Chill Of Night. John Lutz

must have wanted to get away!

      The van came to a rocking stop. Nothing in the shadow beneath it moved. People started to drift closer, then crowded in on the vehicle.

      Nell began walking fast toward the corner. She realized she was carrying her gun at her side and slid it back into its holster, then made sure her blazer was buttoned to cover it.

      “He broke out through a window and down the fire escape,” a calm voice said beside her. Beam.

      The nearness of him calmed her somewhat, but her heart was still pounding in her ears. “He decided to run. That van got him.”

      “I know, I know…”

      They reached the corner and flashed their shields, telling people to stand back. Beam kneeled down to look under the van, then quickly stood up.

      “There’s a woman under there.”

      Nell saw that there were smears of blood on the pavement between the skid marks left by the tires and looked away. The van’s driver must have been distracted by Rodman and struck the woman.

      Knocked her out of her shoes.

      Nell’s stomach kicked and she swallowed brass.

      A radio car arrived and blocked the street. Sirens whooped, and another car came in from the opposite direction, then braked and parked angled sideways. The uniforms piled out and hurried toward the van, moving swiftly, looking this way and that, sizing up the situation.

      Beam identified himself and Nell to the nearest two uniforms and explained what must have happened. They all gazed up and down the street, as if Rodman might still be somewhere in sight.

      The van driver was out of the vehicle now, leaning on a fender and yammering to one of the uniforms. He was a short, dark-complected man wearing gray work pants and a darker gray shirt. He looked as if he might vomit any second. He’d killed someone; one day it had been work as usual delivering packages, necessary and monotonous, the world in its revolutions, then he’d killed someone and everything was changed.

      “Rodman didn’t have a record, so why’d he run?” Beam asked.

      Nell looked at him, rubbing her shoulder. “Because he’s who we’re looking for?”

      Beam gave her a level, unreadable look. “You really think this guy’s the killer?”

      She shook her head no. “Not unless our guy establishes a romance with his victims before killing them.”

      Beam studied her as if wondering if she’d bumped her head as well as her shoulder on the bricks, then turned away, maybe giving her more time to recover. He spoke briefly to one of the uniforms, making sure the scene was secured, then returned to Nell. “Let’s go back up to his apartment, see why he might have bolted.”

      “Drugs would be my bet,” Nell said.

      “Always the favorite,” Beam said, walking beside her. “How’s your shoulder?”

      “Still attached.”

      “Wanna have it looked at?”

      “Later, if it needs it.”

      In the corner of her vision, she might have seen Beam smile.

      No one stopped them or spoke to them as they made their way to Lenny Rodman’s building and up the stairs to his second floor apartment.

      Beam must have realized along with Nell that Rodman had rabbitted, because the door was hanging open. Nell saw that the wooden frame was splintered around the latch from Beam kicking his way in.

      They entered the apartment carefully, though they figured if anyone had been in there besides Rodman, he or she surely would have taken the opportunity to leave.

      Nell said, “He must have had reason to want out of here fast.”

      She looked around. The place was a mess. It was an efficiency, and from where they stood just inside the door they could see all of it except into the closets and bathroom. There were heaps of clothes on the painted hardwood floor, and a sofa bed was open and unmade. Furniture had obviously been shifted around, and along one wall were stacks of large cardboard boxes.

      Beam and Nell went to the apartment’s two closets and made sure they concealed nothing human or dangerous. The first closet contained half a dozen dress shirts, a gray suit, and two blazers. There was a pair of black shoes on the floor, and a stack of yellowed pornographic magazines on the wooden shelf. The second closet contained nothing other than wire hangers on the rod and in a tangle on the floor, and two roaches that scurried beneath the baseboard to escape the sudden light. Nobody in the bathroom. The torn plastic shower curtain dangled from its rod on two hooks. The window near the tub was wide open. Rodman’s access to the fire escape.

      Beam opened the medicine cabinet. Arranged on sagging shelves were a disposable razor and aerosol can of shaving cream, toothpaste, a toothbrush, comb, deodorant, lemon-scented cologne. Nell remembered the sickening sweet scent of cologne when Rodman had shouldered her aside in his desperate flight.

      “You think he lived here,” she asked, “or used the place as a kind of combination office and hideout?”

      “Maybe all of the above,” Beam said. “Let’s look into those cardboard boxes.”

      “If they contain drugs,” Nell said, “we got us the mother lode.”

      Kane removed a small bone-handled folding knife from his pocket and began slicing the tape holding the boxes’ flaps down. But the tape was so flimsy there was no need for the knife, and he and Nell began opening the boxes eagerly with only their hands, examining contents then pushing down the flaps and shoving the boxes aside.

      They learned soon enough that the boxes contained sea shells.

      “Conch shells,” Beam said.

      “They look like the kind of sea shell you might be able to blow like a horn,” Nell said. “Or put to your ear and hear the ocean.”

      “They are,” Beam said. “Down in Key West and other places they fry and eat what lives inside. Conch fritters.”

      “I’ve heard of them,” Nell said. “I haven’t spent my whole life in New York.”

      “There are plenty of these shells down there, but not a lot as perfect as these are. Notice they’re all unbroken?”

      “I did,” Nell said. “What on earth was Rodman doing with sea shells?”

      “He stole ’em,” a voice said.

      Beam and Nell turned to see a skinny African American girl about sixteen standing in the doorway. She was wearing baggy red shorts, rubber sandals, and a sleeveless white T-shirt lettered JUST VOTE. She would have been pretty if it weren’t for severely crooked yellowed teeth.

      “He tol’ me he stole them shells,” she said. “What you gonna do to him?”

      “Try to catch him and find out why he stole them,” Beam said.

      “Oh, I know why. Lenny’s kinda man like to brag on hisself. Like to play the lead role in his own movie. Need the audience. Need a leading lady. We close. He tol’ me lotsa things. You know what I mean?”

      Beam and Nell glanced at each other. They could imagine.

      “We know,” Beam said. “We don’t want to hurt Lenny, but we do need to find him. You understand that?”

      “Sure. I warned him more’n once. He jus’ laugh the way he do.”

      “Where would he steal sea shells from?” Nell asked.

      “Place in New Jersey buys shells and ships ’em up here from Florida, uses ’em to crush and pave things like driveways an’ such for rich folks here an’ down south. But the good shells that ain’t broke, they set aside and sell ’em to souvenir shops and the like.”

      “Lenny