Darker Than Night

by John Lutz

  Stress.

  He could feel the word even as he thought it. Could feel it insinuating itself throughout mind and body. He knew he had to hold stress at bay so he could function at the high level he demanded. That his mission demanded.

  Benzene.

  But lately the fumes that had carried him to a placid and advanced mental state hadn’t worked their magic as quickly or as well. The body adapted to everything eventually; the Night Prowler knew that.

  But he had to do something to relieve his stress. And soon.

  Knowing Quinn was dead would help immensely. Would change the world.

  But right now he looked down and saw that his hands were trembling in his lap.

  The train lurched and slowed and light crept in at the edges outside the dark windows.

  His stop.

  Almost home.

  Alice Fedderman took the news like a cop’s good and faithful wife, stricken with worry but with a calmness about her.

  She’d been expecting this for years. Any phone call, long ago and long forgotten, might have brought her the same news. And now here it was.

  But not as bad as it might have been. That was the kind of thing you told yourself, that you grabbed hold of and clung to at a time like this.

  Her husband was alive.

  She was on her way to the hospital and not the morgue.

  60

  Because of the incompatibility of cell phones and hospitals, Quinn had used a pay phone near the waiting area to call Alice. He’d noticed while talking that his heart rate had picked up again.

  He hadn’t thought about his heart during the action at the park until Pearl cautioned him. It had slowed its rhythm and seemed normal since he’d arrived at the hospital. But maybe talking to Alice Fedderman was more of a strain than he’d imagined.

  May had waited for phone calls like the one to Alice. So would Pearl, but in a different way, because she was a cop herself.

  And I’ll be waiting.

  There was a thought that sobered him.

  When he returned to the waiting area, a spacious, carpeted alcove off the main hall, a tall, redheaded doctor, wearing wrinkled green scrubs, was talking to Pearl.

  When Quinn joined them, the man identified himself as Doctor Murphy. He had about him a sharp scent that might have been medicinal or simply an agent in soap.

  Pearl, sitting slumped in one of the carefully arranged gray chairs, said, “Fedderman’s going to be okay.”

  Quinn had thought that would be the word, but still he was relieved. “His arm…”

  “The bone was nicked,” Dr. Murphy said. A green surgical mask dangled high on his chest like some kind of neck-wear he’d loosened. “Most of the damage was done to soft tissue. The bullet appeared to have struck something and was flattened before it hit him, or it might have penetrated the bicep and gone into his side. As it is, his arm will be in a cast for about six weeks. Then, with therapy, he’ll be able to recover ninety percent of previous mobility.”

  “What in the movies they call a flesh wound?” Pearl asked.

  The doctor looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

  “A car window,” Quinn said. “That’s what the bullet went through before it hit him.”

  “He’s lucky the window wasn’t down. Detective Fedderman is still under anesthetic and will be a while in the recovery room.”

  “His wife’s on the way here.”

  Doctor Murphy smiled. “She won’t mind the news, considering how bad it could have been. I’ll instruct the nurses to inform me when she arrives.” He nodded to both of them and stalked back to the hall and through wide swinging doors, which hissed open at his approach.

  “Egan’s on his way here, too,” Quinn said.

  Pearl snorted. “Tell me it’s because he’s injured.”

  “Pissed off is what he sounded like.”

  “Well, he’ll cheer up when he sees me.”

  “He doesn’t have to know you’re here.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  Quinn sighed. “Listen, Pearl—”

  “I’m thirsty.” She stood up and strode toward a drinking fountain in the hall near the phone Quinn had used, a woman beyond reason.

  Quinn sat down, leaned back, and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. All things considered, he didn’t feel so bad about this evening. The essential news was good: no one had been killed, and Fedderman would be his old self once his arm healed.

  Yawning, Quinn reached over to a lamp table and picked up the only magazine, a dog-eared People. Jennifer Lopez worked hard to keep in shape. There was scandalous news about a distant Kennedy relative. Sean Penn was acting up again. A new movie was going to star the winner of a cable TV talent hunt show. This he learned just from the cover.

  “Getting educated?”

  Quinn looked up to see the blocky, muscular form of Captain Vincent Egan. He was surprised to see that Egan was wearing a tuxedo, his face flushed above the tight collar and white tie.

  “On your way to the prom?” Quinn asked.

  “On my way to a banquet at the Hyatt, as a matter of fact. Where I’m going to see the commissioner, where maybe a lowlife like you might find part-time work next year serving the haut monde.”

  “There’s fish on the menu?”

  “Be as much of a smart-ass as you want, Quinn. I won’t have to put up with you much longer. I’m gonna recommend at the banquet that you be taken off the Night Prowler case. It’s beginning to look bad for the department, setting a serial child molester to catch a serial killer.”

  Quinn felt himself getting angry and tried to control it. What Egan wanted more than anything was for him to stand up and lose his temper, take a swing at him as Pearl had done. Pearl. He caught sight of her down the hall, talking on the pay phone, and hoped she’d have sense enough to stay away until Egan was gone.

  “What I came here for,” Egan said, “was to see if you had anything to say that would lead me to believe you were any closer to the Night Prowler.”

  Covering your ass. “I’d say we were pretty close to each other a few hours ago.”

  “That’s true. When he unfortunately missed who he must’ve been aiming at. But that’s not quite the kind of close I had in mind. Out of fairness, I stopped by to give you one last chance to come up with something positive that suggested progress.”

  “That’ll be your story, anyway.”

  Egan pulled a cigar from his pocket and fired it up with a lighter. The hell with hospital rules. And New York rules that said you couldn’t smoke anyplace other than inside your house or apartment and within five feet of an ashtray and exhaust fan. “That’ll be my story,” he confirmed, and blew an imperfect smoke ring.

  He turned and swaggered away, not an easy thing to do in a tuxedo, and it took all the willpower Quinn had to remain in his chair. He hadn’t budged through the entire encounter with Egan.

  A nurse said something to Egan, no doubt about the cigar. Egan blew smoke her way and didn’t break stride.

  He did break stride when he saw Pearl.

  Now Quinn stood up. Don’t be stupid, Pearl, please!

  Pearl walked toward Egan, smiling. Quinn had seen that smile. No, no…

  She leaned toward the surprised Egan and whispered something in his ear. Then she walked away, toward Quinn.

  Egan stared after her and seemed to puff up with rage. His flushed face glowed like red neon above the pristine whiteness of his formal shirt and tie.

  Quinn thought surely Egan was going to come after Pearl. Instead he whirled and trod swiftly down the hall, then stamped around the corner as if trying to crack walnuts with every step.

  “What did you say to him?” Quinn asked Pearl.

  “That you were my fella and he better get off your ass. That you had a health problem, and if anything happened to you, I’d hold him personally responsible.”

  “I sincerely doubt that’ll help matters,” Quinn said, and told her about his conversation with Egan.
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  Pearl seemed unimpressed.

  “It’ll help,” she said.

  Quinn didn’t feel like arguing. He wasn’t sure he believed Pearl, but whatever she’d whispered made Egan seem almost to explode, and that was all to the good.

  Besides, here came an angry, frightened Alice Fedderman, charging down the hall toward them at a run.

  61

  Unlike Dr. Rita Maxwell, who leaned toward earth tones, Dr. Jeri Janess favored green. Her office was furnished mostly in shades of green. It was a restful color and many psychoanalysts made it the basis of their decor.

  The office wasn’t as plush as Dr. Maxwell’s. It was on Second Avenue near the turnoff to the Queensboro Bridge. An air conditioner, taller than it was wide, hummed smoothly in one of the casement windows, softly overwhelming any sound that might filter into the office from the street nine stories below. Dr. Janess wanted to avoid the stereotypical setting for analysis, so there was no couch. Other than her desk chair, there were only two extremely comfortable leather armchairs, both green leather with brown piping.

  Dr. Janess sat now in one of the chairs across from her new patient, Arthur Harris, and continued sizing him up, looking and listening for clues. She was sure she’d heard his name somewhere before. He was well dressed, and in many ways average-looking. You’d make a great spy, Mr. Harris. There was his mustache, which was darker than his hair, and she suspected it was false. His wire-rimmed glasses looked like cheap drugstore frames, and if they weren’t clear glass, the lenses were incredibly weak.

  Jeri Janess was an attractive African American who’d spent her formative years in a rough section of Harlem as one of six children raised by their mother. She’d listened to her father’s bullshit on the rare occasions when he visited. Listened to her brothers justify behavior that had gotten two of them shot and another beaten so badly he was in a wheel-chair for life. Listened to the lines of her uncle and the neighborhood creeps who tried to get into her pants from the time she was thirteen. And she’d watched her mother taken in by her father. Watched one of her sisters marry at sixteen, then turn to drugs and hang herself in a neighboring vacant apartment. It all made Jeri want to learn why people behaved that way.

  And she had learned.

  Arthur Harris, my ass.

  But it wasn’t unusual for new patients to be coy about their identity. At least Harris hadn’t told her he was there because “a friend” had a problem. Dr. Janess decided to play along with the lie for a while. Eventually she’d find out everything she needed to know about Arthur Harris, what was bedeviling him and why, and perhaps how she could help him.

  “How would you describe this tension and restlessness you mentioned?” she asked.

  “It’s like something expanding under my skin, squeezing me in at the same time it’s pressuring me so I might explode.”

  “Like a secret that needs to get out?”

  He stared at her. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Yes, like a secret, buzzing inside me. And if I confessed it, I’d relieve all the pressure. The tension would go away. Only I don’t know the secret myself!”

  Obviously, you’ve read Freud. “Perhaps we can find it out together. When you have more confidence in yourself and in me.”

  He put on a shy act, lowering his gaze. “Maybe someday I will have that confidence, Dr. Janess.”

  “You and I both need to work on it, and it will happen.”

  “I believe you.”

  I don’t believe you. Not yet. “Would this problem be about women, Arthur?” she asked with sudden directness. An ambush.

  The shyness lifted from his features. “If you’re a man, everything’s about women. So the answer’s yes and no.”

  “That’s how most men feel about women,” Dr. Janess said, smiling to let him know she was joking and their appointment time was up.

  It wasn’t until several hours after Harris had left that she remembered where she might have heard the name. In a college history class years ago, or more recently watching a documentary on television.

  She sat at her computer and went online to Google “Arthur Harris” and make sure.

  Her memory was correct. Arthur “Bomber” Harris, sometimes referred to as “Butcher” by his countrymen, was the British vice air marshal who’d enthusiastically overseen the RAF’s carpet bombing of German cities and the deaths of thousands of civilians during World War II.

  Of course it was a common enough name, and it could be coincidental that her new patient had it.

  But she doubted it. Considering his behavior and obvious prevarication, she was sure he’d simply recalled the name as she had and borrowed it.

  The first piece of the puzzle. Now she was determined to learn more about her Arthur Harris, and about this pressure he described. And she had something to work with. Maybe she’d ask him if he was aware he had a historical name, see how he’d react.

  Dr. Janess signed off her Internet service, sat back, and smiled.

  Arthur Harris, you and I are going to get to know one another sooner than you think, and better than you think.

  Quinn called Harley Renz from his apartment at eight the next morning, using the kitchen phone so he wouldn’t wake Pearl. When he’d left her in the cool breeze from the air conditioner, she’d been sleeping soundly, something not to be prodded.

  “Has Egan talked to you?” Quinn asked when Renz answered his cell phone.

  “No.” Renz seemed puzzled. “Was he supposed to?”

  Quinn told him about Egan coming to the hospital after Fedderman was shot.

  “I haven’t heard anything about you being yanked off the case,” Renz said. “That’s supposed to be up to me. And if Egan mentioned it to the chief or commissioner at the Citizens Award Banquet, I’d know about it by now. Probably would’ve learned about it before the banquet was over.”

  “What do you think stirred him up so that he came by the hospital and made that kind of threat?”

  “Like all predators, he sensed weakness and saw opportunity. A cop was shot and civilian lives were threatened. It looked like your lack of progress was starting to endanger people. And you know what, it looks that way to me, too.”

  “But I’m all you’ve got, Harley, and we both know I’m getting closer. Old cops like us can feel it when a case is coming to a head. The Night Prowler can feel it, too. That’s why he shot at the car.”

  “Shot at you, you mean.”

  “Probably. Are you warning me to be more careful?”

  “I’m remembering what you said about being all I’ve got.”

  “I still don’t see why Egan would spout off to me at the hospital, then go to the banquet and stay mum.” Quinn had decided not to mention to Renz that Pearl whispered something in Egan’s ear that almost made him launch like a rocket.

  “Obviously, he changed his mind. But he might not keep it changed for long. Here’s another piece of information for you, one Egan doesn’t have and won’t for another two or three hours. I had my contact in ballistics run another quick comparison for me. The bullet that was dug out of Fedderman’s arm isn’t from the gun that was used to take a shot at you outside the florist shop on First Avenue.”

  “So Lunt watches cop shows on TV and knows about ballistics tests, so he ditched the First Avenue gun. He’s not stupid.”

  “He’s not that.”

  Quinn watched a small cockroach wander into a patch of morning sunlight on the kitchen floor near the window and stagger toward the wooden molding. It reminded him of Egan. It reminded him of his life the last few years—trying to escape the light.

  “You still there, Quinn?”

  “Yeah.” The roach flattened itself and disappeared in the shadowed space between molding and floor. With the rehabbing and so many vacant apartments in the building, it was impossible to get rid of all the roaches, no matter how much insecticide was sprayed around.

  “Quinn?”

  “Fedderman’s okay, by the way. I tell you because I’m sure you were going to
ask.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Renz said. “I already called the hospital this morning and they let me talk to Fedderman. He’s gonna be released this afternoon with his arm in a cast. And he wants to keep working the case.”

  “He shouldn’t.”

  “That’s what Alice says.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said, sure he could work the case, no matter what his wife says. Let the two of ’em fight it out.”

  Quinn started to tell Renz what a jerk-off he was, but he realized Renz had hung up.

  Quinn did the same, and looked over and saw Pearl standing in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes were puffy, her hair was a mess, and she was wearing only Quinn’s oversize T-shirt that she’d slept in. He thought she looked beautiful in the morning sun that illuminated her half of the kitchen. He forgot about the cockroach and how bad life had seemed a few minutes ago.

  “Who were you talking to?” she asked.

  “The hospital. Fedderman’s being released this afternoon.”

  “Great! He can go home and sit on his ass and eat chicken soup for a while.”

  “He’s gonna keep working the case, unless Alice wraps him in duct tape to stop him.”

  “Duct tape. We haven’t tried that.”

  “Pearl, get dressed.”

  “Like you are?”

  Quinn realized he was sitting at the kitchen table in nothing but his Jockey shorts.

  “We don’t have to meet Fedderman at the bench this morning,” Pearl reminded him.

  “True. Let’s go out and get some breakfast, read the paper.”

  “I’m not hungry. And we pretty much know what’s in the paper.”

  “Pearl—”

  “There’s no reason we can’t go back to bed for a while. We’re undressed for it.”

  She had him there.

  Claire woke up craving chocolate.

  Her unreasonable and overwhelming physical cravings during pregnancy made her uneasy. They were so unnatural, so unlike her, that they reminded her of the profundity of what must be happening inside her body and mind. To be so at the mercy of one’s nature, one’s hormones, was unnerving. If she had to, no matter what, have chocolate on waking in the morning, what other irresistible urges might compel her?