Darker Than Night

Book 0: Frank Quinn Novel

by John Lutz

Genres: Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

Ex-homicide cop Frank Quinn is still reeling in the wake of an elaborate setup that ended his career, but a new case presents a chance to salvage his reputation. A killer dubbed "The Night Prowler" has begun terrorizing the citizens of New York City. Unseen, he enters couples' homes. Unsuspected, he lingers until the perfect moment arrives to murder his victims. With the body count climbing, it's up to Quinn to unlock the mystery of a madman's past and end his bloody reign of terror. Quinn has his work cut out for him-because in the city of New York, any one of eight million faces could be that of a killer - or his next target.

"Lutz knows how to seize and hold the reader's imagination from the start." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Release date: May 21, 2010

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 544

Sample

“Lutz’s skill will keep you glued to this thriller.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Night Kills

“Brilliant…a very scary and suspenseful read.”

—Booklist on In for the Kill

“Shamus-and Edgar award–winner Lutz gives us further proof of his enormous talent for crafting great police fiction…another enthralling page-turner.”

—Publishers Weekly on In for the Kill

“Since Lutz can deliver a hard-boiled P.I. novel or a bloody thriller with equal ease, it’s not a surprise to find him applying his skills to a police procedural in Chill of Night. But the ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz is in rare form.”

—The New York Times Book Review on Chill of Night

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

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Chill of Night

“A fast-moving novel, a plot-driven page-turner of the first order.”

—Book Page on Fear of Night

 

 

More Praise for John Lutz

“John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel and he shows his talents to the fullest here. Highly recommended!”

—Ridley Pearson on Fear the Night

“A twisted cat-and-mouse game…a fast-moving crime thriller.”

—Publishers Weekly on Fear the Night

“The Night Spider is compelling, suspenseful and creepy. John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”

—Harlan Coben

“Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster of a tale.”

—Jeffery Deaver on The Night Spider

“I’ve been a fan of John Lutz for years.”

—T. Jefferson Parker

“John Lutz is a major talent.”

—John Lescroart

 

 

“Compelling…a gritty psychological thriller.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Night Watcher

“John Lutz is the new Lawrence Sanders.”

—Ed Gorman in Mystery Scene on The Night Watcher

“Complex, riveting, and chilling.”

—Jonathan Kellerman on SWF Seeks Same

“John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”

—Tony Hillerman on SWF Seeks Same

“Lutz is among the best.”

—San Diego Union

“Lutz is rapidly bleeding critics dry of superlatives.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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

—Publishers Weekly

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

—San Antonio Express-News

Jan Elzner jolted awake in alarm.

Something…a sound from the kitchen, had intruded in gentle dreams she could no longer recall. She reached over to prod her husband, Martin, but her hand found only smooth sheet, cool pillow. Maybe he’d been awakened before her and had gone to investigate the sound.

Jan smiled, drifting back into shallow sleep, sure that her husband would return to bed and everything would be all right. Probably the sound was nothing, the icemaker doing its work, or a delicately balanced object falling in one of the cabinets. Martin would handle the situation, as he did most things. He was a man who—

A voice.

Unintelligible, but she was sure it was Martin’s.

Who could he be talking to at—she glanced again at the clock radio by the bed—three A.M.?

The talking stopped.

Jan opened her eyes wider and lay in the still darkness. The distant sounds of a half-awake Manhattan filtered in through the bedroom windows. A faint, faraway shout, a siren like a distant wolf on the hunt, a growling whisper of traffic below. Night sounds. She rolled over on her back, listening, listening….

Frightened. Though she shouldn’t be.

I’m not afraid! There’s nothing to fear!

But she knew she was wrong.

Martin never talked to himself. She couldn’t imagine it.

Something clanked, bounced lightly, then rolled over the kitchen’s tile floor.

She swiveled to a sitting position on the edge of the mattress, her heart drumming a rapid message of alarm. She remembered what her grandmother had told her years ago. The heart knows before the head. Knows everything first. Beyond the bedroom doorway she could see a rectangle of light from the kitchen, angled over the hall floor. Then the light altered as a shadow passed across it.

What is Martin doing out there?

She stood up, one bare foot on the woven throw rug beside the bed, the other on cool hardwood floor. That was one of the things she and Martin had liked most about their Upper West Side apartment, the polished oak floors. They knew somehow they could be happy there.

And we were happy. Are happy!

What did her heart know that her mind didn’t?

Fear was like a drug, yet it propelled her through her dread toward the light near the end of the hall. She had to find out—had to know what it was that terrified her. She walked stiff-legged in her silk nightgown, her pale fingers clenched around her thumbs. The only sound she heard now was the faint thump, thump of her bare heels striking the wood floor as she lurched toward light and a horrible knowledge she couldn’t avoid.

She turned the corner and stood in the kitchen doorway.

Her breathing stopped as she took it all in—the bright kitchen, Martin curled on the tile floor in what looked like a black shadow, the plastic bag and groceries scattered on the gleaming gray surface of the table. A tuna can lay on the floor near Martin’s right arm. That’s what I heard fall. It must have rolled off the table.

She heard herself utter Martin’s name as she took a step toward him.

She wasn’t surprised—not really—when a dark figure straightened up from behind the cooking island and moved toward her. It was more like a confirmation of what her terror had already told her. Something in his right hand. A gun? No. Yes! A gun with something attached to it. A gun with a silencer.

“Please!” She saw one of her hands float up in front of her face. “Please!” Not me! Not me! Not yet!

She barely heard the sput! of the gun as the bullet ripped through tissue and bone, between her breasts, into her heart, a leaden missile tumbling and tearing through her world, her life, ending her past, her future, everything.

She was still alive on the floor, beyond pain but not horror, as the man with the gun momentarily bent over Martin, then delicately stepped over her, careful not to get blood on his shoes, and continued toward the door.

For an instant she glimpsed the expression on the face of the monster who had taken all that she had and was. Him! He was so calm, smiling contentedly, like a simple workman who’d accomplished a routine and necessary task.

He glanced down at her with faint curiosity, then obviously dismissed her as dead.

He wasn’t wrong, only a few seconds early.

Flash!

Fedderman blinked as yet another photo was shot and the auto winder on the camera whirred like a miniature blender. The crime scene unit was all over the apartment, photographing, luminoling, vacuuming, plucking with tweezers.

The Elzners didn’t seem to mind the intrusion. Or the carnage in the kitchen. Not even what had been done to them.

Sudden death did that to people. In the midst of all the horror he’d seen during his time in the NYPD, Fedderman had often thought that was the single mercy.

“About done with these two?” his partner, Pearl, asked the ME, a self-important, meticulously groomed little man named Nift, who, if his life had taken another direction, might have had a film career playing Napoleon. He’d been fussing over the bodies for the last fifteen minutes, giving Pearl and Fedderman some first impressions.

“Sure. You can diddle with them awhile now. Just be sure and zip up when you’re finished.”

A nasty Napoleon.

Fedderman watched Pearl step hard on Nift’s instep, perhaps deliberately, as she moved toward Martin Elzner’s body. Those comfortable-looking black shoes of hers, with the two-inch heels to make her appear taller than her five-foot-one stature, could be dangerous.

Nift winced and jerked backward, almost kicking away the tuna can on the kitchen floor.

“Try not to step in any blood,” Pearl said.

Then she ignored Nift entirely as she bent down and gingerly pried a Walther semiautomatic handgun from Elzner’s dead fingers, then used a pencil inserted in the barrel to transfer the gun to a plastic evidence bag.

Nift glared at her and made for the door, taking his sick sense of humor with him and not looking back. One thing Fedderman knew about Detective Pearl Kasner was that she didn’t take any crap from anybody, not even Napoleon. It was the character trait that had gotten her into trouble and sidelined her career. It was why Fedderman liked her but figured she wasn’t going to be his partner much longer. Probably this time next year she’d be driving a cab or demonstrating perfume in Macy’s.

She was a looker, Fedderman thought, with the great rack and nice ass, and could be an actress or model if she were taller. Searching dark eyes, wavy black hair, turned-up nose, a way about her. Fedderman sometimes mused that if he were younger, unmarried, didn’t have trouble getting it up sometimes, didn’t have bad breath, a chronically upset stomach, and wasn’t balding and thirty pounds overweight, he might make a play for her.

Pearl handed one of the techs the evidence bag with the gun, glancing at Fedderman as if she knew what he was thinking.

She knows. They were partners. Had been for months, since Pearl’s troubles began. Neither of them was getting a bargain, and they both knew it. That was the idea. If they got tired of each other’s company, that was tough shit. Like with the couple on the kitchen floor.

Homicide had been called in after the radio car uniforms arrived at the scene, called by a next-door neighbor who noticed what looked like a bullet hole in her kitchen wall. When the super had let them in, they discovered the hole was indeed made by a bullet. It had gone through Jan Elzner, then the wall separating the Elzner apartment from the adjacent unit. The uniforms backed out and secured the scene.

Pearl and Fedderman had questioned the tenants on either side of, and above and below, the Elzners. None of them remembered hearing anything like a gunshot, but then Nift had said the killings occurred sometime between two and four in the morning. Sleep was deepest then. Or was supposed to be. Fedderman knew that when people were awake at that time, for whatever reason, terrible things could happen.

He glanced around at the carnage, feeling his stomach kick even after all the years, all he’d seen. He looked at the kitchen table. “How do you figure the groceries? It looks like one or both the Elzners had just come back from shopping and they were putting away what they bought.”

Pearl gave him one of her sloe-eyed dark looks. “At three in the morning? In their pajamas and nightgown?”

“It doesn’t make sense now, I know. But maybe they shopped earlier and forgot to put stuff away, then remembered and got up and were finishing the job when they started arguing. Hubby got the gun and did Wifey, then himself. It could happen in the real world.”

“That would be our world?”

Fedderman didn’t want to get into some kind of metaphysical conversation with Pearl. “So whadda we tell Captain Egan, murder-suicide?”

“I don’t like telling the prick anything.”

“Pearl…”

“Yeah, yeah…that sure looks like what it was, murder-suicide. Stemming from the pressures of the big city and what comes of marital bliss.”

Fedderman breathed easier. She wasn’t going to buck the system and cause problems. He had enough problems.

“But it isn’t complete.”

“Nothing’s ever complete,” Fedderman said, “but we gotta go with the evidence. Two dead bodies. And what will no doubt be the weapon still in Hubby’s hand, powder burns around the hole in his head. It appears he shot the wife, realized what a shit deed he did, then killed himself. The honorable thing. Murder-suicide. Crime solving being on a kinda assembly-line basis with new crimes always demanding our attention, we chalk this one up and move on to the next problem coming down the line.”

“Move on but not up,” Pearl said.

Fedderman knew what she meant. Even if somehow she kept her job in the NYPD, she wasn’t going any higher. Promotions were not for Pearl.

She knew where she stood and so did everyone else, after what she’d done to Captain Egan.

Pearl and Egan.

Sometimes, when he thought about it, Fedderman caught himself smiling.

“Ah, it’s Quinn, is it?”

The man who had spoken stood in the doorway of the West Side walk-up. He was middle-aged and balding, with a long, jowly face, fleshy purple bags beneath somber brown eyes, and a neatly trimmed downturned graying mustache. A big man, but sagging at the middle, he seemed to have been assembled with mismatched body parts so that his expensive tailored blue suit looked like something plucked off the discount rack.

As only four years had passed, he’d recognized Quinn, and Quinn knew it.

Quinn didn’t move from where he sat on the threadbare sofa, facing the door. “It is Quinn,” he confirmed unnecessarily to Harley Renz, NYPD assistant chief of police.

Frank Quinn was a lanky, hard-edged man an inch over six feet, with a twice broken nose, a square jaw, and short-cropped dark hair that wouldn’t stay combed. But what people remembered about him were his eyes, green, flat, cop’s eyes that seemed to know your darkest secrets at a glance. Today was his birthday. He was forty-five. He needed a shave, a fresh shirt, a haircut, new underwear, a new life.

“You didn’t lock your door,” Renz said, stepping into the tiny, messy apartment. “Aren’t you afraid somebody’s gonna walk in and steal you blind?”

“To wanna steal anything from here, you’d have to be blind.”

Renz smiled, which made him look like a dyspeptic bloodhound. Then his expression changed, but he still looked like a dyspeptic bloodhound. “I never told you, but I’m sorry about you and May, the divorce and all. You still see her much? Or the girl? Laura, isn’t it?”

“Lauri. May doesn’t want to see me. There’s no reason to, except for Lauri. And Lauri isn’t sure what she wants. What she believes about me.”

“Have you told her your side?”

“Not lately. May has her ear and keeps telling her what to think. They’re out in L.A. Went there to get away from me.”

Renz shook his head. “About all you can say in favor of marriage is that it’s an institution. Like prisons and mental hospitals. I was married twenty-six years before my wife ran away with my brother.”

“I heard about that,” Quinn said. “It was worth a laugh.”

“Even I can laugh about it now. That’s how things can change in this amazing world. Even your shitty situation could change.”

Quinn knew what situation Renz meant. Four years ago, Quinn had lost his reputation, his job, and his family, when he’d been unfairly accused of child molestation—the rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. She was a girl he’d never met, much less molested. He knew why he’d been set up. The problem was, he didn’t know how.

He’d been a good cop, even a great one, widely respected for his toughness and clever approach to cases. He didn’t give up. He didn’t back down. He got results.

And in the end, he’d been too good a detective not to notice little things during the investigation of a drug dealer’s murder. Quinn had dug deeper, wider, and discovered a network of kickbacks and corruption that involved many of his fellow cops. He was anguished about what he had to do, but he knew, and they knew, that eventually he’d go to internal affairs with his suspicions. Quinn had spoken with his superior officer, Captain Vince Egan, and told him as much.

But somebody else contacted IA first. About the brutal rape of a young girl in Brooklyn. Quinn had been astounded, but not too afraid at first. He was innocent. The accusation had to be a mistake.

He was shown a button found at the scene of the crime, and it matched one that was missing from the shirt he’d worn the evening of the rape. Then, astounding him further, the girl picked him out of a lineup, identifying him by size and build and the jagged scar on his right forearm, even though the rapist had worn a stocking mask.

Quinn knew the accusation wasn’t a mistake. It was a preventative.

They confiscated his computer from his desk in the squad room, and on it were three suggestive e-mails to this girl he’d never seen. And there was the worst kind of child pornography on the computer’s hard disk.

It looked bad for Quinn, he was told. And he knew it was bad. He understood the game. He knew what was coming next.

They were going to show him a way out of his predicament.

And they did. Retirement with partial pension, or he would be charged with child molestation, the rape of a minor.

Quinn realized it must have been Egan who’d tipped off the corrupt cops, and who was part of the corruption himself.

And probably it was the politically savvy Egan who prevented Quinn from being prosecuted, thus keeping a lid on the rot in the NYPD. Quinn, knowing he wasn’t going to be believed anyway, understood the arrangement, the addendum to corruption. He was if nothing else a realist.

So he preserved his meager pension, but lost his job and everything else.

Everything.

He hadn’t known the devastation would be so swift and complete. His reputation, credibility, and marriage were suddenly gone.

Not only that, he found himself existing only on his partial pension, a pariah unable to find a job or a decent place to live because he was on an unofficial NYPD sexual predator list. Every time he thought he was making progress, word somehow got to whoever controlled his future.

Whoever had put Quinn down wanted to keep him there.

After May left, he missed her so much at first that it affected his health. He thought his aching stomach would turn to stone.

Now, though he thought often of Lauri, he hardly thought of May at all. Renz was right. Things did change.

Quinn had never cared much for Captain Harley Renz. Ambitious, conniving bastard. He liked to know things about people. To Renz, personal information was like hole cards in a poker game.

“You been drinking?” Renz asked.

“No. It’s only ten in the morning. What I am now is fucked up with a headache.”

Renz drew a tiny white plastic bottle from a pocket and held it out toward Quinn. “Would some ibuprofen help?”

Quinn glared at him.

Renz replaced the bottle in his pocket. “This isn’t such a bad neighborhood,” he said, glancing around, “yet this place looks like a roach haven.”

“The building’s gonna be rehabbed, so the rent’s cheap. Anyway, I’ve hired a decorator.”

“Johnnie Walker?”

“Uh-uh. Can’t afford him.”

“Good fortune might change all that. Might throw you a lifeline of money and regained self-respect.”

“How so?”

“I’m here.”

“You said it was a roach haven.”

 

“It’s good to know you’re still a smart-ass,” Renz said. “You’re not completely broken.”

Quinn watched him settle into the worn-out wing chair across from the worn-out sofa. Renz made a steeple with his fingers, almost as if he were about to pray, a characteristic gesture Quinn recalled now. He’d never trusted people who made steeples with their fingers.

“My proposition,” Renz said, “involves an unsolved homicide.”

Despite his wish that Renz would make his pitch and then leave, Quinn felt his pulse quicken. Once a cop, always one, he thought bitterly. Blood that ran blue stayed true. Wasn’t that why he found himself sitting around all day drenched with self-pity?

“You know the Elzner murder case?” Renz asked.

Quinn shook his head no. “I stay away from the news. It cheers me down.”

Renz filled him in. Jan and Martin Elzner, husband and wife, had been discovered shot to death ten days ago in their Upper West Side apartment. The deaths occurred in the early-morning hours, at approximately the same time. The gun that fired the bullets was found in the dead husband’s hand. It was an old Walther .38 semiautomatic. Its serial number had been burned off by acid.

“Like half the illegal guns in New York,” Quinn said.

“Seems that way. He was killed by a single shot to the temple.”

“Powder residue on the hand?”

“Some. But it mighta been transferred there if the gun was exchanged.”

“Burns near the entry wound?”

“Yeah. He was shot at close range.”

“Murder, then suicide,” Quinn said.

“That’s how it’s going down. That’s what they want to believe.”

“They?”

“The NYPD, other’n me. I think the Elzners were both murdered.”

Quinn settled deeper into the sprung sofa and winced. His headache wasn’t abating. “What makes you different?” he asked Renz.

“For one thing, I intend to be the next chief of police. Chief Barrow’s going to retire for health reasons early next year. The department’s considering candidates for replacement. I’m one of those up for the job.”

“You’ve got the asshole part of it down pat.”

“You were the best detective in homicide, Quinn. You can be that again, if you take me up on my offer.”

“I haven’t heard an offer,” Quinn said. Christ! Another offer. He licked his lips. They were dry. “But let’s take things in order. What makes you think the Elzners were both murdered?”

“I’ve talked to the ME, Jack Nift, an old friend of mine.”

Quinn wasn’t surprised Nift and Renz were friends. A couple of pricks.

“Nift tells me in confidence that the angle of the bullet’s entry isn’t quite right for a suicide—too much of a downward trajectory.”

“Does Nift say it definitely rules out a self-inflicted wound?”

“No,” Renz admitted, “only makes it less likely. Also, there’s what might be a silencer nick in some of the spent bullets, where they might have contacted a baffler or some irregularity in a sound suppressor, and the gun in Elzner’s hand wasn’t equipped with a silencer. There were marks on the barrel, though, where one might have been attached.”

“But the marked gun and slugs are no more conclusive than the bullet wound angle.”

“True,” Renz said, “but then there are the groceries.”

“Groceries?”

“Some groceries were out on the table, along with a couple of half-full plastic bags, and a can of tuna was on the kitchen floor. The nearest grocery stores and delis don’t remember either of the Elzners shopping there or ordering a delivery that day or evening, and there was no receipt in the grocery bags.”

“Odd,” Quinn said.

“People don’t interrupt unbagging their groceries after midnight so they can commit murder, then suicide,” Renz told him.

Quinn thought Renz should know better.

He waited for more, but Renz was finished. “That’s it? That’s your evidence?”

“So far.”

“Not very convincing.”

“So far.”

Quinn stood up and paced to the window, pressing his palm to his aching forehead. He had to squint as he looked down at the street three stories below. The morning was warm but gloomy. Some of the people scurrying along the sidewalks were wearing light raincoats. A few of them wielded open umbrellas.

“Now, what would be the proposition?”

“I want you to investigate the Elzner murder secretly,” Renz said, “with my surreptitious help. I’ll sit on the evidence as long as possible, so you and I will be the only ones to know it in its entirety. You’ll be paid well, and you don’t ask where the money’s coming from. And if I—you—solve the case and I become the next chief of police, you’re back in the NYPD and part of its inner circle.”

“A crooked deal.”

“Sure, sure. And you’re so fucking ethical. I know your reputation, but you mighta noticed you’re about out of options. I’m holding out a chance for you. And it’s my chance, too. The way it looks, it comes down to me or Captain Vincent Egan as the new chief, and you know Egan’s not gonna play it straight.”

Quinn had to smile. Renz had gotten his ducks in a row before coming here. Quinn knew something else: Renz would never have come to him with this if somebody higher in the NYPD or in city politics hadn’t approved it. Maybe somebody had his suspicions and wanted to place Egan and Quinn, and possibly Renz himself, under a microscope.

“There’s no way I can conduct an investigation without Egan and the rest of the NYPD finding out about it,” Quinn said.

“Egan won’t find out if you work fast enough. And if he does, we’ll think of something else. What I’m asking is that you climb outta this physical and psychological shit hole you been in and do your job the way I know you can.”

“That last part’d be easy enough,” Quinn said, still gazing out the window.

“Not without the first part. Can you manage it?”

Quinn saw more umbrellas opening below, like dark flowers abruptly blooming. He thought it would be nice if the sun would burst out from behind the clouds, send him a sign.

Screw it. He didn’t need a sign.

“I can try,” he said, turning away from the gloom. “But even if I get it done, I don’t see how you can get me back in the NYPD.”

“I can if I’m chief.”

“All things considered, I don’t see why you’d take a chance on me.”

“I noticed coming over here, there’s a few schools in this neighborhood.”

“One right down the street. And there’s a church near here, too. I don’t pay much attention to either of them.”

“I know,” Renz said. “That’s why I decided to drop by.”

Moving day.

Claire Briggs stood in the center of the vacant living room, looking around with satisfaction at the fresh paint. She decided the off-white made the pale blue carpet look older, but that was okay for now. She’d spent her budget on paint and what new furniture she needed, and she was grateful she could exchange her tiny basement apartment in the Village for this one.

It was all thanks to her landing a supporting role in the continuing Broadway comedy Hail to the Chef. Claire, with her newly dyed blond hair and faux French accent, played Mimi the restaurant owner, in love with her insane but talented sous chef.

A slender woman of medium height who looked taller due to her long neck and erect posture, Claire tucked her fingertips in the side pockets of her tight jeans and walked over to peer out the window.

Twenty-nine stories below, she saw the movers dolly her flea-market antique china cabinet out of the van and roll it down the truck’s steel ramp into the street. The cabinet was tightly wrapped in thick padding to prevent damage. She smiled. Claire was glad to have hired this moving company, Three Hunks and a Truck, on the recommendation of one of the dancers in Hail. Despite their gimmicky name, they were careful and hardworking movers. Not to mention hunks, as advertised. The moving company, actually more like twenty men and several trucks, based across the East River in New Jersey, was fast gaining a reputation in Manhattan for reliability.

Claire left the window and wandered around the rest of the two-bedroom West Side apartment. She’d had only the living room and kitchen painted; the bedrooms were good enough for now, and only one of them would be used for sleeping. The other would be for storage, a home office, and would contain a small sofa that could be made into a bed—a sometimes guest room. It was a luxury in New York to have an apartment with a spare room, but Claire had always wanted one. It fit into her plans that, even to her, weren’t fully formed.

She heard voices, scuffing sounds, then the hall door being shoved open. She went into the living room and saw one of the movers holding the door while another wheeled in the china cabinet. The one with the cabinet was husky and blond, with long, lean features and clear blue eyes, handsome enough to be an actor. And maybe he was one, Claire thought. Manhattan was like that. Anyone might be an actor. Anyone might be anything.

“That wall,” she said, pointing. She wanted them to be careful with the old mahogany cabinet, even though it wasn’t particularly valuable. She was fond of it, and it would hold the stemmed crystal left to her two years ago by her grandmother, now buried in Wisconsin.

“Nice piece of furniture,” said the blond one, as he and his almost-as-handsome dark-haired partner stripped away straps and padding and wrestled the cabinet against the living-room wall. “’Bout here okay?”

“A little to the left, if you don’t mind,” Claire said.

“We don’t,” the dark one said. “You’re the boss.”

“And a pleasure to work for,” said the blond one with a wink.

Claire couldn’t help smiling at him. He was definitely a magnetic guy, like a sort of modern-day Viking. If she weren’t involved with Jubal…

But she was involved. She altered her smile, trying not to make it mean too much.

It took the three movers about an hour and a half to bring up the rest of the furniture in the service elevator and place it more or less where Claire wanted it. All the time they worked, the blond one paid special attention to Claire, which seemed to amuse the other two, the dark-haired man and a handsome, bald African American who had a dancer’s build and way of moving.

When they were finished, it was the blond one who presented Claire with something on a clipboard to sign and told her she’d be billed. She preferred to write them a check today, she said; she didn’t like leaving things hanging. That brought a wide smile to the blond one’s face.

“That’s good,” he said. “You can sometimes get stiffed in this business.”

He was waiting patiently for her reply, but Claire decided not to play the double-entendre game. Strictly business. She wrote a check, adding a large tip, and handed it to the Viking. He was sweating, standing closer than he had to, emanating heat and a scent that should have been unpleasant but wasn’t. Claire had to admit he made her uncomfortable in a way she liked.

He made a show of examining the check, then smiled and said, “My name’s Lars Svenson, Claire.”

“Lately of Sweden?” She didn’t know what else to say and the inane question had jumped out.

“Not hardly,” Svenson said. “Well, a few generations ago. What about Briggs? What kind of name is that? A married one?”

“Not yet,” Claire said. “Soon, though.”

“Soon is no. The date been set?”

“No.”

“Question been popped?”

“Not in so many words. We have an understanding.”

He gave her a wide, sensuous grin. “Understandings aren’t exactly contracts.”

She shook her head no to his obvious intention. “I’m afraid this one is.”

Svenson shrugged. “Well, if he turns out to have murdered his last three wives…”

She laughed. “Then I’ll need a mover.”

He gave her a jaunty little salute, then shot another smile at her as he went out the door.

“Whew!” Claire heard herself exclaim.

She walked again to the window and watched below as Svenson swung himself into the truck’s cab with the other two men, and the blocky little van pulled away from the curb.

 

Claire toured the apartment again, checking on where the furniture had been placed. She moved a table closer to the sofa, then exchanged two lamps.

She was standing with her hands on her hips, planning on where to place wall hangings in the living room, when her cell phone chirped in her purse.

She hurriedly crossed to where the purse sat on the floor in a corner and dug the phone from it.

“Claire? It’s Maddy,” came a woman’s voice on the other end of the connection. Madison Capp, the dancer friend who’d recommended the movers.

“Hi, Maddy,” Claire said.

“The movers been there?”

“And left. Thanks for recommending them. They were terrific. They didn’t dent or scratch anything.”

“And they’re very decorative, aren’t they?”

“I have to say yes.”

“Was the big blond one there? Lars whatever?”

“Yeah. Lars Svenson.”

“He come on to you?”

“Somewhat. He an actor or something?”

“Nope, just a hunk with a line of bullshit. A friend of mine went out with him after he helped move her into an apartment a few months ago.”

“Oh? She give you any reports?”

“Haven’t seen her. She left the city. I heard she got a movie part in Europe in one of those erotic coming-of-age flicks. She’s bi.”

“Bisexual?”

“No, bilingual. But she must have been more than satisfied with Lars in any language.”

“Must have been,” Claire said, laughing.

“Anyway, you’re serious about someone, right?”

“Right. Jubal Day. He’s an actor.”

“Ah! Played in Metabolism in the Village last year?”

“Same Jubal Day.”

“Then I can see why you’re serious. What’s he doing now?”

“Metabolism’s touring. He’s in Kansas City.”

“Too bad he can’t be with you. Well, if you need anything, Claire, give me a call.”

“I will. And thanks again, Maddy.”

“So be happy and get back to nesting.”

Claire replaced the phone in her purse and did just that. She continued her rounds of the apartment, touching, adjusting, rearranging, feeling very domestic.

She was feeling that way more and more—domestic. It was strange. Maddy had used the word nesting. Birds did that, made a nest, a home. Homemaking. That was what was on Claire’s mind these days, and there was a deep pleasure in it.

She wondered what was wrong with her.

She realized suddenly that in the excitement of moving, she’d forgotten to check the box downstairs to see if the postal service had started mail delivery at her new address.

At first, when she stood in the tiled lobby and opened the brass mailbox beneath her apartment number, Claire thought she might as well not have bothered. The box was empty except for yet another offer to open a new charge account, and a coupon for free pizza delivery.

Then she noticed the letter-size white envelope scrunched up against the side of the box.

In the envelope was her second major stroke of luck.

It was a gracefully handwritten letter from Aunt Em, her favorite relative, who lived in Maine. The letter was creased and folded around a check.

After Claire had e-mailed the good news about taking over one of the most important roles on Broadway, Aunt Em e-mailed back that she was sending Claire a congratulatory gift. And here it was. Enough money to do what Claire had often told her was one of her fondest desires—hiring a professional decorator. Aunt Em’s generous check was the perfect gift, with the new apartment.

Claire thought about calling Maddy back and sharing her good news, then decided against it. Maddy thought about little beyond dancing. Her idea of a well-decorated apartment was one with more than one place to sit.

Which, Claire had to admit, was maybe the reason why Maddy was one of the most frequently employed dance gypsies in New York.

Claire liked Maddy, but she’d always thought a human being should have more than one interest.

She was pretty sure she’d locked the apartment door behind her, so she left the lobby to go outside and walk to the Duane Reade drugstore two blocks down, where she could buy a nice thank-you card for Aunt Em.

It was a beautiful warm day, sunny, so that even the curbside plastic trash bags glistened with reflected light like jewels set along the avenue. Maybe it was only her mood, but people on the sidewalk seemed less preoccupied, more tuned in to the world and happier.

Sometimes, Claire thought, life could be just about perfect.

Also surprising.

Pearl lay in bed in her crummy fourth-floor walk-up, staring at the cracked ceiling that needed paint like the rest of the place.

She’d bought decorating supplies last month after renting the apartment six months ago—colonial white latex flat paint with matching glossy enamel. Also brushes, scrapers, rollers, paint trays, plastic drop cloths, even some kind of sponge contraption for trimming corners and around window and door frames. She had everything she needed other than enthusiasm. And time.

Things kept getting in the way, like murders, rapes, robberies, occupying most of her hours and demanding most of her energy.

So the painting supplies all sat in a narrow, shelfless closet in the hall, waiting to be used. Pearl hadn’t looked at them in weeks.

The Job, her job, where was it going? She knew where everyone, including her, thought it was going, since the evening she’d had the run-in with that asshole Egan.

 

She’d been off duty and had gone into the Meermont Hotel to use the ladies’ room, such facilities being rare and precious in Manhattan. To reach the restrooms she had to walk through the Meermont’s softly lit, oak-paneled lounge, and she’d heard her name called.

When she’d stopped and turned, there was Captain Vincent Egan seated on the end stool at the long bar.

She’d smiled, wanting to move on, desperately having to relieve herself. But she couldn’t ignore or be brusque to the man who commanded her precinct, and who in many ways controlled her future.

“Captain Egan! Hello!” She feigned surprise and pleasure convincingly, she thought, while managing not to stand with her legs crossed.

Maybe she’d been too convincing. Egan slid his bulky, bullnecked self down off his bar stool and advanced on her. Seeing his unsteadiness, looking into his somewhat glazed blue eyes, she realized with a shock he was drunk.

“You undercover?” he had asked, moving close to her so she could smell that he’d been drinking bourbon and plenty of it. She glanced over at his glass on the bar. An on-the-rocks glass, empty but for half-melted ice. “If you’re undercover,” Egan slurred at her, “you really shouldn’t have addreshed me as captain.”

And I really have to go to the bathroom. “I know that, sir. I’m not unde. . .