John Lutz - Night kills

"That's him," one of the troopers said.

"Who?" Ike asked.

He didn't think they were going to answer him. Then the nearest trooper said, "The only one of us here other'n you who's seen Mary Smith."

"An' she offered me a-"

"Forget that part of it," said the trooper farthest away.

The other trooper winked. "Excuse my partner. He's kind of a prude. And we don't think the woman really is Mary Smith."

"Don't make me no never mind," Ike said. "That's the name she signed in under. Said her husband'd be here the end of the week with some money, an' she'd pay me cash when she checked out."

"That before or after you got that offer of sex?"

"After. She went to cryin' when I turned her down. Then she gave me the husband story."

"And you believed her, even though she signed in as Mary Smith?"

"I pretended to. She's a sweetie. An' she seemed all frazzled an' I felt sorry for her. Thought she might have some kinda mental or drug problem an' she should be in the hands of the authorities. Anyways, I seen more Smiths sign in here than you can imagine."

"I can imagine a lot of Smiths," said the trooper farthest from the desk.

"Let's go," said his partner. To Ike: "Just sit tight here, old fella, and we'll finish our business and you can go back to that girlie magazine you've been reading."

Ike started. He'd thought he'd concealed Bizarre Desires under People on the table behind the desk. Now he saw that People had been knocked sideways and Bizarre Desires was plainly visible. He must have brushed up against the table.

"Hell, I got no idea where that came from. I used to read Playboy years ago."

But the troopers were gone. It was amazing how quickly and quietly they'd moved, for such big men. They hadn't let the screen door slam behind them. Ike hadn't even heard the stretched-out spring squeal the way it usually did when the door opened and closed. They were here; they were gone.

Ike went back to his magazine, but he couldn't read it or even focus on the photographs.

Too much going on outside.

Outside, the two troopers walked to a line of trees at the edge of the parking lot opposite the room where Mary Smith presumably lay sleeping. The room's lights were out, anyway.

A knot of their fellow troopers was already there, along with Lieutenant Floyd Balamore from headquarters up the highway. A young, tan-uniformed guy who must be Simmons, the Pool County sheriff's deputy, was standing beside the lieutenant.

Simmons shifted his weight and the moonlight touched his face, and all of a sudden he didn't look so young.

"We've got the back covered in case there's some way out we don't know about," Lieutenant Balamore said to Simmons. Balamore was African American, big, smart, and very ambitious. He had sparkling dark eyes and wore a tiny brush mustache that was always impeccably trimmed and made him look as if he'd just sucked a lemon and, hey, it'd tasted okay.

"We're gonna advance in a semicircle," Balamore said, "with weapons drawn, and two men are gonna knock on the door and identify themselves as police. One of them's gonna be looking back at you, Deputy Simmons. When you're positive this is the Aiken woman, you give us the nod."

Simmons, who'd seen and talked with Cathy Lee Aiken back at the swamp shack and was 90 percent sure she was also "Mary Smith," nodded.

"Like that," Lieutenant Balamore said, "but not yet." His smile was thin beneath the twitchy little mustache. A comedian too dry for those under his command, he felt unappreciated. Simmons, he figured, was as humorless as the rest of them.

Balamore turned to his somber troopers. "Let's do this thing. And remember, the subject might be armed and dangerous."

They spread out, just as he'd instructed, and slowly advanced across the dark parking lot toward the end room that presumably contained the woman registered as Mary Smith, and whose description matched that of the woman they sought, Cathy Lee Aiken. Armed and dangerous as a woman named Cathy Lee could be.

The two troopers at the motel room door stood well on either side of it, concerned that a fusillade of bullets might smash through it at any second. The one on the left leaned in, knocked three times, and loudly proclaimed he was police. The one on the left had his gun raised and held with both hands. His head was turned and he was looking at Simmons, who was off to the side of the door and about twenty feet away.

Having met Cathy Lee, Simmons didn't think all these precautions were necessary, but he had his gun out so as not to be the only one not ready to blast away. There was enough firepower here to take on an armed battalion. Nobody even knew if Cathy Lee Aiken-assuming the woman in the motel room was Cathy Lee Aiken-actually had a gun.

The motel room door slowly opened, and the form of a woman in a white robe appeared. At first she stood motionless. Then she moved forward, leaning out into the moonlight, and Simmons saw her face as well as her cleavage.

She was Cathy Lee, all right. He nodded in an exaggerated way, so there would be no mistake.

No sooner had he done that then Cathy Lee suddenly bolted straight out the door and past the two nearest troopers. She stopped ten feet beyond them and pulled a large revolver from beneath her robe, causing the robe to flap open and reveal her otherwise naked body. She began turning in a tight circle, taking in the entire scene with wide eyes while affording everyone an entire view of what was beneath the robe.

There was no contingency plan for this. The startled troopers who'd been at the door froze when they saw her. The troopers lined in the lot couldn't fire for fear of hitting their comrades behind Cathy Lee. The troopers behind her couldn't fire without risking hitting one of those standing out in the lot. And of course there was the fact that in every demonstrable way she was a woman, and that gave men with guns pause.

Cathy Lee raised the revolver with both hands and began squeezing the trigger. The big revolver roared again and again. One bullet slammed into a car parked fifty feet to her left. Three went twenty feet up and lodged in some tree limbs. One went away into the night over a bean field. The last struck the side of a tractor trailer driving past on the state highway, hauling tires north to Atlanta. The driver wasn't even aware the trailer had taken a bullet, one that was now probably bouncing around inside a tire.

Cathy Lee pulled the empty gun's trigger several more times, then sat down on the ground and began to cry.

Palmer Stone had showered and was shaving, preparing to leave for the office, when he noticed the news was on the small-screen TV in his bathroom. A beautiful and sincere blond anchorwoman was talking about a woman who'd been arrested in Louisiana, and was thought to be the confederate of the two men who'd been charged with murdering Tom Coulter and with possession and distribution of methamphetamine.

Because of Coulter's fortunate death and the assumption that he'd been the Torso Murderer, Stone had been following the news reports on him with some interest. He'd read about the woman who'd been with the two men charged with murdering Coulter, and knew something about her. A woman like that knew how to take care of herself. Stone thought she'd gotten away clean. Well, not clean, but away.

Obviously, she hadn't.

The mug shot of a distraught-looking woman with scraggly brown hair was shown on the tiny flat-panel screen. She had dark and desperate eyes, attractive features, and was staring at the screen with her lips parted as if she were about to speak. Stone thought there was something about her reminiscent of trailer parks, cheap beauty shops, and tattoos in unmentionable places.

"Twenty-year-old Cathy Lee Aiken resisted arrest," the anchorwoman was saying, "and after a fierce gun battle with police, in which, thankfully, no one was killed or injured, she was taken kicking and screaming into custody. Police regard her as a valuable source of information about the recent whereabouts of fugitive Tom Coulter, the alleged Torso Murderer, and what led to the murder of Coulter himself by suspects Joe Ray Jeffers and Juan Adamson, allegedly. It's reported that Aiken had been living with the two alleged killers in what some people are said to be describing as a menage a trois." She lowered her gaze and flipped a page that had been invisible until she lifted it to camera level, then looked back up and smiled. "They say dogs can't talk, but in Spangler, Idaho-"