The Night Caller (20 page)

Billard called Coop at four in the morning. “You awake, pardner?”

It was twenty years ago. They’d just made detective and were huddled up on a case where a guy in Brooklyn had chopped off—

It was now. Coop was awake and Billard was middle-aged and going to fat and Coop was middle-aged and might not get much older.

“Christ!” Coop said into the phone. “You took me back more than twenty years.”

“You were asleep, dreaming.” But something in Billard’s voice made Coop believe he’d understood, had maybe felt the same way. “You were asleep.”

“I usually am at four in the morning.”

“Then you got a good prostate. Why I’m calling is we got a homicide on the edge of Central Park near the West Eighty-sixth Street entrance. Looks like your guy.”

“Did he leave St. Augustine behind?”

“Sure did. On the ground this time. Deliberately, or he mighta dropped it for some reason and was in too big a hurry to stop and pick it up.”

Coop was already up and sitting on the edge of the bed. “You gonna be there?”

“Yeah, but not before you. The whip’s name is Porter, lieutenant out of the Two-Oh. I already got word to him about you.”

Billard was talking as if it were twenty years ago. Coop understood: Porter was the officer in charge, out of the 20th Precinct. “Thanks, Art.”

“Not for nothing, I hope.”

She was a brunette with long hair, lying on a park bench as if she were asleep. Porter led Coop to her, raising the tape so he could enter the frozen zone. Several people were moving carefully around her, bent over her. Coop didn’t move too close. Professional courtesy. Also, the moon was bright in the cold sky and he had a clear view.

Porter, a hefty, swarthy man who badly needed a shave, had a lieutenant’s badge pinned to his coat lapel. He watched as Coop stood staring at the woman.

“Too early for a time of death, I guess,” Coop said.

“Yeah, but it’s been at least a couple of hours, probably more.”

Coop was disappointed. The woman had long hair, but it was mussed and not in the usual fanned pattern around her head. And now that he was closer he saw that her eyes hadn’t been closed. She appeared to have been dumped on the bench rather than laid out carefully and lovingly.

Lieutenant Porter jammed his hands in his coat pockets. “Billard said the guy you’re looking for varies his MO.”

“Maybe not this much, Lou. How’d she make the trip?” Amazing. Only a few minutes at a New York crime scene and Coop was talking as if he were still in the Job. Billard was contagious.

“Big knife or hatchet or something to the nape of her neck. ME said it killed her instantly, like she was beheaded. Nerve ganglia or something.”

Marlee Clark.

“Maybe he is my guy,” Coop said. Playing dumb about the plastic saint. Porter wouldn’t trust a civilian with the information and didn’t know if Coop was tuned in to it.

“Something might have scared him off,” Porter ventured.

“Something might have. Anything else on him? Or around the victim? Any footprints?”

“Nothing like that,” Porter said. “All I can tell you is she was a reader. Or somebody was.”

Coop looked at him. “Reader?”

“This was found under the bench, like she dropped it.”

Carefully, by the page edges so as not to disturb any fingerprints, Porter held out a paperback novel.

Even in the dimness Coop saw the outline of a cat on the glossy cover, and the name of the author:
Deni Green.

“Mean anything to you?” Porter asked, seeing the expression on Coop’s face.

Coop told him that it did and told him how.

“Probably just coincidence,” Porter said. “We got the victim’s name from her purse. Theresa Dravic. And her address. Lives with a flight attendant—female—who’s out of town working on the other side of the country. I already got the word the apartment’s full of mysteries, lots of them by this author. We even found a Barnes and Noble membership card of some sort in her wallet.”

“Kinda dark here to be reading,” Coop said, “unless she sat down a long time before she died.”

“Way it looks, the book fell out of her purse. Something else mighta, too. Some kind of plastic religious figure. A saint or prophet, maybe. But it was found a little way from the bench, like maybe somebody else dropped it there. Might not be any connection with the crime. Doesn’t look like it’s been out in the weather long, though.”

Coop dummied up about the saint. “Anything taken from her purse?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Wallet and money seem intact. And there’s a pretty good Seiko watch on her wrist. No robbery here, unless the doer was scared away.” Porter scratched his sandpaper jaw hard enough that it sounded like a rasp. “Coincidence,” he said again, but not with much conviction.

Both men had been in the Job for a long time and thought the same way about coincidence.

A plainclothes cop approached, glancing at Coop, then focusing his attention on Lieutenant Porter. “Lou, we got a call for you in the radio car.” Coop knew it would be on the detectives’ special band.

“Go ahead,” he told Porter. “And thanks.”

“You got any more questions, you give me a call,” Porter said.

Coop said that he would, but he saw a Channel One van turning into the entrance to the park and figured there’d be a lot of information about Theresa Dravic in tomorrow’s news.

As he was walking toward the street, an unmarked arrived and Billard’s bulky form emerged from it. Coop decided to hang around a while longer, maybe go someplace with Billard and get coffee. They could pretend some more that it was twenty years ago.

Darby’s Deli served breakfast.

Cara had agreed to meet Coop there an hour before she had to go in to work at Mercantile Mutual. That was easy enough for him, since he’d been awake since four o’clock.

The deli was warm and welcoming with the scents of baking and fresh coffee. Most of the business was counter trade or carryout, the customers people who, like Cara, worked in the neighborhood.

Coop looked around and saw Cara already seated in the window booth she favored because she could be seen from the street. Her gray coat was folded on the bench seat next to her, and she was wearing dark slacks and a gray sweater. Her red hair was in a long braid down her back. She was drinking coffee from a large brown mug that was steaming as if it had just been topped off.

After confirming that she wanted breakfast, Coop got two toasted bagels from the counter, a coffee, black, for himself, and went to sit with her.

He liked the way she smiled at him, the way they were comfortable with each other as if they were old friends from a lost world. Coop wondered again, should you fall for someone if you might have limited time left on earth? Did anyone have a choice? And who didn’t have limited time left on earth?

“Thinking deep thoughts?” Cara asked over the rim of her coffee mug.

“The deepest. Have you had any luck acting out Ann’s daily life?”

“I don’t know. Maybe whoever killed her didn’t approach her right away.”

“I can almost guarantee that. Most serial killers stalk their victims before striking. It prolongs the sick fun.”

“You really are sure Ann was the victim of a serial killer.”

“I’m sure, but I can’t prove it.”

She gave him her smile. “Cop’s instincts?”

“That, and the way evidence is accumulating.”

She placed the steaming mug before her, the smile gone. “Do you have some new piece of evidence?”

“A dead woman in the park,” he said, and told her about Theresa Dravic.

“That explains the bags under your eyes,” she said. “The reason why you look like you’ve already been up for hours is that you have. Can we be sure this woman was the victim of the same killer?”

“Who’s sure of anything? But I think the odds favor it.”

She nodded and began spreading cream cheese on her bagel. A messy business. After laying the knife on her plate edge, she licked two of her fingers. “Since she died after we made this date, that can’t be why we’re here. Is there other new evidence?”

“No. If I led you to believe that, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. If we’re here only because you wanted to see me, good.” She was making it tough for him.

“It isn’t only that. I was worried about you. And after seeing Theresa Dravic, I’m even more worried. I think I have a better idea than you do of what you might be taunting by walking around where Ann walked, wearing similar clothes, looking too much like her.”

“I thought we’d already established that you disapproved.”

“Yeah, we did. I’m not going to ask you to stop permanently.”

“Oh?”

“Just for a few days.”

She studied him, obviously trying to look into his mind. He was thinking how beautiful she was with her hair red. How he’d love to—

Idiot!
He interrupted his own thoughts. Middle-aged, doomed idiot!

But she didn’t seem to see him that way. She appeared wary. “Why would you want me to stop for a while? What difference could it—” Realization widened her eyes. “Have you been following me, Coop?”

He couldn’t answer right away, though he knew immediately that he wasn’t going to lie to her.

“Coop?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “I told you, you worry me.”

“And you want to protect me.”

“Of course I do. You’re—”

“What?”

“You don’t seem to know it, but you need protection.”

She took a bite of bagel, dabbed her lips with her napkin to remove nonexistent errant cream cheese, then sat thoughtfully, chewing. After chasing down the bagel with a sip of coffee, she said, “While you’ve been following me, have you noticed anyone?”

He knew what she meant—might he have noticed a man who had possibly killed her sister and would try to kill her? “I don’t think so,” he said. “But that’s the point. Maybe he won’t be so noticeable at first. Serial killers tend not to look like serial killers.”

“But you have a trained eye.”

“More trained than yours. That’s why I’ve been shadowing you. To see who else might be doing the same thing.”

“You’re incredibly deft at your work,” she said with a faint smile. “I didn’t notice you.”

“And you might not notice him until it’s too late. That’s why I’m asking you not to roam the sidewalks and shops, or ride the subway and bus that Ann rode. Only for a few days.”

“Is this because you’re taking a trip and can’t be my protector?”

He nodded. “Driving to Haverton, where Bette lived and worked. I want to talk again to some of the people who knew her.”

“And you’d be distracted if you were worrying about me.”

“Exactly right.”

She gazed fixedly at him; then something in her seemed to relax. “I’ll stay off the subway and bus.”

“And the shops and restaurants?”

“I need to eat lunch, Coop. And I’m going to assume you don’t mind if I keep working and getting paid.”

He grinned, realizing he was being quite the authoritarian. He had no right. “Okay. Thank you.”

She touched the back of his hand and leaned slightly toward him. “It’s nice to be worried about.”

“I haven’t known the feeling in years.”

“Then get used to it,” she told him.

He suddenly wasn’t hungry. He felt terrific, but his appetite was gone. His appetite for food.

She read him easily. “I have to get up from here in a few minutes and go to work, Coop.”

“We could go to my place instead. Or yours,” someone else said. No, Coop realized it had been
his
voice! He wished he could reach out and snatch the words from the air before they got to her.

“The most I’d better take off work is this morning.”

He was having trouble breathing. “There’s a hotel near here.”

She smiled at him. “I take it you’ve had enough coffee.”

He kissed her before helping her off with her coat. And as soon as he felt the warm wedge of her tongue against his lips all doubt and awkwardness disappeared. Both their coats wound up tossed over the back of a chair. Their clothes were scattered on the floor.

In bed he started to speak but she kissed him again. Then she trailed her tongue down his chest, his stomach, used her mouth on him.

“Not yet,” she said, and was on top of him, lowering herself onto him. He gasped, admired her breasts as she loomed over him with her arms straight. He sucked each breast, massaging the nipple softly with his tongue. He was amazed by how all his reservations about any relationship had flown with his desire for her.

They were both perspiring now; the scent and taste of her made him want her all the more. She dropped her upper body down and began to move. He gripped her buttocks, for a few minutes feeling them flex and relax, then carefully, without hurting her, rolled her onto her back.

Coop had heard that the French referred to orgasm as “the little death.”

There in Room 276 of the Atherton Hotel, with the cold morning and everything else on the other side of the walls and window, he thought it was exactly the opposite.

Afterward they showered together, then leisurely got dressed. Neither wanted to leave the room. Both knew they must.

Cara kissed him on the lips, then put on her gray coat, wrapped the red muffler about her neck, and folded it over her throat. For an instant Coop thought about the man in the tan topcoat and voluminous muffler, but only on the edges of his mind.

“Don’t follow me to the bank,” she said. “It’s only a few blocks away. Stay here awhile if you feel like it. I’ll be okay.”

But he went downstairs with her, then stood with her outside the hotel as they buttoned their coats.

“Let me know when you’re back in the city,” she said.

“I will. I’ll call to make sure you’re all right.”

As they parted he held her close and kissed her there on the sidwalk, in front of the doorman. Not like him at all.

Where is this going?
he wondered.
Where in the hell is this going?

When Coop got back to his apartment the phone was ringing. He locked the door behind him, then crossed the living room and lifted the receiver, still thinking about Cara.

When he said hello, the voice on the other end of the connection said, “Coop, it’s Alicia. I’m calling to ask a favor of you.”

He had a pretty good idea what it would be.