Darker Than Night fq-1

by John Lutz

  Anna shrank back a few feet to be less noticeable as her interest increased. The two guys in suits who had to be cops had left after talking with the doorman, and now Quinn emerged from the building.

  He, too, walked over to accost the doorman, who excused himself for a moment to hold the door open for one of the building’s tenants. The doorman seemed a little annoyed, as if murder shouldn’t interfere with his job. There were doors to open, packages to sign for, cabs to hail.

  After about five minutes Quinn left the beleaguered doorman alone and walked toward the corner.

  Anna followed, hanging back and staying, as was her strategy from watching movies and TV, on the opposite side of the street. Tailing somebody really wasn’t all that difficult. For Anna, it had become an obsession.

  What would it be like to be a cop, instead of playing music?

  At the intersection a cab pulled over near a fire hydrant and a woman laden with shopping bags struggled out from the backseat.

  Quinn picked up his pace and retrieved one of the plastic bags the woman had dropped, then exchanged a few words with her and took over the cab. Anna saw him in sharp profile as he leaned forward in the back of the cab and told the driver their destination.

  She decided not to try to follow. What was the use? By the time she found a cab herself, Quinn would be well out of sight. The “follow that cab” method seemed to work only in fiction.

  She stood rooted by anger as she watched the cab drive away. Usually she rode the bus or took the subway. Quinn could afford cab fare these days, on the money the city was paying him-the city that should have prosecuted him.

  Anna wandered back to the building, where she knew two more Night Prowler victims probably lay dead.

  Her thoughts were jumbled by her insistent rage. She should feel sorry for the victims, but she could only feel sorry for herself. After all, if it weren’t for the Night Prowler and his victims, Quinn would still be under whatever rock he’d retreated to in order to escape a trial and prison.

  While Anna lived with her rage and shame, circumstances had worked in her attacker’s favor. A serial killer roamed the city, and the police thought Quinn was their best chance to stop him. The city needed Quinn, so the city embraced him-after discarding Anna.

  It isn’t fair! she kept repeating to herself as she walked faster and faster.

  Her anger was a driving force she could no longer control.

  It isn’t fair!

  44

  Seated in the back of the cab, Quinn called Harley Renz on his cell phone and gave him the details of the latest Night Prowler killings.

  He slipped easily into cop talk, clipped, incisive, and impersonal.

  “It’s gonna get even stickier,” Renz said when Quinn was finished. “The public’ll be leaning on the pols, who’re already leaning on the department higher-ups, who’re leaning on folks like me. Shit rolls downhill and picks up speed, Quinn, and that’s where you are, at the very bottom of the hill.”

  “Well, let’s hope it hits the fan before it reaches me. You got anything I should know?”

  “Only that Egan and his pals are saying bad things about you. Off the record, of course.”

  “Off the record to the media.”

  “So astute you are sometimes.”

  “Maybe I can be astute and deduce something before Egan’s troops do.”

  “They sense a shift in the balance, Quinn; innocent Anna is becoming the seriously wronged and sympathetic party, and you’re on your way to becoming the villain again.”

  “I sense it, too,” Quinn said. “We’ll just have to work through it. When you can, let me know what the postmortems reveal.”

  “Okay. Speaking of Egan’s troops, who drew the case?”

  “Couple of guys named Frist and Jefferson.”

  “Both deep in hock to Egan. Jefferson’s okay, just in a bind and covering his ass. Frist is a jack-off under the best of circumstances.”

  “That’s kind of how I read them. Frist is afraid of Pearl.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “Anything new on the silencer?” Quinn asked, getting in a dig.

  “You laugh about the silencer, but we’re narrowing it down. It’s the kinda police work you never did grow into, Quinn, which is why your career turned to garbage.”

  Quinn thought Renz might have a point.

  “Where you going now?” Renz asked.

  “How’d you know I’m going someplace?”

  “I deduced from the car engine and traffic noise, plus the rattling when you hit potholes indicates a New York cab.”

  “That’s good deducing.”

  “I’m a policeman, you know.”

  “I didn’t. I’m on my way to my place to reexamine the murder files. I want to make sure of something.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Deduce,” Quinn said, and cut the connection.

  The buzzing had abated.

  The Night Prowler sat at an outdoor table at a restaurant on Amsterdam and ate eggs over easy while enjoying the beautiful morning. It was the beginning of another warm day, but with a gentle breeze that made being outside comfortable and chased away exhaust fumes.

  Three tables away sat a woman with long brown hair, sipping coffee and studying papers she’d removed from a briefcase that was alongside her chair. She had striking blue eyes and slender, delicate features. The expanse of nyloned leg visible between black high-heeled pumps and the hem of her blue skirt was difficult not to keep glancing at, and she knew he was watching her-he was sure of it.

  You like being observed, studied. You like it very much.

  Are you feeling between your thighs, in the core of you and in your heart, what I’m feeling? Are you?

  Sensing his thoughts, he was sure, she looked over at him, then quickly back down at her papers on the table. No change of expression. But he’d seen her blush, caught the subtle alteration of color in her flesh, the soft rose hue that came and went with emotional tide.

  The Night Prowler didn’t change expression, either. He simply looked slightly away and took a sip of his own coffee, talking to her in his mind.

  You’re not as untouchable as you’d like to think. You can be touched, so pink and red and brown. You’re a confection. What color are your nipples? You can be had. You can be had by me.

  She used a pen to make a notation on one of the papers, not looking over at him. But he knew she’d heard in her mind the message of his own.

  A man in his thirties, with wind-mussed blond hair and carrying his suit coat slung over his shoulder, entered the restaurant’s cordoned-off seating area and sat down across from the woman. She smiled at him and immediately tapped the edges of her papers on the table to align them, then leaned sideways gracefully and slid them back into her briefcase.

  The Night Prowler made it a point to ignore her now, not wanting to be noticed and outnumbered. He tried to avoid scenes.

  But I haven’t forgotten you. I put you away in my mind and I’ll get you out later, when I need you.

  Nothing will come of it.

  Or maybe something will.

  He looked down and saw that he was gripping his spoon almost hard enough to bend it. Lowering the spoon to the table, he felt a sudden chill, as if the morning had cooled abruptly.

  This woman was a total stranger, he cautioned himself. They had never spoken. He knew nothing about her other than how she looked. How she held herself in repose. How she moved.

  But wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work, according to the literature, to the police, to the hunter Quinn? Compulsion. Something distinctive about the woman might have triggered my compulsion!

  The cops, the FBI, assumed that after a certain amount of blood and benediction, the serial killer’s compulsion would become stronger and seize complete control of him, and eventually force mistakes.

  Control was something the Night Prowler refused to relinquish. Powerful hidden desires could be coped with and ma
naged. They could be channeled and fulfilled. That was something the so-called experts were afraid to acknowledge. But they knew it. And if they didn’t, they were learning. He was teaching them.

  He finished his eggs, which were cooling in the breeze, then signaled the waiter for a refill on his coffee and began reading the newspapers he’d bought at two separate kiosks. This was enjoyable, sitting in the sun and at his leisure leafing through the papers for news of himself. His anonymous, famous self.

  His gaze fell on a name he recognized. In a weekly celebrity feature called “Showbiz Shebangs,” halfway down an inside page. Claire Briggs.

  But what made him sit up straight was the information that surrounded her boldly printed name. He read the paragraph again:

  Actress Claire Briggs, currently charming Broadway audiences in Hail to the Chef, will be married next week to her longtime love interest, actor Jubal Day. Time and place are of course a secret, now that Claire glitters as a major Broadway star. Congrats to the happy couple.

  The Night Prowler read the paragraph several times, completely forgetting about the woman three tables away. He couldn’t help smiling as he added cream to his coffee and stirred. He watched as the marbled liquid absorbed the whirlpooled white strands and became a uniformly rich but light caramel color. What color are your nipples? Then he turned his attention yet again to the show business gossip column. He couldn’t stop reading it.

  Compulsion? Maybe. But surely there’s a proper time for compulsion if it’s controlled. If it’s focused. So enjoy, enjoy…

  Who said the papers never printed good news? Claire Briggs was getting married. She of the braided hair and beguiling grace.

  Claire Briggs!

  Congrats to the happy couple!

  45

  When Quinn climbed out of the cab in front of his apartment building, he saw a gray-haired man about sixty sitting slumped on the concrete stoop.

  Future me, if this investigation doesn’t work out.

  The man’s bearing suggested he’d been there awhile but was prepared to wait longer. He was wearing gray slacks and an untucked tropical print shirt. When he saw Quinn, he became more alert and removed his sunglasses, then stood up stiffly, as if his back ached.

  As Quinn approached, he saw that the shirt had a colorful ornate design of parrots and exotic blossoms. The man was older and taller than he first appeared, and there was something in his patient stance and in his eyes that said he was a cop.

  He smiled, just a bit, and asked curiously, “Quinn?”

  “Quinn,” Quinn said, and shook the man’s proffered hand.

  His grip was firm and dry, and he didn’t make the handshake a contest. “Name’s Nester Brothers. I’m here about the Night Prowler murders. There somewheres we can talk?”

  “We can go upstairs to my place, or there’s a bar a few blocks over.” Quinn glanced at his watch. “I know it’s only eleven o’clock, but-”

  “Bar,” Nester said.

  Ten minutes later they were seated in a front booth of Whichi Woman, a small lounge that served almost inedible sandwiches along with booze, and featured bad music on weekends. It was a pickup parlor for mostly legitimate singles on the prowl, but occasionally vice cleared away the hookers. The bland-featured, overweight bartender had the door propped open as an invitation to fresh air, but the place still smelled of last night’s stale beer and disappointment.

  There was only one other customer in Whichi Woman, a despondent-looking business type hunched over what looked like a martini at the far end of the bar. Quinn wondered if the poor bastard had just been fired. Every inch of his elegantly hunkered form suggested it was a miserable world and he was miserable in it.

  When Nester had a beer in front of him, and Quinn a club soda with a twist, Nester looked outside the spotted window at the cars creeping along and being left behind by the flow of pedestrians. “Shit pot fulla traffic,” he said, “but it looks like it’s goin’ no place fast.”

  “It mostly is,” Quinn said. Isn’t? “First time in New York?”

  “Yep.” Nester took such a big, hearty swallow of beer from his frosted mug that it might have hurt him.

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “Business. You. I came here to see you about this Night Prowler asshole.” Another long pull of beer. Nester was some robust drinker, considering it wasn’t yet noon. “I used to be a cop.”

  “It shows.”

  “I s’pose it does. I was a sergeant in the Saint Louis Police Department. I’m retired now. Got pensioned off after a back injury few years ago. Before the Saint Louis job, I was a sheriff’s deputy in a little river town in Missouri. Place called Hiram. What I do now that I’m not workin’ is sit on my ass and read the paper, watch TV news, an generally try an’ stay outta the wife’s way. ’Nother thing I do is spend time online. You ever get online, Quinn?”

  “Not much anymore.”

  “Most everything ever printed about the Night Prowler killin’s is online. While I was readin’ about ’em, somethin’ started to bother me, an old cop’s kinda hunch that starts in the gut instead of the brain. You fathom what I mean?”

  “I fathom.” Quinn sipped his club soda to be sociable and signaled the bartender for another beer for Nester, whose mug was almost empty. The bartender was busy hoisting a metal barrel out from behind the taps and simply nodded to show he’d seen Quinn.

  “I thought you oughta know about the Sand case.”

  “Never heard of it,” Quinn said.

  “No reason you shoulda. It happened in Hiram back in ’89, half a continent away.”

  Both men were silent while a hard-looking waitress, who’d just come on duty, placed a fresh beer on the table and withdrew.

  “That woman have a cussword tattooed just below her left eye?” Nester asked.

  “She did,” Quinn said. “New York.”

  “Back to Hiram in ’89,” Nester said, “where you never saw that kinda tattoo and probably still don’t. Fella and his wife, name of Milford and Cara Sand, were found stabbed to death in their kitchen. Ugly scene, ’specially the way the wife was carved up, round the crotch and tits. Ordinary enough couple, though Milford could be a bit of a shit. Sometimes they were foster parents, and they had this sixteen-year-old boy, Luther Lunt, stayin’ with ’em at the time.”

  Quinn got his notepad from his pocket and found that he’d used the last sheet of paper. He pulled a napkin from a holder on the table and began making notes on it.

  Nester waited patiently until Quinn had caught up. “’Bout three in the mornin’,” he continued, “young Luther stabbed the both of ’em to death in their kitchen, then hightailed it outta town. Nobody in Hiram ever seen him again. What made me come see you is I noticed a lotta similarities in the Sand murder, which I helped investigate, and these Night Prowler killins of yours.”

  “Such as?”

  “They all but one took place in kitchens in the early-mornin’ hours, all the victims were married couples, all stabbed to death but for that pair that got themselves shot, all with food layin’ around like somebody’d been snackin’ or grocery shoppin’ recently.”

  “Did there happen to be fresh-cut flowers at the crime scene?” Quinn asked.

  “Sure were. Half a dozen roses right there in a vase on the kitchen table.”

  “Remember what color they were?”

  “Yellow.”

  Quinn felt his blood begin to rush. “Any doubt the kid did the deed?”

  “None whatsoever. His prints were on the knife, autopsy showed he’d likely had recent sex with the wife, and he bolted like a scalded rabbit. He stole the Sands’ car and used it to get outta town. His prints and some of the family’s blood was all over it when we found it parked off the road outta sight among some trees.”

  “This Luther have any priors?”

  “Nothin’ violent, and only one conviction, but he was a rough number with several arrests. Vagrancy, male prostitution, theft. He’d been a street kid in Ka
nsas City.”

  “Working his way up to murder,” Quinn said, sipping his drink.

  “Well, he made it all the way. It looked like he’d been secretly livin’ in the Sands’ attic for a while, ballin’ the wife and havin’ a grand old time, till old Milford caught ’em together. Least that’s the theory.”

  “You buy into it?”

  “Sure, there’s nothin’ else.” Nester was already halfway through his second beer. “An’ Luther ain’t been seen nor heard of since the murders.”

  Quinn thought about what he’d just heard. “I’m glad you came to see me, Nester. I’ll find out more about this Luther Lunt. Sic the feds and their computers on him.”

  “I done that already,” Nester said with a note of pride. “I still got connections, friends in high-tech places.”

  “Great. Will you copy me what you have?”

  “No need. Got it all in my pocket. An’ you can have it after only one more beer.”

  Quinn laughed and signaled the woman with the bold tattoo. “Nester, I bet you were one hell of a good cop.”

  “Still am,” Nester said. “It ain’t the kinda profession you ever really retire from.”

  “That’s something we can drink to,” Quinn said.

  Claire Briggs stood with her arms crossed in the center of the bare bedroom and looked around with satisfaction.

  This was to be the baby’s room, and would look like it as soon as it was decorated. Right now it wasn’t very impressive. The absence of furniture revealed cracks in the plaster walls, and there were scrapes and gouges in the paint from when the movers took out the furniture, knowing the room was going to be redone and they didn’t have to be careful. The windows were dirty and the old blinds didn’t admit enough light. The tarnished brass ceiling fixture, which might have been original to the 1920s building, cast barely enough illumination to chase away the pale shadows.