Night Victims (The Night Spider) Read Online Free PDF

lawsuit?”
    “Nothing I feel like talking about. I want this evening to be only about us.”
    So they sat and enjoyed their drinks and talked about anything but the Vine suit against Kincaid Hospital, and whatever it was Horn wanted to tell her. Their conversation flowed easily, old friends as well as lovers. Their shared past was the strength and foundation of what they had today.
    Twenty minutes later they were strolling along the sidewalk toward the restaurant.
    Horn loved walking in New York. The sights, sounds, and smells of the city were his oxygen. The exhaust fumes, even the sweet smell of the garbage wafting from black plastic bags not tightly sealed, soothed his spirit. If he shared the thought with Anne she’d laugh and tell him it was probably the scotch that made him feel that way about carbon monoxide and garbage. Horn had to smile. Anyone in his right mind would agree with her.
    The Regency was a medium-priced casual restaurant that served great Italian food and tolerable red wine. Horn and Anne decided on a sidewalk table shaded by a large blue canvas canopy. They were near a dividing wall and well back from the street, so they could talk more or less privately if they didn’t raise their voices.
    The waiter came with ice water and menus. Anne ordered a salad and angel-hair pasta, Horn the house specialty, baked lasagna, and a glass of merlot.
    The wine arrived, along with bread and Anne’s salad. He sipped, she ate, he talked.
    When he was finished telling her about his conversation with Rollie Larkin, she put down her fork and patted her lips with her napkin. “You’re going back to work.” Parallel vertical lines appeared above the bridge of her perfect nose. Subway tracks, Horn used to call them, because they signified she was thinking deep thoughts.
    “Only for a while, with special status for the serial killer case. I’ll be in charge, and I got Rollie to assign to me the two detectives who have the case now.”
    “You start when?”
    “Tonight. The detectives are coming by the brownstone at about nine o’clock so we can talk.”
    “As if I didn’t have enough to worry about,” Anne said.
    “I know, darling.” He sipped merlot. “The Vine case.”
    A ten-year-old boy, Alan Vine, had become comatose on the operating table six months ago at Kincaid Memorial. The boy’s parents were convinced that a mix-up in body scan images had caused the mishap, meaning Anne’s department, and ultimately, her responsibility. She, and the hospital, knew better. The boy’s condition was most likely caused by his rare reaction to his anesthetic. “Blaming the victim,” the family’s attorney said as often as possible. Which, in a perverse way, was true; in this case there was no one else to blame. Not the anesthesiologist who’d performed as he should, not the medical technicians who’d conducted the scan, not the doctors who’d interpreted the images. And not Anne.
    Then why did she feel guilty?
    “Thomas, you don’t call me darling unless you don’t mean it.” She was the only one who used his given name. Everyone else Horn knew simply called him by his last name. Horn had never minded.
    “But I do mean it. Hell, it isn’t hard to know you’re under stress and this is a bad time for me to become active again. That’s why I set it up with Rollie that I’d mostly be advising these other detectives.”
    “Do you know them?”
    “No. One’s a woman who hasn’t been in the department very long. The other’s old school and is going to retire soon, if I don’t talk him out of it.”
    “And I’m sure you will.”
    He didn’t answer, and Anne went back to work on her salad.
    “I talked to Ashleigh today,” she said. Ashleigh was their married daughter in Connecticut. “Dan Jr. tried to set fire to the garage.”
    Horn raised his eyebrows. “He’s only five years old!” he said of his grandson.
    “Ashleigh said she found an open matchbook and some burnt matches on the garage