Night Victims (The Night Spider) (34 page)

Horn opened a wooden humidor on his desk and got out a cigar so dark it was almost green, then cut off its tip with a miniature guillotine. He held another of the cigars out for Bickerstaff, who hesitated, then accepted the offer. The guillotine didn’t work so well in his hands. Paula thought he might cut off a finger.

“Paula?” Horn offered, holding up another cigar.

“Thanks,” she said, “but I’m a lady.”
And I thought smoking in the house was against the rules.

Horn and Bickerstaff chuckled at that lady remark. Paula didn’t know quite how to take it. She traded glances with Bickerstaff, who finally appeared to be catching on that something essential had changed there. He looked away from her and peered cross-eyed at the tip of his cigar as he struggled to light it with a paper match he’d produced from somewhere.

“Anne and I have decided to separate,” Horn said between puffs, effortlessly firing up his cigar with a silver lighter. “She’s rented an apartment on the East Side and is preparing to move out.”

The boxes in the hall. The missing furniture.
Paula didn’t know what to say. Heard her own voice. “I’m . . . sorry.”
Shit! Inadequate!

Bickerstaff said nothing but paused in his puffing, salivating attempt to get his cigar burning.

Horn gave a shrug that might have meant anything.

“I think I might not’ve cut the whole tip off thish thing,” Bickerstaff said around the dead cigar.

Horn slid the guillotine across the desk to him. “Mind your finger.”

Bickerstaff took another swipe at the saliva-moistened tip of the cigar with the little angled blade, then tried again with a match. “Thash better.” Paula saw ash drop from the burning tip of the cigar onto the carpet. Overhead, the floor creaked.
God!

“So we get to work,” Horn said. “Summarize what we’ve learned.”

“That’ll be easy,” Bickerstaff said, holding the cigar between index and middle fingers, “considering it isn’t much.”

“Evidence suggests both guards were killed at almost the same time,” Paula said, “one with the sharpened screw Mandle used to disembowel the other prisoner. The other was shot, then his face and head were bludgeoned, probably with the butt of the gun.”

“The guard’s gun,” Horn said.

Paula nodded. “Mandle’s got both their guns.”

“Any witnesses turn up?”

Bickerstaff said, “Not anyone who saw the escape itself. It had to have happened lightning fast. A guy named Smith—actually Smith—who happened to be glancing out a window of a sleazy hotel near where the escape took place and said he saw someone in what he called prison garb leaving the scene on the run. Then Smith disappeared. Apparently doesn’t want to get involved. Wants to join all those other Smiths out there who aren’t really Smiths.”

“We’ve canvassed the neighborhood,” Paula said. “Doubled patrols in the area, buttoned up the airports and Port Authority, put a watch in the subway. And, of course, every minute and a half the media are showing that creepy photo of Mandle taken during the trial.”

She thought she might have heard the doorbell chime in the bowels of the house, some noise on the stairs. Horn didn’t seem to have noticed. Or care.

“Not that it’ll do much good,” Bickerstaff said, “but we’re keeping a watch on the building where Mandle rented an apartment under an assumed name. Maybe something’ll draw him back to his familiar neighborhood—a favorite item he left behind, unfinished business, an old love or something.”

“Somebody he forgot to murder,” Paula said.

Bickerstaff drew on his cigar and looked at it appraisingly the way cigar smokers do, as if pleased by it and wondering what it was going to do next. “It’s amazing—” he said. Paula thought he was going to comment on the cigar. “—the way Mandle just dropped out of the world without leaving tracks. He kills three men, then unlocks handcuffs and leg irons and strolls away dressed in a luminous jumpsuit. Right off the end of the earth. So far, a perfect disappearing act. How the hell did he bring it off?”

“It’s his training,” said a voice from the doorway.

And there was Colonel Victor Kray in full military uniform, his regulation coat slung casually over his arm. The medals on his chest gleamed as if he’d just polished them— or had an aide do it.

“I know because I trained him.”

“I feel somewhat guilty,” Kray said, stepping the rest of the way into the room. He draped his coat over the back of a chair but remained standing. “I don’t think I fully got across to you earlier how skilled Mandle would be in the lethal arts. And that includes the art of subterfuge. If he’s hiding from the police, from the world, he won’t be easily found. He’s trained to be elusive in countries where he doesn’t even speak the language.”

Horn’s only response was to offer Kray a cigar.

“I don’t smoke,” Kray said. “But I wouldn’t mind another glass of that single malt scotch.”

Paula was beginning to feel as if she’d wandered into a men’s club.
What next? A pheasant hunt and billiards?

Horn got up from behind the desk and poured Kray his drink. Paula and Bickerstaff declined, and Horn put the bottle back in its cabinet then returned to sit behind his desk. Though there was a chair nearby, Kray didn’t make a move to sit down. Paula wondered how he could appear so relaxed while maintaining such an erect posture.
Must be leadership.

“I came back,” Kray said, after sampling the scotch, “to offer my help. After all, the Night Spider is, in a way, my creation. I taught him how to move like a ghost and kill, and then hide.”

“And now you think you’re better qualified than anyone to find him,” Horn said.

“I think I might be the
only
one who
can
find him,” Kray said. “Or who can effectively help you find him.”

“How do you intend to help?”

“In any way you choose. Fill me in on what you know about his escape, keep me apprised, and as events unfold, you can contact me and I’ll provide any insights I can.

Obviously, you can accept or reject my suggestions. If nothing else, I’ll sleep easier knowing I made them. I’ll be staying at the Sheraton Towers. Not for an indefinite period of time, but as long as my absence from other duties permits.”

Horn thanked him. “I’m sure your insights and advice will be of value.”

“And of course,” Kray said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d view me as a kind of ace in the hole. To alert media or other agencies of my involvement would be to admit the SSF exists, which officially it doesn’t. The relatively few people who know about it get kind of prickly if they’re forced to go on record denying they’ve ever heard of it. Elections, promotions, and all might be at stake. Careers.”

“Such as your own,” Bickerstaff said.

Kray shot him a look that seemed to physically press Bickerstaff back in his chair. “Yes, such as my own.”

Horn said he understood, and that they appreciated the risk Kray was taking. They’d do everything possible to maintain confidentiality. Bickerstaff and Paula seconded the sentiment.

Kray finished his scotch, then smiled graciously and nodded to each of them in turn as he said his good nights. He abruptly did a kind of smooth about-face, scooping up his coat from the chair back as he spun, and showed himself out.

The room seemed to have been made smaller by his leaving. Paula thought you didn’t often meet somebody whose absence made almost as profound an impression as his presence. The man did have an effect. She felt as if she’d hear an order to charge up a hill any second, and up the hill she would go.

“Well?” Horn said, after about half a minute.

“He doesn’t waste our time with small talk,” Paula said.

“He said what he came to say,” Bickerstaff remarked in a tone of admiration, “so it was time to leave and he went.”

“How very military,” Paula said.

Bickerstaff puffed on his cigar. “You think about it, Paula, we’ve won some wars.”

* * *

Horn’s first night alone in the brownstone. Scotch straight up. Cuban cigar and the hell with the smoke and lingering tobacco scent. He was still bewildered and smarting from Anne’s departure, and knew he was indulging himself in a way that was almost childishly defiant.

Living alone. Old cop aging in an old house in an old part of an old city. It was a depressing thought, but at least it had
some
advantages. Like greater personal freedom.

Damn, the place was quiet!

He’d just returned from a steak dinner at a neighborhood restaurant he’d always liked but Anne despised. Full stomach, good liquor, and a quality cigar. He knew he should feel at least some sense of well-being if not contentment. What he had, what he was left with, was far beyond the means and luck of most people in the world. There was a reason why misery loved company. It was probably comparison.

But he felt no contentment, and it was no comfort that others had more reason for misery. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man still had only one eye. He remembered a time long ago when fledgling TV journalist Nina Count almost touched a microphone to the nose of a young cop who’d just shot and killed a burglary suspect and asked, “How do you feel? Right now?” Then it became such a cliché that even TV journalists no longer asked the question. It was an interesting question despite its intrusive and often tasteless nature. Horn took a sip of scotch and asked it of himself.

Lonely,
was the answer.
Right now, I feel goddamned lonely.

He realized he hadn’t been lonely in years. Really lonely. The kind of lonely that grabs at your guts and makes you afraid to look into yourself.

He also had to admit he was feeling too sorry for himself. If there was any emotion Horn hated it was self-pity. It robbed you of everything worthwhile. It made you vulnerable.

He mentally castigated himself for falling into such a funk.
Don’t be such an asshole. You’ve got a life to live. A job to do.

A job . . .

He tried to concentrate on the Mandle case: how the murderous bastard had escaped, what a capable killer he must be. A man trained to kill in the service of his country now killing in the service of his psychosis.

Was
it a psychosis? Or was Mandle simply evil? The truth was that Horn had never much bothered himself about the distinction. His job, his calling, was to stop people like Aaron Mandle, to remove them from society. The world didn’t set itself right. For everyone who broke things material or human and upset the balance, someone had to repair and restore and realign. Horn wasn’t only working for the city; he was working for the victims. Justice was not an abstract to Thomas Horn.

Illness or malevolence or both, whatever fueled his intent, Mandle was certainly doing evil. And if he wasn’t found again and stopped, the evil would resume. That was enough motivation for Horn, enough reason to live and to rouse himself and confront each fresh new morning.

Or so he told himself.

He snuffed out what was left of his cigar, drained the last quarter inch of his drink, and trudged upstairs to bed.

Sleeping alone was nothing new. Because of the hours a cop kept and the hours a hospital administrator kept, Horn and Anne had often slept alone.

But going to bed alone wasn’t the same thing as going to bed lonely.

Getting up early wasn’t the same thing as waking up early, either. Horn had been awake for hours before finally climbing out of bed when dawn light began filtering into the room.

He put on a robe, stepped into comfortable lined leather slippers, and went down to the kitchen. After getting the

Braun coffeemaker clucking and gurgling, he padded into the foyer, expecting to hear Anne’s footfall upstairs or see a note from her on the hall table explaining where she’d gone. When she’d return.

Not gonna happen! Stop messing with your own mind!

Time to step outside and get the morning paper, if no one had stolen it. He knew that by the time he stepped back inside there’d be at least a faint scent of fresh coffee in the brownstone. He’d have a cup at the kitchen table while he scanned the news. Then he’d shower, dress, and walk down to the Home Away for a proper breakfast.

When he opened the door, he wasn’t surprised not to find a paper on the concrete stoop or within sight on the sidewalk.

But there
was
something on the porch. A chess piece. A plastic red knight about four inches tall.

Horn thought it was interesting the way it had been placed on the porch, tucked up against the inside of the wrought-iron railing so it couldn’t be seen from the street. Someone would have to walk up on the stoop and then turn almost all the way around in order to spot it. Or open the door and look out.

He bent over, picked up the piece, and examined it. Nothing unusual. Cheap plastic from a mold. The red knight was from the sort of set that could be bought at just about any store that sold games.

Horn carried the chess knight into the house and placed it on the kitchen table. He poured a too strong, half cup of coffee, then sat down at the table and looked at the knight, wondering what it might mean. Almost surely someone had placed it on the porch deliberately where he—or Anne— would notice it when leaving the brownstone.

Horn sipped and thought, while the bitterness of lukewarm coffee displaced the stale aftertaste of last night’s cigar. Some trade.

The thing about the knight, he mused, was that it was the only chess piece capable of moving
above
other pieces. It could drop straight down to capture an opponent’s piece.

Did that really mean something? Was he making too much of this? Had some homeless person or wandering kid simply found the chess knight on the sidewalk and placed it out of harm’s way on the stoop, thinking it might belong to whoever lived in the brownstone? A thoughtful gesture. Such things could happen in New York. Along with the brusequeness, mayhem, and murder, such things could happen.

The phone rang.

Setting down his cup, Horn twisted his body and stretched out his left arm to lift the receiver on the kitchen extension. He glanced at the microwave clock as he put plastic to ear and said hello, wondering who’d be calling him at 6:45 in the morning.