Something else started climbing his right leg, ripping his trousers as it went.
Other creatures had come out of the wall duct. As blood ran down his forehead from his scalp wounds and clouded his vision, he realized that there were many pairs of silvery eyes in the room. Dozens of them.
This had to be a dream. A nightmare.
But the pain was real.
The ravenous intruders swarmed up his chest, up his back and onto his shoulders, all of them the size of rats but not rats, all of them clawing and biting. They were all over him, pulling him down. He went to his knees. He let go of the beast he was holding, and he pounded at the others with his fists.
One of them bit off part of his ear.
Wickedly pointed little teeth sank into his chin.
He heard himself mouthing the same pathetic pleas that he had heard from Ross Morrant. Then the darkness grew deeper and an eternal silence settled over him.
PART ONE
Wednesday, 7:53 A.M.-3:30 P.M.
Holy men tell us life is a mystery. They embrace that concept happily. But some mysteries bite and bark and come to get you in the dark.
—THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS
A rain of shadows, a storm, a squall! Daylight retreats; night swallows all. If good is bright, if evil is gloom, high evil walls the world entombs. Now comes the end, the drear, Darkfall.
—THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS
CHAPTER ONE
1
The next morning, the first thing Rebecca said to Jack Dawson was, “We have two stiffs.”
“Huh?”
“Two corpses.”
“I know what stiffs are,” he said.
“The call just came in.”
“Did you order two stiffs?”
“Be serious.”
“I didn’t order two stiffs.”
“Uniforms are already on the scene,” she said.
“Our shift doesn’t start for seven minutes.”
“You want me to say we won’t be going out there because it was thoughtless of them to die this early in the morning?”
“Isn’t there at least time for polite chit-chat?” he asked.
“No.”
“See, the way it should be ... you’re supposed to say, ‘Good morning, Detective Dawson.’ And then I say, ‘Good morning, Detective Chandler.’ Then you say, ‘How’re you this morning?’ And then I wink and say—”
She frowned. “It’s the same as the other two, Jack. Bloody and strange. Just like the one Sunday and the one yesterday. But this time it’s two men. Both with crime family connections from the sound of it.”
Standing in the grubby police squad room, half out of his heavy gray overcoat, a smile incompletely formed, Jack Dawson stared at her in disbelief. He wasn’t surprised that there had been another murder or two. He was a homicide detective; there was always another murder. Or two. He wasn’t even surprised that there was another strange murder; after all, this was New York City. What he couldn’t believe was her attitude, the way she was treating him—this morning of all mornings.
“Better put your coat back on,” she said.
“Rebecca—”
“They’re expecting us.”
“Rebecca, last night—”
“Another weird one,” she said, snatching up her purse from the top of a battered desk.
“Didn’t we-”
“We’ve sure got a sick one on our hands this time,” she said, heading for the door. “Really sick.”
“Rebecca—”
She stopped in the doorway and shook her head. “You know what I wish sometimes?”
He stared at her.
She said, “Sometimes I wish I’d married Tiny Taylor. Right now, I’d be up there in Connecticut, snug in my all-electric kitchen, having coffee and Danish, the kids off to school for the day, the twice-a-week maid taking care of the housework, looking forward to lunch at the country club with the girls...”
Why is she doing this to me? he wondered.
She noticed that he was still half out of his coat, and she said, “Didn’t you hear me, Jack? We’ve got a call to answer.”
“Yeah. I—”
“We’ve got two more stiffs.”
She left the squad room, which was colder and shabbier for her departure.
He sighed.
He shrugged back into his coat.
He followed her.
2
Jack felt gray and washed out, partly because Rebecca was being so strange, but also because the day itself was gray, and he was always sensitive to the weather. The sky was flat and hard and gray. Manhattan’s piles of stone, steel, and concrete were all gray and stark. The bare-limbed trees were ash-colored; they looked as if they had been severely scorched by a long-extinguished fire.
He got out of the unmarked sedan, half a block off Park Avenue, and a raw gust of wind hit him in the face. The December air had a faint tomb-dank smell. He jammed his hands into the deep pockets of his overcoat.
Rebecca Chandler got out of the driver’s side and slammed the door. Her long blond hair streamed behind her in the wind. Her coat was unbuttoned; it flapped around her legs. She didn’t seem bothered by the chill or by the omnipresent grayness that had settled like soot over the entire city.
Viking woman, Jack thought. Stoical. Resolute. And just look at that profile!
Hers was the noble, classic, feminine face that seafarers had once carved on the prows of their ships, ages ago, when such beauty was thought to have sufficient power to ward off the evils of the sea and the more vicious whims of fate.
Reluctantly, he took his eyes from Rebecca and looked at the three patrol cars that were angled in at the curb. On one of them, the red emergency beacons were flashing, the only spot of vivid color in this drab day.
Harry Ulbeck, a uniformed officer of Jack’s acquaintance, was standing on the steps in front of the handsome, Georgian-style, brick townhouse where the murders had occurred. He was wearing a dark blue regulation greatcoat, a woolen scarf, and gloves, but he was still shivering.
From the look on Harry’s face, Jack could see it wasn’t the cold weather bothering him. Harry Ulbeck was chilled by what he had seen inside the townhouse.
“Bad one?” Rebecca asked.
Harry nodded. “The worst, Lieutenant.”
He was only twenty-three or twenty-four, but at the moment he appeared years older; his face was drawn, pinched.
“Who’re the deceased?” Jack asked.
“Guy named Vincent Vastagliano and his bodyguard, Ross Morrant.”
Jack drew his shoulders up and tucked his head down as a vicious gust of wind blasted through the street. “Rich neighborhood,” he said.
“Wait till you see inside,” Harry said. “It’s like a Fifth Avenue antique shop in there.”
“Who found the bodies?” Rebecca asked.
“A woman named Shelly Parker. She’s a real looker. Vastagliano’s girlfriend, I think.”
“She here now?”
“Inside. But I doubt she’ll be much help. You’ll probably get more out of Nevetski and Blaine.”
Standing tall in the shifting wind, her coat still unbuttoned, Rebecca said, “Nevetski and Blaine? Who’re they?”
“Narcotics,” Harry said. “They were running a stakeout on this Vastagliano.”
“And he got killed right under their noses?” Rebecca asked.
“Better not put it quite like that when you talk to them,” Harry warned. “They’re touchy as hell about it. I mean, it wasn’t just the two of them. They were in charge of a six-man team, watching all the entrances to the house. Had the place sealed tight. But somehow somebody got in anyway, killed Vastagliano and his bodyguard, and got out again without being seen. Makes poor Nevetski and Blaine look like they were sleeping.”
Jack felt sorry for them.
Rebecca didn’t. She said, “Well, damnit, they won’t get any sympathy from me. It sounds as if they were screwing around.”
&nb
sp; “I don’t think so,” Harry Ulbeck said. “They were really shocked. They swear they had the house covered.”
“What else would you expect them to say?” Rebecca asked sourly.
“Always give a fellow officer the benefit of the doubt,” Jack admonished her.
“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Like hell. I don’t believe in blind loyalty. I don’t expect it; don’t give it. I’ve known good cops, more than a few, and if I know they’re good, I’ll do anything to help them. But I’ve also known some real jerks who couldn’t be trusted to put their pants on with the fly in front.”
Harry blinked at her.
She said, “I won’t be surprised if Nevetski and Blaine are two of those types, the ones who walk around with zippers up their butts.”
Jack sighed.
Harry stared at Rebecca, astonished.
A dark, unmarked van pulled to the curb. Three men got out, one with a camera case, the other two with small suitcases.
“Lab men’re here,” Harry said.
The new arrivals hurried along the sidewalk, toward the townhouse. Something about their sharp faces and squinted eyes made them seem like a trio of stilt-legged birds eagerly rushing toward a new piece of carrion.
Jack Dawson shivered.
The wind shook the day again. Along the street, the stark branches of the leafless trees rattled against one another. That sound brought to mind a Halloween-like image of animated skeletons engaged in a macabre dance.
3
The assistant medical examiner and two other men from the pathology lab were in the kitchen, where Ross Morrant, the bodyguard, was sprawled in a mess of blood, mayonnaise, mustard, and salami. He had been attacked and killed while preparing a midnight snack.
On the second floor of the townhouse, in the master bathroom, blood patterned every surface, decorated every corner: sprays of blood, streaks of it, smears and drops; bloody handprints on the walls and on the edge of the tub.
Jack and Rebecca stood at the doorway, peering in, touching nothing. Everything had to remain undisturbed until the lab men were finished.
Vincent Vastagliano, fully clothed, lay jammed between the tub and sink, his head resting against the base of the toilet. He had been a big man, somewhat flabby, with dark hair and bushy eyebrows. His slacks and shirt were blood-soaked. One eye had been torn from its socket. The other was open wide, staring sightlessly. One hand was clenched; the other was open, relaxed. His face, neck, and hands were marked by dozens of small wounds. His clothes had been ripped in at least fifty or sixty places, and through those narrow rents in the fabric, other dark and bloody injuries could be seen.
“Worse than the other three,” Rebecca said.
“Much.”
This was the fourth hideously disfigured corpse they’d seen in the past four days. Rebecca was probably right: There was a psychopath on the loose.
But this wasn’t merely a crazed killer who slaughtered while in the grip of a psychotic rage or fugue. This lunatic was more formidable than that, for he seemed to be a psychopath with a purpose, perhaps even a holy crusade: All four of his victims had been in one way or another involved in the illegal drug trade.
Rumors were circulating to the effect that a gang war was getting underway, a dispute over territories, but Jack didn’t put much faith in that explanation. For one thing, the rumors were... strange. Besides, these didn’t look like gangland killings. They certainly weren’t the work of a professional assassin; there was nothing clean, efficient, or professional about them. They were savage killings, the product of a badly, darkly twisted personality.
Actually, Jack would have preferred tracking down an ordinary hit man. This was going to be tougher. Few criminals were as cunning, clever, bold, or difficult to catch as a maniac with a mission.
“The number of wounds fits the pattern,” Jack said.
“But they’re not the same kind of wounds we’ve seen before. Those were stabbings. These definitely aren’t punctures. They’re too ragged for that. So maybe this one isn’t by the same hand.”
“It is,” he said.
“Too soon to say.”
“It’s the same case,” he insisted.
“You sound so certain.
“I feel it.”
“Don’t get mystical on me like you did yesterday.”
“I never.”
“Oh, yes, you did.”
“We were only following up viable leads yesterday.”
“In a voodoo shop that sells goat’s blood and magic amulets.”
“So? It was still a viable lead,” he said.
They studied the corpse in silence.
Then Rebecca said, “It almost looks as if something bit him about a hundred times. He looks ... chewed.”
“Yeah. Something small,” he said.
“Rats?”
“This is really a nice neighborhood.”
“Yeah, sure, but it’s also just one big happy city, Jack. The good and the bad neighborhoods share the same streets, the same sewers, the same rats. It’s democracy in action.”
“If those’re rat bites, then the damned things came along and nibbled at him after he was already dead; they must’ve been drawn by the scent of blood. Rats are basically scavengers. They aren’t bold. They aren’t aggressive. People don’t get attacked by packs of rats in their own homes. You ever heard of such a thing?”
“No,” she admitted. “So the rats came along after he was dead, and they gnawed on him. But it was only rats. Don’t try to make it anything mystical.”
“Did I say anything?”
“You really bothered me yesterday.”
“We were only following viable leads.”
“Talking to a sorcerer,” she said disdainfully.
“The man wasn’t a sorcerer. He was—”
“Nuts. That’s what he was. Nuts. And you stood there listening for more than half an hour.”
Jack sighed.
“These are rat bites,” she said, “and they’ve disguised the real wounds. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy to learn the cause of death.”
“I’m already sure it’ll be like the others. A lot of small stab wounds under those bites.”
“You’re probably right,” she said.
Queasy, Jack turned away from the dead man.
Rebecca continued to look.
The bathroom door frame was splintered, and the lock on the door was broken.
As Jack examined the damage, he spoke to a beefy, ruddy-faced patrolman who was standing nearby. “You found the door like this?”
“No, no, Lieutenant. It was locked tight when we got here.”
Surprised, Jack looked up from the ruined door. “Say what?”
Rebecca turned to face the patrolman. “Locked?”
The officer said, “See, this Parker broad... uh, I mean, this Miss Parker... she had a key. She let herself into the house, called for Vastagliano, figured he was still sleeping, and came upstairs to wake him. She found the bathroom door locked, couldn’t get an answer, and got worried he might’ve had a heart attack. She looked under the door, saw his hand, sort of outstretched, and all that blood. She phoned it in to 911 right away. Me and Tony—my partner—were the first here, and we broke down the door in case the guy might still be alive, but one look told us he wasn’t. Then we found the other guy in the kitchen.”
“The bathroom door was locked from inside?” Jack asked.
The patrolman scratched his square, dimpled chin. “Well, sure. Sure, it was locked from inside. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had to break it down, would we? And see here? See the way it works? It’s what the locksmiths call a ‘privacy set.’ It can’t be locked from outside the bathroom.”
Rebecca scowled. “So the killer couldn’t possibly have locked it after he was finished with Vastagliano?”
“No,” Jack said, examining the broken lock more closely. “Looks like the victim locked himself in to avoid whoever was after him.”
“But he was
wasted anyway,” Rebecca said.
“Yeah.”
“In a locked room.”
“Yeah.”
“Where the biggest window is only a narrow slit.”
“Yeah.”
“Too narrow for the killer to escape that way.”
“Much too narrow.”
“So how was it done?”
“Damned if I know,” Jack said.
She scowled at him.
She said, “Don’t go mystical on me again.”
He said, “I never.”
“There’s an explanation.”
“I’m sure there is.”
“And we’ll find it.”
“I’m sure we will.”
“A logical explanation.”
“Of course.”
4
That morning, something bad happened to Penny Dawson when she went to school.
The Wellton School, a private institution, was in a large, converted, four-story brownstone on a clean, tree-lined street in a quite respectable neighborhood. The bottom floor had been remodeled to provide an acoustically perfect music room and a small gymnasium. The second floor was given over to classrooms for grades one through three, while grades four through six received their instruction on the third level. The business offices and records room were on the fourth floor.
As a sixth grader, Penny attended class on the third floor. It was there, in the bustling and somewhat overheated cloakroom, that the bad thing happened.
At that hour, shortly before the start of school, the cloakroom was filled with chattering kids struggling out of heavy coats and boots and galoshes. Although snow hadn’t been falling this morning, the weather forecast called for precipitation by mid-afternoon, and everyone was dressed accordingly.
Snow! The first snow of the year. Even though city kids didn’t have fields and country hills and woods in which to enjoy winter games, the first snow of the season was nevertheless a magic event. Anticipation of the storm put an edge on the usual morning excitement. There was much giggling, name-calling, teasing, talk about television shows and homework, joke-telling, riddle-making, exaggerations about just how much snow they were supposed to be in for, and whispered conspiracy, the rustle of coats being shed, the slap of books on benches, the clank and rattle of metal lunch-boxes.