Sam stared at him, disoriented.
“We were in a car accident,” he said. “We need to get out of here before the police come. Can you move?”
Sam blinked several times, then nodded quickly, seeming to collect herself. She gazed around, a bewildered expression. The wrecked van. The bullet holes. The dead guys up front. Arturo gone.
Gray stood up and suffered a wave of nausea. He steadied himself, arm on the side of the van. With his other arm, he reached for Sam, who clutched his hand and hoisted herself from under the bench, pebbles of windshield falling from her clothes.
They ducked out of the back. People were outside talking to them, but Gray couldn’t hear what they were saying. He pushed by, clasping Sam’s hand, and they ran down the street, not looking back. Around the corner was a bodega. They went inside the ramshackle building caged in metal bars. The clerk behind the counter, a heavyset Hispanic woman, gave them a lazy glance. Sam with blood caked at her hairline, ripped Ann Taylor getup from earlier. Gray still in his homeless disguise. Nothing a store-keep in Hamilton Heights hadn’t seen before. His hearing was coming back, muffled, like people talking under water.
Gray grabbed some Band-Aids, baby wipes, and a bottle of Advil. At the register, Sam pointed to the disposable cell phones for sale behind the counter. “I left my purse. I don’t have a phone.”
“I still have mine.” Gray tapped his pocket, which had a rectangular bulge. He gave the clerk a twenty. She took the bill carefully without touching Gray’s filthy hand.
“Can we use the restroom?” Gray asked.
“For employees only,” the clerk replied, not looking at him as she dug out the change from the register.
Gray slapped another twenty on the counter.
The clerk hesitated, then pulled a key attached to a large slab of plastic that had EMPLOYEES ONLY! written on it.
“Don’t make a mess, and I need the key back,” the clerk said.
Inside the restroom, which was surprisingly clean, Sam washed her face in the sink as Gray used the baby wipes to remove the blood and dirt from his face and arms. Sam rinsed the blood from her hair, and pulled it into a ponytail. They’d been lucky, none of their lashes were deep, though both ached from the whiplash and bruises from the crash. Gray popped four Advil from the bottle then cupped his hand under the tap and washed it down. He passed Sam the bottle and she did the same.
“What are we going to do?” Sam asked.
“We need to get to Justice Cutler’s house,” Gray said. “The challenge in the envelope begins at seven o’clock. If we don’t stop them, she’s dead.”
“But if we go, Arturo…” There was desperation in Sam’s voice now.
Gray sat on the closed toilet seat and massaged his temples with a hand. He needed to think. Sam was right. If they went to save Cutler, to catch the justices before they struck, Razor would surely kill Arturo. But if they went for Arturo, Douglas and Wall would kill Cutler.
“We need to call the FBI,” Sam said.
“And tell them what? We don’t know where Arturo is. And they’re never going to believe us about Douglas and Wall.”
“They may not believe us, but the cops won’t take the chance if you tell them Justice Cutler is in danger. They’ll make sure she’s protected, if only to make sure you don’t hurt her.”
Sam was right. They thought Gray was a killer, so if Gray mentioned Cutler they’d get her somewhere safe.
Gray pulled out the iPhone. He was going to call Agent Milstein. But he noticed that the phone still displayed the find-my-phone app screen. The small blue dots showed the location of Douglas and Wall’s cars. Both vehicles were still at the Supreme Court, but that wasn’t what captured Gray’s attention.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
He held up the phone. “The tracker, there’s three dots.”
Sam shook her head, not understanding.
“One for Douglas, one for Wall. And one for the other phone.”
Sam’s eyes flashed.
Arturo had the phone. They knew where Razor Ortiz had taken him. And it was only five blocks away.
CHAPTER 75
Milstein sat behind her desk, frustrated she’d let Hernandez escape. It was a huge risk he’d taken, going to the court. What was he up to? She was frankly tired of thinking about Grayson Hernandez and the rest of it. She scanned her desk. The photos of the victims. She kept them out as a reminder and because she knew they held the key to identifying the killer. Hernandez’s theory was a good one, it did look like a game. But not the game he had in mind.
She glanced at the old Washington Post stories about the Whitlock case. Her mind flew to the horror show that Kevin Dugan had come upon. His deposition testimony about Susie Whitlock, the girl who’d survived:
“She was sitting on a stained mattress on the floor of the unit. Her hair was chopped up.”
Milstein had an urgent thought. Her eyes darted to the photo of Sakura Matsuka, her bludgeoned face. Her cut hair.
She searched for the VCR remote and found it under some papers, then rewound the Dugan deposition footage.
“And what about her sister, Kimberley?”
“I didn’t see her at first, and then…”
“You wanna take a break?”
“No, let’s get this over with.”
“You said you didn’t see Kimberley at first.”
“Yeah, so I start looking about the unit. It was small, filled with junk. Then I saw the large duffel bag.”
“And what was in the bag?”
“I unzipped it and she was in there. I saw her tiny head. Then her neck, it was bruised. Then I realized that it wasn’t attached to her body, that he’d dismembered her.”
Milstein paused the frame. She looked at the photo of young Isabelle Hill dead in Dupont Underground, the bruises on her neck.
Milstein clicked the video back on.
“He molested them both. We think he made Susie watch him cut up her sister.”
Milstein’s eyes jumped back to the dismembered bodies of Ben Freeman’s son and his girlfriend.
Milstein felt goose pimples envelope her flesh. Then she heard the ping of her e-mail. She glanced at the computer. It was the information she’d requested from the prison. Video of John Whitlock’s visitors. Whitlock’s only visitor, “L. Smith.” The e-mail contained a link. She clicked on it and up popped a split screen, one of the prisoner, one of the visitor’s room on the other side of a glass partition. Whitlock was alone at first, waiting for his guest. Milstein examined his face. In his mug shots from the prison file, he’d had a shaved head and been clean shaven. But in the video his hair was unruly. She examined his face; there was something familiar about it. She held her hand up, covering his mouth. The eyes. But it was the person who’d just entered the visitor’s room that answered everything.
CHAPTER 76
Gray and Sam ran the five blocks to the blue dot on the phone, pushing through the pain of the crash. Gray examined the entrance to the auto repair shop. The place probably chopped up more stolen vehicles than performed any legitimate repairs. They ducked past the windows, which had been covered in flat black paint, and hurried to the back of the structure. The blue dot on the phone hadn’t moved. Arturo was inside.
There was a window next to the back door. Gray cupped his hands and peered through the glass. Inside was a small room that had a desk, phone, and some file cabinets. The office for the garage, probably. Gray tried the back door, but it was locked. To the left of the door were two large garage doors for the vehicles brought in for repair. One of the doors wasn’t closed completely. He could probably fit under the gap. “I need you to stay here,” he said.
“I’m coming,” Sam said.
“No, I need you here.” He looked at the iPhone’s clock: 5:50. “If I’m not out in ten minutes—and I mean it, if I’m even one second late—you call Agent Milstein, and you tell her where I am.” Gray pulled out his wallet and found Milstein’s business card.
Sam looked
at her watch. “Why don’t we just call her now, we can—”
Gray shook his head and jammed the business card in Sam’s hand. He didn’t have time to debate. Arturo was in there.
“Wait,” Sam said, “I need the phone.” Gray had the only phone left. She’d been right, they should have bought another at the bodega.
“I need it. If I’m not back by six o’clock, get back to the bodega and call Milstein.”
Gray dropped to a push-up position, then skidded under the gap in the garage door. There was a Toyota with front-end damage, probably the car Razor crashed into the van. Spare parts and tires were strewn about, and the place smelled of oil and grease. A section of the garage was cordoned off by a drop cloth that hung from the ceiling. Gray could see light filtering from behind the curtain. Gray stepped quietly over to the curtain and peered through a gap. There they were. Ortiz and three men. It wasn’t like the rest of the filthy shop. A camera was mounted on a tripod, pointed at a bed. Behind the bed, a large backdrop hung from a metal frame. Like a movie set. Gray’s attention turned to a metal shelf, the kind you buy at Home Depot and had to assemble. It had boxes of Trojans, a large jug of K-Y Jelly, sex toys. Gross. He realized that this was a movie set—a makeshift porno studio.
No degrading sex scenes would be filmed today. But maybe a snuff film. Arturo was tied to a concrete support beam next to the bed. His head was lowered, his chest heaving up and down. Shirt stained with blood. One of Ortiz’s men was adjusting a portable lamp, another fiddling with the camera.
As for Razor Ortiz, he was wearing what looked like a green garbage bag with holes cut in it, an apron to cover his clothes, and was ranting at his colleagues. “I tell you to get me a chain saw and you bring me this?” He held up electric hedge clippers. They had an orange base and black handle and a long blade with teeth lining the edges.
A man with greased-back hair said, “They was out of stock. We thought—”
Ortiz hit the man hard in the face. The man stumbled, but didn’t lose his footing. Nor did he try to defend himself.
Ortiz powered on the clippers, which made a high-pitched whine, like a vacuum cleaner. “Fuck it, these will do.”
Another man, this one older, gestured for Ortiz to turn off the clippers. After Ortiz clicked them off, the older man said, “Ramon, I understand that you want to do this—for Angel—but I think it’s a mistake.”
Ortiz looked at the older crew member. In an even tone, but with a sadness to it, he said, “This motherfucker killed my brother. For nothing! Then he disrespects me? He’s dyin’.”
The older man nodded slowly, resigned that Ortiz needed this, that nothing he could say would stop him. “At least don’t film it. If it gets out…”
Ortiz ignored him and powered on the hedge trimmers. They didn’t have the roar of a chain saw, but the sound was still terrifying. It would be worse—a chain saw could easily slice through flesh and bone. The clippers were going to take some work. It would be slow and messy.
Arturo raised his head as Ortiz moved closer. If Ortiz had expected fear, blubbering, or begging, he would be disappointed. Arturo gave only a black stare.
Ortiz moved the blade close to Arturo’s face, toying with him. But Arturo didn’t look away.
This seemed to anger Ortiz. He turned to the man working the camera to confirm he was getting the shot. The man nodded.
It was times like this that tested the measure of a man. Arturo, who faced death with courage, had passed the test. Gray would be damned if he failed.
Gray looked at the clock on the iPhone. 5:54. He had only six minutes before Sam would call for help. He stepped into the bright lights of the room. “Ramon Ortiz,” he shouted. Gray held the iPhone in front of him filming the scene.
Ortiz’s men hastily pulled guns, and pointed them at Gray. In turn, Gray panned the room, catching them on the video.
Ortiz clicked off the hedge trimmers and stared at Gray. “You know that iPhone don’t make you bulletproof, right?”
“No, but you’ve just confessed to kidnapping. To conspiracy to murder. I got it all. That’s enough to put you and your friends here away for life.”
The older of the crew moved in closer, gun trained on Gray. He gave a derisive laugh. “Or we could just waste you and take your phone.”
Not an unfair point. “The video is streaming to the cloud,” Gray said. “If I don’t get back with Arturo in five minutes it goes live on the Internet.”
Ortiz shot a nervous glance at the older man.
“Release him,” Gray said trying to sound confident. “You do that, and the video is destroyed.”
The men darted looks at one another, not sure what to do. There was no streaming, no cloud, no team ready to release the video, of course. Gray prayed they wouldn’t call his bluff. They hadn’t shot him yet, so that was a good sign. Gray looked at Ortiz. “Doing this isn’t gonna bring Angel back.”
Ortiz’s face reddened. “Say my brother’s name again, and I’ll string you up next to your friend.”
Gray held the iPhone, continuing to film.
Razor turned to Arturo, who was looking more alert now. Ortiz seemed to be calculating his next move, deciding whether he believed Gray. Deciding whether Arturo was worth the risk.
“If the video goes live, you’re all going away for a long time,” Gray said. “Let him go and it never sees the light of day. You have my word.”
“Your word,” Ortiz scoffed.
“I mean it. I got no problem with you.”
Ortiz looked to the older member of his crew again. The older man didn’t say a word, but it was clear his view on the matter: walk away.
The other men kept their guns on Gray, but their faces betrayed their worry that Gray had them on video committing multiple felonies.
“Only four minutes left before this goes public,” Gray said. “Decide.”
Ortiz pressed his lips together. He clicked the starter on the clippers and marched toward Arturo, who was standing erect now.
“Don’t!” Gray shouted.
Ortiz moved the clippers near Arturo’s face again. Arturo didn’t back down.
Ortiz made a fast arc with the clippers striking the cement beam, the teeth clacking against the concrete, echoing through the garage. Threads of rope securing Arturo flew into the air.
Arturo pushed himself free, and was now face-to-face with Ortiz.
The guns previously directed at Gray were now on Arturo.
Arturo started to speak, but stopped himself.
Ortiz said, “You best get the fuck outta here before I change my mind.”
“Let’s go,” Gray said, keeping the video on them.
Arturo and Ortiz held a stare for a long moment. Then Arturo said, “Nice to see you again, Ramon.”
Ortiz smiled wryly. Arturo then walked slowly to Gray.
Ortiz turned to them both. “Hernandez,” he said. The sound of his name still sent a chill through Gray the same way it had that night with Lauren.
“Yeah?” Gray said, the iPhone still pointed at Ortiz and his men.
“That video ever gets out, there ain’t gonna be much of a future in the pizza business. Or for its owners.”
“Don’t you threaten his family, motherfucker,” Arturo shouted.
Ignoring Arturo, Ortiz looked at Gray. “It’s not a threat.”
Gray believed him.
“And Alvarez,” Ortiz said, as Arturo and Gray paced backward out of the room. “This ain’t over.”
Arturo gave an exasperated smile. “It never is,” he said.
CHAPTER 77
Sam’s face lit up when she saw them run out of the garage. “Thank God!” She threw her arms around Arturo, then Gray. “You had only thirty seconds left before I was gonna go make the call.”
Arturo smacked Gray on the back. “Ponyboy don’t need no thirty seconds, he’s a fucking badass.” For having been worked over and almost dismembered, Arturo was in good spirits. Gray thought perhaps shock was making him
loopy.
Once they were a safe distance from the garage, Arturo pulled out his phone.
“You’re not gonna call your crew to have them go in there, are you?”
“Not gonna lie, I was thinking about it. But, nah. This shit’s gotta stop somewhere.” Arturo put the phone to his ear. “But I assume we need a way to get to the justice’s house?”
It took Arturo’s men thirty minutes to arrive with two motorcycles.
“Bikes?” Gray said.
“Thought it would get us there faster since we can ride around traffic. Also good for escapes,” Arturo said. “What’s wrong? You forget how to ride?” Arturo smirked. Sam smiled too.
“I’ll be fine,” Gray said, though he wasn’t so sure. If you grew up in the Heights, you knew how to street bike. But it had been years since Gray had ridden solo.
As Gray familiarized himself with the motorcycle, Arturo and Sam talked to the guys who’d delivered the bikes. The men handed Arturo two bandanas, the guns. Gray checked the time. It was 6:35 p.m. If the justices proceeded with the game they’d be leaving in twenty-five minutes.
“We need to get moving,” Gray said.
Arturo continued talking to his men, taking his time, not a care in the world. Gray made eye contact with Sam, hoping she’d get the hint and urge Arturo to get a move on. Arturo said something to the men, who laughed. A tricked-out Impala then pulled up and retrieved the men.
Arturo climbed on the other bike. “Don’t worry, we’ll beat them there,” he said. “You want to ride with me or Pony?” Arturo asked Sam.
She climbed on the back of Arturo’s motorcycle. “Not even a close one,” she said.
The two motorcycles then tore off into the night.
CHAPTER 78
Justice Cutler’s estate in the exclusive Avenel neighborhood in Potomac, Maryland, bordered a thick throng of mature trees and was perched on a hill behind an iron fence. No neighbors nearby. The justice was somewhat of a recluse. Divorced, no children. Gray had a stab of guilt that they were using her as bait. They hid the bikes in the trees that lined the fence on the side of the place. Gray gave Arturo a boost, and he cleared the tall gate, then opened a side door to let them in. Easy enough. They decided that Gray and Sam would hide out front, while Arturo would cover the back.
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