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  Highest Praise for

  JOHN LUTZ

  “John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”

  —Harlan Coben

  “Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster of a tale.”

  —Jeffery Deaver

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

  —Ridley Pearson

  “John Lutz is 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

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

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Lutz is among the best.”

  —San Diego Union

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

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

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

  —Publishers Weekly

  Mister X

  “Mister X has everything: a dangerous killer, a pulse- pounding mystery, a shocking solution, and an ending that will resonate with the reader long after the final sentence is read.”

  —BookReporter.com

  “A page-turner to the nail-biting end . . . twisty, creepy whodunit.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  Urge to Kill

  “A solid and compelling winner . . . sharp characterization, compelling dialogue and graphic depictions of evil.... Lutz knows how to keep the pages turning.”

  —BookReporter.com

  Night Kills

  “Lutz’s skill will keep you glued to this thick thriller.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Superb suspense . . . the kind of book that makes you check to see if all the doors and windows are locked.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  In for the Kill

  “Brilliant . . . a very scary and suspenseful read.”

  —Booklist

  “Shamus and Edgar award–winner Lutz gives us further proof of his enormous talent.... An enthralling page-turner.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Chill of Night

  “Since Lutz can deliver a hard-boiled P.I. novel or a bloody thriller with equal ease, it’s not a surprise to find him applying his skills to a police procedural in Chill of Night. But the ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz is in rare form.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Lutz keeps the suspense high and populates his story with a collection of unique characters that resonate with the reader, making this one an ideal beach read.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A dazzling tour de force . . . compelling, absorbing.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “A great read! Lutz kept me in suspense right up to the end.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Fear the Night

  “A twisted cat-and-mouse game . . . a fast-moving crime thriller . . . Lutz skillfully brings to life the sniper’s various victims.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A tense, fast-moving novel, a plot-driven page-turner of the first order . . . a great read!”

  —Book Page

  Darker Than Night

  “Readers will believe that they just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl after reading this action-packed police procedural.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  Night Victims

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

  —Sun-Sentinel

  The Night Watcher

  “Compelling . . . a gritty psychological thriller . . . Lutz

  draws the reader deep into the killer’s troubled psyche.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ

  *Mister X

  * Urge to Kill

  *Night Kills

  *In for the Kill

  Chill of Night

  Fear the Night

  *Darker Than Night

  Night Victims

  The Night Watcher

  The Night Caller

  Final Seconds (with David August)

  The Ex

  Single White Female

  *featuring Frank Quinn

  Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and

  Pinnacle Books

  JOHN LUTZ

  SERIAL

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Highest Praise for - JOHN LUTZ

  ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PART 1

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  PART 2

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  PART 3

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  Copyright Page

  For Barbara

  As are they all

  PART 1

  I would I were alive again

  To kiss the fingers of the rain,

  To drink into my eyes the shine

  Of every slanting silver line . . .

  —EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, “Renascence”

  I hear a sudden cry of pain!

  There is a rabbit in a snare . . .

  —JAMES STEPHENS, “The Snare”

  1

  Millie Graff’s feet were sore. She was a hostess at Mingles, a new and popular restaurant on West Forty-fifth Street near Times Square, and hadn’t sat down for over five hours. After work, it was a three-block walk and a long concrete stairwell descent to a downtown subway platform. In the crowded subway, someone would probably step on her toes.

  She didn’t mind the work or the time at Mingles. Her paycheck was big enough that she’d soon be able to move out of her cramped Village apartment into something larger, maybe on the Upper West Side. Her job was secure, and there was still a chance she
could land a spot in an off-Broadway chorus line.

  Dance had been Millie’s first love. It was what had brought her to New York City from the small town her folks had moved to in New Jersey. Dance and dreams.

  She’d kept her weight down and was still built like a dancer: long-waisted, with small breasts, muscular legs, and an elegant turn of ankle that drew male glances.

  In fact, as she jogged up the concrete steps to the entrance to her building, holding level a white foam takeaway container from a deli she’d stopped at on her way home, a middle-aged man walking past gave her a lingering look and a hopeful smile.

  Not till you grow some hair on your head, Millie thought— rather cruelly, she realized with some regret, as she shouldered open the door to the vestibule.

  She saw no one on the way up in the elevator or in the hall. Pausing to dig her keys out of her purse, she realized again how weary she was. Just smiling for seven hours was enough to wear a person down.

  After keying the locks, she turned the tarnished brass doorknob and entered.

  She’d barely had time to register that something was wrong when the man who’d been waiting for her just inside the door stepped directly in front of her. It was almost as if he’d sprung up out of the floor.

  Millie gasped. The foam container of chicken wings and brown rice dropped to the carpet and made a mess.

  The man was so close that his face was out of focus and she couldn’t make out his features. She thought at first he was simply shirtless, but in a startled instant realized he was completely nude. She could smell his sweaty male scent. Feel his body heat. She was looking up at him at an angle that made her think he was about six feet tall.

  He smiled. That frightened the already-stunned Millie to the point where her throat constricted. She could hardly breathe.

  “You know me,” he said.

  But of course she didn’t. Not really.

  “I have a gift for you,” he told her, and she stood in shock as he slipped something—a necklace—over her head carefully, so as not to disturb her hairdo.

  She was aware of his right hand moving quickly on the lower periphery of her vision. Saw an instantaneous glint of silver. A blade! Something peculiar about it.

  He was thrilled by the confusion in her eyes. Her brain hadn’t yet caught up with what was happening.

  The blade would feel cold at first, before pain overwhelmed all other feeling.

  He was standing now supporting her, a length of her intestines draped in his left hand like a warm snake.

  He thought that was amazing. Incredible! The expression on Millie Graff’s face made it obvious that she, too, was amazed. Her eyes bulged with wonder. He felt the throb of his erection.

  Despite the seriousness of her injury, he knew she wasn’t yet dead. He lowered her gently to the floor, resting her on her back so she wouldn’t bleed so much. Carefully, he propped her head against the sofa so that when he used the ammonia fumes to jolt her back to consciousness, she’d be looking down again at what he’d done to her.

  She’d know it was only the beginning.

  2

  “Why would you invite anyone sane to see this?” Quinn asked.

  But he had a pretty good idea why.

  New York Police Commissioner Harley Renz wouldn’t be at a bloody crime scene like this unless he considered it vitally important. Renz was standing back, well away from the mess in the tiny living room. The air was fetid with the coppery stench of blood.

  The commissioner had put on even more weight in the year since Quinn had seen him. His conservative blue suit was stretched at the seams, rendering its expensive tailoring meaningless. His pink jowls ballooned over the collar of his white silk shirt. More and more, his appearance reflected exactly what he was, a corpulent and corrupt politician with the fleshy facial features of a bloodhound. He looked like a creature of rapacious appetite, and he was one.

  “Look at her,” he said, his red-rimmed eyes fleshy triangles of compassion. “Jesus, just look at her!”

  What he was demanding wasn’t easy. The woman lay on her back on the bloodstained carpet, with her legs and arms spread as if she’d given up and welcomed what was being done to her so the horror could end. Quinn knew it had taken a long time to end. It looked as if the tendons in the crooks of her arms and behind both knees had been severed so she couldn’t move other than to flop around, and her abdomen had been opened with some kind of knife. Small circular burns indicated a cigarette had been touched to her flesh. Shreds of flesh dangled from her corpse in a way that suggested it had been violated with a blade and then peeled from body and bone with a pair of pliers.

  Quinn figured the butchery for an amateur job, not done by anyone with special medical knowledge. The killer’s primary goal was to torture. He’d burned her and stripped away skin for no purpose other than pain.

  He must have done this while she was still alive.

  Pink bloodstained material, what appeared to be the victim’s panties, was wadded in her mouth. The elastic waistband of the panties was looped around her neck and tightly knotted at the base of her skull.

  Quinn looked over at Renz.

  “Nift says she was alive and what was done to her took hours,” Renz said. “The stomach was done first.” His voice broke slightly. Not like him.

  For the first time Quinn noticed the usually loquacious and obnoxious little medical examiner, Dr. Julius Nift. He was standing alongside a wall with a uniformed cop and a plainclothes detective with his badge dangling in its leather folder from a suit coat pocket. A crime scene tech wearing a white jumpsuit and gloves was over near the door. Everyone seemed to be standing as far away as possible from Renz.

  “That’s why there’s so much blood,” Nift said. “A stomach wound like that looks horrible, but the victim doesn’t necessarily die right away. Whatever her condition, he somehow managed to keep her heart pumping for quite a while. There’s a slight ammonia smell around her head, too. Could be he used ammonia like smelling salts, to jolt her around whenever she lost consciousness. So she’d feel everything.”

  Quinn could hear a slight hissing and realized it was his own breathing. Being here with the dead woman, where there had been so much agony, was like being in a catacomb with a saint. Then he understood why he’d made the comparison. Clutched tightly in the victim’s pale right hand like a rosary was a silver letter S on a thin chain that was wrapped around her neck. Careful not to step in any of the darkening puddles of blood, Quinn leaned forward to more closely examine the necklace.

  “Kinda crap you find in a Times Square souvenir shop.” Renz said.

  “That’s where it might have come from,” Quinn said. “It says ‘New York’ in tiny letters on the back.”

  “I noticed,” Renz said, probably lying.

  Quinn straightened up and looked around. The living room was tastefully decorated, with wicker furniture and a large wicker mask on one wall. On the opposite wall was a framed Degas ballerina print with “MoMA” printed on the matting. Not expensive furnishings, but not cheap. The apartment was cramped, and the block in this neighborhood in the East Village wasn’t a good one.

  Quinn wondered what made this a big case for Renz. Major money didn’t seem to be involved. This woman appeared to have lived well but modestly. Politics might be at play here. Maybe the victim had been somebody’s secret lover. Somebody important.

  No. If that were true Renz would be using it for leverage. He seemed emotionally involved here. It wouldn’t be because of the goriness of the crime. He’d seen plenty of gore in his long career. He—

  Nift was saying, “You wouldn’t know it to look at her now . . .”

  Careful, Quinn thought, knowing how Nift was prone to make salacious remarks about dead female victims.

  “. . . but she was kind of athletic, especially for her age,” Nift finished, avoiding an explosion from Renz.

  “I wanna show you something else,” Renz said, ignoring Nift. He led Quinn from the bedroom
and into a small bathroom.

  There was a claw-footed porcelain tub there, and a washbasin without a vanity attached to the wall. Everything was tiled either gray or blue. White towels stained red with diluted blood were jumbled on the floor and in the tub. The tub, as well as the washbasin, had red stains that looked like patterns of paint applied by a madman.

  “Bastard washed up in here after he killed her,” Renz said, “But more than that.” He pointed at the medicine chest mirror, on which someone, presumably the killer, had scrawled in blood the name Philip Wharkin.

  “The killer?” Quinn asked.

  “Maybe. The kind of asshole who’s daring us to catch him. It’s happened before. They’re out there.”

  “Don’t we know it.”

  Quinn moved closer to the mirror and leaned in to study the crudely printed red letters. “I don’t think he’s one of those. He was careful. This was written with a finger dabbed in blood, and it looks like he had on rubber gloves.” He backed away from the mirror. “If nothing else, this is a passion crime. Maybe the victim had a thing with Philip Wharkin and it went seriously bad.”

  “That’s how I figure it,” Renz said. “If she did, we’ll sure as hell find out.”

  Quinn could see Renz’s jaw muscles flex even through the flab. This one was important to him, all right. Maybe, for some reason, his ill-gained position as commissioner depended on it.

  They left the stifling bathroom and returned to the living room. The techs were still busy, having taken advantage of the extra space created when Renz and Quinn had left. Nift was down on one knee packing his black bag, finished with the body until it was transported to the morgue.