Darker Than Night

by John Lutz

  “Or maybe they didn’t know each other at all. Maybe he’s somebody in a position to know people’s marital status.”

  “Jesus! He might be employed by the state or city in some kinda record-keeping capacity.”

  “Or by a bank or credit bureau. Someplace where you can get real and deep information about people without them knowing about it. Or maybe someplace where you can get their keys and steal them or make copies—like a parking garage or a store where women might check their purses.”

  “Their keys?”

  “Sure. There was no sign of forced entry into any of these apartments, but our killer came and went at will. After all, he was practically living in their apartments while his future victims were asleep.” And maybe when they weren’t home. Quinn made a mental note to have Pearl and Fedderman check the victims’ neighbors to find out if anyone noticed someone coming or going during the day, work hours, in the weeks before the murders.

  “Sounds to me like you’re giving a two-sided problem eight sides, Quinn. Could be the killer and victims knew each other, that they were friends. Or thought they were. What’s simple is usually right.”

  “Now you’re bragging.”

  “Don’t be such a prick. You know I’m probably right—probably correct.”

  Quinn knew Renz was making a classic mistake, settling on a theory too soon and ignoring other evidence. Yet he was right about the obvious usually being what happened in a homicide. But this killer was definitely different; Quinn had felt it from the time he’d read the Elzner murder file. “Yeah, it’s possible. We still have to sort it all out.”

  “What about computers? These victims own one?”

  Quinn remembered a laptop on a corner of the desk. “Everyone has a computer.” Except for washed-out ex-cops.

  “We’ll check it and make sure it wasn’t hacked. The other victims’ computers were okay.”

  That was something Quinn hadn’t thought to consider. Slipping mentally? Or just being buried by technology like the rest of the poor schmucks my age?

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the bloody mark on the wall,” he said, not wanting to come up short again.

  “Egan doesn’t think it’s important. Poor woman just didn’t get her message down in time.”

  “He’s probably right, or the killer would have smeared it.”

  “Now you want some good news?” Renz asked.

  “Don’t tease me, Harley.”

  “We’ve made some progress tracking the silencer.”

  “Be still, my heart.”

  “We got it narrowed down some more.”

  “To the northern hemisphere, I’ll bet.”

  “What with the way records are kept these days, and what you can do on the Internet, this isn’t as long a shot as you think. I’ll tell you, Quinn, the computer is a marvelous instrument.”

  Quinn wondered if Renz was jabbing at him for not factoring in what might be on the victims’ computers. Or was he slyly referring to the fact that a computer had helped to set up Quinn for the rape accusation? “That’s what Michelle says.”

  “Michelle?”

  “My sister.”

  “Oh, yeah, the Quinn kid that turned out okay.”

  “Remember to let me know about the silencers, Harley.”

  Quinn hung up, thinking what a waste of time it was, even with the aid of computers, tracking silencers. Guns were difficult enough to trace, but mail-order silencers that had no individual serial numbers and changed hands maybe several times since their purchase…Quinn thought again that the only good thing about the silencer hunt was that it would help to keep Renz occupied and not ragging him and his team. Though it hadn’t seemed to have that effect so far.

  The intercom rasped. Pearl and Fedderman.

  Quinn buzzed them up and threw the bolt on his door.

  They both looked exhausted. Pearl’s hair was stuck in lank bangs to her perspiring forehead, and her white blouse was patterned with wrinkles. Fedderman’s eyes were bloodshot and his baggy brown suit looked as if it had been used in a tug-of-war. Pearl flopped herself down on the sofa while Fedderman trudged out to the kitchen to help himself to a beer.

  “You coulda asked us,” she said, irritated, when Fedderman returned carrying only one can of beer.

  “Blame our host,” Fedderman said. “We come in expecting a buffet, maybe some canapés, and there’s nichts.”

  “Canapés and nichts in the same sentence. You don’t hear that very often.”

  “Shows I’m well traveled and you’re not.” Fedderman popped the tab on the can and licked foam from between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Shows what a putz you are.”

  “My old German grandmother would tell you who’s what part of the anatomy.”

  “I’m going out to the kitchen and get two more beers and a bag of potato chips,” Quinn told them. “Then we’re gonna talk police work. Unless you two have been doing other things all day.”

  Neither answered as he walked into the kitchen.

  When Quinn returned with the beer and chips, Fedderman said, “If memory serves, there were a couple of murders just this morning, weren’t there?”

  “I told you he was a putz,” Pearl said.

  Quinn said, “He didn’t exactly deny it.”

  He yanked open the top of the potato chip bag and placed the bag on the coffee table. Then he opened the beers and handed a can to Pearl, took a swig of the other. He sat down in his chair opposite the sofa.

  Fedderman sat down next to Pearl, who threw a potato chip at him. “Have a canapé.”

  The chip landed in Fedderman’s lap. He picked it up and ate it.

  Quinn told them about his phone conversation with Renz.

  “You think that silencer thing will actually get anyplace?” Fedderman asked.

  Quinn shrugged. “It keeps you-know-whom busy.” He looked from Pearl to Fedderman. They looked as if they would have sprung at each other’s throats, only they didn’t have the energy. “So how was your day?”

  They told him it hadn’t been good. Other than the woman who’d noticed the thin trail of blood on her wall in the unit below the murder apartment, no one in the building had seen or heard anything unusual.

  “What about the doorman?”

  “We were including him,” Pearl said. “But he admits he’s not always on the door. He might have been running an errand or hailing a cab for one of the tenants. And sometimes he sneaks a smoke down in the stairwell of the building next door.”

  “Did anyone mention seeing something or someone unusual during the two weeks or so leading up to the murder? I mean, during daylight, working hours?”

  Pearl and Fedderman stared at Quinn.

  “No,” Fedderman said, “but we didn’t specify those hours and we didn’t go back as far as two weeks.”

  “You will tomorrow,” Quinn said.

  Pearl took a pull on her beer and glanced at Fedderman. “I told you we shouldn’t come here.”

  An incurable wiseass, Quinn thought. But so was Sherlock Holmes.

  Pearl and Fedderman had left less than five minutes ago. Quinn had just finished throwing away the empty beer cans and putting the potato chip bag back in a kitchen cabinet when there was a knock on his apartment door. Someone must have bypassed the intercom and let themselves in as Pearl and Fedderman were leaving.

  But when Quinn peered through the glass peephole into the hall, there was Pearl.

  “I forgot my purse,” she said when he’d opened the door. “My gun’s in it.”

  Quinn stepped back so she could enter.

  She went to the middle of the living room, placed her fists on her hips, and glanced around. Quinn looked, too. No purse.

  Pearl went to the sofa and felt along the sides of the cushions.

  “Ah!” she said, and pulled the small purse up from where it was jammed between the cushions.

  She held the purse up by its strap, as if it were a fish she’d just c
aught, and smiled at Quinn. “You got any more beer?”

  “I can get you one,” Quinn said.

  He went into the kitchen and came back a minute later with an opened can of Budweiser. “Tell Fedderman I’d have given one to him, only he’s driving.”

  “Oh, he went ahead with the car. I told him I’d subway home. It’s not that big a deal, and there was no point making him wait.”

  Quinn felt his pulse quicken. He looked closely at her.

  “This apartment,” she said, motioning with her arm, “probably hasn’t been this neat in years.”

  “Pearl, you never forgot anything in your life, much less your gun.”

  She stooped and placed the beer can on the carpet, then came over and stood too close to him. “I can save you, Quinn.”

  “How is that, Pearl?”

  “I can give you back your self-respect.”

  “You helped me clean my apartment, now you’re ready to start on my life.”

  “Question is, are you ready?”

  The scent of her hair, even her perspiration, was like perfume to Quinn. He remembered the way she’d looked at him as he was leaving her apartment after spending the night there and felt a tightening in his groin even as internal alarms were triggered. “Fedderman knows you didn’t forget your purse.”

  “Piss on Fedderman. You’ve been friends with him a long time. You must have something on him.”

  Quinn grinned. “Pearl, Pearl…”

  “I can save you,” she said again, and stood high on her toes and kissed him.

  He kissed her back and felt her lips part, then the warm strength of her eager tongue.

  When they pulled away from each other, she smiled up at him. “I’ve got another side, you know.”

  He did know. He picked her up and carried her into his bedroom.

  She seemed to like that.

  Their lovemaking qualified as frenzied, Quinn surprising himself. Pearl was on top, grinning down at him, working her hips to a marvelous silent beat, her large breasts swaying with the rhythm. After a while he rolled her off and mounted her, careful to support himself with his elbows and knees. She was so small, yet there was a compact strength to her. He was gentle but took control. She was ready for it and clamped her legs around him, somehow still managing to work her hips in response to his powerful thrusts. Her warm breath was near his ear and she made urgent, throaty sounds that grew louder and louder.

  When it was finished, they lay on their backs, side by side, staring at the cracked ceiling and listening to their ragged breathing gradually even out. They’d wanted and enjoyed each other more than either of them had imagined possible. They were both still shocked and, in a way, frightened by what still gripped them. During the past half hour everything had changed for both of them, forever.

  After a few minutes the only sounds in the small, warm room were of the city outside the window, the complex stage on which they would continue to act out their lives.

  Where the hell…, Quinn wondered.

  …is this going? Pearl asked herself.

  Less than a mile from where Quinn and Pearl lay, the Night Prowler was curled in his corner with his benzene and his dreams. These were some of the best times, knowing what he was going to do next, who would be his next victims.

  He wasn’t completely a slave to his compulsion. He had free will. He knew the actress would be perfect, with the graceful, practiced music of her every move, as if her walk drew energy from the ground. But she wasn’t married and so wouldn’t do and couldn’t do. Living together in sin, delicious sin, that wasn’t like marriage, no matter how hard people pretended.

  The actress had called to him without knowing. She was unaware of her own silent voice and that she was an actress in more ways than she suspected. Yet she wasn’t one of them, one of his, so he’d decided to forget her, as he had so many others. They were like bright coins of little value that he hadn’t bothered stooping to pick up.

  He closed his eyes and pushed all thoughts of the actress away, and lovely Lisa strode toward him across vistas like a high-fashion model on a celestial runway. She emerged from shadow into light and into focus. Staring inward, he marveled at her beauty.

  My God!

  Tears tracked down his stiffened cheeks. There was no need for the actress. Not if he had Lisa.

  He could see her clearly now in every detail. Such was the power of his mind to re-create beauty and essence. Lisa tucking in her chin and giving him a flirtatious look. Lisa smiling. Lisa whirling. Lisa complete.

  He rewound time and there she was, Lisa Ide, manager of the jewelry store she and her husband, Leon Holtzman, owned on West Forty-seventh Street. Lisa working behind the glittering showcases. Lisa in her kitchen, yellow, at the big white stove, hot grease smell, stretching and reaching to get something from the back of the refrigerator, white blue, doing dishes by hand, suds yellow rubber fingers, facing away from him, wearing the tight, tight black slacks he’d seen her in, her flesh, her flesh. She had her auburn hair swirled high and piled jauntily toward the back of her head, precisely the way she’d worn it when he’d watched her leave the jewelry store and stride along the crowded sidewalk.

  Fading…

  He raised the folded cloth to his face and inhaled, smiling but still crying.

  There she was! In focus, in color…

  He could dial in on her much faster now, the way he needed to, the way he needed her. Lisa Ide, with her bright blue eyes so widely spaced, ocean, and her wide mouth with its full lips, wet red, and slight overbite. Lisa Ide dining at the sidewalk café across from Lincoln Center with her husband Leon, raising her coffee cup to her mouth, pursing her lips so softly. A small woman but so complete, so perfect in so many ways. Her lushness, the endless and wonderful spectrum of her coloring. A man like Leon, a simple merchant whose work was his life, would never in a thousand years understand Lisa. He dealt in precious stones and yet was unaware of what was precious and so near him.

  A man like that deserved nothing but death.

  Yes, there was no doubt who was next. The Night Prowler could feel the fatal knowledge stirring in him like a thing aborning that would begin its rapid and relentless growth. It was barely potent now, harmless, but it would grow teeth and claws. And it would have its way.

  He pressed the folded cloth hard to his nose and inhaled deeply, but the benzene was losing its effect and he felt himself simply falling asleep.

  The buzzing, briefly, but fading away…

  And he dreamed, unable now to escape from her: Lisa standing in the bathtub, about to lower herself into the warm water. Lisa pausing nude on the stairs, like Picasso’s painting somehow unscrambled and made whole woman. Lisa watering flowers. Lisa in bed asleep and almost smiling. Lisa’s hair and eyes and flesh and lips and glance and smile…the music of her colors and her walk. Of her pain to be. Moana Lisa…

  He understood that destiny and dream were one.

  Detective Quinn, Lisa Ide. What I know and you don’t.

  Soon-to-be-famous Lisa.

  35

  Quinn awoke to the scent of coffee and frying bacon.

  He suddenly recalled last night—Pearl.

  Now she was in his kitchen preparing breakfast. Where had this domestic Pearl come from? For that matter, the Pearl she’d displayed last night had been quite a surprise.

  He climbed out of bed nude and trod heavily into the bathroom.

  “Quinn?” Pearl’s voice from the kitchen stopped him. Must have heard the floor creak.

  “Yeah?” His sleep-thickened voice came out as a growl. “Yes?” Better. Civilized.

  “You have time to shower and shave before breakfast.”

  “Uh-huh.” He continued on his way to the bathroom.

  When he was clean and shaven, he slicked back his wet hair, then returned to the bedroom and rummaged through his dresser drawers until he found an old robe he hadn’t worn in over a year. The gentleman in his dressing gown. He put on the robe but couldn’t locat
e his slippers, so he padded barefoot into the kitchen.

  Pearl was standing at the stove holding a spatula. She’d made a pass at combing her thick hair, but it was still flat where she’d slept on it. She was wearing the clothes she’d had on yesterday. They looked as if she’d been wearing them for a week. Her blouse had wrinkles that might never iron out. This was not a woman who looked as if she belonged in a kitchen, yet she had the table neatly set, crisp bacon already on plates, and eggs sizzling in a frying pan.

  “I thought you might want to go out for breakfast,” he said.

  The coffeemaker’s glass pot was full. Two clean cups sat nearby. He went over and poured himself a cup of the strong black brew. There was no cream in sight. How did she know I like my bacon crisp, my coffee black? She must have been observing all this time.

  Pearl was smiling at him. “Eating at home’ll be better.”

  Home? “What I thought,” Quinn said, “was we might have breakfast at the diner down the street, then take a walk. Maybe you could pick up some clothes at one of the shops near there.”

  She raised her eyebrows, puzzled. “Why would I want to buy clothes?”

  “Fedderman’ll be here sooner or later this morning. He’ll see you’re wearing the same clothes from yesterday. He’ll know you spent the night.”

  Careful…don’t break what happened last night like the eggs. “Makes no difference to me. Sunny-side up?”

  “Over well. It does make a difference to me.”

  “If that’s how you feel about it…. Break the yellow?”

  “No.”

  She used the spatula to slide one egg onto a plate with the bacon, then deftly flipped the egg remaining in the skillet.

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea, Pearl, advertising that we slept together.”

  She motioned with her head at the egg. “Hard enough?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fedderman left a message on my machine at home this morning. He said since I didn’t pick up, he assumes I left and took the subway here and we can meet later. He won’t be here for another hour. I’ll go out after breakfast and find something else to wear.” She transferred his egg from skillet to plate and grinned at him. “Not that Fedderman will be fooled.”