Chill of Night Read online

  Praise for John Lutz

  “John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”

  —Harlan Coben

  “John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”

  —Ridley Pearson

  “A major talent.”

  —John Lescroart

  “I’ve been a fan for years.”

  —T. Jefferson Parker

  “John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”

  —Tony Hillerman

  “For a good scare and a well-paced story, Lutz delivers.”

  —San Antonio Express News

  “Lutz knows how to seize and hold the reader’s imagination.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Lutz’s real gift is to evoke detective work better than anyone else.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Lutz ranks with such vintage masters of big-city murder as Lawrence Block and the late Ed McBain.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Lutz is among the best.”

  —San Diego Union

  “It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar and two Shamuses.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Some writers just have a flair for imaginative suspense, and we all should be glad that John Lutz is one of them. The Night Spider features elegant writing enveloping exotic murder and solid police work…. A truly superb example of the ‘new breed’ of mystery thrillers.”

  —Jeremiah Healy

  “Lutz juggles multiple storylines with such mastery that it’s easy to see how he won so many mystery awards. Darker Than Night is a can’t-put-it-down thriller, beautifully paced and executed, with enough twists and turns to keep it from ever getting too predictable.”

  —reviewingtheevidence.com

  “Readers will believe that they just stepped off a tilt-awhirl after reading this action-packed police procedural…John Lutz places Serpico in a serial killer venue with his blue knights still after him.”

  —The Midwest Book Review on Darker Than Night

  “John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror…. [He] propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.”

  —Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale) on The Night Spider

  “Compelling…a gritty psychological thriller…Lutz’s details concerning police procedure, fire-fighting techniques and FDNY policy ring true, and his clever use of flashbacks draws the reader deep into the killer’s troubled psyche.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Night Watcher

  “John Lutz is the new Lawrence Sanders. The Night Watcher is a very smooth and civilized novel about a very uncivilized snuff artist, told with passion, wit, carnality, and relentless vigor. I loved it.”

  —Ed Gorman in Mystery Scene

  “A gripping thriller…extremely taut scenes, great descriptions, nicely depicted supporting player…Lutz is good with characterization.”

  —reviewingtheevidence.com on The Night Watcher

  “SWF Seeks Same is a complex, riveting, and chilling portrayal of urban terror, as well as a wonderful novel of New York City. Echoes of Rosemary’s Baby, but this one’s scarier because it could happen.”

  —Jonathan Kellerman

  “With Lutz stirring the pot the dish spits with just the right amount of sizzle.”

  —Bon Appétit on Tropical Heat

  “Lutz is a fine craftsman.”

  —Booklist on The Ex

  “The grip on the reader is relentless until the final, entirely unforeseen shocker rings down the curtain.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Kiss

  “Well written, meticulously constructed, gripping.”

  —Library Journal on Scorcher

  “A psychological thriller that few readers will be able to put down.”

  —Publishers Weekly on SWF Seeks Same

  “Tense and relentless.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Torch

  “The author has the ability to capture his readers with fear, and has compiled a myriad of frightful chapters that captures and holds until the final sentence.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune on Bonegrinder

  “Likable protagonists in a complex thriller.”

  —Booklist on Final Seconds

  “Lutz is rapidly bleeding critics dry of superlatives.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ

  Fear the Night

  Darker Than Night

  The Night Spider

  The Night Watcher

  The Night Caller

  Final Seconds (with David August)

  The Ex

  Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and Pinnacle Books

  CHILL OF NIGHT

  John Lutz

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For Eunice Pope

  Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,

  Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.

  —Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

  Render therefore to all their dues.

  —Romans XIII.7

  None are so desolate but something dear,

  Dearer than self, possesses or possess’d

  A thought, and claims the homage of a tear.

  —Byron, Childe Harold

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  1

  Things are never as they seem.

  The area was supposed to be clear, marked off with yellow NYPD crime scene tape, but Beam caught a glimpse of movement behind one of the parked cars and moved toward it.

  One step, that was all he’d taken, and the figure hiding behind the parked Mercedes was off and running toward the garage exit. Beam could see by the way he moved that he was young, teens or twenties. Beam had just turned fifty-three. Convert that difference in years to
distance, and there was a lot of it to make up. Still, Beam was on the run and gradually gaining.

  The victim’s body had been removed, and the crime scene unit and other detectives had left. It was part of Beam’s method to hang around alone at a murder scene and take in what he could in the immense silence and stillness that followed violent death. Now and then, he discovered something.

  He’d sure as hell made a discovery this time—probably the shooter.

  His feet pounding the concrete floor, Beam yelled, “Halt! Police!”

  That seemed to speed up the guy, a skinny kid dressed in jeans, a dark watch cap, and a black jacket, flailing his arms, and with long legs that could eat up the ground. He was making for the vast rectangle of light that was the exit from the garage to freedom, where he’d be lost in the crowded New York streets. Beam couldn’t risk taking a shot at him and would soon be outdistanced. The probable killer of the garage attendant, and he was getting away.

  Can’t let that happen!

  Beam had seconds to act or he’d lose the angle, and his bullet might ricochet out onto the sidewalk.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot!”

  Should it be a warning shot at the concrete ceiling? Or should he try to bring down the fleeing man before it was too late? One of those split second decisions you read and hear about in the media.

  “Stop, damn it!”

  The suspect lifted his knees higher, trying to draw more speed from his adrenaline-jacked body.

  Beam stopped, spread his feet wide, and raised the revolver and held it before him in his right hand, bracing with his left.

  Decision time.

  But not for Beam.

  The fleeing man suddenly skidded to a halt, at the same time whirling and dropping to one knee. It was a graceful, dancer’s movement made possible by youth.

  He shot Beam.

  It was like getting whapped in the thigh with a hammer.

  Beam was on the hard concrete floor without knowing how he got there, fire pulsing in his right leg. He craned his neck and peered toward the garage exit and saw that the kid was getting away.

  Rubber screeched out on the street, and there was the dull sound of impact. A woman shouted something over and over that Beam couldn’t understand.

  He reached for his two-way. If the damned thing would work in the garage, he could get help, maybe nail the bastard on the street.

  Then weakness came with the pain.

  Then darkness.

  Beam thought, Lani…

  2

  “What’s it been, bro?” Cassandra Beam asked. “A week?”

  “Nine days,” Beam said. That was how long since he’d been released from the hospital into a bright spring day. His right leg still ached and wasn’t as strong as his left. He’d lost twenty pounds while laid up, and his clothes hung on him as if they were somebody else’s.

  He was wearing a pale gray shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and folded neatly halfway up his forearms. His face was so gaunt as to be almost vulpine, with blue eyes that could charm or cut steel, and an intensely curious, slightly lopsided expression due to a missing right earlobe that had been bitten off in a saloon fight his rookie year as a cop. Beam looked like a guy who’d been dragged bumping and thumping through life, resisting every inch.

  The bullet fired in the parking garage had done only minimal damage to the bone, so he’d be able to walk soon without a cane. He was having lunch at Fostoria’s, on Central Park West, with his sister, Cassie, who was a psychiatrist with her office nearby. A long way from downtown, where they’d spent their childhood.

  The restaurant’s tables were small and round, with lacy white tablecloths, and the place was filled with brilliant winter sunlight. They were waiting for their server to bring them their orders of croissant sandwiches. It looked to Beam as if everyone in the restaurant was eating something on a croissant.

  Their table was by the window, and both had been watching people stream past out on the sidewalk. It was easier than talking.

  “You were thinking about retiring anyway,” Cassie said.

  She hadn’t done well in the gene pool. Unlike Beam, who was tall and rawboned, his older sister was short and blocky, in a sturdy way that dieting would never change. Her eyes were darker than his, too, staring at Beam now from beneath black bangs.

  “Thinking about and doing are two different things,” Beam said.

  Cassie gave him her gap-toothed smile. “You’re telling me that?”

  Beam had to smile back. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget what you do for a living.”

  “Getting shot, so soon after Lani, it was like a one-two punch.”

  “Is that psychoanalyst talk?” Beam asked. “A one-two punch?”

  Cassie took a sip of lime-flavored bottled water. “I’m not talking like an analyst now. More like a sister. Not that I don’t think analysis wouldn’t help you, but it should be done by another professional.”

  “I’ll get through it,” Beam said. His wife of twenty-three years, Lani, had for reasons unknown leaped from the high balcony of her friend and business partner’s apartment, where she was attending a cocktail party and charity fund raiser. It was five months later when Beam had been surprised by the suspect in the parking garage, while investigating the robbery shooting of the attendant, and was shot in the leg. The shooter, who turned out to be twenty-two years old, with an impressive record of armed assault and burglary, had been struck and killed by a car in the street outside the garage exit. Beam’s final collar.

  Not the best way to end the career of legendary New York homicide detective Artemis Beam, the cop who’d made his reputation understanding and hunting down serial killers. He’d been kicked up to the rank of captain and unceremoniously pensioned off. Since then he’d had to use pills to help him sleep, and awake he wandered alone and uneasy in the shifting world of the retired.

  Cassie was the first to tell him he’d never been one to adjust easily. She had a seer’s gift for spotting trouble even before it appeared on the horizon, and she’d known Beam’s retirement was going to be hell. As usual, she was right.

  Beam still grieved for Lani.

  Beam’s leg still hurt.

  Beam still missed the hunt.

  Here came the croissants.

  3

  It felt like butter.

  Lois Banner stood in front of the bolt of rich fabric and again ran her fingertips over it along the barely discernible warp of the material that was so incredibly soft despite its high wool content. It was dark gray, with a faint black splatter pattern, and would be perfect for some of the fall lines she’d seen at last week’s fashion show. Evening in Paris was the name the supplier had affixed to the material, and Lois thought they had it right. That was what the soft fabric reminded her of, her earlier, not-so-innocent years in the city that lent itself to sin.

  Lois herself was a former fashion model, almost forty now, and twenty pounds beyond her working weight. But she would still look good in some of the clothes due in the shops next season. In fact, she would look fantastic. Her features were still sharp, her eyes a brilliant blue, and her dark hair was skinned back to emphasize prominent cheekbones that looked like swept back airplane wings. As a model she’d been considered exotic. She was still that, if she dressed for it. Which happened less and less often.

  Lois preferred to spend time tracking fashions and buying the wonderful fabrics that her customers, gained from longtime business contacts, would purchase wholesale to make the most of what was new. And always, in the world of fashion, something—the most important thing—was new.

  The main office of Fabrics by Lois was on Seventh Avenue. This fabric warehouse and showroom was on West Forty-sixth Street, in the loft of a building that housed offices below. Though most of the bolts of fabric were stored vertically to maximize space, at five feet, ten inches, Lois was the tallest thing in the unbroken area with its vast plank floor. It was evening and dark outside. The Forty-sixth Street end of the loft was shadowed
but for dappled light that filtered through unwashed windows and skylights. The rest of the area was dimly illuminated by original brass fixtures suspended on chains from the high ceiling. Lois would not abide florescent lighting—the cruel tricks it played on colors!

  She was dressed simply and casually in black slacks and blouse this evening, and wore white Nikes, no socks. On Lois, the outfit looked even more expensive than it was.

  A breeze played across her bare ankles, as if a door had opened. But the loft was accessible by elevator. The only door was to the fire stairs that ran down the south side of the building.

  The subtle change of temperature jogged Lois’ memory. She glanced at her Patek Philippe watch, a gift from a long-ago admirer. Almost eight o’clock, and she was due to meet a buyer for drinks at nine. She barely had time to get to her apartment, shower, and change clothes.

  Time to lock up. But she couldn’t resist running her fingertips one more time over Evening in Paris.

  A slight noise made her glance to her left.

  She gave a sharp intake of breath. A shadowy figure stood silently among the tall fabric bolts. Almost like someone standing watching in a corn field. The bucolic image surprised Lois and, through her fear, unpleasantly reminded her of her childhood in Ohio. She belonged here! In New York or Paris or Berlin. She was no longer the early version, the early Lois Banion, who was no more.

  “Who—” she began in a strangled voice.

  The figure, a man, stepped forward, and she could see in his right hand a bulky object which she recognized as a gun with a silencer attached to its barrel.

  Lois forced herself to speak. “If you want money, there isn’t any here.”

  The man said something she didn’t understand.

  “What?”

  “Justice,” he said softly, and raised the gun as if to point it at her like an accusing finger.

  “My God,” she said in a small girl’s voice, “what have I done?” What haven’t I done?

  Oh, Jesus, what haven’t I done?

  The gun jumped in the man’s hand, and she felt a fire and then a numbness in her chest, and she was on the floor. Terrified, she tried to get up and found herself entangled in fabric. Tried to get up. Tried not to die. Tried to get up.

  The light was fading. She was staring up at one of the dangling brass fixtures, and it was like a distant star, moving even farther away.