The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  Question was, what was she going to do about it? She really didn’t believe her Chips ever killed anybody. And his police record, assuming he was the same guy, suggested he was nonviolent. Mirabella had enough experience with the cops not to suggest Chips should get a lawyer and turn himself in, get the truth out there. Even though Chips wasn’t the Torcher, he might be convicted. Then where would she be, having sheltered him all this time? She knew how that could turn out, the way the authorities could twist and mold everything until it fit their theory. First you had the truth by the tail; then all of a sudden it had you, and it wore a badge or a black robe.

  Of course there was the off chance Chips was telling the truth, and he really was a different Larry Chips from the one pictured in the news. When monkeys fly out of my ass. Or that he was the same Larry Chips and really was the Torcher. When monkeys fly out of his ass. Or that he was the same Larry Chips but never burned anyone to death. The most likely and easiest to believe.

  Either way, he was going to end up in the arms of the law instead of her arms.

  So should she make the call? Turn him in? He was her man, and what was her loyalty worth? She should stand by him, like the song said.

  But she didn’t see herself as naive. There was, she had to admit, a slight chance he really was dangerous.

  What should she do? She might be making a mistake doing nothing. On the other hand, if instead of standing by her man she turned him over to the cops, then they arrested somebody else for the Torcher murders, she’d hear that song all the rest of her life. It was a problem, all right.

  Mirabella thought about it.

  She drank a lot of tequila thinking about it.

  She fell asleep thinking about it.

  She wasn’t good with hard decisions.

  Gertrude Kreiger was a leggy and buxom thirtyish woman with fluffed red hair, a face etched by tragedy, and dark shadows beneath sad brown eyes. Stack couldn’t help but think of a ravaged cheerleader. She was living temporarily in a vacant apartment three floors beneath the one where her husband had burned to death, and when she opened the door to Stack’s knock she apologized to him and Rica for the lack of furniture.

  She invited them to sit on the one sofa, but Stack refused twice at her urgings, so she finally nodded and smiled glumly at his male stubbornness. Her husband had been stubborn, Rica would bet. Gertrude looked like some kind of redheaded Barbie Doll zombie with credit cards for brains.

  Gertrude sat in one corner of the sofa and Rica sat in the room’s only other chair, a wooden kitchen job so uncomfortable it had to have been designed by one of those extreme religious orders that equated comfort with sin.

  Stack the chivalrous remained standing, his coat unbuttoned, his hands in his pants pockets. “We’re sorry for your loss,” he said. “Is there anything we can do?” Rica knew he already knew that answer. Every cop did.

  “I want you to catch whoever killed him,” Gertrude Kreiger said.

  Stack’s line, Rica thought, keeping her silence.

  “Take my word, dear, we’re doing everything possible in every way.”

  “I do believe you,” Gertrude said. She placed her hands together in prayer position and sat with them squeezed between her knees. Stack had seen rape victims assume that posture.

  “You mentioned on the phone you might have something to tell us,” he reminded her gently.

  “I had my reservations about this, but I want to do anything I can to help catch Otto’s murderer.”

  “Of course, of course…”

  “And I feel a responsibility toward whoever else the maniac will set on fire like…” She bowed her head and clenched her eyes shut to an emotional storm that passed quickly. “I don’t know what it’ll mean for my husband’s reputation—his memory. But you need to know about an envelope I found tucked beneath a copy of his will in our wall safe. It had my name on it, and inside was a safe deposit box key with a note telling me the contents of the box were mine. I was to go to the box, retrieve what was in it, then close the account and tell no one about it.”

  Rica watched Stack. Showing no particular curiosity, he shifted his weight, his hands still in his pockets. “And did you follow the directions, dear?”

  “Of course. There was money in the box. Fifty thousand dollars, most of it in twenty-dollar bills.”

  “My goodness. Was there anything else in the box?” Stack asked, his expression unchanged. Rica looked on silently, really enjoying watching him work.

  “Nothing,” Gertrude said. “No note, no explanation of any kind. Nothing but the money.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “In what’s left of our—my apartment. In the wall safe.”

  “Do you have any idea where your husband might have obtained this money?”

  “None. Or why he hid its existence from me until after his death.” She stared hopefully up at Stack, tears in her eyes. “Do you think it had anything to do with Otto’s murder?”

  “Well, it might have,” Stack said.

  “Is it evidence? Must I turn it over to the police?”

  “I suppose that would be a good idea,” Stack said. “Temporarily, of course. As of now, it’s simply money your husband wanted you to have and keep confidential, for what might have been his own good and perfectly legal reasons. Paper money seldom yields anything in the way of fingerprints or other physical evidence, but we should take a look at it, check to see if the serial numbers are recorded anywhere, that sort of thing. It will be in good hands, and we’ll give you a receipt, of course.”

  “Yes,” Gertrude said, “a receipt.” She shook her head and her brow furrowed, as if it occurred to her that with her husband gone, she was in charge of her life and would have to become accustomed to business matters. “I just hope it helps in some way to catch whoever’s doing these terrible murders.”

  “You’ve done the right thing,” Rica said.

  Gertrude looked over at her as if she’d forgotten Rica was there. “Yes, yes…” She stood up. “If you come with me to the apartment, I’ll get it for you.”

  They left her temporary apartment and elevatored three floors up. On the floor that still smelled of smoke and death, Gertrude hesitated.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” she said, actually backing away. “Not until the decorators are done.”

  Stack and Rica looked at each other.

  “I do trust you, both of you,” Gertrude said. “If I tell you where the safe is and give you the combination, will you go in and get the money? It’s the only thing in the safe right now.”

  Stack lifted her right hand and patted it gently. “Of course, of course…”

  Rica stayed out in the hall with Gertrude while Stack went into the burned co-op, then emerged a few minutes later carrying a bulky paper bag.

  “We’ll need to count it, dear,” he said to Gertrude. “A procedural thing.”

  Gertrude said she understood, and they escorted her back to her temporary apartment, counted out fifty thousand dollars even, then thanked her again as Stack wrote out and signed a receipt.

  “By the way,” he said, as they were leaving, “did your husband ever mention a woman named Myra Raven?”

  Gertrude stared at the floor while she thought. “No, I’m sure he didn’t. But the name is vaguely familiar.”

  “She has one of the most successful real estate agencies in Manhattan,” Stack said. “Maybe you saw her name in an ad.”

  “Yes, yes, that is where I saw it. The newspaper, or maybe on the subway.”

  The remark struck Rica as odd. Gertrude Kreiger didn’t seem the type to spend much time riding subway trains. But then, the subway was a democratic form of transportation.

  “What I was wondering,” Stack said, “was if you and your late husband bought your apartment through her agency.”

  “No, we bought directly from the owner. Otto didn’t like paying anyone a commission.”

  They thanked her again and left.

  “Like
Danner’s twenty thousand in his safe,” Rica said, tapping the bulky, folded paper sack tucked beneath Stack’s right arm as they waited for an elevator.

  “Maybe,” Stack said. “Or maybe what’s in this bag is money Otto didn’t want his widow to have to pay taxes on. As we both know, there are plenty of possibilities, money being the root of our employment.”

  As they stepped out of the elevator at lobby level, a model-handsome man in his late thirties, with thick blond hair and a small, flesh-colored Band-Aid on his neck, was waiting to enter. He did a double take when he saw Rica, then smiled warmly at her.

  Stack had waited for Rica to exit the elevator first, and as he stepped out he noticed the man pressed the button for the floor where Gertrude Kreiger grieved in her temporary home.

  Myra sat at her desk and stared out at the darkening sky. One of her agents, a man she’d been having some doubts about, had brought in a contract from a major brokerage firm still searching for additional business space after the World Trade Center tragedy. It would be a complicated deal involving multiple lenders, but the commission profit would be immense. She knew that under normal circumstances her focus would be intense; with part of her mind on autopilot, she would be thinking with the other part only of solidifying the contract. But this evening, while outside her office door the Myra Raven Group was closing down around her until tomorrow, she wasn’t thinking about real estate at all. She was worried.

  Her gaze followed the distant lights of a plane flying well beyond the city, and she wondered what it would be like to be aboard and traveling almost at the speed of sound away from her problems.

  She watched the plane until it disappeared.

  Billy Watkins. She wanted to see Billy.

  As she was turning around in her swivel chair to reach for the desk phone, there was a soft knock and her office door opened about a foot.

  Amy Marks stuck her head in. She looked nervous.

  “Come in, Amy. What is it?”

  Amy entered and held out a white letter-size envelope. “I just got around to opening the afternoon mail delivery,” she said. “This was in it.” She approached the desk so Myra could reach the envelope. “It wasn’t marked personal,” she added. “And I wouldn’t have read it if there’d been a name.”

  “That’s all right, Amy.” It was company procedure for Amy to open mail addressed only to the agency, then see that the contents went to the appropriate parties. Myra looked at the envelope that had been neatly slit at the top by Amy’s letter opener. There was no name typed above the agency address.

  But Myra’s name was on the folded typed note inside:

  For Myra Raven:

  Unto the fire and death all things are pure.

  The note was unsigned.

  Myra tried not to show her concern as she refolded the brief note and slid it back in its envelope. “Sort of cryptic, isn’t it?”

  “Sort of scary,” Amy said. “What with the Torcher murders and all, maybe you should call the police. They might be able to trace whoever sent it. They can bring out fingerprints from paper, maybe even identify the typewriter.”

  “If they could find the typewriter,” Myra said. One thing she knew was that she couldn’t turn the note over to the police. “I don’t think this note is all that serious. It isn’t exactly threatening.”

  “I’d call it threatening. I’d call it downright creepy.”

  “Has anyone else seen the note?”

  “No. As soon as I saw it was personal and for you, I brought it right to you. I didn’t show or mention it to anyone else.” She absently adjusted the plain gold wedding band she still wore. “You really oughta consider calling the police.”

  Myra looked down at the envelope now lying in the center of her desk. “You might be right. I’ll think on it. Meanwhile, don’t mention to anyone else about the matter.”

  “Of course not,” Amy said. She stood awkwardly for a moment. “Is there anything else?”

  Myra smiled at her. “No. And thanks for bringing this directly to me. You did the right thing, Amy. As usual.”

  Alone again in her office, Myra read and reread the note. Someone was playing with her mind. Warning her? Setting a trap for her? She couldn’t be sure. But the note must mean something.

  She was still uneasy as she left the office, elevatored down to the garage, and drove her SUV through wet and sometimes icy streets to her co-op.

  When she’d been home only a few minutes, she realized someone had been in her apartment in her absence.

  More angry and curious than anything else, she explored and decided that nothing was missing, but many things, from furniture to the smallest items, seemed to have been moved slightly. So odd. It wasn’t even as if a search had been conducted. More as if someone had taken a hurried inventory.

  Why would anyone do that? Because they planned on returning later? Did whoever it was know she couldn’t call attention to herself with the police?

  Myra crossed her arms, cupping her elbows in her palms, and stared across the room and out the window into the cold night above Central Park.

  Standing in what she knew with her Realtor’s eye was the geometric center of her high and violated home, with its expensive furnishings intact, she felt terribly alone.

  And for the first time since reading the note in her office, her uneasiness became raw fear.

  It was late, and Stack and Rica were about to leave the precinct house, when the call came in.

  When Stack picked up the phone on his desk, Sergeant Redd told him there was another call on the Torcher murders. Not unusual. The police were inundated with calls. Not only did hundreds of people have deliberately misleading or otherwise useless information about the Torcher to feed to the police, but, perversely, dozens of people pretended to be the Torcher. “Their fifteen minutes of flame,” the Beave had once remarked. Only some of the calls did Sergeant Redd take seriously enough to patch through to Stack or Rica.

  “What is it about this one?” Stack asked the desk sergeant.

  Redd knew what he meant. “It’s the fresh angle. And something in her voice.”

  And something in your gut, Stack thought. “Put her on,” he said. Then: “Detective Stack here.”

  “Hello?” A woman’s voice, throaty and nervous.

  “This is Detective Stack,” Stack repeated patiently in a neutral tone. Sometimes this job was like being a radio call-in show host. “I understand you have some information to convey.”

  “Yes. About the Torcher.”

  “And what would that be, ma’am?” He deliberately hadn’t asked her name. There was a pause. Stack liked that. She was reconsidering, screwing up her determination to forge ahead and tell her tale. Making sure she really wanted to do this. “I guess it’s what you’d call a tip.” Her voice was steady now; she’d turned the corner. “If you want to find the Torcher, I suggest you look in the mayor’s office.”

  Fresh angle indeed. “The mayor of New York?” Drawing her on. Keeping her talking.

  “Of course New York!”

  “His office?”

  “Yes. Among his aides.”

  “Oh? And which of his aides would that be?”

  “You’re the police. You should be able to figure that out. If I give you a name, it might be too obvious where you got the information. That might be harmful to me.”

  “What’s your connection with this person?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “You do understand that before we can act on this, we need to establish credibility.”

  “That’s up to you. I only wanted to make sure you have the information.”

  “We get dozens of calls a day like this,” Stack said.

  “I’d be surprised if you didn’t.”

  “Would it be possible for you to elaborate on your information just a bit more?”

  “No.”

  Clamming up. Losing her. “I only need something from you that makes your call more credible than most of the othe
rs. Is that too much to ask?”

  Silence. Had she walked away? Left a phone off the hook somewhere?

  “May I ask your name, ma’am?”

  “Ask anything you damn well please. I don’t have to answer.”

  “Well, I suppose you’re right about that, dear. But I do need—”

  He was interrupted by a click, then a loudly buzzing dial tone that sounded like an angry wasp. She’d abruptly hung up the phone.

  Stack replaced the receiver on his desk phone. “Anything?” Rica asked.

  “A woman suggesting we look in the mayor’s office for the Torcher.”

  “He’ll be hiding beneath the desk?”

  “I don’t think she meant it precisely that way.”

  Rica finished buttoning her coat to leave. “Another nutcase.”

  “Probably. But she didn’t exactly sound like one.”

  “Lots of them don’t.” She raised her chin high and flung one end of her long red muffler about her neck so that it dangled down the back of her coat.

  “Well, it probably was another crank call,” Stack said. “But it’s one to put in the hopper.”

  “With all the others.”

  Hundreds of them.

  The phone jangled again.

  Sergeant Redd: “The call came from a pay phone down in the Village.”

  Stack thanked him, then reached for his own coat.

  After hanging up, Dani walked quickly away from the phone, her head bowed, her fists jammed deep in her coat pockets. For all she knew, the cops had traced the call and a police car was already on the way. That was why she’d kept the conversation short.

  She was glad she’d made the call. She’d done the right thing, she told herself. No second-guessing.

  A cold wind kicked up and propelled litter along the sidewalk, causing a dancing sheet of newspaper to snag for a moment on the instep of her left boot.

  Dani crossed Bedford and hurried along Christopher Street toward Bleecker, thinking back on the phone conversation. What, really, might she have told Detective Stack that would mean anything and prompt police action? She really didn’t know anything substantive. It was all gleaned from her conversations with Etta, and during most of them Etta had been talking in a drug-induced haze or in her sleep. Fragmented, fanciful statements that might be fact or dream.