John Lutz - Darker Than Night

The cop had clung to him all the way down the hall and into the living room. In the mad struggle in the dark and the confusion after the other cops arrived, Wilde was shoved against the coat closet door and felt the knob jab him in the hip. He turned in the blackness and found refuge in the closet, just before the lights came on to show at the bottom of the door as a thin yellow line.

Certain he’d be discovered, he was about to make a hopeless, desperate break for freedom, when he heard the cops turn their attention to someone else.

It took Wilde a few seconds to realize what had happened-Hubby had flown home unexpectedly and surprised everyone.

And been surprised.

They must have caught Jubal at the door when the lights came on and assumed he was leaving instead of entering the apartment.

The Night Prowler almost fainted with gratitude.

He’s me! Tonight he’s me!

Wilde could have cheered when he heard Jubal insist on a lawyer before trying to explain himself to the police. A homicide charge was nothing to mess with unless you had counsel.

Damned right! Wilde had known that ever since Hiram, Missouri.

Since the night of the Sand murders.

He’d suspected Luther was still seeing Cara and followed him to the Sand house, waited for him to emerge, then realized he must be sleeping there. Years before, Wilde had lost his teaching job because of a secret affair with one of his art students, Cara Smith, who’d later married Milford Sand. The embers of that affair had never died, and they became flame again-at least in Tom Wilde.

He went to the Sand house late one sleepless night to talk Luther into leaving, for the boy’s own good, and had seen lights and heard shouting coming from the kitchen. When he investigated the source of the commotion, he found opportunity as well as pain.

In his rage it had seemed so simple, the desperate logic that had moved countless men before him: if Cara couldn’t be his, she’d belong to no one.

The scene in the kitchen, the brilliant colors, remained vivid in Wilde’s memory; the blood, the interrupted meal that he could taste, the interrupted lives… How suddenly everything could change, could stop.

When Luther regained consciousness and was still in shock, it hadn’t been difficult to convince the intoxicated and naive young man that he’d committed the murders. And, of course, his good friend and mentor, Tom Wilde, would help him to escape, would send him downstream to safety in his boat.

And that part of it was God’s truth; Wilde did want Luther to get clear and free.

But Luther must have recalled what had really happened in the Sand kitchen, and in a fury tried to kill Wilde but botched the attempt. It was Wilde who took the boat out from the bank. A mile downriver, Luther’s weighted body sank to the bottom and was never found.

Wilde had taken the advice he’d given Luther: lose yourself in a large city and become another you. Be a different man living a different life.

It hadn’t been easy, this creation of another self. It didn’t happen overnight, but it happened. Wilde had found in himself a resourcefulness and talent he’d only faintly known existed.

But over the years Wilde-Romulus came to realize that the past was always there, as if it were upstream and around the bend in a winding river, invisible but there, always there, while time flowed on. Cara!..Claire!..

Now, hiding in the dark closet, Wilde thought enough time had passed. Besides, the police might soon realize their mistake and return.

Timing…so important.

He was sure he’d heard the faint shuffling of feet, probably Claire walking back to the bedroom. Since then, no sound from the other side of the closet door. She was alone.

Thought she was alone.

The buzzing…

He swallowed, steadying himself for what was to come, maintaining control.

Soon.

The police would have taken the knife, but there were others in the kitchen. Lots of them.

Very soon.

Night. Black. Red.

The elevator arrived at the end of the hall on the twenty-ninth floor.

When the door opened, Pearl and Fedderman guided the handcuffed Jubal inside, and the three of them stood huddled as far to the rear as they could move.

Quinn stood facing away from them and pressed the button for the lobby. In the reflection of the polished steel control panel, he watched his two detectives and Jubal Day. Quinn seemed relaxed, but he was tensed and ready to help if Jubal panicked or for some other reason got rambunctious. That happened sometimes. The suspect, facing a hopeless future, suddenly decided to lash out at his fate, his past, his sickness, at anyone close enough to reach. The demon in him trying one last time to escape.

The door slid closed, and the elevator began to drop.

Now!

The Night Prowler soundlessly rotated the knob and opened the closet door about six inches.

The living room was still dark, but there was a light on somewhere in the back of the apartment, the bedroom.

For several seconds he stood without moving, listening, listening…

Then he stepped from the closet and silently made his way toward the kitchen.

Claire would be in the bedroom, still trying to figure everything out, nursing her grief and pain, too much of it to allow sleep.

She’d be awake and alone.

That was best, that she be awake. If it’s going to be just the two of us.

In the kitchen he tried to decide between a boning knife-perhaps too flexible and fragile-and a serrated bread knife with sharp twin points.

And, of course, the sturdy, all-purpose chef’s knife. Hail to the Chef!

Did he want her to come here, to the kitchen, or should he go to her?

Where will you die, Claire?

He decided on the bedroom. Enough had gone wrong tonight already, so why take chances?

It would be quick. He’d be careful not to make any noise on his way to the bedroom, then when he entered she’d be astounded and paralyzed with terror. Her throat would be solid. She’d be unable to breathe for a moment, much less cry out.

Then it would be too late.

No one spoke as the elevator descended. Quinn resisted the temptation to stare upward, as people did out of habit in elevators, instead keeping his gaze fixed on Jubal’s reflection in the shiny control panel.

Suddenly he saw an arm extended alongside him.

Pearl pressed the emergency stop button, and the elevator slowed, lurched, and was still.

Fedderman said, “What the hell, Pearl?”

Quinn turned and looked at her. “Why?”

She jerked a thumb toward Jubal. “He’s just been in a fight for his life with a tough cop and made a run for freedom.”

“And?” Fedderman said.

“He isn’t breathing hard.”

Quinn stared at Jubal.

It was true. Jubal’s complexion was pasty and he was obviously distressed, frightened, but his chest wasn’t heaving and his pale lips were pressed together. His breathing was even. After going several rounds with Campbell? And he wasn’t marked up from his struggle with Campbell and then with Campbell’s reinforcements.

He isn’t the Night Prowler!

Which meant…

“Good Christ!” Fedderman said.

All three of them had figured it out and were reaching for the 29 button. It was Pearl who pressed it, with Quinn’s finger mashing down on her thumb.

The elevator began its slow ascent back toward Claire’s floor.

“Cara?”

Claire gasped and looked up from where she sat slumped on the edge of the bed, her elbows on her knees.

In that instant the Night Prowler hesitated.

So beautiful in her sadness, in her secret knowledge. Not now, not yet…

She sat up straight. It took her a few seconds to recognize the man standing in her bedroom doorway. The decorator. “Romulus…” Then she said automatically, “Not Cara. It’s Claire.”