Night Victims (The Night Spider)

by John Lutz

  “So why doesn’t he go after you?”

  “Might, eventually.” Killing Anne would be an initial step in murdering me, using her death to torture me before he finishes the job.

  Both men were thinking the same thing. Neither put it into words.

  “I don’t see why he doesn’t simply try for Anne,” Larkin said. “God knows, he’s had plenty of practice.”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Horn said. “What’s the police profiler have to say?”

  “What you just said. She also said we might expect more murders after Alice Duggan’s, with approximately the same amount of time between them as between Mandle’s previous victims. That means we might have a couple of weeks, at least, to prevent the next killing.”

  And the next intended victim might be Anne, Horn thought.

  Larkin flicked ash from his cigar. “If Mandle keeps killing, and it turns out there’s some kind of pattern in the murders since his escape, it’ll be clear he’s toying with you and Anne, doing his sadistic act. But Duggan looks like the earlier random prey. High-rise apartments and windows difficult to reach, that encourage a kind of false sense of security and a carelessness, are what seem to dictate his choice of victims. There’s no apparent similarity in physical type or in the work they did, and their ages varied. Some were divorced, some had never been married, and one was widowed.” Larkin finished his cigar and snuffed it out in an ashtray. “Seems obvious Mandle’s read the literature and knows how to avoid a pattern.”

  “So no woman can feel secure,” Horn said.

  “Yeah. So any woman in New York might be a victim and has to walk around terrified because of him. Loves power, does Mandle.”

  “Single women.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mandle’s victims were all single and lived alone,” Horn reminded Larkin. “No live-in lovers, no roommates.”

  “True,” Larkin said. “Like Anne.”

  “Like Anne.”

  And, as it turned out, like Letty Fonsetta.

  Horn received news of her murder over his cell phone as he was driving away from his meeting with Larkin.

  It was like Alice Duggan’s murder. Letty Fonsetta was lying on her back in bed, tightly shrouded in her blood-soaked sheets, a rectangle of duct tape slapped over her mouth. There was a depression in the center of the gray rectangle, from when she’d tried to draw her last, desperate breath, and even that was denied her. A clot of blood clung to her hairline. It was where she’d been bludgeoned. On the floor near the bed was a small, triangular marble clock with blood and a clump of hair stuck to one of its corners. Horn was sure it would yield no fingerprints.

  “Only three days since the last murder,” Paula said.

  “And her apartment’s only on the third floor,” Bickerstaff added.

  “Three’s wild,” Horn said. “Think that means anything?”

  “Only if you’re a numerologist or poker player,” Bickerstaff said.

  “The short interval between murders,” Paula said, “might mean he’s getting desperate. More driven by compulsion.”

  “More dangerous,” Horn said. He wondered if Mandle might be sending a message to Anne and him: Any night now. Sooner than you think. Trying to heighten the terror. “The killer get inside the usual way?”

  “He did,” Paula said. “Dropped five stories from the roof, which he reached from an adjoining roof. I’m wondering why, though.”

  Horn looked at her. “Why what?”

  “Where Letty’s window is, he could have easily reached it from the ground without being seen. It looks out on an alley where he wouldn’t have been noticed. So why didn’t he choose the easy way in and out?”

  “You said it yourself,” Bickerstaff told her. “Compulsion. He’s locked into a ritual. Gotta do it the same way every time.”

  Horn glanced over at the intense and somber techs gathered like visiting physicians around Letty Fonsetta’s body. Now you make house calls. Too late.

  “What do we know about this one?” he asked.

  Paula tucked in her chin and consulted her notes. “Forty-one years old, divorced, a stock analyst and sometimes TV personality. She was on a financial channel just this morning, touting stocks.”

  “Anybody still pay attention to people who do that?”

  “Sure it wasn’t the comedy channel?” Bickerstaff asked.

  Paula glanced up from her notes to nail him with a glare. “Neighbors said she pretty much kept to herself but was friendly enough. Didn’t notice any men coming or going at her place. A career type. And successful.”

  “Like Alice Duggan,” Bickerstaff said.

  Paula had closed her notepad. “There’s something else she had in common with Duggan. They were both public figures. Not exactly famous, but public. Duggan was an off-Broadway actress with her name and photo on a poster and playbills outside a theater. And Letty Fonsetta was recently on television.”

  Once again, Horn was glad he’d chosen Paula for his investigative team. “They’d be easy enough to find and follow,” he said. “This is a media city. Lots of prospective victims like that. Mandle chooses his prey from public women who are most likely to be living alone, then finds out where they live, probably by following them from wherever they practice their professions. If his simple requirements are met, they’re in his web.”

  “If they live alone in high-floor apartments,” Paula said, “they’re as good as dead as soon as he lays eyes on them. And there might be another reason he’s choosing public figures. He understands that people feel they know them, maybe even identify with them. Women will think, It could have been me.”

  “It might be simpler than that,” Bickerstaff said. “Maybe he’s murdering women in the public eye because he knows they’re attractive and he’s in a hurry. Instead of walking around looking at the buffet, he’s choosing from a menu.”

  “Compulsion,” Paula said. “Getting more powerful and controlling. More urgent.”

  “At least Anne isn’t in the public eye,” Bickerstaff said.

  “She doesn’t have to be,” Paula said. “Mandle already knows where she lives, and probably where she works.” She glanced at Horn, maybe regretting her words. She and Bickerstaff exchanged a look.

  Horn seemed not to have heard them. After a parting glance at the carnage, he instructed them to follow their usual procedure, then left Letty Fonsetta’s apartment as soon as possible.

  He already had his hand in his pocket and was clutching his cell phone. He wanted to get someplace where he could speak privately. Wanted to tighten security around Anne immediately.

  Compulsion.

  Another one. He had to find another one, a chosen one. Had to work fast. Wanted to get to his goal, to Anne Horn.

  To get this over with, even though he yearned to draw it out, to enjoy it. And he was enjoying it. Christ, the need! Each one increased the need! All different but the same! The need! Like a fire that consumed fire . . .

  He might not even have glanced at her as he walked past the Projections movie theater except for the usher standing outside smoking a cigarette, leaning down, and flirting through the window slot where money and tickets changed hands. “How’s it goin’, Nadine? You wanna sell me a ticket for a ride?”

  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 wer
e 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 ticket 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, workin
g 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.