The Night Watcher (17 page)

In the corner of his vision, he saw a woman collapse. A cop was nearby and rushed immediately to her aid, then bending over her motioned frantically for more help.

The woman was burned but not seriously. It took several minutes before the paramedics gave up and resigned themselves to the fact that the infants she’d been holding and had instinctively protected in her fall were dead. They’d died from smoke inhalation in her escape from the burning building.

Myra didn’t sleep well for weeks after the fire. When it became obvious that the distraught Amy was going to have an almost impossible time coping with her grief, she offered her a job as file clerk at the agency.

Not that the agency needed a file clerk.

Myra needed to help Amy.

February 2002

Mirabella watched the headlights out the living room window as Chips turned her car into the driveway, how he deliberately fishtailed it a little in the snow that had collected near the curb. A funny kind of guy, but not unlike some others she’d known. He was cautious, even timid, but at the same time,
or maybe because of his timidity,
he wanted his little kicks—but safe kicks. Challenges, he would tell himself, pushing to validate himself as a man, tempting fate, but only after figuring all the odds. She hoped he wouldn’t wreck her car.

His footfalls crunched on the gravel driveway as he made his way to the front porch.
Clomp! Clomp!
Stamping the snow off his shoes. She’d asked him please not to track it in.

When he came through the door he was grinning as if he’d just sneaked the last piece of chocolate. The way his eyes were, at first she thought he was drunk, but then she changed her mind. There was a slowness to the way his eyes moved, a drowsiness to them. It was the way he sometimes looked at her after sex.

She wondered if he was coming back from seeing somebody else, and a warm flame of anger began to grow in her gut. She held no illusions, but she’d been unable to keep herself from making an emotional investment. She’d put some trust in Chips. Maybe she should have known better than to think he was different. She’d learned this hard lesson before.

And forgotten it before.

Now some of her growing anger was directed at herself. Asking for it, as her father had told her over and over. Just goddamn asking for it.

Chips had pushed the guilt and fear to the far edges of his mind, concentrating on the best part of the night, the reason for the night. He could do that, almost as if he were two people living in two different worlds.
Man of mystery,
he thought.
They should make a movie out of my life, star that guy James Woods even though he’s a little older than I am. Maybe whazzisname…Jude Law. Too bad Newman’s doing character roles these days. Frank Sinatra, long time ago. Christ, wouldn’t that be typecasting!

Now he told himself to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t help grinning when he stomped the snow off his shoes, then went into the house and closed the door behind him.

He was still grinning as he stood taking Mirabella in with his narrowly focused eyes, the way she was standing with her weight on one leg, one hip thrust out, wearing her robe that was gaping at one pale bare thigh, as if she didn’t know she was flashing him a go signal. He pushed the night’s terror away again, everything that had happened except for the good parts. What the whole thing was, it was fuckin’ exhilarating.
So what’s not to grin about?

“Why the big smile?” she asked. As if he could tell her. No, he didn’t nearly trust her that much yet. Probably never would.

“I look at you,” he told her, “and I feel lucky. That makes me smile.” She knew he was bullshitting her, but that didn’t matter. She’d convince herself. Chips knew women like Mirabella top to bottom. Knew them the way predators knew prey.

“Sure you feel lucky,” she said, still obviously angry, the little parallel vertical lines above the bridge of her nose deeper than usual, the vein in the side of her neck throbbing. She had the thickest carotid artery, or whatever the hell it was, he’d ever seen on a woman. Like a damn fire hose. The way it pulsated during sex was a turn-on. He was getting a boner, the way he had driving here from the city thinking about her. Maybe she’d notice. Well, let her. Really get that vein pumping.

Chips took off his coat and tossed it in a heap on a chair, then slipped off his wet shoes and left them on the rug just inside the door. He turned on what he thought was his sexiest smile. “I guess I have to prove it’s really you that makes me grin.”

He moved toward her in his stocking feet, still with the high-wattage smile, and she backed away. Not fast enough as he rushed and had her by the waist, attempting to kiss her. She kept turning her head and trying to shove him away at the same time. Still pissed off at him, all right. He laughed and nuzzled the side of her neck, the vein, and pretended he was taking little bites out of her, using just his lips, making that sound he knew they liked. Tightening the pressure with his right arm, he drew her close and ground his pelvis into hers, letting her feel what he had for her.

She stopped struggling and he tried to kiss her on the mouth again. This time she only made a motion as if to turn away, and he had her, used his tongue. When they separated she still looked mad, so he kissed her again, which wasn’t easy because he was faking a laugh. She couldn’t help it and started to laugh with him.

“You’re something else,” he said, releasing her waist and moving his hands up to her shoulders. “You really and truly are.”

She was looking up at him now, her eyes kind of dreamy.
Works every time,
he thought. Her weakness was that she wanted so much to believe in him. He didn’t have to give her much to go on and she’d make the effort.
Work at it, baby.
He’d have her in bed and on her back in no time.

Chips pulled her to him again, being a little rough, this time kissing her for a long time, waiting until she’d almost but not quite had enough and then pulling back before she did. The way she was gazing up at him now, breathing hard with her tits rising and falling, she was plenty ripe for it.

Something else about her, though, like she was puzzled. She lowered her head, sniffed, and looked back up at him.

“You been smoking?”

“Not me,” he said.

Rica stared down at the blackened corpse on the kitchen floor, thinking she should be getting used to this but wasn’t. “This one’s only on the second floor,” she said.

But everything else fit. Well, almost everything. The fire had been carefully and deliberately confined to the kitchen. The umbrella had been used to shield the burning body, then left at the scene. The body had been bound with cloth strips before being set on fire.

The only significant difference Rica could see was the lower-floor apartment.

This victim was another woman, name of Victoria Pike.

Stack and Rica had already talked to some of the neighbors. By their accounts, Pike had been a quiet woman and friendly enough. She’d even served on the building’s co-op board until about a year ago, when for some reason she’d quit. Then she’d begun to keep more to herself, not smile or talk to people sometimes when they passed in the hall. Maybe something had happened to her about a year ago, some of the other tenants speculated.

“So now what?” Rica asked. “We gonna have to go back a year or more in the victim’s life and see if she suffered some kinda trauma?”

“Could be,” Stack said. He was sloshing through the puddles of black water left on the kitchen floor, not minding if some of it got on the leather of his thick-soled black shoes. “But let’s learn a little more first. Maybe she had a more recent trauma that led to her last one.” He glanced at his watch. “Burns oughta be here soon.”

Burns was Ed Burnschmidt, the Mobile Response computer genius. Stack had called for him because in the kitchen, on a small built-in wood desk that was sheltered from the sprinkler system by an overhanging cabinet, was one of those dedicated computers, which was to say it was made expressly for sending and receiving e-mail. A small, oblong aqua-colored machine with a raised lid, it wasn’t even hooked up to a printer or monitor other than its own narrow screen. Stack had seen the machine advertised on TV, aimed at people who were technophobes, like he was; the commercial showed a grandmother using the device to keep in touch with the family. Only Pike hadn’t been a grandmother; she’d died in her forty-first year.

Despite the fire in the kitchen, the e-mail machine had been on and somehow stayed on while the FDNY had extinguished the fire. They’d had plenty of time, since they’d been notified again by phone, this time directly and not through 911, that a fire at the apartment’s address was in progress.

Stack glanced over at the e-mail machine’s glowing screen that showed nothing but some icons he wasn’t sure he understood. Evidence. Maybe the Pike woman had been interrupted while sending or reading an e-mail. Or maybe she’d simply forgotten to switch off the machine. Stack wasn’t completely comfortable around any kind of computer. He didn’t fully understand the damned things. So when the techs were finished dusting this one for prints, he’d called for Burns. Electronic evidence. Not to be messed with by a ham-handed cop who felt more at home disassembling and cleaning a revolver.

“You want,” Rica offered again, “I think I can figure out that computer easy and check the victim’s e-mail.”

“Be better if Burns was the one who testified about it in court,” Stack said. “Expert witness and all.”

“You’re right,” she said, and gave him a wicked wink. “My expertise lies in other, more sensitive areas.”

Stack stared at her, then down at the corpse. “Jesus, Rica, show some respect.”

“The dead don’t know if I show them respect,” she said. “You would.”

Burns didn’t arrive until after the body had been removed and everyone other than Stack and Rica had followed. He was a skinny little guy with jug ears and a bad haircut and looked about eighteen though Stack knew he was in his early thirties. He even had a case of acne, and malicious blue eyes as if he might be thinking up some adolescent prank. Burns was a wiseass who feared no one and got by with his attitude because he was the best at his work. Stack liked him but would never let him know it.

He nodded hello to Stack and Rica, then looked at the computer with unmistakable disdain.

“Christ, Stack! You mean you can’t sit down and figure out this thing? It isn’t even an honest-to-God grown-up computer.”

“You’re the expert,” Stack reminded him.

“Okay. Next time call me if you need the push buttons set on your car radio.”

“The only radio in my car gets police calls.”

Burns gave him a look. “Somehow I believe you. This clean?” Nodding toward the e-mail machine.

Stack said it was, and Burns went over and didn’t even bother to sit down at the kitchen desk. “Electricity must be off because of the fire. It’s on backup battery power.”

He worked a few keys and a log of e-mail messages appeared on the screen. “You want messages sent, or received?”

“Let’s look at the sent ones first,” Stack said. No sooner had he spoken than a different long list of e-mails winked onto the monitor. “These won’t be deleted, will they?”

“Not to worry,” Burns said.

He worked the keys again. Stack and Rica stood on either side of him, staring at the illuminated screen, and they began to read.

After about twenty minutes, everyone’s back was sore, but every message sent or received by Victoria Pike during the past month had been read. Most were uninteresting family chitchat between Pike and her mother in Ohio. Some of the e-mails were gossipy, to and from a woman whose e-mail moniker was
peeps252
. Peeps’s real name was Corlane, and the e-mails made it obvious that she worked with Victoria Pike at Juppie’s Restaurant, only a few blocks away on West Forty-seventh. The interesting thing about those messages was that they mentioned somebody named Ned who might have been Pike’s lover. It seemed Ned liked to feel up Victoria in public places when no one was looking. In line to get into theaters, he would often move close behind her and snake his hand beneath her coat. Victoria wondered if this was in any way normal behavior. Corlane said what’s the difference? She’d been dating in New York for ten years and there was no normal out there. Normal in New York was if they didn’t rape you, then chop and dice you with a machete.

“I kinda like peeps252,” Rica said.

“I’m gonna log off now,” Burns said, “before the battery goes. Everything’ll be saved. If you want, I can disconnect the machine and bag the whole thing for evidence. No trouble at all, with the keyboard and monitor built right in.”

“Thanks,” Stack said, straightening all the way up and stretching his back. He thought he heard a couple of vertebrae crack.

“You oughta buy one of these machines,” Burns said, yanking the plug from its dead socket, by the cord, just in case the crime scene techs hadn’t thought to dust the plug. “Communicate more. Join the human race.”

“I’ve seen enough of the human race. You get this thing bagged and in the trunk of your car. Then Rica and I will buy you a beer across the street before you go back to the precinct.”

Burns smiled. “Human of you.”

Juppie’s was
JUPPIE’S JUMPIN’ JOINT
, according to the lettering on the sign over its door. But when Stack and Rica entered, they found themselves in a gloomy restaurant with half a dozen senior citizens seated at round tables with red-and-white checked tablecloths. A couple of tired-looking waitresses, plodding their way toward swinging doors that apparently led to the kitchen, glanced back at Stack and Rica, who were removing their coats and hanging them on a rack with coat hangers near the door. Convenient for coat thieves, Stack thought as he and Rica moved over to stand near the defaced
HOSTESS WILL EAT YOU
sign.

“Somebody’ll be right there,” one of the waitresses called, before the two of them disappeared through wide swinging doors. Off to the left, Stack saw a dim bar occupied only by a morose-looking man seated on a stool and staring at a TV mounted up near the ceiling. His resigned isolation and the way he was dressed in black slacks and white shirt, a towel tucked in his belt, Stack figured him for the bartender coping with a slow night.

“Somebody at Juppie’s has a sense of irony,” Rica said.

A stout woman about forty, with wide, Slavic features and carefully coifed black hair, approached them hurriedly in a whirl of strong perfume scent and a swish of voluminous black jacket and skirt. She walked as if her feet hurt, but her unwavering smile suggested she was used to the pain and could put up with it. “Sorry for the wait. It’s senior citizen night here, but that’s okay despite what the sign says. You’re welcome.”

I’ll bet,
Rica thought. “We didn’t notice a senior citizen sign.”

“That’s okay. Gonna be just the two of you?”

“We already had dinner,” Stack lied. He turned his back on the diners and unobtrusively showed the hostess his shield. “What we’d like is to talk to one of your employees, a woman named Corlane.”

The welcoming smile faded and the hostess turned pale beneath her dark hair. Stack noticed her eyes momentarily widen, imperceptibly unless you were watching closely for it, before she got hold of herself. “I’m Corlane.”

Something to hide, Stack thought. Most people had something to hide, and it almost always showed when the law introduced itself.

“Corlane Chadner,” she quickly volunteered, showing she was cooperative, an honest citizen.

“This isn’t about you, Corlane,” Stack said, making friends. “Our only interest is in what you can tell us about Victoria Pike.” He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, dear. We’re very single-minded. Unless you’ve robbed a bank recently, you have nothing to fear from us.”

Corlane looked relieved. What was it? Stack wondered. Outstanding traffic tickets? A previous drug conviction? Maybe just a long-ago bad experience with a cop.

Corlane led them to one of the tables out of earshot of the customers who retained sound hearing, and motioned for them to sit down. When they were seated in uncomfortable bentwood chairs, she asked if they wanted some coffee. Both declined, and she didn’t summon the waitress she was keeping in sight. Instead, she sighed and said, “So what’s with Victoria?”

“Not
Vicky?
” Stack asked.

“Naw. She doesn’t like being called anything but Victoria. That’s one of the first things I learned about her when she started here last year.”

“You were close friends?” Stack asked.

Corlane caught the past tense and blanched again in the dimness. “Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it? You said—”

“I’m afraid your friend is dead,” Stack said. “I’m truly sorry, Corlane.”

Corlane stared at Stack, then at Rica. Her eyes were tearing up. Genuine shock, Stack thought. She was wrestling hard with what she’d just learned. She licked her lips. Her broad brow wrinkled, and her surprisingly small hands knotted into fists. “That fucking Ned!”

“Why Ned?” Stack asked.

“You know about Ned?”

“Sure. A little. We’d like to know more.”

“He bruised her up. She showed me. Until then I thought he was okay, maybe a little quirky. But when he turned physical I advised Victoria to dump him like dog shit. They don’t change. Once they start knocking a woman around, it never gets any better.”

“I’ve never known it to,” Stack agreed.

“You’ve had a bad time like that?” Rica asked Corlane in a sympathetic voice.

“Long time ago. When I was slender and young and vulnerable.” And very attractive, Stack figured.

“You looking for Ned?” Corlane asked. She sounded hopeful.

“Not really,” Rica said.

Corlane looked confused.

“What made you think Victoria was murdered?” Stack asked. “We never mentioned it. Only that she was dead.”

Corlane glared warily at him. “I wouldn’t have been so cooperative if I knew you were gonna play games like some kinda TV cop.”

“We’re not playing games, Corlane. And please, try to understand we’re only doing our job.”

Corlane motioned for one of the waitresses to come to the table. “Have Eddie pour a Walker Red for me,” Corlane said. “A double, straight up.” Then she turned her attention back to Stack and Rica. “A couple of cops come here at my place of work and tell me one of my friends and fellow workers is dead. And after what I learned about Ned, who’s always had a screw loose, what would you figure I’d think?”

“Exactly what you did think,” Stack said. “We just needed it for the record.”

Corlane frowned. “Is this conversation being recorded?”

“Heavens no!” Stack said, holding up both his hands as if that proved his denial. “But if you really distrust us that much, I’m saying that this is an illegal recording and anything that comes out of it is entrapment.” Another smile. “Over and out.”

Corlane sighed. “Okay…sorry. I guess I’m shook-up.”

“Naturally,” Stack said.

“So what happened to Victoria?”

“She died in a fire in her apartment.”

“Ah, an accident!”

“Oh, no. Someone set the fire deliberately, I’m afraid. Set
her
on fire, actually. Even held an umbrella over Victoria so she’d burn for a while after the sprinkler system came on. People will burn that way, you know, like meat that catches fire in a frying pan.” Stack brutally painting her a picture, trying to flick her even more off balance. In case she
was
hiding something significant.

“Jesus!…”

“I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s okay.” Corlane swallowed hard and brushed his apologies away with a wave of her pale hand.

“I know it must be difficult,” Stack said. “We should have broken it to you easier, I guess. We grow mental calluses in this job and sometimes forget ourselves.”

“Still think it was Ned?” Rica asked, playing the mean cop. Insensitive, anyway. Those mental calluses.

Corlane took a deep breath, then shook her head. “Comes right down to it, I don’t know.” The waitress came with her drink, approaching the table tentatively, sensing something was wrong. Corlane thanked her and took a long pull of scotch before setting the glass on the table. “I guess, to tell you the truth, I can’t imagine Ned doing something like that. He wasn’t even to the stage where he was likely to cut skin or break bones, though he would have gotten there eventually. You know how it is; they work up to it over time. Ned and Victoria, the way they are together,
were,
he mighta got a little too rough with her and left a few bruises on her, like I said. But to set her on fire and stand there and watch her burn…Naw, not our Ned.”

Our
Ned? “Too decent a guy?”

“Naw. To my way of thinking, he doesn’t have the balls.”

“Usually they don’t,” Stack said. “Bedroom badasses like Ned.”

Corlane actually smiled at him, a cop talking her language. Ten minutes and Stack had her. Rica loved it.

“Victoria have any enemies you know of?” Stack asked. “Other than her love-hate thing with Ned.”

Corlane didn’t have to think about it more than a few seconds. “She was a sweet, lovable person. You’ll see. Everybody who knew her will tell you the same. Even Ned, prick that he is.”

“She was a waitress here, right?”

“Yeah. But you might say the job was beneath her station. She used to be a big-shot investment counselor, then got mixed up with booze and drugs and came down in the world. I might as well tell you about the substance abuse, ’cause you’ll find it out anyway. But I’m also gonna tell you she went through rehab two years ago and she’s been clean ever since. She told me that and I believe her, and I never saw her even smoke or take a drink since I’ve known her.”

“She might have fallen off the wagon,” Rica said.

“Naw. She was a convert and a true believer. You know the type. She
drove
the wagon.”

“Okay,” Stack said. “Anybody come in the restaurant lately and have words with her? Give her any kind of trouble? Even if it was just over burnt food.”

“All the food’s burnt here. Honestly, Victoria was a sweetheart.”

“Our Ned the prick got a last name?” Rica asked.

“Salerno. Ned Salerno.”

“We’re gonna want to talk with him. You know his address?”

“I can get if for you. But it won’t make any difference.”

“Why? He the kinda guy who might go underground?”

“That I don’t know.”

“So where do you think we might find him?” Stack asked.

“In the kitchen,” Corlane said. “He’s the chef.”

Ned Salerno didn’t keep a clean kitchen. The grill was littered with onion scraps and crumbs of burned ground beef. There was a slice of bread and some lettuce on the floor that had obviously been stepped on and ground in.

Ned was a medium-sized guy in his forties with a gut barely contained by a white T-shirt tucked into too-tight jeans. He had a head of wavy black hair and the face of an aging, petulant schoolboy. The only other person in the kitchen was a teenage kid stirring something pretending to be soup in a big steel pot. The kitchen was warm, and the kid had on a T-shirt like Ned’s that showed lots of tattoos on his skinny arms. The tattoos featured artistically rendered knives, snakes, and writhing, tortured nude women, and didn’t go with the kid’s hair net.

When Stack and Rica identified themselves to Ned, the kid stopped stirring soup. Ned told him to take a break. The kid disappeared like a wisp through a door that must have led outside, because it let in an eddy of cold air as it opened and closed. The stirring of air moved the scent of the soup, which smelled pretty good but was still unidentifiable.

“So what’s
this
all about?” Ned asked, wiping his hands on a towel. Whatever
this
was, he seemed already geared up to deny it. “I don’t remember any parking tickets or walking outta someplace without paying.”

“Any recollection of murder?” Stack asked.

That seemed to take Ned back a bit, but it might not have been genuine. Guys like Ned had been acting since they were weaned. “You saying I killed somebody?”

“Did you?”

Ned looked as if he might get really angry. Then he gave a cocky grin, shrugged, and shook his head, apparently deciding to take the philosophical line. Cops in his soup again. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for this bullshit from my public servants. I got a busy kitchen here.”

“Sure,” Rica said. “Senior citizen night.”

“It’s something we do for the neighborhood,” Ned said. “Charitable stuff. That’s how you build a customer base. Besides, it makes us feel pretty good.” He winked. “You know how it is…it’s the right thing to do.”

“Are you patronizing us?” Stack asked. “I wouldn’t like it, Ned, if you were talking down to us.”

Ned gave up half of the grin and sighed elaborately. “Okay, I’ll play. Who’d I kill?”

“We say you killed somebody?” Stack asked.

“C’mon, now. Quit stringing me out. Am I gonna need a lawyer?”

“You can certainly call one any time,” Rica said.

“Which ain’t what I asked.”

“Victoria Pike,” Stack said in a flat voice.

Ned stared at him. “What about her?”

“You kill her?”

Ned’s jaw dropped and he backed a step toward the hot grill. If he was acting, he had a modicum of talent.

“Victoria got popped?”

“Shot, you mean?” Stack asked.

“Yeah. You said murdered, so I just figured shot. Drive-by or some such shit. Happened to some guy last week right in her neighborhood.”

“She was burned to death in an apartment fire.”

“I thought you said murdered.”

“We did.”

Ned glared at Stack, ignoring Rica, letting them both know he was losing patience and they could no longer count on him to be nice. “You come into my kitchen, tell me my girlfriend’s dead, give me a lotta crap. Okay, you told me what happened, now let me see if I can get it straight in my mind that my woman’s dead. Quit playing word games with me.”

“Games?” Stack asked.

“I said, do I need a lawyer? You didn’t say yes or no, only told me I could call one, which I already fuckin’ knew. Then you tell me about Victoria, jerk me around with that information. Games, you ask? Yeah, fuckin’ games. Dumb cops’ games. Know what I say now?”

This guy was working up a serious mad, Rica thought, glancing over at Stack, who was gazing calmly at Ned.

“What
do
you say now?” Stack asked mildly.

“I say get outta my fuckin’ kitchen or I’m gonna call my lawyer. Victoria was murdered, you talk to me only if I got an attorney present. I know my rights. Now I said get outta—”

But Stack had him by the throat. Ned was staring at him, stunned. He instinctively took a swing at Stack, which Stack absently brushed away with his free hand. Neatly and quickly, Stack spun Ned around, had one arm bent behind him, and had shifted his grip so his big hand clutched the back of Ned’s neck. Rica could see his fingertips digging deep into Ned’s flesh.

Stack shoved Ned’s head down and held it so his face was inches above the hot grill. He spoke to Ned in a gentle, almost crooning way. “This kitchen of yours isn’t a church and you’re not a priest. You’re a smart-mouth little punk and a woman beater, and if you really want a murder charge hung on you, I can accommodate. We might want to talk to you some more, Ned, and if I hear of you misbehaving in any way with any woman, I’ll come here and shove your head up your ass. You know your rights. I know what I can get away with. You want to file a complaint and start trading trouble, I’ll trade. Maybe it’ll be your last rights you’ll hear. You got that, you miserable piece of shit?”