The Night Caller (32 page)

When Coop flung open the door, he found that it led not to a hall, but a small foyer with a marble floor and bench next to an elevator.

He immediately saw something else—blood on the veined white marble. He pressed the elevator button and had to wait only a few seconds. It must have been on the floor below.

Hoping he’d shot Nighklauer and would find him dead in the elevator, Coop waited for the door to open, his gun aimed, finger tense on the trigger. God help anyone other than Nighklauer who happened to be in the elevator.

But when the door glided open, the elevator was empty.

There were a few spots of blood on its carpeted floor.

Coop got in and pushed the button for the lobby. The sirens he’d heard earlier were louder now—Billard, Willingham, the blues closing in. Nighklauer, wounded, might not get very far unless he got out of the building and away in a hurry.

But two floors down, Coop realized something was wrong here. Why so much blood on the white marble, and only three—no, four—drops on the elevator floor?

Then he remembered the elevator rising from just below when he’d pressed the buttons, remembered the board on the roof, and knew why Nighklauer might only have ridden one floor down.

The section of hall made into the foyer of his loft apartment had meant walling off the entrance to the service stairs when the building was remodeled. Nighklauer would have had to descend one floor to make his way back up to the roof using the stairs!

Coop didn’t want to ride all the way down to the lobby, then back up. He punched the button for the next floor, left the elevator, then ran to the end of the hall and shouldered open the heavy steel door that would lock behind him.

Every breath a struggle, he began climbing the service stairs.

As Coop edged open the roof door, cold air hit him, fogging his breath and biting hard at the back of his raw throat.

But it also cleared his mind. The cold, the adrenaline, made him remarkably alert. He had never felt so ready.

He stepped the rest of the way out onto the roof.

And it was so sudden it startled him.

A dark figure, not much more than a shadow, darted across the roof near the opposite edge. Nighklauer? Coop thought so, almost aimed and fired in that instant. But he couldn’t be sure of his target’s identity. Only a shadow figure.

In flight!

Without a hint of hesitation, the dark figure launched itself and was hurtling in silhouette toward the adjacent roof, arms and legs spread wide and extended like an Olympic long jumper’s.

For a moment Coop thought the jumper might make it, even felt a twinge of guilty admiration.

Then gravity worked its antimagic. Momentum suddenly slowed, and forward became downward.

Close. The jumper had come so close!

It had all been so quick and silent, a cold dream in the night.

His shoes crunching on the graveled tar roof, Coop slowly walked to the edge and looked down, to make sure what he’d seen was real.

He expected to see a twisted dark shape on the pavement below, near where he’d dropped the board.

Instead he saw Nighklauer a story below against the wall of the opposite building, clinging desperately to the square dark bulk of a covered air conditioner protruding from a window.

Nighklauer must have sensed Coop staring at him. He craned his neck awkwardly in order to return Coop’s gaze. The planes of his face were serene but his wide eyes shone with horror and certainty. There was no way Coop could save him even if he so chose.

Would
that have been his choice?

The deep and secret knowledge, the arc, bridged the dark space between the two men. But this time there was something more. They were both dying and each knew it about the other. The Night Caller couldn’t understand that and wished he could ask Cooper about it. But he couldn’t. He forced his eyes closed and pretended to sleep. He was lying beside Julia. They were both asleep.

The cloth or vinyl air conditioner cover began to slip from the unit, coming undone first on one side, then the other, a few inches at a time. On the other side of the window, someone parted the curtains to see what was happening, form and face barely visible in the dimness behind the reflecting glass. A woman with long hair. She didn’t seem surprised by what she saw.

Bette!
Coop realized with a leap of the heart. He almost said her name. She looked so much like Bette!

The air conditioner cover slipped all the way off.

The curtains swung closed.

Nighklauer was silent as he fell.

Coop sat with Cara at one of the outside tables at Seconds, feeling the spring breeze blow cool off the bay. He was sipping a Beck’s dark, his one beer for the day. On the table before them lay the remains of a good meal, one Art Billard had personally recommended.

Cara’s hair was back to its original blond and cut short, stirring in the ocean air currents. At times, from particular angles in a certain light, she looked like her sister Ann. From any angle, in any light, Coop thought she was beautiful.

Sometimes he found himself wondering if it was his cancer, in remission but still there, that made her seem so wonderful. She was time and beauty and life, and all of it was precarious but he still possessed it. Cancer cells were immortal; he wasn’t. That his time was limited made the bounty of his life all the more precious. And who knew how much time anyone had? Months? Years? Even decades were possible.

Far out on the bay, a boat with a triangular white sail tacked toward shore. The bright sun made its sail luminous against a sky that was the deepest blue Coop had ever seen.

He was staring out at the boat when Billard approached the table. Billard had put on weight and was wearing more expensive suits, looking more and more like a restaurateur than a cop. He was planning on full retirement in September.

He stood near their table, his hands folded in front of him. “Everything good?”

“Everything’s wonderful,” Cara said.

Billard smiled. “Maureen told me she was going to the wedding.”

“We invited her,” Cara said. “She helped save my life.”

“She’s well aware of it,” Coop said to Billard. Maureen hadn’t exactly turned over a new leaf, but the role she’d played in ending Nighklauer’s string of victims seemed to have changed her, made her more contented with herself and her situation. It was because of her that women lived, and that one she knew, Cara, had a chance for happiness. Coop thought sometimes that Maureen didn’t even begrudge him his second chance.

The waiter came and placed the check on the table. Billard immediately scooped it up. The waiter gave a little half bow and turned away.

“Wait a minute,” Coop said to him. “We’re going to have dessert.”