Darker Than Night

by John Lutz

Quinn grinned at her. She was still smiling, a dare in eyes black enough to have gotten her burned as a witch four hundred years ago. Probably, Egan would like to burn her now. There was something in her favor. What kind of pain is driving you?

  “Am I the boss?” he asked her. “Or are we gonna have a contest?”

  “It’d only be a waste of time,” Pearl said.

  Quinn decided not to ask her what she meant. “You two go ahead and sit down,” he said. “I’ve been sitting awhile.”

  When they were on the bench, Fedderman slouched with his legs apart. Pearl sat stiffly, with her notepad in her lap, looking as if she were about to take dictation.

  Quinn told them what he’d learned from the Elzner murder file, and what he speculated.

  Pearl made a few notes and listened intently. He got the impression her eyes might leave scars on him.

  “The jam bothered me, too,” she said when he was finished. “An almost full jar in the refrigerator, and they bought two more identical jars when they went grocery shopping.”

  “Which means they didn’t know how much jam they had,” Fedderman said, “or they were gonna hole up in their apartment for a few weeks and live on strawberry jam, or someone else did the shopping for them. Someone who didn’t know what kinds of foods they were out of.”

  “Or someone who thought they just couldn’t have enough gourmet jam,” Pearl said. “I lean toward your possibility number three, that somebody else bought the groceries.”

  Fedderman leaned forward and scratched his left ankle beneath his sock. Quinn wondered if he still wore a small-caliber revolver holstered to his other ankle. He looked up at Quinn, still scratching. “So, we working on the assumption somebody killed both Elzners?”

  “It’s the only assumption we’ve got, “Pearl said, “if you don’t want to finish your career doing crap assignments, I don’t want to be out of work, and Quinn doesn’t want to go back to being a—”

  “Pariah,” Quinn finished for her.

  She nodded. “Okay, pariah. I like that. It’s so Christian.”

  “It isn’t biblical,” Fedderman said, “it’s ancient Greek.”

  She stared at him. “That true?”

  “I have no idea. You’re so naive, Pearl.”

  “That I doubt,” Quinn said. He made a show of glancing at his watch. “So as of now, we’re on the job.”

  “We don’t have anything new to work with,” Fedderman pointed out.

  “Then we’ll work with what we have. Again. You two go back over the evidence and see if there’s anything I missed. Then we’ll talk to the Elzners’ neighbors again. Anyone in the adjoining buildings who might have seen anything. See if there wasn’t a dog that didn’t bark in the night, that kinda thing. You do the murder file again, Pearl. Fedderman and I will work on the witnesses.”

  Pearl looked as if she might say something about being assigned to paperwork, but she held inside whatever words she wanted to speak. She knew Quinn was assessing her, testing her. Something told her it was one of the most important tests she’d ever have to pass.

  “We’ll meet back here at six this evening. If it’s raining, the meet’ll be at the Lotus Diner on Amsterdam.”

  “That place is a ptomaine palace,” Pearl said.

  “I know,” Quinn said. “I chose it because I don’t think it’s gonna rain. Where’s your unmarked?”

  “Parked over on Central Park West,” Fedderman said.

  “Let’s go, then. Pearl can drop us off at the Elzners’ building, then take the car on to the precinct house and get busy with the murder file.”

  Pearl and Fedderman stood up. Fedderman stretched, extending his back and flailing his arms, which still looked abnormally long even though he’d put on weight. Then he and Pearl walked in the warming sun toward Quinn. They all knew they were probably wasting their time, but nobody objected.

  Quinn was pleased with the way their first meeting had gone. Beneath the bullshit and hopeless humor was the beginning of mutual understanding, maybe even respect.

  Maybe the beginning of a team.

  14

  He lay curled in a corner, a folded white cloth clutched in his left hand. He was smiling.

  Slowly he raised the saturated cloth to his nose and inhaled deeply of the benzene fumes. Benzene was a solvent not often used these days, but he’d become accustomed to it a long time ago, adapted to it. His drug of choice for the visions and memories long and short.

  He inhaled again, his eyelids fluttering. He was back in the Elzners’ kitchen, carefully, silently, removing groceries from plastic bags and placing them on the table before putting them away. As usual, he was wearing flesh-colored latex gloves. He giggled, looking down at them in his dream; they were like real fingers, only without fingernails. He reached for the tuna can.

  And there was Martin Elzner, the husband. This time he’d been willed there, but he appeared as he had that night—that early morning. Elzner was stunned, his mouth hanging open, surprise, anger, fear…all flashing like signs in his eyes. His sandy hair was mussed from turning in his sleep. Had it actually stood up in points like that? It made him look even more astounded to find this stranger in his kitchen, busy at a domestic task.

  The stranger—who wasn’t a stranger—set the tuna can on the table. The husband’s sudden presence in the dim kitchen was a surprise to him, too. Yet not exactly a surprise. He was doomed to disappointment and betrayal and knew this could happen, would happen, and he was prepared for it. Wanting it?

  He smiled.

  He inhaled.

  Back to Elzner, too astounded even to speak. More fear in his eyes as he saw the gun with its bulky silencer. A terrible understanding. He grimaced and turned sideways, raising a hand as if to wave some irritating insect away if it buzzed near again. Death could be such a pest.

  Step close…. Don’t shoot the hand…. They must think he died last…a suicide, poor deranged creature.

  The betrayer would die second.

  Close enough. Up came the gun, steady in seconds, inches from his head. The satisfying putt! of the silenced gun, like a tiny engine trying once to turn over. Martin Elzner, down with a loud double thumping sound on the kitchen floor.

  Backward, step backward, as it actually occurred. The choreography of dreams.

  A sudden clattering. His free hand had brushed the tuna can near the edge of the table. As it actually occurred. If the sound of Elzner hitting the floor hadn’t awakened his wife, the can striking and rolling across the tiles would.

  He inhaled. He wondered if the tiles had been damaged. The floor was actually quite attractive. An unusual beige with flecks of—

  Enough. There she was as she’d been, standing in the doorway with the sudden alteration of her life, the cancellation of her past and future, all on her face. They knew. They always knew.

  His hand not clutching the cloth moved down to his crotch as she instinctively lurched toward her fallen husband, her true love, her only, her lifemate, her deathmate, drawing her, drawing her, gravitation, the inevitable physics of love, the end of love….

  The end of love…

  After a while it was time for the second show. He played in his mind once more that night in the Elzners’ kitchen. It amazed him the force of his intellect, the control he had over his recall. He’d reached the point where he could even fast-forward or rewind the reconstruction, as if he were pressing mental buttons, watching the sped-up images moving back and forth across his spectrum of recollection: stop, pause, replay. Slower now—relishing it, seeing it, and reliving it from a more vivid angle….

  Unpacking the groceries, the tuna can. There was Martin Elzner, the husband. Surprise, surprise…. Pause, play, speedup, aim, fire the silenced handgun. The acrid scent of the shot lingering in the air, in his mind. Fast-forward. He inhaled. Jan Elzner was barefoot, in her knee-length flimsy nightgown…half speed…. She sees her husband on the floor, the blood, a rich scarlet almost black, and moves toward him, the blood…. Wait
until she’s very near him, almost over him…slow motion….

  Her eyes…what she knew!

  The hand without the folded, saturated cloth moved back down.

  He climaxed as he squeezed the trigger again and again.

  The colors! The colors are magnificent!

  He inhaled.

  Finally evening.

  It hadn’t even hinted at rain that warm summer day, so Quinn met with his team of detectives again on the park bench just inside the entrance at Eighty-sixth Street. He sat awkwardly but comfortably on the hard bench, sipping from a plastic water bottle he’d bought from a street vender, and watched New Yorkers enjoying their park while there was still daylight and the muggers hadn’t yet come out with the stars. There were more people now that it was cooler, a woman pushing a stroller, a few joggers, and some helmeted and padded rollerbladers zooming about like cyber creatures who’d escaped a video game.

  Pearl and Fedderman approached together. They looked hot and tired. Pearl’s pace was dragging and Fedderman had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up and was carrying his suit coat slung over his shoulder. Quinn thought back to a time when the younger Fedderman had entered rooms with his coat slung like that on a crooked forefinger over one shoulder and would say “ring-a-ding-ding,” like Sinatra when he was a hot item in Vegas and everywhere else. Quinn couldn’t imagine that coming out of the older, heavier Fedderman, who carried the weight of his experience on his shoulders along with the coat.

  “Ring-a-ding-ding,” Fedderman said wearily.

  Quinn grinned and Pearl stared at both men. She still looked beautiful, her irises so black in contrast with the gleaming whites of her eyes. Her mascara had run a little with the heat, making the right eye appear slightly bruised, as if she’d gotten into a scuffle sometime today. Not impossible.

  “Old joke,” Quinn explained.

  “Secret male-bonding bullshit,” she said.

  “Nothing to do with you, Pearl,” Fedderman assured her, thinking he was too tired to put up with her if she decided to be in one of her moods.

  Quinn thought the brief ring-a-ding-ding jingle could apply to Pearl. She was somehow even more attractive when worn down from a difficult and probably futile day’s work. He pulled from beneath his folded sport coat, where they’d stayed cool out of the sun, the other two water bottles he’d bought and handed them up to Pearl and Fedderman. Both detectives expressed gratitude, then uncapped the bottles and took long sips. Quinn watched Pearl’s slender pale throat work as she swallowed.

  “So what’ve we got?” he asked when they were finished drinking.

  “Nothing new,” Pearl said, using her wrist to wipe away water that had dribbled onto her chin, “but at least we’re more sure of what we do have. I mean, we’ve got everything in the file almost goddamn memorized.”

  “Cop work,” Fedderman said with a shrug. He rested a hand on Pearl’s shoulder while looking at Quinn. “One thing she hasn’t mentioned yet. We questioned the witnesses again and one of the tenants in the Elzners’ building, a lonely old guy down the hall, responded to Pearl’s feminine wiles.”

  Quinn took a sip of water and stared at Pearl.

  “I use them sparingly and selectively,” she said.

  “So how did this old guy respond?”

  “By remembering something he hadn’t had a chance to tell the police. He’s three apartments away and was only questioned briefly and by phone.”

  “So why did you question him?”

  “His apartment’s by the elevator.”

  Quinn smiled.

  Pearl smiled back. “He can hear the elevator through the wall. Like a lot of lonely old people who live alone, he doesn’t sleep well, and he was awake most of the night of the Elzner murder. He heard the elevator, and recalled it because of the late hour. He said he’d never heard it before at that time.”

  “Two fifty-five A.M.,” Fedderman said to Quinn.

  “Exactly?”

  “He said he looked at his watch,” Pearl said. “He sleeps wearing it. Said it sounded like the elevator stopped at his floor. His and the Elzners’. About twenty minutes later, it went back down.”

  “He seem credible?”

  “Very. And his watch is the kind made especially for old guys with failing eyesight, about the size of an alarm clock and with luminous hands and numerals you could read a book by.” She took another sip of water, then watched a wobbly rollerblader for a moment. “It really isn’t much.”

  “It helps fix the time of death,” Quinn said.

  “So what have you come up with?” Fedderman asked.

  “I visited my sister, Michelle.”

  They both looked at him. “The stock analyst?” Fedderman asked.

  “The same.”

  Pearl shook her head and grinned. “Their credibility’s not the highest.”

  “Not about stocks, no. But Michelle isn’t only interested in stocks. She’s a math and computer whiz. She runs comparative analyses on other things, sometimes just for amusement. I asked her a question yesterday, and she spent most of last night and some of this morning finding the answer. Insofar as it can be found.”

  “Question about killers?” Pearl asked.

  “Right. She used her sources via the Internet and came up with statistics gathered from and about serial killers. It seems a surprising number of them don’t plan concretely but come prepared for murder, compelled to seek situations where they’ll have little choice, and the deaths, in their minds, won’t be their fault.”

  “Sounds like public-defender bullshit,” Fedderman said.

  “He means they set up the situations,” Pearl said. “Like teenagers baiting their parents. Grown-ups aren’t supposed to lose their tempers, so if they can be made to, whatever comes of it is their responsibility. Or so think the teenyboppers.”

  Fedderman uncapped his plastic bottle and took a swig of water. “Some of them think that way up to about age seventy.”

  “It’s not the analogy I’d have chosen,” Quinn said, “but it’s pretty accurate. I think of it as Michelle’s scenario-for-murder theory. If the Elzner murders weren’t random, if the killer at least expected he’d have to do them and was prepared for it, or even possibly planned it in detail just in case, that means he killed for his own internal reasons. The kinds of reasons that don’t go away.”

  “And?” Fedderman said.

  “He’s gone through a door that opens only one way, and leads only to another door.”

  Fedderman shook his head. “You’ve gotten cryptic in your old age.”

  Pearl understood immediately. “You saying we should wait for him to kill again?” she asked. “That maybe we got a serial killer here?”

  “In the bud,” Quinn said, smiling.

  The smile sort of gave Pearl the creeps. It wasn’t about amusement. It was more the smile of a hunter who’d picked up the spoor of his prey. Who now wouldn’t be shaken off, no matter what.

  In fact, it was exactly that kind of smile. She knew where she’d seen it before: while walking past a mirror in the bedroom of the sister of a murdered child, when she’d unexpectedly glimpsed it on her own face. It had scared her a little then. It scared her now.

  And Pearl wondered, how did Quinn know so much about doors?

  Marcy Graham got home from work before Ron. The subway had been a mob scene, and the first train had been so crowded she had to wait for a second. To add to her ordeal, some oaf in a big rush had stepped on her toe as she’d been climbing the steps to the street.

  Tired, overheated, irritated, she sat down on the sofa and worked her shoes off. She examined her ankles, which were as swollen as she thought they’d be after a hard day on three-inch heels. The toes of her left foot, which was slightly larger than her right, felt as if they’d been pressed together in a vise. Dressing for success was dressing for discomfort.

  Marcy sat and massaged her sore, stockinged feet for a while, then realized she was thirsty. Probably dehydrated after th
e struggle with crowds and summer heat on her way home.

  It seemed too warm in the apartment. She stood up, leaving her shoes lying on their sides on the floor, and padded over to the thermostat. After edging the dial down a degree, she heard the air-conditioning click on. The apartment could be a cool refuge, and would be soon.

  It was freshly painted and comfortably furnished. The advance Ron had gotten on his new position at work had been well spent, even if maybe too hastily. Decorating the apartment, buying new clothes they’d both need if they were to stay in style, then paying off old debts, had left the checking account almost in the red.

  Marcy swallowed dryly, reminding herself of her thirst.

  Feeling a rush of cold air from an overhead vent, she made her way into the kitchen. She was pretty sure there were some diet Cokes in the refrigerator.

  And there they were on the bottom shelf, a six-pack, the cans still joined by their plastic harness.

  As Marcy worked one of the cold cans loose, then straightened to close the refrigerator door, she noticed a wedge of Norstrum Gouda cheese, her favorite to spread on crackers for snacks. It was shrink-wrapped and unopened, yet she was sure she’d eaten some since the last time she’d bought groceries at the D’Agostino.

  She pulled open the plastic meat-and-cheese drawer and saw a half-consumed wedge alongside a plastic container of leftover meatballs. She shrugged. Apparently, she’d bought two wedges when she last shopped. That should be all right. Did cheese ever really go bad? Might it be the only thing in the world that didn’t?

  Sipping soda from the can, she went into the bedroom, bending down adroitly to pick up her shoes on the way. It would feel good to ditch the panty hose and get into some cool slacks and a sleeveless blouse. She removed her gray skirt and blazer, then sat on the bed and peeled off her panty hose. After draping skirt and blazer on a hanger, she took off her blouse and dropped it in a white wicker clothes hamper. She extended her elbows out and back, in a practiced gesture made somehow graceful, and unhooked her bra, then slipped it off. Bra and panties followed the blouse into the hamper. Nude now, she went to her dresser to get another pair of panties.