Night Victims n-3

by John Lutz

  “I guess because I was an oldest child,” Horn said.

  “No, you weren’t the oldest.”

  Horn was surprised. Marla was right; he was the middle of three brothers and the only survivor of the three. “So pop psychology can lead us astray,” he said.

  “You better believe it.”

  There were no other customers in the diner, and the glass coffeepot she held was almost empty, so she lingered by his booth as she often did.

  “So what do you think?” Horn asked.

  “About?”

  “This serial killer.”

  “I don’t have all the facts.”

  “None of us do,” Horn said. “That’s the problem. What do you make of it from what you read in the papers and hear on the news?”

  Marla seemed a little surprised he was asking her about this seriously, but she walked over and placed the coffeepot back on its burner, and then returned. Her manner was slightly different, but it would take a practiced eye like Horn’s to notice. She wasn’t in her waitress persona now; she seemed involved and thoughtful. There was more going on behind her eyes than over easy and bacon crisp.

  “He kills women he doesn’t know,” she said, “or he’d simply knock on their doors then incapacitate them instead of sneaking through their windows.”

  “He might have a thing about them needing to be asleep,” Horn suggested.

  “I know. I’m only hypothesizing. The victims are all attractive women but not of a particular type.” She saw the curiosity in his eyes. “Television news had their photos on last night. Nina Count’s channel.”

  “It would be hers,” Horn said. “She’s a wolf among news hounds.”

  “Your killer must have some kind of climbing skills,” Marla said. Something in the look she gave him revealed she was locked on like radar, now that he’d asked her opinion. She wasn’t interested in his asides about a TV anchorwoman. “So he might be involved in rock climbing-that’s a growing sport-or mountain climbing. Or maybe entomology.”

  That brought Horn up short as he was lifting his cup to his mouth. He placed the steaming cup back down. “Entomology? The study of insects?”

  Marla nodded. “The media aren’t just calling him the Night Spider because he crawls up and down buildings. There’s the way he swathes his victims, like a spider using secretions to wrap and disable a victim before draining it of fluids. And the wounds are stabs rather than slashes, almost as if he’s emulating a spider slowly sapping the life of helpless prey caught in its web. The killer doesn’t seem to be in a rush. Neither is a spider. It feeds at its leisure off insects it’s trapped and wrapped, until they weaken and die and become useless husks.” She smiled without humor. “If I were a bug, I wouldn’t want to be at the mercy of a spider. It doesn’t know mercy, and neither does your killer.”

  “You’re saying the killer somehow identifies with spiders?”

  “Exactly. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to how or why, but it looks that way. And for that he needs familiarity with spiders. Like an entomologist.”

  Horn sat back, studying her. It wasn’t just what she’d said but the way in which she’d said it. “You weren’t always a waitress, Marla.”

  “Who was? I had a life before this.”

  “What kind of life? You don’t look that old.”

  She laughed. “The past is dead and gone. And I’m. . let’s just say in my early forties.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to stray where I shouldn’t.”

  “That’s okay. I understand. It’s the cop in you.”

  “Marla-”

  The bell over the door jingled, and she hurried toward the front of the diner to wait on a guy in a business suit mounting a stool at the counter.

  Horn used his cell phone to contact Paula and Bickerstaff.

  It was Bickerstaff who answered.

  “You still interrogating Gary Schnick?” Horn asked.

  “Paula’s in the room with him now. This guy didn’t do it. Two of his neighbors saw him arriving home last night a couple of hours before Redmond’s time of death. He doesn’t know that yet, though, so we’re letting him ramble.”

  “He might have returned to her apartment later.”

  “Could have, but I doubt it. Nothing in his apartment suggests he knows anything about climbing, and his hands are soft from years of pushing pencils and tickling tax returns. This character’s no more a mountain climber than I am. Doin’ it without Viagra’s the extent of his vertical challenge.”

  “You press him hard?”

  “We did. He had a rough night and looks about ready to fold. Paula’s easing up now. He didn’t even ask for an attorney for about two hours. Then he got some schmuck tax client of his that knows nothing about criminal law. I think they’re bartering, trading services so they can screw the IRS. We were about to release Schnick. His lawyer will be shocked.”

  “You want to cross him off our list entirely?”

  “Almost entirely. I know this guy’s telling the truth, and Paula feels the same way. This is not a hard case. He actually fainted when he knew we were gonna confront him about Redmond’s murder.”

  “Before you uncage him,” Horn said, “have Paula find out if he knows anything about insects.”

  “Incest?”

  “Insects. Bugs.”

  Bickerstaff was silent for a moment. “Like was he ever an exterminator?”

  “Or a scientist. An entomologist or biologist.”

  “We checked out his background,” Bickerstaff said. “Nothing like that in it. No sheet on him, degree in accounting, been a CPA for the last ten years. Course, there’s always hobbies. Maybe he had a butterfly or beetle collection. You know, one of those guys sticks pins through bugs to mount them on a display.”

  “Yeah,” Horn said. “Find out about that. Make sure before you put him back on the street.”

  “Will do,” Bickerstaff said before hanging up. “Bugs. .”

  “Spiders,” Horn said into the dead phone.

  As he slid the phone back in his pocket, he saw that Marla had finished waiting on the executive type at the counter and was returning to his booth, carrying the coffeepot as an excuse. She was eager to talk to him about this case. He wondered why.

  The cop in him.

  13

  Arkansas, the Ozark Mountains, 1982

  Seven years old and he was terrified.

  But he was used to being frightened, existing with the living lump of fear in his stomach. There was no light or movement of air where he was, only heat and darkness. His mouth was dry, and the corners of his eyes stung with perspiration. Listening to the sounds coming from the other side of the locked closet door, he wondered why his mother did this. Did all mothers do it?

  He understood some things from hearing his mother and father arguing, yelling and losing their tempers, like he did at times. Their faces would be red, their eyes bulging. Their mouths were ugly and shaped like the ones on the stone things he’d learned about in school, the gargoyles. They would scream at each other sometimes until they got too tired to go on. Did they feel as he did afterward, empty and lost? He thought they did.

  He knew his mother had once been a snake handler in the name of God. At least that’s what his father had said. Both his father and mother said God a lot when they talked or yelled at each other. What a snake handler was, the boy didn’t know. It had to do with a special kind of church, he was once told by his father. He was then given a look that made it clear he wasn’t to ask about it again.

  His father was away most of the time because he was in the army, leaving the boy in the care of his mother. She would beat him with one of his father’s belts at times when he was bad, which he deserved though it made him mad for long times. Teaching him respect, she would say, or sometimes shout, losing her temper. Teaching him respect. Respect in this world that was hard.

  He wished the noise on the other side of the door would stop so he could be let out of the closet, so he could finally h
ave something to eat. He wasn’t sure if his stomachache was from fear or from hunger.

  Here were the spiders!

  After a while in the dark closet they always came. He knew the place he lived was old and all by itself in the woods, and he’d heard his father say the rotted wood house was full of termites. That’s why it had so many spiders, they ate the termites. And there was no shortage of flies and roaches for them to feast on, according to his father.

  Then why did they still bite?

  The first spider was like the touch of a feather on his left arm. He knew better than to knock it off with his hand. The spiders could bite quickly.

  He made himself lie still while the soft exploring tickling sensation traveled up his arm toward his shoulder. There was another tickle on his right ankle. His left arm. His cheek. His mouth was open wide but he knew what would happen if he screamed. So he screamed silently because he had to. He couldn’t be seen or heard in the dark closet.

  Oww! A bite on his left arm. He made himself stay perfectly still. Painful experience had taught him that was his only defense. Lie still. Let the spiders have their way.

  There was one on his right cheek. He hated it when they got near his eyes. It wasn’t a terrible sensation, more like somebody slowly dragging a piece of thread across his flesh, but he didn’t like to think about being bitten in the eye. He did take the risk of clenching his eyes tightly shut. Then he closed his mouth and gritted his teeth, protecting his tongue.

  More tickling on his chest and stomach. He wished he was wearing more than his underpants. Lying on his side on the bare wood floor, he wanted to curl up, to sob. But he knew he couldn’t risk crying. It made his body shake. Made them bite. Very slowly he allowed his knees to draw up. He couldn’t help trying to make himself smaller-small as a spider-so he could crawl right out through the crack of dim light beneath the door.

  He told himself it wasn’t all that bad, the slight tickling all over his body. He told himself it could even feel good. He was getting used to it and so were the spiders. They didn’t bite him so many times now.

  But he knew they might if he moved suddenly, or if he didn’t. He knew they might.

  “In the name of our Lord!” shouted his mother’s voice from outside the dark closet.

  The spiders were still.

  “Amen in the name of the Lord of the earth!” shouted the people who were out there with his mother. Her flock, she called them.

  “Praise be it, the poor shall inherit the earth, and after them the animals and then the smallest of the Lord’s earth, the kings of heaven!” The boy listened. What did it all mean?

  “Praise be it!” shouted everyone beyond the door. “The kings of heaven!”

  “The flesh of the rich shall be rent with disfigurement and the pain of their sins! The green of their money and gleam of their possessions shall be as the black of dust. The small and the crawl shall reap the reward. And the reward shall be ours and then theirs.”

  “Ours and then theirs! Ours and then theirs!”

  The chanting had started. He knew that soon they would be singing. And dancing. Wild voices.

  “The psalm of the mandible!” his mother said. “The psalm of the hive and the wing! The small and the crawl!”

  “The small and the crawl.”

  The singing began. The boy felt his heart jump and jump. The dancing started, the shouting and tromping on the old plank floor-the rhythm of God, his mother had called it-making the whole house shake. The old house shake. The pots and pans rattle in the kitchen. His room, the closet, everything felt it. Everyone felt it. Maybe God felt it and paid notice. Or Satan. His mother talked and screamed so much of Satan while she made the house bounce, the whole house shake, while she beat and beat with the belt.

  She loved him. The boy knew she loved him. She would kiss his forehead and make him feel better when he cried; she told him nothing was his fault. And sometimes at night she would read to him from the Bible till he went to sleep.

  If she loved him, why did she lock him in the closet? Why did she beat him with the belt?

  What did it all mean?

  In the dark, the spiders began to move.

  14

  New York, 2003

  Anne nodded good morning to people she passed in the wide, cork-tiled hall of Kincaid Memorial Hospital as she made her way to Radiology. Hospitals were depressing to some people, but she’d always liked the efficiency and order of them, the practiced routine, even the antiseptic scent. Except for the patients, everyone knew more or less what to expect in such an environment.

  At least it had been that way until lately.

  She glanced in through glass doors lettered radiology to see how many people were in the waiting rooms. This was the time for morning-appointment imagery and, sometimes, the last pre-op X rays or scans for patients scheduled for early surgery.

  About half the chairs and upholstered benches were occupied in the waiting area. It appeared to be a busy morning.

  Ida, Anne’s fastidious, graying assistant, was already at her desk when Anne pushed through the unmarked gray door that led to the reception area of her private office. Sun was pouring through the window and the printer was clicking and humming industriously. The morning light was golden and seemed thick and tangible.

  When Ida saw her, she stopped typing and turned away from her computer keyboard. She and Anne had worked together for five years. They’d reached the point where they communicated silently if there was anyone nearby they might not want to overhear them. With a sideways motion of her head, Ida let Anne know that someone was waiting in her office. Anne knew it would be hospital personnel or somebody she was expecting. Probably the rep from Central Medical who wanted to talk to her about the new PET scan equipment the hospital had on order.

  But her caller was a tall, long-jawed man with flowing gray hair and wearing an elegant brown silk suit. Dr. Herbert Finlay, Kincaid’s chief of administration-hospitalese for CEO. He was half sitting with his rump against the edge of Anne’s desk and leaning back. His arms were crossed so his marble-sized gold cuff links glinted in the sunlight streaming through the window. When he looked up from studying his polished oxblood loafers and saw Anne, he smiled.

  Anne wasn’t fooled by the smile as she said good morning.

  “I hate to make it not such a good morning,” Finlay said, standing up straight and turning to face her as she laid her attache case on her desk and pulled out her chair. She hadn’t sat down.

  “The Vine complaint?”

  “I’m afraid so, Anne. It’s no longer a complaint. Now it’s a lawsuit. Our attorneys called. The family filed this morning.”

  Now Anne did sit down. She felt flushed, resentful. And, God help her, at the same time guilty. I’ve done nothing. Why can’t I shake this? Why can’t I escape the guilt? “Do they really think a momentary, after-the-fact mix-up in CAT scan images caused their son to be comatose? The operation was completed when the mistake was noticed and mentioned. It might have been a serious screwup, but in this case it wasn’t. It simply wasn’t a factor.”

  “It doesn’t matter what the family thinks,” Finlay said. He was standing with one hand in his pocket now, weight on one foot. A familiar casual pose. Finlay’s posturing often irritated Anne. “It’s what the family says that’s important.”

  “The boy had a reaction to the anesthetic,” Anne said. “It’s rare, but it happens. If they want to sue someone, it should be the anesthesiologist.”

  “You know anesthesiologists here aren’t on staff, Anne. They’re contract workers. Besides, hospitals have deeper pockets.”

  “Justice!” Anne said disgustedly. “My husband used to be in the justice business, and he tells me it’s rare and often occurs outside the system.”

  “Yes, I suspect he’s right.”

  “Outside the family, no one feels worse about the boy than the people who were in the OR during the operation. No one feels worse than I do. But it isn’t a perfect world. Those i
nfrequent side effects listed in fine print actually do happen to some people.” Listen to me. . Don’t I sound like a coldhearted bitch? But I’m not! I’m not! I went to visit the boy! He didn’t know I was there!

  “I don’t need convincing, Anne. And I certainly don’t hold you or anyone else on staff even slightly responsible.”

  “We offered the family a fair settlement even though it isn’t the hospital’s liability.”

  “That was a mistake,” Finlay said. “The Vines’ attorneys are now characterizing our offer as an admission of guilt.”

  Anne sank farther back in her black leather desk chair and sighed. “Once the lawyers get hold of something like this, compensation can become financial rape. What does Legal say about it?”

  “They haven’t had time to study it yet.” Finlay smiled slightly. “Their preliminary observation was something like yours.” He uncrossed his arms and smoothed his coat sleeves down over the bulky cuff links. Anne now saw that they were in the form of elaborate lions’ heads and had tiny rubies for eyes. “Something else you should know, Anne.

  The complaint names the hospital, attending surgeon and additional OR personnel, and you.”

  She looked up sharply. “Me?” She’d expected to be named in a potential lawsuit but hearing that she had been was still a shock.

  “As the chief administrator of radiology, you would be technically responsible for anything that happens in your department, including imagery mix-ups. At least the Vines’ attorneys hope the law will define it that way.”

  “You didn’t mention the anesthesiologist,” Anne said.

  Finlay shrugged like an actor onstage, a gesture he’d long practiced and made elegant. “The other side wants to remain on good terms with the anesthesiologist.”

  “Of course! They don’t want what happened to be his fault.”

  Finlay used his shrug again. “Legal maneuvering, Anne. . ”

  She rocked this way and that in her chair for a moment. The other side. Battle lines had been drawn. “The sad part is I actually feel as if I’ve done something wrong, that I should pay for it.”