John Lutz - Night kills

The train accelerated into darkness with a roar and a squeal of steel on steel. Jill sat back and watched her wavering reflection facing her in the dirt-streaked window. A corner of the window was smeared with a gooey substance that might be anything.

She remembered reading about a study concerning germs on subway cars-they were everywhere on everything. She rubbed her fingertips on her slacks.

The roar of the train grew suddenly louder, and cooler air swirled around Jill's ankles. The sliding door at the end of the car, leading to and from the next car, had opened. Someone was moving from one car to another. Teenagers did that a lot. So did panhandlers, as well as gang members looking for trouble. Jill told herself this was probably just someone looking for someone else and kept her gaze focused on the floor.

She saw movement in the periphery of her vision; then the door swung shut. There was sudden silence, and the air around Jill's ankles became still. She waited for whoever had entered the car to move past her, possibly toward the door at the opposite end.

Instead she saw a pair of worn-out, scuffed black shoes protruding from wrinkled brown slacks, and a body dropped with a sigh next to hers on the small seat so that their thighs were warmly touching.

Jill saw dirty hands, chipped fingernails, and recoiled at the stench of stale perspiration and perhaps urine.

She turned her head and was looking into the desperate bloodshot eyes of the woman who'd been following her.

Jill's throat constricted with fear.

A viselike grip closed on her right bicep, squeezing so hard that it hurt.

"We've gotta talk," the woman said in a raspy voice. "Whether you want to or not."

"I don't want to!" Jill managed to force the words through her tightened throat as she tried to yank her arm away. She couldn't break the iron grip. "We have nothing to say!"

"What you need to do is listen. I'm warning you."

"Warning me?" Jill tried harder to escape the fingers digging into her arm. The woman's grip got even tighter.

"Something bad could happen to you," the woman said. Her breath was foul enough to turn Jill's stomach.

"Damn it! Let me go!" Jill began working her arm back and forth, desperate to get away. "Stop following me! Leave me alone!"

"You'd better watch out."

Jill stood up this time, pulling her arm away and twisting it violently, causing it to flare with pain.

Suddenly she was free.

She took two wobbling steps and bumped into one of the vertical bars for standing riders to grip when the car was crowded. Her forehead hit the hard steel, momentarily disorienting her. She almost fell.

Then she got her balance and started to stagger toward the front of the car. A man was staring at her. He quickly looked away.

No one looked at her other than briefly and with mild and guarded curiosity as she lurched and stumbled the length of the car. The other passengers seemed not to have noticed anything was wrong. They were studiously reading or gazing up at the advertisements running along the sides of the car above the windows. Or they stared at the dirty and littered floor. They didn't want to get involved with violence, insanity, the unpredictable. The predictable they faced every day was difficult enough.

Jill gripped another vertical bar and looked back to see if the woman was pursuing her.

The other end of the car was unoccupied. The woman was gone.

Jill fell into an empty seat and hugged herself. She began rocking in the seat, exaggerating the motion of the train. This was insane. Maybe she was insane.

Is my mind slipping?

Was the woman real?

Jesus! Oh, Jesus! This city…This city…

She glanced around, embarrassed and still afraid.

Still, no one looked at her. The train thundered through the darkness.

Jill had calmed down by the time she got to work. There was no one at Tucker, Simpson, and King she wanted to tell about the subway incident. She didn't know anyone there well enough. And they might think she was crazy. They would think she was crazy. The incident now seemed almost as if it hadn't happened. It was so incongruous to her surroundings aboveground, at work, in the normal world.

But of course it had happened.

Something had happened.

She'd been at work about half an hour and was filing papers concerning a traffic violation appeal when a voice said, "It's for you."

Jill turned around. The receptionist, an older woman named Judy, was staring at her. "Line three."

"Excuse me?"

"You said your name was Jill Clark, right?"

"Right," Jill said.

"You have a phone call. Line three."

Jill straightened up. She looked around and then went to a phone on the other side of the office, where she'd have some privacy.

She pressed the glowing line button and said hello.

"Is this Jill Clark?" A woman's voice. Familiar.

"Yes. Who is this?"

"The woman from the subway."

Jill's heart jumped. She told herself the caller was lying. The voice on the phone wasn't so hoarse, and it was controlled, almost cultured. Not like the subway woman's. But it carried the same note of desperation.

"Don't hang up, Jill. Please!"

"Why shouldn't I? My arm still hurts!"

"I'm sorry about that. You have to understand my state of mind."

I think I do. Insane.

Behind the receptionist's desk, Judy glanced at Jill, then looked away.

Jill lowered her voice, not wanting to attract attention. "Leave me the hell alone! Stop following me! Stay away from me! Stay out of my apartment!"

"Don't hang up!" the woman pleaded again.

"I haven't, have I?"

"I've never been in your apartment," the woman said. "My name is Madeline Scott, and we have to talk."

"I can't imagine why."

"That's the point, damn it!"

"My arm still hurts," Jill repeated.

Jill hung up, careful not to bang the receiver.

American Airlines flight 222 out of Mexico City via Atlanta arrived ten minutes early, and the plane touched down gently on LaGuardia Airport's south runway. When the reverse thrust of the plane's powerful engines had brought it almost to a halt, it taxied toward its assigned gate.

The plane veered gently and arrived at the mobile enclosed ramp to the concourse. The engines stopped whirring, a faint bell chimed pleasantly, and the clacking of unfastening safety belts rippled through the fuselage.

Maria Sanchez, who'd been sitting in a coach window seat just beyond the wings, wrestled her carry-ons from overhead storage and filed off the plane with the other passengers.

She exchanged a polite and perfunctory "G'bye" with the smiling flight attendant at the plane's door. Maria's formerly long dark hair was dyed blond, and she was traveling under forged identification. She'd made it a point not to be at all memorable to the other passengers or the flight crew.

When she emerged from the enclosed walkway into the terminal, she lowered both of her large red carry-ons to the floor and raised their telescoping handles. She followed the stream of passengers along the concourse toward the baggage area, then increased her speed, lengthening her stride and pulling the two rolling suitcases behind her.

She went outside the terminal and waited her turn in line for a taxi. A cabbie finished stuffing a young couple's tons of luggage into his taxi's trunk, then got in and drove away with a brief squeal of tires. The cab lying in wait behind his leaped forward to take its place and came to a rocking stop. Maria's turn.

She watched her driver place her two suitcases in the trunk, then got in the cab and waited for him to join her. When he was settled into his seat and had turned an ear toward her, she gave him an address in Manhattan.

The cab made a squeal like its predecessor's and shot forward, speeding toward the island like a wolf returning to its lair.