John Lutz - Darker Than Night

“Jubal, you’re all we’ve got, my man. No troops in reserve. You’ve gotta do this!”

“I will, Don. Don’t sweat it. I still have time to catch a flight out tonight.”

“You’re a prince, Jubal. I owe you a piece of the kingdom.”

“Careful, Don, I might claim it one of these days.”

“Hey, that’s how it works.”

“When it works. I’ll be at the theater tomorrow morning, I promise.”

“Early?”

“Before you get there, Don.”

“I doubt it. I don’t do much sleeping lately.”

“You can sleep well tonight,” Jubal said, and hung up.

Now what?

Claire was in the kitchen puttering around, trying to decide if she was hungry. She wasn’t going to like Jubal dropping in for a few days, then streaking back to Chicago. Jubal didn’t like it himself.

But then there was Dalia.

Jubal realized he had something to do before he told Claire he was packing and leaving within an hour. While she was busy in the kitchen, he went into the bedroom so he could retrieve the necklace he’d bought for Dalia. He’d concealed it well by taping it to the outside of the back of one of the dresser drawers. The drawer would have to be completely removed before the necklace was visible.

He was reaching to remove the drawer when-

“Jubal.”

Claire’s voice spun him around.

She was standing in the doorway, smiling. “Scare you?”

Almost to death. “No, not at all.” He grinned. “I was just about to start packing.”

Her smile disappeared. “For what?”

He told her about Henson’s phone call.

“What about West Side Buddies?”

“I don’t think it should make any difference.”

Claire looked disappointed, even for some reason afraid.

He tried to lighten the mood. “I don’t feel like cabbing back to the airport and jumping on a plane again, but it’s nice to be needed.”

She came to him, moving more heavily in her pregnancy, and kissed him on the lips. “Now more than ever.” When she pulled away, she said, “How soon do you have to leave?”

“Within an hour at most. I’ll grab something to eat at the airport.” He extended his hands, palms out, a gesture he’d practiced before a mirror: Nothing I can do about this, and I’d move heaven and earth if I could change it. “I’m really and deeply sorry about this, hon.”

“I know,” she said, biting her lower lip but not crying, not crying. “I’ll help you pack.”

Jubal decided Dalia would have to wait for her necklace.

There was no choice, as with so much else in this world. Women. The way they got beneath your skin and into your blood; they ran like a chemical in your veins.

Women were a problem.

“You’re telling me,” Harley Renz said the next evening on the phone to Quinn, “that you’ve got nada times nada.”

“So far,” Quinn admitted. He was sitting in the heat on the bench inside the Eighty-sixth Street entrance to the park, waiting for Pearl and Fedderman. The bench was in the shade, but that didn’t help much, hot and muggy as it was today. “We’re not a helluva lot closer than we were last week.”

“Last week when you were shot at?”

Renz rubbing it in. “That week,” Quinn said. He’d been there awhile and wondered if his rear end might be welded to the hard slats of the bench.

“Listen, Quinn, my sources tell me there’s another TV feature on Anna Caruso in the works, this one by Kay Kemper. She’s making this her story.”

“Anna Caruso’s?”

“Kay Kemper’s. She cares not at all about Anna except that the kid means ratings. You mighta noticed, local news in this city is a competitive business. The thing is, whenever Anna’s sweet young face appears on television, you look more and more like the villain in the piece. Especially with your rugged bad looks. Especially now that the rumor is you’re a serial child molester. There are voices telling me to yank you off the streets, Quinn.”

“Arrest me?”

“Of course not. Not without proof. But lots of people in the department and at City Hall would like to see you run over by a cab and no longer be a problem. Pressure keeps building, Quinn, on me, on you-”

“And on the Night Prowler. He’d love to see you take me off the case. He’s probably the one who planted the child molestation story with Kay Kemper.”

“Maybe. But don’t bet against Egan.”

“Point. Where we going with this, Harley?”

“Nowhere, faster and faster. That’s the fucking problem. It’s a matter of days, and you’re gonna be gone. I’ve got no choice, Quinn. I talk to you and you keep coming up blank.”

“Speaking of blank,” Quinn said, “did you ever get a lead on Dr. Maxwell’s patient David Blank?”

“Nothing. The guy doesn’t exist.”

“You’ve come up blank.”

“That’s cute, but-”

“You’d think the Night Prowler would have broken under pressure by now, wouldn’t you? He’s been at it a long time with us on his heels.”

“He’s one of the toughest,” Renz said.

“Suppose he had a way of relieving that pressure. Like seeing a good psychoanalyst. Somebody he could talk to about these killings.”

“Confess to, you mean?”

“Maybe even that.”

“The analyst is obligated to tell us about criminal activity, especially murder.”

“Unless the analyst becomes a victim herself.”

Renz didn’t answer for a while, his breath hissing into the phone. “David Blank and Dr. Maxwell, huh? It’s a stretch, but possible. Sick fucks like that do suffer from a growing need to confess. That’s why we got the Miranda law. But even if true, it doesn’t help us. If the Night Prowler and David Blank are the same person, his charade worked. We got us a dead analyst who served her purpose, and David Blank is still nowhere to be found.”

“It gives us more insight into the Night Prowler. And that’s what this is all about, figuring how he thinks.”

“It doesn’t help us,” Renz repeated. Not as much as you being a serial molester.

Quinn couldn’t deny it. All he could muster was “But it might.”

“There’s only a few grains of sand left in the hourglass, Quinn. This is something I can’t control. Keep that in mind.” Renz hung up without saying good-bye.

Quinn sat in the shade with the dead phone and watched the unmarked pull to the curb out on Central Park West. He watched Pearl and Fedderman climb out of the car and make their way toward the park entrance and bench. They looked tired again. Pearl was plodding and Fedderman seemed as if he could barely drag his cheap suit along with him. His pants had worked themselves so low he looked like a prison gang-banger; they puddled around his feet and would have dragged the ground if not for his big clunky shoes. These two did not look like the NYPD’s finest.

Unsurprisingly, they reported no progress.

Quinn related the conversation he’d just had with Harley Renz.

“Sounds like we’re royally fucked,” Fedderman said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief that looked as if it had been used to change oil.

“I can’t think of a better way to put it,” Pearl said.

“We’re all in a lousy mood,” Quinn said. “Let’s get outta here. Get into some air-conditioning.”

“I gotta get back to the precinct house and pick up my car,” Fedderman said. “I’m going out to dinner with the wife. We got reservations.”

I’ll bet she does about you. “Take the unmarked,” Pearl said.

“Thanks. Drop you two at Quinn’s place?”

They both nodded, and the three of them trudged glumly toward the car. Nobody spoke because there wasn’t anything to say. That was the problem. They were headed toward a wall and they all knew it, and talking about it wouldn’t change a thing.