Darker Than Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

and about as big around as a shoelace, so it stung and left narrow but painful welts on the woman’s bare back.
    She couldn’t avoid the lashes, because she was lying on her stomach on her bed, her hands tied to the headboard, her feet to the iron bed frame’s legs. She couldn’t cry out, because a rectangle of silver duct tape covered her mouth.
    He lashed her again and she managed a fairly loud whimper.
    Lars stood back and smiled down at her. Through the web of hair over her left eye, she stared up at him. He loved the pain in her dark gaze and the message it sent.
    He gave her a few more, striking her just so, barely breaking the skin.
    It wasn’t the first time for her. He’d known that when he picked her up in the Village bar, where she wouldn’t have been if she wasn’t cruising for this kind of action. She was plump and dark, maybe Jewish or Italian, with a mop of obviously dyed blond hair and the kind of wide smile people called vivacious. He’d seen in her eyes what she wanted. She saw in his that he’d supply it. After only one drink she’d suggested they go to her apartment.
    When they’d undressed, he saw that she was even plumper than she’d appeared in clothes. Not exactly what you’d call fat, though.
    Lars knew where to look. He saw bruises around her nipples, faint scars on her thighs and buttocks. Her back looked fresh, though. He’d take care of that.
    Tiring of using the whip, he propped it in the crack of her ass and went over to the dresser, where he had a cold beer sitting on a coaster so as not to mar the finish. Lars respected furniture.
    The woman was sobbing now. He took a sip of beer and regarded her. It might be time to talk to her, softly tell her what else he was going to do to her. Then he realized he’d forgotten her name. It sounded Russian or something and was hard to recall.
    He grinned. She wasn’t in any position now to refresh his memory.
    She twisted her neck, trying to get him in her range of vision, wondering if he was still in the room. He shouldn’t have gone yet, leaving her bound and gagged. That was breaking the rules.
    Then he remembered. Or thought he did.
    â€œFlo?”
    She reacted immediately, tensing her buttocks and straining to look in the direction of his voice.
    â€œIf you’re a good girl, Flo, maybe I’ll take you out for breakfast tomorrow.” Letting her know he was staying the long night through.
    She managed only one of her whimpers.
    He decided the bottoms of Flo’s bare feet shouldn’t be ignored.

6
    Quinn was up late at the kitchen’s tiny gray Formica table, smoking a cheap cigar and studying the Elzner murder file. Rather, the copy of the file, which Renz had provided.
    He was drinking beer from a thick, clouded tumbler that looked as if it had been stolen from a diner years ago. The foam head had disappeared except for a light, sudsy film along the glass’s sides, and the beer was warm.
    Quinn exhaled cigar smoke and leaned back away from the open file. There really wasn’t much of value inside it. Sure, there were things that didn’t quite add up, that suggested someone other than Martin Elzner had fired the shots that killed Elzner and his wife. But almost always in cases of violent death, there were such loose ends, questions that would never be answered. Lives that were stopped abruptly left them behind as if to haunt and not be forgotten. If you were a cop long enough, you didn’t expect to ever understand everything.
    He propped the cigar in a cracked saucer he was using as an ashtray, then took a sip of beer. There was one thing, though, that stuck like a bur in his mind. The groceries. The Elzners must have bought them before the stores closed, then were putting them away when the shooting occurred. But no one in any of the surrounding grocery stores or all-night delis, where they might have bought groceries, recalled them being there.