Darker Than Night

by John Lutz

  It was past three A.M. when the Night Prowler had left Claire. He’d felt secure standing at the foot of her bed, knowing that if he chose to stay, he’d be alone with her until dawn. As I would be if I chose to wake her.

  Not yet, not yet….

  So he’d left. He was surprised when he’d crossed the street and happened to see Jubal striding toward the apartment building.

  You’re supposed to be somewhere else.

  But here he was. Handsome young would-be celebrity, moving confidently and with a preoccupied air about him, almost floating down the street, a parade all by himself. Nicely cut suit, tie loosened and askew, hair mussed in a carefully arranged manner, as if he suspected there might be cameras about and wanted to convey a candid flattering moment. Always on; that was the rule. Practicing for greater fame and the fortune that must accompany it.

  Jubal Day. Home to Claire!

  Must have taken a late flight. Cheaper, or the only seat available. Jubal was carrying no luggage. Traveling light. And why not? I’ve seen your closet; you have a wardrobe here. It’s waiting for you. Like Claire.

  Like me.

  “Thanks for the mints,” Claire said. She’d gotten up early and decided to let Jubal sleep. Then, when she’d gone into the living room after getting the coffee brewer going, she noticed the two green boxes of chocolate mints on the table. Her favorite candy. Jubal must have bought them for her on the way home. It was so thoughtful and loving of him. She wouldn’t tell him she’d experienced one of her sudden cravings and consumed an entire box of the mints only last night.

  Barefoot and shirtless, he stood staring at her, puzzled. “Mints?”

  She grinned. He was an actor, all right. And if he wanted to play it this way, that was fine. She went to him and kissed him, standing close while he held her. “Never mind. Want some coffee?”

  “Can’t think of anything I want more.”

  “I should be insulted.”

  “Don’t be. I didn’t mean—”

  She laughed. “You’re still half-asleep. When did you get in?”

  “About three.”

  Claire glanced at a wall clock. “It’s not even nine o’clock. Go back to bed, darling, and have your coffee later.”

  “Can’t. Audition at ten. That’s why I set the alarm.”

  “I didn’t hear the alarm.”

  “My watch.”

  “I didn’t even know your watch had an alarm.”

  Jubal’s heart jumped. It was the watch Dalia had given him. He’d forgotten to exchange it with his old one before leaving Chicago.

  He went to Claire and kissed her. “Every watch these days has an alarm.” He walked into the kitchen and she followed.

  “Technology,” she said. “I can’t keep up.”

  “Coffee,” he said. “And you keep up just fine. The way things are, nobody can know everything.”

  He poured his coffee, careful to stand so the watch wasn’t visible, making it all look so natural, knowing in his bones she was buying into it.

  How can anyone who isn’t an actor cheat on his wife?

  The damned photograph was still everywhere, opening old wounds. The Night Prowler had avoided the newspapers and TV for a while, thinking the media mania would subside, or at least go off on a tangent. There was, after all, other news.

  But when he’d turned on the TV yesterday, there was a cop in a suit talking to Kay Kemper about the Night Prowler murders, about how the police were getting closer all the time and it wouldn’t be long before an arrest was made. And on the street this morning there was the photograph again, staring from one of the twine-tied stacks of tabloid papers aligned before a kiosk.

  It was that bastard Quinn’s fault. He was behind the photograph, the demeaning, humiliating news releases, the increasing pressure, everything. Quinn. He was like something out of legend that never stopped, that couldn’t be stopped. It made the Night Prowler furious that he couldn’t help admiring Quinn even as he loathed him.

  Quinn!

  The Night Prowler bolted from his chair with the force of his impulse.

  No, not impulse, thought! Idea. Strategy.

  He put on his new NYPD cap he’d bought in a Times Square souvenir shop (irony-dripping blue), his amber sunglasses, and went outside and down the street to a subway stop. Not the nearest stop; he wasn’t that foolish.

  The morning rush was almost over, but there were still twenty-five or thirty people waiting for the next train. No one seemed to be paying much attention to him, staring instead into the dark tunnel in anticipation of the train, or at the littered concrete floor, or down into the shadowed trench where the third rail lay and the gray rats roamed. Fear and the city. He was thankful for subway etiquette.

  After riding the subway to the Fifity-third and Lex station, far enough from his apartment, he found a public phone near the Citigroup Building. He already knew the number. Had it memorized. Because he’d been considering this not only this morning, but for the past several days. Working out what to say, how to say it, how to be taken seriously.

  If they didn’t put him on hold and forget him.

  Two can waltz with the New York media. Two can use them, the rabid, hypocritical creatures who gorge on other people’s grief, then vomit it through mindless smiles and call it news. Two can feel the rhythm and do this destructive, deadly dance of ruination, of blackness and red.

  Blackness and red, crimson to black…

  He punched out the phone number, waited, then told a woman on the other end of the connection he had vitally important information for Kay Kemper.

  Who was he?

  “I’m sorry, I can’t reveal that because I fear the consequences. All you have to know is I’m a former New York cop who was high in the department. I have tremendous respect for Kay Kemper. She’s the only one I’ll trust. I’m afraid to talk to anyone else. She can judge the veracity of my information.”

  Afraid of nothing!

  After only a moment’s hesitation, the woman transferred his call.

  The world belonged to the bold.

  58

  Quinn was tired and felt old. Along with Pearl and Fedderman, he’d spent much of the day talking to tradesmen on the decorators’ lists who’d done work the past year in the murder apartments and were known to have their own key-making machines.

  There weren’t that many, but it had taken a while to identify and then find them. First the detectives asked the tradesmen themselves if they had the machines, then asked them about other tradesmen. Checking, cross-checking, not turning up a lie. As it turned out, not that many carpenters, painters, or plumbers also made or duplicated keys.

  When they’d finished going down the list, it seemed they’d pursued another ghost of a lead. It wasn’t that Pearl’s idea was a bad one; it was just that there was no way to be sure one of the tradesmen didn’t possess a key-making machine and the skill to use it and had managed to keep the capability a secret. As well he might, if he were the Night Prowler.

  They’d had dinner at a place on the West Side called Placebo, and stayed there over coffee until almost seven o’clock, commiserating with each other over how the investigation was going. When they went outside, they found that while the sun was low, the evening seemed just as hot and humid as the day had been.

  Rush hour traffic had died down when Pearl and Quinn dropped Fedderman back where he’d left his car on Central Park West near Eighty-seventh, the nearest parking space he’d been able to find. It was only a few blocks away, but the overheated and exhausted Fedderman didn’t feel like doing more walking and they didn’t blame him. He lurched like one of the undead in a baggy suit toward his car, opened the door, and dropped in behind the steering wheel.

  After watching Fedderman drive away, Pearl pulled the unmarked back into traffic and headed for Quinn’s apartment.

  Pearl said, “Idiot!” as she yanked at the steering wheel to avoid hitting a house-size SUV crossing the intersection.

  She’d been
the one who jumped the light, but Quinn said nothing. He became aware that his right foot was pressing against the car’s floor on the passenger side, as if there were a brake pedal there. He made himself relax—somewhat. Sometimes he thought it would be a miracle if he lived through this investigation.

  A cell phone chirped and he blanched at the thought of Pearl driving and talking on the phone simultaneously. Then he realized it was his own phone.

  He dug it out of his pocket and answered.

  “Quinn?” Harley Renz’s voice.

  “Yeah. It was my number you called.”

  “So what’s this latest bullshit?”

  “I guess I’m gonna have to ask you the same question.”

  “Kay Kemper.”

  “You mean your interview with her?”

  “I mean the story about you and those other teenage kids.”

  Other teenage kids? “Tell me what this is about, Harley.”

  “You don’t know? Sure you don’t. On her six o’clock news report Kemper reported that a reputable anonymous source informed her you mighta molested other kids besides Anna Caruso. She said others in the NYPD had confirmed there were rumors to that effect at the time of the Caruso rape.”

  “Others? You mean somebody in the NYPD is dishing out this crap?”

  “My impression is her primary source was a former cop, but she didn’t come right out and say that.”

  “Egan. It has to be Egan, or one of his flunkies.”

  “If Egan didn’t dream up the idea, he’ll sure take to it, and he’ll try using it against us. So, is it true?”

  Quinn was glad they weren’t having this conversation face-to-face; he might have grabbed Renz by the neck and squeezed. “It’s as true as the Anna Caruso story.”

  That didn’t seem to be what Renz wanted to hear. Instead of saying anything immediately, he made a soft wheezing sound, as if breathing through a stopped-up nose. “Well, in a way it doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters a hell of a lot to me.”

  “Sure it does. What I mean is, the media’s already playing you off against Anna Caruso. Now these rumors, true or not, lend more credibility to her story.”

  “If there really are rumors, whoever’s spreading them can’t come up with a complainant or a witness, Harley, because these molested girls they’re talking about don’t exist and never did.”

  “Jesus, Quinn, Anna Caruso identified you.”

  Quinn was silent for a long time, barely noticing when Pearl missed a startled pedestrian by inches. “So where’s this leave us, Harley?”

  “I said when you started that you had a short shelf life, Quinn. It just got shorter.”

  “I’m telling you—”

  But Renz had hung up.

  Quinn broke his end of the connection and slid the phone back in his pocket.

  “So what was that all about?” Pearl asked, glancing over at him as the car struck a pothole hard enough to cause one of the sun visors to flip down.

  He told her.

  She didn’t ask him if the new accusations were true. He appreciated that.

  “The assumption is that the source is a former New York cop,” Quinn said.

  “Genuine anonymous sources,” Pearl said, “usually try staying as anonymous as possible.”

  Quinn sat and watched her drive. “Meaning?”

  “Maybe the source isn’t NYPD. The informer might have wanted Kay Kemper to think so because it would lend credibility to his lies.”

  A white work van cut off Pearl as she slowed to take a corner. She honked the horn and the driver glared at her and raised his middle finger. Pearl sat quietly, as if she hadn’t seen.

  It was a possibility, Quinn thought. “The most likely source would be the Night Prowler himself.”

  “Sure. You’re getting under his skin. He had to do something to get back at you, so he used Kay Kemper. It all fits. And it’s the way assholes like that operate.”

  “The Night Prowler—”

  “I meant Kemper. She probably knows the story’s bullshit, but she’ll do anything for ratings.”

  “He must be getting frustrated, to pull something like this.”

  “That’s the idea, isn’t it?” Pearl said. “We want him frustrated. We break the fucker so he messes up, and we nail him.”

  The white van hadn’t moved after cutting off Pearl. She leaned on the horn and the driver, a guy in a dark shirt with a cap set way back on his head, repeated his obscene gesture.

  Pearl lowered her window and waved her shield around. “I’m a cop! Move that van now, shit for brains, or I’ll arrest you for vehicular stupidity!”

  Watching the van driver maneuver his big vehicle out of the way by putting two wheels up on the sidewalk, Quinn thought again that Pearl was some item.

  “He has a lotta nerve, that stewhead!” The car shot forward and Quinn noticed his foot was mashing down again on his nonexistent brake pedal.

  “Guy’s probably tired and on his way home from work,” he said.

  “Not the van driver, the Night Prowler.”

  Quinn sat back and closed his eyes. Pearl…

  “I’m staying over with you tonight,” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You need me, so it’s settled.”

  She was so right. And she still hadn’t asked if the rumors about him were true.

  Pearl.

  There was still enough daylight to see to shoot. The setting sun had turned the horizon, barely visible beyond a dark row of trees and distant buildings, a vivid burned orange threaded with gray.

  The Night Prowler was standing on the slope of an abandoned quarry outside Newark, New Jersey, where many amateur target shooters, not to mention rat hunters, went to sharpen their aim. He was the only one left in the orange-tinted, failing light, but still he sighted in carefully on bent tin cans or beer or wine bottles protruding from the landfill near the base of the quarry.

  He stared intently over the sight of his handgun, squeezed the trigger gently, and saw a slight puff of dust as the bullet struck a yard to the side of what looked from this distant like a pound coffee can.

  Not good enough!

  He had to improve! Had to learn to shoot for distance. And he was lucky enough to have the handgun; he couldn’t risk buying or stealing a rifle, as difficult as they were to conceal. And using one would be a problem, anyway. Long guns were, let’s face it, noticeable. New York wasn’t Wyoming.

  It amazed the Night Prowler how swiftly Quinn had struck back. Tit for tat, this for that, death for that. He squeezed off another shot. Closer. It seemed that Kay Kemper had no sooner mentioned on TV the rumors of more child molestations by Quinn, than Victory called and told the Night Prowler he’d learned of a woman cop—Detective Pearl, no doubt—asking about key reproductions. The hardware store where she’d been making her inquiries was not only in Victory’s neighborhood, it was also in the Night Prowler’s, and only a few blocks from his apartment.

  Drab gray officialdom in my personal territory! Intolerable!

  So, the law was concentrating now on who might have had keys to the murder apartments. No problem, so far. But it was only a matter of time before they learned he had a portable machine for setting locks and cutting keys. And he’d done work in all the apartments where the murders occurred.

  Only a matter of time. In-fucking-tolerable!

  Another shot.

  Another miss.

  At least the phone call to Kay Kemper had gone as the Night Prowler expected. She’d been interested and tried to pump him for more information about himself. But he’d sold her on the idea that he was a former cop, and he was afraid for his life if it became known he’d turned snitch on the NYPD. He had a pension and a sick wife to consider. Kay Kemper had bought it, true blue, probably because she wanted so much to believe him, wanted the story.

  And as the Night Prowler had suspected, Quinn’s enemies in the NYPD took the opportunity to stick more barbs into him. Yes, they’d h
eard the rumors, they said anonymously. No fire, but a sky full of smoke. No proof, but then there hadn’t been any lock-tight proof in the Anna Caruso case, and everyone in the NYPD knew who’d committed that crime. Everyone in the city.

  The Night Prowler smiled, aimed, shot.

  Another miss.

  Smile became frown.

  Is Quinn impossible to kill? Is that what the message is here? Is Quinn being favored by fate?

  There! Something!

  The Night Prowler had glimpsed movement about twenty feet away, where there was a low mound of what looked like cinders and assorted trash someone had dumped. It had been there awhile. The labels on cans and bottles were faded, and even in the dying light swarms of flies were visible droning around the base of the mound.

  But something other than insects had moved. The Night Prowler was sure of it.

  He crept closer, holding the gun before him in both hands, like cops on countless TV shows.

  And there was the movement again!

  A rat?

  No, an ordinary squirrel.

  The Night Prowler aimed, fired, and the squirrel leaped into the air violently as if electrified, then dropped to the trash pile dead.

  Blood makes the difference! Shooting for real. The blood!

  He walked over and looked down at the gray and the red that was the squirrel, the glimpse of white that was the purity of bone. Most of the animal’s head was missing.

  Fate was no longer something to fear. Neither was time. Death was an ally. The Night Prowler’s luck had changed.

  And Quinn’s.

  “Bad luck, I’m afraid,” said the voice in Jubal Day’s ear.

  Jubal was in the living room, on his cell phone. He’d just returned from reading for the role in West Side Buddies at a small studio on West Forty-fourth Street. He and the producer and Jubal’s agent had gone out for drinks afterward. There were two more auditions to be held, they said, two more candidates for the role. If neither of them made the grade, then Jubal looked good for the part. His world was opening before him. His career was about to be launched big time. If only—

  “Jubal, did you hear?”