John Lutz

Chill Of Night


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24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 32

      Chapter 33

      Chapter 34

      Chapter 35

      Chapter 36

      Chapter 37

      Chapter 38

      Chapter 39

      Chapter 40

      Chapter 41

      Chapter 42

      Chapter 43

      Chapter 44

      Chapter 45

      Chapter 46

      Chapter 47

      Chapter 48

      Chapter 49

      Chapter 50

      Chapter 51

      Chapter 52

      Chapter 53

      Chapter 54

      Chapter 55

      Chapter 56

      Chapter 57

      Chapter 58

      Chapter 59

      Chapter 60

      Chapter 61

      Chapter 62

      Chapter 63

      Chapter 64

      Chapter 65

      Chapter 66

      Chapter 67

      Chapter 68

      Chapter 69

      Chapter 70

      Chapter 71

      Chapter 72

      Chapter 73

      1

      Things are never as they seem.

      The area was supposed to be clear, marked off with yellow NYPD crime scene tape, but Beam caught a glimpse of movement behind one of the parked cars and moved toward it.

      One step, that was all he’d taken, and the figure hiding behind the parked Mercedes was off and running toward the garage exit. Beam could see by the way he moved that he was young, teens or twenties. Beam had just turned fifty-three. Convert that difference in years to distance, and there was a lot of it to make up. Still, Beam was on the run and gradually gaining.

      The victim’s body had been removed, and the crime scene unit and other detectives had left. It was part of Beam’s method to hang around alone at a murder scene and take in what he could in the immense silence and stillness that followed violent death. Now and then, he discovered something.

      He’d sure as hell made a discovery this time—probably the shooter.

      His feet pounding the concrete floor, Beam yelled, “Halt! Police!”

      That seemed to speed up the guy, a skinny kid dressed in jeans, a dark watch cap, and a black jacket, flailing his arms, and with long legs that could eat up the ground. He was making for the vast rectangle of light that was the exit from the garage to freedom, where he’d be lost in the crowded New York streets. Beam couldn’t risk taking a shot at him and would soon be outdistanced. The probable killer of the garage attendant, and he was getting away.

      Can’t let that happen!

      Beam had seconds to act or he’d lose the angle, and his bullet might ricochet out onto the sidewalk.

      “Halt or I’ll shoot!”

      Should it be a warning shot at the concrete ceiling? Or should he try to bring down the fleeing man before it was too late? One of those split second decisions you read and hear about in the media.

      “Stop, damn it!”

      The suspect lifted his knees higher, trying to draw more speed from his adrenaline-jacked body.

      Beam stopped, spread his feet wide, and raised the revolver and held it before him in his right hand, bracing with his left.

      Decision time.

      But not for Beam.

      The fleeing man suddenly skidded to a halt, at the same time whirling and dropping to one knee. It was a graceful, dancer’s movement made possible by youth.

      He shot Beam.

      It was like getting whapped in the thigh with a hammer.

      Beam was on the hard concrete floor without knowing how he got there, fire pulsing in his right leg. He craned his neck and peered toward the garage exit and saw that the kid was getting away.

      Rubber screeched out on the street, and there was the dull sound of impact. A woman shouted something over and over that Beam couldn’t understand.

      He reached for his two-way. If the damned thing would work in the garage, he could get help, maybe nail the bastard on the street.

      Then weakness came with the pain.

      Then darkness.

      Beam thought, Lani…

      2

      “What’s it been, bro?” Cassandra Beam asked. “A week?”

      “Nine days,” Beam said. That was how long since he’d been released from the hospital into a bright spring day. His right leg still ached and wasn’t as strong as his left. He’d lost twenty pounds while laid up, and his clothes hung on him as if they were somebody else’s.

      He was wearing a pale gray shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and folded neatly halfway up his forearms. His face was so gaunt as to be almost vulpine, with blue eyes that could charm or cut steel, and an intensely curious, slightly lopsided expression due to a missing right earlobe that had been bitten off in a saloon fight his rookie year as a cop. Beam looked like a guy who’d been dragged bumping and thumping through life, resisting every inch.

      The bullet fired in the parking garage had done only minimal damage to the bone, so he’d be able to walk soon without a cane. He was having lunch at Fostoria’s, on Central Park West, with his sister, Cassie, who was a psychiatrist with her office nearby. A long way from downtown, where they’d spent their childhood.

      The restaurant’s tables were small and round, with lacy white tablecloths, and the place was filled with brilliant winter sunlight. They were waiting for their server to bring them their orders of croissant sandwiches. It looked to Beam as if everyone in the restaurant was eating something on a croissant.

      Their table was by the window, and both had been watching people stream past out on the sidewalk. It was easier than talking.

      “You were thinking about retiring anyway,” Cassie said.

      She hadn’t done well in the gene pool. Unlike Beam, who was tall and rawboned, his older sister was short and blocky, in a sturdy way that dieting would never change. Her eyes were darker than his, too, staring at Beam now from beneath black bangs.

      “Thinking about and doing are two different things,” Beam said.

      Cassie gave him her gap-toothed smile. “You’re telling me that?”

      Beam had to smile back. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget what you do for a living.”

      “Getting shot, so soon after Lani, it was like a one-two punch.”

      “Is that psychoanalyst talk?” Beam