Night Hunter (16 page)

“
That’s an understatement.”

“
Wanna talk about it?”

She hugged herself. “My aunt —well, she’s not really my aunt—anyway, something awful happened to her today. She has this TV show and some guy threw acid in her face.”

“
Yeah, I heard.”

“
Why would someone do something like that?”

“
Crazy, perhaps.”

“
Another understatement.”

John had nothing to add so he turned back to the task at hand.

“
I wish my mother would get home. She must be at the hospital. I’ve been calling down there, but they just give me the runaround. Won’t tell me anything.” Then she sighed, long and deep.

“
You look like you could use some cheering up.” When she looked up at him, he put down the rag and motioned to her to follow him. Without question she did. She’s too trusting, John thought. Someone should talk to her about that.

He walked to a door on the other side of the hall, opened it, and turned on the light. It was the room they used for storage: cleaning supplies, tools, paints, and so forth. Kristy walked in without hesitating.

“
There,” he said, pointing to a cardboard box on the floor against the wall. “You like kittens?”

Her face lit up. “Love em.” She stepped to the box, crouched down, and began to exclaim over the litter, cooing in baby talk.

John crossed the room to a shelf by the window. As he poured fresh paint remover into the can he glanced out.

Their neighborhood, without street lights, was darker than most. But as he casually scanned the street a car passed, illuminating the parked cars. John caught a glimpse
of movement behind a van. He became alert, instantly stepping back from the window.

With a quick motion he closed the blinds. Behind him he sensed Kristy watching him, wary at last, but he ignored her. A figure stepped out from behind the van and disappeared between the two apartment houses.

John turned and stared into Kristy’s bewildered face. He smiled. “Pick them up if you like. Their mother’s outside.” Then using the cat as an excuse to investigate the figure he had seen down below, he said, “In fact, I think I’d better let her in so she can feed them.”

He hurried from the room, took the steps two at a time, and headed toward the back entrance.

In the laundry room, John put the can of solvent on the floor and was about to reach for the knob to open the back door when he saw it turn slowly, first to the left then to the right. He looked around the tiny room for a weapon. A hammer hung on a nail above the washing machine. He grabbed it, whirled around, and knocked a broom over. The handle fell with a clunk against the door.

He swore under his breath.

Moving to the door, he carefully turned the lock, closed his hand around the knob, and, twisting it sharply, raised the hammer and yanked the door open.

There was no one there.

He hurried down the steps to the side of the building and looked down the narrow walkway. It was clear.

A car door slammed. John ran the length of the building, stopped at the corner, and, keeping his back flat against the apartment house, looked out. Regina Van Raven was hurrying along the walk toward the house.

He waited, watching for signs of a prowler. When she was safely inside the vestibule, he circled the building once before going back inside.

As Regina entered the apartment house, a rush of foreboding raced through her, making breathing difficult. She quickly looked around but saw no one. So strong was the feeling that she was somewhat surprised to reach the inner hall without dire consequences. She hurried up the stairs to the second level, her nose crinkling at the odd odor she encountered, rushed inside the apartment, and closed and locked the door.

The living room and kitchen were dark. But the lights and radio were on in Kristy’s room — rock music pounded to the beat of Regina’s heart. Clothes were tossed about in the usual disorder. A glass of cola sat on the windowsill, the ice cubes only half melted. Kristy had been in this room less than an hour ago, Regina told herself. Possibly more recently.

“
Kris?” she called, looking in the closet, then the bathroom, and finally her own bedroom. Kristy, in the habit of leaving either a note or a message on the answering machine, had left neither. “Kristy, where are you?”

She stood in the living room, with panic working its way through her like live electrical wires. Something bad was about to happen, or had already happened. First her best friend, she thought, and now her little girl. What the hell was going on?

Footsteps approached the apartment door, then it was silent. She heard a key in the lock.

Kristy,
Regina thought with a flood of relief. She rushed to the door and yanked it open.

Standing at her door was a man. He held a coffee can in one hand and her mace key ring in the other. The man was frighteningly familiar.

Rooted to the spot, her knees threatening to buckle, she could only stare at the coffee can in his hand. The man stepped forward. Over the rushing noise in her head, she heard him say her daughter’s name.

He had Kristy.

“
Where is she?” she managed in a hoarse whisper.

He turned slightly, tipped his head to the side toward a door across the hall marked STORAGE. The odd way he was staring at her made her want to scream.

“
Kristy,” she called softly, then louder, more frantic, “Kristy!”

Her own voice released the muscles in her legs. She brushed past the man and ran across the hall to shove the door open. She saw her daughter on her knees, facing the wall.

With tears springing to her eyes, Kristy came to her feet and rushed into her mother’s arms.

“
Oh, Mom, Mom, thank God you’re here.”

Regina whipped around in such a way as to shield her daughter from the man in the doorway.

“
What’d you do to her?” she demanded.

The man looked from Regina to Kristy, his brows furrowed.

Regina looked at Kristy.

“
Mom, what are you talking about?” Kristy said, sniffing and wiping her eyes. “That’s John Davie. From downstairs. He didn’t do anything to me.”

“
Then why are you crying? What are doing in here, on your knees?” Regina said in exasperation. “God, will somebody talk to me?”

“
Aunt Donna. I heard on the news what happened to Aunt Donna.”

“
Oh god,” the breath rushed out of Regina. “I thought something happened to you, too. I called and there was no answer. I came home and there were no lights on, no message or note, nothing. I had this awful feeling ...”

“
You and your feelings, Mom. I just came to see the kittens,” Kristy said. And for the first time Regina saw the reason Kristy had been on her knees. In a cardboard box were six black-and-white balls of fur. “I was going nuts alone in the apartment waiting for you to get home to tell me how Aunt Donna is.”

Regina turned back to John Davie. She stared at him. What was he doing with her keys? And what was in the coffee can that smelled like a strong chemical?

As if he could read her mind, he said, “I was stripping off the old varnish on the railing ...” He lifted the can. “I noticed your keys hanging from the lock on your door and I took them out ...”

Relief, exhaustion, frustration, and confusion, swirled inside her. Regina nodded —a gesture of understanding, apology—then took the key ring from his hand and steered Kristy out of the room and back to their apartment.

After closing and locking the door, Regina turned, leaned against it, and asked in a hushed tone, “That man—”

“
The landlady’s nephew?”

“
He was at the station today when Donna was attacked. I’d never seen him there before today.”

“
He’s okay, Mom.”

“
You don’t know that,” Regina said fiercely. “You don’t know anything about him.”

“
But, Mom--”

“
Stay away from him.”

Alone now in his apartment, the odor of paint remover still reeking on his hands, John could clearly see the face of Regina Van Raven. Although he was staring at it on the TV screen — the action paused at the frame in the restroom when she had glanced at the camera—he was seeing another image. Frozen in his mind’s eye was a woman whose soft hazel eyes burned with fear, distrust, and a powerful sense of determination. He was seeing her as she had been less than an hour ago in the storage room, her arms around her daughter, prepared to fight, perhaps even kill, to protect her own.

He admired that.

The compulsion to protect oneself and one’s own — at any cost.

It may come to that, he told himself. God help her, it may come to that.

Fear and self-preservation were not strangers to him. He had served his twelve-month stint at the tail end of the Vietnam war and both senses had ridden his back like leeches. Yet he often wondered if the reason he had enlisted instead of waiting to be drafted had been because he had failed to protect his own.

“
We’ve been over this a million times,” he said aloud to the badgering part of his subconscious that forever seemed reluctant to let it go, “and we decided there was nothing I could do. Nothing. Right? So fuck off.”

John focused his eyes on the TV. It was clear now why both brunettes, the one in the hall at the station talking with the man in the gray suit, and the one clutching a pair of shoes, had looked familiar. They were faces from the past. Although they had never met, and he had seen her only the one time during the contest, and that from a distance, he remembered Regina in particular. She’d been different from the others, showing little interest in her surroundings. It was as if her participation in the pageant had been a job and nothing more. Yet, John had felt she had the best shot to win the title if Corinne didn’t.

He pressed the play button on the VCR remote. The two women on the screen became animated again. “Get help,” Regina Van Raven said into the camera.

Get help ...

The following morning Regina sat on the edge of the hospital bed opposite the intravenous pouches and the oxygen apparatus. The room was filled with flowers. She held Donna’s hand in both of hers.

Donna’s eyes, above the nasal cannula and the saturated gauze dressing, were bright with pain, yet glassy from painkillers. She was staring across the room at her husband, who stood at the window, his back to them.

Dr. Hemmer entered the room and went directly to the bed. Regina was about to rise from the bed when the doctor waved her back down. “Nurse Diehl will give you holy hell if she sees you there. But I won’t tell her.”

With efficiency and brevity, the doctor checked his patient. “How are you doing with the pain?” he asked. “Is the medication strong enough?”

Donna tried to nod, but instead she stiffened, her eyes squeezing shut tightly.

“
Don’t move your head. No talking either. Remember the code. One tap for yes, two taps for no.”

Donna tapped lightly in Regina’s palm.

“
Yes, it’s strong enough,” Regina said.

“
You’re a very lucky lady, Donna,” Hemmer said. “I know that sounds like a damn fool thing to say, but it could have been worse —much worse. Quick thinking and immediate action to dilute the acid spared you the full ravaging effects. Most of the burning, first and second degree, involves the epidermis and part of the dermis. There was some third degree trauma on the right ear and neck that will require skin grafting. I foresee no permanent damage to the mucous membranes.”