John Lutz - Night Victims

“You’re saying the killer somehow identifies with spiders?”

“Exactly. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to how or why, but it looks that way. And for that he needs familiarity with spiders. Like an entomologist.”

Horn sat back, studying her. It wasn’t just what she’d said but the way in which she’d said it. “You weren’t always a waitress, Marla.”

“Who was? I had a life before this.”

“What kind of life? You don’t look that old.”

She laughed. “The past is dead and gone. And I’m. . let’s just say in my early forties.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stray where I shouldn’t.”

“That’s okay. I understand. It’s the cop in you.”

“Marla-”

The bell over the door jingled, and she hurried toward the front of the diner to wait on a guy in a business suit mounting a stool at the counter.

Horn used his cell phone to contact Paula and Bickerstaff.

It was Bickerstaff who answered.

“You still interrogating Gary Schnick?” Horn asked.

“Paula’s in the room with him now. This guy didn’t do it. Two of his neighbors saw him arriving home last night a couple of hours before Redmond’s time of death. He doesn’t know that yet, though, so we’re letting him ramble.”

“He might have returned to her apartment later.”

“Could have, but I doubt it. Nothing in his apartment suggests he knows anything about climbing, and his hands are soft from years of pushing pencils and tickling tax returns. This character’s no more a mountain climber than I am. Doin’ it without Viagra’s the extent of his vertical challenge.”

“You press him hard?”

“We did. He had a rough night and looks about ready to fold. Paula’s easing up now. He didn’t even ask for an attorney for about two hours. Then he got some schmuck tax client of his that knows nothing about criminal law. I think they’re bartering, trading services so they can screw the IRS. We were about to release Schnick. His lawyer will be shocked.”

“You want to cross him off our list entirely?”

“Almost entirely. I know this guy’s telling the truth, and Paula feels the same way. This is not a hard case. He actually fainted when he knew we were gonna confront him about Redmond’s murder.”

“Before you uncage him,” Horn said, “have Paula find out if he knows anything about insects.”

“Incest?”

“Insects. Bugs.”

Bickerstaff was silent for a moment. “Like was he ever an exterminator?”

“Or a scientist. An entomologist or biologist.”

“We checked out his background,” Bickerstaff said. “Nothing like that in it. No sheet on him, degree in accounting, been a CPA for the last ten years. Course, there’s always hobbies. Maybe he had a butterfly or beetle collection. You know, one of those guys sticks pins through bugs to mount them on a display.”

“Yeah,” Horn said. “Find out about that. Make sure before you put him back on the street.”

“Will do,” Bickerstaff said before hanging up. “Bugs. .”

“Spiders,” Horn said into the dead phone.

As he slid the phone back in his pocket, he saw that Marla had finished waiting on the executive type at the counter and was returning to his booth, carrying the coffeepot as an excuse. She was eager to talk to him about this case. He wondered why.

The cop in him.

Arkansas, the Ozark Mountains, 1982

Seven years old and he was terrified.

But he was used to being frightened, existing with the living lump of fear in his stomach. There was no light or movement of air where he was, only heat and darkness. His mouth was dry, and the corners of his eyes stung with perspiration. Listening to the sounds coming from the other side of the locked closet door, he wondered why his mother did this. Did all mothers do it?

He understood some things from hearing his mother and father arguing, yelling and losing their tempers, like he did at times. Their faces would be red, their eyes bulging. Their mouths were ugly and shaped like the ones on the stone things he’d learned about in school, the gargoyles. They would scream at each other sometimes until they got too tired to go on. Did they feel as he did afterward, empty and lost? He thought they did.

He knew his mother had once been a snake handler in the name of God. At least that’s what his father had said. Both his father and mother said God a lot when they talked or yelled at each other. What a snake handler was, the boy didn’t know. It had to do with a special kind of church, he was once told by his father. He was then given a look that made it clear he wasn’t to ask about it again.

His father was away most of the time because he was in the army, leaving the boy in the care of his mother. She would beat him with one of his father’s belts at times when he was bad, which he deserved though it made him mad for long times. Teaching him respect, she would say, or sometimes shout, losing her temper. Teaching him respect. Respect in this world that was hard.

He wished the noise on the other side of the door would stop so he could be let out of the closet, so he could finally have something to eat. He wasn’t sure if his stomachache was from fear or from hunger.

Here were the spiders!

After a while in the dark closet they always came. He knew the place he lived was old and all by itself in the woods, and he’d heard his father say the rotted wood house was full of termites. That’s why it had so many spiders, they ate the termites. And there was no shortage of flies and roaches for them to feast on, according to his father.

Then why did they still bite?

The first spider was like the touch of a feather on his left arm. He knew better than to knock it off with his hand. The spiders could bite quickly.

He made himself lie still while the soft exploring tickling sensation traveled up his arm toward his shoulder. There was another tickle on his right ankle. His left arm. His cheek. His mouth was open wide but he knew what would happen if he screamed. So he screamed silently because he had to. He couldn’t be seen or heard in the dark closet.

Oww! A bite on his left arm. He made himself stay perfectly still. Painful experience had taught him that was his only defense. Lie still. Let the spiders have their way.

There was one on his right cheek. He hated it when they got near his eyes. It wasn’t a terrible sensation, more like somebody slowly dragging a piece of thread across his flesh, but he didn’t like to think about being bitten in the eye. He did take the risk of clenching his eyes tightly shut. Then he closed his mouth and gritted his teeth, protecting his tongue.

More tickling on his chest and stomach. He wished he was wearing more than his underpants. Lying on his side on the bare wood floor, he wanted to curl up, to sob. But he knew he couldn’t risk crying. It made his body shake. Made them bite. Very slowly he allowed his knees to draw up. He couldn’t help trying to make himself smaller-small as a spider-so he could crawl right out through the crack of dim light beneath the door.

He told himself it wasn’t all that bad, the slight tickling all over his body. He told himself it could even feel good. He was getting used to it and so were the spiders. They didn’t bite him so many times now.

But he knew they might if he moved suddenly, or if he didn’t. He knew they might.

“In the name of our Lord!” shouted his mother’s voice from outside the dark closet.

The spiders were still.

“Amen in the name of the Lord of the earth!” shouted the people who were out there with his mother. Her flock, she called them.

“Praise be it, the poor shall inherit the earth, and after them the animals and then the smallest of the Lord’s earth, the kings of heaven!” The boy listened. What did it all mean?