Darkfall

of stone, steel, and concrete were all gray and stark. The bare-limbed trees were ash-colored; they looked as if they had been severely scorched by a long-extinguished fire.

He got out of the unmarked sedan, half a block off Park Avenue, and a raw gust of wind hit him in the face. The December air had a faint tomb-dank smell. He jammed his hands into the deep pockets of his overcoat.

Rebecca Chandler got out of the driver's side and slammed the door. Her long blond hair streamed behind her in the wind. Her coat was unbuttoned; it flapped around her legs. She didn't seem bothered by the chill or by the omnipresent grayness that had settled like soot over the entire city.

Viking woman, Jack thought. Stoical. Resolute. And just look at that profile!

Hers was the noble, classic, feminine face that seafarers had once carved on the prows of their ships, ages ago, when such beauty was thought to have sufficient power to ward off the evils of the sea and the more vicious whims of fate.

Reluctantly, he took his eyes from Rebecca and looked at the three patrol cars that were angled in at the curb. On one of them, the red emergency beacons were flashing, the only spot of vivid color in this drab day.

Harry Ulbeck, a uniformed officer of Jack's acquaintance, was standing on the steps in front of the handsome, Georgian-style, brick townhouse where the murders had occurred. He was wearing a dark blue regulation greatcoat, a woolen scarf, and gloves, but he was still shivering.

From the look on Harry's face, Jack could see it wasn't the cold weather bothering him. Harry Ulbeck was chilled by what he had seen inside the townhouse.

“Bad one?” Rebecca asked.

Harry nodded. “The worst. Lieutenant.”

He was only twenty-three or twenty-four, but at the moment he appeared years older; his face was drawn, pinched.

“Who're the deceased?” Jack asked.

“Guy named Vincent Vastagliano and his bodyguard, Ross Morrant.”

Jack drew his shoulders up and tucked his head down as a vicious gust of wind blasted through the street. “Rich neighborhood,” he said.

“Wait till you see inside,” Harry said. “It's like a Fifth Avenue antique shop in there.”

“Who found the bodies?” Rebecca asked.

“A woman named Shelly Parker. She's a real looker. Vastagliano's girlfriend, I think.”

“She here now?”

“Inside. But I doubt she'll be much help. You'll probably get more out of Nevetski and Blaine.”

Standing tall in the shifting wind, her coat still unbuttoned, Rebecca said, “Nevetski and Blaine? Who're they?”

“Narcotics,” Harry said. “They were running a stakeout on this Vastagliano.”

“And he got killed right under their noses?” Rebecca asked.

“Better not put it quite like that when you talk to them,” Harry warned. “They're touchy as hell about it. I mean, it wasn't just the two of them. They were in charge of a six-man team, watching all the entrances to the house. Had the place sealed tight. But somehow somebody got in anyway, killed Vastagliano and his bodyguard, and got out again without being seen. Makes poor Nevetski and Blaine look like they were sleeping.”

Jack felt sorry for them.

Rebecca didn't. She said, “Well, damnit, they won't get any sympathy from me. It sounds as if they were screwing around.”

“I don't think so,” Harry Ulbeck said. “They were really shocked. They swear they had the house covered.”

“What else would you expect them to say?” Rebecca asked sourly.

“Always give a fellow officer the benefit of the doubt,” Jack admonished her.

“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Like hell. I don't believe in blind loyalty. I don't expect it; don't give it. I've known good cops, more than a few, and if I know they're good, I'll do anything to help them. But I've also known some real jerks who couldn't be trusted to put their pants on with the fly in front.”

Harry blinked at her.

She said, “I won't be surprised if Nevetski and Blaine are two of those types, the ones who walk around with zippers up their butts.”

Jack sighed.

Harry stared at Rebecca, astonished.

A dark, unmarked van pulled to the curb. Three men got out, one with a camera case, the other two with small suitcases.

“Lab men're here,” Harry said.

The new arrivals hurried along the sidewalk, toward the townhouse. Something about their sharp faces and squinted eyes made them seem like a trio of stilt-legged birds eagerly rushing toward a new piece of carrion.

Jack Dawson shivered.

The wind shook the day again. Along the street, the stark branches of the leafless trees rattled against one another. That sound brought to mind a Halloween-like image of animated skeletons engaged in a macabre dance.

III

The assistant medical examiner and two other men from the pathology lab were in the kitchen, where Ross Morrant, the bodyguard, was sprawled in a mess of blood, mayonnaise, mustard, and salami. He had been attacked and killed while preparing a midnight snack.

On the second floor of the townhouse, in the master bathroom, blood patterned every surface, decorated every corner: sprays of blood, streaks of it, smears and drops; bloody handprints on the walls and on the edge of the tub.

Jack and Rebecca stood at the doorway, peering in, touching nothing. Everything had to remain undisturbed until the lab men were finished.

Vincent Vastagliano, fully clothed, lay jammed between the tub and sink, his head resting against the base of the toilet. He had been a big man, somewhat flabby, with dark hair and bushy eyebrows. His slacks and shirt were blood soaked. One eye had been torn from its socket. The other was open wide, staring sightlessly. One hand was clenched; the other was open, relaxed. His face, neck, and hands were marked by dozens of small wounds. His clothes had been ripped in at least fifty or sixty places, and through those narrow rents in the fabric, other dark and bloody injuries could be seen.

“Worse than the other three,” Rebecca said.

“Much.”

This was the fourth hideously disfigured corpse they'd seen in the past four days. Rebecca was probably right: There was a psychopath on the loose.

But this wasn't merely a crazed killer who slaughtered while in the grip of a psychotic rage or fugue. This lunatic was more formidable than that, for he seemed to be a psychopath with a purpose, perhaps even a holy crusade: All four of his victims had been in one way or another involved in the illegal drug trade.

Rumors were circulating to the effect that a gang war was getting underway, a dispute over territories, but Jack didn't put much faith in that explanation. For one thing, the rumors were… strange. Besides, these didn't look like gangland killings. They certainly weren't the work of a professional assassin; there was nothing clean, efficient, or professional about them. They were savage killings, the product of a badly, darkly twisted personality.

Actually, Jack would have preferred tracking down an ordinary hit man. This was going to be tougher. Few criminals were as cunning, clever, bold, or difficult to catch as a maniac with a mission.

“The number of wounds fits the pattern,” Jack said.

“But they're not the same kind of wounds we've seen before. Those were stabbings. These definitely aren't punctures. They're too ragged for that. So maybe this one isn't by the same hand.”

“It is,” he said.