Darker Than Night

45

When Quinn climbed out of the cab in front of his apartment building, he saw a gray-haired man about sixty sitting slumped on the concrete stoop.

Future me, if this investigation doesn’t work out.

The man’s bearing suggested he’d been there awhile but was prepared to wait longer. He was wearing gray slacks and an untucked tropical print shirt. When he saw Quinn, he became more alert and removed his sunglasses, then stood up stiffly, as if his back ached.

As Quinn approached, he saw that the shirt had a colorful ornate design of parrots and exotic blossoms. The man was older and taller than he first appeared, and there was something in his patient stance and in his eyes that said he was a cop.

He smiled, just a bit, and asked curiously, “Quinn?”

“Quinn,” Quinn said, and shook the man’s proffered hand.

His grip was firm and dry, and he didn’t make the handshake a contest. “Name’s Nester Brothers. I’m here about the Night Prowler murders. There somewheres we can talk?”

“We can go upstairs to my place, or there’s a bar a few blocks over.” Quinn glanced at his watch. “I know it’s only eleven o’clock, but—”

“Bar,” Nester said.

Ten minutes later they were seated in a front booth of Whichi Woman, a small lounge that served almost inedible sandwiches along with booze, and featured bad music on weekends. It was a pickup parlor for mostly legitimate singles on the prowl, but occasionally vice cleared away the hookers. The bland-featured, overweight bartender had the door propped open as an invitation to fresh air, but the place still smelled of last night’s stale beer and disappointment.

There was only one other customer in Whichi Woman, a despondent-looking business type hunched over what looked like a martini at the far end of the bar. Quinn wondered if the poor bastard had just been fired. Every inch of his elegantly hunkered form suggested it was a miserable world and he was miserable in it.

When Nester had a beer in front of him, and Quinn a club soda with a twist, Nester looked outside the spotted window at the cars creeping along and being left behind by the flow of pedestrians. “Shit pot fulla traffic,” he said, “but it looks like it’s goin’ no place fast.”

“It mostly is,” Quinn said. Isn’t? “First time in New York?”

“Yep.” Nester took such a big, hearty swallow of beer from his frosted mug that it might have hurt him.

“Business or pleasure?”

“Business. You. I came here to see you about this Night Prowler asshole.” Another long pull of beer. Nester was some robust drinker, considering it wasn’t yet noon. “I used to be a cop.”

“It shows.”

“I s’pose it does. I was a sergeant in the Saint Louis Police Department. I’m retired now. Got pensioned off after a back injury few years ago. Before the Saint Louis job, I was a sheriff’s deputy in a little river town in Missouri. Place called Hiram. What I do now that I’m not workin’ is sit on my ass and read the paper, watch TV news, an generally try an’ stay outta the wife’s way. ’Nother thing I do is spend time online. You ever get online, Quinn?”

“Not much anymore.”

“Most everything ever printed about the Night Prowler killin’s is online. While I was readin’ about ’em, somethin’ started to bother me, an old cop’s kinda hunch that starts in the gut instead of the brain. You fathom what I mean?”

“I fathom.” Quinn sipped his club soda to be sociable and signaled the bartender for another beer for Nester, whose mug was almost empty. The bartender was busy hoisting a metal barrel out from behind the taps and simply nodded to show he’d seen Quinn.

“I thought you oughta know about the Sand case.”

“Never heard of it,” Quinn said.

“No reason you shoulda. It happened in Hiram back in ’89, half a continent away.”

Both men were silent while a hard-looking waitress, who’d just come on duty, placed a fresh beer on the table and withdrew.

“That woman have a cussword tattooed just below her left eye?” Nester asked.

“She did,” Quinn said. “New York.”

“Back to Hiram in ’89,” Nester said, “where you never saw that kinda tattoo and probably still don’t. Fella and his wife, name of Milford and Cara Sand, were found stabbed to death in their kitchen. Ugly scene, ’specially the way the wife was carved up, round the crotch and tits. Ordinary enough couple, though Milford could be a bit of a shit. Sometimes they were foster parents, and they had this sixteen-year-old boy, Luther Lunt, stayin’ with ’em at the time.”

Quinn got his notepad from his pocket and found that he’d used the last sheet of paper. He pulled a napkin from a holder on the table and began making notes on it.

Nester waited patiently until Quinn had caught up. “’Bout three in the mornin’,” he continued, “young Luther stabbed the both of ’em to death in their kitchen, then hightailed it outta town. Nobody in Hiram ever seen him again. What made me come see you is I noticed a lotta similarities in the Sand murder, which I helped investigate, and these Night Prowler killins of yours.”

“Such as?”

“They all but one took place in kitchens in the early-mornin’ hours, all the victims were married couples, all stabbed to death but for that pair that got themselves shot, all with food layin’ around like somebody’d been snackin’ or grocery shoppin’ recently.”

“Did there happen to be fresh-cut flowers at the crime scene?” Quinn asked.

“Sure were. Half a dozen roses right there in a vase on the kitchen table.”

“Remember what color they were?”

“Yellow.”

Quinn felt his blood begin to rush. “Any doubt the kid did the deed?”

“None whatsoever. His prints were on the knife, autopsy showed he’d likely had recent sex with the wife, and he bolted like a scalded rabbit. He stole the Sands’ car and used it to get outta town. His prints and some of the family’s blood was all over it when we found it parked off the road outta sight among some trees.”

“This Luther have any priors?”

“Nothin’ violent, and only one conviction, but he was a rough number with several arrests. Vagrancy, male prostitution, theft. He’d been a street kid in Kansas City.”

“Working his way up to murder,” Quinn said, sipping his drink.

“Well, he made it all the way. It looked like he’d been secretly livin’ in the Sands’ attic for a while, ballin’ the wife and havin’ a grand old time, till old Milford caught ’em together. Least that’s the theory.”

“You buy into it?”

“Sure, there’s nothin’ else.” Nester was already halfway through his second beer. “An’ Luther ain’t been seen nor heard of since the murders.”

Quinn thought about what he’d just heard. “I’m glad you came to see me, Nester. I’ll find out more about this Luther Lunt. Sic the feds and their computers on him.”

“I done that already,” Nester said with a note of pride. “I still got connections, friends in high-tech places.”

“Great. Will you copy me what you have?”

“No need. Got it all in my pocket. An’ you can have it after only one more beer.”

Quinn laughed and signaled the woman with the bold tattoo. “Nester, I bet you were one hell of a good cop.”

“Still am,” Nester said. “It ain’t the kinda profession you ever really retire from.”

“That’s something we can drink to,” Quinn said.

Claire Briggs stood with her arms crossed in the center of the bare bedroom and looked around with satisfaction.

This was to be the baby’s room, and would look like it as soon as it was decorated. Right now it wasn’t very impressive. The absence of furniture revealed cracks in the plaster walls, and there were scrapes and gouges in the paint from when the movers took out the furniture, knowing the room was going to be redone and they didn’t have to be careful. The windows were dirty and the old blinds didn’t admit enough light. The tarnished brass ceiling fixture, which might have been original to the 1920s building, cast barely enough illumination to chase away the pale shadows.

But Claire had a vision for the room: bright yellow paint, a white picket fence flush with one of the walls, with stenciled daisies and red geraniums peeking through the slats. There would be new blinds and white curtains. It would be a well-lit, cheerful room, a place of optimism and beginnings. And at night, when the switch was thrown and the new ceiling fixture winked out, artificial stars—invisible during the day—would twinkle across the ceiling in an accurate representation of the heavens. Something for her baby to gaze at from earliest infancy.

Her baby.

Her child—hers and Jubal’s—was beginning to occupy her thoughts more and more, even though she also had her wedding to think about. At the oddest, most unlikely times during the day, she would dream or wonder about the child she would bear. These thoughts of the baby and its future had even begun happening onstage, though thank God they hadn’t interfered with her performance.

Her pregnancy didn’t show yet. If she had to get pregnant, her timing couldn’t have been better. She could act weeks longer in Hail to the Chef, she was sure, maybe even for a while after the baby began to show. Her reviews had been that good and the box office was holding up. Then a long break from show business would be welcome. Time to play mommy.

Sometimes she could hardly wait for her pregnancy to be far enough along that she might have an ultrasound done and could determine the baby’s sex.

Or did she and Jubal really want that information?

It was something to be decided later. Claire was happy now and she lived for now; that was the important, overriding thing. She hadn’t dreamed her pregnancy would mean so much to her. There must be something in all that talk about hormonal behavior.

Sometimes she felt guilty for not looking forward more to her and Jubal’s wedding. It was going to be a small, brief ceremony in a church in the West Village, and would be attended only by a few friends and family. Claire’s longtime friend from Wisconsin, Sophie Murray, was flying to New York and would be her maid of honor, and a fellow actor of Jubal’s, Clay Simms, was to be best man. It wasn’t that Claire felt blasé about the wedding; it was just that the ceremony was only a formality. She and Jubal might as well have been married the past four years.

It was the baby that was everything to Claire now. Even more than her career. (And that was something she never would have predicted!) She knew she couldn’t explain that adequately to Jubal. He wouldn’t understand. But he might after the baby was born. In fact, she was sure he would.

That certainty was something else that made her happier than she’d ever been. Her acting, her relationship with Jubal, her pregnancy. Everything in her life seemed to be falling into place.

All the way across the board, Claire was on a gambler’s roll.

Time after time, coming up roses.