Night Victims

52

New York, 2004

The night after Cindy Vine’s statement, Will Lincoln rotated the valve to extinguish the flame of his welding torch. A wisp of smoke and the stench of hot metal lingered.

He’d come out to his garage studio to work, thinking it would take his mind off what he’d just seen the TV news saying: that the police suspected Joe Vine of killing the last four Night Spider victims.

When he’d heard that, Will set down the Budweiser he’d been drinking. Kim had bitched, telling him the bottle would leave a ring on the table, he should use a coaster. Didn’t he see the stack of coasters right there on the table?

At first Will hadn’t even heard her, then he calmly told her he didn’t care if the bottle left a ring. She was yelling at him as he stood up and walked out of the house. He heard her for a while after he shut the front door, even after he entered the garage, until he’d turned the air conditioner on high.

Then he set to work on Flying Vengeance, the steel American eagle sculpture he’d been working on.

But it hadn’t helped. He hadn’t been able to shake his concern for Vine.

Joe Vine. .

Will remembered Vine very well. He could recall his face in minute detail: tense going into action; relieved and looser around the eyes and mouth afterward. He was never really afraid enough for it to show. Watching Vine had helped Will steel himself for the things they’d had to do, the things he never talked about and that no one would believe. Not in their worst nightmares.

Will stepped away from his workbench and peeled off his tinted welder’s glasses. He didn’t feel like working anymore. Not after the news and the memories that had been stirred.

He felt like having another beer, but not at home.

He felt like talking to someone, but not his wife.

Joe Vine and Kray were in Kray’s black rental Ford Explorer, driving north. They had everything they needed. Kray had seen to it.

Vine was slumped against the door in the passenger seat, staring intently ahead into darkness. His gaze didn’t seem to carry, as if he were concentrating on the bugs occasionally flitting in the headlight beams and smacking against the windshield. Kray didn’t like the way he looked.

“We can pull it out, Joe,” he said, shooting glances sideways while paying attention to the highway. “We’ve been in deeper shit.”

“I’m not in any shit. I’m gonna get what I want.”

“We’re trained for the impossible,” Kray reminded him. “Don’t change your mind and go pussy on me, Joe.”

“You know I won’t. I want to kill her more than you do.”

“Closer than brothers. That’s how the unit survived.”

“Those of us who did.”

“Fuckin’ right!” Those of us who did! The winners! “We survived because in situations like this we toughened up. There’s nothing new for us here, Joe. We deal with it or it buries us. And we can deal with it if we’ve got the guts. You got the guts, Joe?”

“I’m fine in the guts department. Anyway, like I told you, there really isn’t a choice. Not for me. I’m on my way to kill the cunt who ruined my son.”

“There’s always a choice. You throw up your hands and get fucked, or you become the fucker.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Truth is, I know that, Joe. In this, you don’t have any real choice. It’s why I’m here with you, helping you in what you have to do.”

Vine pulled himself up to sit straighter, though he continued his intent stare out the windshield at the headlight beams and rushing highway. Kray hoped Vine was going to be okay. Vine was at the edge. His blood lust might overwhelm his reason, or worse, his madness might shut him down, paralyze him.

“Closer than brothers, Joe. That’s how we got it done. That’s how we’ll get this done. You ready?”

Vine didn’t answer for a while. The intermittent splat! of insects on the windshield was the only sound other than the hum of motor and moan of wind.

Finally Vine said, “Fuckin’-A. I’m better than ready. I’m eager.”

Kray smiled tightly. Confidently. Those words from Vine had been good enough before. They’d be good enough again.

Horn got the call that evening at his brownstone. He’d just snuffed out a cigar and was getting ready for bed when the phone rang.

Rollie Larkin.

“We don’t have the DNA yet,” he said to Horn, “but I thought you’d like to know that microscopic analysis matches the strand of hair found stuck beneath Alice Duggan’s duct-tape gag with hair taken from Joe Vine’s comb. Vine killed her, not that there was much doubt.”

“No doubt at all,” Horn said, “but thanks for calling. Everything in place for Anne?”

“I’m in tight communication with the operation. Everyone’s in place. Men in the woods and in the creek bed, sentries watching the road. An officer is sitting guard while the cabin sleeps.”

“I guess I can sleep then.”

“Go ahead, Horn. Drink some of that scotch of yours, if it’ll help.”

Horn smiled. “I might do that. Then I’ll drive up to the cabin in the morning.”

After hanging up the phone, Horn was glad the conversation hadn’t been on the cell phone. It would have been more likely overheard.

On the other hand, given the capabilities of Joe Vine, the phone line to the brownstone might be tapped.

Horn decided he probably wouldn’t sleep very well, scotch or no scotch.

But he did-for less than an hour.

Then he was wide awake and fumbling for the phone.

Larkin said a thick hello, as if Horn had woken him.

Horn didn’t care. “Rollie, I’ve thought of something!”

“I’m thinking of something right now, too,” Larkin said sleepily.

“Cindy Vine,” Horn said. “I remembered something she said during her interrogation, about when her husband confessed the murders to her. She said, ‘. . they never told their wives or anyone else about the murders.’”

“Yeah,” Larkin said.

“Vine said they. And he said wives. Mandle never had a wife.”

“This means?. .”

“Joe Vine was telling her about more than one other killer besides himself. He must have been referring to Victor Kray. The three of them-Mandle, Vine and Kray- took up murder together during the SSF’s black operations.”

“It’s possible,” Larkin said cautiously. He sounded all the way awake now and somewhat skeptical. “But why Kray?”

“Mandle stayed in the SSF and was never called on the murder Vine witnessed, so Vine must not have talked.”

“True,” Larkin said.

“Unless he did go to his commanding officer, and it went no further.”

“Makes sense.”

“And it went no further because Mandle must have had something on Kray.”

“So why didn’t Vine go over Kray’s head?”

“My guess is by that time he was in too deep,” Horn said. “All that’s important is we know he didn’t go higher than Kray in the chain of command. Then, when Mandle escaped from the prison van, Vine picked up where the Night Spider had left off, after killing Mandle. All so he could avenge what happened to his son and kill Anne; her death would’ve been blamed on Mandle.”

“So why is Kray trying to help us nab Vine?”

“He doesn’t want us to nab him; he wants to make sure we kill him, so he can’t talk and implicate Kray. He wants to stay close to the investigation so he can control it, make sure Vine dies before talking, even if he has to kill him himself. Kray probably helped his old military buddy Vine kill Mandle after he escaped from the van, then thought the situation was contained. He had no way of knowing Vine would go on a killing spree of his own. Something else: I mentioned to Kray that Anne was going to be hidden away in her brother’s cabin.”

“You mention where the cabin was?”

“Do you really think Kray couldn’t find out?”

“I get your point. You say Kray’s at the Rion Hotel?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll send around a detail to bring him in.”

“No,” Horn said. “Just put a tight tail on him. No need yet to let him know we’re on to him.”

“Chess game, huh?”

“I hope we’re still at that point.”

“Where’s Bobby Fischer when you need him?”

“I’m driving up to the cabin.”

“I’ll go with you, soon as I arrange for the watch on Kray. That’s where this is all likely to come together. I want to make sure everything up there is being done right.”

“No need for that. Can you call Army Records in St. Louis this time of night?” Horn asked.

“I know a way to get through.”

“Get any information they might have on Colonel Kray. It might help us string him along while he thinks he’s stringing us along.” Horn glanced at his watch. 11:35 P.M. “I’m leaving in five minutes. I’ve gotta make another phone call.”

“I’ll be on the road in ten minutes.”

Larkin was determined. Horn decided to give up trying to talk him out of it. “Okay. Meet me off the highway on the county road that leads to the cabin.”

“Take your cell phone,” Larkin said.

“Always.”

As Horn hurriedly got dressed, he wondered if Larkin really knew how much the NYPD leaked.

After leaving the brownstone, Horn’s first act was to call Bickerstaff and Paula on a public phone three blocks away.

At about the halfway point of the drive to the cabin, Larkin called Horn on his cell phone.

“Just got the word,” he said. “The detail sent to the hotel to observe Kray says he checked out only hours ago. Desk clerk said he was in a hurry.”

Horn felt his stomach go cold with apprehension. Things were moving ahead of them; they weren’t in control and might not possess the necessary knowledge. Losing at chess, and the stakes were unbelievably high.

“Something else,” Larkin said. “Army Records tells me

Colonel Victor Kray resigned his commission and left the service over two years ago.”

Horn was silent, trying to drive and comprehend all of this at the same time.

“Whaddya think, Horn?” asked Larkin’s voice from the cell phone. Horn could hear the constant snarl of Larkin’s car engine in the background. Larkin wasn’t worried about speeding tickets.

Horn said, “Drive faster.”

Harlington Sheriff’s Deputy Albert “Sass” Collier settled deeper where he sat in darkness among last year’s leaves. He was alongside the dry creek bed. Like the others guarding Anne Horn, Sass had strict instructions to hold his position and not go near the cabin unless ordered to do so. The NYPD guys were farther in toward the cabin, one of them inside with the blond Anne Horn. Sass had seen her photo in the New York papers. Nice looking lady from the big city. He wondered what she’d be like to talk to. He smiled. Talk to, hell!

Collier was on loan from the sheriff ‘s department because he was a local and a hunter. He knew the woods. If the wind was right, he could hear a deer move a hundred yards away. He could hear a squirrel chatter and know its direction almost well enough to fire at it blind and hit it with a shotgun blast. Rumor had it Sass was half Cherokee Indian. He wasn’t, but he should have been.

Nothing, nobody, was going to pass him in or on either side of the creek bed without him knowing.

He was called “Sass” because of some wildness in his younger days, and a stubbornness that had matured into genuine toughness. Sass was six-feet-two and two hundred pounds of solid cop. He knew the skills of his trade and beyond that held a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. If he did hear somebody moving through the woods toward the cabin, he’d know what to do. He’d be able to do it.

But he heard nothing other than the soft breeze playing through the leaves, even as dark forms above him moved through the forest canopy. If he’d glanced up, they would have been still, merely shadows among shadows.

One of the dark forms dropped straight down on a slender line to a point about three feet behind and above the seated Sass. The dark figure made a sudden, silent movement that tipped his body forward and down. In the same abrupt but smooth motion Sass’s hair was gripped, his head yanked back to expose his throat, and tempered sharp steel sliced through his neck deep enough to sever both carotid arteries.

It had all happened in a few seconds, and the only sound had been the gush and soft splatter of blood on the dry leaves-like a gentle summer rain that passed quickly.

Sass’s face barely had time to register surprise.