John Lutz - Fear The Night

Highest Praise for

JOHN LUTZ

John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.

Harlan Coben

Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster of a tale.

Jeffery Deaver

John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.

Ridley Pearson

John Lutz is a major talent.

John Lescroart

Ive been a fan for years.

T. Jefferson Parker

John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.

Tony Hillerman

Lutz ranks with such vintage masters of big-city murder as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lutz is among the best.

San Diego Union

Lutz knows how to seize and hold the readers imagination.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Its easy to see why hes won an Edgar and two Shamuses.

Publishers Weekly

Mister X

Mister X has everything: a dangerous killer, a pulse-pounding mystery, a shocking solution, and an ending that will resonate with the reader long after the final sentence is read.

BookReporter.com

A page-turner to the nail-biting end... twisty, creepy whodunit.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Urge to Kill

A solid and compelling winner... sharp characterization, compelling dialogue and graphic depictions of evil....
Lutz knows how to keep the pages turning.

BookReporter.com

Night Kills

Lutzs skill will keep you glued to this thick thriller.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Superb suspense... the kind of book that makes you check to see if all the doors and windows are locked.

Affaire de Coeur

In for the Kill

Brilliant... a very scary and suspenseful read.

Booklist

Shamus and Edgar awardwinner Lutz gives us further proof of his enormous talent.... An enthralling page-turner.

Publishers Weekly

Chill of Night

Since Lutz can deliver a hard-boiled P.I. novel or a bloody thriller with equal ease, its not a surprise to find him applying his skills to a police procedural in Chill of Night .

But the ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz is in rare form.

The New York Times Book Review

Lutz keeps the suspense high and populates his story with a collection of unique characters that resonate with the reader, making this one an ideal beach read.

Publishers Weekly

A dazzling tour de force... compelling, absorbing.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A great read! Lutz kept me in suspense right up to the end.

Midwest Book Review

Darker Than Night

Readers will believe that they just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl after reading this action-packed police procedural.

The Midwest Book Review

Night Victims

John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror.... He propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.

Sun-Sentinel

The Night Watcher

Compelling... a gritty psychological thriller... Lutz draws the reader deep into the killers troubled psyche.

Publishers Weekly

ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ

*Mister X

*Urge to Kill

*Night Kills

*In for the Kill

Chill of Night

Fear the Night

*Darker Than Night

Night Victims

The Night Watcher

The Night Caller

Final Seconds ( with David August)

The Ex

*featuring Frank Quinn

Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and Pinnacle Books

FEAR THE NIGHT

JOHN LUTZ

PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

For Michaela Hamilton, Doug Mendini,
and so many others at Kensington

I must become a borrower of the night
For a dark hour or twain.

Shakespeare
Macbeth . Act III. Sc.2. L. 404.

He flung open the service door and was on the roof and in the cool, dark vastness of the night. In the building beneath his feet people fought and loved and hated and dreamed, while he lived the dream that was real. He was the one who decided. Below and around him the Theater District glowed, as did the stars above. He was sure that if he tried he could reach up, clutch one of the stars, and plunge it burning into his pocket. The end and the beginning of a dream...

On the night he died, Marty Akim was selling.

Marty sold anything that would fetch a price, but he specialized in nineteen-dollar watches that he bought for ten dollars.

Warm evenings in New York would find him lounging outside his souvenir shop, Bargain Empire, just off West Forty-fifth Street in the theater district. Inside the crowded shop were lettered T-shirts, cheap umbrellas, plastic Statues of Liberty, Broadway show posters, glass snow globes that played New York tunes while dandrufflike flakes, swirled by shaking, settled among tiny replicas of the buildings Chrysler, Empire State, and Citigroup, towering inches over Rockefeller Center and Grand Central Station. There were plenty of cut-rate laptop computers, digital cameras, cell phones, recorders, and suitcases, many with brand names that seemed familiar at a glance.

Outside the shop, next to a rack of rayon jackets featuring colorful New York scenes, and a table with stacks of sports logo caps and pullovers, was the display of wristwatches. Alongside them, his seamed and friendly face bunched in a perpetual smile, sat Marty in his padded metal folding chair. Marty caught the eye, with his loosened silk tie and his pristine white shirt with its sleeves rolled up, his slicked-back graying hair, and his amiable keen blue eyes. Sitting there gracefully and casually, his legs crossed, a cigarette either wedged between yellowed fingers or tucked loosely in the corner of his mouth, he looked like a once-handsome, aging lounge singer taking a break between sets. A man with tales to tell and eager to tell them for the price of a return smile.

But interesting and approachable as Marty seemed, it was the watches that drew customers, all the glimmer and glitter of gold and silver electroplate and plastic gemstones, colorful watch faces with bright green numerals and hands that looked as if theyd surely glow in the dark. There was something about all that bright, measurable time so closely massed, the tempo of Times Square, the chatter and shuffle and hum and shouts and roar of traffic and pedestrians, all of them moving to some raucous, frantic music punctuated by blaring horns. In the middle of all this happy turmoil was this ordered display of shining metal and geometric precision, and Marty, waiting.

Customers would come and he would talk to them, not pressuring them, not at first. Where were they from? What shows had they seen? Were they having fun? Sure, he could recommend a restaurant or direct them to the nearest subway stop. All the while theyd be sneaking peeks at the watches, the Rodexes, Hambiltons, Bulovis, and Mowados. (The cheap, illegal knockoffs bearing correctly spelled brand names were kept out of sight beneath the false bottom of a showcase inside the shop, sold only to customers whod been referred to Marty and could be trusted.) Often Martys customers were a couple, a man and woman, and the woman would invariably find something that interested her, squint at it, pick it up, then hold it to her ear, like with this couple.

Theyre all quartz movement, maam. Marty smiling wider and whiter, beginning to work his magic on the two of them. Factory seconds of quality brandsIll leave you to guess which brandssome of them with flaws youd need a microscope to see. But ordinarily theyre expensive and the people who buy them expect perfection. Perfect theyre not, but then neither are you and me, and I know these watches are closer to heaven than Ill ever get.