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Night Spider by John Lutz
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(Mass Market Paperback)
- Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
- Pub. Date: November 2003
- ISBN-13: 9780786015160
- Sales Rank: 29,751
- 415pp
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- ISBN:
0786015160
- ISBN-13: 9780786015160
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 415pp
- Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
- Pub. Date: November 2003
- Sales Rank: 29,751
Read a Sample Chapter
THE NIGHT SPIDER
By John Lutz
PINNACLE BOOKS
Copyright © 2003
John Lutz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7860-1516-0
Chapter One
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 take-out
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 fiat 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 bed-spread
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!
Chapter Two
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 Bickerstaff,
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.
Continues...
Excerpted from THE NIGHT SPIDER
by John Lutz
Copyright © 2003 by John Lutz.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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