Chill of Night

by John Lutz

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

THE JUSTICE KILLER

There's a twisted serial killer stalking the streets of New York City, dealing his own perverse version of justice. He kills swiftly and silently, leaving his calling card-a red "J"-on the bodies of his prey. His victims have one thing in common: they've all been jurors in the city's most infamous cases-cases in which the killer was found "not guilty." Overnight, the Justice Killer has the city in a stranglehold. And there's only one man who has a shot at finding him . . .

Homicide detective Artemis Beam made his reputation hunting down serial killers. After getting shot by an armed robber-and stepping on the wrong toes in the NYPD-he's been retired. The city needs him now, and finding the killer is his chance to get back into the life he loves. As the body count climbs and the city's legal system fails, the Justice Killer thinks he's outsmarted the cops. But Beam isn't officially a cop anymore . . . and he doesn't have to play by the rules . . .


From the Compact Disc edition.

Release date: September 1, 2010

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 480

Sample

“John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”

—Harlan Coben

“John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”

—Ridley Pearson

“A major talent.”

—John Lescroart

“I’ve been a fan for years.”

—T. Jefferson Parker

“John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”

—Tony Hillerman

“For a good scare and a well-paced story, Lutz delivers.”

—San Antonio Express News

“Lutz knows how to seize and hold the reader’s imagination.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Lutz’s real gift is to evoke detective work better than anyone else.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Lutz ranks with such vintage masters of big-city murder as Lawrence Block and the late Ed McBain.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Lutz is among the best.”

—San Diego Union

“It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar and two Shamuses.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Some writers just have a flair for imaginative suspense, and we all should be glad that John Lutz is one of them. The Night Spider features elegant writing enveloping exotic murder and solid police work…. A truly superb example of the ‘new breed’ of mystery thrillers.”

—Jeremiah Healy

“Lutz juggles multiple storylines with such mastery that it’s easy to see how he won so many mystery awards. Darker Than Night is a can’t-put-it-down thriller, beautifully paced and executed, with enough twists and turns to keep it from ever getting too predictable.”

—reviewingtheevidence.com

“Readers will believe that they just stepped off a tilt-awhirl after reading this action-packed police procedural…John Lutz places Serpico in a serial killer venue with his blue knights still after him.”

—The Midwest Book Review on Darker Than Night

“John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror…. [He] propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.”

—Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale) on The Night Spider

“Compelling…a gritty psychological thriller…Lutz’s details concerning police procedure, fire-fighting techniques and FDNY policy ring true, and his clever use of flashbacks draws the reader deep into the killer’s troubled psyche.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Night Watcher

“John Lutz is the new Lawrence Sanders. The Night Watcher is a very smooth and civilized novel about a very uncivilized snuff artist, told with passion, wit, carnality, and relentless vigor. I loved it.”

—Ed Gorman in Mystery Scene

“A gripping thriller…extremely taut scenes, great descriptions, nicely depicted supporting player…Lutz is good with characterization.”

—reviewingtheevidence.com on The Night Watcher

“SWF Seeks Same is a complex, riveting, and chilling portrayal of urban terror, as well as a wonderful novel of New York City. Echoes of Rosemary’s Baby, but this one’s scarier because it could happen.”

—Jonathan Kellerman

“With Lutz stirring the pot the dish spits with just the right amount of sizzle.”

—Bon Appétit on Tropical Heat

“Lutz is a fine craftsman.”

—Booklist on The Ex

“The grip on the reader is relentless until the final, entirely unforeseen shocker rings down the curtain.”

—Publishers Weekly on Kiss

“Well written, meticulously constructed, gripping.”

—Library Journal on Scorcher

“A psychological thriller that few readers will be able to put down.”

—Publishers Weekly on SWF Seeks Same

“Tense and relentless.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Torch

“The author has the ability to capture his readers with fear, and has compiled a myriad of frightful chapters that captures and holds until the final sentence.”

—New Orleans Times-Picayune on Bonegrinder

“Likable protagonists in a complex thriller.”

—Booklist on Final Seconds

“Lutz is rapidly bleeding critics dry of superlatives.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Things are never as they seem.

The area was supposed to be clear, marked off with yellow NYPD crime scene tape, but Beam caught a glimpse of movement behind one of the parked cars and moved toward it.

One step, that was all he’d taken, and the figure hiding behind the parked Mercedes was off and running toward the garage exit. Beam could see by the way he moved that he was young, teens or twenties. Beam had just turned fifty-three. Convert that difference in years to distance, and there was a lot of it to make up. Still, Beam was on the run and gradually gaining.

The victim’s body had been removed, and the crime scene unit and other detectives had left. It was part of Beam’s method to hang around alone at a murder scene and take in what he could in the immense silence and stillness that followed violent death. Now and then, he discovered something.

He’d sure as hell made a discovery this time—probably the shooter.

His feet pounding the concrete floor, Beam yelled, “Halt! Police!”

That seemed to speed up the guy, a skinny kid dressed in jeans, a dark watch cap, and a black jacket, flailing his arms, and with long legs that could eat up the ground. He was making for the vast rectangle of light that was the exit from the garage to freedom, where he’d be lost in the crowded New York streets. Beam couldn’t risk taking a shot at him and would soon be outdistanced. The probable killer of the garage attendant, and he was getting away.

Can’t let that happen!

Beam had seconds to act or he’d lose the angle, and his bullet might ricochet out onto the sidewalk.

“Halt or I’ll shoot!”

Should it be a warning shot at the concrete ceiling? Or should he try to bring down the fleeing man before it was too late? One of those split second decisions you read and hear about in the media.

“Stop, damn it!”

The suspect lifted his knees higher, trying to draw more speed from his adrenaline-jacked body.

Beam stopped, spread his feet wide, and raised the revolver and held it before him in his right hand, bracing with his left.

Decision time.

But not for Beam.

The fleeing man suddenly skidded to a halt, at the same time whirling and dropping to one knee. It was a graceful, dancer’s movement made possible by youth.

He shot Beam.

It was like getting whapped in the thigh with a hammer.

Beam was on the hard concrete floor without knowing how he got there, fire pulsing in his right leg. He craned his neck and peered toward the garage exit and saw that the kid was getting away.

Rubber screeched out on the street, and there was the dull sound of impact. A woman shouted something over and over that Beam couldn’t understand.

He reached for his two-way. If the damned thing would work in the garage, he could get help, maybe nail the bastard on the street.

Then weakness came with the pain.

Then darkness.

Beam thought, Lani…

“What’s it been, bro?” Cassandra Beam asked. “A week?”

“Nine days,” Beam said. That was how long since he’d been released from the hospital into a bright spring day. His right leg still ached and wasn’t as strong as his left. He’d lost twenty pounds while laid up, and his clothes hung on him as if they were somebody else’s.

He was wearing a pale gray shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and folded neatly halfway up his forearms. His face was so gaunt as to be almost vulpine, with blue eyes that could charm or cut steel, and an intensely curious, slightly lopsided expression due to a missing right earlobe that had been bitten off in a saloon fight his rookie year as a cop. Beam looked like a guy who’d been dragged bumping and thumping through life, resisting every inch.

The bullet fired in the parking garage had done only minimal damage to the bone, so he’d be able to walk soon without a cane. He was having lunch at Fostoria’s, on Central Park West, with his sister, Cassie, who was a psychiatrist with her office nearby. A long way from downtown, where they’d spent their childhood.

The restaurant’s tables were small and round, with lacy white tablecloths, and the place was filled with brilliant winter sunlight. They were waiting for their server to bring them their orders of croissant sandwiches. It looked to Beam as if everyone in the restaurant was eating something on a croissant.

Their table was by the window, and both had been watching people stream past out on the sidewalk. It was easier than talking.

“You were thinking about retiring anyway,” Cassie said.

She hadn’t done well in the gene pool. Unlike Beam, who was tall and rawboned, his older sister was short and blocky, in a sturdy way that dieting would never change. Her eyes were darker than his, too, staring at Beam now from beneath black bangs.

“Thinking about and doing are two different things,” Beam said.

Cassie gave him her gap-toothed smile. “You’re telling me that?”

Beam had to smile back. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget what you do for a living.”

“Getting shot, so soon after Lani, it was like a one-two punch.”

“Is that psychoanalyst talk?” Beam asked. “A one-two punch?”

Cassie took a sip of lime-flavored bottled water. “I’m not talking like an analyst now. More like a sister. Not that I don’t think analysis wouldn’t help you, but it should be done by another professional.”

“I’ll get through it,” Beam said. His wife of twenty-three years, Lani, had for reasons unknown leaped from the high balcony of her friend and business partner’s apartment, where she was attending a cocktail party and charity fund raiser. It was five months later when Beam had been surprised by the suspect in the parking garage, while investigating the robbery shooting of the attendant, and was shot in the leg. The shooter, who turned out to be twenty-two years old, with an impressive record of armed assault and burglary, had been struck and killed by a car in the street outside the garage exit. Beam’s final collar.

Not the best way to end the career of legendary New York homicide detective Artemis Beam, the cop who’d made his reputation understanding and hunting down serial killers. He’d been kicked up to the rank of captain and unceremoniously pensioned off. Since then he’d had to use pills to help him sleep, and awake he wandered alone and uneasy in the shifting world of the retired.

Cassie was the first to tell him he’d never been one to adjust easily. She had a seer’s gift for spotting trouble even before it appeared on the horizon, and she’d known Beam’s retirement was going to be hell. As usual, she was right.

Beam still grieved for Lani.

Beam’s leg still hurt.

Beam still missed the hunt.

Here came the croissants.

It felt like butter.

Lois Banner stood in front of the bolt of rich fabric and again ran her fingertips over it along the barely discernible warp of the material that was so incredibly soft despite its high wool content. It was dark gray, with a faint black splatter pattern, and would be perfect for some of the fall lines she’d seen at last week’s fashion show. Evening in Paris was the name the supplier had affixed to the material, and Lois thought they had it right. That was what the soft fabric reminded her of, her earlier, not-so-innocent years in the city that lent itself to sin.

Lois herself was a former fashion model, almost forty now, and twenty pounds beyond her working weight. But she would still look good in some of the clothes due in the shops next season. In fact, she would look fantastic. Her features were still sharp, her eyes a brilliant blue, and her dark hair was skinned back to emphasize prominent cheekbones that looked like swept back airplane wings. As a model she’d been considered exotic. She was still that, if she dressed for it. Which happened less and less often.

Lois preferred to spend time tracking fashions and buying the wonderful fabrics that her customers, gained from longtime business contacts, would purchase wholesale to make the most of what was new. And always, in the world of fashion, something—the most important thing—was new.

The main office of Fabrics by Lois was on Seventh Avenue. This fabric warehouse and showroom was on West Forty-sixth Street, in the loft of a building that housed offices below. Though most of the bolts of fabric were stored vertically to maximize space, at five feet, ten inches, Lois was the tallest thing in the unbroken area with its vast plank floor. It was evening and dark outside. The Forty-sixth Street end of the loft was shadowed but for dappled light that filtered through unwashed windows and skylights. The rest of the area was dimly illuminated by original brass fixtures suspended on chains from the high ceiling. Lois would not abide florescent lighting—the cruel tricks it played on colors!

She was dressed simply and casually in black slacks and blouse this evening, and wore white Nikes, no socks. On Lois, the outfit looked even more expensive than it was.

A breeze played across her bare ankles, as if a door had opened. But the loft was accessible by elevator. The only door was to the fire stairs that ran down the south side of the building.

The subtle change of temperature jogged Lois’ memory. She glanced at her Patek Philippe watch, a gift from a long-ago admirer. Almost eight o’clock, and she was due to meet a buyer for drinks at nine. She barely had time to get to her apartment, shower, and change clothes.

Time to lock up. But she couldn’t resist running her fingertips one more time over Evening in Paris.

A slight noise made her glance to her left.

She gave a sharp intake of breath. A shadowy figure stood silently among the tall fabric bolts. Almost like someone standing watching in a corn field. The bucolic image surprised Lois and, through her fear, unpleasantly reminded her of her childhood in Ohio. She belonged here! In New York or Paris or Berlin. She was no longer the early version, the early Lois Banion, who was no more.

“Who—” she began in a strangled voice.

The figure, a man, stepped forward, and she could see in his right hand a bulky object which she recognized as a gun with a silencer attached to its barrel.

Lois forced herself to speak. “If you want money, there isn’t any here.”

The man said something she didn’t understand.

“What?”

“Justice,” he said softly, and raised the gun as if to point it at her like an accusing finger.

“My God,” she said in a small girl’s voice, “what have I done?” What haven’t I done?

Oh, Jesus, what haven’t I done?

The gun jumped in the man’s hand, and she felt a fire and then a numbness in her chest, and she was on the floor. Terrified, she tried to get up and found herself entangled in fabric. Tried to get up. Tried not to die. Tried to get up.

The light was fading. She was staring up at one of the dangling brass fixtures, and it was like a distant star, moving even farther away.

There was no pain, she realized. Incredible! No pain! For that, at least, she was grateful.

If there’s no pain, why should there be fear?

Evening in Paris enfolded and embraced her like a warm, welcoming shroud.

To his friends and enemies, Artemis Beam was simply “Beam.” Ella, the waitress at the Chow Down Diner on Amsterdam Avenue, thought of him as “Over hard.” The way he liked his eggs. The way she figured he was.

Beam sat in his usual booth near the window, where he could look out on the street over coffee and his folded Times, at people who had places to go in a hurry. He had no particular place to go, but he thought that if need be, he could still get somewhere in a hurry. Though he walked with a long, limping lope, the truth was that the leg didn’t hurt much anymore, and he was still in pretty good shape and could move fast.

Another truth was that Beam hadn’t been eased out of the NYPD four months ago only because of the gunshot wound. Politics had been involved. Beam had never been in his element within a bureaucracy—which the NYPD was—and had stepped on the wrong toes.

The resultant trouble had been all right with Beam, except that his job was at least partly the cause of his wife Lani’s bouts of depression. Almost a year had passed since Lani’s death leap from the apartment balcony near Lincoln Center.

Beam was still grieving for his wife, still trying to come to terms with the hard fact that she was actually gone, that the dark winds of her tortured mind had finally claimed her, and that in part it had been his fault. Because of who he was, because of not quitting the department sooner, because of all the things he hadn’t done and all the words he hadn’t spoken and she would now never hear. She had left him behind in a cold world that denied him peace and comfort.

Still feeling the effects of the Ambien he’d taken last night to get to sleep, he sipped his coffee and gazed out at the crowded sidewalks and stalled morning traffic on Amsterdam Avenue.

New York. His city, like clustered Towers of Babble, that he used to protect, that he still loved. Where he was born to a Jewish father and Irish mother, and, with Cassie, raised on the Lower East Side. His father, who’d been a cop.

The city still needed protection, needed to be set right again and again because that was its raucous, rowdy, and sometimes deadly nature.

The hell with it! Not his problem anymore.

Beam was getting accustomed to not thinking about his past, but it still scared the hell out of him to contemplate his future. His future alone.

He still didn’t mind stepping on toes. And he didn’t feel like being involved again with the NYPD.

He knew Andy da Vinci was going to ask him to do both those things.

 

Beam’s eyes narrowed at the invasive morning light beyond the window. There was da Vinci, picking his way like a nifty broken-field runner through the stalled traffic before the signal at the intersection changed, engines roared, horns blared, and he might be run down and over and dragged. He was grinning, obviously relishing the challenge.

Dumb! Beam thought, but he liked da Vinci. It was just that needlessly risking a life wasn’t Beam’s game.

“Topper?”

Ella was standing next to his booth, holding the round glass coffee pot, staring down at him with a questioning look on her long, bovine features.

“Sure,” Beam said.

Horns honked wildly outside. Da Vinci hadn’t quite made it all the way across and was really dancing now, his moves a graceful series of passes within inches of bumpers and fenders. He was still grinning, now and then waving, or flipping off an irate driver.

“Look at that idiot,” Ella said, staring out the window as she poured coffee into Beam’s cup. “He’s gonna get himself killed.”

“Bet not.”

“You’re on.”

“I know him,” Beam said. “He’s on his way here. Pour him a cup of coffee. I know he’ll want one.”

“You don’t mind,” Ella said, “I’ll wait till I know it’s necessary.”

And she did. Da Vinci was safely up on the sidewalk before she brought another cup from the nearby counter and poured.

 

“Mine?” da Vinci asked, pointing to the steaming cup, when he’d pushed inside the diner and slid into the booth to sit across from Beam. There were perspiration stains beneath the armpits of his otherwise pristine white shirt. It was going to be a hot summer.

“Yours. And on me.”

Da Vinci flashed his handsome grin and shook hands with Beam. “It’s good to see you again, Cap.”

“No longer a captain,” Beam said.

“Hard not to think of you that way.”

“The waitress and I had a bet about whether you’d make it across the street.”

“Ah! And you had faith in me.”

“I knew you,” Beam said. “And by the way, I still think of you as Deputy Chief da Vinci.”

“Good.”

Da Vinci skipped cream but dumped three heaping tablespoons of sugar into the cup. Still living dangerously.

“Had breakfast?” Beam asked.

“Naw. Never eat it. My stomach doesn’t like it. What I came here for’s to talk.”

“My stomach doesn’t like that,” Beam said.

Da Vinci sampled his coffee and smiled. He was handsome enough to be an actor, dark wavy hair, slightly turned up nose, strong chin and clear gray eyes. Young Tony Curtis, Beam thought.

Da Vinci was in fact the youngest deputy chief ever in the NYPD. He was clever and shamelessly ambitious, but at least he was up front about it. Despite his sometimes brash and manipulating manner, Beam liked him. Da Vinci had proven himself incorruptible and dedicated, two virtues Beam admired. It was also rumored that eight years ago da Vinci, as a young motorcycle cop, planted a “throw down” gun after pursuing and shooting to death a Mafia enforcer without giving him a chance to surrender. The thug had deliberately run down and killed an assistant DA’s six-year-old daughter. A review board had, without winking, cleared da Vinci of any wrongdoing. That was fine with Beam.

“Better talk before you run out of coffee,” Beam said.

“Doesn’t matter. The waitress will top off my cup.”

“Not if she thinks I want you to leave.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Beam. Women love me, with or without coffee. I give her the word and she might chase you away.”

“Doesn’t a deputy chief have more important things to do than yak with an old retiree in a diner?”

“That’s for damn sure. Which means the old retiree oughta be wondering what it’s all about.”

“Give my friend some more coffee,” Beam said, as Ella passed close by the booth with her pot.

Da Vinci sat silently and watched as his cup was topped off. He didn’t seem at all out of breath from playing dodge with the traffic. Must still be in pretty good shape.

“Two words,” da Vinci said, when Ella had left. “Serial killer.”

“Not my favorite words.”

“But nobody was ever better at getting inside their sick minds. Especially the vigilante types who think they’re righting some terrible wrong.”

Beam knew what da Vinci was talking about. Four years ago Beam had hunted down and nailed Reverend Death, the city’s last vigilante serial killer, who had been murdering porn shop owners whose establishments the city seemed unable to shut down.

“We got one who might be cut from that same sanctimonious cloth,” da Vinci said. Two days ago a woman named Lois Banner was shot and killed in her fabric warehouse. Two weeks before that a tax attorney named B. Eder was whacked.”

“What’s the B stand for?”

“Nothing. Like with Harry S. Truman.”

“Nobody ever called Truman ‘S.’”

“Doesn’t matter. Two weeks before B. Eder, an exercise equipment salesman named Harry Meyers was murdered.” Da Vinci sipped coffee and looked at Beam. “All of the victims were shot.”

“With the same gun?”

“No doubt about it. A serial killer. The media hasn’t tumbled to it yet.”

“They will soon. The NYPD does nothing better than leak information.”

“So it won’t be long before they leak the letter J.”

“Is it something like Truman’s S and the victim’s B?”

“No, we think it stands for something. At the scene of each murder was a capital letter J. Lois Banner’s employees discovered her body under some kind of fabric, and a red cloth J had been cut out and placed on the corpse.”

“All the Js cut from red cloth?”

“No. But they’re all red. The attorney had red marking pen on his forehead. The exercise salesman had a red J torn out of a magazine ad tucked in his breast pocket.”

“But you don’t know what the Js stand for?”

“We’re not sure. But Eder was Jewish. Meyers wasn’t, but his name could have suggested in the mind of the killer that he might have been. Same way Banner, though her real name was Banion.”

“Anti-Semitism. Nasty.”

“If that’s what’s going on. Some kinda religious or political nut.” Da Vinci stared at his coffee cup, as if he didn’t like its contents, then placed the cup on its saucer and stared across the table at Beam. “I don’t really give a frig about the why of it, Beam. I just want the bastard stopped.”

“Why not give this knotty problem to a working homicide detective instead of one who’s happily retired?”

“You’re not happily retired. And you happen to be the best at this kind of investigation. And I’m gonna be honest with you. You break this case, as I know you will, and I’ll get credit for putting you on the scent. I could make chief.”

“Being nakedly ambitious becomes you.”

“I also think you’re a certain kind of cop, Beam.”

“The kind you are?”

“Yeah, only much more so. What I think of your kind of cop is that they’re Old Testament cops. Now and again, they play God. You got a reputation for bending the rules, even the law, in the interest of seeing justice done. And as you’re already retired and more or less don’t give a shit, you’ll bend whatever you have to in order to nail this letter J scumbag.”

Beam had to smile. “I’m more used to being called a dinosaur than God.”

Da Vinci shrugged. “God is a dinosaur.”

Beam thought he better not ask what da Vinci meant by that. Didn’t want lightning to strike the booth.

“You do this thing, Beam, and you’ll be on a work-for-hire basis, have a captain’s status, and all the resources of the NYPD at your disposal. And I’ll assign you a team of detectives.”

Da Vinci bolted down the rest of his coffee, making another sour face, then stood up from the booth.

“This where you ask me to think about it?” Beam said.

“Naw. You know I know that you know.”

“That I’ll do it,” Beam said.

Da Vinci smiled. “I’ll have Legal draw up a contract.”

“Nothing in writing,” Beam said.

“That’s not the way it works.”

“That’s the way I work.”

Da Vinci’s grin widened and he shook his head. “Okay. Dinosaurs never had anything in writing.”

“I’ll work this case my way, out of my apartment.”

“Why?”

Beam shrugged. “I’m retired. But I do want access by computer to NYPD data bases.”

“Easy enough. But you’re gonna need those investigators.”

“A couple of good ones,” Beam said. “And some added uniform help if and when I need it.”

“You mean you’re not gonna wrestle this guy to the ground yourself?”

“Let me think on that one,” Beam said.

“Okay, we’ll meet again and I can give you more details.”

Da Vinci grinned, saluted, then turned and strode from the diner. Beam watched him cross the street the other way, toward his illegally parked car. There wasn’t much traffic just then. Da Vinci seemed to wish there were some.

“What was that all about?” Ella asked, standing by the booth and clearing away dishes.

“Extinction,” Beam said.

 

Beam’s bedside phone that night was insistent, piercing his sleep with its shrill summons, not letting him sink back each time he rose toward the real world.

He reached out in the darkness, noticing that the luminous hands of his wristwatch had edged past midnight, and found the receiver. He drew it to him and mumbled hello. Terrible taste in his mouth.

“Cassie, bro,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Just thought I’d call and tell you about this dream I had.”

“I wasn’t dreaming,” Beam said, annoyed, “which is rare for me.”

“It was about you.”

“Great.” He wasn’t in the mood for one of Cassie’s hazy prognostications.

“I think it was about you, anyway. Had to do with biblical figures. In a place with tall stone columns, like a temple. I could make out faces. One of them was yours. The dream was about betrayal.”

Beam waited, exhausted. “That’s it?”

“It was vague. Piecemeal. Like most of my dreams. But you were in it. You and someone close to you—I’m not sure who, or if it was a man or woman.”

“Tall stone columns. Maybe Julius Caesar. Brutus is gonna stab me in the back. Kinda thing happens to me all the time.”

“You weren’t Julius Caesar, bro. Biblical, but not Roman.”

“And I’m gonna be betrayed by someone close to me? Like Jesus?”

“No. You were Judas.”

“Terrific.”

“Hey, you know how dreams are, all mixed up. Probably means nothing.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“No problem.”

Try getting back to sleep after that.

1987

New York had been leaden-skied, cold, and gloomy all week, and the man who entered the Waldemeyer Hotel looked like a product of the weather.

He was medium height, wearing a dark raincoat spotted from the cool drizzle that had just begun outside. Ignoring the bellhop’s half-hearted attempt to relieve him of the single small suitcase he was carrying, he paused just inside the revolving glass doors, glanced around, then trudged across the lobby toward the desk.

A whiff of mold made everything seem damp. Though small, the Waldemeyer had once been one of New York’s better hotels. It had been in decline for years. People wanted to stay closer to the theater district now, or to upscale shopping or Central Park. Fewer wanted to stay in Tribeca, in a fading small hotel that had once housed celebrities who wanted to visit town incognito. Tribeca was becoming more desirable, but not for the Waldemeyer. The rehabbing and construction in the area would soon catch up with demand, and the struggling hotel would fall even further victim to commerce and skyrocketing real estate prices. The ancient, ten-story Waldemeyer was in too valuable a location to be saved. It would doubtless be razed to make room for something that would generate higher taxes.

Grayer and almost as old as the Waldemeyer, Franklin, behind the desk, watched the man approach, sizing him up. An average looking guy, but there was something about him that drew and held the eye. He hadn’t bothered to unbutton his raincoat, and he seemed oblivious of the faded red carpet, oak paneling that needed waxing, potted palms that had seen better days, marble surfaces that were stained and cracked. His face was composed, his eyes unblinking and sad. He was here, in the Waldemeyer, but his mind seemed to be somewhere else.

It occurred to Franklin that more and more of the hotel’s guests wore distracted looks. Sad was the word that persisted in Franklin’s mind, as the man did a slight dip and put down his suitcase out of sight on the other side of the desk.

“I’ve got a reservation,” he said. “Justice.”

Franklin gave him a smile and checked on the computer. “Yes sir, we’ve got you down for one night.” Something in the man’s eyes kind of spooked Franklin, so what he heard next was no surprise.

“I’m not carrying credit cards, but I can pay cash.”

“Cash is still good here, sir.” Franklin couldn’t help glancing across the lobby, out to the street, thinking maybe there was a woman lurking out there who would soon enter the hotel and nonchalantly make her way upstairs. Justice had the earmarks of a guy on a guilty pleasure trip with the baby sitter or his wife’s best friend. Or maybe it would be a guy. The world had changed since Franklin started as a car parker at the Waldemeyer thirty-five years ago.

“It’ll be in advance,” the man said, pulling an untidy wad of bills from his pocket and peeling off the exact amount of the room rate.

“Best way, sir.” Franklin had him sign a registration card. “Room five-oh-six,” he said, forgetting the man’s name and glancing at the card as he handed over a key, “Mr. Justice.”

“There should be a package for me,” Justice said.

Franklin checked beneath the desk, and sure enough there was a small box wrapped in plain brown paper, hand addressed to the hotel in care of a Mr. I. Justice.

“Came in today’s delivery,” Franklin said, and handed over the package, which was heavy for its size. He saw that it was marked book rate. Guy might be a writer. They stayed at the Waldemeyer sometimes.

Justice thanked Franklin, tucked the package under an arm, then hoisted his suitcase and walked toward the elevators. A cheap vinyl suitcase, Franklin figured, and the way Justice was carrying it, moving so balanced, it couldn’t be very heavy.

Okay, Franklin thought, whatever the guy’s game, it was fine with him. Whatever was making Justice edgy in a deadpan sort of way, it was none of Franklin’s business. In fact, it didn’t really interest him. Didn’t interest him much what might be in the package, either—could be pornography, or not a book at all but a vibrator, or one of those blow-up dolls. No matter. In Franklin’s job, you learned to submerge your curiosity.

As soon as Justice had stepped into an elevator, and the tarnished brass arrow above its sliding door started its hesitant journey toward the numeral five, Franklin turned his attention back to the newspaper he’d been reading.

More shit in the Middle East. Always.

After a while he forgot about watching for a woman entering the lobby and going straight to the stairs or elevators.

After a while, he pretty much forgot about Justice.

 

The guest in the raincoat had decided on traveling under the name Justice because it seemed apropos, though “Vengeance” might have done as well.

He laid the half-packed suitcase on one side of the queen-sized bed, then removed his coat and his sport jacket and stretched out on his back on the other side.

But he couldn’t relax.

Suddenly unable to lie still, he sat up on the edge of the mattress and reached for the phone directories in the nightstand drawer. It took him only a few minutes to find what he was looking for in the Queens directory. Davison’s Dent and Paint, an auto body shop on Filmont Avenue.

He sat with the directory spread open on his lap, staring at the phone number. He could call the repair shop now and probably talk to Elvis Davison, who owned and operated the dent removal and paint business. Who a year ago had sexually molested and murdered Justice’s four-year-old son, Will. Davison, who, acquitted despite overwhelming evidence, had walked smiling from the courtroom. Who’d returned to his family and business and life as usual after an unpleasant but brief interval, while Justice and his wife April walked from the courtroom into hell.

Elvis Davison, who was right now, since it wasn’t quite closing time, probably concerned mostly with pounding out dents and matching paint colors. Davison, the child molester and murderer, free because the police had searched his apartment with a faulty warrant.

Davison, who had killed what was bright and pure in a dismal, cruel world.

Davison, the man Justice was here to kill.

After the trial, Justice and April had thought the tragedy might somehow make them closer. Couples who shared grief at least shared something. Perhaps they might lessen each other’s burden of pain.

They’d instead discovered that grief was a thing you could almost reach out and touch and feel grow, if it weren’t for your terror. Even though two people rather than one desperately wanted it to leave, it didn’t go away any sooner. Instead it loomed larger, feeding off the agony of two rather than one. It did drive Justice closer to April. It drove April further and further away.

Justice’s wife, the murdered Will’s mother, lived now more on antidepressants than food. When she wasn’t taking pills, she drank. When she wasn’t drinking, she was downing pills. Two psychologists and a psychiatrist had been unable to make her grief bearable. Unable to sleep, she roamed the house at night, and she roamed Justice’s dreams.

He slid the phone closer to him and punched out the code for an outside line. Then he called, but not the number of Davison’s Dent and Paint. He called his home.

April picked up on the third ring and said hello. He could tell from the slow slide of her voice that she was heavily medicated.

At first he said nothing, then simply, “It’s me.”

“Why aren’t you home?” She sounded disinterested, everything obscured by her fog of medication.

“I told you I had a business trip. I’m in Cincinnati.”

“Cinciwhat?”

“—Nati. In Ohio.”

“That’s right, a business trip. I forgot.”

“You okay?”

“What’s okay? Who the hell’s okay?”

“April, have you had supper?”

“Not suppertime,” she slurred.

She was right, he realized. He was an hour ahead of her in New York. She was in their apartment in St. Louis.

“I’ll eat somethin’ later,” she said, obviously not meaning it. She’d have a drink later, or take a pill. Or take too many pills, as she had more than once.

He thought of telling her where he really was, what he was going to do. She would approve, he was sure. At least she would. . .