a while. Oh, he was ready for surprise as he sat with his blade and his plan, eating his sandwich and drinking milk. A late-night snack, and not the first.
He was prepared, as he had been night after night. There were no real surprises in life. It was just that people had trouble reaching and touching what they knew was coming. Mary and Donald, all of them, they knew before they knew. Everything that walked or squirmed on earth knew at the end, learned at the end, welcomed the end. The terminally ill dying in hospital wards. Animals sagging limp in the jaws of predators, patient yet impatient.
Their deaths are a benediction.
Adrift on his thoughts, the Night Prowler only half heard what Kay Kemper was saying as he sat watching her glossy lips move, the way she shaped her vowels and unconsciously ran the ripe tip of her tongue, so pink, over her white upper incisors when she glanced down to check her notes flapping in the breeze. An errant blond strand of hair interfered with her vision and she brushed it back, almost losing the notes.
The Night Prowler wondered if the station would ever make up its mind what it wanted to do with her hair. Such indecision. It should be shorter and closer to her head, and lose the bangs, please! Her lips were remarkably mobile, stretching and inverting, ideal for unnatural acts, never still, as if they had too many nerve endings in them: “…had moved into their apartment only, pink tongue, two months ago, looking, pink, to…brutally, pink, murdered sometime last night…impacted by…say they heard nothing…any suspects…hopefully, pink, the fear… Detective Frank Quinn was unavailable, for comment…no leads…”
Frank Quinn.
The Night Prowler stretched his left arm and placed his glass of water on the floor near the sofa. Quinn’s name was appearing more and more in conjunction with the Night Prowler. It was becoming difficult to think of one and not the other. A team. A chess set. Adversaries.
Enemies.
The Night Prowler knew how to deal with enemies. What to expect from them. It had been his first hard lesson in life.
On the table next to the sofa was a small bottle with a rubber stopper, along with a folded white handkerchief. The Night Prowler unstopped the bottle and carefully tilted it to let a few drops fall onto the handkerchief, which he picked up and pressed lightly over his nose and mouth.
He breathed in deeply. A cool and silent wind blew somehow without motion. Walls fell away, and curtains swayed wide to reveal vistas of light and color. Truth became evident, and what wasn’t evident didn’t matter.
He wished now he still had his gun. He should never have used it to begin with; he should have saved it for killing from a distance.
Should he obtain another gun? It would have to be done illegally; there could be no record of a transaction, and no one must know of his possession of the gun. So there was only one way. That would be stealing. Blatantly breaking the law.
He threw back his head and laughed at the azure blue truth of it. His pursuer Quinn had broken the law, hadn’t he? With that young girl, that beautiful child with flesh the hue of-
But he’d seen only photographs of the child. Anna something.
Handkerchief to nose. Breathe in, breathe in…
How could Quinn do such a thing? Where was honor, love, and fidelity? He was a cop! How could he betray that girl? She hadn’t betrayed him. She hadn’t had the opportunity.
Yesterday’s Quinn.
Today’s Quinn, second-chance Quinn, was a mechanical, determined hunter, a relentless agent of a god that was like Judas. The god of the girl he had raped. The Night Prowler’s god of gray.
Handkerchief to nose…
Yes, Quinn was a dangerous man, and that was a fact the color of blood.
Quinn was a stalker who would follow and follow and become his prey so there would be no escape. They were, in the end, always the same, hunter and quarry, both of them diminished by either’s death.
That mustn’t happen. Not to me. Us…
Sleep was taking control now, a drug relaxing every muscle, comfortable and familiar, welcome as death that thwarted pain.
Mary, Mary…
He mustn’t. Must not…
Enemies!
34
Renz had done his job well in stalling Egan’s troops. It had been a full twenty minutes before the crime scene techs and detectives from the precinct arrived at the apartment of Donald Baines and Mary Navarre. After they arrived, information Quinn and his team hadn’t had access to began flowing within the NYPD. Renz phoned Quinn that evening to bring him up to date, while Quinn was waiting for Pearl and Fedderman to arrive.
“Hubby was killed by a single stab wound to the heart. Mary Navarre had sixteen stab wounds in her. Probably the fatal one was to the heart, though several of the others would have eventually proved fatal.”
“How long did she last before she died?” Quinn asked, remembering the trail of blood on the floor where Mary had crawled or pulled herself to the wall to scrawl her indecipherable message that was abbreviated by death.
“ME says it’s difficult to know for sure, but after the wound to the heart, not more than a minute or so. Blood patterns indicate some of the more debilitating wounds were suffered first.”
“How about prints or DNA?”
“No prints, of course. Our man favors gloves. We did pick up some DNA samples from the milk carton and the half-eaten sandwich. And we’re still checking blood on the scene to make sure none of it’s from the killer.” Renz paused. Quinn could hear him making rhythmic little puffing sounds into the phone, a nervous habit, as if he were halfheartedly trying to whistle. “How do you read it, Quinn?”
“The bloody mark Mary made on the wall?”
“No, no, that doesn’t mean shit. I mean, how do you read the situation in the apartment?”
“Something disturbed the victims’ sleep and they went to investigate, Donald first. They interrupted the killer eating a sandwich and drinking milk from the carton. He had to kill them.”
“Really? I’ve been caught drinking milk from the carton.”
“Word’s gotten around,” Quinn said.
“Hubby was carrying a heavy bookend and primed for action.” Renz, serious again.
“The killer was ready for them. Almost waiting for them.”
“Whaddya mean, almost waiting?”
“He knew the risk and thought they might wake up. He had to know.”
“You think he wanted them to wake up?”
“Maybe not last night, but sooner or later. He probably kept pushing it, increasing the risk.”
“Tell you the truth, Quinn, I don’t see it, but you’re supposed to be the expert on how these sickos think.”
“It doesn’t take a psychic, Harley. After all, he was eating a sandwich while wearing rubber gloves, and he must have had his knife where he could reach it in a hurry. It doesn’t look as if Donald got to use his pineapple bookend.”
“He didn’t. There was no trace of blood or hair on it. Quinn…you realize you’re saying our Night Prowler did something to wake them up? That he wanted them to find him making himself at home in their apartment?”
“It reads that way. Like the way he’ll eventually yearn to be caught and confess his crimes. It builds in them; they keep pressing, taking more chances. It’s part of the package.”
“So the shrinks say, but it doesn’t make sense.”
“Except in the killer’s mind, and he’s the one eating pastrami sandwiches with his gloves on.”
“Not to mention stabbing people through the heart,” Renz said.
“Not to mention. You know how it works, we have to get inside this guy’s sick brain and figure out how he’s
