Darker Than Night

by John Lutz

  “What about time of death?” Quinn asked.

  “Early morning,” Nift said. “One or two o’clock. Three, three-thirty at the outside. I’ll be able to make a closer estimate later.”

  Quinn had moved to get a different perspective of the room, which was well furnished and looked freshly painted. Most of the furniture looked new.

  “They live here long?” he asked nobody in particular, getting into the mode of command again. An assumption of authority that had become part of him. He sent a look Fedderman’s way.

  Fedderman understood and left the bedroom to talk to one of the uniforms who’d taken the call and were first on the scene. Nobody said anything until he returned a few minutes later.

  “The Grahams moved in three months ago. Neighbors didn’t know much about them. Guy next door said they argued a lot. He could hear them through the ducts.”

  “We oughta find out what else he might have heard through the ducts,” Pearl said.

  Quinn seemed not to have heard her. He was studying the room, the way the dead man lay, the closet door hanging open and how the clothes were draped on the hangers, the way the wife was sprawled on her back with her nightgown up so her breasts showed. What had happened to her breasts. He felt his stomach turn and he swallowed bile that rose bitterly at the back of his throat. All these years on the job, and he still didn’t understand how people could do this kind of thing to each other.

  He made himself walk over and look more closely at the wife, and at the area around her body.

  “Looks like our killer was hiding in the closet,” he said, “and surprised the husband when he opened the door. After stabbing the husband, he went for the wife.”

  “Killer musta gotten blood on him from the wife,” Fedderman said.

  Quinn wasn’t so sure. Someone expert enough with a knife knew how people bled, and could avoid being marked.

  “No sign of him having washed up,” Pearl said, “but we can check the drains for traces of blood to be sure.”

  “Maybe she had a lover on the side, and Hubby came home unexpectedly,” Fedderman said. “The lover hid in the closet, but maybe made some noise the husband heard and went to investigate. Bad things ensued.”

  “Hubby must have had time to get undressed and ready for bed,” Pearl said with an edge of sarcasm.

  “Could have gone that way. The wife’s lover mighta been trapped in the closet for hours, hoping for an opportunity to leave before daylight.”

  “Like in those French bedroom farces,” Pearl said.

  Nift laughed.

  Quinn and the others looked at him.

  “Detectives!” Nift said. “Your theories are all bullshit.”

  Quinn cocked his head at the little man. “Why so sure?”

  “You didn’t look close enough at the husband. He’s still gripping the knife he used to kill his wife, then to stab himself through the heart.”

  Quinn returned to the husband and got down on one knee beside him. He could see the end of a knife handle in one of the dead hands drawn close to the husband’s midsection. He moved an arm slightly to peer at the knife, which appeared to be a paring or boning knife with a long, thin blade.

  “Murder-suicide,” Nift said.

  Quinn nodded. “Looks that way, Detective Nift.” He glanced at Pearl and Fedderman and made a slight sideways motion with his head to signal they were leaving. “We’ll give you a while, then get back to you about exact time and cause,” he said to Nift.

  “It’ll all be in the autopsy report,” Nift said. He looked down at Marcella Graham and shook his head sadly. “Damned shame, great rack like that.”

  Quinn didn’t look at him as he left the bedroom, Pearl and Fedderman following. They made their way through the techs who were busily luminoling the living room, nodding to a few they knew, then went into the kitchen.

  “Some blood on the soap,” said one of the techs, a curly-haired guy about Nift’s size, leaning over the sink. He was slipping a small bar of white soap into a plastic evidence bag. “Looks like somebody washed up here. There’ll be more blood residue in the drain.”

  “If any of it’s the killer’s blood, we got this asshole’s DNA,” Fedderman said.

  “Then all we’d need is the asshole himself,” Pearl said, “and we’d have a match.”

  “Knife come from there?” Quinn asked, nodding toward an open drawer above one of the base cabinets.

  “Probably,” said the tech. “That’s the drawer where the knives were kept, and it was open like that.”

  Quinn walked over and peered into the drawer. It had one of those plastic dividers. He saw an elaborate wine cork puller, spatulas, a long-tined fork, and lots of knives with wooden handles. Like the knife in hubby’s hand.

  He turned away from the drawer and looked at the refrigerator. It was large and appeared to be fairly new. There was a big clear bowl on top, probably for salads, and next to the bowl a slender glass vase with a yellow rose in it. “Fridge been dusted?”

  The tech nodded. “Not that it matters. The way the prints are smeared and overlaid, I can tell you somebody was in here recently wearing gloves.”

  “Why would Ron Graham have worn gloves?” Pearl asked Quinn and Fedderman.

  But it was the tech who answered. “I’ve seen this before, when it was somebody in the kitchen doing cleaning while wearing rubber gloves. Some women protect their hands that way.”

  Everybody’s a detective, Quinn thought. But the tech was right. Not too much could be made of the gloves. Still…

  “Found any rubber gloves in here?” he asked the tech.

  “Not so far.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Quinn went to the refrigerator and used two fingers to open it. Pearl and Fedderman crowded close to peer inside with him.

  “Nothing unusual,” Fedderman said in a disappointed voice, feeling cold air spilling out around his ankles as he looked at milk and juice cartons, condiment jars and bottles, soda and beer cans.

  Pearl, who’d been standing very close to Quinn, opened the meat drawer, then the produce drawer.

  “Cheese,” she said, as if about to be photographed.

  Quinn and Fedderman looked where she was pointing, near a head of lettuce. There were four large wedges of white cheese there, identical except that one of them was half gone, with the plastic wrapper tucked around it. The labels said the cheese was NORSTRUM GOURMET and it was imported from the Netherlands.

  “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 tone 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 th
e 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.