impressive. The absence of furniture revealed cracks in the plaster walls, and there were scrapes and gouges in the paint from when the movers took out the furniture, knowing the room was going to be redone and they didn’t have to be careful. The windows were dirty and the old blinds didn’t admit enough light. The tarnished brass ceiling fixture, which might have been original to the 1920s building, cast barely enough illumination to chase away the pale shadows.
But Claire had a vision for the room: bright yellow paint, a white picket fence flush with one of the walls, with stenciled daisies and red geraniums peeking through the slats. There would be new blinds and white curtains. It would be a well-lit, cheerful room, a place of optimism and beginnings. And at night, when the switch was thrown and the new ceiling fixture winked out, artificial stars-invisible during the day-would twinkle across the ceiling in an accurate representation of the heavens. Something for her baby to gaze at from earliest infancy.
Her baby.
Her child-hers and Jubal’s-was beginning to occupy her thoughts more and more, even though she also had her wedding to think about. At the oddest, most unlikely times during the day, she would dream or wonder about the child she would bear. These thoughts of the baby and its future had even begun happening onstage, though thank God they hadn’t interfered with her performance.
Her pregnancy didn’t show yet. If she had to get pregnant, her timing couldn’t have been better. She could act weeks longer in Hail to the Chef, she was sure, maybe even for a while after the baby began to show. Her reviews had been that good and the box office was holding up. Then a long break from show business would be welcome. Time to play mommy.
Sometimes she could hardly wait for her pregnancy to be far enough along that she might have an ultrasound done and could determine the baby’s sex.
Or did she and Jubal really want that information?
It was something to be decided later. Claire was happy now and she lived for now; that was the important, overriding thing. She hadn’t dreamed her pregnancy would mean so much to her. There must be something in all that talk about hormonal behavior.
Sometimes she felt guilty for not looking forward more to her and Jubal’s wedding. It was going to be a small, brief ceremony in a church in the West Village, and would be attended only by a few friends and family. Claire’s longtime friend from Wisconsin, Sophie Murray, was flying to New York and would be her maid of honor, and a fellow actor of Jubal’s, Clay Simms, was to be best man. It wasn’t that Claire felt blase about the wedding; it was just that the ceremony was only a formality. She and Jubal might as well have been married the past four years.
It was the baby that was everything to Claire now. Even more than her career. (And that was something she never would have predicted!) She knew she couldn’t explain that adequately to Jubal. He wouldn’t understand. But he might after the baby was born. In fact, she was sure he would.
That certainty was something else that made her happier than she’d ever been. Her acting, her relationship with Jubal, her pregnancy. Everything in her life seemed to be falling into place.
All the way across the board, Claire was on a gambler’s roll.
Time after time, coming up roses.
46
Somewhere in the chaos must be something useful.
Quinn sat back in his kitchen chair and looked at the spread of handwritten notes, computer printouts, and copies of forms and records Nester had given him. What was laid out on the table had all been contained in a large folded brown envelope the retired cop and sheriff’s deputy wrestled out of a back pocket.
An envelope content that hadn’t been wrinkled or folded, though, was a copy of a black-and-white snapshot of Luther Lunt taken by Cara Sand. It had been discovered in the bottom of one of her dresser drawers when the Hiram police searched the house after the murders. Luther was outdoors, barefoot, wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt, a slender but muscular kid with tousled hair, leaning with one hand against the trunk of a large tree and smiling at the lens. He looked wholesome and innocent. While his body might have passed for twenty-one, his face could have been fourteen. Cara Sand must have known what she was doing when she’d decided to have an affair with him.
Quinn stretched out an arm and reached for the diet Coke on the table. He sipped and thought. This Luther Lunt was some pumpkin despite his appearance of naivete. He’d led a tough, impoverished life, which must have suddenly become heaven when he moved in with the Sands and had his way with the willing wife. And from reading newspaper clippings and Nester’s notes, Quinn was sure Luther had indeed led a phantom life in the attic, descending into the real world only when the master was away, or occasionally at night for a secret tryst with Cara or for food. Food in the kitchen, where he’d apparently been interrupted around three A.M. while eating a sandwich and drinking milk from the carton.
Domestic murder in the early-morning hours. Every cop knew that was the prime time for it, if not in the bedroom, in the kitchen. Home, sweet…yeah.
Murder could be prosaic, so why not in the middle of a late-night snack?
Quinn let his chair tilt forward so its front legs contacted the floor, then looked again at the photograph of Luther Lunt. The boy standing and smiling, in what was probably his victims’ backyard, would look much different now. He might have gained weight, lost some or all of his hair, grown a mustache or beard. The subtle rearrangements of time.
But whatever his appearance, Luther was out there somewhere in New York.
Staring hard at the photograph, Quinn could feel his presence. There was always a moment when hunter somehow made a mysterious connection with quarry, whether each or only one of them realized it. This was the moment for Quinn, the instant he’d been waiting for, perhaps prompted by Nester’s visit and Luther’s photograph. Quinn was now locked on to Luther in a way he hadn’t been before. Luther grown older…thirty-one now, if his recorded birth date was correct. Luther an adult and a fugitive who’d adapted and led what might seem an outwardly normal life.
Quinn knew he was out there, and knew he was feeling the vise tighten as he killed more often, and increased with each murder the odds of his being caught. Luther Lunt, feeling the pressure, irritable, not sleeping well lately, off his appetite because of the ache in the pit of his stomach.
And there was no reason he shouldn’t feel even more pressure.
Quinn decided to give Dave Everson a call at the Times. The Luther Lunt photo should be in the papers and on TV news. The media would make sure the prime suspect in the Night Prowler murders would have his photograph appear all over the city and beyond. They’d do a better job than a police artist in aging Luther, giving him no hair or shorter or longer hair, facial hair, a double chin, lines in his face, experience in his gaze. Though still a young man, his hard years would show on him, scars inside and out.
Quinn knew this kind of media blitz worked sometimes. Someone out there would see the original photographic image or one of the artists’ renderings and decide maybe they did know Luther Lunt, though that wasn’t what he’d be calling himself these days. They wouldn’t be sure at first; then they’d think about it-whether they wanted to or not-and eventually they’d phone the police.
Usually they’d be wrong about whoever it was they suspected; any photograph, especially an old one in black and white, resembled a lot of people.
Then one day one of the callers would be right. The adult Luther Lunt would be identified. And at Quinn’s convenience, he and Luther would meet.
Quinn stood up and stretched until his aching spine made a soft popping sound and he felt better. Then he went to the phone in the living room, where he could sit down again but in a softer chair.
It was time for Luther Lunt to become a celebrity.
The Night Prowler watched the television screen in horror and rage. First the photograph had been in the newspapers, stopping and momentarily paralyzing him as he walked past a news and magazine kiosk on Broadway. Now the long-ago image was on seemingly every channel broadcasting the evening news. There stood a young Luther Lunt, leaning against the tree in the backyard that had been part of his home. Time made it seem like a
