Darker Than Night

64

The Night Prowler rode the elevator up to his apartment, touching a fingertip to the hard steel surface of the knife taped to his chest beneath his shirt. He stood motionless but feeling the motion as he rocketed through the dark core of the building.

He’d been ready for the unexpected, expected the unexpected. But Claire had been sleeping in the big bed alone.

Where was her husband?

Away somewhere, probably in some other city, some other world. He was an actor, so maybe he had to reshoot a scene in a movie or TV commercial, or had to attend a story conference. A business trip. But he’d return—Me! Home, dear!—to where the journey began and where it would end.

No one could plan for everything, so tonight had been simply another night.

It wasn’t yet time to act if Claire slept alone. She and her husband would understand that; being actors, they would surely know the entire cast had to be in place before the curtain was raised, lowered, and the lights came up, died. It was all necessary for effect, for illusion layered over illusion until it became reality.

So, for a long time, he’d simply stood silently in their bedroom, a dark angel at the foot of the bed, and watched Claire sleep. Watched and listened to her breathe. Then he’d gone into the smaller bedroom, the room of the child that might have been, and lay on his back on the carpet and stared at the stars.

He left the gifts, the stuffed bear for the child-to-have-been. Irony, the cuddly, smiling beast that rips with razor claws. And he’d fixed to its paw, with a piece of cellophane tape from the desk, the single yellow rose for Claire.

He looked in on her before leaving, to make sure her sleep hadn’t been disturbed. How safe and beautiful she looked, the paleness of her flesh where her leg extended from beneath the white sheet, as if she were seeking in sleep a foothold in the waking world. The slow pink rhythm of her breathing was hypnotic….

The elevator stopped its ascent. The door slid open. The Night Prowler didn’t move.

Finally he pressed the down button.

He couldn’t go home yet, not to needs unfulfilled and gray terrors that wouldn’t remain dead. Not to the buzzing he knew would begin and would become louder and louder.

He couldn’t and wouldn’t.

As on so many nights lately, he’d roam the colorless, early-hour streets, where there were few to see him. Sometimes he’d wear his sweatpants and jogging shoes so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion as he ran faster and faster and farther until the needs and terrors were left behind, at least for a while. Some of the terrors had faces only glimpsed. Quinn’s broad, powerful face. Quinn, the god of the law; Quinn, the chess master, red and black.

Quinn the hated and feared. One can’t exist without the other.

Hate, fear, frustration, needs. A recipe that boiled in the brain.

Quinn knew that and was counting on a mistake, an opening, a checkmate, and a death.

Soon the husband half of the acting team would return to wife and apartment, his final destination. Home, dear!

And soon enough, when the cast was reassembled, the Night Prowler would return to his stage and play the role he was born to and borne to. Destiny from the womb. There was a birth order worldwide, not only within families.

Chess has nothing to do with fate.

He wasn’t wearing jogging shoes tonight, but he would run.

Anna ran in the building’s basement on the industrial-model treadmill her overweight neighbor Mr. Jansen had offered. It helped him to run off stress, he’d told her, so maybe it would do the same for her.

And it did help. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people jogged along city streets for their health. For their health they went most places in pairs and avoided certain street corners. For their health they stayed indoors most nights and kept their drapes closed and their shades down and minded their own business.

Mr. Jansen called his treadmill “Mr. Torture.” Joking, of course. He was diabetic and his doctor said he had to get his weight down, so it wasn’t as if he had much choice. It was the kind of treadmill that had a digital display showing how far you’d gone and how many calories you’d burned. And you could put a headband on with a wire that plugged into the display so you could observe your pulse rate in red digital numbers. Anna’s heart rate was well over a hundred. More than it should have been, according to the table stuck on the treadmill’s control board.

She was winded. Her legs ached and her sides hurt with every breath, but she continued to run. She felt oddly detached from her discomfort, her legs and arms pumping mechanically. Physical exhaustion could do only so much to alleviate stress. It was the mental friction that set thoughts on fire and burned away the soul, and that you could never really outrun. But you could try, so the treadmill growled along while Anna’s jogging shoes beat out their weary, relentless rhythm on its unforgiving rubber belt.

While she ran nowhere she thought about Quinn.

She thought about her gun.

Finally she pressed the off button and the treadmill slowed and then stopped. She leaned forward with both elbows resting on the steel handrails, her head bowed, and tried to catch her breath.

This was, she realized, quite literally getting her nowhere.

She thought about her gun.