Chill of Night

40

Beam, as always, showed up early for his weekly dinner with Cassie. Her high apartment was a comfortable enclave amidst the sheets of summer rain that were sweeping across the city. He sat and watched TV news while she carried things out from the kitchen to her elaborately set dining room table. Beam would have been glad to help, but he knew he’d get his hand slapped. Cassie liked to put on her dinners by herself. She liked to fuss.

She’d prepared almond-crusted trout this evening, along with green beans, and mashed potatoes with garlic in them. The meal was complemented by an Argentine white wine Beam had never heard of.

When Cassie was ready she called him, and Beam simply used the remote to switch off the TV, then went to the table and sat. Outside, thunder rumbled over New York.

The dishes were Haviland, with silver flatware and Waterford crystal. Cassie sat down opposite Beam, and dinner began with a silent toast with wine glasses, then with a salad of spinach leaves, scallops, and tomatoes, with an oil and vinegar dressing. Cassie had also prepared warm rolls.

Beam sometimes thought his sister would have made some man a good wife, but she never discussed her love life. He thought she might have a girlfriend down in SoHo. He’d even glimpsed them once on the street, holding hands, the hefty form of Cassie alongside a slim woman with long, straight hair, but he’d never mentioned it and hadn’t seen the woman since. However, Cassie didn’t mind discussing Beam’s love life. Ever the analyst, even when Lani was alive, his sister sometimes surprised him with her blunt and probing questions or observations about them.

Beam didn’t mind. He and Cassie had learned to trust each other before they were ten years old. He usually answered her questions, and she his, though his were less personal.

“The profiler in the Justice Killer investigation thinks our man might be in the initial stages of coming unraveled,” he said, and forked in a mouthful of spinach leaf.

Cassie sipped her wine. “I thought you didn’t believe in profiling.”

“Can’t be dismissed completely,” Beam said. “Like your predictions.”

She understood he was joking. He knew better than to ignore his sister’s predictions. They had a way of coming true, even if it happened to be in some manner that made you wish they hadn’t.

“No predictions here, “Cassie said, “But the timing might be about right for the murderer to start coming unglued. Taking a human life is a destructive process for both parties. Is he killing more often and more brutally?”

“Yes, and varying his methods.”

“Playing a game,” Cassie said, and began moving her salad ingredients around with her fork, almost as if looking for something in the cut glass bowl.

“Very much like a game,” Beam said.

“Like the ones the rest of us play.”

Flashes of chain lightning illuminated the apartment. “The rest of us don’t go around killing people.”

“Oh, we do. In one way or another.”

Beam finished his salad. People who’d never dealt with serial killers couldn’t know how devoid of human empathy and conscience they were. They had a mission, a compulsion that, to them, was in and of itself enough justification for their actions. “It’s not like you to get all cryptic and philosophical on me, Cass.”

“Sorry. I’ll revert to the prosaic. How’s Fred Looper? He still off the cigarettes?”

“As far as we know. He still reaches for them.”

“Nell okay, too?”

“Fine, I think.”

“You only think?”

“She’s a hell of a detective,” Beam said. “She has insight and talent, and she’s damned tenacious.”

“But?”

“She tends to push things too far sometimes. Like when a security tape caught her beating up on a suspect.”

“The one who tried to stab her?”

“That’s her story. I’ve seen the tape and I believe her. But even if it’s true, she seemed to like her job too much-the part of it where we take on the bad guys physically if they don’t give up.”

“Nobody hates the bad guys more than you do, Beam. And you’ve been in some scraps.”

“Yeah. Can’t deny it. But I’ve also learned how to hold myself back. It’s part of professionalism.”

“Would you be able to hold yourself back with the Justice Killer?”

Beam glared at Cassie. She did have an instinct for the Achilles’ heel. “I would try to, Cass.”

“Maybe Nell tries. She’s not as experienced as you are. Give her a break. I’ve got a good feeling about her.”

“Another thing I’ve noticed,” Beam said. “Nell’s been distracted the past few days.”

“Maybe she’s in love, or at least in sexual thrall. It happens. And she’s still young and attractive.”

“That could be the reason,” Beam said. Actually, he was pretty sure of it. He’d seen the signs before, in cops of both sexes. It was the sort of thing that could make you careless and get you shot.

“Do you think it’s interfering with her work?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Not yet.

“So there’s no problem.”

“None,” Beam said. “Except I get the feeling I don’t know her as well as I used to.”

“Do you still trust her?”

“All the way. But if she’s in love…”

“She’s vulnerable,” Cassie finished for him. She pushed her half-eaten salad aside. “But from what you’ve told me, and what I’ve seen of her, I don’t think you have to worry about Nell being vulnerable as a cop. She might be distracted now, but it’s only temporary, while mind and body adjust. She takes her work seriously. We all have to take time off now and then for being human.”

Some of us from being human, Beam thought.

“In my line of work,” he said, “being human can be dangerous.”

“In everybody’s.” Cassie stood up to go to the kitchen and get the main course.

She returned a minute later carrying two steaming plates. She set one down in front of Beam, the other on the side of the table where she would sit.

“Looks delicious,” Beam said. He could smell the seasoning on the fish, the garlic in the mashed potatoes. And there were other, more delicate scents, herbs and melted butter. Cassie was one terrific cook.

Brother and sister picked up knife and fork, and for a few minutes they sat silently and ate and sipped wine. The Argentine wine was perfect with the trout.

“It all tastes even better than it smells,” Beam said. “If you ever give up psychoanalysis, you could have a career as a chef.”

“Or a culinary psychiatrist.” She took a bite of potato. “I have a theory that everything in life is connected in one way or another with food.”

“Hmm. Didn’t Freud think it was sex?”

Cassie lifted her square shoulders in a shrug. “That’s Freud for you.” She took a sip of wine and dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “Have you seen your friend Nola again?”

“I’m not sure I like the segue.”

“Are you avoiding the question?”

“I suppose. And I shouldn’t avoid it. Maybe you can tell me what’s going on.”

Ignoring his food-which to Cassie might be meaningful-Beam told her about sitting in his car across from Nola’s antique shop, and what went on between them when finally he did go inside.

When he was finished, she said, “You went inside the shop. I congratulate you for acting on your fear.”

“My nervousness, you mean.”

“I mean your fear.”

Beam knew she was right. He had been afraid. “I remembered what you told me,” he said, “about her needing to forgive me.”

“Do you agree now that’s what she needs?”

“I told her it was what she needs.”

“How’d she react?”

Beam told Cassie about Nola insisting that he leave, but not insisting that he not return. He was dismayed that in the telling, it seemed like wishful thinking on his part. It also sounded stilted and futile.

What had happened in the antique shop was beyond words. Words simply weren’t up to the task. They were as useful as paddles in mid ocean. Nola was beyond words.

“Do you think she’ll want to see me again?” he asked Cassie.

“Was your account of what happened between you two accurate?”

“I’m a cop,” Beam said. “I remember details. It was accurate.”

Cassie finished her wine and grinned. “Then you can bet your sweet ass she wants to see you. Don’t you understand, bro, you’re her way out.”

And she’s mine.

When Beam left Cassie’s apartment a few hours later, he drove past the antique shop even though he was sure Nola wouldn’t be there.

The shop’s windows were dark, like those in the rest of the businesses lining the block. Even the lettering on the glass was part of the night and unreadable. The windows reminded Beam of blank, uncomprehending eyes staring out at the street.

When he steered the Lincoln in a tire-squealing U-turn and drove for home, he didn’t notice the car following him, as he hadn’t noticed it when it fell in behind him as he’d pulled out of the parking garage half a block from Cassie’s apartment.

In his business, distraction could be dangerous.