Raptor - Hardcover

Fiske, Dorsey

3.05

21 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312872631 ISBN 13: 9780312872632

Publisher: New York, NY, U.S.A.: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2000, 2000

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Kate Marbury is a police artist as well as a detective, and in this lively procedural, her two jobs converge to put her directly in the sights of a rapist who's been stalking the women of Wilmington, Delaware, and attacking them in their homes. Now the violence has escalated: he's mutilating and murdering his victims as well as raping them, and the task force assigned to the case can't find any connection among his targets. Only one of them, Janet, has survived to give Kate enough of a description to work with, and author Dorsey Fiske uses the friendship that develops between the two women to keep the plot moving speedily along. When Janet thwarts an attack on Kate and saves her life, Kate is taken off the case. When she can't get her colleagues on the task force to believe her when she says she knows the rapist's identity, she takes the law into her own hands and sets up the violent denouement.

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About the Author:

Dorsey Fiske, who lives in Delaware, is the author of several mystery and suspense novels, including Raptor and Academic Murder. A graduate of Harvard, Fiske has worked as a researcher and in the worlds of art and rare books.

CHAPTER 1Mid-AugustHEAT. Fever heat. The city is sick with a fever. It sprawls, steamy, inert, sunk in tropical torpor. The weather has been hot for weeks. It feels like years. The thought of the city in winter, covered in snow, is a pipe dream, a shimmering fantastic impossible vision. It is hard to believe there has ever been snow in the city, hard to believe the city has ever been cool. There is only the heat, a malign smothering force which hovers, relentless, over the buildings and the vacant lots.People shuffle listlessly along the city streets. It is too hot to pick up their feet. It is too hot to move. Those who can afford it exchange air-conditioned cars for air-conditioned restaurants for air-conditioned houses. Those who cannot sit panting on their front stoops, languidly fanning themselves. The air is heavy with unshed water. Black beads of tar ooze from the softened asphalt of the streets. The dog days of August have arrived with a vengeance.The row of brick houses on Broom Street is new—only a couple of years old—and cheaply built. Several of the air-conditioning units have been defeated by the unrelenting heat wave; and even though it is nighttime, the interiors they were installed to cool are hot as bake ovens. The inhabitants have raised their unscreened windows in a vain attempt to capture a breath of air. Near an open window someone is playing the Neville Brothers. The notes fall like leaden weights, muffled by the thick atmosphere. Drums dully thump-thump-thump, Evan Neville’s high pure voice cuts through the murk like a knife, singing about heat—emotional heat. About fever in the morning, fever at night. Like tonight.He crouches, waiting in the dark, a deeper shadow among the shadows. He is dressed all in black: black jeans, black sneakers, black T-shirt, black gloves dangling from jeans pocket. He saw her leave several hours earlier. It was still light then and he was dressed differently. He keeps track of her movements; sometimes he is a delivery man, sometimes he hands out flyers, sometimes he is just a passerby headed for the neighboring park. But tonight he is dressed for business. Real business.Her house is at the end of the row. The windows in the second-floor front bedroom are open. So is the kitchen window: ideal for a quiet entry, he notes. The night is deathly still with no breeze stirring. He had thought of waiting inside for her return. But the house is small and there is a chance she might see him. Sometimes he attacks in the early evening, but he prefers to catch them asleep. That way there’s no time for them to call 911. There is the risk that she might close and lock the kitchen window when she gets home, and he likes an easy entrance. It leaves fewer clues. But he is patient. Patience is the secret of his success. If he can’t get in tonight, there will be another opportunity. There always is.A young man and a girl—the girl—approach, moving listlessly in the envelope of heat. They stop at the front door of her house. They are quarreling. He listens intently, leaning back invisible in the bushes.“Come on,” the young man says. “Don’t be such a prude.”“It’s too hot.”“You’ve got air-conditioning. I’ll heat you up, it’ll cool you off.” He laughs at his own wit. His laughter is an intense, slightly hysterical jangle of noise. He has had a lot to drink.“I said no. I told you, the air-conditioning’s gone bust. It’s too hot even to ask you in for a drink.” She sounds slightly relieved as she says this.Despite his less than sober condition, her companion sees his chance and seizes it. “If it’s that bad, you’d better come back with me.”“I said no,” she repeats, annoyed. “Look. It isn’t that I don’t like you. I just don’t want to sleep with you. Not now.”“That’s not the way you acted last Saturday,” he says insistently.“Saturday was ... I had too much to drink last Saturday. Anyway, we didn’t. We nearly did, but we didn’t.”“What makes you so sure? You were high as a kite,” he teases her.There is a pause. Then she says, “We didn’t. I know we didn’t. I didn’t pass out.”“I wish we had,” he says, his voice low and amorous.There is a silence. The listener holds his breath. Damn, he thinks. The son of a bitch is going to queer it for me. He grits his teeth as he sees the two separate shadows meld. Then,“No,” she says again, but her voice is tentative. “Not tonight. Please. I have a lot of work to do this week. I can’t let myself get tired. I shouldn’t even have taken time out to go to dinner with you. I have to concentrate on this case I’m working on. You know, the one I told you about.”He takes hold of his opportunity. “Well, how you going to get any sleep in that hotbox? You said the air system’s broken. Look, I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but you’d better come back and sleep at my apartment.” He takes his keys out of his trousers pocket and waves them in front of her invitingly. “You can have the bed,” he says. “I’ll take the living room sofa. And stay there. Scout’s honor.”She hesitates. It is a tempting prospect. Even with the electric fan and a cold shower, she won’t get much rest. But he makes the mistake of supposing he has won and puts his hand on her arm, touching her breast as he does so.“No, I ... Thanks, Tom, it’s very nice of you to offer. I really mean that. And some other time ... It was a wonderful dinner, wonderful evening. It’s just this case. The firm is counting on me to pull it together by the end of the week. I can’t let myself get distracted.”He can tell by the sound of her voice, which has traveled the road from uncertainty to firmness as she says this, that the time for changing her mind tonight is past. But he can’t help asking her, “How you going to get any sleep in this weather? With no air-conditioning?”“I’ll manage.” She is determined not to go with him. Their kiss has made it clear to her that even with air-conditioning, she won’t get much sleep at his apartment.“Well, then ... What about Friday? Your case be wrapped up by then? Dinner after work?”“It has to be. I said it would be. Sure, I’d love to.”“Great. We’ll celebrate.” He moves in for another kiss, but she dodges and inserts her key in the door.“Terrific. See you then. Six o’clock, same place?”“Right.”“’Night. Thanks, Tom. Super evening.”The lock of the door clicks and she is gone. The alcohol has slowed Tom’s reflexes. He shakes his head to clear it like a dog coming out of water and stands uncertainly for a moment or so, then mutters, “Shit,” and shambles off.The figure hidden deep in the shadows does not move. He will wait until the girl has taken off her clothes, turned off the lights in the house, climbed into bed, and gone to sleep. Even in this heat, even without air-conditioning, she is bound to sleep at first. The heat is like a drug. It drains the energy from people, knocks them out for a few hours, then it wraps itself around them like damp felt, smothering and waking them. But in a few hours it will be too late for her.At first he hears a variety of night noises—the muffled sound of footsteps on pavement, the heavy drone of an engine as an occasional car passes along the city streets, the sharp yelp of a dog. Then there is unbroken silence. The watcher has not moved from his niche in the shadows. The lights in the house he is watching—the lights in all the nearby houses—have been extinguished for almost an hour. It is time.Warily he moves over to the kitchen window, which she did not bother to close and lock before she went to bed, and climbs over the conveniently low sill. A beam of light from the street-lamp casts a cold glitter on the blade of a knife that hangs on a magnetized holder beside the window. It has a wintry gleam that is strangely attractive in the sweltering night. He snatches it up to see if it is as cold as it appears, and tests the edge with his finger. It is razor honed. It gives him an idea. It may be useful when he gets upstairs. It will serve as an artful persuader. He has never thought of using a knife before.The idea pleases him. His method has been to hit the recalcitrant ones until they can no longer resist. But the knife is a far more elegant solution. He does not enjoy inflicting damage as much as he enjoys the fear in their eyes, their knowledge that he can do anything he likes to them, their realization that he holds absolute power in his punishing hands, the power of hurting, the power of life and death. When he hits them too much, too hard, they do not feel it after a while. They are no longer frightened, they are too numb to feel. But the knife! The knife will evoke a flicker of fear, a glitter of pure icy terror at the back of her eyes, a reflection of the sliver of steel he wields in his hand. And afterward, when she is filled to the brim with all the fear she can hold, he can use the knife to release it. In the blood. A river of blood, a torrent of blood. If he wants to. If he chooses.He gazes, entranced, at the thread of shimmering light that runs along the edge of the knife blade. He wonders why the idea of using a knife has not occurred to him until now.

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