Night Victims

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. There was no way to recover his work, his life in the NYPD.

The Job had been more than a job; it had been what he was about, who he was. But what Horn wasn’t about was self-pity. He knew now he’d have to become someone else. Trouble was, he couldn’t figure out who.

“Corn muffins, Horn.”

He looked up from his steaming coffee cup.

Marla, the waitress who usually served Horn on the mornings he came into the diner for breakfast, had placed a plate with two toasted muffins before him. She was fortyish, maybe older, slim, and attractive, even in her dowdy black-checked uniform that made her somber brown eyes look even darker. She didn’t wear much makeup and didn’t seem to care much about her mud-colored hair, which she wore pulled back in a ponytail.

“Sorry,” he said, “I was daydreaming.”

“Want juice this morning?”

“No, this is fine.”

“You gonna tell me crime stories today?”

“No, I’m slacking off. I’m not some old fart living in the past.”

She grinned. “You hardly qualify for old fart status.” She walked away, then came back with a coffeepot and topped off his cup. “Even if you sometimes think so.”

He glanced around. The breakfast crowd was gone and there were only a few other customers in the diner, down near the other end of the counter. Maybe he would talk with Marla. She made him feel better, that was for sure. Sometimes her incisive questions surprised him-her curiosity about the criminal mind and the mind of a cop, about serial killers, which had been Horn’s specialty when he was active.

But when he was about to call her back, the bell above the door tinkled as another customer entered. Marla would have work to do, and Horn didn’t want to pass the time of day with her anyway if the customer sat down within earshot.

Horn sipped his coffee as he turned and glanced to watch where whoever had entered would settle.

He was surprised to see heading toward his booth Assistant Chief of Police Roland Larkin.

“Now you’re retired,” Larkin said with a grin, “I see you’re working on clogging your arteries.” He shook his head. “You were eating those toasted muffins when we were young and riding together in Queens.”

“Not like these,” Horn said. “These are toasted just right and are delicious.”

“And have soaked up all the grease and every flavor from the grill.” Larkin extended his right hand palm down and Horn shook it with his left. Old friends.

“Why don’t you sit down and have some of your own, Rollie?”

Larkin slipped the button on his suitcoat and slid into the seat on the other side of the table. When the coat flapped open, Horn saw he wasn’t carrying a gun. Too important these days. Larkin looked good, Horn thought. Tall and lean, even if a little paunchy, his gray eyes slightly more faded, his hair grayer, his usually rouged-looking cheeks a little more florid. He was the kind of tough but compassionate Irishman who would have made a good priest and had made a good cop.

Marla came over with a menu, all waitress now, as if she’d never seen either man before.

Larkin handed the menu back and told her just coffee.

“You come in here often?” Horn asked, knowing Larkin lived across town.

“First time. Just to talk to you.”

“How’d you find me?”

“I’m a cop. I followed the muffins.”

Marla brought coffee, then left and began working behind the counter, not far away.

“So how’s retirement?” Larkin asked.

“It hasn’t dulled my senses.” Horn took a bite of toasted muffin, chewed, and swallowed. “How come you looked me up, Rollie?”

Stirring sugar into his coffee, Larkin leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “Need your help, Horn. Something’s going on.”

“What something?”

“Last week a woman named Sally Bridge was found murdered in her apartment. She’d been wound up in her bed-sheets and stabbed thirty-seven times.”

“Lot of stab wounds.” Horn took another big bite of muffin.

“Not many of them were fatal. The killer wanted to inflict maximum agony before she died.”

“Husband?” Another bite of muffin, what was left of the top removed and buttered. Horn chased it down with some coffee.

“Bridge was single. And we don’t have the killer.”