The Night Watcher. John Lutz
knew he wasn’t thinking clearly but could do nothing about it.
Cautious here…be cautious…Do nothing sudden….
Slowly he opened his eyes, and immediately a stinging sensation made him clench them shut. As he did so, his vision registered movement nearby, and he knew he wasn’t alone. He realized also that he was bound, tied up and lying on his kitchen floor.
And now he was afraid.
Don’t panic! Oh, God, don’t panic!
He forced his eyes open narrowly, trying to make out what was happening, trying to make some sense of this. His eyes still stung, bringing tears. Something must have splashed into them. He could see, but barely, blearily.
There was dark movement and a soft sound close above him, like the single unfolding rush of vast wings spreading wide. Against the looming darkness appeared a pinpoint of light. The light grew in size and intensity, then became brilliant.
It was so sudden. Light, pain, time, all converged in and around Danner. Someone was screaming. Einstein was right: time was relative. It could even stop. Time and pain were unending. The dark thing had carried Danner to an unimaginable height and dropped him into the sun.
He was burning on the surface of the sun and it would never end!
TWO
She thought about how large and strong his hands were, and gentle. He even punched the elevator button with a kind of softness, as if he knew his strength and didn’t want to harm the mechanism.
Rica Lopez removed her gloves and stuffed them in the pockets of her wool coat, then stamped her feet. It was below freezing in New York City, and what was left of the snow had turned to hardened clumps of gray slush. The two police cruisers parked outside were splattered with grime, as was the unmarked Ford Victoria that Rica and Ben Stack had arrived in. A knot of people, probably residents of the building who were still uneasy about going back inside, stood off near one of the radio cars. They were huddled together as if for warmth and staring curiously at Stack and Rica, like a small herd of sheep wary of what might be wolves.
It took only seconds for a chime to sound in the high-speed elevator and the doors to slide open onto the thirty-first floor of the Ardmont Arms. Stack waited as he always did for Rica to leave the elevator first. He was that way with doors and turnstiles and every other known kind of egress and ingress, Rica thought with a smile. Ladies first. An old-fashioned kind of gent was Ben Stack, for an NYPD homicide detective.
It was easy enough to find the right co-op unit. There were three uniforms lounging outside its door, keeping an eye on the hall and elevators, waiting for further instructions from Stack or Rica, maybe trying to keep away from what was inside the apartment. As Stack and Rica walked along the hall’s plush blue carpet, past gilded white apartment doors identical but for identifying brass numbers and letters, Rica began to smell the faint burnt scent wafting from the luxury co-op unit with the open door. Mingled with the burnt smell was the scent of something sweet, a distinctive odor Rica had experienced only once before, when a truck driver had been trapped in his burning cab after an accident on the Veranzano Bridge. The scent had clung to her clothes, her flesh, her dreams, for weeks. It still clung to her memory. Now here it was again. Seared human flesh.
The three cops in the hall knew Stack. Everyone on the force seemed to know Stack and admire him, the cop who could instantly calm a panicked child with his touch and smile, and who had taken down three Gambino family members in a Brooklyn restaurant, two with his service revolver, one with his fists.
“We got a homicide, sir,” the youngest of the uniforms said. He had brown eyes, long lashes, hair so black it looked dyed. Too pretty to be a cop, Rica thought. Maybe prettier than I am.
“Bill and I got the call half an hour ago. Then Ray, here.” He nodded toward one of the other three cops, a tall, laconic-looking man with a bushy gray mustache. “We handled traffic for the FDNY.”
Stack looked at Rica, who shrugged.
“We didn’t see any fire department downstairs,” Stack said. “Just your cars, and some of the residents standing around looking confused.”
“The FDNY already left,” the uniform said. “The fire was out when they got here. They knew right where to go. I mean, which unit. This building’s got a sophisticated alarm system tells ’em all that up front when they get the alarm forwarded. The door was unlocked so they barreled ass on in here. When they saw the body, they got out and turned everything over to us.”
“Anyone been in since?”
“No, sir. Scene’s clean except for some big footprints on the carpet from the fire department’s boots.”
“So what makes this a homicide?” Rica asked.
“All I know is, the fire department said it looked fishy. I mean, maybe it’s not a homicide. Ray and me, we only gave it a look. Guy on the kitchen floor, cooked. That don’t happen a lot.”
“Not according to the Gallup Poll,” Stack said.
Jesus! Rica thought, as even here Stack politely stepped aside and let her enter the apartment first. Miss Manners would approve, Rica thought. When at a homicide scene, the gentleman always…
“Looks like the kitchen’s this way,” Stack said, stepping in front of Rica now to take the lead. The gentleman should always be first to look at a dead body.
As they approached the short hall to the kitchen, their soles began making squishy sounds on the soggy gray carpet. The apartment’s sprinkler system was unitized, as in many expensive co-ops where priceless art or furniture might be a room away from a simple kitchen or wastebasket fire; no need to saturate the entire unit and cause unnecessary water damage.
Stack broke stride as he entered the kitchen, as if what he’d seen gave him pause. Not like him, Rica thought.
She went in and edged around him so she could see better.
Great kitchen. The kind she would kill for. White European cabinetry, marble sink, stainless steel refrigerator, large window with a view of the park. It struck her that while this was a fairly expensive co-op (and what co-op wasn’t in Manhattan?), it was the apartment’s furnishings that made it seem so luxurious. Like the glass-fronted wine cooler with divided sections set at different temperatures for red and white wines; the glass and wrought-iron table; the array of expensive copper cookware suspended on hooks above a cooking island and breakfast bar.
She heard her own involuntary gasp as she gazed beyond Stack at what was left of the man on the floor. His body was blackened and curled, reminding Rica of nothing so much as overdone bacon. Most of his legs were burned away; she knew that could happen, a human being’s fat could catch on fire and blaze like meat in a frying pan.
Stack and Rica put on their rubber gloves. Rica hadn’t seen the results of a serious kitchen fire before, but that was what this looked like. A cooking accident, maybe a heart attack while the deceased had been holding a match, lighting a cigarette. Or maybe burning grease had leaped from a pan to his clothes that were particularly combustible. She glanced at the stove. No frying pan. But there was a pot without a lid, centered on a lighted gas burner; he had been preparing something to eat. She peered into the pot and saw a couple of eggs dancing around in boiling water. She didn’t turn off the burner. It could wait for the techs.
She turned her attention back to what was on the floor.
“Ever seen anything like this?” Stack asked in a calm voice.
“Only in training films.” Rica swallowed. “There’s hardly anything left of him—or her.”
“I’d guess him,” Stack said, “by the size and what’s left of the shape.”
The corpse’s hair had been completely burned away, leaving an odor much like that created when Rica used a too-hot curling iron. She felt her stomach kick.
“You gonna be okay with this?” Stack