by Dean Koontz
Within a few steps he caught her by the shoulder.
She tried to jerk free.
He was stronger than he looked. His fingers were like talons. He swung her around and shoved her backward.
Off balance, she collided with the coffee table, fell over it. She struck her hip on one of the heavy wooden legs; pain like an incandescent bulb flashed along her thigh.
He stood over her, still holding the knife, still grinning.
“Bastard,” she said.
“There are two ways you can die, Sarah. You can try to run and resist, forcing me to kill you now—painfully and slowly. Or you can cooperate, come into the bedroom, let me give you some fun. Then I promise you’ll die quickly and painlessly.”
Don’t panic, she told herself. You’re Sarah Piper, and you came out of nothing, and you made something of yourself, and you have been knocked down dozens of times before, knocked down figuratively and literally, and you’ve always gotten up, and you’ll get up this time, and you’ll survive, you will, dammit, you will.
“Okay,” she said. She stood up.
“Good girl.” He held the knife out at his side. He unbuttoned the bodice of her pantsuit and slipped his free hand under the thin material. “Nice,” he said.
She closed her eyes as he moved nearer.
“I’ll make it fun for you,” he said.
She drove her knee into his crotch.
Although the blow didn’t land squarely, he staggered backward.
She grabbed a table lamp and threw it. Without waiting to see if it hit him, she ran into the bedroom and shut the door. Before she could lock it, he slammed against the far side and pushed the door open two or three inches.
She tried to force it shut again so that she could throw the lock, but he was stronger than she. She knew she couldn’t hold out against him for more than a minute or two. Therefore, when he was pressing the hardest and would expect it the least, she let go of the door altogether and ran to the nightstand.
Surprised, he stumbled into the room and nearly fell.
She pulled open the nightstand drawer and picked up the gun. He knocked it out of her hand. It clattered against the wall and dropped to the floor, out of reach.
Why didn’t you scream? she asked herself. Why didn’t you yell for help while you could hold the door shut? It’s unlikely anyone would hear you in soundly built apartments like these, but at least it was worth a try when you had a chance.
But she knew why she didn’t cry out. She was Sarah Piper. She had never called for help in her life. She had always solved her own problems, had always fought her own battles. She was tough and proud of it. She did not scream.
She was terrified, trembling, sick with fear, but she knew that she had to die the same way she had lived. If she broke now, whimpered and mewled when there wasn’t any chance of salvation, she would be making a lie of her life. If her life was to have meant anything, anything at all, she would have to die as she had lived: resolute, proud, tough.
She spat in his face.
14
“Homicide.”
“I want to speak to a detective.”
“What’s his name?”
“Any detective. I don’t care.”
“Is this an emergency?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Never mind. I want a detective.”
“I’m required to take your address, telephone number, name—”
“Stuff it! Let me talk to a detective or I’ll hang up.”
“I just killed a woman.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Her apartment.”
“What’s the address?”
“She was very beautiful.”
“What’s the address?”
“A lovely girl.”
“What was her name?”
“Sarah.”
“Do you know her last name?”
“Piper.”
“Will you spell that?”
“P-i-p-e-r.”
“Sarah Piper.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s your name?”
“The Butcher.”
“What’s your real name?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Yes, you are. That’s why you called.”
“No. I called to tell you I’m going to kill some more people before the night’s out.”
“Who?”
“One of them is the woman I love.”
“What’s her name?”
“I wish I didn’t have to kill her.”
“Then don’t. You—”
“But I think she suspects.”
“Why don’t we—”
“Nietzsche was right.”
“Who?”
“Nietzsche.”
“Who’s he?”
“A philosopher.”
“Oh.”
“He was right about women.”
“What did he say about women?”
“They just get in our way. They hold us back from perfection. All those energies we put into courting them and screwing them—wasted! All that wasted sex energy could be put to other use, to thought and study. If we didn’t waste our energies on women, we could evolve into what we were meant to be.”
“And what were we meant to be?”
“Are you trying to trace this call?”
“No, no.”
“Yes. Of course you are.”
“No, really we aren’t.”
“I’ll be gone from here in a minute. I just wanted to tell you that tomorrow you’ll know who I am, who the Butcher is. But you won’t catch me. I’m the lightning out of the dark cloud man.”
“Let’s try to—”
“Good-bye, Detective Martin.”
15
At seven o’clock Friday evening, a fine dry snow began to fall in Manhattan, not merely flurries but a full-scale storm. The snow sifted out of the black sky and made pale, shifting patterns on the dark streets.
In his living room, Frank Bollinger watched the millions of tiny flakes streaming past the window. The snow pleased him no end. With the weekend ahead, and now especially with the change of weather, it was doubtful that anyone other than Harris and his woman would be working late in the Bowerton Building. He felt that his chances of getting to them and pulling off the plan without a hitch had improved considerably. The snow was an accomplice.
At seven-twenty, he took his overcoat from the hall closet, slipped into it and buttoned up.
The pistol was already in the right coat pocket. He wasn’t using his police revolver, because bullets from that could be traced too easily. This was a Walther PPK, a compact .38 that had been banned from importation into the United States since 1969. (A slightly larger pistol, the Walther PPK/S, was now manufactured for marketing in the United States; it was less easily concealed than the original model.) There was a silencer on the piece, not homemade junk but a precision-machined silencer made by Walther for use by various elite European police agencies. Even with the silencer screwed in place, the gun fit easily out of sight in the deep overcoat pocket. Bollinger had taken the weapon off a dead man, a suspect in a narcotics and prostitution investigation. The moment he saw it he knew that he must have it; and he failed to report finding it as he should have done. That was nearly a year ago; he’d had no occasion to use it until tonight.
In his left coat pocket, Bollinger was carrying a box of fifty bullets. He didn’t think he’d need more than were already in the pistol’s magazine, but he intended to be prepared for any eventuality.
He left the apartment and took the stairs two at a time, eager for the hunt to begin.
Outside, the grainy, wind-driven snow was like bits of ground glass. The night howled spectrally between the buildings and rattled the branches of the trees.
Connie opened the foil-lined box on the conference table. Steam rose from the pizza; a spicy aroma filled the office.
> The wine was chilled. In the pizzeria, she had made them keep the bottle in their refrigerator until the pie was ready to go.
Famished, they ate and drank in silence for a few minutes.
Finally she said, “Did you take a nap?”
“Did I ever.”
“How long?”
“Two hours.”
“Sleep well?”
“Like the dead.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Dead?”
“You don’t look like you’d slept.”
“Maybe I dreamed it.”
“You’ve got dark rings under your eyes.”
“My Rudolph Valentino look.”
“You should go home to bed.”
“And have the printer down my throat tomorrow?”
“They’re quarterly magazines. A few days one way or the other won’t matter.”
“You’re talking to a perfectionist.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“A perfectionist who loves you.”
She blew him a kiss.
A skin of snow, no more than a quarter inch but growing deeper, sheathed the sidewalks and street. Except for a few taxicabs that spun past too fast for road conditions, there was not much traffic on Lexington Avenue.
The main entrance to the Bowerton Building was set back twenty feet from the sidewalk. There were four revolving glass doors, three of them locked at this hour. Beyond the doors the large lobby rich with marble and brasswork and copper trim was overflowing with warm amber light.
Bollinger patted the pistol in his pocket and went inside.
Overhead, a closed-circuit television camera was suspended from a brace. It was focused on the only unlocked door.
Bollinger stamped his feet to knock the snow from his shoes and to give the camera time to study him. The man in the control room wouldn’t find him suspicious if he faced the camera without concern.
A uniformed security guard was sitting on a stool behind a lectern near the first bank of elevators.
Bollinger walked over to him, stepped out of the camera’s range.
“Evening,” the guard said.
As he walked, he took his wallet from an inside pocket and flashed the gold badge. “Police.” His voice echoed eerily off the marble walls and the high ceiling.
“Something wrong?” the guard asked.
“Anybody working late tonight?”
“Just four.”
“All in the same office?”
“No. What’s up?”
Bollinger pointed to the open registry on the lectern. “I’d like all four names.”
“Let’s see here ... Harris, Davis, Ott and MacDonald.”
“Where would I find Ott?”
“Sixteenth floor.”
“What’s the name of the office?”
“Cragmont Imports.”
The guard’s face was round and white. He had a weak mouth and a tiny Oliver Hardy mustache. When he tried for an expression of curiosity, the mustache nearly disappeared up his nostrils.
“What floor for MacDonald?” Bollinger asked.
“Same. Sixteenth.”
“He’s working with Ott?”
“That’s right.”
“Just those four?”
“Just those four.”
“Maybe someone else is working late, and you don’t know it.”
“Impossible. After five-thirty, anyone going upstairs has to sign in with me. At six o’clock we go through every floor to see who’s working late, and then they check out with us when they leave. The building management has set down strict fire-prevention rules. This is part of them.” He patted the registry. “If there’s ever a fire, we’ll know exactly who’s in the building and where we can find them.”
“What about maintenance crews?”
“What about them?”
“Janitors. Cleaning women. Any working now?”
“Not on Friday night.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.” He was visibly upset by the interrogation and beginning to wonder if he should cooperate. “They come in all day tomorrow.”
“Building engineer?”
“Schiller. He’s night engineer.”
“Where is Schiller?”
“Downstairs.”
“Where downstairs?”
“Checking one of the heat pumps, I think.”
“Is he alone?”
“Yeah.”
“How many other security guards?”
“Are you going to tell me what’s up?”
“For God’s sake, this is an emergency!” Bollinger said. “How many security guards besides you?”
“Just two. What emergency?”
“There’s been a bomb threat.”
The guard’s lips trembled. The mustache seemed about to fall off. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were.”
The guard slid off his stool, stepped from behind the lectern.
At the same time Bollinger took the Walther from his pocket.
The guard blanched. “What’s that?”
“A gun. Don’t go for yours.”
“Look, this bomb threat ... I didn’t call it in.”
Bollinger laughed.
“It’s true.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“Hey ... that gun has a silencer on it.”
“Yeah.”
“But policemen don’t—”
Bollinger shot him twice in the chest.
The impact of the bullets threw the guard into the sheet marble. For an instant he stood very straight, as if he were waiting for someone to measure his height and mark it on the wall. Then he collapsed.
part two
FRIDAY 8:00 P.M. 8:30 P.M.
16
Bollinger turned immediately from the dead man and looked at the revolving doors. Nobody was there, no one on the sidewalk beyond, no one who might have seen the killing.
Moving quickly but calmly, he tucked the pistol into his pocket and grabbed the body by the arms. He dragged it into the waiting area between the first two banks of elevators. Now, anyone coming to the doors would see only an empty lobby.
The dead man stared at him. The mustache seemed to have been painted on his lip.
Bollinger turned out the guard’s pockets. He found quarters, dimes, a crumpled five-dollar bill, and a key ring with seven keys.
He returned to the main part of the lobby.
He wanted to go straight to the door, but he knew that was not a good idea. That would put him in camera range. If the men monitoring the closed-circuit system saw him locking the door, they would be curious. They’d come to investigate, and he would lose the advantage of surprise.
Keeping in mind the details of the plans he had studied at City Hall that afternoon, he walked quietly to the rear of the lobby and stepped into a short corridor on the left. Four rooms led off the hall. The second on the right was the guards’ room, and the door was open.
Wondering if the squeaking of his wet shoes sounded as loud to the guards as it did to him, he edged up to the open door.
Inside, two men were talking laconically about their jobs, complaining, but only halfheartedly.
Bollinger took the pistol from his coat pocket. He walked through the doorway.
The men were sitting at a small table in front of three television screens. They weren’t watching the monitors. They were playing two-handed pinochle.
The older of the two was in his fifties. Heavy. Grayhaired. He had a prizefighter’s lumpy face. The name “Neely” was stitched on his left shirt pocket. He was slow. He looked up at Bollinger, failed to react as he should have to the gun, and said without fear, “What’s this?”
The other guard was in his thirties. Trim. Ascetic face. Pale hands. As he turned to see what had caught Neely’s attention, Bollinger saw “Faulkner” stitched on his shirt.
He shot Faulkner first.
Reaching with both hands for his ruin
ed throat, too late to stop the life from gushing out of him, Faulkner toppled backward in his chair.
“Hey!” Fat Neely was finally on his feet. His holster was snapped shut. He grappled with it.
Bollinger shot him twice.
Neely did an ungraceful pirouette, fell on the table, collapsed it, and went to the floor in a flutter of pinochle cards.
Bollinger checked their pulses.
They were dead.
When he left the room, he closed the door.
At the front of the big lobby, he locked the last revolving door and put the keys into his pocket.
He went to the lectern, sat on the stool. He took the box of bullets from his left coat pocket and replenished the pistol’s magazine.
He looked at his watch. 8:10. He was right on schedule.
17
“That was good pizza,” Graham said.
“Good wine, too. Have another glass.”
“I’ve had enough.”
“Just a little one.”
“No. I’ve got to work.”
“Dammit.”
“You knew that when you came.”
“I was trying to get you drunk.”
“On one bottle of wine?”
“And then seduce you.”
“Tomorrow night,” he said.
“I’ll be blind with desire by then.”
“Doesn’t matter. Love is a Braille experience.”
She winced.
He got up, came around the table, kissed her cheek. “Did you bring a book to read?”
“A Nero Wolfe mystery.”
“Then read.”
“Can I look at you from time to time?”
“What’s to look at?”
“Why do men buy Playboy magazine?” she asked.
“I won’t be working in the nude.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Pretty dull.”
“You’re even sexy with your clothes on.”
“Okay,” he said, smiling. “Look but don’t talk.”
“Can I drool?”
“Drool if you must.”