Darker Than Night

44

Seated in the back of the cab, Quinn called Harley Renz on his cell phone and gave him the details of the latest Night Prowler killings.

He slipped easily into cop talk, clipped, incisive, and impersonal.

“It’s gonna get even stickier,” Renz said when Quinn was finished. “The public’ll be leaning on the pols, who’re already leaning on the department higher-ups, who’re leaning on folks like me. Shit rolls downhill and picks up speed, Quinn, and that’s where you are, at the very bottom of the hill.”

“Well, let’s hope it hits the fan before it reaches me. You got anything I should know?”

“Only that Egan and his pals are saying bad things about you. Off the record, of course.”

“Off the record to the media.”

“So astute you are sometimes.”

“Maybe I can be astute and deduce something before Egan’s troops do.”

“They sense a shift in the balance, Quinn; innocent Anna is becoming the seriously wronged and sympathetic party, and you’re on your way to becoming the villain again.”

“I sense it, too,” Quinn said. “We’ll just have to work through it. When you can, let me know what the postmortems reveal.”

“Okay. Speaking of Egan’s troops, who drew the case?”

“Couple of guys named Frist and Jefferson.”

“Both deep in hock to Egan. Jefferson’s okay, just in a bind and covering his ass. Frist is a jack-off under the best of circumstances.”

“That’s kind of how I read them. Frist is afraid of Pearl.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Anything new on the silencer?” Quinn asked, getting in a dig.

“You laugh about the silencer, but we’re narrowing it down. It’s the kinda police work you never did grow into, Quinn, which is why your career turned to garbage.”

Quinn thought Renz might have a point.

“Where you going now?” Renz asked.

“How’d you know I’m going someplace?”

“I deduced from the car engine and traffic noise, plus the rattling when you hit potholes indicates a New York cab.”

“That’s good deducing.”

“I’m a policeman, you know.”

“I didn’t. I’m on my way to my place to reexamine the murder files. I want to make sure of something.”

“What would that be?”

“Deduce,” Quinn said, and cut the connection.

The buzzing had abated.

The Night Prowler sat at an outdoor table at a restaurant on Amsterdam and ate eggs over easy while enjoying the beautiful morning. It was the beginning of another warm day, but with a gentle breeze that made being outside comfortable and chased away exhaust fumes.

Three tables away sat a woman with long brown hair, sipping coffee and studying papers she’d removed from a briefcase that was alongside her chair. She had striking blue eyes and slender, delicate features. The expanse of nyloned leg visible between black high-heeled pumps and the hem of her blue skirt was difficult not to keep glancing at, and she knew he was watching her—he was sure of it.

You like being observed, studied. You like it very much.

Are you feeling between your thighs, in the core of you and in your heart, what I’m feeling? Are you?

Sensing his thoughts, he was sure, she looked over at him, then quickly back down at her papers on the table. No change of expression. But he’d seen her blush, caught the subtle alteration of color in her flesh, the soft rose hue that came and went with emotional tide.

The Night Prowler didn’t change expression, either. He simply looked slightly away and took a sip of his own coffee, talking to her in his mind.

You’re not as untouchable as you’d like to think. You can be touched, so pink and red and brown. You’re a confection. What color are your nipples? You can be had. You can be had by me.

She used a pen to make a notation on one of the papers, not looking over at him. But he knew she’d heard in her mind the message of his own.

A man in his thirties, with wind-mussed blond hair and carrying his suit coat slung over his shoulder, entered the restaurant’s cordoned-off seating area and sat down across from the woman. She smiled at him and immediately tapped the edges of her papers on the table to align them, then leaned sideways gracefully and slid them back into her briefcase.

The Night Prowler made it a point to ignore her now, not wanting to be noticed and outnumbered. He tried to avoid scenes.

But I haven’t forgotten you. I put you away in my mind and I’ll get you out later, when I need you.

Nothing will come of it.

Or maybe something will.

He looked down and saw that he was gripping his spoon almost hard enough to bend it. Lowering the spoon to the table, he felt a sudden chill, as if the morning had cooled abruptly.

This woman was a total stranger, he cautioned himself. They had never spoken. He knew nothing about her other than how she looked. How she held herself in repose. How she moved.

But wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work, according to the literature, to the police, to the hunter Quinn? Compulsion. Something distinctive about the woman might have triggered my compulsion!

The cops, the FBI, assumed that after a certain amount of blood and benediction, the serial killer’s compulsion would become stronger and seize complete control of him, and eventually force mistakes.

Control was something the Night Prowler refused to relinquish. Powerful hidden desires could be coped with and managed. They could be channeled and fulfilled. That was something the so-called experts were afraid to acknowledge. But they knew it. And if they didn’t, they were learning. He was teaching them.

He finished his eggs, which were cooling in the breeze, then signaled the waiter for a refill on his coffee and began reading the newspapers he’d bought at two separate kiosks. This was enjoyable, sitting in the sun and at his leisure leafing through the papers for news of himself. His anonymous, famous self.

His gaze fell on a name he recognized. In a weekly celebrity feature called “Showbiz Shebangs,” halfway down an inside page. Claire Briggs.

But what made him sit up straight was the information that surrounded her boldly printed name. He read the paragraph again:

Actress Claire Briggs, currently charming Broadway audiences in Hail to the Chef, will be married next week to her longtime love interest, actor Jubal Day. Time and place are of course a secret, now that Claire glitters as a major Broadway star. Congrats to the happy couple.

The Night Prowler read the paragraph several times, completely forgetting about the woman three tables away. He couldn’t help smiling as he added cream to his coffee and stirred. He watched as the marbled liquid absorbed the whirlpooled white strands and became a uniformly rich but light caramel color. What color are your nipples? Then he turned his attention yet again to the show business gossip column. He couldn’t stop reading it.

Compulsion? Maybe. But surely there’s a proper time for compulsion if it’s controlled. If it’s focused. So enjoy, enjoy….

Who said the papers never printed good news? Claire Briggs was getting married. She of the braided hair and beguiling grace.

Claire Briggs!

Congrats to the happy couple!