Night Victims

willing in some indirect, perverse way.”

“Were you ever?”

“A victim?” She took a few seconds to consider. “I don’t think so, no. And I’m not going to begin because this evil freak is pushing my buttons.”

“Mandle’s changed his MO somewhat. He’s not as predictable now.”

“Are you trying to frighten me more?”

“For God’s sake no, Anne! I want you to know the facts so you can take precautions. Mandle didn’t come through the window of his last victim. He forced the lock and came in through her door.”

He could hear her breathing loudly into the phone. “Okay, Thomas. I’m sorry. I’m strung out with this. . with everything that’s going on. But my nerves are holding. Damn it, they are! The more I know, the better off I am.”

“Here’s something else you need to know, or at least have a right to know. The NYPD’s not releasing the information yet, so this is in confidence. It appears Mandle’s using his victims’ first initials to spell out your name.” He explained to her what Paula had figured out. “It doesn’t necessarily mean,” he added, “that a woman whose first initial is E will actually be a victim before Mandle tries for you. The order of victims’ names might only be his way of throwing us off guard so he can get to you while we’re concentrating on someone else.”

“You really think his fucked-up mind works that way, Thomas?”

“Why not? You just said yourself it was fucked up.”

“He’d only be pretending to be locked into a compulsion. I’m no psychiatrist but nothing Mandle’s done before has suggested he’s anything other than a true obsessive-compulsive.”

“The sad truth about serial killers,” Horn said, “is that we really don’t know how their minds work, what’s missing in them. They aren’t all locked into patterns. And some of them, for unknown reasons, change patterns. Some of them even suddenly stop killing, as if finally they’ve become satiated with death.”

“Satiated with death. .” The concept seemed to intrigue her. “God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mandle suddenly decided he’d taken enough lives?” There was a slight note of hope in her voice, beneath her despair.

“Wonderful,” Horn agreed, “but not the sort of notion I’d stake my life on.”

Horn left the brownstone before ten o’clock to stroll down to the Home Away and have a late-night snack, hoping Marla was working. The evening was warm, with a breath of breeze, and reminded him of other warm evenings of his life: swimming illegally in a lake as a teenager; cruising in his first car, an old Ford convertible; romancing Anne; sweltering during summer stakeouts; helplessly watching a mugging victim bleed to death on a sidewalk in Queens. .

Enough of warm nights.

He was a hard man who’d long dealt with hard facts; he’d never been able to afford a world of fancy. Now here he was feeling as if he were walking in a dream. Had he really awoken, or was he still home, lying asleep on the sofa? Was the warm evening a dream while he was suspended in the world between sleeping and waking? So many mornings he hadn’t wanted to wake up. .

But he knew he was awake and walking in the city of his younger days, away from his wife’s voice and toward another woman. Looking forward to seeing the other woman. Feeling the stirrings of new beginnings.

Brakes squealed and rubber rasped on concrete.

“Watch where you’re fuckin’ walkin’!”

Horn backed away from the cab he’d almost stepped in front of and waved an apology to the driver.

He stood chastised and did not look back at his fellow pedestrians on the sidewalk, who were staring at him with blank cops’ faces as they waited for the traffic signal to change.

Marla was off work until morning. Horn got his usual booth but had to settle for an omelet and decaffeinated coffee served to him by a new waiter named Leonard who spoke so softly it was hard to understand him. That seemed to work both ways because he brought Horn a cheese omelet thinking Horn had said “cheese” instead of “please” when he’d ordered.

Horn, who chose his battles carefully, said nothing, fearing more complication.

He’d taken only a few bites of the omelet when his cell phone beeped in his pocket.

Good. Someone I can understand.

But at first he wasn’t sure who was on the other end of the connection.

“Waldo Winthrop,” repeated the caller.

“Sorry, I don’t know any-”

“Newsy. I used to be Nina Count’s assistant.”

“Newsy! Sure, I remember you. How’d you get this number?”

“Captain Horn, you insult my professionalism.”

“Sorry, Newsy. So I take it you’re still in the business.”

“As an independent.”

“You mean you sell information?”

“To news outlets. Not to you, Captain Horn. Nina wouldn’t have wanted it that way. She liked you.”

“I liked her.” But Horn knew others in the information business, at her station, who hadn’t been crazy about Nina and her news-diva ways. And resentment of her rubbed off on her assistant. After Nina left for Atlanta, it probably hadn’t taken long for the corporate sharks to close in on Newsy and chase him out of his job.

“One of my informants in the NYPD told me the story’s been leaked,” Newsy said.

“What story?”

“About how the Night Spider’s spelling out your wife’s name with the first initials of his victims. And now it’s E’s turn.”

“I don’t suppose it’d do any good if I asked how it leaked?”

“Hey, Captain Horn. .”

“Okay, Newsy. Thanks for the information. I owe you.”

Horn deactivated the phone and slipped it back in his pocket.

Leonard had been hovering in the distance with the coffeepot, obviously waiting for Horn to finish his phone conversation. Now he closed in and topped off Horn’s cup, spilling a liberal amount of coffee on the table.

Leaks.

45

Newsy was right to warn him.

The next morning’s Post all but shouted the glaring headline E-E-E- K! superimposed over the gray silhouette of a tarantula. Kudos to the art department.

Horn bought a paper and continued his walk toward the Home Away, glancing at the text and stopping now and then to read more carefully.

The Post contained a painstakingly accurate description of the Nora Shoemaker crime scene, almost as if it were lifted directly from a police report.

No almost about it, Horn reminded himself. Sometimes he wondered if every large bureaucracy was so porous. But he knew the answer.

The fact that since his escape, the first initials of Mandle’s victims spelled the first three letters of Anne’s name was said to have been noticed by “several journalists.” The media protecting their sources.

Horn removed his half-glasses, tucked the folded paper beneath his arm, and continued walking. The cool summer morning gave him slight respite from his worries. Breezes and rising exhaust fumes sent discarded advertising circulars and scraps of newspaper dancing over curbs and wide sidewalks. The sun’s increasing heat drew a melange of odors both rank and delicate from uncollected trash. The morning traffic roared and blared, a cacophony of constant background noises.

All of it surrounded Horn and he was glad. The city was beautiful and wonderful in its own flawed way,