John Lutz - Chill of Night

“The gut’s gotten a lot of cops killed.”

“You don’t know that, Terry. You’re talking bullshit. You’ve only ridden with cops for a while, and played a cop onstage.”

“And slept with a cop.”

“Well…that, too.”

He paced around again for a few seconds, then faced her. “You’re pissed at me for caring so much about you.”

“Whatever the reason, I’m getting pissed.”

What’s with you, Terry? Why is this more difficult than it should be?

“I’ll stay here with you tonight, Nell.”

Tempting, tempting… “No, you have to leave and stay away. Until this is over.”

“You’re asking a lot of me.”

“Don’t think I don’t know it.” She placed her hands on his chest and kissed him lightly on the lips. “It won’t be long, darling.” Try a little tenderness.

He held her close, almost tight enough to hurt her.

When he released her, she saw the stress on his features, the now familiar vertical tracks above the bridge of his nose that told her he was thinking hard, agonizing.

Then she saw resignation.

A tenseness seemed to leave him all at once, changing the energy of his body though he hadn’t moved a muscle.

“You’re right,” he said. “But even if you were wrong, it’d be your decision. I’m not going to oppose you on this, Nell. If I have to accept it, I will. I love you that much.”

They kissed. Nell didn’t want him to release her this time, ever; but when he did, the resolve in her tightened.

“Will you change your mind about tonight?” he asked.

“No. You have to go, Terry. And stay away for a while. I don’t like that part of it, but it has to be that way.”

“I suppose it does, if your mind’s made up as only you can make up a mind. Did the police see me come in?”

“They saw you come in,” Nell said, walking to the door and standing by it. “And now they’ll see you go out.”

As he left, he said glumly, “I think your fern is dead.”

Terry had been gone less than an hour when Nell’s cell phone chirped.

She went to where it was lying on the desk next to her purse, then picked it up gingerly and saw by the caller ID that it was Jack Selig.

The musical chirping persisted.

She laid the phone back down and didn’t answer.

Beam sat in a battered white Chrysler minivan half a block down from Nell’s apartment. The van had been confiscated in a Brooklyn drug raid last month and pressed into service by Narcotics. It had been used by the bad guys as a portable crystal meth lab, and there was still a faint chemical scent to its interior.

The evening was finally beginning to cool, so Beam had the engine and air conditioner off and the windows down. A pleasant breeze was moving through the van’s interior. Traffic swished and honked in the background. Music was playing somewhere, wafting through the lowering dusk, a bastardized Beatles tune he couldn’t place though it was hauntingly redolent of his past. Beam knew it was all deceptively reassuring. Mucking around in one’s own contentment often ended badly.

But he couldn’t help being somewhat reassured. They were as ready as they could be, for now. It would take a few days, and nights, to get Nell’s protective net perfect, but he’d see that it became perfect. He could have stopped Nell from doing this-maybe he was the only one-so it was more his responsibility than anyone else’s to see that nothing bad happened to her.

The way to do that was to make sure that when she moved around the city, pretending she was leading a normal life, out of the investigation and no longer a player, she was shadowed by undercover cops. When she was in her apartment, like now, the main thing was to keep track of everyone entering or leaving the building. Everyone.

Beam knew numbers were important, but they wouldn’t get the job done by themselves. The killer might even figure out a way to use numbers against them. A lot of cops were a good thing, but they weren’t necessarily a lot of protection; they multiplied the possibility of someone being spotted or identified as police, of making a mistake.

Usually a suspect couldn’t afford even one mistake, but a mistake by the police could be rectified and might only delay the payoff. The Justice Killer had managed to reverse that dynamic, to flip the odds so they favored him. One mistake by the police, and Nell would be dead. And the stalker was choosing time and place, biding his time for a sure kill. He could wait. Numbers were no match for patience.

The patience of a hunter.

Like she hadn’t a care.

Justice watched Nell stroll down the street toward a knot of people waiting to cross at the intersection, then stand on the fringes of the group. She was wearing Levi’s, sandals, a gray golf shirt, and had her hair tucked under a blue Yankees cap. And she was carrying what looked like one of those collapsible two-wheeled wire carts many New Yorkers used to transport light loads such as clothes or groceries.

She’s looking kind of yummy today, in those tight jeans.

Not that it matters.

West-and east-bound traffic squealed and rumbled to a halt, except for vehicles making right turns. The backup of people building at the intersection broke from the curb and began to cross. Some hurried, glancing warily from side to side, while others walked slowly and seemed casually unaware of traffic. Nell was a typical New Yorker and crossed briskly, her head up, her gaze shifting for oncoming traffic or other urban dangers.

For the urban danger standing unseen across the street, watching her.

Justice smiled. He wasn’t at all surprised that Nell hadn’t gone to Los Angeles to visit friends, as the media reported. That had been a cover story floated by the police. She remained in the city, where Justice, unfooled, was supposed to discover her. A trap.

Unfooled and unfooled.

He stopped near a window display of electronics and observed the reflection of the street behind him.

There went Nell, into a D’Agostino’s grocery store.

Justice studied the moving, reflected scene made vivid by bright sunlight. Who was the young tourist type, complete with jeans and backpack, who’d been walking behind Nell but now slowed down and moved back against a wall, then ostensibly began searching for something in his pockets? He finally found a map, unfolded it, and began to study it.

Did he glance at the casually dressed couple-the man with a camera slung on a strap around his neck-as they entered D’Agostino’s? Did they glance back?

A green Ford Taurus slowed, stopped, then parked in a miraculously available space near the grocery store. It contained only the driver, and he didn’t get out.

The police had quite an operation going. They were covering Nell very efficiently. Justice approved.

Fifteen minutes later, Nell emerged from the store with her wire cart unfolded and loaded with two tan plastic bags stuffed with groceries. The green of celery tops or leaf lettuce protruded from the top bag. There was a six-pack of something beneath the bottom one. Looked like Diet Pepsi. Justice was learning more and more about Nell.

She pushed rather than pulled the cart as she walked back the way she’d come. As it passed over seams in the sidewalk, the flimsy little cart bounced, and Nell had to use both hands to control it.

The young tourist with the backpack folded his map and stuffed it back in his hip pocket, then continued his stroll. The car whose driver had never gotten out pulled away from the curb. The middle-aged couple with the camera came out of D’Agostino’s. Nothing in their hands. No paper-or-plastic dilemma for them. They began strolling side by side behind the youth with the backpack, who was behind Nell.