Night Victims

the carpet.

Everything was here. Time to set to work. His time. His time was coming.

He threaded the needle on the first try. He unwound about a yard of slender, strong thread from its spool. By a thread. . Her life hanging by a thread. . He began to sew, his fingers moving with incredible dexterity and precision, faster and faster, never missing a stitch. His unblinking gaze was fixed on his task. He moved to the rhythm of his breathing, the rhythm of his own dark cosmos. Bony breast rising and falling. . a soft hissing, like a bellows fanning flame. By a thread. .

32

It would be tonight.

The weather report promised cloud cover and a sliver of moon. The Night Spider’s plans had been laid, the enemy measured. The resignation at last induced by constant fear. Soon would come the stupor of the prey in the grasp of the predator. The prey was waiting, afraid and impatient, secretly wishing to be possessed at last.

And he knew she was waiting for him, growing restless in her anticipation. They cooperated with him toward the end, in their surrender. He knew by their eyes. Sometimes they grew eager. Death was magnetic.

After double-checking to make sure he was fully prepared, he slipped into a light silk windbreaker, dark like his slacks.

Cap pulled down, collar up. Ready. He opened the door and went out into the night, part of the night. Hell on the hunt.

For the first time in weeks he felt wonderful!

“Maybe he’s got this figured,” Paula said. “Maybe he’s too smart for us this time and won’t show. If he wants to, he can just sit back and let Nina crow.”

Horn had expressed the same doubts that afternoon to Marla. Her confidence had remained unshaken.

“He can’t stay away from her much longer,” he said now to Paula, echoing Maria’s words. “He’s trying to outwait us, lull us into complacency so he can take advantage of our carelessness. He’ll show. If we’re patient, he’ll cooperate. He has no choice.”

Paula wasn’t so sure. But Horn was the boss.

This time she was glad she wasn’t in charge.

She went to her station on the apartment building’s roof, out of sight just inside the slanted and slightly opened service door. When she positioned herself just so, she had an unobstructed view of most of the roof ‘s dark expanse.

Getting as comfortable as possible, she settled down with her steel thermos full of coffee, her twelve-gauge shotgun, and her fear.

She found herself thinking about Harry Linnert, then tried not to.

A cop’s life. What am I doing here? Why me? How the hell did it happen?

A surflike rush of breeze flowed across the roof, warm as the night. Paula felt a bead of perspiration trickle down the side of her neck. She sighed and rested her hand closer to the gun.

Horn did his nightly inspection before settling down in his unmarked parked across the street, from which he directed the operation. Everyone was in place: undercover cops on the street, observers and sharpshooters on surrounding buildings, more undercover cops posing as building employees or tenants.

If the Night Spider appeared on the roof of Nina’s building, they would know. When he did his spider’s drop toward her window, he’d be observed every inch of the way. Gun sights would be trained on him in case anything went wrong. There was no way he could get close to Nina Count. But if he did, there was a cop in her apartment as a last line of defense, a borrowed SWAT martial arts expert who, on signal, would move into Nina’s bedroom and be waiting for whatever came through the window, while other cops closed in on the apartment fast.

Horn leaned back against the car’s soft cloth upholstery. From where he was parked, he had a clear view of Nina’s apartment building.

He couldn’t help a slight amount of complacency. Inevitably in situations like this, it edged in. Repetition was to blame. And this was another night exactly like the ones before. It was doubtful anything would occur. But he hadn’t let down his guard or weakened his defenses. The same precautions were in place tonight that had been here on the first night of the operation.

He tucked in his chin to speak into his two-way. “We’re up and running.”

Everyone acknowledged they’d heard.

Horn had the car’s windows down, so he lit a cigar and smoked it, using his cupped hand to conceal the glowing ember whenever he raised it above dashboard level. He was satisfied that Nina was safe.

Safe as anyone in her position could be.

Newsy, set up with his cameraman behind the window of the building across the street, waited and watched and smoked a filtered Camel. Like Horn, he had his hand cupped to conceal the glow of the ember.

He couldn’t help staring across the street at the face of Nina’s building as its lighted windows went dark one by one.

At 11:45 P.M., which was her usual bedtime, just after the news starring Nina, her own window went dark.

Newsy stepped back and to the side so he could light another cigarette off the one he’d smoked to a stub. His palms were moist. He wasn’t sure how he should feel or even how he did feel.

He wanted something to happen.

He was terrified that it might.

33

The Benadryl hadn’t worked tonight. Nina wondered if she might be building up a resistance.

Several hours ago she’d finally drifted into restless half sleep and fragmented dreams. Then she’d come fully awake, wishing it were morning.

It was 3:03 A.M., according to the clock by the bed.

She lay in the dimness and listened to the muted sounds of the city late at night. New York might never sleep, but tonight it was doing a better job than Nina at skirting sleep’s edges. Right now there was only the distant whisper of traffic, barely audible, almost like a faraway ocean that occasionally surged closer, then withdrew. Life and time, coming almost within reach.

Her pulse seemed to throb too strongly throughout her body. She could almost hear her blood coursing through her veins, could hear it pounding in her ears. The blue hammer, doctors called the pulse. Pounding madly on its muted anvil. The lump in her stomach took on weight.

Fear was a curious thing when it never went away, when it made its home in you. It might always be there, but you never got used to it. Not completely. It would lie almost dormant, then grab you from the inside when you least expected it, almost as if it had a sadistic sense of humor that was a reflection of your own.

A car horn honked blocks away outside, startling her. But only momentarily. Now she felt reassured. At least somebody was out there going about normal activities. On the way to see a lover, to go home from a night job, to burgle a business, to-

She told herself to go back to sleep, she was safe. Horn knew his business, and there were cops all over the place outside and in the building. Even that cute one, Detective Lyons, in her living room, almost right outside her bedroom door.