She unbolted the door and opened it, staring into the darkness. ‘Paige. Are you in there?’
No answer. No movement.
She stepped inside, fumbling on the wall until she found the light switch. A short flight of wooden steps led down into a gloomy, windowless space lit by a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Leaving the door open behind her, she descended the steps, noticing the strong smell of disinfectant.
A workbench with a buzz-saw took up a chunk of space, and a large, well-used hacksaw hung from the wall behind it. On one side of the bench were a couple of boxes, one of which contained more DIY tools and other assorted junk, while on the other side there was a washing machine and large chest freezer. There was nothing to suggest that Paige had ever been here.
Brook approached the bench. The smell of disinfectant was stronger here, and she could see that the wooden surface and the razor-sharp saw-blade had both recently been cleaned meticulously. Even so, there were still a string of dark flecks on the woodwork beneath the base of the blade, with more dotted about on other parts of the bench.
She felt her breathing get faster, not liking the feeling she was getting, then turned towards the chest freezer, staring at it for several seconds before finally pulling open the lid.
She let out a cry when she saw what was in there.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ she whispered, her voice cracking. ‘Jesus, no.’
Slamming the lid shut, she raced back up the stairs and back into the hallway.
Cervantes was still standing a few yards away, pointing his gun into the kitchen, but he looked scared. ‘Don’t pick that gun up, Luis!’ he called out, the fear in his voice obvious.
‘What are you going to do, Dad? Shoot your own son?’ McPherson demanded inside the kitchen.
‘I should have done it last time. It would have saved the world a lot of trouble.’
‘There are body parts in the freezer in the basement!’ Brook called out, still reeling from the shock of what she’d just seen, but knowing that she needed to steel Cervantes’s resolve. ‘It’s Paige’s nanny – Rosa. Your son’s a killer!’
‘I know he is,’ said Cervantes. ‘He murdered a drug dealer three years ago. You still have to answer for that, Luis.’ His face tightened. ‘Do not pick up that gun. I will shoot you, and I won’t miss.’ But as he spoke the words his hands were shaking, and Brook already knew what was going to happen.
‘Dad, no!’ McPherson shouted.
Cervantes opened his mouth to say something and his eyes widened. At the same time, his finger tightened on the trigger.
‘Don’t kill him!’ Brook screamed. ‘He’s my only—’
The shot exploded around the house with a deafening blast, and Brook’s eyes reflexively shut.
A second shot followed a moment later and, as her eyes opened again, she saw Cervantes stagger backwards and fall to the floor, his gun, and then his stick, clattering after him. He rolled over onto his side so that he was facing her, his eyes wide and uncomprehending, one hand clutching at his rapidly reddening shirt, the other reaching out towards her in a last desperate gesture. Then the hand dropped and he lay still.
Cervantes’s gun was no more than five yards away from her, and Brook was moving towards it, but had barely put one foot in front of the other when McPherson appeared in the doorway, pointing the smoking pistol at her.
She stopped dead. She and McPherson faced each other. Adrenalin pumped through her, fuelled by anger. But she was trapped. The gun was too far away, and she’d never make it to the back door before McPherson put a bullet in her.
McPherson glared at her. ‘You really fucked things up, bitch.’
‘Just tell me where my daughter is and I won’t say a word about any of this, or come after you in any way,’ Brook said quietly.
‘You might not have noticed but you’re not exactly in a position to make demands.’ He aimed the gun at her chest. ‘So you taped my call, did you? That was the cleverest move you’ve made all week. Give me the tape, and the cell I called you on.’
‘I haven’t got them.’
But she did. In the pocket of the hoodie she was wearing. And although she was putting on her best poker face, it was obvious he didn’t believe her.
‘Either you can hand them over or I can search your corpse for them. You choose. But be quick about it.’
Brook took out the tape-recorder and slid it across the floor to him, then hesitated for a second before taking out the cell, knowing it was the only proof she had that her whole story was true. She cursed herself for not leaving it somewhere else, but everything had happened so fast. Reluctantly, she slid it across the floor.
McPherson picked up both items and placed them in the front pocket of his jeans, so that the top of the phone was sticking out of it. He smiled at her, making no effort to lower the gun.
‘I’ve sent another copy of the tape to my lawyer,’ she told him, playing for time, ‘naming you as the man in the call. It’s not going to take the police long to track you down, especially as your father called one of his former colleagues to get your address. If you kill me, it’s another homicide against your name, but all I care about is getting my daughter back. Just tell me where she is and, as far as I’m concerned, I never saw any of this.’
McPherson looked confused as he tried to work out what to do with this new information. ‘You’re bullshitting me.’
‘Why would I? I was always going to make backups.’ Her voice sounded surprisingly calm. She was still terrified, but not as much as she had been the previous night, when Maria Reyes had been pointing the gun at her. Maybe, in some bizarre way, she was simply adapting to this violent new life of hers.
‘I can’t let you go,’ he said at last.
‘All I want is my daughter.’
‘You don’t get any of this, do you? Right from the beginning, you were never going to see her again.’
‘Why not, for Christ’s sakes? What have I ever done to you?’
‘Sorry, bitch, but you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He raised the gun and shut one eye, and Brook realized he was aiming at her.
The whole world fell silent.
And then, without warning, his father’s body juddered and it sounded like he actually groaned.
McPherson frowned and tried to look back over his shoulder to see what was going on.
Four days ago Brook would have stayed frozen to the spot, waiting for the inevitable, but now she took her chance and dived to one side and straight through the open basement door, as two shots rang out in quick succession and glass shattered.
She lay sprawled on her front on the wooden steps and, in one movement, leaped back up and slammed the door shut behind her, then ran halfway down the steps before jumping through the air, yanking the light bulb and the cable holding it from the ceiling and plunging the room into darkness. Landing on her feet, she crept over to the workbench and felt about in the box of tools for a weapon – anything that she could use to defend herself against McPherson’s attack – quickly locating a large spanner. It would probably be useful only as a missile, but it was better than nothing.
Then she crouched down to wait in the darkness.
A minute passed. Then two.
She heard McPherson moving about outside and tried to calm her breathing as she prepared for the inevitable. She might die, but she’d die fighting.
And then she heard the sound of the bolt being pulled across the door and footsteps walking away, and it struck her, with a sinking heart, that he didn’t need to come in here to kill her because, right now, she was crouching in her very own tomb.
49
McPherson cursed his luck. He didn’t know how the hell his old man and Brook Connor had found him, but if they’d just come ten minutes later he would have missed them. He’d already packed and cleaned the place up before they’d arrived, but then, typically, he’d got hungry. And now, because of that fucking appetite of his, he’d been completely caught out.
He walked back into the kitchen, ignoring the corpse of his father, who, as far as he was concerned, had been dead to him for years anyhow, and put down the gun, thinking through his options while he finished the remainder of his ham-and-cheese sandwich. The most effective option would be to go into the basement and kill Connor. That way, at least he’d have a chance to get rid of all three bodies and clean up afterwards. He’d still have to go on the run and with a lot less money now, but there was nothing that could be done about that.
The problem with this first option, though, was obvious. Brook Connor might have been a rich bitch living the easy life, but the fact that she’d come this far showed she was no pushover, and he risked getting injured or even killed if he went into the basement after her. McPherson would never admit to himself that he was a coward, but he wasn’t prepared to take that risk.
A second option was to burn the place down and get rid of all the evidence that way, but McPherson had enough knowledge of forensics to know that the cops would quickly be able to tell that it was arson, and even if the fire burned for hours, there’d be traces of all three corpses, and then he really would be heading for the chair.
In the end he decided on the third option, which was to leave Connor down there for now. There was no way she could get out, and it bought him time to get as far away as possible from here with his hundred and twenty-five grand.
He put down the sandwich, grabbed the solitary Coors that was in the fridge and drank it quickly. He was certain Connor and his old man wouldn’t have called the cops before they came here, but there was no point hanging around. The sooner he was gone, the better. Then he could think things through and come up with a better plan.
But as he put down the empty beer can, he caught sight of the figure reflected in the glass.
He turned round, saw the gun and knew that on this occasion his time really was up.
50
Time passed in the darkness and Brook waited, spanner in hand, feeling increasingly claustrophobic, conscious that she was only feet away from the frozen body parts of the woman who’d shared her home for the past two years, knowing that she could end up in exactly the same situation – murdered and dismembered – if McPherson chose to come down here.
And yet he didn’t. Brook had no idea how long had passed since she’d been there. It could have been five minutes. It could even have been ten.
And then she heard voices coming from beyond the door. They were very faint, but she knew wasn’t mistaken.
Slowly she stood up and felt her way over to the staircase, wanting to hear more. But the voices had already stopped. And then, just as silence began to descend again, a shot rang out that made her start.
Brook stayed perfectly still, trying to work out what this meant. Had the police arrived? Had McPherson shot himself?
She heard the faint sound of footfalls in the hallway, followed a second later by the bolt being pulled back across the door to unlock it. Someone was coming inside.
As silently as possible, she slunk back further back into the darkness, raising the spanner above her head, ready to throw it.
Giant and Jenna moved quickly down the track towards the house where, according to the probation services, Luis McPherson lived. Their guns were drawn and Giant was tense. Chris Cervantes’s car was on the road outside, but there was no sign of the Rav4 that Brook Connor was supposedly driving.
As they reached the door, Giant peered through the strip of frosted glass and saw the body. The walking stick down by its side suggested it was probably Chris Cervantes. Giant felt his whole body tighten. He’d seen too many corpses in the last forty-eight hours.
He knew he should definitely call for backup, but something stopped him. It was the memory of his dad coming home from work in his pristine uniform when Giant was a little kid and was always pleased to see him. All his life, Giant had wanted to make his old man proud, and yet somehow he’d always fallen short. This time he wasn’t going to.
‘Let’s go round the back,’ he whispered to Jenna.
Still holding the spanner, Brook mounted the steps, conscious of the deep, oppressive silence in the house. She guessed she’d been down there a good ten minutes since that single shot, maybe even longer. During that time she’d heard absolutely nothing. But she also knew it could be a trap. Why else would someone have pulled the bolt across the door to give her an escape route?
She stopped when she got to the top of the steps and put her ear to the door. Finally, gripping the spanner tightly, she grabbed the handle and slowly pulled it open, half-expecting someone to be standing there with a gun. But as she slowly poked her head out, she saw that the hallway was empty, except for Chris Cervantes’s body, which lay where it had fallen. Brook knew it was her actions that had killed him, just as they had Maria Reyes. It was a heavy burden to carry and, whatever happened after this, she’d be carrying it for the rest of her days.
She considered running out the back door and getting as far away as possible, but curiosity got the better of her and she crept along the hallway, unable to stop herself looking at Cervantes’s corpse. His shirt was heavily stained, but there wasn’t as much blood as she’d thought there would be. His eyes were closed, and in truth he looked like he was asleep. She thought about the fact that he’d gone out of his way to bring her pizza earlier. It had been a kind act. And one that had got him precisely nowhere.
It was when she reached the kitchen door that she saw Luis McPherson. He was lying on his back in the middle of the floor, one arm in his lap, the other splayed out over his shoulder as if he was doing backstroke. He wasn’t moving.
Brook went over and looked down at him. The man who’d kidnapped Paige was dead. He’d been shot in the side of the head, close to his temple, leaving a large exit wound on the other side that had torn part of his skull away. He’d obviously been shot at point-blank range and there was a lot more blood, most of it in a pool around him. A gun – it looked like the one she’d seen on the kitchen table earlier – was lying a few feet away.
The first thing Brook thought was that McPherson had shot himself, but then she saw that the cellphone she’d given him was no longer sticking out of his front pocket. She leaned down to get a closer look, but the pockets were definitely empty. The tape-recorder wasn’t there, either.
She looked round hurriedly. Neither item was on any of the worktops. McPherson’s holdall was still on the table, so she pulled it open and looked inside, but there was nothing in there but some clothes and toiletries.
That was when she realized there was no way he’d killed himself, and that once again she was being set up, because the tape-recorder and the cell were the only items of evidence that proved her innocence.
‘Shit,’ she cursed aloud. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’
She walked out into the hallway, her mind a maelstrom of confusion as she tried to work out what she was going to do now.
And then the decision was made for her, as she saw two figures taking aim and heard angry shouts of ‘Police! Get on the floor now!’ breaking the heavy silence in the house.
51
The police interview room
Now
Utterly exhausted, Brook finished her account and sat back in the hard seat. Her back ached and her mouth felt dry.
Detective Giant exhaled loudly. ‘Well, that was some story, Brook. To be at three different crime scenes where, by my estimation, there were a total of five victims – and not to have participated in any of the killings – that’s got to be a record.’
Detective Jenna King fixed Brook with a cold stare. ‘Either you’re the unluckiest person in the world or you’re lying. And to think that your own lawyer’s involved, too, seeing as she’s the attorney of one of the victims and met up with Maria Reyes just before she was murdered.’
‘She wasn’t murdered,’ said Brook.
Jenna shrugged. ‘The fact remains that your attorney met her, and now she won’t tell us what the meeting was about.’
‘My client’s already given you Maria Reyes’s explanation for our meeting,’ said Angie, ‘and I don’t want to add any more than that.’
‘And I’m telling the truth about what happened,’ said Brook, who knew how her story must sound to them. She looked at Angie, who gave her a nod to let her know that she had everything under control.
Angie turned back to the two detectives. ‘My client is not lying to you and let’s face it: what is her motive in all this? Yes, it’s possible she may have had a motive for killing her husband. But let’s assume for a moment she did kill him, then why start a fire to advertise her crime? Why not just dump the body somewhere?’
Detective King opened her mouth to say something, but Angie put up a hand to stop her. ‘And if my client wanted to kill Maria Reyes, in revenge for the affair she was having with her husband,’ she continued, ‘why, having abducted her at gunpoint, would she drive to the family home to kill her in front of her husband and several other armed men? And what possible motive did she have for killing Mr Cervantes and his son? Or for dismembering her nanny, Miss Fernandez, a woman with whom she enjoyed an excellent relationship?’
‘We don’t know Ms Connor’s exact motives yet,’ said Giant, ‘but you know as well as I do that spree killers are often illogical. The point is there’s a stack of evidence against your client right now.’
‘Really?’ said Angie, raising her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think so. And let’s talk about someone who’s missing from this discussion so far. My client’s daughter, Paige.’
‘Stepdaughter,’ said Detective King harshly. ‘A stepdaughter she would have lost, if her husband had left her.’
‘I’m assuming you’ve still found no trace of her,’ said Angie.
‘Not yet,’ said King. ‘But we have a major multi-agency search going on.’
‘Look,’ said Angie, as she consulted her notes, ‘we know Paige was picked up from kindergarten at two p.m. on Wednesday afternoon by Rosa, and that was the last time she was seen by anyone. My client was at her office in Santa Cruz with her own clients at the time, and she didn’t leave until seven p.m. Camera footage and witnesses will corroborate that. Are you suggesting that she’d cold-heartedly arranged the kidnapping of Paige, the murder of Rosa and that of Logan twenty-four hours later, and that Paige is now being held at an undisclosed location? If she wanted to get rid of her husband, why not just have him killed? Why go to all that trouble?’
We Can See You Page 24