Darker Than Night fq-1

by John Lutz

  She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the coat. Now, how should she react? What would Ron expect when he walked in the door? Should she leave the coat on the sofa? Maybe it was better to hang it in the closet, play dumb, toy with him and make a game of it. The kind they used to play. Or she could lay the coat on the bed and let him find it. That might be interesting. Then she’d show him her appreciation for his unexpected gift, making a gift of herself. The old games.

  There was a slight sound in the hall; then the ratcheting of a key in the dead-bolt lock.

  The door opened and her options disappeared as Ron stepped into the apartment.

  At first he didn’t notice her or the coat as he turned and closed and relocked the door. Then he turned back, saw her, and immediately his gaze shifted to the sofa where the coat lay. He appeared genuinely puzzled, but she knew he could act convincingly if he had to, feigning surprise at seeing the coat.

  “Isn’t that-”

  “You know it is,” she interrupted, smiling.

  “You went back and bought it?” She could see his confusion changing now to anger, and silent alarms went off in her head.

  “Of course not. You know I didn’t!”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Because you bought the coat and put it there on the sofa so I’d find it when I came home.”

  He yanked his tie loose violently so it hung crookedly around his neck, reminding her of a hangman’s noose, then jutted out his chin and unfastened his top shirt button. “Now why the hell would I do that?”

  Marcy was stunned, searching for words. “I…uh…Well, I don’t know.”

  Not because you love me. Your eyes and that throbbing vein in your temple say now isn’t the time to remind you of that.

  “You thought it was a gift from me?” He pulled the narrow end through the knot and let the tie drape loosely around his neck. Almost as if he were preparing to remove it and strangle her with it if that was what he decided.

  “What else would I think? I came home from work and there was the coat you knew I wanted.”

  “And that we didn’t buy.”

  “You could’ve changed your mind.”

  “The point is, I didn’t change it. So where’d the coat come from?”

  “I told you, I assumed it was from you. Who else would have left it there? I was at work all day, and you and I are the only ones who have keys. Except for Lou the super.”

  Ron shook his head. He might have been angrier, only he couldn’t quite figure out who was his target. “Lou’s sixty-five years old and couldn’t afford a coat like that. Besides, it’s impossible to get him in here to fix a leaky faucet, much less shower us with gifts. After the chat I had with him, Lou wouldn’t let anybody in here even for a minute without one or both of us being present.”

  “Then who?”

  He clenched his right hand into a fist, holding it close to his chest. “That asshole salesclerk at Tambien’s-Ira.”

  “But how could he? Why would he?”

  “He knew you wanted the coat.” Ron went to the coat and lifted it, then wadded it and tossed it in a heap back on the sofa. “There was no note or anything?”

  “Nothing. I found it just like you saw it.”

  He picked up the coat again and tucked it, still wadded, beneath his arm. “C’mon!”

  “Come on where?”

  “To Tambien’s.”

  “You’re taking it back?”

  “No. I never took it from! We’re giving it back to Ira the wiseass salesclerk, along with a warning.”

  “We simply can’t give this back, Ron! I can’t. Let’s put this off, think about it some more.”

  “There’s no place else the coat could have come from. Nobody else who might have given it to you.”

  “How could Ira get in?”

  “I don’t know, Marcy,” Ron said impatiently. “I don’t know how magicians guess the right card, either, but they do.”

  “But why would he give me a gift? What would he expect to get out of it?”

  “Jesus, Marcy, what do you think?”

  “We only met once, and you were there.”

  “So what? Maybe he’s one of those fucked-up psychos who only have to see a woman once and some kind of weird connection’s made.”

  “I guess that’s possible…”

  “Goddamned right it is!”

  “If it is, I don’t want to go near him again.”

  Ron drew a deep breath, then sighed and dragged his forearm across his mouth, as if he’d just taken a long, sloppy drink from a stream.

  “All right,” he said. “You stay here. I’m gonna take this thing and return it to Tambien’s. We’re gonna find out about this! And do something about it!”

  And he was out the door and gone.

  An hour later Ron was back, empty-handed. Marcy watched her husband remove his sport coat and drape it on a hanger in the hall closet. He seemed calmer now. His face wasn’t so flushed, and the blue vein in his temple wasn’t even visible. “Did they take the coat back at Tambien’s?”

  “No,” Ron said. “They claimed they didn’t sell it. Said it was sold in at least a dozen shops in and around New York. I told them maybe Ira just walked out with it so he could give it to you. Ira got pissed and I threatened to twist his head off. He just smiled, the little bastard.”

  “I think he might be dangerous,” Marcy said. “There’s something creepy about him.”

  Ron shrugged. “Whatever he is, I told him if he ever came around here again, I’d cut off his balls.”

  Before or after you twist off his head? “What did he say?”

  “That Tambien’s wouldn’t take the coat in return unless I had a sales slip. He and that numb-brain manager went into their professional salesclerk mode, polite but underneath it acting like assholes.”

  “So what’d you do?” Marcy asked.

  “I told them I didn’t want a refund; then I tossed the coat on the floor and walked out the door. You shoulda seen the look on their faces.”

  “That’s an eight-hundred-dollar coat, Ron.”

  “Not to us, it isn’t. It’s worse than worthless.” He stalked into the kitchen and a few minutes later returned with a glass of water with ice cubes in it. Marcy watched him take a long sip, his head back, the Adam’s apple working in his powerful neck.

  “You still think Ira somehow sneaked in here and left the coat?” she asked when finally he lowered the glass.

  He’d downed half the water. His head bowed, he stared into the glass and swirled its remaining contents around so the ice cubes rattled. “I don’t know,” he said. “I honestly don’t. But if it was him, he won’t do something like that around here again. He’s been scared away.”

  Marcy wasn’t so sure.

  For some reason she doubted if Ira had ever been scared away from anything in his life.

  10

  This time Harley Renz knocked politely on Quinn’s apartment door.

  Quinn peered through the round peephole and viewed the distorted police captain. Renz shifted his weight impatiently and raised his elongated arm to look at his watch. Busy man in a hurry, taking valuable time off to talk to a lowlife like Quinn.

  Quinn waited awhile, until Renz knocked again, louder, before opening the door.

  “Quinn,” Renz said simply, nodding hello. “I would’ve called up on the intercom, but I saw there was sixty years of enamel over the button.” He studied Quinn, who was in his stocking feet but was wearing new gray slacks and a white T-shirt, and didn’t look quite so like a thug as he had during Renz’s last visit. “You got a haircut.”

  “Got a lot of them cut,” Quinn said. “You wouldn’t have noticed just one.”

  Renz smiled. “Some new threads, too. I’m glad you put the money I sent to good use. May I enter your shit can abode?”

  “Sure. You’re a fit with the decor.” Quinn stepped back and to the side, closing the door behind Renz after he’d entered.

&
nbsp; Renz sat down on the sofa and crossed his legs, then looked around. “I don’t know or care if that’s an insult. You’ve cleaned up the place. No magazines, newspapers, or orange peels on the floor. And is that new mold in the corner?”

  “Mold’s the same. Orange peels clashed with the carpet, so they had to go. You clash, too.”

  “Remember I’m your friend now, Quinn. Your way up and back in.” Renz made a big deal of sniffing, wrinkling his nose, and squinting. “It doesn’t smell as bad in here. Is that insecticide? Or are you burning incense?”

  “Have you come to pay me more money?”

  “Do you need more?”

  “Not yet,” Quinn said honestly.

  “Come up with anything in the Elzner apartment or murder file?”

  “Not much,” Quinn said. “The groceries bother me. The strawberry jelly.”

  “Jelly?”

  “Jam, actually. A fairly expensive gourmet brand. There were two jars in with the groceries in the plastic bags and on the kitchen table. And there was a nearly full jar of the same stuff in the refrigerator.”

  Renz uncrossed his legs and crossed his arms, thinking about that. “Somebody else bought the groceries. Somebody who didn’t know the Elzners had plenty of jelly.”

  “Jam.”

  “Still odd, though. Two jars…”

  “Maybe they were a gift from somebody who knew how much one or both of the Elzners liked that kind of jam.”

  “A gift.” Renz made a steeple of his fingers. He liked the idea of a gift, except for…“But why would somebody buy the Elzners a gift and then kill them?”

  “Maybe he hadn’t planned on killing them.”

  “Maybe.” Renz grinned. “And he just happened to be carrying a gun equipped with a silencer. The important thing is, if you’re right, it points to a third party for sure. A killer still on the loose.”

  “A third party who might’ve left before the Elzners were killed.”

  Renz sneered at Quinn. “Don’t send me up, then bring me down. You’re coming around to my way of thinking about this case; you know you are.”

  “I’ve moved in that direction,” Quinn admitted. He didn’t want Renz to think he’d moved almost all the way. “Also, it might be coincidental that the plastic grocery bags aren’t the kind that have the name of the store on them. Or it could be the killer deliberately bought groceries someplace where they couldn’t be traced by the bags and someone might remember him.”

  “Very good, Quinn. I was sure you’d have a different slant on this and come up with something new. You didn’t disappoint me.”

  “I’m flushed with pride. Are you here to tell me anything new?”

  “Yeah. I’m afraid things have changed. Egan found out you’re on the case. I think from a uniform named Charlie Mercer.”

  “Big, square-shouldered guy, blue and brown?”

  “Fits him.”

  “He was coming out of the elevator in the Elzners’ building when I stepped in.”

  “He get a good look at you?”

  “Like I got at him.”

  “Then there’s no mistaking it; the bastard must’ve told Egan.” Renz’s brow furrowed. “Mercer’s made a mistake. One he’ll pay dearly for, and sooner than he thinks. Egan’s probably already notified the chief’s office. Maybe somebody in the news media. That last won’t help him.”

  “Why not?”

  Renz’s forehead relaxed, but the furrows didn’t fade away. “Because I’ve gone on the offensive. I’ve notified all my media contacts I’ve taken a chance on a good man-that’d be you. The safety of the community comes before NYPD politics and petty revenge, so I’ve asked Frank Quinn to look into the Elzner case because he’s the best. If the story’s not already on the news, it will be soon, before Egan’s. The department won’t move to take you off the case, because it’d be bad PR. There was never a criminal charge and a trial in the rape case. The public’ll see you as a hero, Quinn. A victim of unsubstantiated rumor who deserves a second chance. I’ve also assigned a team of detectives to work under your command.”

  Quinn was surprised. “Team?”

  “Two detectives, but you’ll have additional temporary help, if and when you need it.” Renz leaned forward on the sofa. “You know how it works, Quinn. The killing of a typical Manhattan couple means media by the shit load. Media means pressure. Can you deal with it?”

  “I can deal. This team…are these good cops you’re giving me?”

  “Sure, they are. Your old partner from your radio car years, Larry Fedderman, and his new partner, Pearl Kasner.”

  Fedderman. Quinn almost smiled. Other than the people who’d set him up, Fedderman was probably the only one in the NYPD who didn’t think Quinn was guilty of raping a minor. Fedderman had paid for it, in wisecracks and dirty looks and shitty assignments. The word was, he still believed in Quinn. “Fedderman’ll do. What about Kasner?”

  Renz shifted on the sofa cushion as if he’d just noticed he was sitting on something sharp. “She’s got kind of a reputation in the department, but she’s also got great skills.”

  Uh-oh. “Reputation?”

  “She’s got what you might call a temper. Not so unlike yourself. She gets in the same kinda trouble you used to.”

  “She in any of it now?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What’s the yes part?”

  “Vince Egan made a play for her in a hotel lobby, and she knocked him on his ass.”

  Quinn stared incredulously. “A working cop swung on an NYPD captain? She’s on her way out, then.”

  “Let’s just say she’s on the bubble.” Renz explained to Quinn that Egan was drunk at the time and there were witnesses. It was the kind of trouble the NYPD didn’t need aired in public. An IA investigation had been spiked before it could get under way. “It’s the kinda process you should understand,” Renz said.

  “Egan’ll get her some other way.”

  “Not if you, Pearl, and Fedderman break the Elzner murder case.”

  Quinn understood Renz’s angle better now. He jammed his hands in his pants pockets and paced in his stocking feet. “I don’t like this. Too many last chances. How about Fedderman? He got something big riding on this, too? Will solving this case somehow cure him of a fatal disease?”

  “You’re the one who might be cured of a fatal disease, Quinn. Loneliness and rot.”

  That one got through. Quinn stopped pacing and turned to face Renz.

  “You oughta know last chances aren’t so bad,” Renz said. “In fact, they’re what life’s all about.”

  Quinn felt the anger drain from him. Renz was right.

  “You can meet with Fedderman and Kasner tomorrow morning,” Renz said. “You name the time and place. I didn’t figure you’d want the meet here, since the apartment’s not set up for entertaining, even without the orange peels.”

  “Tomorrow’s supposed to be a nice day,” Quinn said. “We can meet just inside the Eighty-sixth Street entrance to Central Park, say around ten o’clock.”

  “That’ll work. They’ll be in plain clothes.”

  “I’ll watch for Fedderman. What’s Kasner look like?”

  “You should know Fedderman’s put on some weight, mostly around the middle. Kasner’s short, a looker with brown eyes, a lotta dark hair, and a good rack.”

  “And a good punch, apparently.”

  “A short right,” Renz said, grinning as he stood up from the couch. “I got the story from a bartender I know at the Meermont. She knocked Egan ass over elbows. You and Pearl, you oughta get along fine.”

  “Like salt and pepper,” Quinn said, liking Kasner a little already, even though he knew she might be playing a double game, reporting to Renz as well as to him.

  “More like pepper and pepper,” Renz said, going out the door.

  Quinn listened to Renz’s receding footsteps on the creaking wooden stairs, then the faint swishing sound of the street door opening and closing.

  He wasn
’t sure what he was getting himself into, but at least his life was moving forward again.

  Or some direction.

  Pain!

  It would never stop. Or so it seemed.

  The woman continued crawling toward the door, and the whip continued to lash her bare buttocks, her meaty thighs, and sometimes, to surprise her, her bare back.

  She’d known what she was getting into-so this was her own doing, as her father used to say. She was to blame. She bore the guilt like invisible chains. When she’d received the pain and punishment she deserved, she’d be the better for it. The chains would drop away and she’d be pure again.

  She was off the carpet now and crawling faster toward the door, knowing she wasn’t going to escape, that she had no chance, as always. A woman with an M.B.A. and a responsible job…what am I doing here? She clenched her teeth and whimpered. She wouldn’t scream. That was one of the rules. She’d been commanded not to scream. And if she did, if her neighbors heard and called the police, how would she explain? Her bare knees thumped on the hardwood floor, and her hands made desperate slapping sounds louder than her moans.

  The whip whistled near her ear, sending a line of fire across her upper back and curling around her shoulder. It burned again across her tender inner right thigh. He knew how to use a whip, this one.

  Ten feet from the door.

  The whip set fire to her right buttock. There was less time between lashes now. She crawled even faster, hurting her knees and the heels of her hands. The whip followed, flicking her like a dragon’s fiery and agile tongue.

  The man standing over her was the dragon.

  Afterward, maybe she’d lie with him, cuddled in his arms, and he’d pretend to love her. It wouldn’t be real, like what he was doing to her now wasn’t exactly real, but that didn’t matter. She had no right to expect real.

  As she stretched out an arm and her fingertips brushed the door, he clutched her ankles and dragged her back and away from freedom.

  It began again.

  What am I doing here?

  11

  Bent Oak, Missouri, 1987.

  Two days before Luther Lunt’s fourteenth birthday, state employees in Jefferson City dropped a cyanide pellet in the gas chamber, killing Luther’s father.