Darker Than Night (8 page)

Nude but for her oversize dark blue NYPD T-shirt, the window air conditioner humming and rattling away as it sent a cool breeze over her bare legs, she lay on top of the sheets and thought about the Elzner case.

Which led her to think about Quinn.

There he was again, slouched on his damned horse.

C'mon, pill!

Marcy Graham woke again from the dream she'd been having lately. Someone would be in the room with her and Ron, standing at the foot of the bed, watching them sleep. She would drift nearer and nearer to consciousness, then come all the way awake with a start.

And there would be no one there.

Again! So real!

She sat up in bed and looked around in the dimness, then relaxed and lay back, noticing her sheet and pillow were damp with perspiration though the room was cool. Ron stirred beside her, then sighed and rolled over onto his side, facing away from her. She took comfort in his bulk, in his nearness.

Yet she couldn't return to sleep, so real was that dream. More real than at other times, she realized. She could almost recall the man's dark form, the silent, motionless way he stood and stared.

But it didn't make sense, any of it. What kind of maniac would want to simply watch other people while they slept?

Unless he wasn't simply watching. Maybe he was making sure they were asleep so he could…do what? Something else? Something more? Knowing he wouldn't be disturbed.

Marcy flung herself onto her side and fluffed her pillow so violently she woke up Ron. He rolled onto his back and looked over at her.

“Somethin' wrong?” His voice was slurred by sleep.

“I can't sleep.”

“Yeah. I gathered s'much. Wha's wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Fine.”

“Something!”

“What?”

“I don't know.”

He breathed in deeply and sighed. “An' you want me to find out.”

“Would you?”

Instead of answering, he sat up and opened the drawer of the nightstand on his side of the bed. She knew he kept a souvenir baseball bat there, but while it was a miniature bat, bearing Sammy Sosa's signature, it made a handy club about the size of a policeman's nightstick.

She watched his muscular, slope-shouldered form, dressed in white undershorts and sleeveless undershirt, cross the room and go into the hall, saw the hall brighten as lights in the living room came on. She could hear him moving around out there, checking things, looking where someone might hide, opening closet doors. Master of his domain, stalking a possible enemy who'd gotten through the defenses.

Suddenly uncomfortable alone in the dim room, Marcy climbed out of bed and went to join him. Besides, if by some remote chance an intruder
was
in the apartment, two against one would be better than just Ron—though Marcy sure didn't want to put that to the test.

Ron was standing in the middle of the living room, the miniature bat held low in his right hand.

He looked over at her, hair tousled, eyes sleepy. “Nothing. The door's still locked, everything looks normal, nobody hiding anywhere in here.”

“Did you look in the kitchen?”

“Sure. Normal. Everything's okay, Marcy.”

“The bedroom.”

“Huh? We just left the bedroom.”

“There are places to hide there.”

“Sure, I guess there are.”

She smiled at him. He'd been brave for her. Now he was humoring her. But that meant he was thinking of her, showing his love.

“You wait here while I go check.”

He trod barefoot back into the bedroom, looking forward to going back to sleep. But why not give Marcy her way? He was too tired to argue. And he'd been revved up a few minutes ago, thinking maybe she
had
heard something or knew somehow there was someone in the apartment.

Damn, he'd been revved up!

Calmer now, reassured, he entered the dim bedroom and didn't bother turning on the light. As he moved toward the closet door, he held the bat higher.
Anything's possible.

“Don't forget to look under the bed,” Marcy called from the living room.

Ron paused and lowered the bat.

 

The man lying flat on his stomach beneath the bed switched the long-bladed knife to his other hand, on the side of the bed where he could see Ron Graham's bare feet. Watching the feet gave him some idea of where Graham's face and vulnerable throat might appear any second if he peered beneath the bed. Using the knife might be awkward. It was all a question of body position. Graham would be surprised and horrified and frozen for a second, allowing the opportunity for a quick body shift and a slash with the knife. But the bare feet were so important, where they were, where the toes were pointed. The man with the knife lay very still, his upper body an inch off the floor, watching the pale bare feet, watching….

 

Ron walked close to the bed and sat down on it. He sure didn't feel like bending over and checking for monsters. He would humor Marcy only so far.

“Nobody under there!” he called to her. “Just a few dust bunnies.”

He rose and went to the closet, quickly opened the door, felt afraid as he inserted an arm and parted the clothes to make sure no one was hiding back there in the darkness.

Then he caught himself. He'd bought into Marcy's delusions.

What the hell am I doing?

Feeling foolish, he grinned and stepped back, closing the door. Shaking his head, he returned to the living room.

“All clear,” he told Marcy, who was standing near the sofa looking worried.

She let out a long breath, then hugged him tightly.

He kissed her cool but damp forehead. “Can we go back to bed now?”

“Yeah. I'm sorry. It's just that I've been worried lately and having the damnedest dreams.”

“Dreams can't hurt you.” He put his arm around her waist and led her back toward the bedroom.

“They can sure as hell scare you.”

When they were back in bed, he moved close to her. “Since we're awake…,” he said.

She felt her nightgown being tugged and worked upward, and she dug her heels into the mattress and raised her back until her breasts were no longer constrained by the taut material. His fingertips and then his lips were light on her right nipple. Desire moved at the core of her and she raked her fingers through his damp hair. Still she was outside of herself, of what was happening. She wanted to do this, but it was too soon after being so frightened.

He was toying with her left nipple now, not going to stop. She knew him so well. He wasn't going to be talked out of this. And she didn't really want to talk him out of it.

“Can I use my vibrator?” she asked. “I need to relax, and I'm still pretty shook up.”

“You'll be shook up in a different way soon,” he reassured her.

“Ron…”

He raised his head. “Okay.” He kissed her between the breasts, using his tongue on her bare flesh, then shifted his weight and stood up. The vibrator was fine with him, anyway. He'd tell her where and how to use it, then let her decide she was ready, then—

“Hurry, please!” she said behind him as he opened the closet door to get the vibrator down from the top shelf. He smiled and didn't answer.

And gasped when he saw the face and eyes staring out at him, felt the cold blade slice in and up toward his heart. Everything was devoured by the searing pain…his world, his loss, his love, his hope…. All of it fell away and he dropped swiftly and breathlessly in a dark elevator plunging toward blackness.

He tried to say Marcy's name, as if it were the magic that might somehow stop the fall and save him, but that, too, died in darkness.

 

Marcy, lying back with her eyes closed and massaging her nipples with her fingertips, sensed something was wrong. Then she heard the funny, gasping sound Ron made and sat up in bed as suddenly as if a puppeteer had yanked her strings.

She saw Ron standing against the black background beyond the open closet door, then watched him sink to the floor.

Marcy tried to call to him but made only a strangled, cawing sound.

And out of the closet stepped her nightmare.

 

Half an hour later, while walking away from the Grahams' apartment building, their killer decided this had been much better than his last late-night encounter.

It was because of the knife.

He'd left his gun in Martin Elzner's hand. The police could do wonders with their ballistics tests, and they could connect gun to crime, therefore he could no longer have it in his possession. It was simply too risky, and he'd learned not to take unnecessary risks within the larger risks that he must take. So, as planned, the gun made a convincing prop.

But it should have been a knife to begin with. Always a knife.

So he'd left the gun, wiped clean of fingerprints other than those of Elzner's dead hand. The silencer, too, was of no further use, so he'd disposed of it by tossing it in a Dumpster. Surely by now it was lost in a vast landfill.

Two days later, at a flea market on the West Side, he'd bought a produce knife, the sort used by warehousemen and shippers of fruits and vegetables. It was a long folding knife, slender, with a bone handle and a high-quality steel blade that would hold an edge.

When he'd bought the knife, he was sure it would do what he needed, and now it had.

Most of the blood was from the wife. Quinn could almost taste its coppery scent along the edges of his tongue in a way that brought saliva and a queasy stomach.

Along with Pearl and Fedderman, he stood in the Grahams' bedroom near the body of the husband, Ronald. The dead man was lying tightly curled on his side on the floor, partly encircling most of the blood that had spilled from him, as if he'd tried to conserve the precious substance and failed. The frozen expression on his face suggested he'd experienced an agonized death. Quinn had seen similar expressions on the faces of too many victims of gunshot or knife wounds that incapacitated immediately but allowed a period of suffering before the end.

“That one's pretty simple,” said Nift the ME, who was standing near the bed where the wife lay. “He was stabbed once beneath the sternum with an upward angle that got the heart.” He motioned toward Marcella Graham. “This one, on the other hand, is more complicated. Over a dozen stab wounds, and deliberate damage to erogenous zones.” He motioned toward two lumps in the puddled, crusted blood on the bed. “Those are her nipples.”

“Jesus!” Fedderman said.

Nift grinned at the veteran cop's reaction. “I'd say your killer had his beef with the wife, and Hubby had to be eliminated so he wouldn't interfere.”

“You're playing detective,” Quinn said.

“That's okay,” Nift said. “You can play medical examiner.”

Quinn ignored him and stuck to business. “Did she die early or late in the game?”

“The pattern of bleeding suggests she died with the last stab wound, to the heart.”

“He wanted her to suffer,” Pearl said.

“What about time of death?” Quinn asked.

“Early morning,” Nift said. “One or two o'clock. Three, three-thirty at the outside. I'll be able to make a closer estimate later.”

Quinn had moved to get a different perspective of the room, which was well furnished and looked freshly painted. Most of the furniture looked new.

“They live here long?” he asked nobody in particular, getting into the mode of command again. An assumption of authority that had become part of him. He sent a look Fedderman's way.

Fedderman understood and left the bedroom to talk to one of the uniforms who'd taken the call and were first on the scene. Nobody said anything until he returned a few minutes later.

“The Grahams moved in three months ago. Neighbors didn't know much about them. Guy next door said they argued a lot. He could hear them through the ducts.”

“We oughta find out what else he might have heard through the ducts,” Pearl said.

Quinn seemed not to have heard her. He was studying the room, the way the dead man lay, the closet door hanging open and how the clothes were draped on the hangers, the way the wife was sprawled on her back with her nightgown up so her breasts showed. What had happened to her breasts. He felt his stomach turn and he swallowed bile that rose bitterly at the back of his throat. All these years on the job, and he still didn't understand how people could do this kind of thing to each other.

He made himself walk over and look more closely at the wife, and at the area around her body.

“Looks like our killer was hiding in the closet,” he said, “and surprised the husband when he opened the door. After stabbing the husband, he went for the wife.”

“Killer musta gotten blood on him from the wife,” Fedderman said.

Quinn wasn't so sure. Someone expert enough with a knife knew how people bled, and could avoid being marked.

“No sign of him having washed up,” Pearl said, “but we can check the drains for traces of blood to be sure.”

“Maybe she had a lover on the side, and Hubby came home unexpectedly,” Fedderman said. “The lover hid in the closet, but maybe made some noise the husband heard and went to investigate. Bad things ensued.”

“Hubby must have had time to get undressed and ready for bed,” Pearl said with an edge of sarcasm.

“Could have gone that way. The wife's lover mighta been trapped in the closet for hours, hoping for an opportunity to leave before daylight.”

“Like in those French bedroom farces,” Pearl said.

Nift laughed.

Quinn and the others looked at him.

“Detectives!” Nift said. “Your theories are all bullshit.”

Quinn cocked his head at the little man. “Why so sure?”

“You didn't look close enough at the husband. He's still gripping the knife he used to kill his wife, then to stab himself through the heart.”

Quinn returned to the husband and got down on one knee beside him. He could see the end of a knife handle in one of the dead hands drawn close to the husband's midsection. He moved an arm slightly to peer at the knife, which appeared to be a paring or boning knife with a long, thin blade.

“Murder-suicide,” Nift said.

Quinn nodded. “Looks that way, Detective Nift.” He glanced at Pearl and Fedderman and made a slight sideways motion with his head to signal they were leaving. “We'll give you a while, then get back to you about exact time and cause,” he said to Nift.

“It'll all be in the autopsy report,” Nift said. He looked down at Marcella Graham and shook his head sadly. “Damned shame, great rack like that.”

Quinn didn't look at him as he left the bedroom, Pearl and Fedderman following. They made their way through the techs who were busily luminoling the living room, nodding to a few they knew, then went into the kitchen.

“Some blood on the soap,” said one of the techs, a curly-haired guy about Nift's size, leaning over the sink. He was slipping a small bar of white soap into a plastic evidence bag. “Looks like somebody washed up here. There'll be more blood residue in the drain.”

“If any of it's the killer's blood, we got this asshole's DNA,” Fedderman said.

“Then all we'd need is the asshole himself,” Pearl said, “and we'd have a match.”

“Knife come from there?” Quinn asked, nodding toward an open drawer above one of the base cabinets.

“Probably,” said the tech. “That's the drawer where the knives were kept, and it was open like that.”

Quinn walked over and peered into the drawer. It had one of those plastic dividers. He saw an elaborate wine cork puller, spatulas, a long-tined fork, and lots of knives with wooden handles. Like the knife in hubby's hand.

He turned away from the drawer and looked at the refrigerator. It was large and appeared to be fairly new. There was a big clear bowl on top, probably for salads, and next to the bowl a slender glass vase with a yellow rose in it. “Fridge been dusted?”

The tech nodded. “Not that it matters. The way the prints are smeared and overlaid, I can tell you somebody was in here recently wearing gloves.”

“Why would Ron Graham have worn gloves?” Pearl asked Quinn and Fedderman.

But it was the tech who answered. “I've seen this before, when it was somebody in the kitchen doing cleaning while wearing rubber gloves. Some women protect their hands that way.”

Everybody's a detective, Quinn thought. But the tech was right. Not too much could be made of the gloves. Still…

“Found any rubber gloves in here?” he asked the tech.

“Not so far.”

“Uh-huh.”

Quinn went to the refrigerator and used two fingers to open it. Pearl and Fedderman crowded close to peer inside with him.

“Nothing unusual,” Fedderman said in a disappointed voice, feeling cold air spilling out around his ankles as he looked at milk and juice cartons, condiment jars and bottles, soda and beer cans.

Pearl, who'd been standing very close to Quinn, opened the meat drawer, then the produce drawer.

“Cheese,” she said, as if about to be photographed.

Quinn and Fedderman looked where she was pointing, near a head of lettuce. There were four large wedges of white cheese there, identical except that one of them was half gone, with the plastic wrapper tucked around it. The labels said the cheese was
NORSTRUM GOURMET
and it was imported from the Netherlands.

“Look at the price of this stuff,” Fedderman said.

“That's why it's gourmet,” Pearl told him. “It's probably delicious.”

“Four wedges. Or almost four. Stuff must last a long time, and it's pretty costly to be buying it four wedges at a whack.”

“And there's no sign the Grahams were planning a party.”

Quinn was listening to them, pleased by their acumen and absorption. They were into the case all the way now, as he was. It was much more than a job.

“Dust the cheese for prints,” he said.

The tech grinned. “You kidding? Cheese doesn't—”

“The wrappers,” Quinn said. “Dust the plastic wrappers.” He nudged the refrigerator door shut and glanced at Pearl and Fedderman. “Let's go downstairs.”

He didn't say anything while the three of them were in the elevator, waiting till they were outside on the sidewalk and out of earshot of anyone in the building.

“I think it's our guy,” he said.

“Yeah,” Pearl said. “Making it look like murder-suicide.”

“But he used a knife this time instead of a gun,” Fedderman pointed out. “Does that add up?”

“If it doesn't touch on his core compulsion,” Quinn said.

“Or if he's read the literature on serial killers,” Pearl said, “and knows enough to alter his methods.”

There was a break in traffic, so they crossed the street to where the unmarked was parked in bright sunlight.

When they were seated in the car—Fedderman behind the steering wheel with the engine idling and the air conditioner on high—Pearl, in the backseat, said, “Nift's gonna go with murder-suicide, and it might wash. The weapon still in hubby's hand, no sign of a break-in….”

“It won't wash for long,” Quinn said. “It can't. There was a chair pulled out from the kitchen table as if somebody'd been sitting there. And there were skid marks on the floor near the bed. Somebody'd been hiding under there and dragged dust with him when he slid out.”

“Maybe the husband, hiding and waiting for the lover to show,” Fedderman suggested.

“But he was in his underwear,” Pearl said. “I think the killer was hiding under the bed. He thought he saw his chance, got out, and was about to leave, maybe out the window, and he heard the Grahams coming and made for the closet.”

“Where would the Grahams be coming
from
?”

“I don't know. The kitchen, maybe. They might've both been awake and gotten up for a snack.”

Fedderman was quiet for a moment, trying to work out a scenario that made sense where the husband might have slid under the bed in his underwear. Part of a plan. It was difficult if not impossible.

“And there's the cheese,” Pearl said. “How many people buy something that expensive four at a time?”

“It happens,” Fedderman said. “The rich are, you know…different.”

“The Grahams weren't the Rockefellers.” Pearl looked out the side window, across the street toward the apartment building they'd just left: red brick above a stone facade, green awnings, ivy growing up one corner out of huge concrete planters. No doorman, but a security system with a keypad, buzzer, and key-activated inner door. It wasn't the best building in the neighborhood, but it was a good one. It would be interesting to find out what the Grahams were paying in rent.

Fedderman put the car in drive but didn't pull away from the curb. “We haven't had breakfast, and looking into that refrigerator made me remember I was hungry.”

“Maybe there'll be some prints on the cheese wrappers,” Pearl said in a hopeful voice.

“I wouldn't count on it,” Quinn said. “Our guy must have known whatever he bought for his potential victims might be examined, so he probably wiped everything he carried into the apartment. He's smart.”

“So are we,” Pearl said from the backseat.

“A cheese omelette doesn't sound bad,” Fedderman said.

Quinn smiled, then said, “Drive.”

 

After lunch, while Pearl and Fedderman were questioning the Grahams' neighbors, Quinn sat on a bench in a pocket park on East Fiftieth and called Renz on the cell phone Renz had furnished. It was supposedly a secure line, or nonline, less likely to be tapped than a regular wire connection. Easier to listen in on with a cheap scanner, perhaps, but no one knew Renz had the phone.

“You've solved the Graham case,” Renz said when Quinn had identified himself.

“Taken the first step,” Quinn said. He had to speak somewhat loudly because of an echo effect and the constant trickling sound of a nearby artificial waterfall. “We can be pretty sure both Grahams were murdered.”

“What's that noise?” Renz asked. “You calling me from a men's room?”

“Maybe you didn't hear—”

“I heard you,” Renz cut him off. “Of course they were murdered. Just like the Elzners. That's why I hired you, remember? I figured we had a repeater and the case would blossom. Thing is, Egan will still be seeing murder-suicide.”

“That's what Nift thinks. I let him think it.”

“Good. I know the basic facts of this case, though, and after the autopsy Nift will have to reveal everything to Egan.”

“I thought Nift was your man in the ME's office.”

“He is, right now. But Nift is for Nift. And all he can do is delay. He'll tell Egan it was murder-suicide; then Egan will figure out what you already know. Which is what?”

Quinn explained to Renz about the positions of the bodies, the dust dragged out from beneath the bed, the chair pulled out from the kitchen table, the four wedges of expensive gourmet cheese.

“Cheese this time, eh?” Renz said when Quinn was finished. Then added, “And a knife instead of a gun. We've got a repeater who changes his method.”

“It happens,” Quinn said. “Our guy's method isn't tied in with whatever makes him tick.”