Darker Than Night (3 page)

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 undercover. I'm between shifts, on my way to meet someone for dinner, and just stopped in to use the ladies' room.”

She saw his eyes gain focus and travel up and down her body. She was wearing a sweater, skirt, and navy high heels. The sweater might be too tight. Pearl had dressed up for the man she was meeting, an assistant DA she'd struck up a conversation with in court. She didn't see much hope that anything might come of the dinner, but still she had to try. Or so she told herself.

Egan had been swaying this way and that, as if he were on the deck of a ship, while he'd stared at her chest. “I've never sheen you sho dolled up.”

Uh-oh.
He was loaded, all right. She'd heard right the first time; he was slurring his words.

“I've never sheen you sho attractive.”

You've never seen me piddle in public.

“You have great…,” he said. “I mean, I've alwaysh greatly admired you, Offisher Kashner.”

“Captain Egan, listen, I've gotta—”

His beefy hand rested on her shoulder. “Politicsh, Offisher Kashner. You are a fine offisher, and I have noted that. A hard, hard worker. Determined. But are you conshidering politicsh's role in your career?” A spray of spittle went with the question.

“Oh, sure. Politics. I really—”

He'd moved to within inches of her, and his fingertips brushed her cheek. “Lishen, Pug—”

“I really don't like to be called that, Captain.” She knew it was short for
pugnacious,
but she also thought some of her fellow officers might be referring to her turned-up nose. One of them had even said it wasn't the kind of nose he expected to find on a girl named Kasner. She didn't bother telling him her mother had been pure Irish. She'd instead elbowed him in the ribs, not smiling.

But Captain Egan
had been
smiling, and it was a smile Pearl had seen on too many men. “I happen to know the hotel manager and can get a room here for the night,” he said. “We are, I can shee, compatible. That ish to shay, we like each other. I can tell that. It would be in both our intereshst to think about a room.” He swayed nearer. “They all have bathrooms.”

“Not a good idea, Captain.”

“But I thought you had to…uh, go.” He winked. She realized he thought he was being charming.

“Not that bad, I don't.” She moved back so his fingertips were no longer touching her face. The bastard actually thought he was getting away with something, making progress with her. It was pissing her off. If she didn't have to go so bad…

“I'm your shuperior offisher, Pug.” His hand, suddenly free, dropped to her left breast and stayed there like Velcro. “If you sheriously object—”

He didn't finish his sentence. Pearl did seriously object. She hit him hard in the jaw with her right fist, feeling a satisfying jolt travel down her arm into her shoulder. It was a good punch. It sent him staggering backward to sit slumped on the floor between two vacant bar stools.

He had fought his way up frantically, like a panicked non-swimmer who didn't know he was in shallow water, flailing his arms and legs and knocking over a bar stool he tried to use for support. His broad face was twisted and ugly with anger.

He'd looked amazingly sober then. “Listen, Kasner!”

But Pearl had spun on her high heels and was striding toward the ladies' room, where she knew he wouldn't follow.

She understood immediately the gravity of what she'd done. Knew she'd screwed up. At least there were witnesses in the bar, a lineup of men and a few women, many of them grinning at her in the back-bar mirror as she passed. Hotel guests, most of them. Witnesses. She could locate them if she had to. Asshole Egan would have to know that.

“Kasner!”

Now she did turn. She balled her right fist and raised her voice. “You really want me to come back, Captain Egan?”

He flinched. He was in plain clothes, but he didn't like his rank and name spoken so loudly. Not in these circumstances.

Maybe he knew what she was doing and suddenly realized his own vulnerability, because he seemed suddenly aware of the other lounge patrons and the two bartenders, all staring at him.

He dug out his wallet, threw some bills on the bar next to his empty glass, then stalked out.

Pearl continued to the ladies' room.

When she emerged ten minutes later, calm but still angry, Egan was nowhere in sight.

As she walked swiftly through the bar toward the lobby, she heard applause.

 

The dinner date was disastrous. Pearl couldn't stop thinking about Captain Egan and what had happened, what she'd done. She couldn't stop blaming herself as well as Egan.

Anger, depression, stress. Pearl's world.

Days had passed, and that world didn't collapse in on Pearl. Word had gotten around, though, like a subterranean current.

Still, there had been no reprisals. Egan was married. There were witnesses to his altercation with Pearl, and he'd been close to falling-down drunk, while she'd been sober. Internal affairs was never involved. No official charges were ever filed. NYPD politics at work.

She, and everyone else, knew that Egan was patiently waiting for his opportunity. Pearl didn't figure to have a long or distinguished career as a cop.

 

“Damn!” she said to her bedroom ceiling, and tried to think about something else. Her mind was a merry-go-round she couldn't stop. Maybe she should get out of bed and paint.

Yeah, at eleven-thirty at night.

It was one of the few times in her life when Pearl wished she had something other than her work. But she'd had several disastrous romances and had lost her faith in men. Most men, anyway. No,
all
men. The entire fucking gender. None of them seemed to be for her.

Fedderman, being her partner, was the man she spent the most time with. A decent enough guy, married, three kids, overweight, overdeodorized, eighteen years older than Pearl, and more interested in pasta than sex.

Not much hope there.

The other men in her life, her fellow officers and men she encountered in other city jobs, sometimes made plays for her. None of them interested her. These guys were far more interested in sex than pasta, or anything else. Invariably, they talked a great game, but it was talk. The few guys she'd given a tumble couldn't keep up with her in or out of the sack, and they tended to run off at the mouth. Pearl didn't like that. Pearl figured the hell with them. When it came to what really mattered, they didn't have it.

Maybe she picked them wrong. Or maybe that was just men.

She laced her fingers behind her head and closed her eyes. If she could only meet some guy who wasn't all front. Who wasn't shooting angles or afraid to care and act like he cared. Who wasn't so dishonest with her.

Who knows how lonely I am.

Who isn't so…

She fell asleep thinking about it.

Him.

Like she sometimes did on nights when she didn't drink scotch or take a pill.

 

Lars Svenson wouldn't let the woman sleep. Whenever he knew she was dozing off, he'd lay into her again with the whip. It was a short, supple whip, and about as big around as a shoelace, so it stung and left narrow but painful welts on the woman's bare back.

She couldn't avoid the lashes, because she was lying on her stomach on her bed, her hands tied to the headboard, her feet to the iron bed frame's legs. She couldn't cry out, because a rectangle of silver duct tape covered her mouth.

He lashed her again and she managed a fairly loud whimper.

Lars stood back and smiled down at her. Through the web of hair over her left eye, she stared up at him. He loved the pain in her dark gaze and the message it sent.

He gave her a few more, striking her just so, barely breaking the skin.

It wasn't the first time for her. He'd known that when he picked her up in the Village bar, where she wouldn't have been if she wasn't cruising for this kind of action. She was plump and dark, maybe Jewish or Italian, with a mop of obviously dyed blond hair and the kind of wide smile people called vivacious. He'd seen in her eyes what she wanted. She saw in his that he'd supply it. After only one drink she'd suggested they go to her apartment.

When they'd undressed, he saw that she was even plumper than she'd appeared in clothes. Not exactly what you'd call fat, though.

Lars knew where to look. He saw bruises around her nipples, faint scars on her thighs and buttocks. Her back looked fresh, though. He'd take care of that.

Tiring of using the whip, he propped it in the crack of her ass and went over to the dresser, where he had a cold beer sitting on a coaster so as not to mar the finish. Lars respected furniture.

The woman was sobbing now. He took a sip of beer and regarded her. It might be time to talk to her, softly tell her what else he was going to do to her. Then he realized he'd forgotten her name. It sounded Russian or something and was hard to recall.

He grinned. She wasn't in any position now to refresh his memory.

She twisted her neck, trying to get him in her range of vision, wondering if he was still in the room. He shouldn't have gone yet, leaving her bound and gagged. That was breaking the rules.

Then he remembered. Or thought he did.

“Flo?”

She reacted immediately, tensing her buttocks and straining to look in the direction of his voice.

“If you're a good girl, Flo, maybe I'll take you out for breakfast tomorrow.” Letting her know he was staying the long night through.

She managed only one of her whimpers.

He decided the bottoms of Flo's bare feet shouldn't be ignored.

Quinn was up late at the kitchen's tiny gray Formica table, smoking a cheap cigar and studying the Elzner murder file. Rather, the copy of the file, which Renz had provided.

He was drinking beer from a thick, clouded tumbler that looked as if it had been stolen from a diner years ago. The foam head had disappeared except for a light, sudsy film along the glass's sides, and the beer was warm.

Quinn exhaled cigar smoke and leaned back away from the open file. There really wasn't much of value inside it. Sure, there were things that didn't quite add up, that suggested someone other than Martin Elzner had fired the shots that killed Elzner and his wife. But almost always in cases of violent death, there were such loose ends, questions that would never be answered. Lives that were stopped abruptly left them behind as if to haunt and not be forgotten. If you were a cop long enough, you didn't expect to ever understand everything.

He propped the cigar in a cracked saucer he was using as an ashtray, then took a sip of beer. There was one thing, though, that stuck like a bur in his mind. The groceries. The Elzners must have bought them before the stores closed, then were putting them away when the shooting occurred. But no one in any of the surrounding grocery stores or all-night delis, where they might have bought groceries, recalled them being there. Of course it was possible they'd shopped just down the block from their apartment and not been recognized. Or had been recognized and forgotten. People didn't go around paying attention to everything around them in case they might be quizzed later.

So, maybe the groceries were going to remain another of those unanswered questions.

But there was also the gun, a Walther .38-caliber semiautomatic. It was a large enough caliber to make plenty of noise, yet no one in neighboring apartments had heard shots.

That, too, was possible, especially at the time of the Elzners' deaths. But it made the marks on the gun and the bullet nicks all the more likely to have been made by a silencer.

Which, of course, would mean a murderer other than the late Martin Elzner. One who couldn't risk making noise, and who knew no one would bother using a silencer for a murder-suicide. Missing silencer: a killer still at large.

Quinn glanced at his watch, a long-ago birthday gift from May. Past midnight. He decided to go to bed. Renz had set it up for him to visit the Elzner apartment tomorrow morning, so Quinn wanted to be alert, and to resemble as much as possible the man he'd been.

Still am!

He closed the file, then snuffed out his cigar in the saucer and finished the tepid beer that would help him get to sleep.

Quinn was satisfied with his chances. He never expected or needed a brass ring.

A toehold would do.

In the bathroom he brushed his teeth, then leaned close and examined them in the mirror. Too yellow, and they seemed slightly crooked, and maybe that was a cavity way back there. He'd neglected them too long. A trip to a dentist wouldn't be a bad idea for his appearance. He'd lost a couple of molars in a long-ago fight, and broken the bridgework since. Other than that, he still had his own teeth. He smiled, then shook his head at the rawboned, luckless thug looking back at him. Rough. Downright grizzly. Scary.

The smile disappeared and he turned away, sickened with himself.

He'd sunk. He could see it now that he was looking up again. He'd sunk so goddamned far! An outcast, a sexual predator the neighbors whispered about and avoided. He drank too much and thought too much, and spent too much time alone. His wife and his own daughter were afraid of him.

It isn't fucking fair!

He turned again toward the mirror and drew back his fist, thinking of smashing his ruined image, cracking it into fragments so it resembled his broken life.

There again was his sad smile. And his own sad eyes staring back at him. Movie shit, punching mirrors. Heavy-handed symbolism. In real life it accomplished nothing and meant nothing.

Self-pity was his problem. Self-pity was like a drug that would pull him down as surely as any of the drugs on the street.

He went to the closet and rooted through his clothes. Whatever he had, it would have to do until he got an advance on his salary from Renz.

Bum's clothes. Goddamned bum's wardrobe!

Or maybe it wasn't that bad. He didn't have a decent suit but could put together what might loosely be called an outfit. A wrinkled pair of pants, a white dress shirt that had long sleeves and would be hot as hell this time of year, and a blue sport coat that wasn't too bad if he kept the ripped pocket flap tucked in. Shoes were okay, a black pair, which he'd bought years ago, that weren't too badly worn and were actually comfortable.

A shave, a reasonable taming of his unruly hair—starting to gray—and he could still look enough like a cop.

Which he was, damn it!

He was a cop.

 

A lot of blood.

That was the first thing that struck Quinn the next morning after he'd unwrapped crime scene tape from the door-knob and let himself into the Elzner apartment with the key Renz had taped to the back of the murder file.

The Elzners had died in their kitchen. Though it wasn't so evident in the crime scene photos, it looked as if the wife, Jan, had dragged herself a few feet before expiring and left some bloody scratches on the freshly painted white door. Quinn didn't think the scratches were an attempt at writing a dying message, more the result of death throes.

Stepping around the crusted dried blood on the kitchen floor, Quinn made his way to the table. The groceries were still there. The can of tuna that had been on the floor near the body was now next to one of the two small, unmarked plastic bags. There were some oranges, a loaf of wheat bread, a jar of peanut butter. Nothing perishable other than the oranges, according to the file. Also there were two jars of gourmet strawberry jam.

Quinn didn't touch anything as he leaned down to peer at the price tags on the jam jars. Expensive.

He left the table and examined the holes in the walls from the bullets that had gone through Jan Elzner. Two holes. One wide and jagged, struck by a misshapen, nearly spent bullet that had passed through too much tissue or bone. The other hole was as circular and neat as if it had been made by a drill bit, from the bullet that had made it through to the next apartment and led to the discovery of the bodies.

Standing there in the kitchen, Quinn felt something stir deep in his gut. The crime scene didn't feel like murder-suicide. The roughly outlined positions of the bodies, the half-finished mundane task of putting away groceries. No foresight or even rudimentary planning was evident here.

Hubby was supposedly the shooter. If the wife had been interrupted by sudden, violent death while putting away groceries, her body probably wouldn't have dropped where it had. And Hubby wouldn't have been in such a rush to kill himself that he'd knock a can of tuna off the table.

Of course it was all possible.

But it didn't
feel
that way. It felt like murder. And an unlikely, perhaps senseless one. An unsuspecting couple living out their domestic lives, and some evil bastard decided they'd had enough and ended it for them, maybe for no reason other than so he could watch them die.
Evil.
It wasn't a word Quinn shied away from, because he'd learned long ago it was a palpable thing that never quite left where it visited. And it was here, in the Elzners' kitchen, his old and familiar enemy.

Do something about this. You can do something about who did this if you don't screw up.

Quinn realized he'd turned a corner and was assuming the killer wasn't Martin Elzner.

It was the kind of gut assumption any old cop knew not to ignore.

 

Quinn went into the Elzners' bedroom. Everything was neat in there except for the unmade bed, obviously slept in by two. There was a set of women's pink slippers on the floor near the bed, the kind without heels that you could slide your feet right into. Mules, he thought they were called. But maybe not.

He made a mental note to check and see if Jan Elzner's corpse had bare feet. If so, it suggested she might have awakened suddenly, maybe heard something in the kitchen that alarmed her, and hurried out there, in too much of a rush even to step into her slippers. Which would mean she'd been in bed alone at the time, or she would have alerted her husband.

Interesting, the slippers.

Mules?

Quinn nosed around in the bedroom some more, then the bathroom, finding nothing of use or interest.

He returned to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The usual. A carton of milk, now gone bad. Some half-used condiments, a six-pack of diet Coke, two cans of Budweiser. In the door shelves were a bottle of orange juice, an unopened bottle of Chablis, a jar of pickles, and two plastic Evian bottles, one of which was opened and half-empty. And something else: a jar of the same kind of gourmet strawberry jam that was on the kitchen table.

Quinn used a dry dish towel wadded on the sink counter to open the jar. It was almost full of jam.

After screwing the lid back on and replacing the jar, he shut the refrigerator door and tossed the towel back on the counter, near a glass vase containing a small bouquet of neglected yellow roses that had died not long after the Elzners. Then he opened the freezer compartment at the top of the refrigerator.

Three frozen dinners—free-range chicken.
How free were they, really?
Some frozen meat wrapped in white butcher paper. A rubber-lidded dish containing chocolate-chip cookies. Quinn leaned forward and peered into the icemaker basket—full of cubes.

The apartment was warm and the cool air tumbling from the freezer felt good, but he shut the narrow white door and heard the refrigerator motor immediately start to hum. A couple of decorative magnets were stuck to the door—a Statue of Liberty, an unfurled American flag—but there was nothing pinned beneath them. No messages.
Such as, who might try to kill us.

Quinn figured he'd seen enough. He left the apartment, locking the door behind him and replacing the yellow crime scene tape. He was glad to get away from the smell. Even dry, so much blood had a sickly sweet coppery scent that brought back the wrong kind of memories. Too many crime scenes where death had been violent and gory. Years of cleaning up the worst kinds of messes that people made of their lives and other lives. The woman in Queens who'd slashed her sleeping husband's throat with a razor blade, then mutilated his nude body. The Lower East Side man who'd shot his wife's lover, then three members of her family, then himself. So many years of that kind of thing. What had it done to him that he hadn't noticed? Didn't suspect?

And why did he miss it so?

What had made May leave him so soon after he'd been discredited and lost his livelihood? Had she doubted his innocence from the beginning? Or had she seen something in him that was beyond his awareness?

While he was waiting for the elevator, he examined his reflection in its polished steel door. He looked okay, he decided, with his fresh shave, white collar, and dark tie. A homicide cop on the job.

Except for the shield. There wasn't one.

The elevator arrived with a muted thumping and strumming of cables.

When the gleaming door slid open, a uniformed cop Quinn knew as Mercer stepped out into the hall. A big, square-shouldered guy with squinty eyes and a ruddy complexion. Quinn had only been in the man's company a few times, years ago, and wasn't sure if he'd be recognized.

Mercer nodded to him and politely stepped aside so Quinn could enter the elevator. Quinn nodded back, studying Mercer's eyes.

They were good cop's eyes, neutral as Switzerland.