Night Victims n-3

by John Lutz

  And there she was, blond and beautiful and in a blouse that definitely needed strong seams. Nadine, selling dreams..

  He glanced at the outside poster to see what movie was playing at the small neighborhood theater. Key Largo. Part of an Edward G. Robinson film fest. About a hurricane, but everything worked out okay in the end. Not like with real-life storms.

  So maybe Nadine was a possibility. Worked late. Not so young at second glance. On display in the ticket booth. Probably selling movie tickets was her second job. Hungry for money she might not need if she had a man in her life. Maybe this was the one, even though she wasn’t a high-powered career-woman type. Or married. If you had a husband or kid you wouldn’t work this kind of evening job. Not if you were a righteous woman.

  Sitting there like a whore in a glassed, bright showcase, every man giving you a look as he drives past, sexy blonde showing off cleavage while she sells tickets to fools who want to escape life for a while in an old black-and-white movie. Robinson, the tough-guy crime kingpin, trading snarls with Humphrey Bogart while the wind blew harder. At least it wasn’t a Woody Allen movie. Old guy slobbering all over women a third his age. Fucking sick!

  She did look like the one. And she might live nearby and walk home after work. He had the time tonight. He could wait. He could watch. Follow like an extra shadow. Find out where she lived, how she lived.

  Where she’d die.

  43

  Pressure was working on Horn, slowing and muddling his thinking, undermining him. The subtle knowledge was infuriating to him and itself served to hasten the process. He knew it was all according to Mandle’s plan.

  Horn was at his desk in his den, examining the reports given to him by Paula and Bickerstaff. A glass of scotch sat on the green blotter pad where it wouldn’t leave a ring. Somewhere in his mind was the knowledge that he was drinking too much lately, that he had no way of knowing when he might suddenly have to go up against a killer and would need every bit of mental and physical ability he could muster.

  He took a sip of scotch.

  Paula and Bickerstaff were right about Fonsetta’s neighbors being of no help. The same could be said of the supers of adjoining buildings. Like Fonsetta’s building, neither one had a doorman. That must have made it easy for Mandle.

  This was odd. He was the sort who wanted everyone to know it had been difficult.

  Horn set the reports aside and looked again at the accompanying photographs from the Fonsetta murder file. He felt a lump in his throat, the familiar anger and fear as he shuffled the crime scene photos: Letty Fonsetta’s corpse wrapped in blood-soaked sheets, a tech’s hand carelessly resting on her shoulder; shots of the bedroom from various angles, showing a dresser cluttered with makeup jars and bottles; a close-up of the marble clock with blood and a blur of hair on one corner. There was the bedroom window, with its cut-out crescent in the glass; the familiar smears from the soap used to quiet the glass cutter; and the masking tape used to hold the removed piece of glass and keep it from falling and shattering below. There were shots of the roof where Mandle had lowered himself to gain entry: recently disturbed gravel; a slight footprint impression in the soft tar, so shallow and imperfect not even shoe size could be determined; scrapes on a vent pipe where a static line had been affixed; marks on the roof tile from where said line had rubbed while Mandle had descended and then ascended. There was also a close-up of a round metal pillbox that had contained breath mints and looked as if it had been on the roof for years.

  Horn tapped the edges of the photos on the desk to even them, then dropped them on top of the reports. He stared at the clutter on his desk. A lot of typing, images, and handwritten notes-all of it not adding up to much. Letty Fonsetta was still dead. Aaron Mandle was still on the loose. Justice was still somewhere with Elvis.

  And the world was still a scary place. Right now, New York especially.

  Horn hesitated while reaching for the small humidor on the desk, then remembered with a pang that Anne no longer lived here and wouldn’t care about the tobacco scent. Stench, she would call it. Maybe she was right.

  He removed a cigar from the humidor, clipped its end, and fired it up with the silver lighter that had been a gift from Anne, on the condition he always smoke outside.

  Then he leaned back in his desk chair, relaxed, and let his mind wander, deliberately not thinking about anything in particular. Sometimes when he did that, something-usually obvious in retrospect-would pop into his consciousness, something like a fact or a name from the past that he couldn’t quite recall but knew was there. It was there all the time, inches beneath the surface where it could only be glimpsed. .

  By the time the cigar was smoked, he was tired and had thought of nothing useful.

  But at the same time he had the feeling he was missing something important. Something was there that he couldn’t quite grasp. . His smoking and musing had resulted in that conclusion, anyway. A reason to prevent another decent night’s sleep.

  He snuffed out the cigar stub and poured himself another two fingers of scotch. He knew the alcohol would help him get to sleep but not stay asleep. Using scotch for a sleeping pill always caused him to awaken in a few hours with his mind awhirl.

  It seemed there was a price to pay for everything in life.

  Nadine, wearing jeans and carrying an umbrella because of unreliable weather forecasts, left the Projections Theater before the last showing of Key Largo was over. Bogart was just putt-putting away from the dock in his rickety boat, so why shouldn’t she leave, too?

  She was watched from across the street.

  For a while the figure that moved out of a shadowed doorway paralleled her course on the opposite sidewalk, then fell back half a block and crossed the street at an angle to be directly behind her. Though there were other people out walking, the sidewalks weren’t crowded. However, there were enough pedestrians that Nadine’s follower could be reasonably sure she wouldn’t notice him.

  As she crossed another street, he followed, staying now about half a block behind her.

  Suddenly he noticed they were walking past Kincaid Memorial Hospital, where Anne Horn worked, where she’d recently returned to work as if to defy him. Venturing out of the apartment where Horn tried to hide her. Would it be possible to act impulsively and enter one of the hospital’s side doors, make his way to Anne’s office, and then. .?

  No. He realized that wouldn’t allow for the ritual. And she would undoubtedly be closely guarded.

  Anyway, it wasn’t yet time. They both knew it wasn’t yet her time.

  He saw that a woman had turned the corner from the street where the hospital’s main entrance was located and was walking toward Nadine. Since it was a warm night she wore no coat and in her nurse’s uniform was stark white against the darkness. A bright thing seeking light. Maybe that was why she held the Night Spider’s attention.

  His gaze fixed on her and didn’t stray.

  A short, compactly built woman with a graceful walk, head held high, arms swinging freely. She and Nadine didn’t acknowledge each other as they passed, and the nurse strode toward the man walking toward her half a block down the sidewalk.

  He pulled his Mets cap down lower as she approached. A car was coming up behind him. Good. He’d be backlighted, and the headlights might temporarily blind the nurse. She wouldn’t remember him.

  She veered ever so slightly toward the curb to give him a wider berth, the way women do, just as the car drove past. Headlights illuminated her almost beautiful features and the hospital name tag pinned to her white uniform top. Nora.

  The nurse didn’t so much as glance at him as they passed. Nora who works where Anne Horn works. The two women might even know each other.

  He slowed his pace, turning his head to see the retreating nurse’s back, then glanced again at Nadine.

  Suddenly changing his mind, seizing opportunity, he turned all the way around and began walking in the opposite direction.

  Forgetting the girl from the ti
cket booth and following Nora the nurse. He was smiling, thinking what a sense of irony fate had, and how it sometimes dispensed opportunities like dark party favors.

  He stayed well back of Nora, watching the repetitive switch of her hips beneath the tight white uniform skirt, the flash of white stockings above her soft-soled shoes. Motion marking off time. Made for the night. So easy and natural to follow. She’s the one.

  The R.N. on Nora’s name tag stuck in his mind. As he walked he wondered what, besides Registered Nurse, the letters might stand for.

  R.N. . ?

  By the time she entered an apartment building about six blocks from the hospital, he’d settled on Retribution Night.

  Two nights later, working the late shift, Anne took the call on the desk phone in her office. It was 2:12 A.M. exactly. She would remember that later when the police asked her.

  “Anne Horn?” A man’s voice. He’d called her direct number rather than go through the hospital switchboard, so he must know her. She should know him.

  “Yes? Hello?” Her own voice sounded thin.

  “I’m calling to ask about Nora Shoemaker. Do you know her?”

  “Not personally. If you want to talk to her, you’ve dialed the wrong number. She’s a maternity nurse in another part of the hospital. I can switch you if you-”

  “No, no, I wanted to talk to you about her.”

  Anne felt a draft on the nape of her neck, an ache in her stomach. She knew it was fear that might be the beginning of terror. “Who is this?”

  “I’m calling from Nora’s apartment. I’m afraid something terrible has happened to her.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m sure you know who. I called to tell you not to worry too much about Nora. You’ll be seeing her soon enough.”

  “Are we talking about the same Nora?” Anne asked, having trouble breathing, getting her legs to work as she stood up from the desk and silently placed the receiver on the desk.

  She ran for her office door and flung it open, motioning frantically and quietly for the guard stationed outside.

  He wasn’t the guard with the scar on his face. This one was middle-aged and Anne thought that with the right sort of mustache he’d look amazingly like Hitler. She frenetically pointed toward the phone.

  His bright blue eyes narrowed, and he caught on immediately and didn’t make a sound.

  Of course, when he picked up the receiver it was dead.

  Anne told him about the phone call, spilling out words that sometimes didn’t make sense.

  A tracer had been placed on Anne’s office phone. The guard did some punching on the keypad and got the location of the phone last used to call in to it.

  The call hadn’t originated from Nora Shoemaker’s apartment, but from a public phone on the other side of town.

  “Is Nora Shoemaker in the building?” the guard asked.

  Anne took the phone from his hand and checked.

  “She worked the last shift and went home,” she said, replacing the receiver in its cradle. Her face was pale. Fear was clawing at her guts. What he wants! Exactly what the bastard wants!

  “Get her home phone number,” the guard said. “Let’s call her.”

  Anne complied, then watched the guard’s impassive face as he stood silently for almost a minute with the receiver pressed to his ear.

  He hung up the phone. “No answer.”

  “She should be in bed.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t wanna answer the phone,” the guard said. “Or has her answering machine turned off and the volume down so the ringing won’t disturb her sleep.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I’m trying.”

  Anne’s legs were too weak to support her. She took three unsteady steps and slumped into her desk chair, then glanced down and saw that both her hands were made into fists tightly clenched around her thumbs.

  “It was probably a crank call,” the guard said, obviously noticing how scared she was, “but it won’t hurt to send somebody around to Nora Shoemaker’s place and check on her.”

  Anne bowed her head, staring into her lap at the whitened fists she couldn’t unclench, and was squeezed by a knowledge that had more to do with the heart and gut than with the mind. Ancient instinct. Signals from the cave.

  It wasn’t a crank call. . It wasn’t a crank call. .

  44

  Horn got the call at 3:01 A.M. A woman named Nora Shoemaker, an off-duty nurse at Kincaid Memorial Hospital, was found dead in her apartment on the West Side. She was apparently another victim of the Night Spider.

  Not only that, Anne had received a phone call from the killer intimating that he’d murdered the nurse.

  A nurse in the same hospital where Anne worked. It could just as easily have been Anne.

  Horn was sure that was the message Mandle wanted to say. And it could happen anytime. Nora Shoemaker’s murder was only two days after Letty Fonsetta’s. And where was the pattern? The nurse was in no way a public figure like Fonsetta and Duggan. Why had Mandle seen her as one of the chosen? Made her a victim?

  Horn’s mind was whirling with these questions as he began making calls, demanding that protection be stepped up for Anne.

  Then he phoned Anne, who seemed more deeply shaken by the nurse’s murder than by any of the others.

  “He might have been here,” she said. “In the hospital, making up his mind who to murder. And for no reason other than to terrorize me! That’s why Nora Shoemaker died-to make me more afraid! In a way, I’m responsible for her death.”

  “That’s what he wants you to believe,” Horn said. “He wants to panic you. Not just for pleasure, but in the hope that you won’t be thinking straight and you’ll make a mistake. If he makes you feel guilty as well as terrified, that’s fine. You’ll be more vulnerable and he’ll be able to get to you. Nora Shoemaker died because Mandle killed her. Period.”

  Her voice quavered but there was strength in it. “I know that intellectually, Thomas. I won’t let this sick freak panic me. My thinking is clear.”

  Horn believed her. “For now,” he said, “cooperate with your guardian angels, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. They know their job.”

  “All right, Thomas. And you promise to be careful.”

  She hung up without waiting for his promise. Only making conversation. The inane conversation of terror.

  He got on his cell phone and woke up Paula and Bickerstaff. Then he got dressed in a hurry so he could drive to Nora Shoemaker’s apartment.

  This one was like the others done since Mandle’s escape from the prison transport van. A woman shrouded in her bedsheets, gagged, then tortured with stab wounds. She was killed by a blow or several blows to the head, with the killer using whatever bludgeoning instrument was handy and suitable for the task. This time it had been a cut-glass candelabra. It had been used with such force and viciousness that two of its six gracefully curved branches had broken off.

  No fingerprints, as before.

  Ah, but there were differences!

  This time no sign of entry from the roof. The knob lock on the apartment door had been expertly slipped. The splintering of the door frame indicated that the chain-lock bracket had been forced not with a sudden, violent effort, but by someone leaning harder and harder against the door, several times in succession, until the screws flew from the wood. It was a method long used by breaking and entering pros who didn’t want to wake anyone sleeping inside.

  The method had worked with Nora Shoemaker, who was probably wrapped like a package and gagged before she woke up completely.

  What happened to her next must have seemed to last forever, until finally the glass candelabra led her to true eternity.

  “There was no doorman,” Paula said over breakfast at the Home Away, where Horn had called a meeting to discuss what they knew before they all went home and caught some much-needed sleep. “There was a keypad outside that the tenants used to open the outer doors.”

  �
�The code changed recently?” Horn asked.

  “Changed last week. Not that it makes any difference. After using the keypad to gain entrance to the outer lobby, tenants then use a regular key to open the door to the inner lobby and elevators. All Mandle had to do was wait on the sidewalk for somebody to enter the building, time his approach, then grab the door before it closed all the way. He could enter with them, as if he’d just walked up and was about to go in when they came along. Then he could wait politely while they used their key to open the door to the inner lobby, and ride up in the elevator to a different floor, as if he belonged in the building.”

  “Do any of the other tenants remember something like that happening?”

  “Sure,” Bickerstaff said. “Half a dozen. It happens all the time. People are lazy with their keys and too trustful, even in New York. It’s like they go to sleep at night and forget everything that happened to them that day or what they’ve read in the papers, then they get up next morning not knowing again how many assholes are walking around out there. A guy edges in with them when they’re buzzed up or unlock a door, they don’t think much about it. They’ve done the same thing themselves.”

  Horn shook his head. “So much for building security.” He sipped from a glass of ice water. He was staying away from coffee so he could actually get a few hours’ sleep and be more effective the rest of the day. “Whatever’s driving Mandle is getting stronger. He’s stepped up the pace, killing with increasing frequency.”

  “Like most of those jerk-off serial killers,” Bickerstaff said.

  “What I don’t understand,” Horn said, “is why his method of entering Shoemaker’s apartment was different.”

  “Another message,” Marla said.

  Surprised, the three detectives looked up at her where she was standing near the booth. There were several customers in the front area of the diner this morning. Marla had to work her trade.