John Lutz - Darker Than Night

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.

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.