Night Victims

35

When finally he’d fallen into bed at 7:00 A.M. Horn went over it in his mind, how everything had almost gone terribly wrong.

Almost.

Aaron Mandle was in custody and under high-alert guard at Kincaid Memorial Hospital. The Night Spider murders had ended, finally and forever. If Nina hadn’t ignored Horn’s instructions and sneaked that gun into bed, then fired that shot. .

Horn tried not to think about it but his mind kept returning to the night before like a dog returning to something buried not quite deep enough.

Mandle had almost won. He’d almost killed Nina and almost made his escape. Only the crack of the gunshot in the early morning hours had made the difference.

The hard fact was, Mandle had outsmarted them. Lying in his hospital bed, waiting for the courts to decide his fate, he’d be thinking about that and it would mean a lot to him. He had that satisfaction, and Horn didn’t like it.

The sick bastard had surprised them.

“You didn’t expect that,” Marla said the next afternoon at the Home Away.

Bickerstaff and Paula were sitting with Horn. They were in their usual booth, drinking coffee. All three looked tired after their long night at the precinct house and only getting a few hours of restless sleep that morning. A plate containing only a pat of margarine and dusting of toasted corn muffin crumbs was in front of Horn. He’d drunk half his coffee before switching to ice water with a twist of lemon, still trying to chase the taste of last night.

“No,” Horn said, “we didn’t expect him to go in through the door. We anticipated him lowering himself from the roof toward Nina’s window. That’s when we were going to drop the net on him.”

“The net,” Paula said, lowering her coffee cup, “was one hell of an idea.”

Horn had first gone to the FDNY for a net, but they didn’t have anything large or heavy enough. Instead, he got several cargo nets from a shipping company on the docks, and had them bound together to form one long, rolled net that could be dropped from the roof as soon as the Night Spider began his descent. Fortunately, the net had been large enough to reach well below Nina’s window.

“When we removed Mandle’s jacket,” Paula said to Marla, “he was wearing what looked like a doorman’s uniform. Gold braid, epaulets, and all. Even had a pretty good representation of a doorman’s cap wadded in a pocket. Guy was a hell of a seamstress.”

“That politically correct?” Bickerstaff asked.

Paula frosted him with a look.

“Mandle figured we’d expect him to drop from the roof,” Horn said, “so he got into the building sometime during the day and hid there. After he’d killed Nina, he was going to make sure there was a big hullabaloo in the building, then simply walk out. There are three regular doormen. The one on duty was replaced with an undercover cop. If he’d seen Mandle he’d have thought he was one of the regular doormen. If a regular doorman had noticed him, he’d have assumed he was an undercover cop.”

“He only had to fool them for a minute or so,” Bickerstaff said, “then he’d have been outside, and it woulda been gone no forwarding.”

“Think it would have worked?” Marla asked, switching the heavy glass coffeepot to her other hand.

“He’d have made it work,” Horn said.

“You see Nina Count’s network TV interview this morning?” Paula asked. “She had her skirt hiked way up so the bandage on her leg was visible.”

“I doubt anyone was looking at the bandage,” Bickerstaff said. He added cream to his coffee and stirred. “What a dumb fuck Mandle turned out to be. Why didn’t he just lay off Nina and keep killing his victims at random?”

“Ask Marla,” Horn suggested.

Bickerstaff stared up at her expectantly.

Instead of explaining, Marla said, “Ever do any mountain climbing, Bickerstaff?”

“Never had the urge. Never wanted to fall a long way and get hurt or killed.”

“You ever jaywalk?”

“Jesus, Marla! I’m a cop!”

“Uh-huh. Anybody want more coffee?”

Paula came all the way awake immediately and sat up, the way it happens sometimes when you’ve slept well and late in a strange bed.

It hadn’t taken long, she thought. Just till the night after Mandle was arrested. Technically, that might not mean the case was closed. After all, Mandle hadn’t even been arraigned yet. Still, it had been close enough. Obviously.

Paula was in Harry Linnert’s bedroom, in Linnert’s bed. He was already up and dressed and standing at the foot of the bed with an oversized cup of hot chocolate in each hand. Paula usually drank coffee in the morning, but she could switch to chocolate. She knew a lot of her habits might change, being in love with Harry.

“This kind of service gonna continue?” she asked, accepting one of the steaming cups.

“Probably not,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

“You’re a depressingly honest man, Harry Linnert.”

“Uh-huh. And look where it’s got me.”

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Jesus! Ten o’clock. I never sleep this late.” She climbed out of bed, careful not to spill hot chocolate. “You’re spoiling me. Ruining me.”

“You mind?”

“Not terribly.”

Naked-she never slept naked-she pecked him on the cheek and padded barefoot into the living room. He’d opened the drapes. She hoped no neighbor with a telescope had been lucky enough to choose their window.

The TV was tuned to Fox News. One of the anchormen, along with the terribly concerned anchorwoman Linda Vester and a former New York judge who’d beome something of a celebrity, were avidly discussing the Night Spider case.

A conviction was almost a foregone conclusion, the judge barked knowledgeably. The anchorman appeared absolutely giddy as he described the tape of Mandle’s capture showing on a split screen. Gorgeous Linda Vester pursed her lips and looked unbearably pained and sympathetic toward everyone everywhere who might be suffering any sort of trouble beyond a hangnail.

Paula became aware of Linnert standing near her, off to the side, paying no attention whatsoever to what was happening on television.

She became suddenly ill at ease in her nakedness. She took a sip of hot chocolate. “I usually don’t sleep past eight o’clock. It’s uncoplike.”

“You don’t have to be at work till this afternoon,” Linnert reminded her, “which makes it okay that you’re out of uniform.”

“That’s true.”

“So what do you want to do with the rest of the morning?”

She placed her cup on the glass-topped coffee table and smiled as she moved toward him. “Go back to bed.” She wrapped her arms around him. Finding herself kind of hoping a neighbor with a telescope was out there.

“This how you celebrate when a killer gets arrested?” Linnert asked, when she’d pulled away from their long kiss.

“Yeah. And there’s almost always a killer getting arrested somewhere.”