John Lutz - Darker Than Night

“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”

“Wanted to see if you’d think of it. If you’ve retained your old sharpness. I’ve seen cops get old fast, once they retire. And I gotta tell you, Quinn, it took you a while.”

“Just keep me informed on the silencer,” Quinn said, and pressed the button to disconnect.

He thought he heard Renz laughing as the phone went dead. Quinn almost hoped the silencer they were after had been smuggled in from another country.

Egan sat in his office feeling that everything was pretty much under control. He’d figured double murder faster than anyone predicted, with Nift’s help. Renz thought Nift was his man, but Nift was Nift’s man only and was hedging his bet on who’d be the next chief. The arrogant little ME called and told Egan right away that the knife found in the husband’s hand wasn’t the murder weapon. The blades were close, but they didn’t quite match the wounds.

The papers and TV had the story the next morning. Egan had seen to it. The New York media became frenetic and inflamed over few things more than a serial killer. Since both couples had been killed around three A.M., and the female victims had been of obvious erotic interest to the killer, the media dubbed him the Night Prowler.

Egan liked it. Leave it to the New York press. Now New Yorkers had a killer they knew by name-nickname, anyway. A killer they could visualize and hate and fear. A star in a city that fed on stars.

He leaned back in his desk chair and grinned at the way things were going. A nocturnal serial killer! Just what was needed to increase the pressure on Renz, Quinn, and that pocket-size bitch Pearl. Fedderman he saw as no problem.

Egan felt confident. This was the kind of fight he never lost.

The Night Prowler.

Okay, why not? He rather liked it.

“The Night Prowler” set his quarter-folded Times aside on the wrought iron table and smiled. He was having a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and a croissant at a West Side restaurant that had tables set up on the sidewalk outside. Someone driving past in the line of traffic was for some reason envious or offended by the smile and raised a middle finger at him, but he didn’t mind. His thoughts were elsewhere, in a very special place the driver would never visit in his paltry, miserable life.

His gaze fell again on the folded newspaper.

The Night Prowler.

Yes, he approved!

And he knew himself well enough to realize that soon the Night Prowler would have to satisfy his special needs. The buzzing would begin again, softly at first, the cacophony and energy of discordant colors. He knew who the next one should be, but she was unmarried and lived alone. And she was apparently without a lover.

Not his type, as the incredibly inept police profilers would say.

Then why does she call to me so in the night?

He should make sure about her. Definitely he should make sure.

His waiter came by and the Night Prowler pointed to the half-eaten croissant on his plate.

“I believe I’ll have another. They’re delicious.”

Why does she call to me so…?

It had rained lightly but persistently the morning of Raoul Caruso’s funeral, but by the time many of the mourners and family arrived at Anna’s father’s modest frame house in Queens, the sun was shining. Food-ravioli, salad, and chocolate-chip cookies-had been prepared there by a neighbor who’d been a good friend of Anna’s father.

Anna looked at the woman, a dark-eyed, onetime beautiful widow in her fifties who’d put on weight but was still attractive. She wondered if her father and his neighbor had had an affair. The woman, whose name was Lilitta, had certainly been deeply distressed at the funeral.

Anna’s father’s employer, a swarthy man named Stick, who looked cheap and disreputable even in his expensive suit, had stood next to her at the funeral but didn’t drive to the house afterward. Anna’s uncle Dale, her father’s brother and Melba’s father, whom she’d met only half a dozen times, came to the house. He was seated on the edge of the sofa with a paper plate full of ravioli balanced on his knee and listening to a woman Anna didn’t recognize, who was sitting next to him. Melba, who was fifteen and made ill by the funeral, was curled in a chair looking as if she wanted to cry and make her eyes even more red and puffy.

With eyes almost as red from crying as Melba’s, Anna’s mother approached Dale and whispered in his ear. Dale nodded, set his plate aside on a lamp table, and stood up. Anna watched them climb the stairs to the second floor. Lilitta, standing over by a big steel coffee urn, also saw them, and put down her foam cup and followed.

Anna hesitated, then followed Lilitta. As she took the stairs, she looked over and saw that Melba hadn’t noticed them and was seated with her head bowed and her eyes clenched shut, absently picking at a zit on her chin.

At the top of the stairs Anna heard voices and went to an open door at the end of the hall.

Her father’s bedroom.

The three of them were standing at the foot of the bed, talking calmly, but Lilitta seemed to be holding in anger as well as grief. Anna looked at the bed, at Lilitta, and wondered.

“It’s difficult but we oughta do it,” Dale was saying. “We’re family, and from what Raoul told me”-a glance at Lilitta-“almost family.”

Anna’s mother saw her and waved her in.

“We’re going to look through some of your father’s things,” she said, “and see what he might have wanted us to take to help us remember him. You should do this, too, Anna. It’s posterity.”

Anna wondered if the three of them were being sentimental, or actually looking for items of value. Either way, she couldn’t stop them, so she decided to play along.

Acting tentative and guilty, as if her father might still be alive, they began opening drawers. Dale went to the closet and yanked open its door, which was warped and stuck on the wood frame. He was about the same size as his late brother and began selectively removing clothes, a shirt, two pairs of slacks, a sport jacket.

“Isn’t it a little soon to be doing this?” Anna asked.

Lilitta smiled at her.

“We need to be realistic,” Anna’s mother said, looking up from the dresser drawer she was rooting through and shooting a glance at Dale.

Anna understood. Her mother feared that if given the opportunity, Dale would return to the house alone and confiscate anything of value.

Dale seemed oblivious of this as he held up the sport jacket to inspect it for wear or moth damage.

Anna’s mother removed a wooden box from one of the dresser drawers and placed it on the bed next to the folded slacks. She opened the box and began spreading jewelry out on the tufted white spread.

Anna could see at a glance that all of it was cheap; she recognized the steel Timex watch her father had always worn and sworn by. Lilitta picked up the watch and held it as lovingly as if it were a $20,000 Rolex.

While the other three were occupied by the jewelry on the bed, Anna went to the closet. On the top shelf were stacks of old Newsweek magazines, a dusty rotary-style phone, and a shoe box. Anna slid the shoe box down and opened it to find that it contained what looked like a new pair of jogging shoes. As she was returning the box to where she’d found it, she noticed an old wooden cigar box that had been behind it on the shelf.

When she reached for the cigar box, she found it surprisingly heavy. With a backward glance to make sure no one was paying attention to her, she stepped deeper into the closet and lifted the box’s lid. The scent of ancient tobacco wafted up to her.

Inside were about a dozen silver dollars with a thick rubber band around them to keep them in a neat stack, and a small revolver.