John Lutz - Darker Than Night

“She’s been getting anonymous gifts,” Quinn pointed out. “Including food.”

“Or so she says.” Fedderman inserted a finger beneath his cast and tried to scratch an itch, then gave up. “The woman’s a confessed chocoholic.”

“So am I,” Pearl said. “If that’s why you don’t trust her, you don’t trust half the human race.”

“I don’t trust anywhere near half. And Claire’s an actress. How can we know if she’s telling us straight? A pregnant actress, at that.”

Pearl glared at him. “Meaning?”

“Hormones,” Fedderman said.

“Hormones what?”

“Just hormones. If you’d ever had a kid, you’d know what I’m talking about.”

Pearl wished she could reach his injured arm.

Fedderman sipped his coffee, thinking his hormones explanation had carried the argument. “I say we have the local precinct run some extra patrols past her building. There’s millions of single women in New York, and every day hundreds of them place Night Prowler calls, none of which pan out. I don’t see why this Claire woman’s anything special that needs our personal attention.”

“She’s a celebrity,” Quinn said.

“Not much of one.”

“Costarring in a Broadway play.”

“Not for much longer, the way she’ll put on pounds. And every other woman you pass on the street in New York’s an actress. All you gotta do is ask ’em.” Fedderman scratched again at the plastic cast. It was obviously driving him nuts. Pearl was glad.

Quinn looked at Pearl, who was calmly buttering her toast. Apparently, both detectives had had their say about Claire Briggs.

“Renz thinks she’s enough of a celebrity that we have to cover ourselves just in case she’s right,” he said.

“What do you think?” Pearl asked.

“I don’t think we can ignore her story. She fits the pattern. And I know, before you tell me, the problem is that lots of women do. And lots of husbands with twisted senses of humor in this city are giving their wives anonymous gifts just to throw a scare into them as a joke.”

“Some joke,” Pearl said. “Really fucks us up.”

“We’ll look over the Briggs apartment, give Claire some instructions, then put a nighttime stakeout on her building starting tonight. We’ll work in shifts so we can all get at least some sleep.”

“We’ll be doing nothing but waiting for Egan to drop the hammer on us,” Fedderman said.

Quinn thought he might be right, but he didn’t see that they had any choice. And in truth, he didn’t so much mind concentrating their efforts on Claire Briggs. Something was going to break soon; he knew it in his mind and his gut. Almost thirty years as a cop told him something was going to break. And Claire Briggs might be the reason. Maybe Fedderman was right about her being an actress and able to take them in, but Quinn was sure one thing about Claire wasn’t an act. She was genuinely terrified.

So, they’d establish their stakeout and wait and wait. And maybe Quinn’s gut would be right again.

And if it wasn’t…

Quinn didn’t have much time to agonize over the possibility.

Pearl fell asleep holding a Styrofoam cup half filled with cold coffee. She was behind the steering wheel of the parked unmarked down the block from Claire Briggs’s apartment building. The car’s windows were down and the damp, close night had permeated the interior and left a film of condensation over glass and metal. That and the bitter aftertaste of too much coffee had put Pearl in a lousy mood.

She awoke with a start and a curse as she realized the cup had tilted and coffee spilled onto her thigh. The sudden action caused her to drop the now-empty cup to the floor between her feet.

Stakeouts. She’d always disliked them. She licked her lips. They felt gummy. She was glad she couldn’t smell her own breath. Stakeouts.

The Briggs apartment was a high corner unit, and Pearl had a fix on its windows. Claire had left the street-side blinds open as instructed. If a light came on in the kitchen or anywhere else, even a faint one, Pearl should be able to see it. Late as it was, the windows in all but four of the other apartments were dark. Pearl glanced at her watch-three-seventeen.

She felt some relief; she’d dozed off only about ten minutes ago.

Not that anything figured to happen. Claire Briggs’s story was only slightly more credible than those of so many other callers who’d contacted the police lately. It was odd how a killer like this affected a certain kind of woman. Loneliness probably made some of them pick up the phone and tell someone on the other end of the line anything that would create interest, draw attention. Loneliness was such a powerful driver of single women.

It’s as if we-

Pearl sat up straighter as she saw one of the building’s street doors open and a man emerge. He paused and looked around, then adjusted his cap, pulling it low as if a wind might blow it off, though the night was calm.

She watched the darkly dressed man walk along the deserted sidewalk, in the opposite direction from where she was parked. Probably, she told herself, he was a tenant. Or a late-night poker player. An insomniac out for a stroll. A guy who worked odd hours, though that didn’t seem likely.

Yet here she was working odd hours.

It wouldn’t hurt to talk to him, listen to his story. She wasn’t here just to sit in the muggy night without moving, like a human mushroom.

Anyway, there was something about the way the man was walking, with a deliberate casualness, his shoulders slightly hunched, now and then glancing off to one side or the other.

Pearl realized she was feeling more and more that the man was acting as if he might have something to hide, slinking along in his dark pants and shirt and wearing what looked like a blue or black baseball cap pulled so low on his forehead.

Slinking?

Yeah, slinking.

When he was almost to the corner, she started the engine.

But when she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, something was wrong. There was back pressure. The car lurched forward and the right front tire dug into the curb, causing the steering wheel to come alive and jerk from her grip violently enough to bend back her thumb.

The engine died.

Pearl contorted her body to reach down low. Her fingers closed on the Styrofoam coffee cup that had dropped to the floor and gotten wedged beneath the accelerator pedal.

Disgusted, she flung the empty cup aside and got the car started again. The front wheel jumped the curb, then bounced back into the gutter, and she pulled out into the street.

But by the time she’d driven to the intersection, the dark man was nowhere in sight.

She worked her aching thumb back and forth a few times to make sure it would be okay, then stepped down hard on the accelerator and did a fast turn around the block.

Still no sign of the man.

Pearl slowed the car and used her cell phone to call and wake Claire.

She hoped.

Pearl knew there was a phone on the nightstand beside Claire’s bed. Unless she had the ringer turned off, it had to be jangling almost in her ear.

It rang four times before it was picked up.

“Claire?” Pearl asked.

“Who is this?” The voice on the other end of the connection was small and afraid.

“Detective Kasner. I don’t think there’s anything to be alarmed about, but I’m coming up to talk to you.”

“Is everything okay?”

“It is. I’ll explain when I get there. When I knock, check through the peephole and I’ll show you my badge. Check everyone who knocks, just like we told you.”

“This sounds creepy. You sure something’s not going on?”

“Yes. I’ll be there in five minutes.”