Darker Than Night fq-1

by John Lutz

  He smiled. There on cable news was a wedding photo of Mary and Donald. The caption at the bottom of the screen read, WEST SIDE SLAYINGS.

  A wedding photo! Wonderful! Handsome couple.

  The newlyweds in the photo disappeared and there was a blond-haired young woman in a navy blazer, standing with the victims’ apartment building in the background. There were several police cars parked at the curb, and people milling about in front of the building. The journalist, whose name was Kay Kemper, wore a serious expression that didn’t work because the top of her fluffy hairdo kept standing straight up in the breeze, then settling almost back down, like a lid that didn’t quite fit but wouldn’t stop trying. “The police aren’t talking,” she was saying into the microphone while staring at the camera, “but sources tell us this is almost certainly another deadly attack by the Night Prowler. Both victims were purportedly stabbed to death, Mary Navarre and her husband, Donald Baines. The couple was childless. Neighbors say…”

  The Night Prowler stopped listening closely; he knew all about the victims, more even than they’d known about each other, their secret places and desires. Mary he knew from reading her mail, both snail and e, from the scent of her clothes, clean and unwashed, from what she ate and liked and disliked. He knew what authors she read, what cosmetics she used, her medications and birth control pills, her breathing and scent when she slept, the up-close warmth of her flesh, her intimate thoughts murmured in her sleep. Her favorite colors.

  And he knew about last night. Far more than anyone else would ever know. The way he’d possibly made enough noise to wake them. Though they might just as easily have slept through his secret visit as they had the others. They’d surprised him there in the kitchen, but not completely. He had, in his way, been waiting for them, sitting with his knife close at hand, sitting with a plan imprinted in his mind, a plan that required action not thought. A plan that was justice and balance and vengeance. Freedom, at least for a while. Escape and salvation, at least for a while. Oh, he was ready for surprise as he sat with his blade and his plan, eating his sandwich and drinking milk. A late-night snack, and not the first.

  He was prepared, as he had been night after night. There were no real surprises in life. It was just that people had trouble reaching and touching what they knew was coming. Mary and Donald, all of them, they knew before they knew. Everything that walked or squirmed on earth knew at the end, learned at the end, welcomed the end. The terminally ill dying in hospital wards. Animals sagging limp in the jaws of predators, patient yet impatient.

  Their deaths are a benediction.

  Adrift on his thoughts, the Night Prowler only half heard what Kay Kemper was saying as he sat watching her glossy lips move, the way she shaped her vowels and unconsciously ran the ripe tip of her tongue, so pink, over her white upper incisors when she glanced down to check her notes flapping in the breeze. An errant blond strand of hair interfered with her vision and she brushed it back, almost losing the notes.

  The Night Prowler wondered if the station would ever make up its mind what it wanted to do with her hair. Such indecision. It should be shorter and closer to her head, and lose the bangs, please! Her lips were remarkably mobile, stretching and inverting, ideal for unnatural acts, never still, as if they had too many nerve endings in them: “…had moved into their apartment only, pink tongue, two months ago, looking, pink, to…brutally, pink, murdered sometime last night…impacted by…say they heard nothing…any suspects…hopefully, pink, the fear… Detective Frank Quinn was unavailable, for comment…no leads…”

  Frank Quinn.

  The Night Prowler stretched his left arm and placed his glass of water on the floor near the sofa. Quinn’s name was appearing more and more in conjunction with the Night Prowler. It was becoming difficult to think of one and not the other. A team. A chess set. Adversaries.

  Enemies.

  The Night Prowler knew how to deal with enemies. What to expect from them. It had been his first hard lesson in life.

  On the table next to the sofa was a small bottle with a rubber stopper, along with a folded white handkerchief. The Night Prowler unstopped the bottle and carefully tilted it to let a few drops fall onto the handkerchief, which he picked up and pressed lightly over his nose and mouth.

  He breathed in deeply. A cool and silent wind blew somehow without motion. Walls fell away, and curtains swayed wide to reveal vistas of light and color. Truth became evident, and what wasn’t evident didn’t matter.

  He wished now he still had his gun. He should never have used it to begin with; he should have saved it for killing from a distance.

  Should he obtain another gun? It would have to be done illegally; there could be no record of a transaction, and no one must know of his possession of the gun. So there was only one way. That would be stealing. Blatantly breaking the law.

  He threw back his head and laughed at the azure blue truth of it. His pursuer Quinn had broken the law, hadn’t he? With that young girl, that beautiful child with flesh the hue of-

  But he’d seen only photographs of the child. Anna something.

  Handkerchief to nose. Breathe in, breathe in…

  How could Quinn do such a thing? Where was honor, love, and fidelity? He was a cop! How could he betray that girl? She hadn’t betrayed him. She hadn’t had the opportunity.

  Yesterday’s Quinn.

  Today’s Quinn, second-chance Quinn, was a mechanical, determined hunter, a relentless agent of a god that was like Judas. The god of the girl he had raped. The Night Prowler’s god of gray.

  Handkerchief to nose…

  Yes, Quinn was a dangerous man, and that was a fact the color of blood.

  Quinn was a stalker who would follow and follow and become his prey so there would be no escape. They were, in the end, always the same, hunter and quarry, both of them diminished by either’s death.

  That mustn’t happen. Not to me. Us…

  Sleep was taking control now, a drug relaxing every muscle, comfortable and familiar, welcome as death that thwarted pain.

  Mary, Mary…

  He mustn’t. Must not…

  Enemies!

  34

  Renz had done his job well in stalling Egan’s troops. It had been a full twenty minutes before the crime scene techs and detectives from the precinct arrived at the apartment of Donald Baines and Mary Navarre. After they arrived, information Quinn and his team hadn’t had access to began flowing within the NYPD. Renz phoned Quinn that evening to bring him up to date, while Quinn was waiting for Pearl and Fedderman to arrive.

  “Hubby was killed by a single stab wound to the heart. Mary Navarre had sixteen stab wounds in her. Probably the fatal one was to the heart, though several of the others would have eventually proved fatal.”

  “How long did she last before she died?” Quinn asked, remembering the trail of blood on the floor where Mary had crawled or pulled herself to the wall to scrawl her indecipherable message that was abbreviated by death.

  “ME says it’s difficult to know for sure, but after the wound to the heart, not more than a minute or so. Blood patterns indicate some of the more debilitating wounds were suffered first.”

  “How about prints or DNA?”

  “No prints, of course. Our man favors gloves. We did pick up some DNA samples from the milk carton and the half-eaten sandwich. And we’re still checking blood on the scene to make sure none of it’s from the killer.” Renz paused. Quinn could hear him making rhythmic little puffing sounds into the phone, a nervous habit, as if he were halfheartedly trying to whistle. “How do you read it, Quinn?”

  “The bloody mark Mary made on the wall?”

  “No, no, that doesn’t mean shit. I mean, how do you read the situation in the apartment?”

  “Something disturbed the victims’ sleep and they went to investigate, Donald first. They interrupted the killer eating a sandwich and drinking milk from the carton. He had to kill them.”

  “Really? I’ve been caught drinking milk f
rom the carton.”

  “Word’s gotten around,” Quinn said.

  “Hubby was carrying a heavy bookend and primed for action.” Renz, serious again.

  “The killer was ready for them. Almost waiting for them.”

  “Whaddya mean, almost waiting?”

  “He knew the risk and thought they might wake up. He had to know.”

  “You think he wanted them to wake up?”

  “Maybe not last night, but sooner or later. He probably kept pushing it, increasing the risk.”

  “Tell you the truth, Quinn, I don’t see it, but you’re supposed to be the expert on how these sickos think.”

  “It doesn’t take a psychic, Harley. After all, he was eating a sandwich while wearing rubber gloves, and he must have had his knife where he could reach it in a hurry. It doesn’t look as if Donald got to use his pineapple bookend.”

  “He didn’t. There was no trace of blood or hair on it. Quinn…you realize you’re saying our Night Prowler did something to wake them up? That he wanted them to find him making himself at home in their apartment?”

  “It reads that way. Like the way he’ll eventually yearn to be caught and confess his crimes. It builds in them; they keep pressing, taking more chances. It’s part of the package.”

  “So the shrinks say, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Except in the killer’s mind, and he’s the one eating pastrami sandwiches with his gloves on.”

  “Not to mention stabbing people through the heart,” Renz said.

  “Not to mention. You know how it works, we have to get inside this guy’s sick brain and figure out how he’s thinking. Gotta be him, at least for a while.”

  That’s why I hired you, baby.

  “That’s the only way we’ll be able to predict what he might do when, where, and to who,” Quinn said.

  “Isn’t that to whom?”

  “Fuck youm.”

  Renz chuckled, pleased to have gotten to Quinn. “Well, this is his third set. If there was any doubt before, there isn’t now. We’ve got a serial killer who does happily married couples.”

  “All three couples were married,” Quinn said, “but two of the wives used their maiden names. There are plenty of couples living together in New York who aren’t married.”

  “So, you’re saying them being legally hitched was coincidental?”

  “I’m saying if the killer knew the victims were married, he knew more about them than just their names and addresses. He couldn’t have just picked them out of a crowd, or run his finger down the phone book with his eyes closed and chosen three married couples.”

  “Then victims and killer knew each other. That should make it easier for us.”

  “Or maybe they didn’t know each other at all. Maybe he’s somebody in a position to know people’s marital status.”

  “Jesus! He might be employed by the state or city in some kinda record-keeping capacity.”

  “Or by a bank or credit bureau. Someplace where you can get real and deep information about people without them knowing about it. Or maybe someplace where you can get their keys and steal them or make copies-like a parking garage or a store where women might check their purses.”

  “Their keys?”

  “Sure. There was no sign of forced entry into any of these apartments, but our killer came and went at will. After all, he was practically living in their apartments while his future victims were asleep.” And maybe when they weren’t home. Quinn made a mental note to have Pearl and Fedderman check the victims’ neighbors to find out if anyone noticed someone coming or going during the day, work hours, in the weeks before the murders.

  “Sounds to me like you’re giving a two-sided problem eight sides, Quinn. Could be the killer and victims knew each other, that they were friends. Or thought they were. What’s simple is usually right.”

  “Now you’re bragging.”

  “Don’t be such a prick. You know I’m probably right-probably correct.”

  Quinn knew Renz was making a classic mistake, settling on a theory too soon and ignoring other evidence. Yet he was right about the obvious usually being what happened in a homicide. But this killer was definitely different; Quinn had felt it from the time he’d read the Elzner murder file. “Yeah, it’s possible. We still have to sort it all out.”

  “What about computers? These victims own one?”

  Quinn remembered a laptop on a corner of the desk. “Everyone has a computer.” Except for washed-out ex-cops.

  “We’ll check it and make sure it wasn’t hacked. The other victims’ computers were okay.”

  That was something Quinn hadn’t thought to consider. Slipping mentally? Or just being buried by technology like the rest of the poor schmucks my age?

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the bloody mark on the wall,” he said, not wanting to come up short again.

  “Egan doesn’t think it’s important. Poor woman just didn’t get her message down in time.”

  “He’s probably right, or the killer would have smeared it.”

  “Now you want some good news?” Renz asked.

  “Don’t tease me, Harley.”

  “We’ve made some progress tracking the silencer.”

  “Be still, my heart.”

  “We got it narrowed down some more.”

  “To the northern hemisphere, I’ll bet.”

  “What with the way records are kept these days, and what you can do on the Internet, this isn’t as long a shot as you think. I’ll tell you, Quinn, the computer is a marvelous instrument.”

  Quinn wondered if Renz was jabbing at him for not factoring in what might be on the victims’ computers. Or was he slyly referring to the fact that a computer had helped to set up Quinn for the rape accusation? “That’s what Michelle says.”

  “Michelle?”

  “My sister.”

  “Oh, yeah, the Quinn kid that turned out okay.”

  “Remember to let me know about the silencers, Harley.”

  Quinn hung up, thinking what a waste of time it was, even with the aid of computers, tracking silencers. Guns were difficult enough to trace, but mail-order silencers that had no individual serial numbers and changed hands maybe several times since their purchase…Quinn thought again that the only good thing about the silencer hunt was that it would help to keep Renz occupied and not ragging him and his team. Though it hadn’t seemed to have that effect so far.

  The intercom rasped. Pearl and Fedderman.

  Quinn buzzed them up and threw the bolt on his door.

  They both looked exhausted. Pearl’s hair was stuck in lank bangs to her perspiring forehead, and her white blouse was patterned with wrinkles. Fedderman’s eyes were bloodshot and his baggy brown suit looked as if it had been used in a tug-of-war. Pearl flopped herself down on the sofa while Fedderman trudged out to the kitchen to help himself to a beer.

  “You coulda asked us,” she said, irritated, when Fedderman returned carrying only one can of beer.

  “Blame our host,” Fedderman said. “We come in expecting a buffet, maybe some canapes, and there’s nichts. ”

  “Canapes and nichts in the same sentence. You don’t hear that very often.”

  “Shows I’m well traveled and you’re not.” Fedderman popped the tab on the can and licked foam from between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Shows what a putz you are.”

  “My old German grandmother would tell you who’s what part of the anatomy.”

  “I’m going out to the kitchen and get two more beers and a bag of potato chips,” Quinn told them. “Then we’re gonna talk police work. Unless you two have been doing other things all day.”

  Neither answered as he walked into the kitchen.

  When Quinn returned with the beer and chips, Fedderman said, “If memory serves, there were a couple of murders just this morning, weren’t there?”

  “I told you he was a putz, ” Pearl said.

  Quinn said, “He didn’t e
xactly deny it.”

  He yanked open the top of the potato chip bag and placed the bag on the coffee table. Then he opened the beers and handed a can to Pearl, took a swig of the other. He sat down in his chair opposite the sofa.

  Fedderman sat down next to Pearl, who threw a potato chip at him. “Have a canape.”

  The chip landed in Fedderman’s lap. He picked it up and ate it.

  Quinn told them about his phone conversation with Renz.

  “You think that silencer thing will actually get anyplace?” Fedderman asked.

  Quinn shrugged. “It keeps you-know-whom busy.” He looked from Pearl to Fedderman. They looked as if they would have sprung at each other’s throats, only they didn’t have the energy. “So how was your day?”

  They told him it hadn’t been good. Other than the woman who’d noticed the thin trail of blood on her wall in the unit below the murder apartment, no one in the building had seen or heard anything unusual.

  “What about the doorman?”

  “We were including him,” Pearl said. “But he admits he’s not always on the door. He might have been running an errand or hailing a cab for one of the tenants. And sometimes he sneaks a smoke down in the stairwell of the building next door.”

  “Did anyone mention seeing something or someone unusual during the two weeks or so leading up to the murder? I mean, during daylight, working hours?”

  Pearl and Fedderman stared at Quinn.

  “No,” Fedderman said, “but we didn’t specify those hours and we didn’t go back as far as two weeks.”

  “You will tomorrow,” Quinn said.

  Pearl took a pull on her beer and glanced at Fedderman. “I told you we shouldn’t come here.”

  An incurable wiseass, Quinn thought. But so was Sherlock Holmes.