The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  The flames were hotter, and it was becoming more difficult to breathe. More smoke now, working its way down from the ceiling. Greasy, heavy-looking smoke.

  Enough…enough…time to get out.

  Marks snatched up the metal lockbox, tucked the album beneath his arm, and turned to leave.

  Only to find that the boxes and some of the clothes he’d hurriedly tossed behind him were now blazing. And the floor itself, old sheet goods and ancient plywood and plank, was now dancing with flame and emitting thick black smoke.

  The fire had taken advantage of him when he wasn’t looking. Moving swiftly, finding the opportunity it needed. So what he’d read about it so many times was true: it was deceptive, seemed to have a mind of its own, was never to be trusted or taken for granted. The problem was, Marks hadn’t realized just how true the warnings were. Fire could surprise you like a clever enemy, a retired fireman had told him one time in a bar near the precinct house. It loved to surprise you.

  Marks swiveled his head one way, then the other, then turned his body in an entire circle. He swallowed hot and burning fear.

  The fire had him surrounded.

  Amy stood across the street from the burning building, still clutching the twins. The fire had been in the stairwell, and her face and bare arms were blackened with soot. Some of her hair was singed, and her left arm and shoulder were burned beneath the soot, but she ignored the pain. Almost as much as the burns, her neck hurt from staring up at the fourth-floor windows of the apartment. Behind the glass the rooms were alight as if all the lamps were glowing, but she saw no sign of her husband. Fire-fighting equipment was still arriving, sometimes accompanied by sirens so loud and piercing they made her wince. An ambulance passed her, almost close enough to run over her toes, but she seemed not to notice and didn’t move back. Firefighters in helmets and long slickers were moving as dark figures on the periphery of her vision, darting, shouting to each other, paying out hoses and equipment. Now and then a powerful diesel engine roared as a ladder truck or pumper was maneuvered into position.

  It was all a dream. It had to be. How could it be real?

  Someone was next to her, saying something she couldn’t understand. She realized he was wearing a cop’s blues. Ed? She almost said his name aloud.

  But it wasn’t Ed. This man was about the same size and build but had blond hair sticking out from beneath his cap and had a mustache.

  “You okay, ma’am?” the cop repeated, louder this time.

  So he was real. The rest of it had to be real.

  She stared at him for a moment, dazed, then nodded and looked back up where her apartment burned.

  Amy wasn’t religious, hadn’t attended church in years, but that would all change if Ed lived. That was a silent, solemn promise she made as she prayed for her husband.

  The curtains in the bedroom suddenly blazed and disappeared, and the window shattered from the heat, showering glass shards down on the sidewalk.

  He would have to be out of the apartment by now, Amy thought. It was pointless to keep watching the windows. Instead she fixed her gaze on the building entrance with the same intensity she’d focused on the windows.

  Almost immediately a figure emerged, and her heart almost exploded with hope.

  But it was a fireman dragging out onto the sidewalk what looked like the threadbare armchair that sat in the lobby. The chair was smoldering and leaving a trail of dark smoke.

  “Holy Christ, look!”

  It was the blond cop. He’d moved in front of Amy, blocking her view of the entrance. But he was staring upward and pointing.

  Amy, along with others in the street and on the sidewalks, also looked.

  A man—Ed!—was standing in the kitchen window of their apartment, waving his arms. He was in silhouette, backlit by a wavering orange glow.

  “There’s a guy up there!” the blond cop yelled to two nearby firemen. “Get a net! You guys got a fuckin’ net? Tell me you got a fuckin’ net!”

  The two firemen stopped and stared up at Ed, then broke into a run toward where several pieces of emergency equipment were jammed up against the curb. One of them hurdled a thick hose draped over a police sawhorse, amazingly graceful considering his bulk.

  “He’s coming out,” another fireman near the blond cop said. “The heat’s driving him out.” This one’s voice was calm, almost resigned. It was the voice of a spectator and it turned Amy’s heart to lead.

  She heard herself gasp. Or was it a collective gasp from the crowd? Ed had raised the window all the way and was turned sideways. He threw a leg over the sill, shielding his eyes from the flames with a forearm, almost falling. He was facing in toward the kitchen now as he backed away from the heat and flames.

  “You guys got a net?” the blond cop asked again in a voice that cracked like a teenager’s. A voice that held no hope.

  “Get a net set up!” Fagin yelled, but he knew there wasn’t time for a net, just as there wasn’t time to maneuver a ladder truck and send someone up to rescue the man. The poor guy backing out of the fourth-floor window would have to choose between burning or falling to his death. And choose soon.

  Fagin didn’t even look away to see how the futile efforts to obtain a net were going. He stared upward like everyone around him, watching the dark figure above back farther and farther out of the window. The man now had both legs out, then his hips, sliding across the sill on his stomach. Only his upper body remained inside and out of sight. A woman screamed as the doomed man lurched all the way out of the window and was hanging on to the sill by his hands.

  Then he began to lower himself, hand over hand. Fagin swallowed. Did the man have a rope ladder? Anything? Was he one of the smart ones who kept a coiled rope beneath the windows of these walk-up fire traps? Does the poor sunuva bitch have a chance?

  The man was slowly lowering himself on what looked like a dark length of rope. His clothes were smoldering, and he began moving his legs in a way Fagin had seen before.

  He was giving in, losing strength, trying to fend off the moment.

  The rope, or whatever it was, wasn’t long enough. No more than three or four feet. The figure above inched downward, still grasping the very end of what had at least allowed him to escape the hell on the other side of the window. Only to face another hell to fall into.

  The crowd began screaming for him to hang on, hang on, hang on…a chant. Hang on!

  But he couldn’t hang on. Or maybe whatever he was hanging onto burned through where it was anchored inside.

  It always amazed Fagin how quickly a body could plunge from a high window. Life to death in brief seconds. He stared with horror and sorrow, his gaze following the limp and smoldering figure all the way down, hearing or imagining he heard the impact of soft flesh on hard concrete.

  In the corner of his vision, he saw a woman collapse. A cop was nearby and rushed immediately to her aid, then bending over her motioned frantically for more help.

  The woman was burned but not seriously. It took several minutes before the paramedics gave up and resigned themselves to the fact that the infants she’d been holding and had instinctively protected in her fall were dead. They’d died from smoke inhalation in her escape from the burning building.

  Myra didn’t sleep well for weeks after the fire. When it became obvious that the distraught Amy was going to have an almost impossible time coping with her grief, she offered her a job as file clerk at the agency.

  Not that the agency needed a file clerk.

  Myra needed to help Amy.

  THIRTY-THREE

  February 2002

  Mirabella watched the headlights out the living room window as Chips turned her car into the driveway, how he deliberately fishtailed it a little in the snow that had collected near the curb. A funny kind of guy, but not unlike some others she’d known. He was cautious, even timid, but at the same time, or maybe because of his timidity, he wanted his little kicks—but safe kicks. Challenges, he would tell himself, pushing to validate
himself as a man, tempting fate, but only after figuring all the odds. She hoped he wouldn’t wreck her car.

  His footfalls crunched on the gravel driveway as he made his way to the front porch. Clomp! Clomp! Stamping the snow off his shoes. She’d asked him please not to track it in.

  When he came through the door he was grinning as if he’d just sneaked the last piece of chocolate. The way his eyes were, at first she thought he was drunk, but then she changed her mind. There was a slowness to the way his eyes moved, a drowsiness to them. It was the way he sometimes looked at her after sex.

  She wondered if he was coming back from seeing somebody else, and a warm flame of anger began to grow in her gut. She held no illusions, but she’d been unable to keep herself from making an emotional investment. She’d put some trust in Chips. Maybe she should have known better than to think he was different. She’d learned this hard lesson before.

  And forgotten it before.

  Now some of her growing anger was directed at herself. Asking for it, as her father had told her over and over. Just goddamn asking for it.

  Chips had pushed the guilt and fear to the far edges of his mind, concentrating on the best part of the night, the reason for the night. He could do that, almost as if he were two people living in two different worlds. Man of mystery, he thought. They should make a movie out of my life, star that guy James Woods even though he’s a little older than I am. Maybe whazzisname…Jude Law. Too bad Newman’s doing character roles these days. Frank Sinatra, long time ago. Christ, wouldn’t that be typecasting!

  Now he told himself to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t help grinning when he stomped the snow off his shoes, then went into the house and closed the door behind him.

  He was still grinning as he stood taking Mirabella in with his narrowly focused eyes, the way she was standing with her weight on one leg, one hip thrust out, wearing her robe that was gaping at one pale bare thigh, as if she didn’t know she was flashing him a go signal. He pushed the night’s terror away again, everything that had happened except for the good parts. What the whole thing was, it was fuckin’ exhilarating. So what’s not to grin about?

  “Why the big smile?” she asked. As if he could tell her. No, he didn’t nearly trust her that much yet. Probably never would.

  “I look at you,” he told her, “and I feel lucky. That makes me smile.” She knew he was bullshitting her, but that didn’t matter. She’d convince herself. Chips knew women like Mirabella top to bottom. Knew them the way predators knew prey.

  “Sure you feel lucky,” she said, still obviously angry, the little parallel vertical lines above the bridge of her nose deeper than usual, the vein in the side of her neck throbbing. She had the thickest carotid artery, or whatever the hell it was, he’d ever seen on a woman. Like a damn fire hose. The way it pulsated during sex was a turn-on. He was getting a boner, the way he had driving here from the city thinking about her. Maybe she’d notice. Well, let her. Really get that vein pumping.

  Chips took off his coat and tossed it in a heap on a chair, then slipped off his wet shoes and left them on the rug just inside the door. He turned on what he thought was his sexiest smile. “I guess I have to prove it’s really you that makes me grin.”

  He moved toward her in his stocking feet, still with the high-wattage smile, and she backed away. Not fast enough as he rushed and had her by the waist, attempting to kiss her. She kept turning her head and trying to shove him away at the same time. Still pissed off at him, all right. He laughed and nuzzled the side of her neck, the vein, and pretended he was taking little bites out of her, using just his lips, making that sound he knew they liked. Tightening the pressure with his right arm, he drew her close and ground his pelvis into hers, letting her feel what he had for her.

  She stopped struggling and he tried to kiss her on the mouth again. This time she only made a motion as if to turn away, and he had her, used his tongue. When they separated she still looked mad, so he kissed her again, which wasn’t easy because he was faking a laugh. She couldn’t help it and started to laugh with him.

  “You’re something else,” he said, releasing her waist and moving his hands up to her shoulders. “You really and truly are.”

  She was looking up at him now, her eyes kind of dreamy. Works every time, he thought. Her weakness was that she wanted so much to believe in him. He didn’t have to give her much to go on and she’d make the effort. Work at it, baby. He’d have her in bed and on her back in no time.

  Chips pulled her to him again, being a little rough, this time kissing her for a long time, waiting until she’d almost but not quite had enough and then pulling back before she did. The way she was gazing up at him now, breathing hard with her tits rising and falling, she was plenty ripe for it.

  Something else about her, though, like she was puzzled. She lowered her head, sniffed, and looked back up at him.

  “You been smoking?”

  “Not me,” he said.

  Rica stared down at the blackened corpse on the kitchen floor, thinking she should be getting used to this but wasn’t. “This one’s only on the second floor,” she said.

  But everything else fit. Well, almost everything. The fire had been carefully and deliberately confined to the kitchen. The umbrella had been used to shield the burning body, then left at the scene. The body had been bound with cloth strips before being set on fire.

  The only significant difference Rica could see was the lower-floor apartment.

  This victim was another woman, name of Victoria Pike.

  Stack and Rica had already talked to some of the neighbors. By their accounts, Pike had been a quiet woman and friendly enough. She’d even served on the building’s co-op board until about a year ago, when for some reason she’d quit. Then she’d begun to keep more to herself, not smile or talk to people sometimes when they passed in the hall. Maybe something had happened to her about a year ago, some of the other tenants speculated.

  “So now what?” Rica asked. “We gonna have to go back a year or more in the victim’s life and see if she suffered some kinda trauma?”

  “Could be,” Stack said. He was sloshing through the puddles of black water left on the kitchen floor, not minding if some of it got on the leather of his thick-soled black shoes. “But let’s learn a little more first. Maybe she had a more recent trauma that led to her last one.” He glanced at his watch. “Burns oughta be here soon.”

  Burns was Ed Burnschmidt, the Mobile Response computer genius. Stack had called for him because in the kitchen, on a small built-in wood desk that was sheltered from the sprinkler system by an overhanging cabinet, was one of those dedicated computers, which was to say it was made expressly for sending and receiving e-mail. A small, oblong aqua-colored machine with a raised lid, it wasn’t even hooked up to a printer or monitor other than its own narrow screen. Stack had seen the machine advertised on TV, aimed at people who were technophobes, like he was; the commercial showed a grandmother using the device to keep in touch with the family. Only Pike hadn’t been a grandmother; she’d died in her forty-first year.

  Despite the fire in the kitchen, the e-mail machine had been on and somehow stayed on while the FDNY had extinguished the fire. They’d had plenty of time, since they’d been notified again by phone, this time directly and not through 911, that a fire at the apartment’s address was in progress.

  Stack glanced over at the e-mail machine’s glowing screen that showed nothing but some icons he wasn’t sure he understood. Evidence. Maybe the Pike woman had been interrupted while sending or reading an e-mail. Or maybe she’d simply forgotten to switch off the machine. Stack wasn’t completely comfortable around any kind of computer. He didn’t fully understand the damned things. So when the techs were finished dusting this one for prints, he’d called for Burns. Electronic evidence. Not to be messed with by a ham-handed cop who felt more at home disassembling and cleaning a revolver.

  “You want,” Rica offered again, “I think I can figure out that com
puter easy and check the victim’s e-mail.”

  “Be better if Burns was the one who testified about it in court,” Stack said. “Expert witness and all.”

  “You’re right,” she said, and gave him a wicked wink. “My expertise lies in other, more sensitive areas.”

  Stack stared at her, then down at the corpse. “Jesus, Rica, show some respect.”

  “The dead don’t know if I show them respect,” she said. “You would.”

  Burns didn’t arrive until after the body had been removed and everyone other than Stack and Rica had followed. He was a skinny little guy with jug ears and a bad haircut and looked about eighteen though Stack knew he was in his early thirties. He even had a case of acne, and malicious blue eyes as if he might be thinking up some adolescent prank. Burns was a wiseass who feared no one and got by with his attitude because he was the best at his work. Stack liked him but would never let him know it.

  He nodded hello to Stack and Rica, then looked at the computer with unmistakable disdain.

  “Christ, Stack! You mean you can’t sit down and figure out this thing? It isn’t even an honest-to-God grown-up computer.”

  “You’re the expert,” Stack reminded him.

  “Okay. Next time call me if you need the push buttons set on your car radio.”

  “The only radio in my car gets police calls.”

  Burns gave him a look. “Somehow I believe you. This clean?” Nodding toward the e-mail machine.

  Stack said it was, and Burns went over and didn’t even bother to sit down at the kitchen desk. “Electricity must be off because of the fire. It’s on backup battery power.”

  He worked a few keys and a log of e-mail messages appeared on the screen. “You want messages sent, or received?”

  “Let’s look at the sent ones first,” Stack said. No sooner had he spoken than a different long list of e-mails winked onto the monitor. “These won’t be deleted, will they?”