Darker Than Night fq-1

by John Lutz

  He felt the mattress shift as Dalia slid over to be near him, her body hot against his. She kissed him wetly on the neck. “I know how to solve the problem,” she whispered in his ear.

  “Oh? How?”

  “Buy another necklace.”

  Claire sat by the phone, holding her coffee cup but not raising it to her lips.

  Something was wrong. She could sense it. Maybe being pregnant gave you ESP.

  She got up, poured a full cup of coffee, and carried it into the living room so she could sip it while sitting on the sofa and watching local news.

  When she used the remote, it was already set for Channel One. A slick anchorwoman and a guy in a suit were talking about that serial killer, the Night Prowler. The suit was a cop, and he was assuring her that the police had leads they were following and would soon bring a resolution to the case. By that, Claire assumed he meant solve it.

  Then the woman began asking about gifts the Night Prowler had apparently left in his victims’ apartments, often in the kitchen. The candy, gourmet foods, yellow roses, jewelry.

  Jewelry!

  Claire stiffened, spilling coffee onto the rug.

  Oh, Christ! She hadn’t thought of this. She should pay more attention to the news.

  She found she was standing but didn’t recall getting up.

  Wait a minute! Calm down, for God’s sake. Think about the odds on this. You’re being stupid. You’re being…pregnant!

  She went into the kitchen and ran water on a paper towel, then carried it, along with a dry towel, back into the living room. She rubbed the coffee spots on the rug with the wet towel, then patted them with the dry one, standing and using the sole of her slipper to press moisture from the stains.

  It was an effort bending over to pick up the towels. Claire carried them into the kitchen, depressed the foot pedal on the plastic wastebasket so the lid would lift, and dropped them in with the trash.

  And noticed something green in the wastebasket-an empty chocolate mints box half concealed by crumpled junk mail.

  The mints she’d assumed were a gift from Jubal, and that were uneaten when Jubal left town.

  The mints whose box she hadn’t thrown away.

  Claire felt her throat tighten. If not Jubal, who had eaten the mints and put the box in the wastebasket?

  Jubal might really not have known about the mints. Or about any of the other gifts.

  Or the necklace.

  He wouldn’t have lied to her about something like the necklace. Not Jubal.

  The sense of dread she felt was for good reason.

  I’m not being an alarmist. I’m not! Pregnant isn’t stupid.

  She went to the phone and called the police.

  62

  “We’ve gotta go with it,” Pearl said. “It’s the pathetic sum total of what we’ve got. And maybe Claire Briggs really is in danger.”

  “We all listened to her story,” Fedderman said. He was on the outside in their booth in the Lotus Diner because of his arm, which was still in a plastic cast and a sling. The breakfast crowd had thinned in the diner, leaving behind unbused tables and the strong scent of burned sausage and toast, ignored coffee residue cooking in a pot. “I don’t know about you two, but my guess is she’s got a problem with her husband. He probably bought the necklace for somebody else and she found it.”

  “Hidden in her drawer?”

  “Like the purloined letter.”

  Pearl and Quinn stared at Fedderman. Pearl said, “The purloined letter wasn’t hidden under a bra.”

  “She’s been getting anonymous gifts,” Quinn pointed out. “Including food.”

  “Or so she says.” Fedderman inserted a finger beneath his cast and tried to scratch an itch, then gave up. “The woman’s a confessed chocoholic.”

  “So am I,” Pearl said. “If that’s why you don’t trust her, you don’t trust half the human race.”

  “I don’t trust anywhere near half. And Claire’s an actress. How can we know if she’s telling us straight? A pregnant actress, at that.”

  Pearl glared at him. “Meaning?”

  “Hormones,” Fedderman said.

  “Hormones what?”

  “Just hormones. If you’d ever had a kid, you’d know what I’m talking about.”

  Pearl wished she could reach his injured arm.

  Fedderman sipped his coffee, thinking his hormones explanation had carried the argument. “I say we have the local precinct run some extra patrols past her building. There’s millions of single women in New York, and every day hundreds of them place Night Prowler calls, none of which pan out. I don’t see why this Claire woman’s anything special that needs our personal attention.”

  “She’s a celebrity,” Quinn said.

  “Not much of one.”

  “Costarring in a Broadway play.”

  “Not for much longer, the way she’ll put on pounds. And every other woman you pass on the street in New York’s an actress. All you gotta do is ask ’em.” Fedderman scratched again at the plastic cast. It was obviously driving him nuts. Pearl was glad.

  Quinn looked at Pearl, who was calmly buttering her toast. Apparently, both detectives had had their say about Claire Briggs.

  “Renz thinks she’s enough of a celebrity that we have to cover ourselves just in case she’s right,” he said.

  “What do you think?” Pearl asked.

  “I don’t think we can ignore her story. She fits the pattern. And I know, before you tell me, the problem is that lots of women do. And lots of husbands with twisted senses of humor in this city are giving their wives anonymous gifts just to throw a scare into them as a joke.”

  “Some joke,” Pearl said. “Really fucks us up.”

  “We’ll look over the Briggs apartment, give Claire some instructions, then put a nighttime stakeout on her building starting tonight. We’ll work in shifts so we can all get at least some sleep.”

  “We’ll be doing nothing but waiting for Egan to drop the hammer on us,” Fedderman said.

  Quinn thought he might be right, but he didn’t see that they had any choice. And in truth, he didn’t so much mind concentrating their efforts on Claire Briggs. Something was going to break soon; he knew it in his mind and his gut. Almost thirty years as a cop told him something was going to break. And Claire Briggs might be the reason. Maybe Fedderman was right about her being an actress and able to take them in, but Quinn was sure one thing about Claire wasn’t an act. She was genuinely terrified.

  So, they’d establish their stakeout and wait and wait. And maybe Quinn’s gut would be right again.

  And if it wasn’t…

  Quinn didn’t have much time to agonize over the possibility.

  Pearl fell asleep holding a Styrofoam cup half filled with cold coffee. She was behind the steering wheel of the parked unmarked down the block from Claire Briggs’s apartment building. The car’s windows were down and the damp, close night had permeated the interior and left a film of condensation over glass and metal. That and the bitter aftertaste of too much coffee had put Pearl in a lousy mood.

  She awoke with a start and a curse as she realized the cup had tilted and coffee spilled onto her thigh. The sudden action caused her to drop the now-empty cup to the floor between her feet.

  Stakeouts. She’d always disliked them. She licked her lips. They felt gummy. She was glad she couldn’t smell her own breath. Stakeouts.

  The Briggs apartment was a high corner unit, and Pearl had a fix on its windows. Claire had left the street-side blinds open as instructed. If a light came on in the kitchen or anywhere else, even a faint one, Pearl should be able to see it. Late as it was, the windows in all but four of the other apartments were dark. Pearl glanced at her watch-three-seventeen.

  She felt some relief; she’d dozed off only about ten minutes ago.

  Not that anything figured to happen. Claire Briggs’s story was only slightly more credible than those of so many other callers who’d contacted the police lately. It was odd
how a killer like this affected a certain kind of woman. Loneliness probably made some of them pick up the phone and tell someone on the other end of the line anything that would create interest, draw attention. Loneliness was such a powerful driver of single women.

  It’s as if we-

  Pearl sat up straighter as she saw one of the building’s street doors open and a man emerge. He paused and looked around, then adjusted his cap, pulling it low as if a wind might blow it off, though the night was calm.

  She watched the darkly dressed man walk along the deserted sidewalk, in the opposite direction from where she was parked. Probably, she told herself, he was a tenant. Or a late-night poker player. An insomniac out for a stroll. A guy who worked odd hours, though that didn’t seem likely.

  Yet here she was working odd hours.

  It wouldn’t hurt to talk to him, listen to his story. She wasn’t here just to sit in the muggy night without moving, like a human mushroom.

  Anyway, there was something about the way the man was walking, with a deliberate casualness, his shoulders slightly hunched, now and then glancing off to one side or the other.

  Pearl realized she was feeling more and more that the man was acting as if he might have something to hide, slinking along in his dark pants and shirt and wearing what looked like a blue or black baseball cap pulled so low on his forehead.

  Slinking?

  Yeah, slinking.

  When he was almost to the corner, she started the engine.

  But when she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, something was wrong. There was back pressure. The car lurched forward and the right front tire dug into the curb, causing the steering wheel to come alive and jerk from her grip violently enough to bend back her thumb.

  The engine died.

  Pearl contorted her body to reach down low. Her fingers closed on the Styrofoam coffee cup that had dropped to the floor and gotten wedged beneath the accelerator pedal.

  Disgusted, she flung the empty cup aside and got the car started again. The front wheel jumped the curb, then bounced back into the gutter, and she pulled out into the street.

  But by the time she’d driven to the intersection, the dark man was nowhere in sight.

  She worked her aching thumb back and forth a few times to make sure it would be okay, then stepped down hard on the accelerator and did a fast turn around the block.

  Still no sign of the man.

  Pearl slowed the car and used her cell phone to call and wake Claire.

  She hoped.

  63

  Pearl knew there was a phone on the nightstand beside Claire’s bed. Unless she had the ringer turned off, it had to be jangling almost in her ear.

  It rang four times before it was picked up.

  “Claire?” Pearl asked.

  “Who is this?” The voice on the other end of the connection was small and afraid.

  “Detective Kasner. I don’t think there’s anything to be alarmed about, but I’m coming up to talk to you.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It is. I’ll explain when I get there. When I knock, check through the peephole and I’ll show you my badge. Check everyone who knocks, just like we told you.”

  “This sounds creepy. You sure something’s not going on?”

  “Yes. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  After breaking the connection, Pearl called Quinn on his cell phone.

  Their conversation lasted as long as it took Pearl to park in front of Claire’s building.

  Using the key Claire had supplied so they wouldn’t have to be buzzed in, Pearl entered the building. She crossed the deserted lobby and pressed the elevator button. The elevator was at lobby level and the door opened within seconds. The man who’d left the building must have ridden it down.

  Pearl took the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor. It took longer than she would have liked. She walked fast down the hall to Claire’s apartment and knocked three times.

  The light in the peephole dimmed almost immediately and Pearl held up her shield.

  Locks snicked, a chain rattled, and the door opened.

  Claire had on a blue robe and slippers. Her eyes were puffy and her hair mussed, but she looked wide awake as she stepped aside so Pearl could enter. She also looked scared.

  Pearl assessed her. Pretty, even rousted out of bed at three in the morning, but not that pretty. Maybe I could have been a Broadway star.

  “What’s going on, Detective Kasner?”

  “Call me Pearl. And probably nothing’s going on. I saw a man dressed in dark clothing leave the building a little while ago, and he acted a little furtive. When I tried to catch up with him in the car, he was nowhere in sight. I wanted to check to make sure you were all right.”

  “Nothing woke me up until your phone call. And the chain was still on when you knocked.”

  “There are lots of ways to refasten a chain lock on the way out. If you don’t mind losing a wire hanger, I could show you.”

  Claire’s pretty face turned pale as she realized the significance of what Pearl was saying. “You mean you think he might have been in here while I was asleep?”

  “That’s how we think he operates.”

  “Yeah. It was a dumb question. I read the papers and watch the news. Here’s another dumb question: do you think he had time to come back into the building after you drove away?”

  Pearl knew what she meant: might he be in the apartment now? “Not such a dumb question, Claire. I don’t think it was possible, but we can have a look to put your mind at ease.” Pearl got her gun from her belt holster, though she was sure it was unnecessary. Sometimes you had to act for show instead of go. Claire was a taxpayer and no fool; if they did find somebody in here, she’d want her protectors able to react and save her from injury or death. “Can I do a walk-through?”

  Claire shivered. “Can I stay close?”

  Couple of yeses. Pearl smiled. She moved to the side to make sure there wasn’t enough angle for anyone to be crouching concealed behind the far sofa arm; then she walked to the closet by the hall door and opened it.

  Nothing but a few coats and bare plastic hangers. And on the single shelf a couple of shoe boxes and a collapsible umbrella.

  Pearl continued clearing the apartment, room by room. She went down the short hall to the kitchen, feeling Claire close behind. She groped around the corner and flipped the light switch.

  No Night Prowler.

  Using faint illumination from the previous rooms, she checked the bathroom, then went into the bedroom, which was brightly lit. Claire watched while Pearl investigated the closets, the small bathroom off the bedroom, even under the bed.

  Pearl straightened up and smiled. “We’re alone. Unless there’s another room.”

  “The baby’s room,” Claire said. “Baby-to-be.”

  Bolder now, she led Pearl down the hall to a closed door. She rotated the knob and pushed the door open, then backed away so Pearl could enter first.

  There was enough light from the hall for Pearl to see pretty well, but she threw the wall switch, anyway.

  Unoccupied.

  Great room! Pearl noticed the stars that had been glittering on the ceiling were no longer visible in the brighter light. There was a section of white picket fence on one wall with painted flowers behind it. A white crib. A padded love seat lined with stuffed animals. The room was ready for baby.

  “The stars come out when the light’s turned off?” Pearl asked.

  “Every time. Just like outside.” Claire was relaxing now. Whatever threat this night had brought seemed past. “My husband Jubal thinks she-or he-might grow up to be an astronomer.”

  “Let me take a look in the closet and we’ll be clear,” Pearl said.

  There was a knock on the apartment door, and Claire jumped. “Damn! I didn’t know I was so nervous.”

  “Healthy to be nervous,” Pearl assured her. “That should be my boss.”

  “Detective Quinn?”

  “Y
eah.”

  “He looks kinda tough, but he seems very nice.”

  “Yeah. Wait a minute while I check the closet and we’ll go let him in.”

  Pearl walked to the closet door and pulled it open.

  Empty. Not even hangers.

  “We need to know the sex before we buy baby clothes,” Claire explained.

  “Can’t you find that out ahead of time?”

  “We’d rather be surprised.”

  Another knock on the door.

  Pearl holstered her 9mm and led the way to let Quinn in.

  Rumpled and tired-looking, he said hello to Claire, smiling to put her at ease. Then he turned to Pearl.

  “Any sign of him having been inside?”

  “None. We just did a walk-through.”

  He only nodded to indicate he’d heard as he looked about, then began idly moving deeper into the apartment.

  “Everything’s no doubt fine,” he assured Claire as she and Pearl followed him. He drifted down the hall to the kitchen, the bath…tracing Pearl and Claire’s earlier route, glancing about in case he might notice something they hadn’t. Of course he wouldn’t come right out and tell Pearl that, for fear she’d get ticked off and start acting like…Pearl. “Your husband left town last night?”

  “Yes. He took the red-eye to Chicago. An emergency. Well, an emergency if you’re an actor. The understudy who took his place in a play got sick and Jubal had to fill in for him.” Claire realized how ironic that sounded and shook her head with a grin.

  “I get you,” Quinn assured her. “The show must go on,” he added unnecessarily, drawing a look from Pearl. Anything to soothe poor Claire.

  “Would you like some coffee, now that we’re all awake?” she asked.

  Pearl was surprised when he said he would.

  When Claire had bustled off to the kitchen to put coffee on, he said to Pearl, “The Night Prowler might not have known hubby wasn’t home. He might have come in here ready to kill if he had to, as usual, then noticed Claire was alone in bed.”