the night caller

8/14/2019 The Night Caller

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THENIGHTCALLER

JOHNLUTZ

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.www.kensingtonbooks.com



CHAPTER ONE

Sue Coppolino was young, pretty, and nervous.

Her painted nails drummed on the steering wheel

as she drove her red Sebring convertible toward the

Siesta Key drawbridge in Sarasota. It was a hot and

humid Florida night so she had the car’s top down, and

the wind caressing her face felt like warm liquid. The

convertible’s tires thrummed over the steel mesh of the

bridge, and within seconds she was off the mainland

and on the key.She turned north on Midnight Pass Road, then

veered to the right instead of going straight toward the

public beach.

Wealthy estates and condominium complexes lay out

of sight beyond thick foliage and palm trees on her

right, overlooking calm, moonlit water. Because the

night was bright, she could see the brilliant oranges

and reds of the hibiscus and bougainvillea blooms. It

was almost midnight and there was no other traffic, and

with the top down the racheting scream of cicadas was

sometimes deafening when the car glided past denselywooded areas. To the cicadas the desperate continual



scream was a mating call. Right now, Sue heard it the

same way.

She was up to no good. At least. some people would

see it that way. Not that she was going to commit a bur-

glary or anything. In fact, she made more than enough

money in her job with a surveying company. It was just

that—

The angular white buildings of Bay Vista condo-

minium with their red tile roofs weren’t visible from

the road, but there was an ornate wrought-iron steelgate painted bone white just up ahead. Sue slowed the

car but drove past the gate. The security guard wasn’t

on duty in the small air-conditioned booth, but anyone

entering needed a resident’s plastic card to insert in a

slot that would trigger the gate to open.

No card for Sue. And she didn’t need one. A few

hundred feet down the road, she turned the car onto an

unmarked and unpaved side road that ran parallel to

Bay Vista’s manicured grounds. Then she killed the

headlights, letting the light from the bright crescent

moon guide her.She parked where she usually did, off the side of the

road behind a tight grouping of date palms. As she

turned off the idling engine, her heart seemed to take

up its fast and rhythmic beat.

Sue didn’t like sneaking around this way. Or did

she? On a certain level it was exciting. Like being in a

movie. She checked herself in the rearview mirror,

then put on fresh lipstick and smoothed back her wind-

mussed dark hair with her hand. Excitement aside, she

did wish Marlee wouldn’t force her to go through these

subterfuges every time they met. It wasn’t as if this wasthe love still afraid to say its name.

2 John Lutz



But she knew Marlee was right; it would be foolish

for Sue to use the main gate. Marlee could easily ob-

tain an extra card that would permit Sue’s entering and

leaving, but a video camera would capture her image

and record times and dates of arrival and departure.

That would never do.

Marlee Clark—long-legged, lithe, tanned, and mus-

cled—had been a teenage tennis phenom only a few

years ago. The experts made her the choice to within a

short time be the top-seeded woman player in the world.Marlee had come close, winning major U.S. tourna-

ments, making the semifinals at Wimbledon. But the

pressure of high-level competition and glaring public-

ity had gotten to her. Drugs, first taken at the urging of

her coach to ease the pain of injuries, then taken by

Marlee despite the coach’s warnings, had led to sloppy

play on the court, then sloppy play off, with the media.

A public shouting match at the U.S. Open, followed by

a drugs-and-drink binge and an auto accident that had

put her in the hospital for a month, started her real and

undeniable decline.Burned-out, she retired early and used some of her

winnings to buy a luxury condo on the key, complete

with private boat dock and her own cabin cruiser.

Marlee still needed income, and because of her

pretty face and long red hair worn in her trademark

braid, she was in demand as a television sports com-

mentator and commercial pitch-woman. But if the pub-

lic found out about her romantic life, she would lose

many of her endorsement contracts.

It didn’t seem to hurt her popularity that she’d once

been into drugs. She’d been through a very publicrehab, even told Barbara Walters how sorry she was.

THE NIGHT CALLER 3



But if word got out that the pristine Barbie doll of ten-

nis was a lesbian, and an unrepentant one, it would de-

stroy the image that was worth big money to her. Sue

argued that Marlee was simply acting paranoid; they

were, after all, in the twenty-first century. But Marlee

wouldn’t budge, quoting her agent’s figures on how

much other women sports celebs had lost in dollars

when they came out of the closet.

So Sue sneaked.

Once on the grounds of Bay Vista, she walked alongthe powdery white sand beach. There was no one in

sight other than a couple strolling along the mystical

border of the glittering surf line a hundred yards away.

They seemed interested only in each other, but Sue

turned her face away anyway as she crossed a narrow

expanse of closely mown grass, then walked along a

crushed shell path toward the rear of Marlee’s building.

Careful not to brush against any of the aluminum-

framed loungers that might scrape metal on concrete,

she skirted the swimming pool, then approached the

sliding glass doors to the ground-floor condo.The drapes were open, and Sue stood for a moment

looking in at the luxurious interior with its plank floors

and thick area rugs, cream colored walls, and soft

beige leather furniture. On the wall behind the sofa

was a grouping of museum-quality oil paintings, all

still lifes of fruit or flowers. It was an expensive world

so unlike Sue’s, and one that Marlee allowed her to

share. Nothing in the room suggested its occupant had

ever played tennis.

The sliding door was unlocked, as Sue knew it

would be. That was part of the arrangement. The soft

4 John Lutz



rumble of the door sliding in its track was barely audi-

ble over the collective shrill scream of the cicadas.

It was much cooler inside the condo. As soon as Sue

slid the door shut to keep the conditioned air in and the

mosquitoes out, she spotted Marlee where she’d fallen

asleep in the leather recliner. Her head was canted back

and her braid was undone, allowing her long red hair to

fan out gracefully on the chair back. She looked so

beautiful, doll-like, and peaceful. What were her dreams?

Sue wondered. She approached the chair softly so shewouldn’t awaken her, then reached out gently to touch

her lover’s shoulder.

Her hand came away wet.

Crusted scarlet.

Stunned, Sue ran her fingers over Marlee’s pale face,

her mind still unable to compute what was going on

here. Was Marlee drugged? Asleep? Unconscious?

Still rejecting the dark and terrible fact before her,

she gently cupped Marlee’s cool, lovely face in her

hands and slowly lifted her head.

Sue gagged and backed away, absently floating her red hand up to her mouth.

Marlee was dead. The back of her neck had been vi-

ciously hacked.

Sue couldn’t bear to look at the gaping wound, but

she couldn’t look away even as she began to scream.

THE NIGHT CALLER 5

the night caller

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