Darker Than Night fq-1

by John Lutz

Quinn glanced toward the street door, which he’d left propped open. “The uniforms are on the way.”

  “So’s the other elevator,” Fedderman said, staring up at the falling indicator light, “but it’s slower than a damned diving bell.”

  In the bedroom’s quiet darkness Campbell heard only Claire’s even breathing.

  Then he stood straighter. He’d heard what had to be the front door’s dead bolt snick, then the door open and the faint click of the latch. His mouth was dry cotton and his drumming heart was the loudest sound in the room. He worked his fingers in and out of fists and smiled thinly, not surprised to realize he still enjoyed this. It was what he was about.

  Claire moaned in her sleep, then rolled onto her side.

  Not now! Don’t wake up now!

  She wasn’t breathing as deeply and evenly, perhaps rising toward wakefulness. Campbell was getting worried. But didn’t something always go wrong?

  It was a well-built apartment and the floors didn’t squeak. He couldn’t be sure of the location of whoever had entered. He stood staring fixedly at the bedroom door, which he’d left open about six inches.

  C’mon in, asshole. Come right on in.

  And the intruder did come in. Quickly and quietly. He seemed almost to float across the room, then stood motionless at the foot of the bed.

  Campbell held his breath and watched. Fuckin’ creepy.

  The Night Prowler stared down at Claire in the dim, buzzing silence. Almost as if he were offering a prayer.

  For someone about to die.

  Then he turned toward Campbell.

  67

  The figure at the foot of Claire’s bed was on Campbell in a second. The veteran cop had no time to react. He felt a burning sensation in his left arm. One he’d felt before.

  Knife!

  He knew he was cut.

  Instinctively he grabbed the knife arm of his assailant and bent it back. Not easily. He was shocked by the man’s physical strength. Campbell head-butted him, gave the arm an extra twist, and the knife dropped to the floor.

  Something slammed into the side of Campbell’s face. The Night Prowler’s fist. Other goddamn arm! He moved in close and the two men began to grapple. Campbell knew he must be losing blood, but the wound couldn’t be serious or he’d feel a greater loss of strength in the arm that was cut. Still, this asshole was powerful. The Night Prowler wrenched his arm free from Campbell’s grasp, gave the veteran cop a bear hug that lifted him off the floor, then flung him halfway across the dark bedroom. The nightstand toppled and the lamp on it went flying.

  The Night Prowler was struggling toward the door now, with Campbell hanging on and trying to trip him up, drag him down. A small, pale hand clutched Campbell’s opponent’s throat, surprising Campbell. Claire! Awake and in the fray! Jesus! No!

  Campbell felt the Night Prowler’s weight shift and saw the man’s open hand slam into the side of Claire’s head. She fell back into dimness and he heard her body hit hard against a wall. Campbell didn’t think she was badly hurt, but in the corner of his vision he saw her slide to the floor, stunned.

  Then he felt something behind his left knee, pressure on his left shoulder, and he was on the floor himself with a jolt. Pain! Base of the spine.

  The Night Prowler was loose and darting toward the living room, the door to the hall, and escape.

  Never, dammit!

  Campbell scrambled halfway to his feet and launched himself after the fleeing dark figure. He managed to grasp an ankle and hold on as he was dragged across the floor. Frantically he tightened his grip, until his fingers ached as if they might break or his nails might bleed.

  They were in the living room, where it was darker than the bedroom. Campbell reached up with his free hand, clutched the fleeing suspect’s belt, and hauled himself to his feet. For his effort, he was punched in the stomach, grabbed beneath the arm, and spun around. Strong! I’m getting old or this is one powerful guy.

  As they clung to each other and fought to control the fight, they turned in a clockwise circle. Furniture bumped and scraped the wall. A lamp crashed to the floor. Neither man spoke, but they were breathing hard and grunting in their battle to gain the upper hand. It was almost as if they were locked in a mad dance, but the direction was steadily toward the door.

  Campbell was losing, and he knew it.

  In the hall, Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman heard the struggle. They ran toward the apartment door, and Fedderman was about to put a shoulder to it when Pearl reached out and turned the knob.

  The door opened to the living room and the two powerful figures grappling in the dark.

  Quinn went in first, feeling the others close behind. He heard the door bounce off the wall and slam shut again behind them, cutting off even the dim light from the hall.

  No time for that now!

  He led the charge.

  Campbell’s breath whooshed out of him as something drove hard into his left side. He was forced back and away, losing his grip on the Night Prowler and collapsing to the floor. He was in a three-point stance, his knees and one palm rooted to the carpet.

  He knew what was happening. Help had arrived and made the wrong guess as to which of the struggling shadows was the Night Prowler.

  Not me, damn you! Not me!

  But Campbell could only scream the words internally. He was still trying to inhale before his heart gave out, when someone grabbed his injured arm. Somehow a yelp of pain made its way out of his gaping mouth.

  Apparently, it was enough. The arm was released and a voice in the dark said, “Campbell?”

  Campbell finally gasped and drew in wonderful oxygen.

  Still unable to speak, he blocked out his pain and managed to get to his feet. Around him in the dark he could hear a lot of movement, but not as if there was a struggle. Lucky fucker’s gonna make it outta here!

  Campbell had lost. A sense of hopelessness and defeat rushed through him so forcefully that he felt like weeping.

  The lights came on.

  Pearl, groping over rough plaster, had found a smooth plastic wall switch and flipped it up.

  In the almost blinding brightness, everyone stared wide-eyed.

  Standing with his hand on the knob of the door to the hall, staring back at them, was Jubal Day.

  Campbell tried to take a step toward Jubal but couldn’t get his body to respond to his will. You didn’t make it out, you bastard. I beat you!

  Jubal, as surprised by the sudden brightness as Campbell, was also motionless.

  With everyone momentarily paralyzed, this was a game that could be won by whoever moved first.

  68

  Fedderman was closest to Jubal, which was why he might have been the first of the good guys to move. He took a long step and reached out for Jubal but was met with a stiff left jab. Pearl was there. She slipped another left and got inside Jubal’s arms so he didn’t have leverage to punch hard. He immediately backed away and raised both arms in surrender.

  She spun him around and shoved so he was pressed with his chest and the right side of his face against the wall. He didn’t resist as she worked his hands behind him and cuffed his wrists.

  “You can’t do this!” he said in a shocked voice as he felt the handcuffs dig into his flesh. He turned around unsteadily and stared at everyone.

  “Can and are.” Pearl pulled her shield and held it up where he could see it.

  The door opened and the two uniforms from downstairs, who’d been on the last elevator ride, came in with guns drawn.

  “We got him,” Pearl said, waving at them to lower their weapons. “We nailed the bastard before he could get out the door!”

  “Jubal?”

  Everyone turned to look at Claire standing in the living-room doorway. She was sagging against a wall, staring uncomprehendingly at her husband. “You’re in Chicago…”

  “He’s here,” Quinn said. “And he’s under arrest for murder.”

  “Don’t listen to this bullshit! Call me a lawyer, Claire
!”

  “Jubal…?”

  “A lawyer!”

  Fedderman read him his rights, then grabbed his left arm above the elbow. Pearl had the other arm.

  “I notice you didn’t ask if your wife was hurt,” Pearl said to Jubal.

  He glared at her in a way that made her glad he was cuffed.

  Quinn looked over at Campbell. His left arm was bleeding, but he otherwise seemed all right. The knife wound didn’t look too serious.

  “Knife’s in the bedroom,” Campbell said.

  Quinn sent Fedderman in to bag it. Fedderman seemed awfully reluctant to release his grip on Jubal, as if nobody in his right mind finally captured something so elusive, then didn’t hold tight to it.

  “Looks like this is what we want,” Fedderman said when he returned holding up the plastic evidence pouch containing the knife. He displayed it like a prize. “Thin blade about ten inches long, sharp edge and point.”

  “It’s goddamn sharp, all right,” Campbell said.

  “You want an ambulance?” Quinn asked, making sure but knowing the answer.

  “Fuck a bunch of ambulances,” Campbell said.

  Tough old bastard. We need more like you. Quinn glanced at one of the uniforms, the younger of the two, black, with a calm look about him, eyes never still.

  “We’ll drive him to the hospital in the cruiser,” the cop said. He looked at Campbell and grinned. “You’ll need some stitches, Sarge, if you’re not too scared.”

  Quinn expected Campbell to explode.

  Instead, he said, “This little prick’s kinda my protege.”

  The cop nodded. “I’ll see the old fart’s taken care of.”

  “And I’ll see you spend the rest of your career chasing Times Square sketch artists,” Campbell growled.

  They threatened each other all the way down the hall to the elevator.

  Claire was staring at her husband, still trying to grasp the metamorphosis. This man who looked exactly like her husband was one of the most brutal and dangerous killers in the city’s history. “Jubal? Can you explain? Will you tell me what’s going on? Please?”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “I shouldn’t talk without a lawyer, Claire. You know that. I’m sorry. Just get me a lawyer.”

  “We don’t even have a lawyer.”

  Quinn knew Jubal was being smart, but he didn’t say so. “Do you want someone to stay here with you?” Quinn asked Claire.

  “No. Really, I’m all right.”

  “Take the suspect down to the elevator and wait for me,” Quinn said to Pearl and Fedderman.

  Each of them gripped Jubal by an arm, and Fedderman used his free hand to bunch the back of Jubal’s collar. They marched him toward the door he’d been so anxious to exit.

  They could have been more gentle.

  John Lutz

  Darker Than Night

  69

  When Quinn was alone with Claire, he went to her and rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. He’d expected her to be trembling, but she was steady. Strong inside, even if she looks frail as a bird.

  “Can I go with him?” she asked.

  “You can, but there’s no point to it at this hour. He’ll go through the booking procedure; then he’ll be moved to a holdover cell. You get referrals in the morning and contact an attorney. In the meantime I’ll see he gets a public defender to protect his rights. I promise you that.”

  He could see her thinking about it, trying to sort out her allegiances. Should I take the word of the arresting officer? Who saved my life. Or should I stand by my husband? Who tried to kill me.

  It took her longer than it should have to make up her mind.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Do you think you might need medical attention?” Quinn asked. “I mean, for your pregnancy.”

  “No. I’d be able to tell if I were hurt that way.”

  “Someone will call you tomorrow morning. We’ll send a car for you.”

  She nodded.

  “Sure you’re gonna be okay?”

  “Okay as anyone can be, lost in all the questions.”

  “We’ll sort things out and have the answers for you. Meantime, try to worry as little as possible.”

  “Easy to say.”

  “Yeah, I know. Like so many things.”

  “I didn’t expect this!” she said, then bit her lower lip and stared up at the ceiling. She didn’t look as if she were going to cry, though.

  Quinn glanced down at her pregnancy, which was beginning to show, and thought of what she faced alone. God help her.

  “It’ll all be okay after a while,” he lied, and patted her gently on the shoulder. He felt suddenly cheap, conning her along, even though he was trying to help. “Better, anyway.”

  He could find nothing else to say to this woman whose husband had been about to murder her, so he turned away.

  After Quinn left, Claire went to the door and locked it, then trudged back into the bedroom.

  Jubal! How could this be happening?

  She’d never felt this way, as if she were alone at the edge of a cold hell. As if there were some dark inadequacy in her. As if this were all because of something she’d done.

  Was it…was it something I did?

  Or didn’t do?

  She sat stunned on the edge of the bed and tried not to sob.

  Was it?

  She wanted to scream.

  She wanted to throw herself on the bed like a child and beat the mattress with her fists until she was exhausted.

  Her misery was a weight that would never lift. She felt beyond crying, but tears that were someone else’s tracked down her cheeks.

  She wanted to die.

  The baby!

  She didn’t want to die.

  She wanted chocolate.

  In the dark closet near the door, the Night Prowler waited.

  70

  They were all gone. The Night Prowler was reasonably sure of that.

  Better to make absolutely sure.

  So Romulus, whose real name was Tom Wilde, stood in stifling heat and darkness, smelling the white acrid scent of mothballs, waiting for his breathing to even out, listening for movement or voices outside the closet.

  He’d entered the apartment just before the husband, Jubal, and had been surprised in Claire’s bedroom by the big cop, the tough one. He’d gotten the cop with his knife, which was a damned good thing because it took at least some of the fight out of the determined bastard.

  The cop had clung to him all the way down the hall and into the living room. In the mad struggle in the dark and the confusion after the other cops arrived, Wilde was shoved against the coat closet door and felt the knob jab him in the hip. He turned in the blackness and found refuge in the closet, just before the lights came on to show at the bottom of the door as a thin yellow line.

  Certain he’d be discovered, he was about to make a hopeless, desperate break for freedom, when he heard the cops turn their attention to someone else.

  It took Wilde a few seconds to realize what had happened-Hubby had flown home unexpectedly and surprised everyone.

  And been surprised.

  They must have caught Jubal at the door when the lights came on and assumed he was leaving instead of entering the apartment.

  The Night Prowler almost fainted with gratitude.

  He’s me! Tonight he’s me!

  Wilde could have cheered when he heard Jubal insist on a lawyer before trying to explain himself to the police. A homicide charge was nothing to mess with unless you had counsel.

  Damned right! Wilde had known that ever since Hiram, Missouri.

  Since the night of the Sand murders.

  He’d suspected Luther was still seeing Cara and followed him to the Sand house, waited for him to emerge, then realized he must be sleeping there. Years before, Wilde had lost his teaching job because of a secret affair with one of his art students, Cara Smith, who’d later married Mil
ford Sand. The embers of that affair had never died, and they became flame again-at least in Tom Wilde.

  He went to the Sand house late one sleepless night to talk Luther into leaving, for the boy’s own good, and had seen lights and heard shouting coming from the kitchen. When he investigated the source of the commotion, he found opportunity as well as pain.

  In his rage it had seemed so simple, the desperate logic that had moved countless men before him: if Cara couldn’t be his, she’d belong to no one.

  The scene in the kitchen, the brilliant colors, remained vivid in Wilde’s memory; the blood, the interrupted meal that he could taste, the interrupted lives… How suddenly everything could change, could stop.

  When Luther regained consciousness and was still in shock, it hadn’t been difficult to convince the intoxicated and naive young man that he’d committed the murders. And, of course, his good friend and mentor, Tom Wilde, would help him to escape, would send him downstream to safety in his boat.

  And that part of it was God’s truth; Wilde did want Luther to get clear and free.

  But Luther must have recalled what had really happened in the Sand kitchen, and in a fury tried to kill Wilde but botched the attempt. It was Wilde who took the boat out from the bank. A mile downriver, Luther’s weighted body sank to the bottom and was never found.

  Wilde had taken the advice he’d given Luther: lose yourself in a large city and become another you. Be a different man living a different life.

  It hadn’t been easy, this creation of another self. It didn’t happen overnight, but it happened. Wilde had found in himself a resourcefulness and talent he’d only faintly known existed.

  But over the years Wilde-Romulus came to realize that the past was always there, as if it were upstream and around the bend in a winding river, invisible but there, always there, while time flowed on. Cara!..Claire!..

  Now, hiding in the dark closet, Wilde thought enough time had passed. Besides, the police might soon realize their mistake and return.

  Timing…so important.

  He was sure he’d heard the faint shuffling of feet, probably Claire walking back to the bedroom. Since then, no sound from the other side of the closet door. She was alone.