by John Lutz
“Is Nora Shoemaker in the building?” the guard asked.
Anne took the phone from his hand and checked.
“She worked the last shift and went home,” she said, replacing the receiver in its cradle. Her face was pale. Fear was clawing at her guts. What he wants! Exactly what the bastard wants!
“Get her home phone number,” the guard said. “Let’s call her.”
Anne complied, then watched the guard’s impassive face as he stood silently for almost a minute with the receiver pressed to his ear.
He hung up the phone. “No answer.”
“She should be in bed.”
“Maybe she doesn’t wanna answer the phone,” the guard said. “Or has her answering machine turned off and the volume down so the ringing won’t disturb her sleep.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I’m trying.”
Anne’s legs were too weak to support her. She took three unsteady steps and slumped into her desk chair, then glanced down and saw that both her hands were made into fists tightly clenched around her thumbs.
“It was probably a crank call,” the guard said, obviously noticing how scared she was, “but it won’t hurt to send somebody around to Nora Shoemaker’s place and check on her.”
Anne bowed her head, staring into her lap at the whitened fists she couldn’t unclench, and was squeezed by a knowledge that had more to do with the heart and gut than with the mind. Ancient instinct. Signals from the cave.
It wasn’t a crank call . . . It wasn’t a crank call . . .
44
Horn got the call at 3:01 A.M. A woman named Nora Shoemaker, an off-duty nurse at Kincaid Memorial Hospital, was found dead in her apartment on the West Side. She was apparently another victim of the Night Spider.
Not only that, Anne had received a phone call from the killer intimating that he’d murdered the nurse.
A nurse in the same hospital where Anne worked. It could just as easily have been Anne.
Horn was sure that was the message Mandle wanted to say. And it could happen anytime. Nora Shoemaker’s murder was only two days after Letty Fonsetta’s. And where was the pattern? The nurse was in no way a public figure like Fonsetta and Duggan. Why had Mandle seen her as one of the chosen? Made her a victim?
Horn’s mind was whirling with these questions as he began making calls, demanding that protection be stepped up for Anne.
Then he phoned Anne, who seemed more deeply shaken by the nurse’s murder than by any of the others.
“He might have been here,” she said. “In the hospital, making up his mind who to murder. And for no reason other than to terrorize me! That’s why Nora Shoemaker died—to make me more afraid! In a way, I’m responsible for her death.”
“That’s what he wants you to believe,” Horn said. “He wants to panic you. Not just for pleasure, but in the hope that you won’t be thinking straight and you’ll make a mistake. If he makes you feel guilty as well as terrified, that’s fine. You’ll be more vulnerable and he’ll be able to get to you. Nora Shoemaker died because Mandle killed her. Period.”
Her voice quavered but there was strength in it. “I know that intellectually, Thomas. I won’t let this sick freak panic me. My thinking is clear.”
Horn believed her. “For now,” he said, “cooperate with your guardian angels, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. They know their job.”
“All right, Thomas. And you promise to be careful.”
She hung up without waiting for his promise. Only making conversation. The inane conversation of terror.
He got on his cell phone and woke up Paula and Bickerstaff. Then he got dressed in a hurry so he could drive to Nora Shoemaker’s apartment.
This one was like the others done since Mandle’s escape from the prison transport van. A woman shrouded in her bed-sheets, gagged, then tortured with stab wounds. She was killed by a blow or several blows to the head, with the killer using whatever bludgeoning instrument was handy and suitable for the task. This time it had been a cut-glass candelabra. It had been used with such force and viciousness that two of its six gracefully curved branches had broken off.
No fingerprints, as before.
Ah, but there were differences!
This time no sign of entry from the roof. The knob lock on the apartment door had been expertly slipped. The splintering of the door frame indicated that the chain-lock bracket had been forced not with a sudden, violent effort, but by someone leaning harder and harder against the door, several times in succession, until the screws flew from the wood. It was a method long used by breaking and entering pros who didn’t want to wake anyone sleeping inside.
The method had worked with Nora Shoemaker, who was probably wrapped like a package and gagged before she woke up completely.
What happened to her next must have seemed to last forever, until finally the glass candelabra led her to true eternity.
“There was no doorman,” Paula said over breakfast at the Home Away, where Horn had called a meeting to discuss what they knew before they all went home and caught some much-needed sleep. “There was a keypad outside that the tenants used to open the outer doors.”
“The code changed recently?” Horn asked.
“Changed last week. Not that it makes any difference. After using the keypad to gain entrance to the outer lobby, tenants then use a regular key to open the door to the inner lobby and elevators. All Mandle had to do was wait on the sidewalk for somebody to enter the building, time his approach, then grab the door before it closed all the way. He could enter with them, as if he’d just walked up and was about to go in when they came along. Then he could wait politely while they used their key to open the door to the inner lobby, and ride up in the elevator to a different floor, as if he belonged in the building.”
“Do any of the other tenants remember something like that happening?”
“Sure,” Bickerstaff said. “Half a dozen. It happens all the time. People are lazy with their keys and too trustful, even in New York. It’s like they go to sleep at night and forget everything that happened to them that day or what they’ve read in the papers, then they get up next morning not knowing again how many assholes are walking around out there. A guy edges in with them when they’re buzzed up or unlock a door, they don’t think much about it. They’ve done the same thing themselves.”
Horn shook his head. “So much for building security.” He sipped from a glass of ice water. He was staying away from coffee so he could actually get a few hours’ sleep and be more effective the rest of the day. “Whatever’s driving Mandle is getting stronger. He’s stepped up the pace, killing with increasing frequency.”
“Like most of those jerk-off serial killers,” Bickerstaff said.
“What I don’t understand,” Horn said, “is why his method of entering Shoemaker’s apartment was different.”
“Another message,” Marla said.
Surprised, the three detectives looked up at her where she was standing near the booth. There were several customers in the front area of the diner this morning. Marla had to work her trade.
“He wanted to let you know you had more than his usual MO to worry about,” she continued. “That he was ahead of you in your game of wits.” She might have been about to say more, but a voice called her name. She turned and strode toward an elderly man in a window booth who was animatedly motioning for her with his empty coffee cup.
“She’s probably right,” Paula said.
“Can we be sure the nurse wasn’t a copycat murder?” Bickerstaff asked.
Horn and Paula looked at him.
“Not likely,” Paula said. “Remember the phone call to Anne.”
“Still possible, though,” Bickerstaff said. “All someone had to do was find out how to get in touch with Anne at the hospital. The news media’s been on this case like flies on a dead carp. Lots of information on TV and in the newspapers.”
“There are too many similarities with the previous mur
ders,” Horn said.
“Not the method of entry,” Paula reiterated.
Bickerstaff grunted and got his notepad from a pocket of his wrinkled suitcoat. He absently propped his reading glasses on the bridge of his nose and consulted his notes. Paula thought he looked ten years older with his glasses on, the way they slid halfway down his nose. And incongruously academic. Mr. Chips with a 9mm.
“We got the three victims,” he said. “Alice Duggan, Nicolette—long for Letty—Fonsetta, and Nora Shoemaker. The first two were in their early thirties, Nora in her early forties. All at least reasonably attractive. The first two were public figures. They were killed after Mandle dropped down like a spider from the roof and entered through their bedroom windows. The nurse was killed after her apartment was entered through the door.”
“Because Mandle wanted to send a message,” Paula reminded Bickerstaff.
He grunted again and nodded. “Thirty-seven stab wounds in the first and second victims, thirty-five in the nurse. All three with their heads bashed in.”
“He might simply have lost track of the number of stab wounds,” Horn said.
“Or was scared away,” Paula said.
“Or got bored.” Bickerstaff dropped his notepad on the table. “I could go on, but it looks like the same killer to me. The nurse’s death looks quite a bit different from the other two until you start listing similarities.”
“Different nonetheless,” Paula said. She yawned.
Made Bickerstaff yawn. He glared at her as if he resented it.
“Let’s catch up on some rest,” Horn said, “before we all drift off here in the diner.”
Bickerstaff said, “You think he knows we meet here?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to Horn or, apparently, to Paula, who was looking at him with a stunned expression.
“I mean,” Bickerstaff went on, “Mandle knows who’s working his case. And we’ve been using this diner like it was a squad room.”
“It’s always possible,” Horn said, watching Marla bring the impatient customer in the window booth a glass of orange juice. For a second, he thought about calling Larkin, getting protection for Marla. But he couldn’t do that. How many women could he insist the overworked NYPD protect? And Rollie would ask, what was Marla Winger to Horn?
Horn had no concrete answer.
“Let’s meet back here about two this afternoon,” he said, sliding out of the booth and standing. He tossed enough money on the table to cover breakfast and a tip.
Both men stood aside and let Paula lead the way toward the door. They all paused to say good-bye to Marla, who was now busy behind the counter.
At the door, Paula stopped and stood still. “Wait a minute!”
“You’re letting out the air-conditioning,” said Mr. Impatient with the orange juice.
She realized she was holding the door open and went the rest of the way outside. Horn and Bickerstaff followed. Heat and noise wrapped around them like a blanket.
“You said Letty Fonsetta’s first name was short for Nicole.”
“Nicolette,” Bickerstaff said.
“Think of the three victims in the order of their deaths,” Paula said, keeping her voice down and moving back against the building so passersby wouldn’t overhear. “Their first names.”
“Jesus!” Horn said.
Bickerstaff looked from one of them to the other.
“Alice, Nicolette, and Nora,” Horn said grimly. “The first letters of their names spell Ann.”
“Maybe a coincidence,” Bickerstaff said.
“They don’t exist,” Paula told him. Something she’d heard Horn say.
“It’s too much of a stretch not to be deliberate.” Horn had removed a cigar from his shirt pocket when they left the diner. Now he put it back.
“Remember the note Mandle sent her,” Paula said. “A-N-N-E, with the dashes between capital letters.”
“I’ll be damned!” Bickerstaff said. “The son of a bitch is leading up to Anne’s murder, spelling out her name with his victims’ first initials.”
“If that’s true,” Paula said, “there’ll be another Night Spider murder before he tries for Anne. The victim will be a woman whose first name begins with E.”
Bickerstaff gazed out at the traffic, at the endless stream of vehicles and countless pedestrians. The expression on his face suggested he was thinking about all the Ellens and Emmas out there. “At least we have the note he sent Anne, so we know we’ve got a little time.”
Paula stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bickerstaff turned to look at her. “We can be sure he knows how to spell her name.”
The two o’clock meeting with Paula and Bickerstaff had yielded nothing else new. Horn was wearing down. He didn’t bother undressing or going up to his bedroom. He merely removed his shirt and shoes and stretched out on the sofa in the living room. Planes of sunlight dancing with dust motes sliced in through the spaces between shades and window frames. The chaotic but muted sounds of the city found their way inside and were oddly relaxing. Four familiar walls, dimness, cracks of sunlight, sounds of human connection too distant to be threatening . . .
Horn rested the back of his wrist on his forehead, blocking some of the light, and closed his eyes.
He woke in darkness.
Horn was hungry, but he was sure that wasn’t what had woken him.
He straightened his right arm and worked it back and forth until most of the soreness was gone. Then he sat up on the sofa, managed to stand, and switched on a table lamp. He saw by the grandfather clock that it was past 9:00 P.M.
Great! He’d intended to check and make sure Anne’s security had been increased and was in place. And he wanted to call Anne and reassure her. He rubbed the back of his hand across his lips. They seemed to be glued together.
As he staggered through the brownstone toward the bathroom, switching on lights as he went, he wondered if he should tell Anne about how Mandle was spelling out her name with victims before trying to kill her. A sadistic game played by an expert. If she knew about his latest gambit, she might feel all the more helpless.
By the time he’d relieved his bladder and was leaning over the washbasin splashing handfuls of cold water on his face, he decided Anne deserved to know. It was, after all, her life that was at stake. There might even be an odd comfort in the knowledge that probably another victim, whose first initial was E, stood between her and her encounter with the Night Spider.
But he’d also have to tell her that might be precisely what Mandle wanted the police to think, so he’d have an easier time getting to her.
After putting on his shoes and a clean shirt, Horn phoned Lieutenant Howard Burton, who’d been put in charge of Anne’s security detail. From Burton he learned that two more undercover cops disguised as hospital employees had been placed in the hospital on Anne’s floor, and another uniformed cop was stationed in the lobby. Good. More visibility. But the NYPD was aiming for an arrest, while Horn’s top priority was prevention. Anne was working in her office at the hospital now, he was told, with her uniformed guard outside her door.
When Horn had hung up on Burton, he phoned Anne’s direct line.
“You doing all right?” he asked.
“Only if you call worrying about getting sued and getting killed doing all right.” She sounded tired. Discouraged.
“You should leave the city, Anne. Go somewhere you know you’ll be safe until we find Mandle.”
“That sounds so much simpler than it is. And how do you know I would be safe? Or that you’ll ever find him? In the meantime, I’ve got a life to live.”
“Mandle sees you as a life to take. You’re running a big risk, choosing this as the time to assert yourself and prove your independence.”
“The time chose me, Thomas. And this isn’t political correctness or feminist dogma. I’m clear-eyed about the facts and who and what I am. And I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to be a victim of fear.”
“How about of murder?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t afraid. I said I wasn’t going to be a victim. Any kind of victim, including one who’s willing in some indirect, perverse way.”
“Were you ever?”
“A victim?” She took a few seconds to consider. “I don’t think so, no. And I’m not going to begin because this evil freak is pushing my buttons.”
“Mandle’s changed his MO somewhat. He’s not as predictable now.”
“Are you trying to frighten me more?”
“For God’s sake no, Anne! I want you to know the facts so you can take precautions. Mandle didn’t come through the window of his last victim. He forced the lock and came in through her door.”
He could hear her breathing loudly into the phone. “Okay, Thomas. I’m sorry. I’m strung out with this . . . with everything that’s going on. But my nerves are holding. Damn it, they are! The more I know, the better off I am.”
“Here’s something else you need to know, or at least have a right to know. The NYPD’s not releasing the information yet, so this is in confidence. It appears Mandle’s using his victims’ first initials to spell out your name.” He explained to her what Paula had figured out. “It doesn’t necessarily mean,” he added, “that a woman whose first initial is E will actually be a victim before Mandle tries for you. The order of victims’ names might only be his way of throwing us off guard so he can get to you while we’re concentrating on someone else.”
“You really think his fucked-up mind works that way, Thomas?”
“Why not? You just said yourself it was fucked up.”
“He’d only be pretending to be locked into a compulsion. I’m no psychiatrist but nothing Mandle’s done before has suggested he’s anything other than a true obsessive-compulsive.”
“The sad truth about serial killers,” Horn said, “is that we really don’t know how their minds work, what’s missing in them. They aren’t all locked into patterns. And some of them, for unknown reasons, change patterns. Some of them even suddenly stop killing, as if finally they’ve become satiated with death.”