Darker Than Night. John Lutz
I talked to my source in the lab. Marks on the gun that was in Martin Elzner’s dead hand were definitely made by a sound suppressor attached to the barrel. They’re consistent with a Metzger eight hundred model, a rare sort of one-size-fits-all for semiautomatic handguns.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Neither did I, but then neither of us is a silencer expert. Turns out it’s a cheap unit made in China and marketed mostly mail order. Not a lot of them are sold. They advertise in magazines for gun nuts and guys who see themselves as soldiers of fortune and other kinds of armed romantic figures.”
“What with the big market in used guns and gun gear, it could be difficult to trace even though it’s not a popular item.”
“Yep, it mighta changed hands ten times at gun shows, or was sold from car trunks.” Renz seemed almost happy about the odds. That Harley! “On the other hand, we can try. I’ll keep you informed.”
Quinn thanked Renz and hung up, thinking it was hard enough to find a particular gun in this wide world, much less a silencer.
But if searching for it helped to silence Renz even a little bit, the Metzger 800 was still doing its job.
Pearl had a late supper alone in her apartment, a Weight Watchers chicken dinner washed down with scotch and water. My own worst enemy.
She rinsed out the empy glass and replaced it in the cabinet, and dumped what was left of the dinner into the trash. Dishes done.
Sometimes she wondered what her life would be like if Vern Shults had lived. They’d been very much in love when they were twenty, or Pearl had thought so. What was left of her family had ostracized her for becoming engaged to a devout Catholic. How devout even Pearl hadn’t guessed. Vern had announced to her one night after sex that he was breaking their engagement; he’d decided to study for the priest-hood.
A week later, he’d been found dead in his bathtub, drowned after apparently falling and striking his head. Leaving Pearl as alone as a woman could be alone.
God moving in His mysterious circles. Pearl trapped in the celestial geometry.
Where she remained trapped.
She watched TV for a while, then didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, so she got the glass back down from the cabinet.
Marcy Graham couldn’t sleep, knowing the anonymous gift of a box of Godiva chocolates was only about ten feet away in one of her dresser drawers, not fifteen feet away from her sleeping husband. She remembered how unreasonable he’d been about the leather jacket from Tambien’s, the problems it had caused.
Even if the chocolates were from Ron, he might not admit it. Or for some reason she couldn’t understand, he might not even remember leaving them for her.
Marcy waited until her nerve built, then quietly climbed out of bed and opened her dresser drawer. Moving silently, she removed the box of chocolates and carried it into the kitchen.
She couldn’t resist opening the box and sampling one of the chocolates.
Delicious! Light caramel with a cream center.
She ate another before closing the box and sliding it into the trash can beneath the sink. Then she tore off a paper towel and placed it over the box so it wouldn’t be visible to Ron if by chance he decided to throw away something.
When she returned to the bedroom, she carefully slipped back into bed and lay awake awhile, listening to Ron’s deep, even breathing.
She was sure he was still asleep.
She felt safe now.
16
He didn’t anger easily. He was beyond that.
He’d thought.
He paced silently. This was an insult, a rejection. A thoughtless, callous act. Who wouldn’t anger at the sting? Sting at the slap?
There was no reason to fear making too much noise as he paced. The steady, reverberating buzzing covered the slight sound of his soft-soled shoes on the tiles.
The buzzing, in fact, seemed to be growing louder and was getting under his skin. Where’s it coming from? What’s its source? He’d checked outside, but there was nothing in sight that might be making such a relentless sound. And inside the building no one seemed to be cleaning their carpets or running an appliance without cessation.
The buzzing continued. It was almost as if he were trapped in the confines of a small space and being observed by some gigantic, predatory winged insect that threatened him, that could almost reach him with its painful and paralyzing venom, that would never give up because it knew that eventually it would reach him.
Black…black…
The sound became even louder and more piercing, a buzzing that tripped the frequencies of his body and caused a terrifying vibration in every cell. A buzzing like death and dying. The buzzing of ending and becoming. Of the swarming insects of decay and the whirring of buzzards’ wings, of bees and wasps in the damp and dark of the underground. Beelzebub…
He knew if he didn’t do something it would make him scream. And if he screamed…
With trembling fingers, he groped in his pocket for the Ziploc plastic bag that contained a folded cloth.
At first Anna Caruso was pleased to be living her long-sought dream, wandering Juilliard’s Lincoln Center campus, the library, and Alice Tully Hall, where she knew someday she would give a concert or at least play in the Juilliard orchestra or symphony. It could happen. The Meredith Willson Residence center towered over the campus, but Anna’s partial scholarship didn’t include residency. She rode the subway each day to Juilliard, usually lugging her viola in its scuffed black case so she could practice at home, as well as in one of the school’s many practice rooms.
She’d taken up the viola seriously about six months after the rape. The instrument suited her. It was slightly larger than a violin, tuned a fifth lower, and produced a more sonorous, melancholy tone. While playing it did nothing to cheer her, it was somehow soothing.
Her bliss at attending Juilliard lasted only a few days. Anna was soon disappointed in the way things were going, her progress with her lessons, her relationship with her instructors, but most of all she was disappointed with herself. Discouraged. She was told that was normal. Suddenly she was among musicians of equal or superior talent. It was natural that she should be overwhelmed at first. And, of course, there was Quinn, in her mind and in her music now. Her hatred for Quinn.
As soon as she entered the apartment and saw her mother, she knew something was very wrong. Linda Caruso was slumped on a chair by the phone and obviously had been crying. Her eyes were red and she clutched a wadded Kleenex in her clawlike right hand with its overlong red nails.
“Mom?” Anna went to her, and her mother immediately began sobbing.
When she gained control of herself, she looked with pain in her eyes at Anna. “Your father died a few hours ago. A heart attack.”
Anna felt the news like a physical blow to her stomach, and her body assumed the same hunched attitude as her mother’s. At the same time, recalling all the things her mother had said about her father, all the old arguments, she wondered how her mother could be so upset. She staggered backward and sat on the sofa.
“But he didn’t have a bad heart!”
“He did,” her mother said. “We just didn’t know it. According to Melba, he didn’t even know it.”
Melba was Anna’s cousin, a chatty fool Anna couldn’t stand. “Was it…I mean, did he go to the hospital?”
“No, it was sudden. Melba said he didn’t suffer. At least there’s that.” Her mother ground the wadded tissue into her eyes, as if trying to injure herself and started crying again. Her loud, rolling sobs filled the apartment, transforming it. The very walls seemed to weep.