Crisscross rj-8

by F. Paul Wilson

  He refolded the map and slipped out of the cab, relocking the door as he went.

  Still a fair number of miles ahead of them. Jack would definitely need a full gas tank. He'd also need a little food and drink before he set out again.

  Looked like it was going to be a long night. He wanted to see this "farm" and find out what they planned for Jamie's remains.

  And then he'd get answers to his questions.

  7

  Richie Cordova looked down at Sister Maggie where she sat tied to a nice, sturdy oak chair, looked into her eyes and saw the fear and confusion there.

  He reveled in the moment. Hard to believe that less than an hour ago he'd been terrified, ready to call the whole thing off.

  All well and good to work up a plan to snatch a nun off the street, but getting down to the job of doing it… that's a whole other story. He'd smeared mud on his plates so no one could report the number, he'd had the sap ready, he'd juiced himself with fury, but when he'd spotted her walking and pulled into that curb… man, he'd switched from being pissed to almost pissing his pants.

  But he'd made himself do it. It was pretty dark, no one around with a clear line of sight—now or never. And he had to do it right. If he blew it, he'd never get another chance.

  He'd pulled it off, clubbing her unconscious and then speeding away with her slumped and huddled on the passenger side floor. But even then he hadn't been able to relax. What if someone had seen? What if some nosy old bitch had been watching out her window and reported it? Not that it was likely or would even matter. He was driving a nondescript Jeep—had to be a million of them in the city—with unreadable plates.

  Still… you never could tell. Driving along he'd spent so much time looking into the rearview mirror he almost ran down a pedestrian.

  But no one gave him a second look on his way to this urban wasteland west of Northern Boulevard in Flushing. And now he was here, hidden away in a rundown warehouse he'd sniffed out yesterday, where no one would interrupt him.

  And now that he had her here, securely trussed up like a prelibato salami, his fear was gone, evaporated, replaced by a strange elation. He'd always got a kick out of how the blackmail game let him call the shots and generally mess up people's lives. But that had always been a long-distance involvement, with contact limited to phone calls and mail.

  But this… he'd never experienced anything like this. Sister Margaret Mary was his to do with as he pleased. He wasn't just pulling her strings, he owned her.

  God, it was like sex.

  And he hadn't laid a finger on her. Yet.

  He was learning things about himself, things he'd never imagined. This was turning out to be more that just payback, it was a voyage of self-discovery.

  But maybe he shouldn't go all that deep about it, seeing as what today's Gemini horoscope had to say.

  You may feel compelled to overanalyze things at work, but resist. A colleague becomes more expressive when you talk first. In time, you'll see that problems at work were a godsend.

  He was kind of awed by that last part. His problems at "work" were already becoming a sort of "godsend." And when he thought about it, Sister Maggie was a colleague in a way. At least they'd worked together. Sort of. For sure she was going to become more expressive, and he was definitely going to talk first.

  "Do you know who I am?" he said, moving closer and standing over her. "Do you have any idea the trouble vou've caused me."

  She shook her head and made begging sounds through her gag.

  Even though no one would hear her even if she screamed at the top of her voice, Richie decided to leave the gag in place. He didn't want to listen to no bullshit. It was his place to do the talking, and hers to listen.

  "I'm the guy who took those pretty pictures of you and Metcalf."

  The way her eyes went wide, showing white all around, shot a bolt of ecstasy toward his groin.

  "That's right. Me. But guess what happened? Someone came around and messed up all my files… destroyed them. Ain't that a pity? I don't know who that someone was, but I think—no, I'm sure I know who sent him. And you're going to tell me all about him."

  He savored for a moment the tears that filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks to the gag, then he rummaged through the toolbox he'd brought along. He wanted the straight dope when he asked a question. That might require a little softening up. Or it might not. He wouldn't know until he removed the gag, and he didn't plan to do that for a while.

  A boy's gotta have his fun, right?

  He found the ice pick and held it up where she could see it.

  "But first, a little truth serum."

  8

  Jack wasn't sure how to play this.

  Here he was, following the Blagden truck down this bumpy country road in the dark. The very dark. The moon hadn't risen, not a street lamp in sight, and he and the truck were the only vehicles on the road.

  They'd turned off the Turnpike miles ago, then wound into these low hills. No way they couldn't know someone was coasting along behind them. But did they care?

  That was the question. If they knew they'd been hauling a murdered woman's body across state lines, they'd be more than a little paranoid and watching their rearview mirrors. They might even pull over to let a following car pass.

  But if they believed they were hauling a weird chunk of concrete and nothing more, they wouldn't care who was behind them.

  Although the truck had made no evasive maneuvers, Jack decided to play it safe and proceed on the assumption that the drivers knew the score.

  So when he saw the truck slow and make a cautious turn onto an even narrower road, Jack drove on by. He spotted two sets of headlights sitting atop a rise. Through his rearview he watched the truck climb to the top of the rise and stop by the headlights.

  Jack killed his own lights and pulled over. He stepped out of the car and found himself facing what looked like an open field, overgrown and bordered by a rickety wire fence. He checked the sky. Broken cloud cover blocked most of the starshine. He looked around for signs that the moon might be rising but found no telltale glow. Good. The less light the better.

  He hopped over the wire and made his way in a crouch through the tall grass toward the lights.

  He dropped lower as he neared the top of the rise, then stopped and squatted just out of reach of the headlights.

  The flatbed and two pickups sat angled around a pit that looked maybe seven or eight feet wide. From the size of the mound of excavated dirt piled to the side, Jack guessed it was a pretty deep hole.

  Deep enough to swallow Jamie's concrete sarcophagus.

  Four men with shovels, plus one of the drivers, stood around the rim showing not a hint of furtiveness. That persuaded Jack that they probably wouldn't be able to add anything to what he already knew. He'd made the trip for nothing.

  No… not for nothing. He'd learned where they were burying Jamie Grant.

  The driver on the ground made a signal to his partner in the flatbed's cab. As Jack watched, the truck's winch began to raise the forward end of the pillar, tilting the butt over the black maw of the hole.

  Jack's instincts spurred him to put a stop to this now. Jamie deserved better. But he'd be taking on six men; some of them could be armed. Better to let them complete their work. This way at least he'd know where to find Jamie when the time came to arrange for a proper burial.

  And another reason for holding back: As long as he knew where to find the pillar—literally where the body was buried—it remained a potential weapon against Brady and Jensen. What he had to do now was figure out how to use it to inflict maximum damage.

  So he held his place and his breath and watched the pillar angle up, up, up, then slip off the truck bed and into the hole.

  9

  In Midtown Manhattan an old woman cries out and clutches her back as pain lances through her. Her dog, a Rottweiler, stands beside her, legs stiff, body tense, barking in sympathy.

  She knows the cause of her sufferin
g.

  Another one… they've buried another one. They must be stopped before it's too late.

  But she can't do it. Someone else must act on her behalf.

  10

  Jack's thoughts raced ahead of his car as he cranked eastward on the Penn Turnpike. How to get the most out of that pillar…

  Nothing was coming. He was dry… dry as the earth they'd backfilled into Jamie's grave.

  East of Harrisburg he gave up and switched on the radio. Maybe he could zone out on music for a while, then tackle the problem with a fresh head. But he couldn't find anything he felt like listening to. He wished he'd brought along some of his CDs, but realized he probably wouldn't want to listen to them either.

  The problem wasn't with the music, but with him. He wouldn't feel right, wouldn't be himself until he'd fixed this.

  He switched to AM and picked up a strong, clear signal from WABC in New York. He hung on through a commercial to see which one of their stable of talk show geeks had the mike tonight, but instead wound up in the middle of the top-of-the-hour news update. He was reaching for the SEEK button when he heard…

  'Wo word yet on the missing nun. Sister Margaret Mary O'Hara was last seen being pulled into a car from a Lower East Side sidewalk earlier this evening. The witness did not know the make or color of the car, and couldn't read the license plate. If you have any information on this incident—any information at all—please call …"

  Feeling as if his bones were dissolving, Jack veered through the right lane and onto the shoulder where he stopped and set the shift into park.

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his hands squeezing the steering wheel as if trying to strangle it.

  He's got her… the son of a bitch has got her.

  But how could he have known it was Maggie?

  An instant of self-doubt pierced him, but then faded as he reviewed all the moves he'd made in the Cordova fix. He was certain—knew—that he hadn't left the faintest link to Maggie.

  She must have made a slip talking to him.

  Jack pounded the steering wheel. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

  All that effort to make the fix look like an accident—for nothing. Cordova knew, and he had her. God knew what he was going to do with her. Or was doing to her. Or had already done to her.

  A slimeball like Cordova… didn't deserve to live… shouldn't have bothered finessing the fix. Oxygen waster like him… best thing to do—for his victims and for the human gene pool—was to walk up to him and deliver a hollowpoint between the eyes.

  But Jack hadn't wanted to set himself on that road. Feared once he started traveling it he might not be able to step off. He'd approached Cordova as a guy who wasn't doing anyone physical harm—his bloodletting was emotional and financial—so Jack had taken a parallel approach. Cordova was hands off, so Jack had gone the hands-off route.

  He realized now that was a mistake. A bullet to the brain would have solved the Cordova problem. Quick, clean, easy. No more blackmail, and sure as hell no worry about a good-hearted nun being abducted.

  A mood cold and black settled on Jack as he threw the Buick back into drive and merged with the eastbound traffic.

  He knew where Cordova lived, where he worked. He'd find him. And if that fat slug had done anything to Sister Maggie, if he'd harmed her in any way…

  11

  Richie Cordova wiped the blood from his shaking hands. His hands weren't all that was shaking. His whole body was twitching. Like someone had shoved a live lamp cord up his ass.

  Richie knew a few guys who might think that felt good, but he felt sick.

  He turned toward the nun—or what was left of her—still tied in the chair, and quickly turned away. He couldn't look at her, couldn't believe how he'd let himself get so out of control.

  No… not out of control. In control. Complete control. Of her. It had thrown some sort of switch in him, made him do things he'd never dreamed he was capable of thinking up, let alone doing.

  He'd planned to kill her. That was a sure thing. Ain't no way she was leaving once he got her here. But he'd wanted to punish her some first, for ruining his game, and to get her to tell him all about it, sing the song he wanted to hear.

  And she'd sung. Held out for an amazingly long time, but finally she'd started to sing. Oh, how she sang. Told him all about meeting a guy named Jack in a place called Julio's and hiring him to get back the pictures of her and Metcalf, how Metcalf didn't know nothing about it, how she'd called him and told him not to worry no more. She'd sung about how she hadn't known Richie's name. Only this guy Jack knew that and he wouldn't tell her.

  Richie should have stopped then and ended it. He had what he wanted, so the thing to do was slit her throat and call it a night. He'd had the razor all set. Unlike the .38s in his pistol, a razor couldn't be traced.

  But he hadn't used it. Because he couldn't stop—didn't want to stop. He had control, he was in the driver's seat and he didn't want to use no brakes, didn't want to let go of the steering wheel.

  Only when the last of her life had leaked away did he come out of it. Then he'd stepped back and looked at what he'd done. And blew lunch.

  He felt a little better now, but not much. It suddenly came to him that this was partly Neva's fault. A lot of the time he spent working on the nun he'd been thinking of his ex-wife, seeing her face. Yeah. Her fault. If she hadn't been such a…

  Anyway, it was over. At least this part of it. He'd hide the body, try not to think about what he'd done, and move on to the next step.

  And that was finding this Jack guy. That was real important, because this Jack knew who he was. Once he was out of the way, any connection between Richie Cordova and the missing Sister Margaret Mary would be gone.

  But the nun couldn't remember his phone number—oh, she'd wanted to remember, Richie made sure of that, but it wasn't there.

  Which left him with the name of an Upper West Side bar called Julio's. Richie wasn't sure how he was going to work this. He was at a disadvantage not knowing what this Jack looked like. The nun had given him a description but it sounded like any one of a zillion guys. He'd sleep on it and see if he came up with anything.

  Sleep. Yeah, that would be good. He was dead on his feet.

  But first he had to deal with the body.

  Steeling himself, he turned and walked toward it…

  12

  Jack wasn't dressed for Beekman Place but he was in too foul a mood to play games.

  He'd been to Cordova's house—picked his way in and searched it from basement to attic. Not a trace of Sister Maggie.

  Next stop was Hurley's. If Cordova had snatched her, chances were slim that he'd be hanging out at his favorite bar. Then again, if he'd killed her and dumped her body, he might feel the need for a few drinks, and maybe an alibi as well. But Jack couldn't find him at Hurley's either. Even checked out the men's room. No Cordova.

  Last stop had been the office: same story.

  Jack had made another swing by Cordova's house—just in case he'd returned in the interim—but it looked as empty as when he'd left it. He'd parked down the street and watched the place.

  Where was the fat slimeball? Jack's mind shied away from imagining what he'd done to Maggie. If Jack could find him, Cordova would tell him where she was. Jack would see to that.

  But after an hour of sitting, Cordova hadn't shown. Good chance he might not show at all.

  So Jack decided to pay a visit to the third woman who'd entered his life this week.

  Esteban wasn't on the door and his late-shift coworker, a brawny black guy, wouldn't let Jack into the lobby.

  His arm blocked his name tag as he opened the glass door six or seven inches and eyed Jack's wrinkled jeans and sweatshirt. "Are you on Mrs. Roselli's visitor list?"

  "I don't know about the list, but she's expecting me. Just call her and say Jack's here for a follow-up chat."

  "I don't know. This is pretty late for her."

  "Just call her and see. I'll wait out h
ere."

  He nodded. "I know you will."

  He closed the door and went to the lobby phone. Jack leaned close to the gap between the glass door and glass wall. He blocked his street-side ear and listened.

  "Mrs. Roselli? Sorry to bother you, but there's a man here. He says his name is Jack and that you're expecting him… Pardon me?… Oh, I see… I'm sorry to hear that… is there anything I can do?… Are you sure? I can call a… Yes. Yes, I see. I'll tell him. And remember, if you need anything, anything at all, I'm right here… Right. Good-night. Feel better."

  Jack backed off a step as the call ended. Sounded like the old lady was sick.

  The doorman returned to the door. Jack saw now that his tag read Louis. He opened it wider this time. Apparently his talk with the old lady had reassured him about Jack.

  "She's not feeling well. Says to come back tomorrow."

  "She okay?"

  "She doesn't sound too hot, but she didn't want a doctor, so…" He shrugged. "I'm here if she needs me."

  "Good. I don't want anything happening to her."

  Jack turned and walked off. Half a block away he hunched his shoulders against a sudden chill. He'd met three new women this week. Now, in the space of twenty-four hours, one was dead, one was missing, and the other was sick. Was he carrying a curse? Had he become some sort of Jonah?

  What the hell was going on?

  SUNDAY

  1

  The news came a little after nine.

  With nothing better to do with his pent-up energy, Jack had been cleaning his apartment. He yearned for a cleaning service, but they might come across things they weren't meant to see. Gia sometimes helped, but today he was on his own.

  He had the tuner set to 880 AM, an all-news station. Usually he cleaned to the gentle refrains of ZZ-Top or the Allman Brothers, but today he was looking for updates on the missing nun story. The morning papers had nothing new. If news hit, the radio would have it first.