Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  Will Lincoln finished brazing the last of a dozen narrow copper strips. He was going to use these to create a miniature picket fence that gave the illusion it diminished with distance. Alongside the fence was a foot-tall tree with delicate, shimmering copper leaves that caught light from every angle.

  He glanced at his watch, then rotated a dial on the compression tank and watched the vibrant flame of his blowtorch sink to a flicker and disappear. He removed his dark safety glasses and laid them on his workbench next to his half-finished New Hampshire Lane, a piece he had high hopes of selling to a wealthy buyer in Florida who had roots in the Northeast.

  It was past ten o’clock. The rain had finally stopped, and, according to the latest weather report, was gusting out of the area. Next to the workbench, the window unit air conditioner he’d mounted in the garage wall was humming away, keeping the studio comfortable and dehumidified.

  His wife, Kim, had taken her meds and would be sleeping soundly by now. He’d given her the white Ativan tablet along with her 500-milligram blue tablet and knew she’d remain asleep until late morning.

  It was safe to leave the garage. As usual, he’d leave the light on and the air conditioner running, so if Kim did happen to awaken and look out the window, she’d assume he was still out there working. Will knew she wouldn’t venture outside. She would have to cross puddled, cracked concrete and then a stretch of rain-soaked grass to reach the garage. She wouldn’t put on her flimsy house slippers and go out so soon after a soaking rain.

  Besides, she wouldn’t want to see him. Kim always avoided him for days after the kind of argument they’d had last night. He’d get the sullen, silent treatment, and that was fine with Will. For the next three or four days, whenever he’d enter a room, she’d find an excuse to leave it. And she sure wouldn’t come looking for him.

  The thick wooden molding above the air conditioner concealed the hinges mounted on the inside of the garage wall. Will put on the light windbreaker he kept in the garage, then took a last look around to make sure everything was in proper disorder; his tools not put away but still scattered on the workbench, and the tiny portable radio still on and tuned to an all-night classical music station. If he did happen to be caught out, he’d simply say he’d gone for cigarettes and locked the garage door behind him. He kept a fresh pack of Winstons in the jacket pocket just for that possibility. Will Lincoln was nothing if not careful. Caution and stealth were a part of his training that had stayed with him. The daring, he’d always had.

  He tilted the still-running air conditioner up and away from the garage’s back wall, then supported it with his strong left arm while he crouched low and exited through the opening the humming unit had occupied. When he lowered the air conditioner back into place, there was no sign that there was a way in and out of the garage other than the overhead and front doors, both of which were locked from the inside.

  Will cut around the side of the garage, then walked down the driveway keeping well to the right of the old Dodge pickup parked there, where he knew he wouldn’t be visible from the house. When he reached the sidewalk, he turned to the right and strode about ten yards to where his car was parked, also out of sight in case Kim were to glance out a front window.

  Outside Minnie’s Place, Will parked his old Pontiac across the street, noticing that the weather report about the rain stopping was wrong and a light mist had begun to fall. Zipping his windbreaker, he jogged to Minnie’s entrance, pushed inside, and stood at the bar even though half the stools were available.

  “Fifth of Southern Comfort to go,” he said, when Bobby, behind the bar, looked his way. Bobby had already been reaching for the Budweiser tap.

  “Not your usual drink,” Bobby said, reaching instead to a low shelf and coming up with the Southern Comfort bottle.

  “If everybody drank their usual drink,” Will said, “we’d all still be drinking water.”

  “Fuckin’ arteests!” Bobby said with a grin, and accepted Will’s money.

  Will told him to keep the change, which wasn’t all that much anyway, then gave a little parting wave to Bobby and whoever else he might know in the dim bar, and went back outside into the misty night. It was actually getting a little cool. He was glad for the jacket.

  After getting into his car, he drove only about three blocks and parked two houses down from a small brown bungalow of the sort built in the twenties and thirties: narrow with a steeply pitched roof, a front porch that ran the front of the house, and slits of windows above the porch roof that had been attic vents before the upstairs was converted to bedrooms decades ago. One of the shutters on the front windows was hanging crookedly, and the grass needed mowing, if for no other reason than to make it uniform. It grew in uneven clumps as if a goat had been at it.

  Without looking around him, Will climbed out of the Pontiac and strode quickly along the sidewalk, then through the scraggly patch of front yard and up onto the porch.

  He rapped lightly on the front door with the knuckle of his forefinger, and the door opened.

  “Seen you drive up,” said the smiling woman looking out at him. She was about five feet tall, barefoot and wearing a gray robe sashed tight at the waist. As she opened the door wider and moved back and to the side to let Will enter, he saw that the robe was gapped at the top to reveal a lot of cleavage. “You brought us something,” she said, noticing the brown paper bag in his right hand.

  “Like always.”

  When the door was closed, he bent and kissed the woman’s forehead. She raised both arms and pulled him lower by the back of the neck and they kissed on the lips. She didn’t want to let up and he felt the soft play of her tongue and tasted mint toothpaste.

  “You gonna stay awhile tonight?” she asked, finally letting him straighten up.

  “You know I would if I could, Roz.” He was telling her the truth. He liked it here with her, where he’d spent a lot of evenings for the past six months. She never bitched, like his wife. Always did what he told her. Eager to please. Goddamned dying to please!

  Still smiling just to be in his presence, she took the paper bag from his hand and set it on the coffee table. He noticed the hurried switch of her broad hips beneath the robe as she went into the kitchen for a couple of glasses.

  Rosanne Turner was an alcoholic. Will liked that. It was her vulnerability that had interested him when he first saw her practically drooling in a liquor store. He’d judged her accurately, picking her up right there using a bottle of scotch for bait. Later he’d found out she wouldn’t drink anything but Southern Comfort, unless there was no Southern Comfort around. Bobby was right; it wasn’t Will’s drink. But he’d made it his drink the second time he’d met Roz.

  The first night, they’d walked and talked and he’d convinced her he was a gentleman and acknowledged she was a lady. He commiserated with her about the lost daughter her bastard of a husband had talked the court into placing in his custody during the divorce. Fucking injustice was everywhere! He agreed with her that her idiot boss at an insurance company had been wrong to fire her and assured her that her infrequent work as an office temp would inevitably lead to steady employment. How could they not hire somebody like her? Not everybody in the world was too stupid or blind to see what she had to offer.

  When they’d reached her house, he hadn’t tried to talk his way inside. Instead, he’d left her the bottle they’d both only taken a few sips from, a little nudge to help her tumble off the wagon and onto her back with her legs spread.

  Their next date, about halfway into the Southern Comfort, she was wildly enjoying her second addiction.

  Roz was back with two juice glasses, both full. His had ice in it, the way he liked it, or could stand it, anyway. Usually he was a straight Bud man.

  “Before we drink these,” she said, “I want to show you something.”

  Will followed her into the spare bedroom.

  There on a table in the center of the room was one of his smaller works, Blue Mourning, a surrealistic bronz
e of a sobbing man seated on a box.

  “I bought it at that gallery in the Village. Three hundred dollars.”

  He didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was angry. He couldn’t be sure. “I’m . . . uh, flattered,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have spent the money.”

  “I wanted to. You’re going to be famous someday, so it’s an investment.”

  Will knew it was an investment she was making in him personally. He didn’t like that. They had an unspoken agreement about their affair, and he intended to keep his part of it.

  She handed him his glass, kissing him again on the lips.

  “You love me?” she asked, backing up a step.

  “You know I don’t,” he said, “and you don’t give a fuck.”

  She downed half her glass and grinned in a way that showed most of her teeth. “I’m gonna show you how wrong you are about that last part.”

  Fifteen minutes later she was smiling down at him, seated on his bare chest with her thighs spread wide. He could smell her sex and feel her heat and wetness against his skin. A drop of perspiration clung to her left breast as if reluctant to leave it and then plummeted to land on his neck.

  “Any place you’d rather be?” she asked.

  “Can’t think of one.”

  “You home?”

  “Home,” he said.

  Thinking this was about as far away from home as he could get.

  And when he returned home, it would be as if he’d never left.

  Linnert looked slightly disheveled the morning after Paula had talked to him. He’d still been in bed when Paula, who’d detoured on her way to pick up Bickerstaff, buzzed from downstairs. His hair was flat on one side, and he was wearing a white T-shirt, brown slippers, and the same pleated pants he’d had on yesterday. She thought he didn’t look bad a little messy.

  Occasionally, Paula dropped in unexpectedly for a brief follow-up interview to catch a suspect off guard. Sometimes they contradicted themselves, or came up with a piece of information even they didn’t know they possessed or was important. Sometimes it gave her a new and completely different view of a suspect. That could be valuable for a lot of reasons.

  “I came back because it occurred to me you might provide some insight,” she said, as he stepped back to invite her inside.

  He grinned as he sat slumped in a chair across from her. She’d noted that he limped getting there. “I’m plenty insightful,” he said. He wasn’t smiling, but it was in his voice. She amused him. It kind of pissed her off.

  “You were SSF yourself. If the Night Spider has a background like yours, what do you think might make him assume he can get away with it?”

  “Arrogance, plain and simple. Taking the kinds of risks we did, an ungodly amount of arrogance was required.”

  “Oh? Are you still arrogant?” Hah!

  “Yes.” He smiled. “A guilty suspect wouldn’t tell you that, would he?”

  Playing with me. “An arrogant one would. Why are you arrogant?”

  “Because it is justified. Besides, women find arrogance attractive.”

  “Some do.”

  “You, Officer Paula.”

  “Detective Ramboquette,” she said, standing up and thanking Linnert for his time. Abrupt, but what the hell? He had a way of taking the play away from her, turning her in on herself, and she couldn’t quite cope with it—with him.

  “Hey! You don’t have to leave again so soon.”

  But she knew she did and that he understood why. Insightful bastard.

  Not to mention arrogant.

  “Have you had breakfast, Paula?”

  “Yes,” she lied.

  “Paula.”

  His voice stopped her at the door.

  “You forgot your umbrella again.”

  29

  There was no record that Aaron Mandle had ever had trouble with the law. His last known address was three years old and in St. Louis, in a neighborhood where it was dangerous to grow up or to grow old. He’d lived in a six-family apartment building long ago torn down to make room for a highway exit ramp.

  Horn had checked with the St. Louis police and was told Mandle didn’t have a record there, either. VICAP and NCIC had nothing on him. The man seemed to no longer exist.

  But he’d definitely existed in St. Louis. The detective Horn talked to, a guy named Homolka, recalled a four-year-old unsolved homicide: a woman wrapped in her bedsheets and stabbed to death.

  The next morning, Horn said, “We’re catching his act after he perfected it on the road,” as if Mandle were someone who’d recently opened on Broadway.

  “Then we don’t know how many women he’s killed,” Paula said. “There might be dozens more, in other cities.”

  “Not that I could find, other than the probable in St. Louis. But it’s still being checked out.”

  “Wouldn’t he have been in the military around that time?” Paula asked.

  “Maybe,” Horn said. “But if he was in the States, he’d have occasional leave.”

  “The army should have his fingerprints,” Bickerstaff said.

  “Should, but they don’t.”

  They’d been in the Home Away for more than an hour, trying to figure out what to do with what seemed to be their best lead. Horn was finished with his corn muffins, and Paula and Bickerstaff had sneaked a stop at a Krispy Kreme and told him they were skipping breakfast today. Horn had congratulated them on their dietary virtuousness, then pointed out the doughnut crumbs on their clothes. There were only three coffee cups and saucers, a small cream pitcher, and sugar packets on the table now. Everyone knew where everyone else stood culinary-wise.

  Horn said, “I didn’t want to drag Kray into this any further, so I contacted Altman and asked him about Mandle. Should have known it was a waste of time. Far as the government’s concerned, the SSF and its roster don’t exist and never did.”

  “Not even to catch a killer?” Paula asked.

  “Alleged killer. And according to Altman, SSF members’ military records are expunged to prevent any possible compromise even after they become civilians. He said he couldn’t help me if he tried.”

  “And we know we can believe him,” Bickerstaff said disgustedly.

  “Did he ask how we found out about Mandle?” Paula said. “Altman must know he wasn’t a name on the original list of SSF members.”

  “The phony list,” Bickerstaff said.

  “Useless, anyway,” Horn said. “And no, Altman didn’t ask. And I didn’t exactly use Mandle’s real name anyway. Sometimes it’s best to cast a lie to a liar.”

  Paula stared at him. Fibbing to the Feds. You’re just like

  Altman. Now and then Horn would do something that jolted her into realizing anew how devious and relentless he was. How he was so much more than a simple, by-the-book cop who’d put in his time, kissed ass, and gotten ahead in the department. She suspected Altman seriously underestimated him.

  “Since we’re not even sure Mandle’s his real name,” Horn said, “we weren’t exactly lying to the federal government.”

  “Good moral point,” Paula said with a smile. “And a relief to hear. If I were Catholic, I’d have an easier time going to confession Sunday.”

  Horn looked at Bickerstaff.

  “Botox for my brow, too,” Bickerstaff said.

  “A unit like the SSF,” Paula said, “do you think the military might even have purged Mandle’s civilian criminal record?”

  “I doubt it,” Horn said, “though it’s possible. I think we can work on the assumption that Mandle never had any brushes with the law.”

  “Then why’s he so damned hard to find?” Bickerstaff asked.

  “Running from family problems, maybe,” Paula suggested, burning her tongue on the coffee Marla the waitress had just topped off. “Ex-wife, child support, that kind of thing.”

  Bickerstaff chewed on the inside of his cheek. A thinking gesture, Paula knew. More chewing. “Maybe he’s got an alias.”

  Paula pour
ed in more cream and cautiously tried her coffee again. Much better. “Or maybe Aaron Mandle’s an alias.”

  “He has a Social Security number,” Horn told them. “Of course, by now he might have another, or one for every occasion.”

  Paula looked across the table at Horn, trying to read him. It was like trying to read slate. “You really convinced Mandle’s our Night Spider?”

  “He looks good for it to me.”

  “We’ve gotta find this prick and shut him down,” Bicker-staff said. “If for no other reason than so I can go fishing.”

  Paula didn’t comment. Trying to get a rise out of me.

  “I told Larkin what we have,” Horn said. “He was thrilled, but he’s skeptical.”

  “Can you be both those things at the same?” Paula asked.

  Horn smiled. “It’s the very juggling act that gets you ahead in the NYPD.” He finished his coffee and rested the empty cup on the white paper napkin he’d folded and placed in his saucer. “Time to do the drone work,” he said. “Make more use of the department computers. I’m told nobody can walk, talk, and breathe on the planet these days without leaving a trail of some sort. We have to find that trail, then follow it.”

  Bickerstaff had already stood up. Paula dabbed at her lips with her napkin and slid out of the booth. They’d learned that the emphatic draining of the coffee cup was Horn’s signal that strategy meetings at the Home Away were over.

  As they strode from the diner, Bickerstaff waved goodbye to Marla, who was busy behind the counter. She gave him a smile and a nod. Friendly but not too personal. Paula thought that if Bickerstaff had any designs on Marla, he’d better go back to thinking about ice fishing.

  Outside in the first clear morning in several days, Bickerstaff said, “You notice that waitress isn’t a bad-looking woman?”

  “I’ve noticed,” Paula said. “Though not like you, I’m sure.” And Horn’s noticed.

  Horn had drawn an El Laquito Especial cigar from his pocket when Marla approached the booth.