Night Victims. John Lutz

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      “Cajuns make great music,” Harry Potter said.

      “Jumbalya,” said the paramedic.

      “That’s food,” said the other.

      “A song, too,” Potter said. He began to sing. It didn’t sound like singing.

      “Yuck,” the paramedic said, working his gloved hand beneath the butchered body. “Crawfish pie.”

      Harry Potter packed his instruments into his bag and said good-bye. Paula was glad he was finished singing.

      As Sally Bridge was leaving her bedroom, Bickerstaff returned.

      “Got the officers’ story,” he said. “And Crocker the super’s. And the doorman said nobody suspicious entered or left the building all evening.”

      “Our killer came in through the window,” Paula said.

      Bickerstaff raised his bushy brows. “No shit?”

      Paula walked with him to the window and opened it wider, still careful not to touch the glass. They both looked down. Paula got dizzy up high and had to back away a few steps.

      “Hell of a climb,” Bickerstaff said.

      “But the street’s pretty deserted after midnight, and once the killer got a few stories up he’d be in darkness and nobody’d notice him.”

      “But it’s damn near a sheer brick wall. How’d he climb it?”

      “Maybe pulled himself up on some kind of line,” Paula said. She examined the windowsill for marks where a grappling hook might have been attached. The sill was unmarked, and nothing else in the room seemed to have been disturbed other than Sally Bridge.

      “The super said she lived alone,” Bickerstaff said.

      “I gathered.”

      “She was a casting director. Even did some work on Broadway.”

      “Really? She have a boyfriend?”

      “She was between them, according to the super and the doorman. They both said she was always working and didn’t have much opportunity for romance. She used to joke about it, how she needed more time to meet interesting men.”

      “She found time last night.”

      “And she isn’t joking,” Bickerstaff said. “Or even slightly interested.” He nodded toward the bloody sheets. “Maybe because she’s on the rag.”

      Police humor, Paula thought. She could live without it.

      3

      Retired NYPD Homicide Captain Thomas Horn didn’t have a hell of a lot more to do these days than eat toasted corn muffins, which was what he was waiting to do on a warm, gray Monday morning in the Home Away Diner on Amsterdam on Manhattan’s West Side.

      Horn, still in his early fifties, had retired early because of what happened to the World Trade Center. He’d been on his way to interrogate the CFO of Jagger and Schmidt Brokerage at the firm’s office on the forty-second floor of the north tower. The man had almost certainly defrauded the firm’s clients of several million dollars, some of which was part of the police pension fund.

      Since it was such a clear, beautiful morning, Horn had decided to leave his car where he’d parked it after pulling to the curb. He went into a jewelry store to look at gold hoop earrings for his wife, Anne. She’d said she wanted such earrings, and there in the store’s window was a sign stating they were on sale. HALF OFF HOOPY-DOOP EARRINGS, the sign had declared in large red letters. GOLD AND SILVER.

      On impulse Horn decided to buy a pair. On impulse he decided to walk the rest of the way to the World Trade Center.

      Horn spent more time than he planned in the store because there were already three customers ahead of him. Then the earrings he wanted weren’t on display and the jeweler had to go into a back room and locate them. These little things added up, changing his world.

      Though he was in the store less than an hour, a lot had happened during that time. The earrings had saved his life.

      After leaving the store slightly before ten o’clock, earrings in his suitcoat pocket, he’d strolled about a block when he saw several people pass him going the other way and knew from their faces and the way they were walking that something was wrong. He hadn’t suspected it was at the World Trade Center, but he picked up his pace.

      From conversation overheard along the way, he learned that a plane had struck one of the towers. Now he began jogging in the opposite direction of those passing him, seeing something beyond fear on some of their faces. He saw terror and, in some cases, people staring blankly ahead under the anesthetic of shock. Faces and hands were cut, clothing was torn. What the hell? He wanted to get to the damaged building, urge people to stay in the area and not to panic. His mind went back to the time when, as a child, he’d heard about a plane striking the Empire State Building. A catastrophe but one that was manageable. As a cop he’d learned that most catastrophes could be managed.

      “Do yourself a favor and turn around, buddy,” a heavyset man in a business suit told him without pausing as he passed. “Both those towers are gonna fall.”

      Both those towers?

      Horn had stopped and stood still, puzzled. He noticed the day had dimmed and looked up to see a dark pall hanging low over the tops of buildings. Burning jet fuel, no doubt, from the collision. It must be worse than he’d imagined. He began running again, toward the towers.

      And heard a roar like a thousand jetliners coming in for a landing.

      A cloud of smoke that was a solid wall rounded the corner at the end of the block and rolled and rushed toward him. Horn’s heart skipped a beat as he looked up to see that the top of the cloud had curled like an incoming wave and was above him. He was going to be engulfed by it!

      Something smashed loudly into a nearby parked car. Debris began falling. A woman on the opposite sidewalk disappeared beneath a crashing mass of tangled wreckage. Instinctively Horn dropped and rolled toward another parked car, trying to get beneath it to shelter himself from what was raining down.

      And remembered nothing else.

      He’d awakened in a hospital bed with his shoulder aching and bandaged. Doctors told him he’d been struck by falling debris, and a steel reinforcing rod had speared his right shoulder. Rerod, construction workers called it. Rescue workers had to bend it to get Horn to fit into the ambulance so the six-foot-long rod could be removed at the hospital. He was sure he’d been able to get under the car, so they figured the rerod must have somehow been shoved in after him by the terrific impact of crashing steel and concrete.

      Three weeks later he was an outpatient with an almost useless right arm, and scars suggesting he’d been shot through the shoulder and the bullet had exited out his back.

      A month after that he was retired. Pensioned off.

      Through grueling physical therapy he’d recovered most of the use of his right arm and hand, and a modicum of strength. СКАЧАТЬ