The Night Caller
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Transcript of The Night Caller
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THENIGHTCALLER
JOHNLUTZ
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.www.kensingtonbooks.com
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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