Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  A woman from the ME’s office was hunched over the dresser, picking up something with tweezers and preparing to drop it into a clear plastic evidence bag. She was young, almost a kid. Straight blond hair, blue eyes, no makeup because she didn’t need it. Looked like a cheerleader his daughter had known years ago in junior high. But she carried herself and did her work with a kind of confidence Horn liked.

  He moved closer. She knew who he was and didn’t object, even inched over to make room for him. He looked down at a pointed white tooth with gray matter dangling from it.

  “Tell me that’s an animal’s tooth,” he said.

  “It’s a human eyetooth,” said the assistant ME, who’d probably never been a cheerleader. “I’d guess it was knocked out, or maybe caught in material or something and ripped out. People get in fights sometimes, try to bite the other guy, and their teeth get snagged in a shirt or whatever. A violent motion and the tooth gets yanked.”

  “Have you ever actually seen that?”

  “Once. A bunch of teeth, all false. We got a good yuk out of it.”

  Horn pointed to the object in the delicate grasp of the tweezers. “So what’s that hanging from it?”

  “That’s part of the gum still attached.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. But we can all be positive after some concurring opinion and basic tests to confirm.”

  Horn saw the chess piece near the base of the dresser mirror. Black plastic. An opposing knight to the red one he’d found on the brownstone’s stoop this morning. Almost certainly it was from the same chess set.

  He walked over to the bedroom window. There was the brass lock that connected top and lower aluminum frames. It was set, but that was meaningless; behind it, a neat crescent of glass had been cut away and was prevented from falling by a strip of masking tape.

  There wasn’t any doubt now.

  Aaron Mandle had been here.

  Horn remembered the hateful diatribes in court. The dead-eyed, baleful stares. How Mandle must despise him! Must blame him for his capture and conviction.

  And now he wanted to punish Horn by making Anne one of his victims.

  Mandle wouldn’t know about their separation. He must be assuming Horn had moved Anne out of the brownstone and was hiding her here for her protection until the Night Spider was once again captured and imprisoned.

  And right now Mandle was moving freely and could take Anne whenever he chose. That was the message of last night. The chess knights, signifying that the game had begun. The opposing knight and the grisly souvenir, letting Anne—and Horn—know that Anne was alive only because the Night Spider didn’t yet want her. Her destiny was in his hands. The knowledge would be toxic, working inexorably inside her. She walked the earth knowing her free will meant nothing if it existed only at his discretion. She wasn’t free at all and never would be again. After last night, her every breath occurred only because he chose to let breathing continue.

  And it wouldn’t continue much longer.

  The Night Spider was toying with her, and showing his disdain for Horn.

  The intricate dance that would end in torture and slow death had begun.

  40

  “So you placed her under police protection?” Marla asked the next morning. Horn was waiting for Paula and Bickerstaff to arrive at the Home Away. She placed his plate of toasted corn muffins on the table. There was still some breakfast crowd in the diner, so their conversation had been sporadic.

  “As much as possible,” Horn said.

  “Anne should be moved out of that place.”

  “That’s exactly what she’s refused to do. She says she won’t be intimidated into living in terror.”

  “But she’s there almost all the time, isn’t she? I mean, she’s not working right now.”

  Horn took a bite of buttered muffin and nodded. Chewed and swallowed. “We’ve got her apartment building and the apartment itself under close watch. And when she goes out, she has a shadow. But there’s a limit to that kind of close scrutiny. The NYPD can’t afford to guard individual citizens forever.”

  “And Mandle’s waiting for it to stop.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  Horn finished one of his corn muffins and downed half a cup of coffee while Marla went to the front of the diner to wait on customers. He was hungry and exhausted. He’d caught only about an hour’s sleep this morning before the scheduled meeting at the diner. It was probably the same for Paula and Bickerstaff; he could hardly blame them for being late.

  When Marla returned, she topped off his coffee.

  “He won’t give up on her,” she said.

  “He should be thinking primarily of escape and going into hiding,” Horn said, “instead of drawing attention to himself.”

  “Should be. And in his position most men would be holed up somewhere and counting themselves lucky.”

  “What’s driving him?” Horn asked. He’d found Marla to be his wisest advisor in this case.

  “The usual. Revenge, compulsion. And ego.”

  “Ego?”

  “Anne’s the most difficult of his victims. He deliberately made her even more difficult by telegraphing he was going to kill her. She’s his ultimate challenge. In climbing terms, his Mount Everest. He sees her as a victory that can never be taken away from him, not even in death. Once Anne is dead, in the struggle with authority—with you—he’s triumphant.”

  “He’ll think he’s triumphant even if it means his death? Instead of life in some distant city or country under another identity?”

  Marla smiled. “You know the answer, Horn.”

  He nodded glumly. “Mandle would rather die a winner than live as a loser. He’ll try to make Anne his next victim.”

  “Not necessarily his next. And my guess is there’s a reason that nobody’s mentioned yet that explains his entry into Anne’s apartment. I don’t think he’s just letting you know he can have her whenever he decides to act. When it’s over, he wants you to know for sure he murdered her and it wasn’t the work of a copycat killer. That’s also the reason for the chess knights, to make you aware this is a game you and he are playing, and when Anne dies, he’s won.”

  “Winning is damned important to this fruitcake.”

  “Like Lombardi said . . . ”

  “Yeah. What about the tooth on her dresser?”

  Before Marla could answer, the bell over the door jingled and Paula and Bickerstaff entered the diner. They both appeared tired, Bickerstaff especially. He was even more rumpled than usual and dragging his feet as he walked. This morning he looked like what he was, a man who should retire.

  When they’d settled into the booth and Marla had brought them coffee and taken their orders, Horn said, “What have we learned?”

  “That a human being might be able to go weeks without sleep,” Paula said.

  Horn ignored her.

  “Nobody in adjacent buildings remembered anything of value,” Bickerstaff said. “It looks like Mandle got up on the roof of the building to the east, got a line across a sort of courtyard between the two buildings and used it to cross over, then dropped down from the roof of Anne’s building to her bedroom window. He did his glass-cutter-and-tape thing and got in and out.”

  “The doorman and neighbors?”

  “Remember zilch.”

  “Like a ghost,” Horn said.

  “Huh?”

  “Kray said Mandle was trained to move like a ghost.”

  “It was more than a ghost in Anne’s apartment,” Paula said.

  “Ghost spider,” Bickerstaff said. “Creepy thought. Almost enough to put me off my corn muffin.”

  “Horn’s corrupted you,” Paula said. “You’re both going to have cholesterol like sludge.” She looked across the table at Horn. “We do have some info on the tooth. It’s human, an eyetooth, and the substance attached to it is human flesh— gum.”

  “So it was torn or knocked out,” Horn said.

  “Preliminar
y DNA tests and a dental match say it belonged to Don Perlman.”

  Horn put down his muffin and stared at her, waiting. Thinking Paula was developing a feel for drama.

  “Perlman was one of the guards killed by Mandle when he escaped from the police van.”

  He wants you to know for sure he killed her . . .

  “He took it as a souvenir?”

  Paula shrugged. “ME says it’s more likely it happened when he was beating Perlman’s head and face with the butt of his handgun. Tooth dropped out of Perlman’s mouth and got caught in Mandle’s clothes, went inside his shirt or down one of his shoes. Maybe in a pants cuff; prisoners sometimes roll up those jumpsuit pants if the legs are too long. Mandle found the tooth later and thought of a use for it.”

  “Why would he put the tooth on Anne’s dresser?” Bicker-staff asked.

  “To make sure we know he was the one in her bedroom,” Paula said.

  “Ego-driven bastard,” Horn said.

  “Sick fuck,” Bickerstaff said.

  Marla with the coffeepot said, “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  Anne left her apartment and nodded to the uniformed officer with the scar on his face who was stationed at the end of the hall. He smiled at her then settled back in his chair. On the floor next to the chair was a folded copy of the Village Voice he’d been reading.

  She took the elevator to the lobby and through the glass doors that looked out on the sunny street saw an unmarked car parked at the opposite curb. There were two men in it not doing a lot to dispel the notion that they were plainclothes cops. After all, they were on a preventive mission.

  Anne used her key to open her brass mailbox. The mail she pulled out didn’t look promising. She shifted her weight to one leg and stood leafing through it. A Visa bill forwarded from her last address, a coupon for five dollars off a pizza from a nearby restaurant, a plain white envelope with her name typed on it.

  She used a fingernail to raise a corner of the flap, then inserted a finger and tore open the envelope. She realized it was the sort of envelope cards came in.

  And inside was a white card bordered in black. Centered on it was black lettering that said, simply, Condolences in this time of your great loss.

  When she opened the card she found it blank except for four crudely inked letters separated by dashes: A-N-N-E.

  Suddenly light-headed, she leaned sideways against the bank of mailboxes There was an ache in her stomach that she knew was fear.

  She hadn’t the slightest doubt as to who’d sent the card.

  When finally she felt steady enough, she went outside and crossed the street toward the detectives in the parked car.

  “It’s part of his campaign of terror,” said Dr. Ellen Nickels, NYPD psychologist and profiler. Horn was alone with her in her silent, monotonal beige office not far from One Police Plaza. It looked like a movie set and smelled as if all that leather and wood had been recently oiled and waxed. “Anne might receive more such mail, maybe anonymous phone calls.”

  “Or not so anonymous,” Horn said. He told Dr. Nickels what Marla had said; the doctor was impressed. She was an attractive woman in her forties, with a no-nonsense, short hairdo and dead-serious brown eyes behind square-rimmed thick glasses.

  “This person you’re talking to,” she said, “keep talking to him.”

  “It’s a her,” Horn said. “A waitress at a coffee shop I frequent.”

  Dr. Nickels smiled. “She’s dispensing wisdom with the coffee.”

  “Why just Anne’s name on the card?”

  The doctor appeared puzzled. “Because it was for her.”

  “I mean, why not a message?”

  “Oh, I think the message was implied.”

  “And the dashes between the letters of her name?”

  “Probably for emphasis. Detective Horn, this man you’re hunting isn’t always going to be predictable. In part because he’s mentally unstable. And, in part, because his mental illness doesn’t necessarily detract from his cleverness.”

  Horn nodded. Tell me something new.

  The doctor must have read his thoughts. “You probably know the psychology of serial killers better than I do.”

  “They’re not all the same,” Horn said.

  “No, they aren’t. Usually they don’t arm themselves in court then escape on their way to Rikers Island. This one seems deadlier than most. I think I can speak for every woman in the city when I say I want him apprehended as soon as possible. Has the lab had any luck with the card or envelope?”

  “None. No prints on either, and no residue of saliva or DNA on the envelope flap. The card’s for sale everywhere in New York, and the postmark’s Brooklyn and means nothing.”

  “Cautious and diligent, your Aaron Mandle.”

  Horn looked at her. “No, not always cautious.”

  She smiled shrewdly and nodded, as if she knew exactly what he meant.

  Not always cautious enough.

  41

  More than anything, Alice Duggan wanted to die, to escape the pain. Her entire body seemed to be on fire. She couldn’t cry out, with the heavy tape over her mouth. She no longer even tried. Only lay still, listening to her own whimpers, praying for it all to end.

  The bed creaked as the dark, lithe figure beside her moved to the side of the mattress and straightened up. She barely paid attention to it—to him—now. The pain was inside her forever, and he was merely a dark, moving shape in her nightmare. It was horrible, he was horrible, but even in horror, in terror, there was a saturation point. There must be!

  And now there was the hope, the knowledge, that it would soon be over, that the nightmare the world had become would fade and disappear, as would she. Alice would no longer be Alice. Alice would be safe.

  In the blurred lower edge of her vision she saw the lean figure standing before her dresser. Preening in the mirror?

  No, picking up something. A statuette.

  On Alice’s dresser were two twelve-inch-tall plaster figures: one was Fred Astaire, the other Ginger Rogers. Alice had fallen for them as soon as she’d laid eyes on them at the

  Twenty-sixth Street flea market. They’d adorned her dresser for more than a year. Sometimes, when she was in a role that required a hairpiece, she used Fred as a wig stand.

  But the nightmare intruder had reached toward the right side of the dresser. It was Ginger he was holding, hefting it in his hand as if testing for weight.

  He returned to the bed where Alice lay whimpering.

  She saw him raise Ginger and closed her eyes.

  The heavy plaster statuette crushed the bridge of Alice’s nose. She felt blood spurt warmly from it and run down onto her neck. More blood began trickling at the back of her throat, then suddenly flowed heavily. She tried to spit it out, but the backwash from where it was blocked by the tape across her mouth made her swallow. She choked, gagged, frantically tried to spit out the blood again but couldn’t. The mattress and springs began shuddering and making a low, fluttering sound. Her body began to tremble and rock so hard she momentarily levitated off the bed.

  The blood flow continued. She had no choice but to inhale, to try desperately to breathe. It was instinctual, automatic, to inhale and expect air. To struggle to live.

  Alice began to drown.

  “I knew this one,” Horn said to Marla. “Not personally. I saw her onstage. She was the stand-in for the star in Leave Her, Take Her, She’s Mine”

  “Broadway?”

  “Off.”

  “Uhm.”

  “Why did he beat as well as stab her?” Horn asked.

  The Home Away had closed, and he and Marla were walking along dark streets to her subway stop. The media were alive with news of Alice Duggan’s murder. night spider on the hunt again! the Post proclaimed in a gigantic headline. The story was above the fold in the Times. There were long-winded speeches in the state capitol and at

  City Hall about reviewing procedures to transfer prisoners. Television pundit panels
wondered how it could be—how it could conceivably be—that a serial killer so lethal hadn’t been under constant guard and in direct view of law enforcement eyeballs. Was it incompetency or conspiracy that had led to Mandle’s escape? Alice Duggan’s parents in Pittsburgh were interviewed every time they ventured out of their house. “New York,” Rollie Larkin had remarked dryly to Horn in his office, “is getting press like John Rocker’s revenge.”

  Horn listened to the regular clacking of Marla’s heels on the pavement as he strolled beside her. She hadn’t answered his question immediately. It wasn’t an easy one.

  “If I had to guess,” she said finally, “and I do, I’d say Mandle wanted to disfigure his latest victim for two reasons: He wanted to show you what he was going to do to Anne, to taunt you, and he wanted to further terrify Anne.”

  “I feel taunted,” Horn said. “And I sometimes wish Anne were more terrified so she’d agree to go into hiding.”

  “She’s confused right now as well as scared, and trying hard to establish her independence after years of marriage.”

  “She always had plenty of independence,” Horn said a bit defensively.

  “I’m talking more about her mental state than whether she pretty much did what she wanted.”

  They walked for a while without talking. Horn wondered if he’d irritated Marla with his claim of Anne’s independence.

  But no; she’d been thinking.

  “Another possibility,” Marla said, “is that Mandle is changed after his conviction and escape. That now there’s an even stronger element of rage in his murders.”

  “He did beat one of the guards from the van in the face and head,” Horn said. “I’d say he was enraged that night.” A taxi swerved to the curb near them and the driver leaned down so he could peer out at them like a lonely puppy, offering to save them some steps. Horn shook his head no and waved the cab away, and was made slightly uneasy by how much he didn’t want his stroll with Marla interrupted.

  “Maybe Mandle’s wounded and in physical pain,” Marla said. “Exacerbating his anger.”