Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  Not a bad place, she thought, as she fitted her key to the dead bolt lock. Secondhand furnishings, framed museum prints, and an old tile bathroom with yellowed porcelain and pipes that clanged but otherwise was in pretty good shape. Kitchen from hell, though the owner was supposed to replace everything in it soon. Sure. More than one burner on the stove would work then.

  Paula tensed and stood still. Something was wrong—the dead bolt was already unlocked.

  She raised her right hand and eased the door open a few inches, nervously touching the butt of her 9mm handgun beneath her blazer.

  “You Ms. Rambo-cwet?” asked a male voice.

  Paula pushed the door open the rest of the way.

  A portly man with wild gray hair and a dead cigar in the corner of his mouth stood solidly in the middle of her living room. He’d left footprints on the carpet and was wearing dirty white coveralls. A large box-end wrench was stuck through one of many cloth loops on his coveralls, dangling at his waist as if it might be drawn as a gun.

  “Rambocet,” Paula corrected. “Like “get” only with a hard C instead of a G.”

  “If you say. I’m Ernie Flatt—regular F—of Flatt Contracting. The super let me in. I’m here workin’ on the kitchen.”

  “Really?” Paula said, stepping all the way into the apartment and closing the door. “And I was thinking of working on dinner in the kitchen.” Heating water for tea to go with Thai takeout, anyway.

  Ernie smiled around the stale stub of cigar that was stinking up the living room even though it wasn’t burning. Smoking the things had left his teeth a jagged jumble of yellow. “Oh, I don’t think you’d wanna do that. I got the water off.”

  “Could you turn it back on?”

  “Only if you want wet floors. I got the sink pretty much tore out.”

  Paula walked over and looked into the small kitchen.

  She almost gasped. The old porcelain sink was dangling sideways on the wall. There were dark holes where the leaky faucet and handles had protruded. Holes in the wall. Exposed plumbing. Layers of old paint and faded wallpaper, like an archaeological dig; a rose pattern could be seen where the wood cabinets had been removed. Plaster dust and dark slats of lath were scattered on the floor. Paula’s dishes, a mismatched service for six, were stacked precariously on the table, along with her used toaster and new Braun coffee brewer.

  “God!” she said. “I wish somebody’d told me you were coming.”

  “I ain’t God, and just be glad I came,” Ernie told her, holding his ground. “You realize how long a waitin’ list I got?”

  New York, Paula thought. Everybody was always poised to turn the tables on you.

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” she said, rolling with the punch.

  Ernie smiled broadly, cigar stub twitching. They were friends. “I’ll be outta here in a week or so, things go right. And I’ll be workin’ days while you’re workin’ yourself. Whatddya do?”

  “Do? Oh, I’m a cop.”

  “No shit?”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, being a cop.”

  “No uniform, though.”

  “Plainclothes. Detective.”

  “Hey! Interesting!”

  “It sure can be, Ernie.”

  “Well, I was gettin’ my tools together. Just leavin’. I was gonna leave you a note, explainin’ that a bomb or somethin’ hadn’t gone off in your kitchen. I’ll be outta here in a few minutes.”

  “How about if I want to take a shower?”

  He cocked his head at her, speculating. Ho, brother! Then he understood. “Sure, sure. I left you water service in the bathroom. Just in the kitchen’s where I’ll be workin’. You’ll see when I’m done. You’ll love it.”

  He waved, swaggered back into the kitchen, and Paula heard tools clanging around.

  She barely had time to take another look at the mail she’d brought upstairs and throw away everything but the bills, when Ernie emerged from the kitchen lugging a large dented black toolbox.

  “See you tomorrow,” Paula said.

  “Yeah, if I’m still here when you get in from chasin’ the bad guys.” He paused with the hall door open. “I been listenin’ to you, and if you don’t mind my askin’ . . .”

  “Cajun,” Paula said. “I’m from Louisiana.”

  Ernie grinned, wagging the cigar stub in his mouth. “Didn’t sound like the Bronx.” He left and closed the door behind him.

  Paula immediately walked over and locked it. People were something in this city. But then, people had been something in New Orleans.

  She started to remove her shoes, then remembered the state of the kitchen and left them on. At the kitchen door, she was relieved to hear a soft but deep humming sound. Thank God, or Ernie, the refrigerator was still operating.

  Paula made herself a J&B and water (from the bathroom washbasin) on the rocks, then went back into the living room, sat down on the sofa, propped her stockinged feet up on the coffee table, and used her cell phone to call the corner deli.

  In her cozy if abused apartment, with only the humming refrigerator and muffled traffic noises nibbling at the silence, she sipped her drink while waiting for supper to be delivered, thinking about the bulging, agonized eyes of a dead woman with thirty-seven stab wounds. What had those eyes seen in the last long minutes and hours before her death? What emotional storm had raged behind them?

  Christ! Thirty-seven!

  Paula’s case.

  4

  Thomas Horn lived in a three-story brownstone on the West Side near Columbus Avenue. It had a basement with street-level barred windows, fancier wrought-iron bars on the first-floor windows, and wonderfully elaborate, if less formidable, bars on the second- and third-floor windows. There were green wooden shutters on all of the windows facing the street and green wooden flower boxes with geraniums and ferns on the first-floor windows. These windows were on either side of four concrete steps that led up to a stoop and stained oak double doors. The tall, heavy doors had small, triangular leaded windows in them. The worn concrete steps were flanked by black wrought-iron railings that echoed the elaborate bars on the upper-floor windows. The effect of all this was that of an urban fortress that had somehow fallen to Martha Stewart.

  In the beamed and wainscoted living room Horn sat in his usual green leather chair near the seldom-used fireplace and watched his wife, Anne, slump down on the sofa and ease off her practical low-heeled black pumps. Working women’s shoes. Horn sometimes thought it a shame that a woman with ankles like Anne’s had a job where she walked quite a bit and needed such comfortable shoes. She was in hospital administration at Kincaid Memorial Hospital and was, in fact, chief administrator of the imaging and radiology department. A responsible job that paid well and, until recently, had provided her with satisfaction.

  An attractive women with long blond hair, a model’s complexion, and clear blue eyes, she raised one nylon-clad foot and massaged it with both hands. Horn loved her.

  She smiled at him and said, “Something’s on your mind.”

  He wasn’t surprised she could tell. “Why don’t we have a drink, then go down to the Regency for dinner and talk about it?”

  “It requires a drink?”

  “‘Fraid so.”

  “I’ll go change.”

  She was smart enough not to press. Not yet. Something Horn very much liked about her was her feel for timing. He watched her climb the carpeted stairs in her bare feet, holding her shoes in her right hand. Timing wasn’t everything in life, but quite a lot.

  When Anne came down fifteen minutes later she was wearing faded jeans, sandals, and a white blouse. Her hair was piled loosely on top of her head, she wore little makeup, and looked about forty though she was actually fifty.

  She came over and lightly pecked Horn on the cheek. He’d made her a martini and himself a Glenlivet on the rocks. He sat down in the green leather chair, and she sat in a corner of the overstuffed sofa on the other side of the oriental rug whose pattern reminded Horn of some
kind of large game board.

  “So how was your busy day?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “How was your day of hard-earned leisure?”

  Christ! Did she somehow sense what he was going to tell her? “I’m getting used to it.”

  She smiled. “Are you now?”

  Change subject. “Anything new on the Vine lawsuit?”

  “Nothing I feel like talking about. I want this evening to be only about us.”

  So they sat and enjoyed their drinks and talked about anything but the Vine suit against Kincaid Hospital, and whatever it was Horn wanted to tell her. Their conversation flowed easily, old friends as well as lovers. Their shared past was the strength and foundation of what they had today.

  Twenty minutes later they were strolling along the sidewalk toward the restaurant.

  Horn loved walking in New York. The sights, sounds, and smells of the city were his oxygen. The exhaust fumes, even the sweet smell of the garbage wafting from black plastic bags not tightly sealed, soothed his spirit. If he shared the thought with Anne she’d laugh and tell him it was probably the scotch that made him feel that way about carbon monoxide and garbage. Horn had to smile. Anyone in his right mind would agree with her.

  The Regency was a medium-priced casual restaurant that served great Italian food and tolerable red wine. Horn and Anne decided on a sidewalk table shaded by a large blue canvas canopy. They were near a dividing wall and well back from the street, so they could talk more or less privately if they didn’t raise their voices.

  The waiter came with ice water and menus. Anne ordered a salad and angel-hair pasta, Horn the house specialty, baked lasagna, and a glass of merlot.

  The wine arrived, along with bread and Anne’s salad. He sipped, she ate, he talked.

  When he was finished telling her about his conversation with Rollie Larkin, she put down her fork and patted her lips with her napkin. “You’re going back to work.” Parallel vertical lines appeared above the bridge of her perfect nose. Subway tracks, Horn used to call them, because they signified she was thinking deep thoughts.

  “Only for a while, with special status for the serial killer case. I’ll be in charge, and I got Rollie to assign to me the two detectives who have the case now.”

  “You start when?”

  “Tonight. The detectives are coming by the brownstone at about nine o’clock so we can talk.”

  “As if I didn’t have enough to worry about,” Anne said.

  “I know, darling.” He sipped merlot. “The Vine case.”

  A ten-year-old boy, Alan Vine, had become comatose on the operating table six months ago at Kincaid Memorial. The boy’s parents were convinced that a mix-up in body scan images had caused the mishap, meaning Anne’s department, and ultimately, her responsibility. She, and the hospital, knew better. The boy’s condition was most likely caused by his rare reaction to his anesthetic. “Blaming the victim,” the family’s attorney said as often as possible. Which, in a perverse way, was true; in this case there was no one else to blame. Not the anesthesiologist who’d performed as he should, not the medical technicians who’d conducted the scan, not the doctors who’d interpreted the images. And not Anne.

  Then why did she feel guilty?

  “Thomas, you don’t call me darling unless you don’t mean it.” She was the only one who used his given name. Everyone else Horn knew simply called him by his last name. Horn had never minded.

  “But I do mean it. Hell, it isn’t hard to know you’re under stress and this is a bad time for me to become active again. That’s why I set it up with Rollie that I’d mostly be advising these other detectives.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “No. One’s a woman who hasn’t been in the department very long. The other’s old school and is going to retire soon, if I don’t talk him out of it.”

  “And I’m sure you will.”

  He didn’t answer, and Anne went back to work on her salad.

  “I talked to Ashleigh today,” she said. Ashleigh was their married daughter in Connecticut. “Dan Jr. tried to set fire to the garage.”

  Horn raised his eyebrows. “He’s only five years old!” he said of his grandson.

  “Ashleigh said she found an open matchbook and some burnt matches on the garage floor. And there were some charred sticks nearby stacked in a pyramid pile.”

  “Sounds like he was trying to build a campfire.”

  “In the garage?”

  Horn raised his glass and sipped; he looked thoughtful. So his only grandchild was a pyromaniac. “Well, no harm done if they gave him a good talking-to. Boys are naturally intrigued by fire.”

  “So are men.”

  He smiled. “You should have some wine with your meal, relax, then after dinner we’ll go back home and I’ll show you I meant it when I called you darling.”

  The waiter arrived with their food. He rested his large round tray on a nearby table and with a flourish raised silver lids to expose steaming entrees.

  Anne’s face gave away nothing, but she ordered wine.

  5

  “Kinda posh for a former police captain,” Paula said, as she and Bickerstaff were about to climb out of the unmarked Paula had parked at the curb in front of Horn’s brownstone.

  “Nobody ever suggested Horn was a bent cop,” Bicker-staff said. “Rumor is he inherited some money, made some smart investments. And he’s not exactly a millionaire.”

  “Yeah, but I bet his wife’s not bagging groceries so they can scrape by.”

  “Matter of fact she does hold down a job. Some kinda executive at a hospital.”

  Paula had her fingers curled around the door handle but paused. “You like this guy.”

  “Never met him. But I like what I heard. He’s straight and tough and an old-fashioned cop.”

  “What’s that mean—old-fashioned?”

  “Means he knows when and how and how hard to push.” Bickerstaff sat and wheezed for a while, then added, “I know how you feel about Horn taking over the investigation, but the important thing you gotta know is that from everything I heard about the guy, he’s not about to hang us out to dry.”

  Paula sighed. “So he’s got balls. Cojones. He’ll go to the wall for us.”

  “Let’s get outta the car, Paula,” Bickerstaff said, perceptive enough to know when he was being patronized.

  He’d already opened his door and was squeezing his bulk out. Egress wasn’t his strong suit. He was still working on it after Paula had gotten out of the car. She slammed her door before he did his. Too many doughnuts, the unknowing might say of Bickerstaff, but Paula knew better. He could move amazingly fast when it was necessary and with an economy that made what he did count. Almost too many doughnuts.

  Neither of them said anything as they took the concrete steps to tall oak doors that had to be original to the house. Bickerstaff pressed the faintly illuminated doorbell button.

  There was no sound from inside, but within a few seconds the door to the left opened and a tall man with bulky shoulders and the beginning of a stomach paunch smiled out at them. He had a nice smile that crinkled his craggy features. He was wearing pinstriped gray suit pants and a white shirt, loosened red tie, and dark blue suspenders, but Paula thought he’d look good modeling hunting outfits in an outdoorsware catalog. It was something about his rangy if slightly paunchy build, and his marksman’s pale eyes. Your manly guide for hunting moose in the north country.

  “Detectives Ramboquette and Bickerstaff,” he said, and shook both their hands with his left hand. His own hands were huge and rough as a stone mason’s but clean and with closely trimmed nails.

  Paula managed to smile back at him, slightly irritated that he’d unnerved her with his size and presence. He wasn’t exactly what she’d expected, and his welcome and amiability seemed genuine.

  Paula and Bickerstaff followed as Horn led them into the comfortably furnished living room with overstuffed chairs and sofa, an oriental rug on hardwood flooring, a fireplac
e that had a brass shovel and poker set alongside it but looked as if it was never used. On the mantel was an arrangement of elegant vases and framed photos of a young blond woman holding an infant, and an older blond woman who might be her mother.

  “My wife, Anne, and our daughter and grandson,” Horn said, reading Paula’s mind. He glanced at the photos and held a trace of a smile when he looked back at Paula and Bicker-staff.

  “He a relative, too?” Bickerstaff asked, pointing to a framed, wall-mounted black-and-white photograph of a distinguished looking man in coat and tie.

  “No, that’s a signed photograph of George Hearn. He’s a great Broadway actor people who mostly go to movies don’t know about. My wife and I are avid theatergoers.”

  “I have to admit I never heard of him,” Paula said. Jesus! Insert foot in mouth.

  Horn motioned for both of them to sit on the sofa. “You’re officially off duty. Either of you want something to drink? I have some good single malt or blended scotch.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Paula said. At least you won’t think I’m a drunk.

  “I’ll try the single malt,” Bickerstaff said, settling into a corner of the sofa. He was a guy about to retire with nothing to lose. “Splash of water, no ice.”

  “Done,” Horn said. He went to an old-fashioned mahogany credenza and worked for a few minutes with his broad back to them. There must have been an ice bucket there; when he turned around he was holding two drink glasses with cobbled bottoms, a couple of ice cubes in one of them. The scotch without ice was a much deeper amber than the other; Paula wondered if Horn had lightened up on his drink and gone heavy on Bickerstaff’s. “To our new working relationship,” Horn said, after handing over the glass to Bickerstaff.

  The two men clinked glass rims, while Paula smiled and made a toasting motion with her hand. She felt suddenly out of place in a male world, sitting there alongside Bickerstaff and watching Horn settle his rangy bulk into a green leather armchair opposite them. She was the one wearing the wrong kind of underwear here.