John Lutz - Chill of Night

He edged open the door to the hall.

There was Garcia, sitting slumped against the wall. His mouth was gaping, and his chest and stomach were black with blood. His eyes were lifeless marbles.

Rags had gotten winded coming up the stairs. His breath seemed to him as loud as a steam engine as he stepped over Garcia’s legs and made his way down the hall toward Nell’s apartment.

At her door, he looked up and down the hall, but saw no one. The elevator should have beaten him up here. Where the hell is Beam?

Maybe inside.

He tried the knob, found the door unlocked, and went in fast, shotgun at the ready.

The living room was dim, unoccupied, but there was light down at the end of a hall.

“Who’s out there?” a woman’s voice called.

“Police!”

“C’mon back here. Come back here and help, damn it!”

Rags made his way down the hall, shotgun still raised and ready to fire.

He was slower going into the bedroom. Faint noise from in there, familiar, like bedsprings in shifting rhythm. Someone having sex?

Then he saw the man on the bed-looked like half his shoulder was blown away. Saw the bloody figure of Nell straddling the man, desperately using a wadded sheet in an effort to stanch the bleeding.

Rags glanced around. Nobody in the bedroom other than him and the two bloodstained figures on the bed.

“Goddamn do something!” Nell pleaded.

Rags didn’t figure there was much he could do. “I’ll call 911,” he said.

“I already did,” Nell told him. “See if you can help me stop this goddamned bleeding.”

Down in the lobby, Beam understood it now, as he stared at da Vinci standing there in his old motorcycle cop uniform, the boots, the jacket that helped hide the bulky silencer, the cap with its eight-pointed wire frame removed, so it was worn crushed already and would fit beneath a motorcycle helmet.

The puzzle clicked into coherence: da Vinci’s fuzzy familial past, the passion for justice, the questionably earned citations, the MRP cops with their crush caps and leather jackets, the frustration with the slow, slow wheels of the legal system that didn’t grind exceedingly fine, the rapid advance in the NYPD at a comparatively young age.

Andy da Vinci, Deputy Chief da Vinci, was the Justice Killer.

“Surprise,” da Vinci said flatly.

“Not when I come to think of it,” Beam said. Sirens were sounding outside. Both men knew da Vinci wasn’t going anywhere other than down or to jail.

“I got tired of seeing it,” da Vinci said, “the scum of the world coming and going through the system, free to rape or kill again. After April-my wife, Beam-killed herself because the sick scum Davison went free, goddamned free, after what he did to our son, I decided to do something about it.”

“About what?”

“The imbalance in the world. The unfairness. The way the wheel is rigged. So I worked for a while as a civilian in the St. Louis police department, then I joined the NYPD.” He gave a tight smile. “You might say I advanced with a vengeance.”

“You knew everything we were trying to do to nail you,” Beam said.

The smile again, somehow infinitely sadder than a frown. “I controlled the investigation, saw that the controversial cases we investigated went back only ten years-not quite far enough to include Davison’s trial and acquittal.”

“Harry Lima’s ring?”

“I knew about you and Nola. Had a duplicate of Harry’s pimp-ass ring made in Toronto. Used it to point you in another direction and throw you off the scent. Being a cop, even a high-ranking one, has it’s limitations, Beam. I was on a mission, and rules and regulations meant less and less to me.”

“You took too many unnecessary risks,” Beam said. “You could have kept coming and going as a uniformed cop, running the investigation of yourself. Helen was right. You wanted to be stopped.”

“Helen? Maybe she was right. Could be the book on serial killers has them-us-pegged. Maybe I even assigned you to the case because I knew you’d eventually stop me. Maybe that was my way of stopping myself. After a while it became obvious to me that Nell was figuring out what was happening. Nell’s smart. And dangerous. I had to kill her.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No. She’s alive. Lucky. I’m glad.”

“But upstairs-”

“I wanted to prolong the game.”

“That’s what it was to you, a game?”

“Not only to me,” da Vinci said. “And I wasn’t the one who made it a game, played between cops and prosecutors and high-priced attorneys. But it is a game.”

Beam wondered how far back da Vinci’s own game went. “What about Rowdy Logan, in Florida?”

Da Vinci paused before answering. “The left-handed killer who murdered your son. His death wasn’t a suicide. He was one of mine.”

Beam held his breath. “And Lani?”

“I didn’t murder your wife to lure you out of retirement for revenge. Or because I knew she’d talk you out of accepting the challenge. I didn’t murder her at all. She must have taken her own life, Beam, for her own reasons. I’m sorry.”

Beam believed he was.

“Some things you can never know for sure, Beam. Some things you just gotta let go of.”

“Some things.”

“You understand, the game isn’t really about justice. That has to change.”

The chorus of sirens grew louder, then stopped one by one outside the building. A glimpse of blue uniform. Someone was in the lobby beside and behind Beam. Sweeney.

“That has to change,” da Vinci said again.

Behind him, the elevator door opened silently. Rags, with his shotgun. He stepped out of the elevator, the Remington leveled at da Vinci. Beam knew he’d been talking to Nell upstairs. Where was Nell?

“Game’s over,” Beam said, but he knew it wasn’t.

Da Vinci made his last move, raising his silenced handgun to point at Beam. Beam saw that da Vinci’s finger wasn’t anywhere near the trigger.

Rags stepped to the side and let loose with the shotgun, spinning da Vinci completely around in a spray of blood. Beside Beam, Sweeney’s nine millimeter banged away. The blue crush cap once worn by the young motorcycle cop went spinning into a corner.

Da Vinci was sitting on the floor, legs straight out in front of him. The back half of his skull was missing. He bent forward, as if he might attempt to touch his toes, then fell to the side.

Rags kicked aside da Vinci’s gun, needlessly keeping the shotgun aimed at his fallen body. Sweeney advanced, still holding his nine in both hands, pointed down at da Vinci. Procedure.

Looper opened the lobby door and came halfway in, gun drawn, and scanned the scene, taking everything in.

His eyes lingered on da Vinci. “Holy shit!”

He holstered his gun, then signaled to someone outside, and came all the way in, followed by two EMS paramedics lugging equipment. They glanced at da Vinci’s body.

“Not that asshole,” Sweeney said.

“Upstairs,” Rags said. “I’ll show you.”

Looper couldn’t stop staring at da Vinci’s corpse. “Jesus!”

“That thing still work?” one of the paramedics asked, pointing to the elevator door peppered with bullet holes.

“Try it,” Beam said.

The paramedic did. It worked.

“What about Nell?” Looper asked.

“She’s upstairs,” Rags said. “She’s okay. Somebody else isn’t.”

More uniforms streamed into the lobby. Two rode the elevator up. Others went thumping up the stairs. A crime scene investigation team would be here soon.

“We better get upstairs, see Nell,” Beam said.

They waited for the elevator to return to lobby level.

“Helen will need to be told,” Looper said, glancing back at what was left of da Vinci.