Night Victims n-3

by John Lutz

  “Which one do you like?”

  “Lady Christ on the cross.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “My palms bleeding?”

  Careen smiled. “A cop could afford that piece only if he or she were the wrong kind of cop.”

  “Known Will long?”

  “About three years. This isn’t his first exhibit here.”

  “Can you tell me anything interesting about him?”

  “He’s self-taught. Been sculpting since he got out of the service, he said.”

  “Service?”

  “Military. I don’t know what branch. Works out of a garage studio next to his house. If you’re looking for dirt on him, you’ll be disappointed. He’s about the most normal guy I know in this business of bullshit and ego and, sometimes, talent.”

  “You think Will has talent?”

  “I wouldn’t display his work if I didn’t.”

  “That him over there?” Paula pointed to the photo from the Web site. It was framed and mounted on the wall near the door, along with information about the artist.

  “That’s him. He’s better looking in person.”

  “Really? Does he fool around on that wife of his, trapped in Queens with the little ones?”

  “Why? You interested?”

  “Maybe,” Paula said. “It’s that crucifixion piece.”

  “I wouldn’t say Will’s kinky,” Careen said. She winked. “Or that he isn’t.”

  Paula cocked her head and gave Careen a woman-to-woman look, then lowered her voice. “You know something juicy?”

  “Nothing I’d tell a cop.”

  Paula decided not to push. “Enough about handsome Will and back to business. Have you seen a man around here, might be homeless, the way he’s dressed? About sixty, red hair and beard?”

  “Does he spray-paint?”

  For the next fifteen minutes Paula made a show of asking questions and making notes about her fictitious redheaded man. She wasn’t sure if Careen was fooled, but maybe it didn’t matter. If Will Lincoln was the Night Spider, maybe a little pressure the other way wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it was about time he started worrying about being stepped on.

  So nice-guy family-man Will might have a kinky extramarital sex life. Having done duty in the Quarter in New Orleans, Paula could envision it. Maybe he was into S amp;M, water sports, or bondage. Or worse. Much worse.

  21

  It hadn’t taken long for Horn to find out about Rett Jackson, the suspect in Philadelphia.

  Horn’s source with the Philadelphia police called him back within an hour and told him Jackson had finally fallen victim to an old war wound. The previous year he’d had a steel rod inserted in his spine, as well as a complete knee replacement. All were delayed problems resulting from injuries sustained when the man in front of him stepped on a mine, blowing shrapnel and bone fragments into Jackson’s lower body. Horn was informed that Jackson had walked with the aid of a cane since his hospitalization.

  Not a climber. Not nimble enough to dangle on a line and use tape and a glass cutter, then silently raise a window and steal into a victim’s bedroom without waking her.

  So there were only two suspects left on the list Altman gave Horn. It seemed the CIA agent’s assurances that the Night Spider was unconnected to the secret Special Forces unit were correct.

  Horn was sitting in the leather armchair in his living room contemplating this when the jangle of the phone broke into his thoughts. Not the cell phone, but the landline phone he’d used to talk to his source in Philadelphia. As he lifted the receiver, he wondered how long phones would still have cords in this rapidly changing world.

  “This is Nina Count,” the caller said, after Horn had identified himself. “Do you remember me, Captain Horn?”

  “I wouldn’t forget you, Nina. And I see you often on cable news.”

  “Which is why I’m calling. To ask for confirmation, as you’ve been good enough to come out of retirement to ramrod the investigation into the Night Spider murders.”

  “I’m not so sure ‘ramrod’ is the word.” But close. “I’m acting in more of an advisory capacity.”

  “Ah, the official line. You’re being modest, Captain Horn.”

  And you’re fishing. “What is it you want confirmed, Nina?”

  “That you’ve consulted with the famous alpinist Royce Sayles.”

  “Is ‘Alpinist’ a real word?”

  “I don’t know. That’s not what I need confirmed.”

  So full of drive and duplicity, these media types. Nina Count among the worst of them. “I didn’t think you’d drop the subject.” And you know the answer or you wouldn’t be asking the question. “Yes, I did consult with Sayles about the Night Spider case. You can say he was helpful.”

  “Are you making any real progress on the case?” she asked in a confidential tone that meant nothing. “I mean, will you confide in me instead of handing out the usual media bullshit you give the other news hounds?”

  “Why would I treat you differently?”

  “You like me.”

  That was true, Horn had to admit to himself. Nina had more daring and imagination than any of her competitors. She’d once crashed one of the mayor’s private dinner parties and sent back the wine. Horn thought she would have made a great cop. “I think you’re full of more piss and vinegar than the rest of them, Nina. Like a crazy aunt I was fond of as a kid. But you didn’t answer my question, and I’m going to be as persistent in asking it as you would.”

  She laughed. “Okay, nephew. You should treat me differently and confide in me because I’ll confide in you. We should work together.”

  “If you have something to confide and don’t, Nina, you might be guilty of concealing evidence of a crime. I wouldn’t want to see you get in trouble with the law.”

  “I don’t have anything to confide yet, but I might. And you know us members of the news media, how we don’t have to divulge our sources or tip our hands.”

  Horn thought about this. “Nina, are you planning on being up to something?”

  “I am, Captain Horn. And when you see what it is, you’ll want to talk with me in the worst way.”

  “To read you your rights?”

  Again the laugh. “I know my rights. Watch my news reports. Tell your friends and relatives. I can always use the ratings.”

  “Nina, ratings aren’t worth your life. This Night Spider psycho is more dangerous than you know.”

  “You’re worried about my safety?”

  “You bet I am.”

  “When you’re ready,” she said in an amused voice, “let me know and we’ll cooperate and nail this sick fuck.”

  “Nina-”

  “Loved talking to you, Captain.”

  And she hung up and left him with a buzz in his ear.

  And a new worry on his mind.

  “That was the lawyers,” Joe Vine said, hanging up the phone. “The subpoenas have been served.”

  His wife, Cindy, was wearing her faded red bathrobe and sitting with her knees drawn up in a corner of the sofa. They’d had hamburgers for lunch, and the scent of the fried beef and onions still permeated the apartment. “I wish Alan would get well and come home so none of this was necessary.”

  “We all wish that,” Vine said, irritated. He’d hoped she’d cheer up when she learned the lawsuit was going forward. “Don’t you think I wish that?”

  “Of course I do. I know you’re suffering just like me. But I also think you want revenge.”

  “Sure, I want them to pay for what they did to Alan. Especially that bitch in charge of the radiology department.”

  “That’s what I mean, Joe. With you it’s personal.”

  “Personal is our son lying in a hospital bed for weeks without moving unless somebody turns him over. Personal is me listening to you grinding your teeth all night while you whimper with bad dreams. And personal is me having to listen to you imply I care more about revenge and money than I do about our son
.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Joe, and you know it.”

  “Stop telling me what I know.”

  She looked away and wrapped her arms tightly around her bent knees, gently rocking back and forth. “I’m afraid for Alan. I’m afraid of what your hate might do to us, Joe. I’m afraid of courts and lawyers. I can’t help it, I’m fucking afraid!”

  “This might not even get to court. The hospital might try to settle.”

  “They already tried once.”

  “Cindy? Stop rocking! You look like a goddamn nutcase!”

  She seemed to hear only her own internal rhythm.

  “Cindy? Honey? Damnit! Answer me!”

  She did, in a mumble he couldn’t understand. She was talking more and more like that lately, as if they were speaking underwater and she was drifting away from him.

  He leaned closer. “Cindy?”

  She mumbled again. It sounded something like “God help us.”

  “A subpoena!” Anne cried to Horn that evening as soon as she came home from work. “For Christ’s sake, a subpoena!” Stress had clenched her face like a fist. A strand of blond hair stuck out above one ear, while another dangled over her forehead. She slammed the door behind her, shutting out the world beyond the brownstone.

  “I’ve seen them before,” Horn said, staying calm, hoping it would be catching. He put the Cuban cigar he’d been contemplating taking outside to smoke back in his pocket, then gently pried the envelope she was waving around from her hand.

  He unfolded the document inside, kinked from the pressure of her tense fingers, and scanned it.

  “Court date’s not for two months,” he said, handing the subpoena back to her. “Give yourself some time to think about this, Anne. Plenty of things can happen over two months.”

  “Such as?”

  “A settlement.”

  “You don’t seem to understand that I, the radiology department, the ER personnel, the hospital, have done nothing wrong!”

  “I do understand. I’m usually the one trying to reassure you of that. Remember, you were telling me the other day about how guilty you felt.”

  She gave him a weary, disdainful look, then turned her back on him and trudged up the stairs, moving like an arthritic.

  “Feeling and knowing are two different things,” she said without looking back.

  They are, Horn thought. They surely are.

  He took the cigar back out of his pocket and went outside to smoke and walk, and think.

  22

  Saint Will.

  Paula had spent the rest of the day talking to people in Will Lincoln’s neighborhood. Everyone, from Lincoln’s barber to the patrons of a corner tavern, Minnie’s Place, where he sometimes stopped in for a drink, held a positive view of Lincoln. A sweet-natured, friendly kind of guy, they all said. A regular guy, despite the odd way he had of turning a dollar, buying and collecting scrap metal, worthless junk, and welding it into art.

  It wasn’t until Paula talked to a Mrs. Dorothy Neidler, who lived in a small clapboard house directly across the street from Lincoln’s similar house, that a sour note was struck.

  “C’mon in,” Mrs. Neidler said, when finally convinced Paula was a genuine NYPD detective and wanted to chat about Lincoln. Paula had the feeling that Lincoln was one of her favorite things to talk about.

  The living room looked like a worn-out, badly designed set from a fifties sitcom. Tables and chairs were blond mod-erne and included a kidney-shaped coffee table. The blue sofa and chairs matched each other but nothing else, though

  Paula guessed they went okay with the sculpted gray wall-to-wall carpet. Clear plastic still covered the shades of the matching lamps on the matching tables on each side of the sofa. In a corner, near some red drapes, sat a blond console TV with a black ceramic panther on it. The panther was actually a planter that featured plastic flowers and a night-light. Paula wondered, where was the basket chair?

  Dorothy Neidler was in her seventies and thin, hunched, bitter, and gray. There were short vertical slash marks above her upper lip that looked like old scars from when someone had sewn her mouth shut. When she moved she left in the air a cloying wake of perfume that didn’t quite disguise a sharp medicinal scent.

  As soon as Paula had seated herself on the stiff blue sofa, Mrs. Neidler offered her a glass of lemonade. Paula accepted and five minutes later was not at all surprised to find the lemonade almost too sour to drink. But she did drink it, sipping cautiously and not making a face. She said nothing, knowing from experience when to wait. It was obvious that a tale or two bounded around in the older woman’s mind, itching to escape to a sympathetic ear. That ear would be Paula’s, if she could be patient.

  Mrs. Neidler trained faded blue eyes on her.

  Paula smiled. Sipped.

  “So somebody figured it out,” Mrs. Neidler said.

  “Only partly,” Paula said, playing along, thinking maybe she was dealing with the neighborhood witch, a busybody with too much imagination.

  But Mrs. Neidler seemed reasonably normal. She had no overt symptoms of being a neurotic or an irrational gossip, simply a gossip. Her clouded eyes seemed permanently pained and narrowed by what might have been a lifetime of disappointments, but Paula had seen the same look on a lot of older people. It was as if they were bewildered and bitter from having glanced in the mirror one day and noticing that somehow they’d suddenly aged. Will I have that look?

  Mrs. Neidler shifted about in her stiff blue chair.

  Paula sipped silently, knowing the pump was primed.

  “Well, maybe I can enlighten you on the other part,” Mrs. Neidler said.

  Paula leaned forward, not overdoing it. Sip. Look interested.

  “Those two are having trouble.”

  “Uh-huh,” Paula said. Sip. Don’t pucker!

  “I guess you people know what kind of trouble.”

  “Some of it, yes.” Paula got out her leather-bound notepad and a yellow stub of a number-two pencil. Waited.

  “I think he leaves the kids alone.”

  “That’s how we figure it,” Paula said, pretending to take notes. Mrs. Neidler was talking for the record now.

  “But I’ve seen the bruises on Kim.”

  Paula remembered Lincoln’s wife was named Kim. “Have you ever actually seen him strike his wife?”

  “Are you from South Carolina?” Mrs. Neidler abruptly asked.

  “No. Louisiana. Cajun country.”

  Mrs. Neidler squinted and stared at her as if she’d mentioned one of the other planets. “The men there. . are they of a violent nature?”

  “Some. Like anywhere else, I suppose. You were telling me you thought there might be some domestic violence in the Lincoln home.”

  “I’ve seen movement behind their blinds. Silhouettes. I can read that kind of body language, even in shadow. Violence, I’m sure, Officer. .”

  “‘Paula’ will be fine.” Paula smiled and worked the blunt point of the pencil.

  “Paula, I’m no stranger to domestic abuse.”

  “Too many women aren’t.”

  “I’ve seen poor Kim at the grocery or drugstore without bruises. Then I’ve heard her and that husband of hers shouting at each other, even from across the street. I could never make out the words, but I recognize the sounds. There’s no mistaking them.” Mrs. Neidler dabbed at a blue eye that had teared up. “The next day I’d see Kim again. She thinks she covers the marks with makeup, but another woman, one with experience, can see behind the makeup.”

  “Have you ever asked her about any of this?”

  Mrs. Neidler shook her head violently. “Not my place.”

  Paula thought of differing with her, then changed her mind. “But you’ve never seen him harm the children?” Two of them, Paula recalled. Girls ages seven and ten.

  “Never. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t. Go and talk to their teachers. They might tell you. Teachers can tell, even though they’re afraid to speak up sometimes.” Mrs.
Neidler shook her head again and clucked her tongue. “Everybody’s suing everybody these days. Have you noticed?”

  “Hard not to,” Paula said.

  “Some teachers’d talk, though.”

  “School’s out for the summer,” Paula reminded her.

  “Ah, I forgot. Old people do forget.”

  “They remember, too,” Paula said.

  “Those two girls, cute as buttons, are away at camp, come to think of it. They’re always at one camp or another during the summers. Some people see camps as full-time baby-sitters, have you noticed?”

  “I have.”

  “And that Will Lincoln keeps odd hours. Works late in that garage art studio of his. Lots of times banging away on metal: bangedy, bangedy, bang! Got no close neighbors on either side of his house. I’m the closest one, so I’ve gotta put up with the noise. Bangedy, bangedy!”

  Paula leaned sideways and glanced out the living room’s picture window. Mrs. Neidler had a view up the driveway of the modest house across the street. Most of the detached garage, gray clapboard like the house, was visible, including a garage window.

  “I see the light on in that garage till all hours. And sometimes I’m up at night-old people don’t sleep well, you know. I see him leave the garage, must be by some back way. He sneaks down the driveway past that old eyesore truck of his, to where he leaves his car parked on the street. Then drives away quiet like.”

  Oh, boy! “About what time of night does he do this?”

  “Early morning, really. I’d say about one or two o’clock. Sometimes even later.”

  “And what time does he return?”

  “Various times. Mostly he’s gone more’n an hour, though. Ask me, I’d say he’s seeing some other woman. Be good if he left Kim, beat up on the other one. She’d be the one that deserves it.”

  Paula was getting some idea of what had happened to Mrs. Neidler long ago. “Does Lincoln work in his garage every night?”

  “Most every one. Sometimes he’s in there during the day, but almost always at night.”

  “Do you think he might go out there to get away from Kim? Feeling guilty, maybe?”