Night Victims (The Night Spider) (36 page)

“Perlman was one of the guards killed by Mandle when he escaped from the police van.”

He wants you to know for sure he killed her . . .

“He took it as a souvenir?”

Paula shrugged. “ME says it’s more likely it happened when he was beating Perlman’s head and face with the butt of his handgun. Tooth dropped out of Perlman’s mouth and got caught in Mandle’s clothes, went inside his shirt or down one of his shoes. Maybe in a pants cuff; prisoners sometimes roll up those jumpsuit pants if the legs are too long. Mandle found the tooth later and thought of a use for it.”

“Why would he put the tooth on Anne’s dresser?” Bicker-staff asked.

“To make sure we know he was the one in her bedroom,” Paula said.

“Ego-driven bastard,” Horn said.

“Sick fuck,” Bickerstaff said.

Marla with the coffeepot said, “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Anne left her apartment and nodded to the uniformed officer with the scar on his face who was stationed at the end of the hall. He smiled at her then settled back in his chair. On the floor next to the chair was a folded copy of the
Village Voice
he’d been reading.

She took the elevator to the lobby and through the glass doors that looked out on the sunny street saw an unmarked car parked at the opposite curb. There were two men in it not doing a lot to dispel the notion that they were plainclothes cops. After all, they were on a preventive mission.

Anne used her key to open her brass mailbox. The mail she pulled out didn’t look promising. She shifted her weight to one leg and stood leafing through it. A Visa bill forwarded from her last address, a coupon for five dollars off a pizza from a nearby restaurant, a plain white envelope with her name typed on it.

She used a fingernail to raise a corner of the flap, then inserted a finger and tore open the envelope. She realized it was the sort of envelope cards came in.

And inside was a white card bordered in black. Centered on it was black lettering that said, simply,
Condolences in this time of your great loss.

When she opened the card she found it blank except for four crudely inked letters separated by dashes:
A-N-N-E.

Suddenly light-headed, she leaned sideways against the bank of mailboxes There was an ache in her stomach that she knew was fear.

She hadn’t the slightest doubt as to who’d sent the card.

When finally she felt steady enough, she went outside and crossed the street toward the detectives in the parked car.

“It’s part of his campaign of terror,” said Dr. Ellen Nickels, NYPD psychologist and profiler. Horn was alone with her in her silent, monotonal beige office not far from One Police Plaza. It looked like a movie set and smelled as if all that leather and wood had been recently oiled and waxed. “Anne might receive more such mail, maybe anonymous phone calls.”

“Or not so anonymous,” Horn said. He told Dr. Nickels what Marla had said; the doctor was impressed. She was an attractive woman in her forties, with a no-nonsense, short hairdo and dead-serious brown eyes behind square-rimmed thick glasses.

“This person you’re talking to,” she said, “keep talking to him.”

“It’s a
her,”
Horn said. “A waitress at a coffee shop I frequent.”

Dr. Nickels smiled. “She’s dispensing wisdom with the coffee.”

“Why just Anne’s name on the card?”

The doctor appeared puzzled. “Because it was for her.”

“I mean, why not a message?”

“Oh, I think the message was implied.”

“And the dashes between the letters of her name?”

“Probably for emphasis. Detective Horn, this man you’re hunting isn’t always going to be predictable. In part because he’s mentally unstable. And, in part, because his mental illness doesn’t necessarily detract from his cleverness.”

Horn nodded.
Tell me something new.

The doctor must have read his thoughts. “You probably know the psychology of serial killers better than I do.”

“They’re not all the same,” Horn said.

“No, they aren’t. Usually they don’t arm themselves in court then escape on their way to Rikers Island. This one seems deadlier than most. I think I can speak for every woman in the city when I say I want him apprehended as soon as possible. Has the lab had any luck with the card or envelope?”

“None. No prints on either, and no residue of saliva or DNA on the envelope flap. The card’s for sale everywhere in New York, and the postmark’s Brooklyn and means nothing.”

“Cautious and diligent, your Aaron Mandle.”

Horn looked at her. “No, not always cautious.”

She smiled shrewdly and nodded, as if she knew exactly what he meant.

Not always cautious enough.

41

More than anything, Alice Duggan wanted to die, to escape the pain. Her entire body seemed to be on fire. She couldn’t cry out, with the heavy tape over her mouth. She no longer even tried. Only lay still, listening to her own whimpers, praying for it all to end.

The bed creaked as the dark, lithe figure beside her moved to the side of the mattress and straightened up. She barely paid attention to it—to him—now. The pain was inside her forever, and he was merely a dark, moving shape in her nightmare. It was horrible,
he
was horrible, but even in horror, in terror, there was a saturation point.
There must be!

And now there was the hope, the knowledge, that it
would
soon be over, that the nightmare the world had become would fade and disappear, as would she. Alice would no longer be Alice. Alice would be safe.

In the blurred lower edge of her vision she saw the lean figure standing before her dresser. Preening in the mirror?

No, picking up something. A statuette.

On Alice’s dresser were two twelve-inch-tall plaster figures: one was Fred Astaire, the other Ginger Rogers. Alice had fallen for them as soon as she’d laid eyes on them at the

Twenty-sixth Street flea market. They’d adorned her dresser for more than a year. Sometimes, when she was in a role that required a hairpiece, she used Fred as a wig stand.

But the nightmare intruder had reached toward the right side of the dresser. It was Ginger he was holding, hefting it in his hand as if testing for weight.

He returned to the bed where Alice lay whimpering.

She saw him raise Ginger and closed her eyes.

The heavy plaster statuette crushed the bridge of Alice’s nose. She felt blood spurt warmly from it and run down onto her neck. More blood began trickling at the back of her throat, then suddenly flowed heavily. She tried to spit it out, but the backwash from where it was blocked by the tape across her mouth made her swallow. She choked, gagged, frantically tried to spit out the blood again but couldn’t. The mattress and springs began shuddering and making a low, fluttering sound. Her body began to tremble and rock so hard she momentarily levitated off the bed.

The blood flow continued. She had no choice but to inhale, to try desperately to breathe. It was instinctual, automatic, to inhale and expect air. To struggle to live.

Alice began to drown.

“I knew this one,” Horn said to Marla. “Not personally. I saw her onstage. She was the stand-in for the star in
Leave Her, Take Her, She’s Mine”

“Broadway?”

“Off.”

“Uhm.”

“Why did he beat as well as stab her?” Horn asked.

The Home Away had closed, and he and Marla were walking along dark streets to her subway stop. The media were alive with news of Alice Duggan’s murder. night spider on the hunt again! the
Post
proclaimed in a gigantic headline. The story was above the fold in the
Times.
There were long-winded speeches in the state capitol and at

City Hall about reviewing procedures to transfer prisoners. Television pundit panels wondered how it could be—how it could
conceivably
be—that a serial killer so lethal hadn’t been under constant guard and in direct view of law enforcement eyeballs. Was it incompetency or conspiracy that had led to Mandle’s escape? Alice Duggan’s parents in Pittsburgh were interviewed every time they ventured out of their house. “New York,” Rollie Larkin had remarked dryly to Horn in his office, “is getting press like John Rocker’s revenge.”

Horn listened to the regular clacking of Marla’s heels on the pavement as he strolled beside her. She hadn’t answered his question immediately. It wasn’t an easy one.

“If I had to guess,” she said finally, “and I do, I’d say Mandle wanted to disfigure his latest victim for two reasons: He wanted to show you what he was going to do to Anne, to taunt you, and he wanted to further terrify Anne.”

“I feel taunted,” Horn said. “And I sometimes wish Anne were more terrified so she’d agree to go into hiding.”

“She’s confused right now as well as scared, and trying hard to establish her independence after years of marriage.”

“She always had plenty of independence,” Horn said a bit defensively.

“I’m talking more about her mental state than whether she pretty much did what she wanted.”

They walked for a while without talking. Horn wondered if he’d irritated Marla with his claim of Anne’s independence.

But no; she’d been thinking.

“Another possibility,” Marla said, “is that Mandle is changed after his conviction and escape. That now there’s an even stronger element of rage in his murders.”

“He did beat one of the guards from the van in the face and head,” Horn said. “I’d say he was enraged that night.” A taxi swerved to the curb near them and the driver leaned down so he could peer out at them like a lonely puppy, offering to save them some steps. Horn shook his head no and waved the cab away, and was made slightly uneasy by how much he didn’t want his stroll with Marla interrupted.

“Maybe Mandle’s wounded and in physical pain,” Marla said. “Exacerbating his anger.”

“If he’s wounded,” Horn said, “it’s minor and doesn’t affect his strength or agility. His MO was the same as always, except for the battering he gave his victim.”

“Was she alive at the time?”

“Yes. Losing blood fast but alive. The knife wounds hadn’t killed her yet.”

“Rage,” Marla said.

“Or callousness. He might be a stone killer who simply doesn’t care if his victim’s alive or dead at the time of disfigurement.”

“Stone killer?”

“Cop talk for somebody who’d just as soon kill another human being as munch a piece of toast. There’s something missing in certain people. They don’t relate to the rest of the human race. Like we don’t relate to bugs and just step on them or kill them with insecticide, then forget about them within minutes. Stone killers sleep well at night no matter what kind of hell they’ve created during the day.”

“Sociopaths.”

“Yeah. And something more. Not all sociopaths are killers. Some become successful corporate raiders or great NFL linebackers.”

“It must be truly liberating, being free of all human concern.”

“It’s probably addictive,” Horn said. “And it leads to the kind of hubris that contributes to serial killers being caught.” He reached into an inside pocket for a cigar, then decided against it. He understood the reluctance of many people, women especially, to endure cigar smoke indoors or out. Now wasn’t the time to find out how Marla felt about it.

“You mentioned insects,” Marla said. “It’s interesting, Mandle’s identification with spiders. And what came out during the trial, his history with his mother and the significance of spiders in her religion.”

“I’m sure if we were to dig through history we’d come up with some ancient cult of the spider,” Horn said. “Or maybe Mandle’s mother saw an old movie and it set her off because she was on the edge to begin with. People are afraid of spiders, and fascinated by them.”

“Fascinated because of their fear.”

“Definitely.”

“Spiders and snakes; religion and mothers. It’s no wonder we have serial killers. They’re created in childhood. The mechanism’s probably wound and set when they’re very young.”

“I’m not so much interested in how or why Mandle ticks,” Horn said, “as in stopping him from ticking.”

“There’s something else I think you should take into account,” Marla said. “You have to concentrate on guarding Anne because Mandle might be watching her, formulating a plan. But he also might be watching you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The way he talked about you during the trial. He was full of hate for you. Obsessed.”

“I noticed.”

They were at Marla’s subway stop. The night was warm and clear, but thunder was bumping and rolling in the distance somewhere over New Jersey. It was a celestial reminder that no one was ever really safe anywhere. Lightning was whimsical.

She looked up at him. “I worry about you, Horn.”

He was surprised, not so much by her words but by the way they were spoken, like a confession. And by the look on her face. Horn didn’t know what to say, but he found himself wondering what would happen if he suggested he take her all the way home. Home and inside.

“I’d like to tell you not to worry,” is what he did say, “that I don’t want you to. But I can’t. A part of me’s glad you’re thinking about me that much.”

And a part of me doesn’t want to do this. A part of me still hasn’t given up on Anne.

Marla seemed to know what he was thinking, sensing his hesitancy and the reason for it. And he saw something else in her eyes, some sudden fear of intimacy, not only with him but with anyone.
What’s your secret, Marla?

“I’d better get down to the platform,” she said. “My train’s about due. I’ve got them timed.”

He nodded and touched her shoulder. She smiled but turned away abruptly to discourage any further contact, then started down the concrete steps to the token booth and platform.

Horn stood watching her until she was out of sight, thinking she was probably right about Mandle observing him, following him.

He wondered if it would occur to her that he might have been followed tonight.