Night Victims

by John Lutz

  “And we’re angling for millions.” She looked up at him. “Do you actually believe that?” NIGHT VICTIMS

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  “Other people in our position have gotten that much.”

  “But it isn’t just the money with you, is it?” Flushed again. Furious. He wrestled out of the rain-spotted jacket he’d put on this morning and hurled it, wadded, into a chair. Righteous rage. He’d gotten good at it. “Fucking right it isn’t just the money! It’s justice! For Alan! Have you forgotten about Alan?”

  “That isn’t fair, Joe.”

  “Maybe it isn’t. But Alan deserves a lot better than he got. I don’t know if it’s possible, but when this is over I want to think he at least got justice.”

  “It’s too late for him to have justice, Joe. No amount of money will ever even the scales.”

  “I can’t believe that. I have to think some kind of justice is possible. It’s the only way I can keep on living.” Vengeance. For Joe. Cindy bowed her head again and said nothing.

  There was nothing more to say. He wouldn’t listen to reason. And she wasn’t even sure if it really was reason.

  Millions of dollars. If Alan lived—and he must live—think of the things they could do for him with all that money. She had to admit it made sense to give up hundreds of thousands for future millions. Her thinking had been addled lately, so maybe Joe was right.

  “I’m going to visit Alan. Are you coming?” His voice was calm. Gentle. Surprising her.

  Cindy sighed. She swallowed the years, the pain, and the compromise that was really simply giving in, giving up.

  She nodded and stood up from the sofa. Her body ached and her shoulders slumped. The tragedy of what happened to Alan, then the conflict with the hospital, seemed to make Joe more determined and stronger. But it was wearing her down.

  Aging her prematurely. She felt so weak, as if something more than bone or tissue was broken inside her. She didn’t want to fight. Not anymore.

  “It’s still drizzling outside, but it’s warm,” he told her.

  “I’ll get an umbrella,” she said. “And one for you.” 202

  John Lutz

  *

  *

  *

  The rain made it easier. The Night Spider stood in the spacious underground garage of the Arcade Building, where the broadcasting studios of Nina Count’s Eye Spy news show were located. No one was there to see him. But if they had been, they wouldn’t have taken special notice, with the weather the way it was. It wasn’t unusual for someone to be wearing a light raincoat with the collar turned up. A baseball cap pulled low like a pitcher’s who wanted to conceal his eyes from the hitter.

  It was his face the Night Spider wanted to conceal. There were dozens, hundreds of pockmarks where skin had sloughed off from the spider bites. It had taken a while for him to become immune to the bites, before he no longer felt ill from the venom used to paralyze helpless prey.

  Then he’d no longer minded the bites, or the spiders themselves. You became what you got used to, and, so, were immune. The captive came to imitate his captor and then, when the opportunity arose, became his captor, or the captor of a suitable substitute. Concentration camps had made that clear; the imitators who became trusties and camp guards were crueler than the real captors. Crueler or wiser. The Night Spider had read much about concentration camps. They were, in fact, his favorite reading.

  He’d even gotten used to what the spiders had done to his face and body, how they’d made him pitted and grotesque.

  Pitted and pitied. People thought spiders were grotesque.

  They didn’t understand because they’d never looked closely enough. The small and the crawl . . . You had to kneel down, lie down, get very close to see them in the dark.

  Not many people could get close enough to understand, and if he tried to explain it to them, that only made things worse. The only girl he’d tried to date in high school had spurned and denigrated him, humiliated him. Her words had stayed with him like burns. Especially one word: Hideous!

  For weeks after she’d walked away from him, he could NIGHT VICTIMS

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  hardly bear to look at his own features in the mirror, the pockmarks, the dark eyes full of pain.

  Then the pain had changed. There was something else in his eyes.

  He met the girl by coincidence in the parking lot of a roadside bar two years after graduation, and he’d taught her what had changed. Followed her home after their so-called friendly conversation, waited for the night to come, then taught her what had changed.

  He stepped back into shadow as the sound of a car engine echoed in the garage. Tires swished on concrete, headlight beams danced in the dimness, and the large white Ford SUV

  that he knew was Nina Count’s leaned as it turned a corner too fast.

  It pulled into a parking space, and almost immediately Nina and a man got out. Without a backward glance, Nina worked her key fob and the SUV’s horn gave an abbreviated eep! as the doors locked.

  The Night Spider stood still and watched as they walked toward the elevator to the lobby. He could tell by the looseness of their strides that they were relaxed and unsuspecting, even confident. The man, short and with a face like a rodent’s; Nina, taller than the man and with her long, nyloned legs glimmering in the dim light. She was even taller than she appeared on TV. Wearing some kind of green cape to protect from the rain. It flowed from around her shoulders to a few inches below her slender waist, almost like graceful, folded wings.

  The elevator door glided open and she and the rodent man stepped inside. The man glanced around as the door closed, but the Night Spider knew how shadow and light worked, knew everything about the darkness, and knew he hadn’t been seen.

  He made a mental note of the black number painted on the concrete wall in front of the white SUV. No doubt Nina Count’s personal parking space.

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  That was the information he’d come for. That and whatever else he might learn. Like the presence of the man with Nina. It would be useful to know who he was and what their relationship was. This was the beginning of the stalk, the first tendrils of the web, the growing knowledge and design of its architecture and of how to spin the rest of it. The first excitement.

  He unconsciously reached down and stroked himself. For a moment he considered going to the SUV and leaving some kind of message for her. Not a note. But maybe he could break a taillight or bend out a windshield wiper arm and make it useless. Bend both wiper blades so they stuck out like helpless, feeling antennae.

  But it wouldn’t be wise to alert her. Not yet. When the time came he might frighten this one with a subtle opening feint, make her pay in dread for what she’d said about him.

  Then she wouldn’t see him again. Not until she was securely snagged by his cunning and it was too late for her. Not until she knew it was too late.

  Then hunter and prey would become captor and captive.

  Her last, endless hours . . .

  His soft-soled shoes made no sound as he left the garage, skirting a wall and avoiding the light as long as possible.

  Marla said, “Think it’ll ever stop raining?” She’d brought Horn the club sandwich he’d ordered. He noticed she hadn’t asked about his dropping into the Home Away for lunch, though before he’d had only breakfast there. He figured she hadn’t asked because she already knew the answer.

  “Never,” he said. He wished it would stop raining. Wet weather always made his right shoulder and arm ache. He bit into his turkey club: lots of mayonnaise, crispy bacon, not so much lettuce the thing resembled a salad. It was actually past lunchtime, quarter after two, and he was the only customer. Marla leaned back with her fanny against the table across from his, half sitting, not in a hurry to leave.

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  “You grumpy today?” she asked, as if it were a serious question.

  “A little, I guess. Did I ever tell you about the lawsuit aga
inst the hospital where my wife works? Names her as a defendant?” This is why I came here. To confide. To reach out.

  “Never did,” she said.

  So he told her. She didn’t interrupt him with questions, simply stood staring at the floor and listening. Had she listened to her patients that way, with that same intent but neu-tral expression?

  When he was finished explaining, he brought her up to date. “Anne found out this morning the Vine family turned down the hospital’s latest settlement offer. She thinks they want to go to court no matter what and try to ruin the hospital and ruin her. For revenge.”

  Marla crossed her arms and thought for a moment. “She might be right. You have to remember, they think she’s responsible.”

  “I don’t see how they could really believe that. They must have seen the medical reports.”

  “Probably think they’ve been doctored, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  Horn finished the first triangular quarter of his sandwich.

  “Yeah, could be. They’re not exactly full of trust at this point, and I guess I can’t blame them. Four-year-old kid in a coma he might not come out of. That’s a damned hard thing.”

  “So revenge isn’t out of the question, right?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the psychologist.”

  “You’re a cop. Cops know people as well as any psychologist.”

  “Was a cop.”

  “Was a psychologist.”

  He laughed and sipped his Diet Pepsi.

  “Let’s get to your problems,” she said. “Any developments in the Night Spider case other than the new victim I read about in the papers? Neva? . . . ” 206

  John Lutz

  “Taylor.”

  “Was she killed like the others?”

  “With only the minor variation you’d expect. There isn’t any doubt it’s the work of the Night Spider.”

  “What about a copycat?”

  “Not likely. He wouldn’t know enough about the murder scenes from the news reports to recreate one so faithfully.

  But why do you ask about a copycat? Does the psychoanalyst in you sense something?”

  She smiled. “It’s the waitress in me asking the questions, Horn. What’s the police profiler tell you?”

  “Exactly what you’d think. The killer’s between twenty and forty-five years old, organized, intelligent, hates women and probably his mother, and stalks his victims before killing them. Yearns for fame and anonymity simultaneously. A sadist who relishes what he’s doing even though he’s driven to it and knows it might destroy him eventually.”

  “You buy into all that?”

  “Only some of it.”

  “Good.”

  “This the psychoanalyst talking now?”

  “Yes. And a woman who lives alone. I’d like to see this dangerous sociopath caught.”

  “We’ve got a fresh list of suspects, some of them in the New York area. Detectives are checking the names now.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because we have enough cops on the case to check on and interview suspects in and around New York City.” A lie, but she couldn’t know for sure.

  “No, I meant here. The diner.”

  “I don’t know. Not for sure. Do you?” He smiled when he asked, signaling to her that he might have been joking.

  Might have been.

  Marla drew a deep breath, then sighed and straightened up from where she’d been leaning back against the table.

  “Think it’ll ever stop raining?”

  28

  The windshield wipers made a regular, rhythmic thump-ing sound that would have reminded Paula of sex if she’d let it. She sat in the unmarked and peered through the fogged-up windshield at the West Village building where the next to last name on her list, a former SSF trooper named Harold Linnert, resided. According to the list given to Horn by Kray, Linnert was fifteen months out of the army, single, and thirty-seven years old.

  He lived in a brownstone that reminded Paula a little of Horn’s, only it wasn’t as well kept. The red front door needed paint and the geraniums in the window boxes were dead, though live ferns hung down in long green tendrils that directed twisting rivulets of rainwater. On the foundation wall behind a row of blue plastic trash cans was some elaborate but indecipherable graffiti sprayed on with faded black paint.

  When she’d left the car and reached the brownstone’s stoop, Paula saw that the building had been made into a duplex. H. Linnert was on the second floor. Paula pushed the buzzer button and stood waiting beneath her umbrella, 208

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  watching rainwater run from it and puddle on the concrete near a rubber doormat.

  A tinny voice from the intercom said something she couldn’t understand. She identified herself as the police, playing by the rules.

  A buzzer like a Louisiana locust grated and she pushed open the door.

  A small foyer with a door to the left, steep wooden stairs straight ahead. The walls in the foyer and stairwell were a glossy green enamel that could be wiped down. The damp-ness made them smell as if they’d just been painted. Music was on too loud in one of the units, a Gershwin show tune Paula couldn’t place.

  She closed her umbrella and trudged up the steps, listening to them creak. No sneaking up on Mr. Linnert. Gershwin had been playing in the downstairs unit and faded to silence halfway up the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs, a handsome man with mussed black hair stood waiting for her. He was wearing pleated brown pants and a gray T-shirt. Even standing still he pro-jected a kind of effortless grace, as if he’d just completed a dance step and was poised for another. Paula thought if he had a physical flaw it was that his ears stuck out too far. He had lots of muscle, a waist smaller than hers, and he was smiling.

  “I’ll take that,” he said.

  At first she didn’t understand what he meant. Then she handed him her wet and folded umbrella. He stepped aside and let her in, placing the umbrella in a stand made from an old metal milk can. He moved with easy precision. Not a drop from the umbrella got on the waxed hardwood floor.

  The living room she found herself in was orderly and surprisingly well furnished. Lots of prints—in the sofa, chairs, wallpaper, even lampshades. Here and there were solid-colored red and gray throw pillows. A blue carpet was a shade darker than the walls. It all went together.

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  “Very nice,” Paula heard herself say admiringly. “Obviously you have a good decorator.”

  “My sister. She watches all those decorator shows on cable and practices on my place. I wouldn’t give up my dogs playing poker, though.” He motioned with his head to his left.

  My God, there they were! Hanging near the door to a hall Paula saw the same hideous print of dogs seated around a table and playing poker that had hung in the home of one of her uncles in Louisiana.

  Linnert limped past her, surprising her with his uneven yet still graceful gait, and motioned for her to sit down on the sofa. She did, finding it as comfortable as it appeared.

  She noticed a fireplace with artificial gas logs burning in it.

  What a wonderful place to spend a rainy afternoon.

  He offered her a cup of hot chocolate, which she made herself refuse. What am I doing, having a cozy confab in a place like this with a handsome bachelor? Is this really m y job? She found herself looking around again at the apartment. Place is like a damned trap.

  Linnert sat down in a chair near the sofa. She noticed how blue his eyes were. Shooter’s eyes. He said, “You mentioned questions.”

  “Did I?” Dumb thing to say. Maybe I did.

  “Over the intercom.”

  “Oh. Yes.” This guy had her flustered for some reason—

  she knew the reason—and she didn’t like it.

  She gathered her wits and explained to him why she was there, not mentioning, of course, how she’d gotten the information about the Secret Special Forces. Horn had told them K
ray was probably risking his career to help them catch this killer.

  Harold Linnert leaned back and crossed his legs, then folded his muscular tanned arms across his chest. “A part of my life that’s over,” he said.

  “What do you do now?”

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  “I’m an architect. An apartment I lease across the hall is my office.”

  “Skyscrapers?”

  He grinned. “Not hardly. I mostly tell people how to reroute plumbing, or which walls they can tear down without the building collapsing around them.”

  “You good at your work?” Stupid, stupid question!

  “Nothing’s collapsed yet.”

  “About that other part of your life . . . ”

  “I suppose you’re checking out everyone in my old unit.”

  “Yes. Routine.”

  “Oh, sure. May I ask why?”

  “We’d rather not say right now.”

  “Uh-huh. I was positive you were going to say you were touching all the bases.”

  Paula felt like telling him she didn’t have time to play du-eling clichés. “I’m interested in your whereabouts on these particular evenings,” she said, making her tone official, as if she’d never had an impure thought in her life. She read off the dates of the Night Spider murders.

  “On one of those nights I was at the Bas Mitzvah of a friend’s daughter, all afternoon and most of the evening. The other nights I’d have to check on.” He uncrossed his legs.

  “But I might be able to save you some trouble. May I show you something?”

  “Of course.”

  He bent forward and pulled up his left pants leg to reveal a nasty, barely healed jagged scar running down the inside of his knee. Stitch marks were still visible. “From radical knee surgery. My surgeon will tell you this scar is from the third of three operations over the past year, the last one about a month ago. I can’t put my full weight on this knee, run or take stairs fast, or climb. Haven’t been able to for months.” Paula sized up the operation scar. It appeared to be as serious as claimed. She couldn’t imagine anyone scaling buildings or hand-walking across ropes or cables with such an injury. “An old war wound acting up?” NIGHT VICTIMS