Chill of Night

by John Lutz

  Melanie looked down at her own lap, where her hands were folded, and tried to focus her attention on what Farrato was saying. Instead she found herself thinking of the defendant. Such an interesting man. His music was violent, but wasn’t he a poet of the streets, reflecting, rather than helping to create, a violent culture? There were those who called Cold Cat a musical genius, and perhaps he was one. Melanie wouldn’t know. But his music sold. He was worth millions. She’d never before seen anyone worth millions, and who’d been referred to as a musical genius. Now here she was sitting not twenty feet from one.

  Farrato, and Judge Moody, had cautioned the jury about the power of celebrity. They were to regard Cold Cat as simply another defendant to be treated fairly and dispassionately. The facts of the case were what mattered here, not that the accused happened to be famous.

  Melanie thought the warnings about the effects of celebrity were overblown. People were people. It was as simple as that.

  Judge Moody had been right when she declared that inside the courtroom, the accused was in no way special.

  Melanie raised her eyes and looked at the defendant, and found Cold Cat looking directly at her.

  Melanie melted.

  “This is approximately the number of days we might have before we lose our jobs,” da Vinci said, holding up a digital photo he’d taken of an image on a TV screen, then enlarged.

  They were in Central Park, where da Vinci requested the meeting with Beam. Which rather amused Beam. Had they reached the point where da Vinci didn’t want to be seen with him?

  Beam turned so the late afternoon sun wasn’t glinting off the photo. “It looks like a big red number six.”

  “Know what it stands for?” da Vinci seemed agitated now. Where had the cool young bureaucratic climber gone. “That’s the number of victims the Justice Killer’s notched. That photo’s of the news on Channel One a couple of hours ago. They were reporting on that press conference you advised me to hold.”

  Beam nodded and waited. He didn’t see where da Vinci was going with this.

  “The papers haven’t had time to get it out yet,” da Vinci said, “but do you know what tomorrow’s gonna be like for me, Beam? The main media’s gonna be all over me, wanting to know why we aren’t closing in on this sicko. Why we didn’t realize until recently that we had a serial killer operating in the city.”

  “Didn’t they hit you with those kinds of questions at your press conference?”

  Da Vinci glared up at a blue jay that was nattering at him from a nearby tree, as if the media had sent the bird to antagonize him. “I didn’t take questions.”

  Beam was surprised. “I thought that was the idea of the press conference.”

  “No. My idea was to get the information out there, let the public know through the media what’s going on.”

  “Do it that way, it just makes you look like you’re trying to duck questions,” Beam said.

  “That’s exactly what I was doing. Because I don’t have answers. You and your detectives were supposed to supply me with answers.”

  Beam gave him a level look. “Is this supposed to be a chewing out?”

  “Of course not. I know what you’re up against.”

  “Then why’d you request this meeting?”

  Da Vinci seemed at a loss for words. He gave a nervous, crooked grin like the kind Tony Curtis used to in the movies. Beam wondered if da Vinci was aware of his resemblance to the movie star and had studied those expressions. Maybe even practiced them in front of a mirror.

  Beam said, “You asking my advice again?”

  Da Vinci seemed suddenly calm. A pretty blond woman, perched high on in-line skates, glided past on the path behind him. The skate wheels made a rhythmic growling sound that became fainter with distance. “I guess maybe that’s part of it,” he admitted, glancing after the woman. “Isn’t that some ass?”

  “I noticed, even at my age. My advice is the same as before—get out ahead of it.”

  “It is the result of getting out ahead,” da Vinci said. The blue jay fluttered to a lower limb, closer, and was definitely observing da Vinci.

  “You should have fielded questions, told them anything.” Beam thought that if they knew bird language, it would be clear that the jay was cursing at da Vinci.

  “They don’t settle for anything,” da Vinci said, “and now I’m in a shit storm.”

  “You were gonna be anyway. If not today, tomorrow. Today woulda been better, cut down on media speculation. Not much better, but better.”

  “You know the kinda pressure goes with this? From the mayor on down to the commissioner, to the chief, then down to me, and then to you and your detectives.” The blue jay flew at da Vinci’s head and he slapped at it and missed. “The hell’s wrong with that thing? Don’t it like me?”

  “Not so you could tell.”

  “Anyway, you heard what I said.”

  “You forgot somebody in that chain of increasing pressure,” Beam said. “The killer. Sure, he’s gotten some of the notoriety he wanted, but he knows now there’s an army of cops searching for him. That brings about a certain amount of pressure.”

  “You said it yourself, though, he’ll enjoy the publicity.”

  “He will. Like some of us enjoy walking the edge of a cliff. The publicity brings us closer to catching him.”

  The jay zoomed at da Vinci again. He swatted at it, then walked about twenty feet farther away from the tree. “Must have a nest in there.”

  “Must,” Beam agreed.

  “All the noise in the news might bring something else closer,” da Vinci said. “Number seven.”

  Beam knew he was right. And in a perverse way, he was almost looking forward to victim number seven. Every murder was a tragedy, but it was also a card to play. It was all the more likely they’d be able to stop this killer if he did more of what they were trying to stop. Ironic.

  Beam didn’t like irony. He was a cop. He liked things to the point, black or white, right or wrong.

  Alive or dead.

  “I swear,” da Vinci said, “if that friggin’ bird flies at me again, I’m gonna blast it with my nine-millimeter.”

  The jay knew when to quit.

  18

  Tina Flitt and her husband, Martin Portelle, sat on the balcony of their twenty-first floor East Side apartment and watched dusk settle over New York. They felt fortunate.

  Martin, a stocky, bald man with mild gray eyes and a scraggly beard grown to compensate for his lack of hair up top, had nothing about him in youth portending success. Yet here he was, a highly paid acquisition appraiser for a major holding company.

  His wife, Tina, was a smallish woman in a way that suggested extreme dieting, and was pretty in an intense, dark-eyed fashion. She was a defense attorney. The two had met in court, when Martin was jury foreperson in the trial of the infamous Subway Killer, Dan Maddox. Tina had been one of the jurors. Maddox had been acquitted.

  Martin used the remote to switch off the small Sony TV they used on the balcony. They’d been watching Channel One news. A special titled Six and the City. It was all about the victims whose deaths were attributed to the Justice Killer.

  “Six so far,” Tina said. “New Yorkers are getting frightened.”

  “Or the media wants us to see it that way.” Martin sipped the vodka martini he’d brought with him out to the balcony. The greed and paranoia of the media were subjects he could talk on for hours.

  “Anybody who’s served as jury foreperson in the past ten years has reason to worry,” Tina told him.

  “Only if the defendant got off in court, but was convicted in the media.”

  “That list of forepersons could include a lot of people.”

  Martin smiled. “It includes me, counselor.”

  “I don’t find it particularly amusing,” Tina said. She didn’t like it when Martin called her counselor. It was as if he had little respect for her profession.

  An emergency siren sounded far below, a police car
or ambulance shrieking protest at the uncooperative traffic.

  “You worry too much,” Martin said, reaching across the glass-topped table and squeezing Tina’s delicate hand. He was careful not to squeeze too hard; his wife was one of those women addicted to rings, and wore three on each hand.

  “You haven’t met some of my clients.”

  “You get them off,” Martin said. “Sometimes when they don’t deserve to walk.”

  “They all deserve legal representation.” This was a discussion Tina and Martin had almost worn out.

  Martin released Tina’s hand and leaned back in his chair. He wished she’d practice some other form of law. Four months after his acquittal, ten years ago, the acquitted Maddox had pushed a woman into the path of an oncoming subway train. It had shaken Martin’s faith in the legal system, his faith in the world. He’d felt responsible for the woman’s death, and for six months he was clinically depressed. He was in analysis for years. Even as he and his fellow jurors had voted Maddox out of legal jeopardy and back onto the streets, they’d strongly suspected he was a killer.

  But “suspected” wasn’t enough. The defendant’s confession had definitely been made under duress, and was disallowed by the judge, who’d had no choice. So the jurors voted to acquit, because they had no choice.

  That was what his doctors had finally gotten Martin to realize: he’d had no choice. It was the system.

  Martin brushed back the long hair over his ears as a high breeze washed over the balcony. A week after the trial, he’d phoned the tiny, dark-haired juror he’d so admired in the assembly room and asked her for a date. Their relationship had developed into love, and she stayed at his side throughout his troubles. She’d somehow realized in the beginning what it had taken Martin over a year to understand.

  Six years ago they were married. Tina had attended law school and become an attorney, while Martin continued to regain his mental equilibrium. It had been a step by step, painful passage, but Martin made the journey. He had moved on with his business career, with his life. Day by day, he’d built a better world for himself.

  Now old wounds were being probed, but he refused to acknowledge any pain. He really did understand that the system and not the jury had freed Maddox. Martin Portelle, personally, was not responsible for Maddox after Maddox walked free from the courtroom.

  Martin had to smile again as he sipped his martini. Tina had barely changed since he’d first laid eyes on her almost ten years ago, and here they were, still thinking about discussing the late Dan Maddox. Like a time machine. Hell of a world, Martin thought, but if you kept scrapping, you got your reward. At least some people did.

  “I think you might be in danger,” Tina said.

  “From who? Maddox? He’s long gone.”

  “From somebody who loved his last victim.”

  “It’s been almost ten years, Tina.”

  “That might not seem long if you’ve lost someone you love. It might only seem like days, if you want vengeance.”

  “The killer we’re talking about wants justice. Or his idea of it.”

  Tina stroked her small, pointed chin, as she often did when she thought. “Justice? Did we play our role in trying to see that Maddox got justice?”

  “Yes. We did what we could.”

  “Does the Justice Killer know that?”

  I’m glad you don’t cross examine me in court. “I’m not sure. I’m not inside his mind, thank God. But I’ll put my faith in percentages. You said it yourself, if I’m in trouble, so are lots of other people. Tells you something about our justice system, doesn’t it?”

  Tina knew that it did, but she didn’t admit it.

  Like a good attorney, she changed the subject. Outwardly, anyway.

  If Martin only knew…

  Number six had been fun.

  The Justice Killer sat in a brown leather easy chair in his apartment, sipped Jack Daniels from the bottle, and looked at the window. It was nighttime and the window had become a mirror reflecting the room—an ordinary room, well decorated and well kept, with its traditional brown easy chair as the center of gravity.

  The man in the chair was not ordinary, nor did he want to be. He had a cause. A cause had him. A just cause.

  But now he also had doubts.

  Not doubts, actually, but a niggling discomfort.

  The unexpected had occurred. He couldn’t deny he’d enjoyed killing Beverly Baker.

  There had even been in the act an unanticipated sexual component. He recalled in vivid imagery her eyes when she’d noticed him in the mirror, the very instant when she understood that hope had run out and she was about to die. That was when her will turned to ice, when mind and body were frozen and there was no resistance.

  His time.

  Our time.

  Something, an arc of cold emotion and sacred knowledge, had passed between Beverly and her killer, something as true and old as hunter and prey. As old as the human race.

  You’re drunk.

  Am I?

  Not that drunk.

  He knew what his quest was also about, he begrudgingly admitted to himself. Not only life and death and retribution, not only justice—but power.

  He took a sip of bourbon. So what? Were power and justice necessarily separate entities? Certainly they were all of a piece. Ask any helpless defendant in a courtroom. And if the Justice Killer found titillation in his revenge, what substantive difference did it make?

  Why shouldn’t I enjoy it?

  He sipped his booze and let his mind chew on the question.

  His mind extrapolated. Why must he be bound by the conventions of the archetype serial killer? He certainly wasn’t typical.

  The problem was the judicial system—the callous, damaging, arrogant, heartless system that did not work—that he was attempting to change. And there was more than one way to change it. There was no reason why he shouldn’t expand his pool of potential victims beyond those who’d chaired juries. The ordinary jurors themselves were equally guilty of setting free the guilty. Their vote was their own. In a criminal trial, the guilty verdict had to be unanimous. But if the verdict was for acquittal, the jury was usually polled. How each juror voted was a matter of public record. For the purposes of the Justice Killer, simple jurors as well as forepersons were fair game. And the effects of such victims’ deaths would be much the same—perhaps even more potent. Fear times twelve.

  Many jurors, of course, were women.

  The Justice Killer raised his glass in a silent toast to the seated figure reflected in the window, and the toast was acknowledged.

  He was beginning to comprehend that in the world he lived in, on the far side of the law, beyond human abhorrence, he couldn’t expect to be understood. So be it. What did it matter? No one really understood anyone else, anyway. And in the world he had chosen for himself, there were advantages. There were no taboos, no walls, roadblocks, fences, rules or limits, because he decided what was moral and permissible. More and more he was realizing he had every right to enjoy the power that was his, and that anything was possible

  More and more.

  He leaned back in the soft chair and closed his eyes.

  And saw Beverly Baker’s terrified, resigned, and understanding eyes. Heard her silent, pleading voice that he had never heard: Get it over with! Do it! Do it!

  And smiled.

  Why shouldn’t I enjoy it?

  19

  St. Louis, 1988

  Justice seldom slept. His life had become as fragmented as his thoughts. Even if he took a sleeping pill, within a few hours he was awake, his mind darting and exploring like that of an insect confined in a matchbox. During the day, exhausted, he found himself dozing off when he least expected. Not only was it embarrassing, but the increasing lack of control he had over his life was terrifying. Time lost all but its literal meaning. Day was like night to him. Night became his day.

  He lay in the night beside April in the bedroom of their shabby south side apartment and wonder
ed if they both might be better off dead. Overhead, a slow moving ceiling fan, almost invisible in shadow, ticked dreamily as it turned. His wife’s breathing was shallow and labored, and he couldn’t be sure what kind of drugs were in her body. She’d become devious in her addiction, lying to him skillfully, and artfully concealing her stash made up of old prescription vials and hoarded pills.

  How did it come to this? How did it happen? Will…

  Her breath caught like a blade in her throat and she woke suddenly, staring over at him as if surprised to find him beside her. Seeming, in fact, not to recognize him at first.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Why are you awake?” Her hair was wild, her tone accusatory.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “You were watching me.”

  He propped himself up on an elbow, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. “Because I love you.” What you were, what you are…

  “People don’t spy on people they love.”

  “I wasn’t spying.” She’d lowered her head and he couldn’t see her face clearly enough in the dim room to know its expression, but he imagined her heavy-lidded eyes, the dull, barely comprehending look of the seriously medicated, the genuinely hopeless. It was like his heart being cleaved sometimes, seeing that expression. “I was watching you, that’s all. To make sure you were okay.”

  “Neither one of us is okay and we both know it.”

  He dropped his head back on his pillow, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling that was like a gray sky with no stars. The hate, the fear, the agony, combined to create a sour, distinctive odor that permeated the sheets and April’s sweat-damp nightgown. Sometimes he could smell the odor briefly when she was near him during the day. He had smelled something like it in hospital wards for the dying.

  “We can’t go through the rest of our lives like this,” he said.

  “I’ve come to the same conclusion.”

  “We’ve got to change things.”

  “Things have changed us.”

  “I’m tired of these goddamned word games, April.”