Darker Than Night fq-1

by John Lutz

  “Look at the price of this stuff,” Fedderman said.

  “That’s why it’s gourmet,” Pearl told him. “It’s probably delicious.”

  “Four wedges. Or almost four. Stuff must last a long time, and it’s pretty costly to be buying it four wedges at a whack.”

  “And there’s no sign the Grahams were planning a party.”

  Quinn was listening to them, pleased by their acumen and absorption. They were into the case all the way now, as he was. It was much more than a job.

  “Dust the cheese for prints,” he said.

  The tech grinned. “You kidding? Cheese doesn’t-”

  “The wrappers,” Quinn said. “Dust the plastic wrappers.” He nudged the refrigerator door shut and glanced at Pearl and Fedderman. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  He didn’t say anything while the three of them were in the elevator, waiting till they were outside on the sidewalk and out of earshot of anyone in the building.

  “I think it’s our guy,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Pearl said. “Making it look like murder-suicide.”

  “But he used a knife this time instead of a gun,” Fedderman pointed out. “Does that add up?”

  “If it doesn’t touch on his core compulsion,” Quinn said.

  “Or if he’s read the literature on serial killers,” Pearl said, “and knows enough to alter his methods.”

  There was a break in traffic, so they crossed the street to where the unmarked was parked in bright sunlight.

  When they were seated in the car-Fedderman behind the steering wheel with the engine idling and the air conditioner on high-Pearl, in the backseat, said, “Nift’s gonna go with murder-suicide, and it might wash. The weapon still in hubby’s hand, no sign of a break-in…”

  “It won’t wash for long,” Quinn said. “It can’t. There was a chair pulled out from the kitchen table as if somebody’d been sitting there. And there were skid marks on the floor near the bed. Somebody’d been hiding under there and dragged dust with him when he slid out.”

  “Maybe the husband, hiding and waiting for the lover to show,” Fedderman suggested.

  “But he was in his underwear,” Pearl said. “I think the killer was hiding under the bed. He thought he saw his chance, got out, and was about to leave, maybe out the window, and he heard the Grahams coming and made for the closet.”

  “Where would the Grahams be coming from?”

  “I don’t know. The kitchen, maybe. They might’ve both been awake and gotten up for a snack.”

  Fedderman was quiet for a moment, trying to work out a scenario that made sense where the husband might have slid under the bed in his underwear. Part of a plan. It was difficult if not impossible.

  “And there’s the cheese,” Pearl said. “How many people buy something that expensive four at a time?”

  “It happens,” Fedderman said. “The rich are, you know…different.”

  “The Grahams weren’t the Rockefellers.” Pearl looked out the side window, across the street toward the apartment building they’d just left: red brick above a stone facade, green awnings, ivy growing up one corner out of huge concrete planters. No doorman, but a security system with a keypad, buzzer, and key-activated inner door. It wasn’t the best building in the neighborhood, but it was a good one. It would be interesting to find out what the Grahams were paying in rent.

  Fedderman put the car in drive but didn’t pull away from the curb. “We haven’t had breakfast, and looking into that refrigerator made me remember I was hungry.”

  “Maybe there’ll be some prints on the cheese wrappers,” Pearl said in a hopeful voice.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Quinn said. “Our guy must have known whatever he bought for his potential victims might be examined, so he probably wiped everything he carried into the apartment. He’s smart.”

  “So are we,” Pearl said from the backseat.

  “A cheese omelette doesn’t sound bad,” Fedderman said.

  Quinn smiled, then said, “Drive.”

  After lunch, while Pearl and Fedderman were questioning the Grahams’ neighbors, Quinn sat on a bench in a pocket park on East Fiftieth and called Renz on the cell phone Renz had furnished. It was supposedly a secure line, or nonline, less likely to be tapped than a regular wire connection. Easier to listen in on with a cheap scanner, perhaps, but no one knew Renz had the phone.

  “You’ve solved the Graham case,” Renz said when Quinn had identified himself.

  “Taken the first step,” Quinn said. He had to speak somewhat loudly because of an echo effect and the constant trickling sound of a nearby artificial waterfall. “We can be pretty sure both Grahams were murdered.”

  “What’s that noise?” Renz asked. “You calling me from a men’s room?”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear-”

  “I heard you,” Renz cut him off. “Of course they were murdered. Just like the Elzners. That’s why I hired you, remember? I figured we had a repeater and the case would blossom. Thing is, Egan will still be seeing murder-suicide.”

  “That’s what Nift thinks. I let him think it.”

  “Good. I know the basic facts of this case, though, and after the autopsy Nift will have to reveal everything to Egan.”

  “I thought Nift was your man in the ME’s office.”

  “He is, right now. But Nift is for Nift. And all he can do is delay. He’ll tell Egan it was murder-suicide; then Egan will figure out what you already know. Which is what?”

  Quinn explained to Renz about the positions of the bodies, the dust dragged out from beneath the bed, the chair pulled out from the kitchen table, the four wedges of expensive gourmet cheese.

  “Cheese this time, eh?” Renz said when Quinn was finished. Then added, “And a knife instead of a gun. We’ve got a repeater who changes his method.”

  “It happens,” Quinn said. “Our guy’s method isn’t tied in with whatever makes him tick.”

  “Whatever makes him sick,” Renz said. “That’s for you to find out. Get in this motherfucker’s mind, Quinn.”

  “Before Egan does,” Quinn said.

  “That’s our game. How are Pearl and Fedderman working out?”

  “They’re both good ones. Fedderman’s got bloodhound in him. Pearl’s a terrier.”

  “Just so they remember Egan wants to send them both to the pound.”

  “It’s always in their thoughts,” Quinn assured Renz.

  “I was gonna call you,” Renz said, “seeing as cooperation runs both ways. We got a trace on that silencer used in the Elzner case, the Metzger eight hundred Sound Suppressor. In the past five years, one hundred thirty of that model was sold through two outlets: a biannual newsletter called ‘Handgun Nation,’ and a magazine, Mercenary Today. ”

  “And you traced all hundred thirty?”

  “It turned out to be easier than we thought. A militia group in Southwest Missouri bought a hundred of them, and they were all accounted for when the government shut down their operation two years ago and confiscated their weapons. The other thirty, we’ve tracked. They’re all accounted for but one. It was bought mail order four years ago from Mercenary Today by a guy named Ed Smyth-that’s with a Y — in Tacoma, Washington. He says he sold it at a gun show a year later to a bearded man in a pickup truck. No sales record because it wasn’t a gun, just gun paraphernalia.”

  Quinn didn’t bother asking about the bearded man in the pickup. “What else do we know about Smyth with a Y? ”

  “That he bought a Russian revolver on that same date. He says he’s a collector, and he lists his age as seventy-nine.”

  “Not our guy.”

  “Not unless he’s the oldest psychosexual serial killer on record. And Tacoma police think he’s telling the truth about the silencer. They know him because he’s a gun nut, and they say he’s honest.”

  “So we need to track the bearded guy in a pickup who bought the silencer. That should be easy.”

  “It should be,” Renz said, his to
ne suggesting he’d been waiting for Quinn’s sarcasm. “Smyth is a straight shooter in more ways than one. He etched his Social Security number in the silencer. Now we have it, and it’s being sent out to various pawnshops and gun dealers. If the beard sold it, we’ll nail him.”

  But Quinn knew he wouldn’t be the killer. Whoever they were tracking was too smart to use anything as a weapon that might be traced to him. And there was something else. “Renz-”

  “Harley.”

  “Harley, you’ve traced silencers sold within the last five years, but what if the silencer was bought before that? There might be hundreds or thousands of them out there you don’t know about.”

  “It wasn’t marketed in this country until five years ago.” Renz, ready for him again. Quinn could almost see his smirk. Irritating.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”

  “Wanted to see if you’d think of it. If you’ve retained your old sharpness. I’ve seen cops get old fast, once they retire. And I gotta tell you, Quinn, it took you a while.”

  “Just keep me informed on the silencer,” Quinn said, and pressed the button to disconnect.

  He thought he heard Renz laughing as the phone went dead. Quinn almost hoped the silencer they were after had been smuggled in from another country.

  Egan sat in his office feeling that everything was pretty much under control. He’d figured double murder faster than anyone predicted, with Nift’s help. Renz thought Nift was his man, but Nift was Nift’s man only and was hedging his bet on who’d be the next chief. The arrogant little ME called and told Egan right away that the knife found in the husband’s hand wasn’t the murder weapon. The blades were close, but they didn’t quite match the wounds.

  The papers and TV had the story the next morning. Egan had seen to it. The New York media became frenetic and inflamed over few things more than a serial killer. Since both couples had been killed around three A.M., and the female victims had been of obvious erotic interest to the killer, the media dubbed him the Night Prowler.

  Egan liked it. Leave it to the New York press. Now New Yorkers had a killer they knew by name-nickname, anyway. A killer they could visualize and hate and fear. A star in a city that fed on stars.

  He leaned back in his desk chair and grinned at the way things were going. A nocturnal serial killer! Just what was needed to increase the pressure on Renz, Quinn, and that pocket-size bitch Pearl. Fedderman he saw as no problem.

  Egan felt confident. This was the kind of fight he never lost.

  The Night Prowler.

  Okay, why not? He rather liked it.

  “The Night Prowler” set his quarter-folded Times aside on the wrought iron table and smiled. He was having a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and a croissant at a West Side restaurant that had tables set up on the sidewalk outside. Someone driving past in the line of traffic was for some reason envious or offended by the smile and raised a middle finger at him, but he didn’t mind. His thoughts were elsewhere, in a very special place the driver would never visit in his paltry, miserable life.

  His gaze fell again on the folded newspaper.

  The Night Prowler.

  Yes, he approved!

  And he knew himself well enough to realize that soon the Night Prowler would have to satisfy his special needs. The buzzing would begin again, softly at first, the cacophony and energy of discordant colors. He knew who the next one should be, but she was unmarried and lived alone. And she was apparently without a lover.

  Not his type, as the incredibly inept police profilers would say.

  Then why does she call to me so in the night?

  He should make sure about her. Definitely he should make sure.

  His waiter came by and the Night Prowler pointed to the half-eaten croissant on his plate.

  “I believe I’ll have another. They’re delicious.”

  Why does she call to me so…?

  19

  It had rained lightly but persistently the morning of Raoul Caruso’s funeral, but by the time many of the mourners and family arrived at Anna’s father’s modest frame house in Queens, the sun was shining. Food-ravioli, salad, and chocolate-chip cookies-had been prepared there by a neighbor who’d been a good friend of Anna’s father.

  Anna looked at the woman, a dark-eyed, onetime beautiful widow in her fifties who’d put on weight but was still attractive. She wondered if her father and his neighbor had had an affair. The woman, whose name was Lilitta, had certainly been deeply distressed at the funeral.

  Anna’s father’s employer, a swarthy man named Stick, who looked cheap and disreputable even in his expensive suit, had stood next to her at the funeral but didn’t drive to the house afterward. Anna’s uncle Dale, her father’s brother and Melba’s father, whom she’d met only half a dozen times, came to the house. He was seated on the edge of the sofa with a paper plate full of ravioli balanced on his knee and listening to a woman Anna didn’t recognize, who was sitting next to him. Melba, who was fifteen and made ill by the funeral, was curled in a chair looking as if she wanted to cry and make her eyes even more red and puffy.

  With eyes almost as red from crying as Melba’s, Anna’s mother approached Dale and whispered in his ear. Dale nodded, set his plate aside on a lamp table, and stood up. Anna watched them climb the stairs to the second floor. Lilitta, standing over by a big steel coffee urn, also saw them, and put down her foam cup and followed.

  Anna hesitated, then followed Lilitta. As she took the stairs, she looked over and saw that Melba hadn’t noticed them and was seated with her head bowed and her eyes clenched shut, absently picking at a zit on her chin.

  At the top of the stairs Anna heard voices and went to an open door at the end of the hall.

  Her father’s bedroom.

  The three of them were standing at the foot of the bed, talking calmly, but Lilitta seemed to be holding in anger as well as grief. Anna looked at the bed, at Lilitta, and wondered.

  “It’s difficult but we oughta do it,” Dale was saying. “We’re family, and from what Raoul told me”-a glance at Lilitta-“almost family.”

  Anna’s mother saw her and waved her in.

  “We’re going to look through some of your father’s things,” she said, “and see what he might have wanted us to take to help us remember him. You should do this, too, Anna. It’s posterity.”

  Anna wondered if the three of them were being sentimental, or actually looking for items of value. Either way, she couldn’t stop them, so she decided to play along.

  Acting tentative and guilty, as if her father might still be alive, they began opening drawers. Dale went to the closet and yanked open its door, which was warped and stuck on the wood frame. He was about the same size as his late brother and began selectively removing clothes, a shirt, two pairs of slacks, a sport jacket.

  “Isn’t it a little soon to be doing this?” Anna asked.

  Lilitta smiled at her.

  “We need to be realistic,” Anna’s mother said, looking up from the dresser drawer she was rooting through and shooting a glance at Dale.

  Anna understood. Her mother feared that if given the opportunity, Dale would return to the house alone and confiscate anything of value.

  Dale seemed oblivious of this as he held up the sport jacket to inspect it for wear or moth damage.

  Anna’s mother removed a wooden box from one of the dresser drawers and placed it on the bed next to the folded slacks. She opened the box and began spreading jewelry out on the tufted white spread.

  Anna could see at a glance that all of it was cheap; she recognized the steel Timex watch her father had always worn and sworn by. Lilitta picked up the watch and held it as lovingly as if it were a $20,000 Rolex.

  While the other three were occupied by the jewelry on the bed, Anna went to the closet. On the top shelf were stacks of old Newsweek magazines, a dusty rotary-style phone, and a shoe box. Anna slid the shoe box down and opened it to find that it contained what looked like a new pair of jogging shoes
. As she was returning the box to where she’d found it, she noticed an old wooden cigar box that had been behind it on the shelf.

  When she reached for the cigar box, she found it surprisingly heavy. With a backward glance to make sure no one was paying attention to her, she stepped deeper into the closet and lifted the box’s lid. The scent of ancient tobacco wafted up to her.

  Inside were about a dozen silver dollars with a thick rubber band around them to keep them in a neat stack, and a small revolver.

  Fascinated, Anna looked at the revolver, then lifted it from the box and hefted it in her right hand. It felt good, as if it belonged there. It was blue steel with a checked walnut grip, and she could see the dull brass of the cartridge cases in the cylinder and knew it was loaded.

  Her father’s gun.

  Her gun now. Posterity.

  My gun.

  Possessing it gave her a sense of secret power she didn’t want to lose.

  Barely hesitating, she slipped the revolver beneath her blouse and tucked its cool steel bulk into her waistband. Later she could go into the bathroom downstairs and transfer it to her purse.

  “Anna?”

  Her mother’s voice.

  Anna turned, still holding the open cigar box.

  “Whatcha got, honey?”

  “Money,” Anna said, and held out the box.

  The cheap cuff links, rings, and tie clasps on the bed were forgotten as Anna’s mother took the box from her hand.

  “Not much,” Dale said, obviously disappointed. “Twelve dollars.”

  “Silver ones, though,” said Anna’s mother. “They might be worth something to a collector.”

  “Kinda thing the people who’ll auction off the household items will keep for themselves. I don’t wanna sound greedy, but the fair thing’d be to divide them coins three ways and forget them.”

  Anna’s mother looked at Lilitta.

  “He means family,” Lilitta said. “Dale, you, and Anna.” She held up the Timex. “I’ll keep Raoul’s watch, if nobody minds.”

  “No objections,” Dale said, and carried the box over to the bed.