The Night Watcher (24 page)

“You wear red a lot,” he said.

She stood up with a bundle of files and stared innocently at him, knowing he saw through her. “You don’t like red?”

“It isn’t that. The expression ‘plainclothes’ means—”

Stack’s desk phone jangled. Still looking at her, he lifted the receiver. “Stack.” His gaze remained locked with hers. “Yeah. Yeah.” Something changed in his eyes. They were no longer seeing her. “Okay. Sounds like it. Got it. Thanks.” He hung up the phone. “There’s been another high-rise fire, and we’ve got another body.”

“Chips again, you think?” She placed the file folders on the desk.

“I don’t know.” He recited the address of the fire.

“The Myra Raven Group.”

“A smaller group now,” he said.

The fire had been neatly contained, and there was the black, half-folded umbrella propped against the desk.

“Shame about the desk,” the ME said. “It was a beauty.”

An odd thing for him to say, Stack thought, considering a woman had died here. He glanced around. “Where’s the body?”

“At Roosevelt,” the ME said. “EMT just left with her. I was called here because the first officers on the scene assumed the victim was dead. She sure looked dead and will probably be dead by tomorrow. Second-and third-degree burns over most of her body.”

“Can she speak?”

“Get serious,” said the ME. “She suffered head injuries also. Looks like somebody bludgeoned her, then bound her with black ties before setting fire to her.” He looked over at the discarded umbrella. “The night security guard must have scared your firebug away; then the sprinkler system did its job well enough to keep the victim alive until he got to a fire extinguisher.”

“Is there a chance she’ll be able to talk—”

“Before she dies? No. I doubt if she’ll regain consciousness. Her stopping breathing is just a formality. You might as well look on this one as a homicide.”

Stack thanked the ME and looked around at the charred office and soaked, burned carpet. At what appeared to be the remains of a leather coat and a few strands of black cloth, where Myra must have lain while she burned.

Men’s ties. Stack wondered if O’Reilly was right and the ties were linked to sadomasochism—ties were a convenient way to bind without much bruising, and could be purchased without embarrassment or undue attention. It was difficult to believe eroticism wasn’t somehow involved. Serial killers were usually psychosexually driven.

Stack swallowed a terrible taste and tried not to inhale too deeply the sweet burnt scent of roasted human flesh. The smell, even the taste of these fires, wasn’t something you got used to. It was more like something that built and built until you couldn’t stand it any longer. Stack was beginning to understand the vegetarian point of view.

“I guess Myra’s no longer a suspect,” Rica said sadly. “If she ever really was.”

Stack glanced over at her. “Isn’t she?”

“Don’t play cryptic with me, Stack. If you didn’t have stamina and a big—”

“Rica!”

One of the techs bustling around the office looked at Stack and grinned in a way Stack didn’t like. If this guy—

“You see the desk?” the tech asked.

What is it with this desk?
Stack turned and looked.

“Near where the victim was,” the tech said.

Now Stack saw what he meant. So did Rica. She and Stack slogged across the mushy carpet together and looked at the way the desk’s end panel protruded a few inches. Stack poked a ballpoint pen behind the panel, then swung it out.

“My, my,” Rica said.

The door of the shallow steel safe that had been concealed in the desk was also slightly open. Standing aside, using the pen again, Stack slowly opened the steel door all the way.

The safe was empty. Which meant its contents were probably the reason Myra Raven was murdered. If Myra wasn’t the Torcher, she was in the case up to her eyeballs. If she still had eyeballs.

Stack and Rica looked at each other.

“You still tired?” Stack asked.

“Somehow I’m not,” she told him.

She knew he didn’t have romance in mind.

In a back booth of the bar at the Edmundton Hotel in Manhattan, Milton Fedders was working on his fourth bourbon and water of the evening. Nobody paid much attention to him, another slightly overweight, middle-aged businessman in a rumpled off-the-rack suit, a tie loosened as if he’d had a rough day and had worked late and was choking to death on his fate. Or maybe he was a road warrior sales type and had struck out on a critical deal, and now the flight back to the home office would be a glum one. Clean shaven, thinning gray hair, weak chin, nothing unusual or impressive about Milton Fedders. No way to look inside his mind at the raw, pulsing pain.

Aran was dead. That hadn’t been part of the plan when Fedders hired Chips. It sure as hell hadn’t. Without lifting his elbow from the table, Fedders raised his glass and took a long sip of his diluted drink. Nothing should have gone wrong. Nothing could have!

But it had. Now Aran was gone, and his wife Zel was a widow, and the kids…Jesus, the kids!

Chips had been so positive. He’d been recommended by a reliable source on the West Coast, had come even more highly recommended by a previous client. And meeting Chips had reassured Fedders. Chips had done this dozens of times, he’d told Fedders. Nothing ever went wrong, because it was so simple, because he had the cooperation of the owner, because he was a pro who took pride in his work. Fedders believed him.

Chips had obviously believed Fedders when Fedders told him his business partner and part owner of the electronics store knew about the arrangement but wanted to stay out of it as much as possible. Fedders had lied some more, said he wanted to protect Aran because he was a nervous kind of guy who didn’t like this kind of thing, burning down the business for the insurance payout, even if there was a guarantee no one would be hurt.

The truth was that Fedders had floated the idea past Aran only once, and Aran had been horrified by the mere thought of it. Fedders had gone on to assure Aran he’d only been joking, musing out loud. An honest and sweetly naive man, had been Aran. Surely he’d thought the matter was settled, that they were going to continue grossing less than they owed while loan interest ate their business, then put them on the street with their pockets turned inside out.

So Fedders went ahead anyway and hired Chips, figuring that even if Aran might—even
would
—suspect he, Fedders, had something to do with the convenient and profitable fire, he would never ask Fedders about it and risk confrontation and learning what he didn’t want to know.

It should have gone smoothly. Fedders and Aran should both be in a position now to cash the insurance settlement check, pay off the business debt, and have money left over.

But now Aran was dead. Fedders was despondent. And Chips was wounded and would probably be caught soon. According to the police, Chips was the Torcher. That meant the law would never stop searching for him until he was found. Then, if Chips survived the inevitable confrontation, he would surely talk and bargain for a better position in the legal system, try to save his own life. Everything would be known.

Not that it mattered now. What really mattered was Aran, and Zel, and the kids. Fedders might be a lot of things, but he’d never seen himself as a murderer. But now he was one. Chips had made him one.

Then Fedders remembered the cop who’d been shot. He, Milton Fedders, was responsible for that shooting, too. They came down hard on people involved in cop shootings. And who could tell from the newspaper or TV how badly somebody was wounded? If the cop should die…Two deaths. Fedders would be a multiple murderer.

Fedders actually moaned, then glanced about to make sure he hadn’t attracted anyone’s attention. The bartender, a large black man wearing a red vest, remained standing behind the bar, talking to the loudmouthed guy who’d proclaimed he was from Detroit. The well-dressed couple near the door were still in the booth up front, near the archway into the lobby, interested only in each other and out of earshot anyway. Nobody seemed even to know Fedders was there. Fedders the murderer. Aran…

Whenever he made himself stop thinking about Aran, he couldn’t keep his mind off what was in his suit coat’s right pocket. It was almost like premonition, like fate at work, when he’d agreed to take in the 9mm Ruger handgun as partial payment for a display model Sony CD player. It was almost as if Fedders, or the down-and-out-looking man who’d brought the Ruger in with an improbable story about finding it in a trash can, had somehow sensed he might have a use for the gun. Milton Fedders, who hadn’t shot a gun in years and didn’t even like guns, who thought they were dangerous to whoever owned them, who had no use for guns.

He had a use for this gun now. It would be after this drink, maybe some of another. He’d know when it was time. When Milton Fedders, murderer of Aran Ahib and seducer of Zel Ahib, would be ready to go out to his car and use the gun on himself.

“They’ve got this bastard now,” Leland Brand said to Etta. “It’s only a matter of time before they take him alive or dead.” There wasn’t much doubt in his mind it would be dead. That was what Brand wanted, for the Torcher, Larry Chips, to die. Finality. Voters loved closure. “It’s going our way, Etta. We can do as you suggested, make clear that my involvement, my prompt action and the pressure I applied to the police, led to the end of the Torcher fires.”

Etta had been standing at the closed glass doors to the balcony, staring out at the cold, brightly lighted city.

Behind her, Brand said, “You mentioned there was something you needed to tell me, Etta.”

She stood very still for a moment, gathering her thoughts, her words. Making sure her mind was made up. To gain something, you often had to give up something of lesser value. It required intestinal fortitude, and afterward, if you were smart, you never looked back. That was what she’d told most of her clients. It was true for everyone at one time or another. Now it was true for her. The thing about a fork in life’s road was that you kept moving as it approached. You had to choose or you crashed.

Finally she turned around to face Brand.

“The former chief of police is one of your likely future competitors for office of mayor,” she said. “I think we can link him to the funds that disappeared from the board of education five years ago. It’s not a solid connection, but it’s enough. Whether it’s true or not, once we tie that can to his tail, he’s out of the race.”

Brand grinned. “You do think ahead, Etta. A long way.”

She smiled. “That’s why you pay me, Leland. A lot.”

It was with renewed enthusiasm that Stack and Rica tackled the co-op board meeting minutes, along with their growing file on Myra Raven and her real estate agency. They were back at Stack’s desk, Stack in his desk chair, Rica in a padded chair she’d rolled in from another office cubicle.

They weren’t sure exactly what they were searching for regarding Myra Raven, but both suspected it would be found by scrutinizing the board meeting minutes and cross-checking them with information about Myra or the Myra Raven Group.

Stack and Rica had settled down for a long night’s work, fueled by a fresh pot of coffee and sheer determination. This was the phase of the investigation that would require almost infinite patience. They were sure they’d found the haystack; now it was only a matter of locating the needle.

“It would have been nice,” Rica said, “if you’d found something in my notes that would have broken the case.”

“Yeah,” Stack said absently, then glanced up at her. “What are you talking about?”

“You let yourself into my apartment and looked over my case notes. It’s okay. You got a right, and not just because we’re partners. Cop partners.”

Stack was starting to feel a chill. “Are you saying somebody was in your apartment going through your desk?”

“Of course that’s what I’m saying. You—”

“Not me, Rica. Don’t go back there. You’re coming home with me. Don’t go home tonight.”

Now it was Rica who felt a shiver pass through her. “That bastard was actually in my place, handling my things…”

“It looks that way.”

“We’ll find him,” she said, more angry now than frightened. She picked up a handful of minutes from the desk. “Even if I have to sit here all night and grow to this goddamn chair.”

Stack watched her, afraid for her. Caring about somebody too much again.
Vulnerable again.

He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

Less than an hour passed before Rica suddenly sat straighter, then stood up and carried a file folder out to one of the desks with a computer on it. Stack had caught from the corner of his eye what she was doing, knew she thought she might have something pertinent. But that had been the case with both of them before, and each time, further checking revealed some explanation or undercut whatever lead they thought they might have found.

Stack paused in his work and watched as Rica peered at the glowing monitor and played the computer keys with her left hand, using her right to nudge the mouse this way and that on its Dilbert pad that proclaimed technology was no place for wimps.

Suddenly all movement ceased, even the almost imperceptible dance of her dark irises as they explored the screen’s contents. She said, “Holy Christ!”

“You got something?” Stack asked, unnecessarily.

She turned and stared at him with an expression he’d seen on her face only a few times before, during sex.

“I’ve got everything,” she said.

October 2001

Amy Marks had never gotten over the death of her husband and infant twin daughters. After the first six months, the grief was less a sharp blade in her stomach than a dull ache, but it remained. She’d emerged from clinical depression but continued to take a cocktail of prescription drugs daily. No longer did she attend her cognitive therapy group sessions, but that was her decision and not her analyst’s. It was also her decision to stop going to her analyst last year, when she enrolled at the Montrose Real Estate Academy, where she was taking courses that would allow her to pass her state exam and become a sales agent.

Myra Raven had been wonderful since the death of Ed and the twins. She’d provided another apartment for Amy to stay in, found an MD to treat her in conjunction with a psychologist, and picked up all her medical bills. She’d even paid for Ed’s funeral. Amy was aware that part of Myra’s motive was guilt, that she felt largely responsible for what had happened that night when Ed and the twins died. After all, if the contract for the co-op Amy and Ed thought they’d purchased had gone through, the destruction by fire of their family wouldn’t have occurred.

Amy had been in hell for months after the fire; then her pain became such that she simply surrendered to it, let it carry her into a numbness that would have left her as dead as Ed and the twins if Myra hadn’t given her a make-work job as file clerk at the agency. The job gave Amy a routine as well as an income, a simple responsibility she could fulfill despite the weight of her grief.

When the other file clerk quit to be married, Amy’s job was expanded. She had to be even more responsible and self-disciplined; a mistake now might be costly to the agency and more difficult to rectify. The effort had been good for her, made her feel useful for the first time since the fire. It helped give her the strength to look into the future and enroll at Montrose.

But the night of the fire was always with her, the flames, the cold, sure knowledge of death, the sight of Ed clinging to life high in the air, her own screams, over and over, changing nothing. At times she could feel the almost weightless forms of the twins in her arms, clutched tightly to her, silent and unmoving while she embraced death as if she were nurturing it. Somewhere in her mind, the night, the pain, played almost constantly in her thoughts, in her dreams, darkening like a gray tinting agent each of her days. The only thing that helped, finally, was to lose herself in her studies at Montrose, learn more and more about the business she found herself in.

And the more she learned, the more she wondered about the aborted deal that had deflected her family from the coop they’d tried to purchase, and placed them in the firetrap walk-up that led to death. When she secretly used a company computer to do an archives search and examine the incomplete transaction, she was surprised to find no record of it. Odd, considering how tightly controlled and easy to track the flow of cash was in the agency. Money had been deposited for a down payment, returned, and the unit was eventually sold by another real estate agency, but under its Myra Raven Group listing.

Maybe not so odd, Amy decided, after mulling it over. She was studying sales, not accounting, so how would she know? It wouldn’t do to ask bookkeeping about it, where they might think she was questioning their competence. Or to ask Myra, who’d warned her more than once it was destructive for her to continue dwelling on the past, on Ed and the twins. So Amy remained silent, following what was probably good advice, and picked at mental scabs as little as possible.

About a week later, she’d entered Myra’s office without knocking, to drop off the afternoon’s mail. A surprised Myra shifted a hip and thigh to one side, against her desk, and gave Amy a look that was unmistakably furtive and hostile before quickly regaining her composure. She also gave Amy a long lecture about the sanctity of her private office and the necessity of knocking.

Chastised, Amy listened quietly and patiently, only later deciding she was sure of what she’d noticed as Myra leaned her weight against the desk. Amy had heard a faint but distinct metallic click. Like the snicking of a well-oiled latch.

It took her four mornings of coming to work early, then finding a way to sneak into the building on Sundays to spend two secret afternoons in Myra’s office, to discover the source of the metallic click, and of Myra’s furtiveness and momentary hostility the day of the interruption: The trick panel on the side of the cherry-wood desk, and the gleaming steel safe concealed inside.

Of course the safe was locked, and a search of the office for the written combination was futile. But Amy knew every combination was written down somewhere, or it was linked to someone’s numerical identity so it would be almost impossible to forget.

She became obsessed with getting into the safe, and at her desk and on the subway and in her bed before sleep, would try to figure out what numbers Myra would choose for the combination. Whenever she had the opportunity she’d try the numbers on the safe. Myra’s birth date in various combinations. The agency’s address, Myra’s home address, phone number…all in various sequences.

Finally, in a company four-color brochure, she came across the founding date of the Myra Raven Group, kept scrambling the numbers in different sequences, and the safe opened.

What was inside changed everything.

Over the next week, whenever she found the opportunity to be alone and unobserved in Myra’s office, Amy absorbed it all. There were the names and addresses of influential co-op board members who accepted payoff money in return for approving Myra’s clients for residency to the exclusion of other applicants. There were the dates and amounts paid. And lots of detailed notes. The safe held a secret record of how the agency had become the most successful in the city. No wonder Myra wanted the contents to remain secret; they were her insurance policy against the threats of her coconspirators, and incriminating enough to put her in prison.

One of the names was of particular interest to Amy: Hugh Danner. His address was in the Ardmont Arms, where Ed and Amy had been rejected as residents.

Amy stared at the name and address, and read accompanying notes giving details of how the money she and Ed had passed through Myra’s hands went to Danner, and how Danner had double-crossed Myra, cast the deciding vote for the board to reject Amy and Ed, and kept their money.

How Hugh Danner had killed Amy’s family.

Seated cross-legged on the carpet in Myra’s office, staring at the papers before her on the floor, Amy felt all the grief return to her as if it had been circling in time, a dark bird of prey glimpsed only now and then in dreams, patiently winging and waiting and gaining strength before descending on her again.

Its sharp beak found her mortal core and tore at it, releasing her rage.