Night Victims

assessment.

“How do you figure he detaches the lines when he goes back to the other rooftops?” she asked.

“Sayles told me there are grappling hooks, even knots, that can be detached by whipping or snapping the rope or cable.”

“Nifty,” Bickerstaff said. “Must take practice.”

“And training,” Horn said. “That our guy is an expert climber is about the only thing that narrows our search.”

“And that he gets in and out so clean,” Paula said. “Even a good B-and-E artist leaves a scuff mark or clue here or there. Other than a couple of indistinct footprints, we’ve been given nothing of much substance to work with.”

“Will Lincoln has the skill set,” Bickerstaff pointed out.

“And an alibi,” Paula said. “Me. I’ve practically been living with the guy. Last night he knocked down some beers at a bar in Queens, then went into his garage studio and worked until about three in the morning. I saw him pass the lighted window now and then, and I saw him leave the garage and go into his house when he was finished working.”

“And let me guess,” Horn said. “The ME says the victim died sometime before three o’clock this morning.”

“That’s it,” Paula said. “Closer to midnight. Will Lincoln didn’t do Neva Taylor.”

“Unless he found a way to leave his garage and return without you knowing it,” Bickerstaff said.

“I don’t think it was possible,” Paula said. “Besides, I’m sure he didn’t know I was out there watching him almost all night.”

“So Altman was playing straight with us when he gave us the list,” Horn said.

Bickerstaff stuffed his hands deep in his pockets, cool on the roof like Paula. “It’s almost enough to make you trust the Feds.”

“I think I saw him down in the street,” Horn said.

Bickerstaff looked at him. “Altman?”

“The Night Spider.”

Horn had their attention, judging by the way their jaws dropped.

He told them about the dark-eyed man in the white Saturn, his pursuit of the car, and the chase’s ultimate unsatisfactory conclusion.

“Jesus!” Bickerstaff said. “Maybe there’ll be prints in the car.”

“I’d be surprised if he didn’t wear gloves to steal cars the way he does for his ritual killings.”

“Clean,” Paula said. “He operates so damned clean.”

“That’s the thing about him,” Horn said, admiring Paula’s knack for homing in on what was pertinent. And for not shooting off her mouth, holding her thoughts till they were ripe. She was impressing him more and more.

Bickerstaff, still with his hands jammed in his pockets, looked around at the skyline and distant river. “It’s peaceful up here.”

“Which is why we’re leaving,” Horn said.

“Like nothing bad could ever happen in this city. But we know better. Hey, Paula?”

“Uh-huh.” Do we ever!

While Paula and Bickerstaff were still supervising or doing legwork on the Neva Taylor murder, Horn went home and used his desk phone in his den to call Anne at the hospital. She seemed calmer now about the lawsuit, but there was still an edginess to her that bothered Horn. He suspected what it might be but didn’t know how to make sure, or even if he could do anything about it if he were sure.

Hard years had taught him hard lessons. One of them was that the damage to cops’ wives was sometimes cumulative, building up over time until the women simply had had enough. Then, usually, they would walk. Maybe they’d wait for the kids to leave home, or for this or that to be resolved, but at a certain time they went. Horn couldn’t think of any cop’s marriage that had broken up that way and that had been made right. It was as if something inside these patient, long-suffering women snapped and couldn’t be repaired.

Horn never thought it could happen to Anne. She seemed to have learned to accommodate his profession-the waiting, the worrying, and the upside-down priorities, and coming in second to dates with drug dealers, rapists, and killers. And she wasn’t a wife who sat around and fretted constantly about him; she had a profession of her own, a life of her own, outside their marriage.

No, not outside it. Not completely. He knew that the conflicts and pressures of her job, especially since the Alan Vine tragedy, had always been a part of their marriage. They’d always shared. Everything. Maybe that was a mistake.

“The trouble with relationships these days,” a grizzled desk sergeant Horn knew often said, “is that there’s too much communication.” He’d gone on to describe the things he’d done without his wife’s knowledge and that he knew she’d done, supposedly without his.

He never seemed to be kidding. Horn knew now that maybe he hadn’t been. The sergeant retired two years ago and was living in Mexico with his wife of forty-two years.

And here was Horn, on the job again.

Like Anne, damn it! He had the right!

Mentally setting personal problems aside, still not knowing exactly how he felt about them or what to do, he wandered into the kitchen. Comfort food would help, and he was genuinely hungry anyway.

He saw the blur of rain on the kitchen’s dark windowpane and could hear the steady drip of water from a nearby downspout. Lightning briefly illuminated the view of the small garden Anne liked to call a courtyard, and a few seconds later distant thunder rumbled. A summer storm. Airborne gloom. Just what he needed to improve his glum mood.

Using meat loaf take-home from the last restaurant meal he and Anne had shared, he found some cracked wheat bread, got ketchup from the refrigerator, and built a thick sandwich. Then he located a bottle of Heineken dark in the refrigerator and opened it. He got a beer glass down from a cabinet, sat at the table, and ate, listening to the rain and what had become a metallic drumbeat from the downspout.

When he was finished with the sandwich but not the beer, he carried the half-full glass into his den and sat down at the antique oak desk Anne had gotten for his birthday ten years before. He couldn’t hear the rain from here. Good. He searched his Rolodex. Nina Count should still be at the station, and he knew she’d talk to him. Knew she was probably expecting him to call.

“Captain Horn!” She sounded overjoyed to hear his voice. “You have something to tell me.”

“Not that you’d want to hear, Nina.”

“C’mon, Horn, we’re old friends.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea what you’re trying to do.”

“Of course, and you appreciate it. I’m trying to flush out your suspect for you. And I will. Just give me a little time.”

He considered telling her about his encounter with the driver of the stolen Saturn earlier that day but decided it would only whet her appetite for danger and ratings. Besides, she’d find out eventually anyway, being Nina.

“My contacts in the NYPD tell me I’ve already had some success,” she said. “You were involved in a dramatic chase this morning. With a little luck, you would have apprehended the Night Spider. It’ll be on tonight’s eleven o’clock news.”

Christ! She was something! “Good. I’ll be able to learn all about it.”

“I’m not completely unselfish about this, Horn. If I’m successful at what I’m attempting, I get viewers and you get the killer. So we both win. You should be grateful for what I’m doing.”

“I would be, if flushing out the killer was all you’re trying to do. You’re taunting this murderous psychopath, Nina. If He’s the Night Spider, you’re offering yourself as a juicy fly.”

“My God! I never thought of that!”

“Bullshit, Nina.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“If you’d seen what was left of his flies, you wouldn’t be doing this.” But he knew better; if she weren’t a