To the Nines

by Janet Evanovich

  “It's quitting time,” he said. “Do you and Lula want to go to dinner? We could all get a burger someplace.”

  “I don't think so.”

  “Okay,” Clyde said. “Call me if you change your mind.”

  “Pretty soon we're gonna be in this lot all by ourselves,” Lula said. “You and me and the two big dummies over there. You aren't planning on breaking in, are you? Maybe see if Bart Cone left his computer on?”

  “Bart's smarter than that. He's not going to leave anything incriminating on his computer. Even if he did, I'm not that good at computers to be able to find it. And I'm sure the building has an alarm system.”

  The idea was tempting, though. Just not practical. And it was out of my league. It was a Ranger escapade.

  “Okay, then how about the guy who just called you? The goofy Cone brother that doesn't do anything and wants to be a junior G-​man. He's always wanting to take you out, right? I bet you could get him to let you in. I bet he doesn't even like his brother.”

  “No. I'll never get rid of him. It would be like feeding a stray cat. Once you give it a bowl of food you're stuck with the cat for life. I don't even talk to Clyde Cone.”

  “Too bad,” Lula said, “because I bet he'd let you in and you could go snooping through ol' Bart's files and drawers and everything. You couldn't get into his email, but you could take a look at the desktop on his computer.”

  Truth is, I didn't want to go into the building. Not even with Cal and Junior doing backup. There was something bad in the building. The monster was there. He was waiting for me.

  I got a call from Morelli wondering where I was. I didn't know what to say. I was sitting in an empty parking lot. Waiting for the mystery to be resolved. “I'll be home soon,” I told him. “Don't worry.”

  The don't worry message was insincere. I was worried. I was really, really worried.

  “Steph,” Lula finally said. “Maybe we should go home.”

  She was right, of course. So I cranked my yellow Escape over and drove out of the lot. I dropped Lula off at her car at the office and then I went home to Morelli.

  I made peanut butter and olive sandwiches for supper and we ate in silence in front of the television. Probably we should have talked about the motel thing, but neither of us knew how to begin. Maybe it wasn't important anyway. We seemed to still like each other.

  At nine o'clock Morelli was glued to the television and I was still fighting the fear or dread or whatever the hell it was that had its grip on me. I went to the kitchen and got a beer and took it out to the back porch. The air was soft and smelled nice, like fresh dirt and new grass. Joe didn't do much with his backyard, but his next-​door neighbor, Mrs. Lukach, had flower beds and a dogwood tree. Joe and I had gardening skills that were almost as good as our housekeeping and cooking skills.

  I finished my beer and stood. I turned toward the house and I felt a familiar piercing pain in my back. In my mind I called for Morelli, but either he didn't hear over the drone of the television or else it was only a mental plea for help, because the blackness came and there was no Morelli.

  Even before I opened my eyes I knew I was in trouble. Fear filled every part of me. The fear was a hard knot in my chest. The fear clogged my throat. The fear slid in a greasy wave through my stomach. I forced my eyes open and I looked around. I was on the floor, in the dark. I didn't seem to be hurt. I wasn't restrained. I moved my leg and realized I had a chain padlocked around my ankle. There were jingle bells attached to the chain. The potential significance of the ankle chain took my breath away.

  I had a dull throbbing ache behind my eyes. It was from the drug, I thought. Like last time, when I was shot with a dart in the parking lot.

  The only source of light was a single candle burning on a desk to my right. The light was dim, but I knew where I was. I was at TriBro. I was in Clyde's office. I could make out the action figures in the bookcase to my left.

  I pushed myself up so I was sitting and realized someone was slouched in a chair, lost in shadow, watching me from across the room. The shadowed figure leaned forward into the candlelight and I saw that it was Clyde.

  “You're awake,” he said. “And you look scared. Sometimes when I get scared I get sexually excited. Do you get excited when you get scared? Are you hot?”

  The words sent a new rush of cold fear into my chest. I looked into Clyde's eyes and I saw the monster emerging.

  “Get up,” Clyde said. “Go around the desk and open the drawer. I have a surprise for you.”

  I steadied myself on the desk and got to my feet, swallowing back nausea from the drug. I inched around the desk, carefully opened the drawer, and looked down at another lock of my hair, tied with the slim pink ribbon.

  I looked up and my eyes met Clyde's. “Now you know,” Clyde said. “You're surprised, right? I bet you never thought it was me.”

  Everything fell into place. Web Master wasn't a computer term as we'd all assumed. It was a Spider-​Man reference. Days ago, I asked Clyde what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to be Spider-​Man. Spider-​Man was known as the webslinger and Clyde's game name was the Web Master.

  “Spider-​Man didn't kill innocent people,” I said. “Spider-​Man was a good guy.”

  “I'm not the webslinger,” Clyde said. "I'm the Web Master.

  There's a difference. And I don't kill innocent people. I run a game so people can kill each other. How cool is that?"

  “What about the prey? Aren't they innocent?”

  “I pick the prey out real careful. And they're never innocent. The cop killed a guy in the line of duty. And so have you. As soon as I saw you at the plant that day I knew you had to be the next prize. Bart tried to warn you away, but you wouldn't listen. It wouldn't have mattered. I had my mind made up right away.”

  “Bart knows about the game?”

  Clyde was smiling, rocking back on his heels, enjoying his moment. “Bart's confused. I got careless with the game two years ago and Bart got to read an email. Paressi and Fisher Cat were left in the game and I was giving them the kill clue. Bart didn't know it was a game. He thought I was involved with Paressi and he went to the kill spot to stop me from a crime of passion. Problem was, he got there too late. Paressi was dead and Fisher Cat was gone.”

  “And Bart was accused of the crime.”

  “Yeah. And he was being a hero, protecting me. What a moron. Then when the DNA came back he was totally confused. It wasn't his DNA, of course. And Bart knows enough science to know that the DNA couldn't have been mine, either. It had the wrong structure. It was Fisher Cat's DNA.”

  “Didn't Bart ask you about the email?”

  “Yeah. I gave him some bullshit story about unrequited love. And he wanted to believe it. He wasn't warning you off because of the game. He was worried I'd go gonzo for you and write another nutcase letter.”

  “What about Andrew? Did Andrew know about the game?”

  "Andrew? You gotta be kidding. Andrews got his perfect office, and his perfect family, and his freaking perfect house. Andrew doesn't see bad things. Doesn't allow them into his life. Doesn't ask questions that might have troubling answers. Andrew lives in Denial Land.

  “Everyone always thinks Andrew's so perfect and everyone always underestimates me. Silly, lazy Clyde. Poor, dumb Clyde.”

  “And?”

  “I'm not dumb. I'm smarter than everybody. Ask any of the people who play my game.”

  “They're all dead,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” Clyde said on a giggle. “I forgot.”

  “Why did Singh take off?”

  “He was scared. He went after Bag Man, who you know as Howie. Somehow, Singh managed to screw up the kill and then his cover was blown. He turned chicken and ran.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now we play. I've got a new game I thought up just for you. It's sort of a treasure hunt. And the grand prize is death. It's going to be a real good death, too. Scary and sexy and bloody.”

  This guy
was so crazy. He'd been letting the insanity leak out little by little over the years and no one had noticed. Or maybe his family had noticed and chose not to recognize it for what it was.

  “Okay, here we go,” Clyde said. “I'm going to tell you about the game.”

  Morelli would have discovered I was gone by now. He'd call Ranger and they'd be out looking for me. If I dragged this on long enough, they might find me in time.

  “I can't think,” I said. “I have a headache and nausea from the drug.”

  “That should be passing. I gave you a small dose. Just enough to have you unconscious for the capture. Probably what you're experiencing is a blood pressure rise from the fear. You're scared, right?”

  I looked at Clyde. I didn't say anything.

  “Yeah,” Clyde said. “You're scared big time. I can feel it. I'm very sensitive to these things.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I am,” Clyde said. “I have heightened senses . . . like a superhero or a werewolf.”

  “I understand pigs have a superior sense of smell. Maybe you're part pig.” I was relieved not to have stuttered. I was so scared my mouth felt detached from my face.

  “Here's the game plan,” Clyde said. "All the doors are locked. You can't get out. Your only hope is to find a weapon and eliminate me before I get tired of playing with you. I have a loaded gun, a stun gun, and a big sharp knife hidden somewhere in the plant. Plus, there are things you'd naturally find here . . . like acid and hammers and shit like that.

  “I've got two of your buddies hanging out here, waiting for you to find them. If you die, they die, too. In fact, if you don't find them soon enough, they'll die. You have a half hour to find the first one.”

  “Who are they?”

  “That's for you to discover. Oh yeah, and I forgot to tell you . . . you'll be doing this in the dark. You can take the candle if you want. Romantic, right?”

  He was smiling again. I guess this was his idea of a date.

  “I've disconnected the alarm system,” he said. “If you trip the smoke detectors the signal won't get sent out anywhere. The sprinklers will go off and we'll all get wet, but nobody'll come to save you. That might be fun . . . seeing you in a wet T-​shirt.”

  Clyde stood so I could see he was armed. “I have a twenty-​two for the kill,” he said. “And I have a paintball gun and a pellet gun for the rabbit in the shooting gallery. That's you. You're the rabbit. Oh yeah, and I have a taser. It's new. I always wanted to use a taser.” He pointed the taser at me. “This is the start of playtime. I'm going to give you a chance to run. I'm gonna count to twenty and then I'm going to shoot you with the taser. Go!”

  He started counting and I took off, forgetting the candle. Halfway down the hall I had to stop running. It was pitch black and I had no idea what was in front of me. I put my hand to the wall, feeling my way, jingling with every step. The hall led to the front foyer and I was prepared to crash through the glass door if necessary. I needed to get out of the building. Crazy Clyde was going to kill me and he wasn't going to spare his hostages. It didn't matter who I found. We were all going to die unless I could escape and get help.

  Clyde wasn't going to leave witnesses.

  I saw the ambient light from the foyer and broke into a run. I turned the corner, heard gunshot, and felt the sting of impact. I felt blood run down my side, down my leg. I cried out and put my hand to my side. Paint. I was hit with a paintball.

  “I'm right behind you,” Clyde said. “If you go toward the door I'll shoot you with the taser. I'm dying to use the taser. Sometimes they use these things for torture. The electric lead stays hooked into you with a barb and you can keep getting shocked. How cool is that?”

  I was in the middle of the floor and I was breathing heavy. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to run, rabbit. Run away from the door.”

  I took a step and stumbled down to one knee. I was too scared to run. Too scared to think. Not good, I told myself. I had to try to stay calm. I managed to get myself to my feet and I ran in blind panic down the other side of the hall, toward Andrew's and Bart's offices.

  There was a faint bar of light under a doorjamb in front of me. I pushed the door and it swung open. It was Bart's office. The office was lit by a single candle on the desk. Albert Kloughn was duct-​taped to the desk chair behind the desk. He had duct tape across his mouth and wrapped around his ankles. His eyes were huge and tears rolled down his cheeks.

  I ripped the tape off his mouth and was about to go for the tape around his torso when I saw the bomb.

  “Don't touch me,” he said. “I'm b-​b-​b-​booby-​trapped.”

  I snatched at the desk phone. No dial tone. I locked the door from the inside and pawed through the junk on Bart's desk, looking for something helpful. My hands were shaking and my heart was thundering in my chest. “I hate this,” I said. “I hate this game. And I hate the pathetic excuse for a human being who's out there stalking me.”

  “You have to get help,” Kloughn said. “This guy is crazy. He's going to kill us.”

  “There are just nuts and bolts on this desk,” I said. “I need something I can use as a weapon.”

  “I know where there's a weapon,” Kloughn said. “I can swivel myself in this chair and I was looking out the window into the warehouse when the crazy guy was hiding things. There's a room off to the side with glass windows all along.”

  “The quality control area.”

  “I don't know, but there's a workstation just by the door to that room. And he hid a gun there. It's right on top of the table part of the machine.”

  There was a knock on the door. “You're not allowed to lock yourself in Bart's office,” Clyde said. “It doesn't matter anyway, I've got a key. But now you're gonna have to get punished before we can go on with the playtime.”

  I heard the key scrape in the lock and I grabbed a wooden crate half-​filled with gears and threw it at the window that led to the warehouse. The glass shattered and I dove through the window. If I got cut it wasn't going to be any worse than what was going to happen to me at Clyde's hands.

  I hit the ground and rolled. I'd seen the roll done in the movies and it seemed like a good idea. Problem was, in the movies they weren't usually landing on two thousand metal gears. Still, I wasn't decapitated from the glass shards when I pitched myself through the broken window, so that was a point in my favor. I scrambled to my feet, sliding on the debris, and ran for the first workstation. Beyond the first workstation the room blacked out and I was going to have to feel my way to the side room where the quality control people worked.

  I was almost to the workstation when I was hit by another paintball. Thank God, I must have been beyond the reach of the taser. The paintball hit square in my upper back. If I lived to see another day, I'd be bruised. I dropped to the floor and put the workstation between me and Clyde. I heard Kloughn give an unearthly blood-​curdling shriek, the candlelight went out, and then everything was quiet.

  I was guessing that Clyde didn't want to chance going through the broken window. He was going to have to go back to the hall and enter the warehouse through the door at the end of the adjoining corridor. That gave me some time.

  I crossed the room as fast as I could, creeping along low to the ground, my hands outstretched to keep from smashing into a workstation. I found the wall with the windows and knew I was in the right place. I followed the wall to the door and then paced off to the workstation. Sure enough, there was the gun just like Kloughn said. I couldn't see the gun even when I held it inches from my face, but I could feel that it was a six-​shot revolver and it was loaded.