John Lutz - Night kills

"Good." With his free hand, he scrunched up his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, looking worried.

"What are you thinking, Tony?"

"I don't know what to think. If you see her again, just avoid her. Do whatever's necessary to stay away. She might be dangerous."

"Whether she is or not, I admit she makes me afraid."

"Maybe you know something about her you don't think you know," Tony said. "If you know what I mean."

Jill didn't. "There's something else." She hesitated. "I don't want you to think I'm some kind of nut."

Tony gave her hand a squeeze. "I don't and I won't."

"I get the feeling sometimes that someone's been in my apartment while I was gone. No, more than a feeling, actually. I'm sure things aren't exactly as I've left them. There've been small changes, barely noticeable, but they're there. Maybe a lamp shade's crooked, or a sofa cushion's propped up at a corner when it wasn't before, or my clothes aren't hung in the same order in my closet. Things like that." She looked at him. He must think she was crazy. "I'm sure about these things, Tony. They're real and not my imagination."

"Not necessarily your imagination," he said. "But maybe your memory. Maybe you're just spooked and seeing things you hadn't noticed before."

She tried a smile. "Sort of the opposite of deja vu?"

"I guess you could put it that way. If you had a sense of humor. You might simply not recall things exactly as they were. We all do that from time to time."

"You could be right." But she wasn't so sure. These differences in her apartment, however minute, did seem real.

He sat back and seemed suddenly alarmed. "Jill, you don't think these two things are connected, do you? I mean the homeless woman and the idea that somebody might have been in your apartment?"

The possibility had been on the edge of her consciousness. But she said, "I don't know. I don't see how they could be, but who knows?"

Tony abruptly leaned toward her, giving her hand another squeeze. "You have my cell phone number, Jill. Do me a favor. If you see this woman again, give me a call. Wherever I am, I'll get right there and confront her."

"All right. But I could call the police."

"If you want."

She didn't and he knew it. She wanted him and not the police to come to her rescue. Besides, what could she tell the police, arrest the woman for staring at her?

"The trouble is," Jill said, "you're out of town so often. Your job."

"If I'm in town, I'll come running."

She placed her hand on top of the one holding hers and aimed a smile across the table. "I know you will, Tony. But all of it, I mean, it's all probably nothing. Maybe it is my imagination. I mean, the woman's real, all right, but she probably does simply want a handout. She might see me as a soft touch."

He grinned at her. "Now, that's possible."

They leaned toward each other across the table and kissed lightly.

"But call me anyway," he said.

Jill assured him that she would, but she'd decided not to. These problems she should handle on her own. She didn't want Tony to think she was some kind of head case.

One he wouldn't want to see again.

He wasn't there. He was.

Deputy Chief Nobbler glanced up from what he was reading on his desk, and there stood Greeve. Also standing was the hair on the back of Nobbler's neck.

Nobbler had just a moment ago told his assistant in the outer office to send Greeve in, but Greeve had somehow opened the heavy door, entered, and closed the door without making a sound. Living up to his "Ghost" nickname. Nobbler wondered if the silent entry had been deliberate. He was sure that from time to time Greeve played with his mind.

"Morning," Greeve said. He made it sound like mourning. Or maybe Nobbler just thought that because of Greeve's mortician looks and attitude.

Mourning yourself. "I've been thinking about that Quinn and Dr. Chavesky thing," Nobbler said.

"It bears thinking about." Greeve methodically unbuttoned the coat of his dark suit. His idea of getting casual.

"Word I get is that he's porking her on a regular basis," Nobbler said.

"Quinn'd be an idiot if he wasn't."

"We got us a bona fide romance going here," Nobbler said, with a smile that made his fat cheeks crinkle. "A reformed alky and a pensioned-off cop. Think it has a chance?"

"Love's strange," Greeve said. "If it is love."

Nobbler narrowed his eyes at Greeve. "You think it might be something else? Somebody using somebody?"

"That's love," Greeve said.

"Maybe it is at that. There's jealousy, too. And hell's fury. They can be part of love. Even part of love's embers."

It wasn't like Nobbler to be poetic. It took Greeve a few beats to figure out where the deputy chief was going. "Pearl?"

"Uh-huh. Even though she and Quinn are no longer a couple, she's working with Quinn, seeing him every day. She can't be happy knowing he's humping the good Dr. Chavesky."

"I'll bet she is good."

"You're digressing."

"Pearl knows about Quinn and Chavesky?"

"If she doesn't already, she will soon," Nobbler said. "She won't like it."

Greeve looked doubtful. "I don't know, sir. Pearl's different. Way I got it, she's the one who broke it off with Quinn. He's been trying to get back in and she wants none of it."

"She'll feel different when she realizes Quinn's suddenly no longer available to her. Women. What they can't have is what they want, and why they want it."

It took Greeve a few seconds to work that one out in his mind. "I've seen Pearl Kasner work. She's not women. She's different."

"Yeah. From what I hear, she's a goddamned alley cat. She'll fight for any morsel just because it's hers. Even if it's Quinn. Then she'll spit that morsel out."

Greeve wasn't so sure. If only from a distance, he knew Pearl. She was a hardhead but smart in a weird way. He chose silence as the wisest course.

"Quinn's also a problem," Nobbler said.

"That's for damned sure."

"But starting today, I want you to get off Quinn and start shadowing Pearl."

"Quinn's the one in charge," Greeve reminded Nobbler. "And we just agreed he's a problem."

"He's the problem," Nobbler said, "and Pearl's his vulnerability."

Greeve stuck out his lower lip and slowly nodded. Nobbler could, at times, be smart in a weird way, too. "Woman scorned, hell hath no fury, that kinda stuff?"

"Exactly," Nobbler said.

"Pearl will feel the way you say. Get distracted and screw up some way. Maybe even sabotage Quinn."

"She will if she's female," Nobbler said. "And she's definitely that."

He began carefully arranging the papers on his desk, letting Greeve know their meeting was at an end.

"I suppose it makes sense," Greeve said.

"I'm glad you think so," Nobbler said, looking up.

But Greeve was gone.

Jill Clark fought her way between a man with a duffel bag and a woman with a purse the size of a house and made her way onto the crowded subway. Getting mobbed and sometimes groped or pinched on the subway wasn't Jill's idea of recreation, and she wished she didn't have to go through the ordeal. But riding the subway was the cheapest way to move around New York other than walking, and the offices of Tucker, Simpson, and King, where she'd filled in for a second vacationing employee, were too far away for her to walk.

When she transferred after two stops to an uptown line, the train wasn't so crowded. In fact, she was one of about twenty passengers. They were the usual mix, business commuters, solemn readers of books and newspapers, dozing night-shift workers on their way home, a few of the homeless, a few truly dangerous-looking men whose dress and manner suggested aggressive mental derangement.

Jill had entered the end door. Immediately to her left there were facing smaller seats with chipped decals on them saying they were priority seating for persons with disabilities. That didn't mean Jill couldn't sit in one and get up if somebody with a disability got on the train. Besides, there were plenty of empty seats. Both of the disability-designated seats accommodated two passengers and were unoccupied. Jill settled into one.