Night Victims

54

PART ONE

1

New York, 2003

Sally Bridge was exhausted.

Wisteria Chance was a premier bitch.

Her Beetle Davis was a totally unconvincing beetle.

Sally had cast aging Broadway star Wisteria in the planned production of the musical Bug Off. Bug had played to full houses for the past three months at smaller theaters throughout the Northeast. It was now scheduled to open at the Cort Theatre on West 48th Street in less than a month. Sally, who was Bridge’s Casting Call, had done what everyone agreed was a great job of casting some major Broadway players in the roles of various insects. This hadn’t been easy; ego sometimes stood in the way of accepting such roles. After all, no one had ever won a prestigious award for portraying an insect. This wasn’t exactly Shakespeare. Sally had often thought of suggesting they retitle the play McBug.

Most of the cast had overcome early reservations about their roles, especially when they found how delightful the material—an insect version of classic Hollywood—actually was. But Wisteria’s reservations had grown into tentativeness, then outright hostility. Sally cringed and laughed at the same time, remembering how the haughty Broadway doyenne had stood before the footlights during dress rehearsal, threatening to walk out on her contract and hurling insults at the director and Sally, her antennae vibrating furiously as she waved her legs and arms.

The hell with it, Sally thought, closing and locking her apartment door behind her. She’d eat leftover Chinese takeout from last night, settle down in front of CNN with a glass of white wine, and look in on some of the world’s real problems.

Sally was young to be so successful, only thirty-two, and attractive enough to cast herself in some of the leading roles that crossed her desk. But she’d learned early on that she wasn’t a real actress, didn’t have the fire and ruthlessness and pure commitment. This tall, blond beauty with a busty build and Helen Hunt features loved the business though. And she had a touch for casting and a line of bull for dealing with agents. She also had a genuine affection and empathy that helped persuade actors and actresses to accept the roles she offered.

Her apartment was a junior one bedroom, which meant it was an efficiency with a dividing wall. Though small, it was well furnished, on the thirtieth floor with a great view of Central Park, and the rent was reasonable. Tables, chairs, and lamps were antique and flea market eclectic, mostly chosen by a decorator friend. The soft leather sofa was from Jennifer Convertibles and could be made into a bed for guests. The framed theater posters and playbills on the walls were supplied by Sally, over the objections of her decorator.

The important thing was, Sally really liked the place. And she knew that was important, because she tended to get emotionally involved with where she lived the way other people did with their pets; it would be difficult for her to leave this comfortable corner of the world where she felt secure and could watch the seasons change in the park.

The warmed-up egg foo yung was still good. The muted sounds of traffic filtering up from the street were relaxing. There was nothing too disturbing on the news. The wine made her even sleepier, and she dozed off in the middle of an SUV commercial and woke up near midnight slouched in a corner of the sofa, her cheek lightly glued to the soft leather by dried saliva.

Yuck! she said aloud. She forced herself up off the sofa, used the remote to switch off the TV (another SUV commercial—or the same one), and lurched zombielike toward the bathroom.

She brushed her teeth, which woke her up somewhat, but decided to shower in the morning. It took her only a few minutes to undress, slip into her knee-length sleep shirt with the likeness of Marlene Dietrich on it, and switch off the lamp by the bed.

Her mattress was only six months old and soft yet supportive. Pure comfort… At least there was some reward for exhaustion. She listened to her long sigh drift out into darkness. A brief vision of an SUV, crawling like an intrepid insect up rough and rocky terrain toward a mountain plateau, and then Sally was asleep.

Not yet opening her eyes, she awoke slowly, becoming gradually aware that she couldn’t move. The dream she’d had was half remembered, movement soft and subtle about her body, around, beneath, so gentle…It was enough to disturb her sleep but not quite wake her.

Until now.

Sally was lying on her back in the dim bedroom, her arms at her sides. One palm was pressed flat to her hip, the other turned outward so that her arm was twisted and ached at the shoulder. She tried to move the arm that hurt, and it didn’t budge. What the hell? How did I get so twisted up in the sheet? The night was warm and there was no blanket or bedspread over the sheet. She should be able to at least goddamn move!

Her eyes were open to slits now, and she could barely lift her head from the pillow to squint and try to see her feet, which were pressed so tightly together that it hurt her ankles. Her calves, thighs, and knees were pressed just as firmly to each other. The area of taut white sheet she could see was wound about her so tightly that her breasts were compressed.

Still, half awake, she was more puzzled than afraid.

Then her heart leaped and began to pound. Movement! Off to the left! Something large and quick! Had she imagined it? She swiveled her head this way and that on the perspiration-soaked pillow, craning her neck so it ached.

But she saw nothing alarming other than the window next to the one that held the humming air conditioner. It was open!

I locked it! I know I locked it!

She wasn’t alone!

Then the mattress creaked and sagged and the form she’d glimpsed was looming above her, straddling her, lithe and angular, large and powerful and dim as the dusk. She tried to scream but her throat was paralyzed. Something was jammed in her mouth, then slapped across her lips, binding them shut. Pain flared in her right side, a deep stinging sensation almost like an insect bite. Bug off! she thought inanely, her mind jumping to the play and casting problems even as she tried to scream against the pressure in and against her mouth, even as she tried to move her arms, her fingers, anything!

Another stinging sensation in her side. Another. Each more painful than the last, and she could only lie mutely and endure, her eyes bulging, her entire body vibrating in agony inside its shroud. Sally knew she was going to die.

End this! she screamed silently. End it, please!

But she was helpless, staring up at the angular dark form above her, into unblinking black eyes that gazed into hers and searched patiently inside her for her pain, for her death. Not to find her death but to avoid it. For a while. Forever.

End it! Please!

2

NYPD Homicide Detective Paula Ramboquette pulled the unmarked car to the curb in front of the Layton Arms apartments on East 56th Street. She’d been in New York almost a year now, and this was the first case where she, and not her partner Roy Bickerstaff, was lead detective. This was because Bickerstaff was retiring and would be gone by the end of the month.

A large, potbellied man who favored cut-rate woolly suits and ineffective cheap deodorant even in summer, Bickerstaff sat still in his seat and waited for Paula before raising his bulk out of the car. He did have a certain sensibility she hadn’t noticed at first, and he was a good detective. And God knew Paula had seen worse.

The uniformed doorman had emerged from the lobby and was walking toward them, not realizing the unmarked was a police car like the rest of the cruisers angled in at the curb. He was a short, dark-haired man with an aggressive curved nose that reminded Paula of a beak, and he was waving them away. This space is for police, Paula heard him say through the glass. We have an emergency here today.

Straighten this bird out, Roy, Paula said, thinking Bicker-staff, in his rumpled brown suit, would be quite a contrast with the hawklike doorman in his royal blue outfit with gold epaulets. While the wheezing Bickerstaff opened the car door and squeezed out, she glanced over her shoulder for on-coming traffic, then climbed out on the driver’s side.

Despite being sartorially outranked, Bickerstaff had been persuasive. By the time Paula had gotten around the car, the doorman was holding one of the glass front doors open for them. Ms. Bridge is on thirty, he said politely, as if she were expecting them. Which Paula knew was impossible because Ms. Bridge was dead.

Paula and Bickerstaff crossed a tile lobby with a square blue area rug and gray leather furniture. Everything looked new and unsat on or unwalked on. Back In New Orleans, Paula had worked the Garden District and was more used to decaying elegance than this kind of contemporary tidiness.

They zipped up to thirty in a polished steel, hexagonal elevator that reflected them so many times it made Paula feel as if she were standing in a crowd. Not much high-speed elevatoring in the Garden District, either.

It was easy enough to find Sally Bridge’s apartment on the thirtieth floor. Hers was the one with the door open and the blue uniforms lounging nearby in the hall.

Ms. Bridge still at home? Bickerstaff asked, still caught in the doorman’s mood of civility.

You mean have they removed the body? one of the uniforms asked. Then answered his own question. No, she’s still at your disposal.

Bickerstaff gave the man a glance and waited like a gentleman for Paula to enter before him. Old school.

And it was Paula who led the way past the techs dusting for prints and into the bedroom where the body lay. As they entered the room, she noticed that the door frame near the latch was splintered. The door had been forced.

The assistant ME was still there, a seedy little guy even more rumpled than Bickerstaff. Paula had seen him around and remembered him because his name was actually Harry Potter. And he looked like Harry Potter, grown up and gone to…well, pot. Put on a little weight, lost most of his hair, wore a different style of glasses. Still had the calm, intelligent look, though.

Paula had pinned her shield on her lapel in the lobby, and now identified herself and Bickerstaff.

Potter straightened up from the body on the bed and stared at her. What kinda accent is that?

Cajun, Paula said. Is this Ms. Bridge?

Potter nodded. The late. She departed this world sometime last night, past midnight.

We all want to die in bed, Bickerstaff said.

Not like that.

Sex crime, Bickerstaff said, as they all stared at the dead woman on the bed. She still had on a short nightgown, though it had worked up over her breasts, and the bed was stripped down to the mattress pad. Bloodied white sheets were in a pile at the foot of the bed. Bickerstaff bent over the stained linen. The sheets were stabbed lots of times like she was.

Over three dozen times, actually, Potter said. At least that’s what we’ve found so far. And she doesn’t appear to have been sexually violated. Though we’ll have to check more closely for semen.

There’s different kinds of sex, Bickerstaff said.

Paula took a closer look at Sally Bridge. She’d been an attractive blond woman in her thirties. This was evident even though there was a rectangle of silver duct tape over her mouth and her features were contorted in horror. A well-built woman. Probably men had thought her sexy in a blowzy way. Her almost nude body was smeared with crusting blood, but something other than the obvious didn’t look right.

Stabbed all those times, Paula said, there should be even more blood.

Potter nodded approvingly at her. There was plenty of blood. Most of it was stemmed by and then absorbed by the sheets. I had to unwind them to get to the body.

Unwind?

Yeah. She was wrapped tight like she was in some kind of shroud. Sheets are full of holes, too, like your partner says. She was wrapped alive, tape put over her mouth, then she was stabbed repeatedly with a narrow, sharp instrument. Few of the wounds are fatal. I’d say she bled to death, and it took her a long time.

Different kinds of sex, Bickerstaff repeated.

The killer wrapped her up alive? Paula asked.

Wrapped her tight as a tick.

Was she drugged?

We’ll find that out later.

Paula moved closer to the body and took it all in: the blood smears, the pale flesh, the narrow slits made by knife thrusts, the eyes like dull marbles that barely reflected light, that seemed to draw light in and make it darkness. Sally Bridge’s arms were still at her sides, her legs pressed tightly together. The way Potter had unrolled her. Never in her life had she dreamed strangers would look at her this way.

So what are those angular marks on her flesh? Paula asked.

Creases. That’s how tightly she was wrapped.

Bickerstaff said nothing, standing and watching with his arms crossed while Paula studied the bloodied mattress pad, still neatly held at the corners by elastic. If there’d been much of a struggle on the bed, the pad would have been pulled loose.

Odd she didn’t put up a fight, Bickerstaff said. Looks like the killer kicked open the bedroom door or slammed his shoulder against it. You’d think the noise would have woke her up and— He was staring at something on the floor.

I wondered when you were going to notice, said Harry Potter.

Paula walked over to look where Bickerstaff was staring. There was a faint and partial bloody footprint on the carpet. The surprising thing about it was it appeared to be the back three-fourths or so of a bare foot.

Hard even to figure the size, Bickerstaff said, but it’s a right foot and almost surely a man’s.

Maybe he stripped nude before the murder so he wouldn’t get blood on his clothes, Paula said. We need to Luminol this place, try to bring more of the footprint out. Then check the tub or shower stall drain, see if the killer cleaned up before putting his clothes back on.

The way she’s wrapped up tight as a tamale, said Harry Potter, her killer probably would have gotten little if any blood on him. You can see near the footprint that there’s blood where some of it soaked through the sheets and ran down to the floor. But that’s the only blood I saw on the carpet.

More might show up under the lights, Paula told him.

Have you talked to the uniforms who took the call? Potter asked.

Not yet, Bickerstaff said.

One of them forced open the door. The super was supposed to repair a leaky faucet in the bathroom. He got no answer when he knocked, so he let himself in and started to work. Bathroom backs up to this room. When he wanted to see if there was an access panel in here to get to the plumbing, he found the door locked. Knocked and got no answer. Thought not much of it till the phone rang and Sally Bridge didn’t pick up. Super figured she might be in the bedroom and need some kinda help, so he pounded on the door, still got no answer, and called the cops. He’s got keys to the hall doors, but not the inside doors, so they had to break in here.

You been playing detective? Paula asked the little ME.

I got eyes and ears.

Paula glanced at Bickerstaff.

I’ll go talk to the super, he said, and lumbered out of the room.

Crocker’s his name, Potter said.

Crocker, Bickerstaff repeated without glancing back. Like Betty Crocker.

The ME stared at Paula.

He does that all the time, she said, to help his memory. She then added, He’s about to retire, knowing that probably had nothing to do with Bickerstaff’s memory method.

Mmph, was all Harry Potter said, nodding.

Paula went to the window where long sheer drapes were dancing rhythmically in the summer breeze. In the room’s other window an air conditioner was humming away. Who’d open one window on a hot night, then switch on an air conditioner in another?

Was this window open? she asked.

That’s just how I found it, Potter said.

Keeping her hands away from the brass handle, Paula gripped the wooden frame and lowered the window until it was almost closed. It worked smoothly and silently.

She was about to turn away when she noticed through the inner glass that a small crescent of glass had been neatly cut from the bottom of the top window. It was centered precisely over where the lock would be if the window were closed and secure.

I’ll be damned, Potter said, looking where she was staring. The killer got in through the window.

And out, Paula said, seeing as the door was locked and had to be forced by the cop who got the call. Unless the killer had a key and locked the bedroom door on the way out.

If he had a key, Potter said, he probably wouldn’t have come in through the window. And anyway, he’d have no reason to lock the bedroom door behind him when he left.

"You oughta be a detective."

So I’ve been told, Potter said. But not often.

Two white-uniformed men appeared in the doorway. EMT had arrived to remove the body. The paramedics were both hefty guys with black curly hair, and could have been brothers.

Okay to take that now? one of them asked, motioning toward the dead woman.

If she says so, Potter said, pointing to Paula.

Police photographer been here? Paula asked.

Potter nodded. Left just before you arrived.

She’s yours, Paula told the paramedics.

What kinda accent is that? one of them asked, as they bent to their task.

Cajun.

Alabama?

Louisiana.

Cajuns make great music, Harry Potter said.

Jumbalya, said the paramedic.

That’s food, said the other.

A song, too, Potter said. He began to sing. It didn’t sound like singing.

Yuck, the paramedic said, working his gloved hand beneath the butchered body. Crawfish pie.

Harry Potter packed his instruments into his bag and said good-bye. Paula was glad he was finished singing.

As Sally Bridge was leaving her bedroom, Bickerstaff returned.

Got the officers’ story, he said. And Crocker the super’s. And the doorman said nobody suspicious entered or left the building all evening.

Our killer came in through the window, Paula said.

Bickerstaff raised his bushy brows. No shit?

Paula walked with him to the window and opened it wider, still careful not to touch the glass. They both looked down. Paula got dizzy up high and had to back away a few steps.

Hell of a climb, Bickerstaff said.

But the street’s pretty deserted after midnight, and once the killer got a few stories up he’d be in darkness and nobody’d notice him.

But it’s damn near a sheer brick wall. How’d he climb it?

Maybe pulled himself up on some kind of line, Paula said. She examined the windowsill for marks where a grappling hook might have been attached. The sill was unmarked, and nothing else in the room seemed to have been disturbed other than Sally Bridge.

The super said she lived alone, Bickerstaff said.

I gathered.

She was a casting director. Even did some work on Broadway.

Really? She have a boyfriend?

She was between them, according to the super and the doorman. They both said she was always working and didn’t have much opportunity for romance. She used to joke about it, how she needed more time to meet interesting men.

She found time last night.

And she isn’t joking, Bickerstaff said. Or even slightly interested. He nodded toward the bloody sheets. Maybe because she’s on the rag.

Police humor, Paula thought. She could live without it.

3

Retired NYPD Homicide Captain Thomas Horn didn’t have a hell of a lot more to do these days than eat toasted corn muffins, which was what he was waiting to do on a warm, gray Monday morning in the Home Away Diner on Amsterdam on Manhattan’s West Side.

Horn, still in his early fifties, had retired early because of what happened to the World Trade Center. He’d been on his way to interrogate the CFO of Jagger and Schmidt Brokerage at the firm’s office on the forty-second floor of the north tower. The man had almost certainly defrauded the firm’s clients of several million dollars, some of which was part of the police pension fund.

Since it was such a clear, beautiful morning, Horn had decided to leave his car where he’d parked it after pulling to the curb. He went into a jewelry store to look at gold hoop earrings for his wife, Anne. She’d said she wanted such earrings, and there in the store’s window was a sign stating they were on sale. HALF OFF HOOPY-DOOP EARRINGS, the sign had declared in large red letters. GOLD AND SILVER.

On impulse Horn decided to buy a pair. On impulse he decided to walk the rest of the way to the World Trade Center.

Horn spent more time than he planned in the store because there were already three customers ahead of him. Then the earrings he wanted weren’t on display and the jeweler had to go into a back room and locate them. These little things added up, changing his world.

Though he was in the store less than an hour, a lot had happened during that time. The earrings had saved his life.

After leaving the store slightly before ten o’clock, earrings in his suitcoat pocket, he’d strolled about a block when he saw several people pass him going the other way and knew from their faces and the way they were walking that something was wrong. He hadn’t suspected it was at the World Trade Center, but he picked up his pace.

From conversation overheard along the way, he learned that a plane had struck one of the towers. Now he began jogging in the opposite direction of those passing him, seeing something beyond fear on some of their faces. He saw terror and, in some cases, people staring blankly ahead under the anesthetic of shock. Faces and hands were cut, clothing was torn. What the hell? He wanted to get to the damaged building, urge people to stay in the area and not to panic. His mind went back to the time when, as a child, he’d heard about a plane striking the Empire State Building. A catastrophe but one that was manageable. As a cop he’d learned that most catastrophes could be managed.

Do yourself a favor and turn around, buddy, a heavyset man in a business suit told him without pausing as he passed. Both those towers are gonna fall.

Both those towers?

Horn had stopped and stood still, puzzled. He noticed the day had dimmed and looked up to see a dark pall hanging low over the tops of buildings. Burning jet fuel, no doubt, from the collision. It must be worse than he’d imagined. He began running again, toward the towers.

And heard a roar like a thousand jetliners coming in for a landing.

A cloud of smoke that was a solid wall rounded the corner at the end of the block and rolled and rushed toward him. Horn’s heart skipped a beat as he looked up to see that the top of the cloud had curled like an incoming wave and was above him. He was going to be engulfed by it!

Something smashed loudly into a nearby parked car. Debris began falling. A woman on the opposite sidewalk disappeared beneath a crashing mass of tangled wreckage. Instinctively Horn dropped and rolled toward another parked car, trying to get beneath it to shelter himself from what was raining down.

And remembered nothing else.

He’d awakened in a hospital bed with his shoulder aching and bandaged. Doctors told him he’d been struck by falling debris, and a steel reinforcing rod had speared his right shoulder. Rerod, construction workers called it. Rescue workers had to bend it to get Horn to fit into the ambulance so the six-foot-long rod could be removed at the hospital. He was sure he’d been able to get under the car, so they figured the rerod must have somehow been shoved in after him by the terrific impact of crashing steel and concrete.

Three weeks later he was an outpatient with an almost useless right arm, and scars suggesting he’d been shot through the shoulder and the bullet had exited out his back.

A month after that he was retired. Pensioned off.

Through grueling physical therapy he’d recovered most of the use of his right arm and hand, and a modicum of strength. There was no way to recover his work, his life in the NYPD.

The Job had been more than a job; it had been what he was about, who he was. But what Horn wasn’t about was self-pity. He knew now he’d have to become someone else. Trouble was, he couldn’t figure out who.

Corn muffins, Horn.

He looked up from his steaming coffee cup.

Marla, the waitress who usually served Horn on the mornings he came into the diner for breakfast, had placed a plate with two toasted muffins before him. She was fortyish, maybe older, slim, and attractive, even in her dowdy black-checked uniform that made her somber brown eyes look even darker. She didn’t wear much makeup and didn’t seem to care much about her mud-colored hair, which she wore pulled back in a ponytail.

Sorry, he said, I was daydreaming.

Want juice this morning?

No, this is fine.

You gonna tell me crime stories today?

No, I’m slacking off. I’m not some old fart living in the past.

She grinned. You hardly qualify for old fart status. She walked away, then came back with a coffeepot and topped off his cup. Even if you sometimes think so.

He glanced around. The breakfast crowd was gone and there were only a few other customers in the diner, down near the other end of the counter. Maybe he would talk with Marla. She made him feel better, that was for sure. Sometimes her incisive questions surprised him—her curiosity about the criminal mind and the mind of a cop, about serial killers, which had been Horn’s specialty when he was active.

But when he was about to call her back, the bell above the door tinkled as another customer entered. Marla would have work to do, and Horn didn’t want to pass the time of day with her anyway if the customer sat down within earshot.

Horn sipped his coffee as he turned and glanced to watch where whoever had entered would settle.

He was surprised to see heading toward his booth Assistant Chief of Police Roland Larkin.

Now you’re retired, Larkin said with a grin, I see you’re working on clogging your arteries. He shook his head. You were eating those toasted muffins when we were young and riding together in Queens.

Not like these, Horn said. These are toasted just right and are delicious.

And have soaked up all the grease and every flavor from the grill. Larkin extended his right hand palm down and Horn shook it with his left. Old friends.

Why don’t you sit down and have some of your own, Rollie?

Larkin slipped the button on his suitcoat and slid into the seat on the other side of the table. When the coat flapped open, Horn saw he wasn’t carrying a gun. Too important these days. Larkin looked good, Horn thought. Tall and lean, even if a little paunchy, his gray eyes slightly more faded, his hair grayer, his usually rouged-looking cheeks a little more florid. He was the kind of tough but compassionate Irishman who would have made a good priest and had made a good cop.

Marla came over with a menu, all waitress now, as if she’d never seen either man before.

Larkin handed the menu back and told her just coffee.

You come in here often? Horn asked, knowing Larkin lived across town.

First time. Just to talk to you.

How’d you find me?

I’m a cop. I followed the muffins.

Marla brought coffee, then left and began working behind the counter, not far away.

So how’s retirement? Larkin asked.

It hasn’t dulled my senses. Horn took a bite of toasted muffin, chewed, and swallowed. How come you looked me up, Rollie?

Stirring sugar into his coffee, Larkin leaned over the table and lowered his voice. Need your help, Horn. Something’s going on.

What something?

Last week a woman named Sally Bridge was found murdered in her apartment. She’d been wound up in her bedsheets and stabbed thirty-seven times.

Lot of stab wounds. Horn took another big bite of muffin.

Not many of them were fatal. The killer wanted to inflict maximum agony before she died.

Husband? Another bite of muffin, what was left of the top removed and buttered. Horn chased it down with some coffee.

Bridge was single. And we don’t have the killer.

Victim have a love life?

About what you’d expect. She was between rides.

Horn spread butter on the uneaten half of his muffin, watching it melt in. What is it about this murder, Rollie, other than the thirty-seven stab wounds?

The media haven’t tumbled to the fact yet, but it’s the third one like this in the last five months.

Ah! Horn rested the knife on his plate. Serial killer.

Uh-huh. Same guy for sure. He climbs the building and enters through the bedroom window. Then he winds the women up in their bedsheets like they’re wrapped in some kind of shroud. Does it so expertly it looks like they don’t even wake up all the way until he slaps a piece of duct tape over their mouths. Then he goes to work with the knife, all stab wounds, no slices, missing the vital organs. Victims finally give out from the pain, die of shock or blood loss.

Horn was staring into his coffee cup. You said he climbs the buildings?

Yeah. The women live on high floors, think they’re safe. But our boy’s a hell of a climber. Uses a glass cutter to get to the hardware if a window’s locked.

Victims the same type?

They’re between twenty-five and forty-six years old. Attractive, well built but maybe a little on the chunky side. All were single. A call girl, a computer programmer, and a casting director, in that order.

Sexual penetration?

Not unless you count the knife, all over the body. Narrow blade, about ten inches long, with a very sharp point.

Unusual killer, Horn said.

And the time between the second and third murders is less than between the first and second.

And scales buildings.

Must.

You’ve got a problem, Horn said.

To be honest, Larkin said, why I came here was to talk you into making it your problem.

Her case. Paula knew this one was going to be something of a test, with Bickerstaff headed for retirement in Minnesota where he was going to ice-fish. Jesus! Ice-fish! From what he’d told Paula, that meant sitting all day shivering in front of a hole in the ice trying to catch a fish instead of pneumonia. Paula had never had the patience for any kind of fishing.

She watched the unmarked she’d just climbed out of turn the corner at the end of her block and disappear, leaving a faint wisp of ghostlike exhaust smoke in its wake. Then she entered her apartment building, checked her mail—bills, ads, bills, coupons, bills—and rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor where her one-bedroom apartment was at the end of the hall.

Not a bad place, she thought, as she fitted her key to the dead bolt lock. Secondhand furnishings, framed museum prints, and an old tile bathroom with yellowed porcelain and pipes that clanged but otherwise was in pretty good shape. Kitchen from hell, though the owner was supposed to replace everything in it soon. Sure. More than one burner on the stove would work then.

Paula tensed and stood still. Something was wrong—the dead bolt was already unlocked.

She raised her right hand and eased the door open a few inches, nervously touching the butt of her 9mm handgun beneath her blazer.

You Ms. Rambo-cwet? asked a male voice.

Paula pushed the door open the rest of the way.

A portly man with wild gray hair and a dead cigar in the corner of his mouth stood solidly in the middle of her living room. He’d left footprints on the carpet and was wearing dirty white coveralls. A large box-end wrench was stuck through one of many cloth loops on his coveralls, dangling at his waist as if it might be drawn as a gun.

"Rambocet, Paula corrected. Like get only with a hard C instead of a G."

"If you say. I’m Ernie Flatt—regular F—of Flatt Contracting. The super let me in. I’m here workin’on the kitchen."

Really? Paula said, stepping all the way into the apartment and closing the door. And I was thinking of working on dinner in the kitchen. Heating water for tea to go with Thai takeout, anyway.

Ernie smiled around the stale stub of cigar that was stinking up the living room even though it wasn’t burning. Smoking the things had left his teeth a jagged jumble of yellow. Oh, I don’t think you’d wanna do that. I got the water off.

Could you turn it back on?

"Only if