Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  Oh, Jesus, he’s reaching inside me!

  Ward went into shock and couldn’t make a sound, so Mandle screamed. He jumped to the front of the passenger end of the van and hammered on the wire-enforced rear window that provided a view from the cab.

  The penal cop in the passenger seat, middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache, twisted around to see what was happening and could make out only Mandle’s distorted face. The thick glass divider muffled enough sound that he couldn’t make out what Mandle was screaming.

  Mandle saw the driver’s eyes flit to the rearview mirror every few seconds. Mustache twisted around farther and worked the sliding panel so he could hear what Mandle was saying.

  “Bleeding to death!” Mandle screamed. “He got a razor blade and cut himself! He’s gonna fucking die if you don’t do something!” As he screamed he moved aside so Mustache would see the carnage in the rear of the van, Ward gutted like a hog, gray intestines spilling out, and all the blood in the world.

  Mustache screamed himself. “Oh, Christ! Stop the van! Pull over! Stop the fucking van!”

  “Help this poor bastard!” Mandle shouted. “Please help him!”

  “You shut the fuck up!” Mustache yelled, as the van swerved and lurched to a stop. Mandle had a chance to check through the windshield as the van’s doors opened and the two cops piled out. A fraction of a second was all he needed. Dark street, no traffic, brick walk-ups, and small, closed businesses. Careful not to slip in the blood, he shuffled to the rear of the van.

  When the doors flew open he was ready.

  He held on to the grip bar and swiveled his body to lift both legs and kick the one who’d been driving, catching him under the chin with his bare foot. Kicked again even as the man’s head was snapping back and felt his big toe find the Adam’s apple. Saw at the same time the ring of keys on the man’s black leather belt.

  Mustache had his 9mm out of its holster and was raising it when Mandle swung himself out of the van. The guard got off a wild shot just before Mandle landed almost up against him and head-butted him. Mandle bent low and slit Mustache’s throat with the sharp screw. Picked up the dropped 9mm with his right foot, transferred it to his hand, and shot the driver. The driver didn’t want to die quite yet, so Mandle hopped over and pummeled his head and face with the handgun. Yanked his gun from its holster to match the one he had.

  It took him seconds to get the driver’s keys, maybe another thirty seconds to find the one that unlocked the cuffs and leg manacles.

  Mandle stole a glance around. No sign of anyone behind him. The van’s headlights illuminated the street ahead. No one. A car passed at the cross street, barely slowing down to obey a stop sign. The van’s lights would have blinded the driver even if he had bothered to look all the way up the street.

  Mandle worked the dead van driver’s wallet from his hip pocket and flipped it open. Bills. Maybe fifty dollars’ worth. He didn’t bother with Mustache’s wallet; he had to get out of there.

  He sprinted halfway down the block and felt a pain in his right side. Maybe Mustache had aimed well after all, but the wound didn’t feel serious. He cut into a dark passageway. He felt good now despite the throbbing pain beneath his ribs. Exhilarated. His approach startled something behind a trash bag. A dark cat flashed out and streaked through the night to disappear down the alleyway.

  The Night Spider grinned. You and me, baby! You and me! On the run. The small and the crawl.

  There were hours of darkness left. More than he needed. Resourcefulness was his training and his life, his survival. He knew he could find clothes somewhere somehow, ditch the Rikers jumpsuit, and fade into the city the way the cat had blended with the night. He had supreme confidence in himself and his destiny. Soon he’d have his wound tended and healing. He’d have food, shelter, cover. A new identity.

  Revenge.

  37

  They were back at the Home Away.

  After Mandle’s escape was discovered at 3:16 A.M., Rollie Larkin had phoned Horn, who’d already left in a charter boat for a rich fishing area twenty miles out in the Gulf. Bickerstaff, who hadn’t been able to sleep, had caught the news on his TV in Minnesota—watching Nina Count in the anchor job she’d landed at CNN in Atlanta—and phoned Paula, who was working a double shift. He left a disbelieving and agitated message on her machine. Harry Linnert, lying alone in Paula’s bed listening to it, decided it would do no good to bother her with it till morning.

  But Paula learned of the escape when she was paged just after dawn and phoned into the precinct on her cell phone. After cutting the connection, she’d gone into a hotel rest room and been sick.

  Afterward, she’d called Horn at the Florida resort and was told he was fishing, and that Bickerstaff had also called Horn. She called Bickerstaff and got his answering machine, because he’d gone out to paddle his canoe in the lake to work off stress. She called her machine and listened to Bickerstaff’s message. Then Linnert got on the phone and unsuccessfully tried to make her feel better.

  When she hung up, she thought if Aaron Mandle could know all this he’d be delighted.

  When Horn got back to shore at two o’clock the next afternoon after not catching a marlin, he returned Larkin’s call.

  Three hours later, in the air over the Carolinas, he called Paula and Bickerstaff. He told Bickerstaff he should stay retired. Bickerstaff told Horn what he could do with the entire notion of retirement while Mandle was again at large. Horn didn’t mind. He found out when Bickerstaff and Paula could make it, then set up the meeting at the Home Away.

  Paula didn’t know how the others felt, but she couldn’t shake the eerie feeling they’d been moved like chess pieces back into the past to relive it, as if destiny wanted to change what had happened last time around. Destiny was always fucking with people.

  “There’s still no word on Mandle’s whereabouts,” Horn was saying, seated in the same booth toward the back of the diner. “He disappeared like smoke after killing the other prisoner and the two guards.”

  “Disappeared with their guns,” Bickerstaff pointed out. He’d lost some weight and grown a scraggly beard. He looked healthier. But right now, not happier.

  “Looks like what he used on the prisoner and one of the guards was a wood screw about four inches long,” Horn said, “honed so the point and threads were sharpened. There was flesh from the prisoner and the dead guard lodged between the screw’s threads.”

  Bickerstaff made a face over his coffee cup. “Where the hell’d he get a long screw he could make into a weapon?”

  “In court, it looks like,” Horn said. “Gradually worked it out of the underside of the table while his lawyer was mesmerizing the jury and judge and bailiff and millions of TV viewers. It was one of the long screws that helped fasten the legs to the table.”

  “Jesus!” Bickerstaff said. “That’s why he spent most of his trial sitting at the table with his head bowed, so he could work at the screw. Maybe he used a coin or something for a screwdriver.”

  “Maybe,” Horn said. “What matters now is he’s on the loose again. And nobody’s seen him. Or called the police if they have.”

  “Difficult to imagine a fugitive who looks like that, wearing a prison jumpsuit, can stay unreported very long,” Paula said. But she didn’t really believe it. Not about this fugitive. “He has to change his clothes. At least you’d think somebody’d find the jumpsuit.”

  “He might have burned it,” Bickerstaff said dejectedly. “By now, he might be a thousand miles away in a different city.”

  “There’s not much chance of that,” Marla said. They hadn’t realized she’d been standing so near. “He won’t leave. Or if he does, he’ll soon come back. This is where it all has to play out for him. His life and death have to create a certain symmetry, or what he’s done and is going to do are meaningless. He can’t accept that he’s without meaning, that he can die or be imprisoned without attaining his own twisted idea of grandeur. He’s crossed the Rubicon and believes in de
stiny. And in vengeance.”

  They sat staring at her, knowing in a way deeper than logically that she was right.

  She smiled tentatively, as if suddenly embarrassed.

  Topped off their coffee.

  Alice Duggan figured she had the part nailed. For over a year she’d been understudy to the star of the off-Broadway hit comedy Leave Her, Take Her, She’s Mine. This morning limited auditions had been held for the starring role, since the present star, Marnie Willison, had announced she was leaving at the end of the month.

  Alice knew the show’s author wasn’t keen on her stepping into Marnie’s role on a regular basis, but the director and producer wanted her to have the inside track. Alice’s agent had taken the risk of hinting that if Alice didn’t assume the role, she might follow Marnie in leaving the show, necessitating finding another understudy. An hour ago Alice had gotten word that the strategy seemed to have worked.

  She felt great when she left the theater after morning auditions. On the sidewalk were scattered playbills from the show, along with inserts from last night announcing that she was playing Marnie’s role for that performance. She saw the fluttering white inserts stuck to the concrete with stepped-on gum, or pinned by the breeze against the theater wall, as a good omen.

  After taking the subway downtown to within a few blocks of her apartment near Twelfth Street and Broadway, she stopped in at a drugstore to buy toothpaste and a Times. Then, on impulse, she stopped at a sidewalk stand and bought a bouquet of colorful flowers to brighten up her apartment.

  Her world was looking up. Hard work might soon pay off. There was always the possibility—in her mind, anyway— that if she grabbed and shook this role as she knew she could, Leave Her, Take Her, She’s Mine might find a new life and a new home on Broadway.

  As she walked along the sunny, crowded sidewalk, kicking out her long dancer’s legs in easy, optimistic strides, she had no way of knowing she’d been followed from the moment she’d left the theater.

  “The rumor is the star’s leaving the show,” Anne said to Horn, while they waited for a cabbie to pay attention to Horn’s raised left arm. The theater was close enough to Times Square that the crowd disgorged back onto the street after curtain was joined by theatergoers from other plays on their way home. Half a dozen people stood up-traffic from Horn and Anne, also unsuccessfully attempting to lure cabs. A man in a business suit was impatiently waving a folded newspaper as if it were a signal flag being ignored. Nothing seemed to work. Few things were more coy than a New York cab after the theater break.

  “The stand-in wasn’t bad,” Horn said. “Whatever her name is.” He watched a lucky couple half a block up the street hurriedly climb into a cab before a nearby woman on the run could reach it.

  “Alice Duggan.”

  “She’ll never be a star, with a bland name like that.”

  “Remember Cloris Leachman.” Anne’s tone suggested she’d taken his comment seriously. Probably because she was distracted and only half listening. Horn had known all evening there was something other than the play on her mind, and that there had been for some time.

  “Let’s skip the cab for now,” he said. “It’s a nice night. Let’s walk a few blocks to that coffee shop we used to stop in and wait for the theater crowd to thin, have some cappuccino, maybe a pastry.”

  She didn’t say yes or no, but fell in beside him as he stepped back up on the curb and began walking. He glanced out at the flow of traffic and counted three cabs whose roof lights indicated they were without passengers. Their drivers were ignoring prospective passengers frantically beckoning them.

  Horn and Anne both ordered simple decaf. Sign of growing old, Horn thought ruefully. He glanced around at the oak- and fern-adorned coffee shop, and the counter with computers where half a dozen patrons sat gooing up keyboards with doughnut glaze. He remembered a working-man’s bar at this site twenty years ago, mob connections, assaults, illegal gambling, a fatal knifing. The city was changing, had always been changing, always would change. A lot of it was for the better.

  Over second cups of coffee, Anne decided to tell him what was on her mind.

  “Finlay was in to see me today. About the Alan Vine case.”

  “How’s the kid doing?”

  “The same.”

  “And the lawsuit?”

  “That’s what Finlay wanted to talk about. The hospital made another offer to settle. Half a million dollars.”

  “The Vine family accept it?”

  “We’re still waiting to find out.” She raised her cup, then looked at it sourly and put it back down. “The hospital’s also offered to accept blame. In exchange for indemnification, of course.”

  Horn knew where she was going. Why she was upset.

  “The radiology department’s being made the scapegoat in the settlement and will be tagged as incompetent and dangerous. And I’ll be wearing an identical tag. It isn’t fair.”

  “No, it isn’t. What about personal indemnification?”

  “That’s part of the deal. The Vines won’t be able to squeeze any money out of me. But that’s not the goddamn point!”

  “I understand,” Horn said quickly. “But at the same time, it’ll be nice to know you can’t be sued.”

  “I’m going to resign.”

  Horn wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. Maybe she meant transfer out of Radiology. “You mean quit your job?”

  “Yes.” She drilled him with a cold stare, anticipating his reaction. “Like you quit yours.”

  “Mine was a case of involuntary retirement, with a disability pension.”

  “The result was the same: you left the NYPD. Just as I’m leaving Kincaid Memorial. I have plenty of money saved up outside my 401K. Enough to last till I find other work.”

  “I was thinking more about you possibly giving up legal protection as part of the hospital staff. You’ve only heard Finlay’s take on the lawsuit and proposed settlement. Maybe you should see our attorney. I can give him a call tomorrow.”

  “I already talked to him.”

  There was a surprise. “It’s a big decision,” Horn said needlessly, while trying to sort all this out and think of what else to say. What exactly was going on here?

  “Not anymore. I’ve made it.”

  “Then that’s that. Money should be no problem. There’s no reason for you to be employed other than if you want to be.”

  He was looking out the window at the string of unmoving headlights. Theater traffic had backed up and spread to the side streets.

  A cop’s wife . . . he thought, knowing before he knew.

  “I’m going to move out of the house,” Anne told him. “I’ve decided to leave you.”

  38

  They were in Horn’s den. The Home Away had been too crowded tonight for them to privately discuss the Night Spider case. At least that was what Horn had told them. It didn’t set quite right with Paula.

  When they’d entered the brownstone, she’d noticed a stack of cardboard boxes in the entry hall, and a glance into the living room suggested furniture and knickknacks had been removed.

  Horn settled in behind his desk; Bickerstaff took an overstuffed brown leather chair. Paula sat in a similar chair that hissed and acted as if it wanted to devour her. The floor overhead creaked. Anne must be home, moving around up there. Doing a lot of moving around.

  Horn opened a wooden humidor on his desk and got out a cigar so dark it was almost green, then cut off its tip with a miniature guillotine. He held another of the cigars out for Bickerstaff, who hesitated, then accepted the offer. The guillotine didn’t work so well in his hands. Paula thought he might cut off a finger.

  “Paula?” Horn offered, holding up another cigar.

  “Thanks,” she said, “but I’m a lady.” And I thought smoking in the house was against the rules.

  Horn and Bickerstaff chuckled at that lady remark. Paula didn’t know quite how to take it. She traded glances with Bickerstaff, who finally appeared to be catching on
that something essential had changed there. He looked away from her and peered cross-eyed at the tip of his cigar as he struggled to light it with a paper match he’d produced from somewhere.

  “Anne and I have decided to separate,” Horn said between puffs, effortlessly firing up his cigar with a silver lighter. “She’s rented an apartment on the East Side and is preparing to move out.”

  The boxes in the hall. The missing furniture. Paula didn’t know what to say. Heard her own voice. “I’m . . . sorry.” Shit! Inadequate!

  Bickerstaff said nothing but paused in his puffing, salivating attempt to get his cigar burning.

  Horn gave a shrug that might have meant anything.

  “I think I might not’ve cut the whole tip off thish thing,” Bickerstaff said around the dead cigar.

  Horn slid the guillotine across the desk to him. “Mind your finger.”

  Bickerstaff took another swipe at the saliva-moistened tip of the cigar with the little angled blade, then tried again with a match. “Thash better.” Paula saw ash drop from the burning tip of the cigar onto the carpet. Overhead, the floor creaked. God!

  “So we get to work,” Horn said. “Summarize what we’ve learned.”

  “That’ll be easy,” Bickerstaff said, holding the cigar between index and middle fingers, “considering it isn’t much.”

  “Evidence suggests both guards were killed at almost the same time,” Paula said, “one with the sharpened screw Mandle used to disembowel the other prisoner. The other was shot, then his face and head were bludgeoned, probably with the butt of the gun.”

  “The guard’s gun,” Horn said.

  Paula nodded. “Mandle’s got both their guns.”