The Night Caller

by John Lutz

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Ezekiel "Coop" Cooper is lonely. He's no longer with the NYPD due to cancer that's in remission. His daughter Bette is in New Jersey, and he doesn't talk with her about anything personal, but he loves her. He's looking forward to seeing her at the family bungalow, but when he gets there, he finds her dead, curled up in a way that suggests a ritual murder. He investigates the death, eventually joining forces with a mystery writer who believes a serial killer has murdered Bette. By the time they put all the pieces together, they realize that the killer is extremely dangerous, and could be headed to kill more people they know. This book puts a new shine on a classic thriller plot.

Release date: July 11, 2012

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

Sue Coppolino was young, pretty, and nervous.

Her painted nails drummed on the steering wheel as she drove her red Sebring convertible toward the Siesta Key drawbridge in Sarasota. It was a hot and humid Florida night so she had the car’s top down, and the wind caressing her face felt like warm liquid. The convertible’s tires thrummed over the steel mesh of the bridge, and within seconds she was off the mainland and on the key.

She turned north on Midnight Pass Road, then veered to the right instead of going straight toward the public beach.

Wealthy estates and condominium complexes lay out of sight beyond thick foliage and palm trees on her right, overlooking calm, moonlit water. Because the night was bright, she could see the brilliant oranges and reds of the hibiscus and bougainvillea blooms. It was almost midnight and there was no other traffic, and with the top down the racheting scream of cicadas was sometimes deafening when the car glided past densely wooded areas. To the cicadas the desperate continual scream was a mating call. Right now, Sue heard it the same way.

She was up to no good. At least. some people would see it that way. Not that she was going to commit a burglary or anything. In fact, she made more than enough money in her job with a surveying company. It was just that—

The angular white buildings of Bay Vista condominium with their red tile roofs weren’t visible from the road, but there was an ornate wrought-iron steel gate painted bone white just up ahead. Sue slowed the car but drove past the gate. The security guard wasn’t on duty in the small air-conditioned booth, but anyone entering needed a resident’s plastic card to insert in a slot that would trigger the gate to open.

No card for Sue. And she didn’t need one. A few hundred feet down the road, she turned the car onto an unmarked and unpaved side road that ran parallel to Bay Vista’s manicured grounds. Then she killed the headlights, letting the light from the bright crescent moon guide her.

She parked where she usually did, off the side of the road behind a tight grouping of date palms. As she turned off the idling engine, her heart seemed to take up its fast and rhythmic beat.

Sue didn’t like sneaking around this way. Or did she? On a certain level it was exciting. Like being in a movie. She checked herself in the rearview mirror, then put on fresh lipstick and smoothed back her wind-mussed dark hair with her hand. Excitement aside, she did wish Marlee wouldn’t force her to go through these subterfuges every time they met. It wasn’t as if this was the love still afraid to say its name.

But she knew Marlee was right; it would be foolish for Sue to use the main gate. Marlee could easily obtain an extra card that would permit Sue’s entering and leaving, but a video camera would capture her image and record times and dates of arrival and departure. That would never do.

Marlee Clark—long-legged, lithe, tanned, and muscled—had been a teenage tennis phenom only a few years ago. The experts made her the choice to within a short time be the top-seeded woman player in the world. Marlee had come close, winning major U.S. tournaments, making the semifinals at Wimbledon. But the pressure of high-level competition and glaring publicity had gotten to her. Drugs, first taken at the urging of her coach to ease the pain of injuries, then taken by Marlee despite the coach’s warnings, had led to sloppy play on the court, then sloppy play off, with the media. A public shouting match at the U.S. Open, followed by a drugs-and-drink binge and an auto accident that had put her in the hospital for a month, started her real and undeniable decline.

Burned-out, she retired early and used some of her winnings to buy a luxury condo on the key, complete with private boat dock and her own cabin cruiser.

Marlee still needed income, and because of her pretty face and long red hair worn in her trademark braid, she was in demand as a television sports commentator and commercial pitch-woman. But if the public found out about her romantic life, she would lose many of her endorsement contracts.

It didn’t seem to hurt her popularity that she’d once been into drugs. She’d been through a very public rehab, even told Barbara Walters how sorry she was. But if word got out that the pristine Barbie doll of tennis was a lesbian, and an unrepentant one, it would destroy the image that was worth big money to her. Sue argued that Marlee was simply acting paranoid; they were, after all, in the twenty-first century. But Marlee wouldn’t budge, quoting her agent’s figures on how much other women sports celebs had lost in dollars when they came out of the closet.

So Sue sneaked.

Once on the grounds of Bay Vista, she walked along the powdery white sand beach. There was no one in sight other than a couple strolling along the mystical border of the glittering surf line a hundred yards away. They seemed interested only in each other, but Sue turned her face away anyway as she crossed a narrow expanse of closely mown grass, then walked along a crushed shell path toward the rear of Marlee’s building.

Careful not to brush against any of the aluminum-framed loungers that might scrape metal on concrete, she skirted the swimming pool, then approached the sliding glass doors to the ground-floor condo.

The drapes were open, and Sue stood for a moment looking in at the luxurious interior with its plank floors and thick area rugs, cream colored walls, and soft beige leather furniture. On the wall behind the sofa was a grouping of museum-quality oil paintings, all still lifes of fruit or flowers. It was an expensive world so unlike Sue’s, and one that Marlee allowed her to share. Nothing in the room suggested its occupant had ever played tennis.

The sliding door was unlocked, as Sue knew it would be. That was part of the arrangement. The soft rumble of the door sliding in its track was barely audible over the collective shrill scream of the cicadas.

It was much cooler inside the condo. As soon as Sue slid the door shut to keep the conditioned air in and the mosquitoes out, she spotted Marlee where she’d fallen asleep in the leather recliner. Her head was canted back and her braid was undone, allowing her long red hair to fan out gracefully on the chair back. She looked so beautiful, doll-like, and peaceful. What were her dreams? Sue wondered. She approached the chair softly so she wouldn’t awaken her, then reached out gently to touch her lover’s shoulder.

Her hand came away wet.

Crusted scarlet.

Stunned, Sue ran her fingers over Marlee’s pale face, her mind still unable to compute what was going on here. Was Marlee drugged? Asleep? Unconscious?

Still rejecting the dark and terrible fact before her, she gently cupped Marlee’s cool, lovely face in her hands and slowly lifted her head.

Sue gagged and backed away, absently floating her red hand up to her mouth.

Marlee was dead. The back of her neck had been viciously hacked.

Sue couldn’t bear to look at the gaping wound, but she couldn’t look away even as she began to scream.

Two years after Marlee Clark’s murder, and two thousand miles to the north, a middle-aged man named Ezekiel Cooper was sitting alone on the outdoor deck of a seafood restaurant. He was over six feet tall, built rangy, with light brown hair straight and combed to the side from a neat part. It was the kind of hair that looked ragged even after a fresh haircut. His lunch companion had been called away, but he didn’t mind. These days he ate most of his meals alone, and he’d gotten to like it. When Coop (as his friends called him—even his enemies didn’t call him Ezekiel) didn’t have to converse, he could concentrate on the simple pleasures of the meal. At this stage of his life, he no longer let the simple pleasures slip away.

Like the sun on his face, still warm even though it was mid-October. And the breeze, bringing him the salt tang of the nearby ocean and the yelps and cries of gulls. The restaurant’s deck overlooked Shell Bank Basin, with a clear view of Grassy Bay and a marina lined with pleasure boats. This was Howard Beach, way down in Queens. You couldn’t even see the skyscrapers of Manhattan from here. Only the roar of a jet, descending toward nearby Kennedy Airport, broke the peaceful mood.

The restaurant, Seconds, belonged to Coop’s friend Arthur Billard. They’d met at the police academy more than a quarter century ago and stayed friends as they made the long, hard climb to lieutenant. Unlike Coop, Billard was still active in the NYPD, but that hadn’t kept him from buying this restaurant. He was always starting small businesses, Coop recalled. Seconds seemed to be doing better than most of them had. Every table on the deck was occupied, and there were plenty of customers inside, too The staff was bustling. In fact, Billard had been called into the kitchen “for a minute” when they sat down, and that had been half an hour ago.

Billard came through the swinging doors, mopping his brow. His broad face was flushed from the heat of the kitchen. He was a man of medium height, bald, and so wide in the middle that he didn’t even try to button his suit coats anymore. He and Coop were the same age, forty-eight, and over the years Coop had watched Billard’s hairline recede and his stomach expand—both at a faster rate than was the case with Coop himself. Coop had taken a secret satisfaction in that. Congratulated himself on aging well. Funny to think of that now. Few things were surer than that his old friend would outlive him.

“Sorry, Coop,” Billard said as he settled heavily into his chair across the table. “Problems with the steam table.”

“That’s okay.”

Billard gestured at Coop’s bowl of Manhattan clam chowder, which was still mostly full. “I told you not to wait for me.”

“I didn’t. I’m just taking it slow.”

“Something wrong with it?” Billard was already turning in his chair, looking for their waiter. “Jeez, it must be cold by now. I’ll get you—”

“Art, relax, it’s fine.”

Billard turned to face him, squinting in the bright sunlight. He hesitated, then said, “Nothing—uh—nothing wrong with your appetite, I hope? You’re feeling okay?”

“My appetite’s fine, too.” Coop took a spoonful of soup to prove it. The chowder had a rich tomato flavor, and the clams tasted fresh. “The food’s great, Art, really. You have a nice place here. Congratulations.”

Billard relaxed. The waiter brought him his plate of fried calamari, and he opened his napkin and dug into it.

For a while they ate in silence. Then Billard began again. “We’re doing real well here, Coop.”

“I can see.”

“In this neighborhood, if you can keep a restaurant going through the first couple years, build up a regular clientele, you’re set. Place’ll do a steady business for decades.”

“Then I hope your luck holds.”

“I don’t want to trust to luck, you know? I’d like to be here all the time, keeping an eye on things. But I gotta put in two more years in the Job to get full pension. Can’t quit now. I’m being pulled two ways here.” Billard hesitated. “I hope maybe you can help me out.”

Coop was aware of Billard’s eyes on him as he took another mouthful of chowder. He swallowed and said, “Well, Art, 1 don’t know what I can do.”

“I want to bring you in as my partner.” Billard held up a hand as if he were directing traffic, a sign to Coop to put on the brakes and hear him out. “I don’t want you to put in money. Hell, we don’t need money. What we need is a—a managing partner. A guy to be here, greeting the customers, keeping an eye on things.”

“I know from nothing about the restaurant business, Art.”

“You’ll pick it up. What I need is someone I trust to be on the spot.”

“Thanks for the offer. But I don’t think so.”

“Think about it, Coop, at least. This is perfect for you. You’re retired. You got loads of time.”

Coop set down his spoon. The bowl was a quarter full but he wasn’t hungry anymore. He looked away from Billard, out at the line of docked boats in the basin. “Loads of time,” he repeated. “Well, I don’t know about that, Art.”

Billard didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “But you’re cured, right? They told me—”

“Not cured. They don’t say cured about cancer. They say in remission.”

“But it’s gone, isn’t it? They got it in the chemo. Burned it all out of you.”

“Oncologists don’t give guarantees, Art.”

He could feel Billard’s eyes on him but couldn’t meet the look. Instead, he studied his chowder.

“You’re looking good now, Coop. You’ve put back some of the weight you lost. And your hair grew back. Hey—that’s something I wish would happen to me.” He laughed, running his hand over his bare pate.

Coop made an effort and smiled. Then he checked his watch. “Look, Art, I better be going. My daughter’s expecting me down at Breezy Point.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. He’d gotten used to doing that slowly, during his chemotherapy, because otherwise a wave of dizziness would sweep over him. And the nausea might follow. The nausea might come anytime. But he felt all right now.

Billard rose with him. “At least think about my offer, will you?”

“It’s not a time for me to be starting new projects.”

“Come on, Coop. You don’t wanna assume the worst. You could live for years. Decades.”

“Possibly,” Coop said. He held out his hand. Billard took it. Seemed reluctant to let it go. He said he’d walk Coop out to his car, but just then a waiter came up to say they had another problem in the kitchen, so he had to go.

Coop made his way through the crowded restaurant and out onto the sunny sidewalk. His car was parked half a block down. He headed for it. There was a time, a few months ago, when he wouldn’t have been able to walk half a block. When he wouldn’t have been able to keep down a bowl of clam chowder. Now he was feeling fine.

But decades?

Possibly.

But he didn’t believe it.

The guard on duty at the entrance to Breezy Point recognized his old Honda Accord and raised the barrier, waving him through. Coop rolled the window down so he could smell the salt air as he drove through the narrow streets. They were lined with one-story wooden bungalows set close together. As he got closer to the beach, he passed larger, newer houses. There were some rich people in Breezy Point now. Times had changed since the days when everybody was either a fireman or a policeman. It had been a long time since the community was jokingly called the Irish Riviera.

The Honda hummed smoothly along the road, its tires singing steadily and ticking at regular intervals when they rolled across seams in the pavement. As usual on a weekday in autumn, Breezy Point was quiet. That was what Coop’s daughter Bette had told him she needed. Normally the beach house Coop and his former wife Maureen had bought and rehabbed in happier times was vacant and secured for the coming winter, but it was little trouble to ready it for Bette.

She’d been there almost a week now, but Coop hadn’t seen her since dinner the night she’d driven into town.

Bette lived and worked in New Jersey, holding down a high-pressure job with a real estate company. Last week she’d called Coop and said she was taking a few weeks off from work and wanted to spend them at the beach house. That was fine with Coop. He missed her increasingly infrequent visits, and she sounded anxious and worn down.

He knew better than to question Bette about her troubles. When she was younger he was an overprotective parent, as cops tend to be. Her mother, strong willed and with her own set of demands on her daughter, hadn’t helped matters. So Coop didn’t blame Bette for guarding her privacy. He was just grateful she’d invited him down today.

He parked in the drive of the small clapboard bungalow and climbed out of the car. There was raw wood showing where some of the white paint had worn off on the structure’s windward side, and the green shutters were starting to peel. The entire place would need painting soon. Usually Coop did that sort of job, but with his illness he found himself wondering if he should take the time. Painting a summer cottage was a productive project only for a man who had enough life to carry him into the next summer. He wasn’t sure if he qualified.

He pressed the doorbell button and waited, but got no answer, heard no sound from inside. He pressed the button again and listened closely, sure that he heard the faint doorbell chimes from the cottage’s interior.

Nothing else broke the silence.

After a few minutes, Coop tried the door and found it unlocked. He stepped inside and called his daughter’s name. There was no answer. The only sound was the refrigerator’s low hum, along with a faint shrill vibration of something glass dancing inside it on a wire shelf.

Then he saw Bette lying on her back on the couch, her dark hair spread on a pillow.

Most people would have assumed she was asleep, but not Coop. He’d visited too many homicide scenes and knew death when he saw it. When he smelled it and felt the solemn eternal hush of its presence.

He stepped numbly to the side and saw Bette’s face, and he knew she’d been strangled.

Death had come for the daughter of the man who so feared death. And with it a future for Coop that he couldn’t have imagined.

The mourners who’d accompanied them to Maureen’s home after the funeral had all gone. Only the flowers were left. Coop sat and looked at them. There were bouquets of roses and carnations in many colors, as well as big, exotic blooms whose names he didn’t know, arranged into elaborate horseshoes and wreaths. People had gone to a lot of trouble and expense, he thought dully. Thank-you notes would have to be written.

Maureen prowled the room, hands on her hips. She kept glaring at the flowers.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why do people send flowers?”

“They’re our friends. They’re trying to console us.”

“Watching something beautiful wither and die is supposed to make me feel better?”

Coop sighed. “I’ll take them if you like.”

“I don’t see why people ever thought of cutting flowers in the first place. Why bring them indoors and watch them die? Go to a garden if you want to see them.”

Coop repeated, “I’ll take them if you like.”

“It’s the waste I can’t stand. If only people had given money to her favorite charity instead of sending flowers. You should have put that in the newspaper.”

He didn’t reply. He felt drained of all energy and emotion.

The funeral had been a horror. All through it Coop had held his pain at a distance. An odd sense of guilt had crept into his grief, as if he were somehow to blame for Bette’s death. He was her father, a cop, and had protected her all her life.

But not this time. Not against this killer.

Now he and Maureen were alone together with their new burden, the mutual loss they would take with them to their own graves.

They hadn’t gotten along after the divorce, which itself had been less than amicable. Along with the recent direction Maureen’s life had taken, this could only make things much worse.

She had become an activist, dedicated to environmentalism, animal rights, and natural everything. Not that anyone would call Maureen touchy-feely. She upheld her gentle, holistic principles with a ferocious rigor. Coop’s efforts to comfort her had met with polite but sullen withdrawal. Her daughter’s murder had stunned her. And made her even more angry.

They were in the living room of her small co-op on a quiet street in New Rochelle. He was sitting in an uncomfortable beige upholstered chair with cold wooden arms. She came to sit directly across from him. He raised his eyes to find her staring at him with her lips pursed, as if waiting for something. She hadn’t aged well. Her once lithe figure had become somewhat stocky, her brown eyes dim and haunted. And she’d dyed her hair dark and cut it short so that it added weight to her face. Yet she might still be attractive if she made a minimum of effort. But she didn’t.

Voices sounded outside, someone giving directions. Then a car door slammed, and the last of the departed mourners drove away. From across the ensuing silence Maureen stared at Coop bleary-eyed, as if through water.

“How could you have let her stay in that house alone?” she demanded to know. “How could you keep it a secret from me that she was in town?”

Coop sighed and dragged his hand down his face, as if trying to rearrange his features so he could be someone else. He’d known the question was coming, had plenty of time to think about it. But there was only one honest answer, and it wasn’t going to satisfy Maureen.

He said, “She would have called you if she wanted to see you. What she wanted was peace and quiet.”

“Why? Was she having problems?”

“I felt I shouldn’t question her,” Coop said miserably. “I was wrong.”

“Were you ever!” Maureen sat back, crossing her legs. He found himself staring at her shoes. They were heavy-looking pumps with a dull black finish. Maureen was against using animal products, including leather. Coop was never sure what her shoes were made of. He remembered how good her legs used to look when she wore high heels.

“Everything I heard about her life in New Jersey was positive,” she went on.

“Same here.”

“You sure? She was always more willing to confide in you than me. The two of you were always so close. You even told her about the cancer before you told me.”

He didn’t reply to that. After a while he said, “You were always a good mother to her.”

“I was. That’s why we weren’t close. There were old grudges. I was the one who had to say no, enforce curfews, dole out allowances. You’d arrive on Saturday afternoon and take her to a soccer game. Easy for you to be her pal. So what’s she been telling you the last few months?”

“Everything was going well. She was busy at work. Feeling tired. That’s all she said.” Coop paused, then added, “Believe me, I’ve thought about this.”

Maureen let it drop. There was silence. He kept his head down, watching as the squared-off toe of her shoe turned in a slow circle. She asked, “Do you know a Detective Mackey?”

“Mackey? No.”

“He was the one who interviewed me. Asked me one totally insensitive question after the other for an hour and a half. Then you know what he did? Fingerprinted me.” She was examining the tips of her fingers as if to make sure she’d gotten all the ink off. “Wouldn’t give a reason why he was doing it, of course. You cops hate giving reasons. All he’d say was it was for purposes of elimination.”

“That was the reason. They dust the house for fingerprints. Next they eliminate the people whose prints they’d expect to find—you, me, Bette. If they find anybody else’s prints—”

“They could be the killer’s?”

“Could be.”

“Well, did they find anybody else’s prints?”

“I don’t know.”

“What—they didn’t talk to you, either?”

“I don’t call them. When they have something to tell us, they will.”

“Oh? Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Suppose they’re covering up. Suppose it was a cop who killed her.”

Coop looked up at her face. She stared fiercely back at him, her lips drawn taut. He said, “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Practically everybody in Breezy Point is NYPD.”

“That’s not true anymore.”

“Our neighbors on both sides are NYPD.”

“You think Judy and Kent Mallon are murderers? Or Edna and Ron O’Brien? We’ve known them for years.”

“Why didn’t they hear anything, then? Why didn’t anybody hear anything? The houses at Breezy are about six feet apart. Thin wooden walls. Open windows. How could someone get into our house and—and do what they did and leave, and nobody heard anything?”

Coop sighed heavily. The question had occurred to him, too. He’d tried to dismiss it, but it kept coming back. He said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t? Then how do you know witnesses aren’t keeping quiet? Protecting somebody. Cops protect each other no matter what. The blue line that never breaks. You’re not going to deny that.”

“It happens. But not in this case.”

“You don’t know about this case. You’ve already admitted that. Why don’t you ask a few questions? Shake things up a little? For God’s sake! You’re a lieutenant, NYPD, and this is your daughter!”

She was leaning forward now, shouting at him. Coop said, “Easy, Maureen. Try to calm down.”

“Don’t give me that condescending male crap! If you think I’m wrong, argue with me.” She bit hard into her lower lip to keep from crying.

“Maureen . . .”

“Leave me the hell alone!”

“I don’t think you’re wrong.” He stood up from his chair. “I’ll make some calls and let you know.”

Maureen remained seated. As he let himself out she said something that might have been “Thanks, Coop.”

Might have been.

When he got back to his efficiency apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, Coop peeled off his suit coat, loosened his tie, then opened a cold bottle of Beck’s dark. The apartment was two rooms and a small bathroom. What passed for a kitchen was behind a tall folding screen in a corner. The walls were a mottled cream color, as were the drapes over vertical plastic blinds in the single window. Framed museum prints hung on the walls, modem ones that were like dreams with sharp angles. Coop didn’t understand them. The furniture had been in the apartment when he moved in and was the best thing about it.

He sat down on his sofa that at night unfolded and became his bed.

Why shouldn’t he look into his daughter’s death on his own? Some in the department might not like it, but what could they do to him at this point in his dwindling life? And what kind of life was it? He’d become a disconsolate recluse in his tiny apartment, roaming the neighborhood on late night walks, a man without employment, social life, or purpose. Now he had his grief to keep him company and turn him in on himself even more, along with his self-pity. Better to do something—to use what time he had left to learn who had killed his daughter, and why.

He took a sip of beer, slouched down, and leaned back against the sofa cushion, thinking on what he did know about Bette’s murder.

He’d been the first cop on the scene, had seen things fresh. That was always an advantage. He steeled himself and tried to picture it in his mind.

The cottage door had been unlocked, but it didn’t seem to have been tampered with. No scratches on the lock or scrapes on the door. The killer had either used a key or been let in, and Coop could account for all the keys to the cottage except the one he’d given to Bette.

Nothing in the house seemed to have been disturbed. Nothing that Coop could recall might be missing. There had been no sign anyone had smoked in the house, no drinking glasses or anything else indicating a visitor. Had Bette talked to anyone on the phone shortly before her death? Coop wished now he’d pressed the redial button before calling for help. But he’d been in shock, disoriented by the sight of his murdered daughter. If only he’d had the presence of mind to treat the situation like any other homicide, to examine the crime scene without touching anything and determine some basic facts. The first building blocks for constructing a case must have been there, but he’d ignored them.

There were so many questions, and no way for him to know the essential answers, or to learn them without help. He couldn’t take seriously Maureen’s suspicions of a police cover-up. That was paranoia talking. But that didn’t mean the detectives investigating the case would speak frankly to the victim’s father, even if he was a retired cop.

He decided to go see Billard. His old friend in the department ought to be able to fill him in. Tomorrow, though. Right now he was exhausted from the funeral, from Maureen. He wanted to take off his shoes, lie back on the sofa, and rest.

No, he told himself, not tomorrow.

He made himself stand up and shrugged back into his suit coat.

Not tomorrow. Today.

He couldn’t rely on tomorrows.

Billard’s office was at the other end of Queens from his restaurant at Howard Beach. To Coop it felt like another world. This was Long Island City, a crowded, noisy district of old warehouses and factories and row houses that had been occupied by working people until yuppies moved in during the eighties. The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan loomed just across the East River.

The dense, mixed population of the area kept the precinct house busy.

As he walked down the hall toward his former patrol car partner’s office he could hear the background chatter of a police radio, the ear. . .