Darker Than Night (38 page)

Fedderman was closest to Jubal, which was why he might have been the first of the good guys to move. He took a long step and reached out for Jubal but was met with a stiff left jab. Pearl was there. She slipped another left and got inside Jubal's arms so he didn't have leverage to punch hard. He immediately backed away and raised both arms in surrender.

She spun him around and shoved so he was pressed with his chest and the right side of his face against the wall. He didn't resist as she worked his hands behind him and cuffed his wrists.

“You can't do this!” he said in a shocked voice as he felt the handcuffs dig into his flesh. He turned around unsteadily and stared at everyone.

“Can and are.” Pearl pulled her shield and held it up where he could see it.

The door opened and the two uniforms from downstairs, who'd been on the last elevator ride, came in with guns drawn.

“We got him,” Pearl said, waving at them to lower their weapons. “We nailed the bastard before he could get out the door!”

“Jubal?”

Everyone turned to look at Claire standing in the living-room doorway. She was sagging against a wall, staring uncomprehendingly at her husband. “You're in Chicago….”

“He's here,” Quinn said. “And he's under arrest for murder.”

“Don't listen to this bullshit! Call me a lawyer, Claire!”

“Jubal…?”

“A lawyer!”

Fedderman read him his rights, then grabbed his left arm above the elbow. Pearl had the other arm.

“I notice you didn't ask if your wife was hurt,” Pearl said to Jubal.

He glared at her in a way that made her glad he was cuffed.

Quinn looked over at Campbell. His left arm was bleeding, but he otherwise seemed all right. The knife wound didn't look too serious.

“Knife's in the bedroom,” Campbell said.

Quinn sent Fedderman in to bag it. Fedderman seemed awfully reluctant to release his grip on Jubal, as if nobody in his right mind finally captured something so elusive, then didn't hold tight to it.

“Looks like this is what we want,” Fedderman said when he returned holding up the plastic evidence pouch containing the knife. He displayed it like a prize. “Thin blade about ten inches long, sharp edge and point.”

“It's goddamn sharp, all right,” Campbell said.

“You want an ambulance?” Quinn asked, making sure but knowing the answer.

“Fuck a bunch of ambulances,” Campbell said.

Tough old bastard
.
We need more like you.
Quinn glanced at one of the uniforms, the younger of the two, black, with a calm look about him, eyes never still.

“We'll drive him to the hospital in the cruiser,” the cop said. He looked at Campbell and grinned. “You'll need some stitches, Sarge, if you're not too scared.”

Quinn expected Campbell to explode.

Instead, he said, “This little prick's kinda my protégé.”

The cop nodded. “I'll see the old fart's taken care of.”

“And I'll see you spend the rest of your career chasing Times Square sketch artists,” Campbell growled.

They threatened each other all the way down the hall to the elevator.

Claire was staring at her husband, still trying to grasp the metamorphosis. This man who looked exactly like her husband was one of the most brutal and dangerous killers in the city's history. “Jubal? Can you explain? Will you tell me what's going on? Please?”

“Are
you
hurt?”

“No, I'm okay.”

“I shouldn't talk without a lawyer, Claire. You know that. I'm sorry. Just get me a lawyer.”

“We don't even
have
a lawyer.”

Quinn knew Jubal was being smart, but he didn't say so. “Do you want someone to stay here with you?” Quinn asked Claire.

“No. Really, I'm all right.”

“Take the suspect down to the elevator and wait for me,” Quinn said to Pearl and Fedderman.

Each of them gripped Jubal by an arm, and Fedderman used his free hand to bunch the back of Jubal's collar. They marched him toward the door he'd been so anxious to exit.

They could have been more gentle.

When Quinn was alone with Claire, he went to her and rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. He'd expected her to be trembling, but she was steady.
Strong inside, even if she looks frail as a bird.

“Can I go with him?” she asked.

“You can, but there's no point to it at this hour. He'll go through the booking procedure; then he'll be moved to a holdover cell. You get referrals in the morning and contact an attorney. In the meantime I'll see he gets a public defender to protect his rights. I promise you that.”

He could see her thinking about it, trying to sort out her allegiances.
Should I take the word of the arresting officer? Who saved my life. Or should I stand by my husband? Who tried to kill me.

It took her longer than it should have to make up her mind.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Do you think you might need medical attention?” Quinn asked. “I mean, for your pregnancy.”

“No. I'd be able to tell if I were hurt that way.”

“Someone will call you tomorrow morning. We'll send a car for you.”

She nodded.

“Sure you're gonna be okay?”

“Okay as anyone can be, lost in all the questions.”

“We'll sort things out and have the answers for you. Meantime, try to worry as little as possible.”

“Easy to say.”

“Yeah, I know. Like so many things.”

“I didn't expect
this
!” she said, then bit her lower lip and stared up at the ceiling. She didn't look as if she were going to cry, though.

Quinn glanced down at her pregnancy, which was beginning to show, and thought of what she faced alone.
God help her.

“It'll all be okay after a while,” he lied, and patted her gently on the shoulder. He felt suddenly cheap, conning her along, even though he was trying to help. “Better, anyway.”

He could find nothing else to say to this woman whose husband had been about to murder her, so he turned away.

 

After Quinn left, Claire went to the door and locked it, then trudged back into the bedroom.

Jubal! How could this be happening?

She'd never felt this way, as if she were alone at the edge of a cold hell. As if there were some dark inadequacy in her. As if this were all because of something
she'd
done.

Was it…was it something I did?

Or didn't do?

She sat stunned on the edge of the bed and tried not to sob.

Was it?

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to throw herself on the bed like a child and beat the mattress with her fists until she was exhausted.

Her misery was a weight that would never lift. She felt beyond crying, but tears that were someone else's tracked down her cheeks.

She wanted to die.

The baby!

She didn't want to die.

She wanted chocolate.

In the dark closet near the door, the Night Prowler waited.

They were all gone. The Night Prowler was reasonably sure of that.

Better to make absolutely sure.

So Romulus, whose real name was Tom Wilde, stood in stifling heat and darkness, smelling the white acrid scent of mothballs, waiting for his breathing to even out, listening for movement or voices outside the closet.

He'd entered the apartment just before the husband, Jubal, and had been surprised in Claire's bedroom by the big cop, the tough one. He'd gotten the cop with his knife, which was a damned good thing because it took at least some of the fight out of the determined bastard.

The cop had clung to him all the way down the hall and into the living room. In the mad struggle in the dark and the confusion after the other cops arrived, Wilde was shoved against the coat closet door and felt the knob jab him in the hip. He turned in the blackness and found refuge in the closet, just before the lights came on to show at the bottom of the door as a thin yellow line.

Certain he'd be discovered, he was about to make a hopeless, desperate break for freedom, when he heard the cops turn their attention to someone else.

It took Wilde a few seconds to realize what had happened—Hubby had flown home unexpectedly and surprised everyone.

And been surprised.

They must have caught Jubal at the door when the lights came on and assumed he was
leaving
instead of
entering
the apartment.

The Night Prowler almost fainted with gratitude.

He's me! Tonight he's me!

Wilde could have cheered when he heard Jubal insist on a lawyer before trying to explain himself to the police. A homicide charge was nothing to mess with unless you had counsel.

Damned right!
Wilde had known that ever since Hiram, Missouri.

Since the night of the Sand murders.

He'd suspected Luther was still seeing Cara and followed him to the Sand house, waited for him to emerge, then realized he must be sleeping there. Years before, Wilde had lost his teaching job because of a secret affair with one of his art students, Cara Smith, who'd later married Milford Sand. The embers of that affair had never died, and they became flame again—at least in Tom Wilde.

He went to the Sand house late one sleepless night to talk Luther into leaving, for the boy's own good, and had seen lights and heard shouting coming from the kitchen. When he investigated the source of the commotion, he found opportunity as well as pain.

In his rage it had seemed so simple, the desperate logic that had moved countless men before him: if Cara couldn't be his, she'd belong to no one.

The scene in the kitchen, the brilliant colors, remained vivid in Wilde's memory; the blood, the interrupted meal that he could
taste,
the interrupted lives…. How suddenly everything could change, could stop.

When Luther regained consciousness and was still in shock, it hadn't been difficult to convince the intoxicated and naive young man that he'd committed the murders. And, of course, his good friend and mentor, Tom Wilde, would help him to escape, would send him downstream to safety in his boat.

And that part of it was God's truth; Wilde did want Luther to get clear and free.

But Luther must have recalled what had really happened in the Sand kitchen, and in a fury tried to kill Wilde but botched the attempt. It was Wilde who took the boat out from the bank. A mile downriver, Luther's weighted body sank to the bottom and was never found.

Wilde had taken the advice he'd given Luther: lose yourself in a large city and become another you. Be a different man living a different life.

It hadn't been easy, this creation of another self. It didn't happen overnight, but it happened. Wilde had found in himself a resourcefulness and talent he'd only faintly known existed.

But over the years Wilde-Romulus came to realize that the past was always there, as if it were upstream and around the bend in a winding river, invisible but there, always there, while time flowed on.
Cara!…Claire!…

 

Now, hiding in the dark closet, Wilde thought enough time had passed. Besides, the police might soon realize their mistake and return.

Timing…so important.

He was sure he'd heard the faint shuffling of feet, probably Claire walking back to the bedroom. Since then, no sound from the other side of the closet door. She was alone.

Thought she was alone.

The buzzing…

He swallowed, steadying himself for what was to come, maintaining control.

Soon.

The police would have taken the knife, but there were others in the kitchen. Lots of them.

Very soon.

Night. Black. Red.

 

The elevator arrived at the end of the hall on the twenty-ninth floor.

When the door opened, Pearl and Fedderman guided the handcuffed Jubal inside, and the three of them stood huddled as far to the rear as they could move.

Quinn stood facing away from them and pressed the button for the lobby. In the reflection of the polished steel control panel, he watched his two detectives and Jubal Day. Quinn seemed relaxed, but he was tensed and ready to help if Jubal panicked or for some other reason got rambunctious. That happened sometimes. The suspect, facing a hopeless future, suddenly decided to lash out at his fate, his past, his sickness, at anyone close enough to reach. The demon in him trying one last time to escape.

The door slid closed, and the elevator began to drop.

Now!

The Night Prowler soundlessly rotated the knob and opened the closet door about six inches.

The living room was still dark, but there was a light on somewhere in the back of the apartment, the bedroom.

For several seconds he stood without moving, listening, listening….

Then he stepped from the closet and silently made his way toward the kitchen.

Claire would be in the bedroom, still trying to figure everything out, nursing her grief and pain, too much of it to allow sleep.

She'd be awake and alone.

That was best, that she be awake.
If it's going to be just the two of us.

In the kitchen he tried to decide between a boning knife—perhaps too flexible and fragile—and a serrated bread knife with sharp twin points.

And, of course, the sturdy, all-purpose chef's knife.
Hail to the Chef!

Did he want her to come here, to the kitchen, or should he go to her?

Where will you die, Claire?

He decided on the bedroom. Enough had gone wrong tonight already, so why take chances?

It would be quick. He'd be careful not to make any noise on his way to the bedroom, then when he entered she'd be astounded and paralyzed with terror. Her throat would be solid. She'd be unable to breathe for a moment, much less cry out.

Then it would be too late.

 

No one spoke as the elevator descended. Quinn resisted the temptation to stare upward, as people did out of habit in elevators, instead keeping his gaze fixed on Jubal's reflection in the shiny control panel.

Suddenly he saw an arm extended alongside him.

Pearl pressed the emergency stop button, and the elevator slowed, lurched, and was still.

Fedderman said, “What the hell, Pearl?”

Quinn turned and looked at her. “Why?”

She jerked a thumb toward Jubal. “He's just been in a fight for his life with a tough cop and made a run for freedom.”

“And?” Fedderman said.

“He isn't breathing hard.”

Quinn stared at Jubal.

It was true. Jubal's complexion was pasty and he was obviously distressed, frightened, but his chest wasn't heaving and his pale lips were pressed together. His breathing was even.
After going several rounds with Campbell?
And he wasn't marked up from his struggle with Campbell and then with Campbell's reinforcements.

He isn't the Night Prowler!

Which meant…

“Good Christ!” Fedderman said.

All three of them had figured it out and were reaching for the
29
button. It was Pearl who pressed it, with Quinn's finger mashing down on her thumb.

The elevator began its slow ascent back toward Claire's floor.