John Lutz - Chill of Night

Justice, delivered not by the legal system but by the killer himself. Beam’s faith in the system he served had been severely shaken. As had his faith in everything.

Seven years ago. First Bud gone, now Lani.

Beam placed the rose-colored chair at an angle facing his large mahogany desk. There was already a brown leather chair in a similar position at the other corner of the desk. Beam would have the two detectives sit in the chairs, facing him across the desk. They would talk. They would plan. They would take the first step in finding and stopping the maniac who was killing people in his city.

At first, hesitant to take on the case, Beam now was beginning to feel the old eagerness take hold. He was on the job again. He was a cop. He was a hunter set to stalk his prey.

Exactly what da Vinci wants.

“You home, Bev?” Floyd Baker called.

He stood just inside the apartment door, his golf club bag slung over his shoulder. Something about the place wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that it was twilight and the apartment was dim without a lamp on. Or that his wife Bev wasn’t yet home from work. She often stayed late on the job.

It was something else making him uneasy.

It was the stillness.

Floyd Baker had been an Army Ranger in action with UN troops in Kosovo. He and another ranger had once come across a house with its front door hanging open, and investigated to find an entire family of five slaughtered inside.

The feeling, the stillness, the subtle scent he was experiencing now made Floyd think of that house, that day, what they’d found. Jesus, what we found! His heart clawed its way into his throat.

“Bev!” There was a note of desperation in his call.

He leaned his golf bag against the wall by the door and moved farther into the dim apartment, then switched on a floor lamp.

Still no sign of Bev, but there was her purse on the table near the door. He hadn’t noticed it before. It meant she was probably home.

The sight of the purse filled Floyd with even more dread.

He made his way across the living room, down the hall, past the kitchen to the bedroom, and looked inside. He noticed immediately that, though the bedroom was dim, the bathroom light was on.

When he went to investigate he found his wife in the alcove between the bedroom and bathroom, where she had her mirrored vanity set up. She was sprawled on the floor, and at first he thought she’d possibly fainted. Prayed she’d fainted.

Then he saw the red letter J smeared on the vanity mirror with what looked like lipstick.

Nothing Bev would do.

He moved nearer, looked closer.

“Ah, Jesus! Bev!”

He leaned toward her to touch her, then realized he shouldn’t. And his right foot was planted in blood. His wife’s blood. He did lean forward slightly so he could see beneath her right arm that was raised so her hand was near her head. He could see darkness on her breasts, see the exit wound.

See into her!

Floyd stood up and staggered backward. He swallowed the bile that rose bitter in his throat, then wiped his sleeve across his mouth and chin. He realized his mouth was slightly open, his lips rigid. He licked his lips with a dry tongue and pressed them together.

Turning away from the horror, he made himself trudge back into the living room.

Must be a dream. Has to be…

He stood at the phone and slowly lifted the receiver.

The voice of the 911 operator from the outside world made it all real.

It wasn’t a dream; it was real. It would stay real.

The buzzer sounded. Beam went to the intercom and called down for confirmation that Corey and Looper were downstairs, then buzzed the two detectives up.

Not knowing quite what to expect, he stood with the apartment door open so they wouldn’t have to knock.

A short, slender woman wearing dark slacks and a rumpled gray blazer emerged from the elevator. She had dishwater blond hair combed back in a convenient rather than flattering hairdo. Her eyes were dark, her chin defiant. Her shoes were black and sensible, with low heels, and she walked with a slouchy kind of determination, as if with a certain slow eagerness she might be heading toward a fight.

She was followed by a tall, sallow man in a suit that didn’t fit his angular body. Beam thought it was a fairly expensive and well cut suit-it was the body that was the problem. Looper was built like a mannequin assembled from spare parts. He looked a little like an awkward Fred Astaire, or maybe that was because Beam knew his first name was Fred.

They did the introductions. Both detectives looked Beam in the eye as they shook hands. He noticed that Nell Corey’s hair had dark roots. Looper was holding the murder files tucked beneath his left arm, thick brown folders, each fastened with cord over a metal clasp.

“Want something to drink while we talk this over?” Beam asked.

Looper declined.

“Bottled water, if you’ve got some,” Nell said.

Beam excused himself, got her a bottle of Zephyr Hills from the refrigerator, then returned to usher the two detectives into his den. One of them smelled strongly of peppermint-Looper, Beam thought. He wondered if the man was covering for a drinking habit.

When they were seated, he saw how Looper, in the leather chair, glanced around to see if there were any ashtrays. Then he noticed the detective’s yellow-stained index and middle finger on his right hand. Not a drinker, a smoker. And if Beam was any judge, badly in need of a cigarette.

Beam, who enjoyed an occasional cigar, started to open a drawer to get out an ashtray, then paused. “Mind if we smoke?” he asked Nell.

“Tell you the truth, I do.”

Looper shot her an annoyed look.

Beam smiled and pushed the drawer closed. “Okay. We can save it for outside.”

Looper leaned forward and laid the murder files on Beam’s desk. “Your copies,” he said. “We each have ours.”

“You’ve studied them?” Beam asked.

Both detectives nodded.

“And?”

Nell spoke up first. “Same gun, same letter J.”

“An anti-Semite killer?” Beam asked.

She surprised him. “I don’t think so. It’s too much of a stretch.”

“I agree,” Beam said.

She swallowed, nervous, as if about to take a plunge. “I was up late working my computer,” she said, “checking into various databases. There’s something stronger linking these victims, something that can’t be coincidental. At one time or other, they all served as jury forepersons in the city of New York.” She glanced at her partner. “I already filled Loop in on this.”

“There doesn’t seem to be any other common denominator among the victims,” Looper said, coming to her defense. “Different parts of town, different occupations, different circles of friends and acquaintances, different sexes.”

“There’s something the juries they presided over had in common, though,” Nell said. “In all the cases, the defendants were almost certainly guilty but got off.”

“Were any of the prosecutors or defense attorneys the same?” Beam asked.

“Nope,” said the blond woman with dark roots, now with a certain confidence. Beam was taking her seriously, buying into her theory.

“Anybody Jewish in all this?”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” Nell said. “What you’d expect in New York, a royal mix. And some of the trials were years apart. The most recent was last year, the one longest ago happened…” She leaned forward to pick up one of the files and refresh her memory.

“Six years ago,” Looper said.

Nell sat back and took a swig of Zephyr Hills.

Beam leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “So whaddya think?”

“Serial killer, obviously,” Looper said. His hand went to his shirt pocket, then quickly withdrew. Smoker’s arm. “He doesn’t seem to have a hard-on about the defendants, though; it’s the juries that set him off, especially the jury forepersons.”