Night Victims

window and outside, dragging a hand and affixing something to the sill on his way out.

Horn’s cigar had gone out and he didn’t bother to relight it. His mouth was dry and with the stale taste of too much tobacco and coffee, and he’d almost dozed off behind the steering wheel of his parked car. Not that there wasn’t enough activity to merit his attention. On a busy Manhattan street like this one, even at this late hour, there was occasional pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

Then he’d seen an undercover cop named Givers leap to his feet from where he’d been pretending to sleep as a homeless man in a doorway and race into Nina’s apartment building.

As Horn was climbing out of the unmarked, he heard “Shot fired!” on his two-way and started to run across the street. He almost slipped and fell in front of a cab letting out a woman in front of the building. She was bent over wrestling packages from the backseat, and looked sideways at him with surprise and concern as he regained his balance and raced past her.

Givers was stepping into the elevator when Horn burst into the lobby. He saw Horn and held the door open for him.

“You hear the shots?” Horn asked, as they ascended toward Nina’s floor.

“Yes, sir. Just one shot.”

“Sound like it coulda come from inside the apartment?”

Givers gave it some thought before answering. “It coulda, yeah.”

When the elevator door glided open, Horn was first out into the hall. A uniformed cop and Bickerstaff were already at Nina’s door. Bickerstaff was kicking at the door with the sole of his shoe. Several other doors were open, tenants craning their necks to peer out. A couple of men in pajamas and an older guy in Jockey shorts and a sleeveless undershirt were standing outside their doors. The one in Jockey shorts had mussed gray hair that stood up like a rooster comb. His grizzled chin was thrust out, his fists propped on his hips. Whatever was going down, he was game for it.

“Back inside!” Horn shouted, waving his shield over his head. “Everybody back inside now!”

There were a few defiant and resentful looks, but everyone obeyed. The guy with the rooster comb was last in.

Bickerstaff had given up on kicking and was lunging at the door over and over, slamming into it with his shoulder. Horn saw that the door was open about three inches. Its latch was sprung and its lock ripped from the wooden frame, but something was stopping it from opening farther. Movement on the left. Paula came chugging down the hall, breathing hard after taking the fire stairs.

Givers and the uniform were helping Bickerstaff now, all three men hunkering down and pressing against the door and each other, trying to direct their strength and weight in one direction. A cop, a raggedy grifter, and a guy who looked like an overweight salesman, all struggling to get into the apartment. Paula, the winded college girl with the shotgun, did what she could to help.

“Something’s up against the damned thing!” Bickerstaff said, looking over at Horn.

“Where the fuck’s Lyons?” the uniform asked, doubling his efforts to budge the door. Each time he strained forward, his eyes bulged and his beefy face got so red he appeared ready to have a stroke.

Horn ignored his bad right arm and joined Paula in awkwardly trying to help with the door, but there wasn’t enough room for either of them to make much difference. He knew that, viewed from a distance, there must be something tragically comedic about their struggle.

Then the door moved an inch inward.

Six inches.

At last it grudgingly opened far enough to allow entry.

Bickerstaff was first in, gun drawn. Givers and Horn followed. Horn heard Paula behind him instructing the uniform to stay in the hall.

Horn had his service revolver out and was crouching low to make a small target as he moved to the side and tried to see in the dim living room. A heavy chair had been pushed up against the door, tilted so its back was wedged beneath the knob. Bickerstaff cursed, almost tripping over the chair.

Horn was wondering about the answer to the uniform’s question in the hall. Where the fuck’s Lyons?

“Shit!” Paula said. She’d stepped in something squishy and almost stumbled over Lyons’s body near the sofa. She looked down and saw that her right foot was on blood-soaked carpet. “Lyons is shot! Looks dead!”

Horn was appalled and relieved simultaneously. One shot fired. Not into Nina.

Then he stepped closer and looked down at Lyons, at the black formless shape that framed his body like a shadow and had leached and spread. “His throat’s been slashed.”

“Shit!” Paula said again.

“Bedroom!” Horn said, pointing to the hall off the living room. He led the way.

The bedroom door was open. Horn held his breath but didn’t hesitate.

There was a little more light in the bedroom. Nina was on the bed wrestling with the sheets, frantically trying to free herself, sit up, and rip a rectangle of tape off her face at the same time.

“Nina!” Bickerstaff shouted, letting her know she had help, friends, she was going to be okay.

Beyond her a shadow moved at the window, not in the room but beyond it. Outside. Horn thought it might have been an illusion, a trick of light and adrenaline.

“The window!” Givers shouted. “He went out the goddamn window!”

Nina was aware that the bedroom was full of dark figures darting in different directions like flitting shadows and still shouting. She heard her name. Then:

“The window! He went out the goddamn window!”

One of the figures was at the window, leaning outside to peer down.

“He’s dropping like a fucking stone. If I take a shot I might hit somebody below.”

Nina tried to get untangled from her sheets. She had to break free so she could rip the tape from her mouth and tell them his line was attached to the sill. They should cut it. Detach it. Let the bastard fall like a stone! See if he shatters like a stone.

Horn was standing near the foot of her bed, yelling something into his two-way.

“Blood on the sheet!” a voice not Horn’s said. “She’s hurt.”

I’m hurt. . I’m hurt!

“Blood on the window frame, too,” said the figure who’d been peering down the vertical face of the building. He stared at his wet fingertips, then wiped them on his pants leg. “He’s hurt!”

The Night Spider had been ready for anything but what happened. After the initial shock of the gunshot, he’d quickly wedged his small but sturdy grappling hook beneath the window’s marble sill and unfurled his slender polymer line down the side of the building. As soon as he was through the window and into the night, he dropped, rappeling; he almost ran down the building, controlling his rate of fall by playing line through his belayer.

But a few yards beneath Nina Count’s window, he realized he didn’t have the strength in his left hand to break his speed as much as he wanted. He was dropping too fast.

He squeezed harder and gained a grip on the line, finally slowing his descent but bringing pain where there had been numbness in his left shoulder.

I’ve been hit! She shot me!

The bitch shot me!

Fury lent him strength. He knew he could do this now, knew he could elude his pursuers. They have no idea what they’re dealing with!

His hyperalert senses picked up movement above. When he glanced up he saw something he didn’t understand. It was dark, jutted out from the building about two feet, and was almost the width of the building. And it was moving down the building’s face toward him like a wave descending on a vertical stone beach.

Falling toward him faster than he could safely drop!

Then it was on him, around him, over him, past him.

No, not past him.

A net! They dropped a net down the side of the building!