At a nod from Tommy, Mac slipped quietly out into the darkness. Tommy shut the door behind him as softly as possible. He followed his partner's shadow around the corner. His gaze swept the streets to either side. This was Gates' world as much as it was theirs. He might have spies everywhere, and the last thing they wanted was a warning to reach him before they did.
* * *
As Hiram entered his office, his heart calmed to a steady, trip-hammer beat and his nerves steadied. He was in what he called his ‘efficiency mode’. No thought, no margin for error. Action, pure and simple, and lots of it. It was this state of mind that had made him rich, that had kept him one step ahead of everyone else in the business.
There were times to sit and worry, and there were times for running and hiding. This was neither. It was time for Hiram Gates to get off his dead ass and do the right thing for someone he now knew meant a very great deal to him. That fact helped him to react, as well. It was a better feeling than he could have imagined, even the worry. It felt good to be attached.
Greve, he decided, was history. No matter whether he was absolutely innocent of what Hiram now feared, no matter if the pictures he delivered of Veronica were so incredible that they brought in a million dollars. None of it mattered anymore. Nothing mattered.
The guy was a freak, and Hiram was becoming a freak by association. It was time for it to end. Their association would become just one more bit of history in Hiram's book of life, and Greve would become a statistic.
That would have to be one of the phone calls, he knew. Someone who could act as an exterminator, someone who could rid his life of this vermin, would have to be called. He knew such people, much as he knew every other level of humanity that San Valencez could offer up. There were even a few of them he could trust and who owed him a favor. It was so seldom they could help him that all the favors were still due.
Hiram called thirteen sleazy hotels and four bars in quick succession. All of these were familiar numbers; even the voices at the other end were ones he'd heard before. At each place he asked for either a name or an extension. These were his people, his connections. Most of them owed him.
Hiram wasn't in the business of going into debt. He told each person he spoke with to start asking around, to look for anyone by Greve's description, and to look for Madeline. It was a simple thing, one they wouldn't question. It wasn't important why he was looking, only that he would pay when they were found. That was the way to find efficient help. No personal interests beyond the almighty dollar.
Most of them knew Maddy on sight. She had been with Hiram for a long time, and she was not an easy woman to forget. He started the chain of action and reaction, like toppling the first in a long row of upright dominos, then he set the phone down and sat back to wait, to take calls, and to solve problems. He felt more like himself.
His eyes strayed to his desk drawers then, and he reached for his key. Scotch was what he needed. The beer had managed to get him into action, but scotch was the fuel, the cure-all for whatever ailed. He'd been going through quite a bit of it lately – another reason Greve had to go. At this rate Hiram knew he'd be an alcoholic within the month.
He unlocked the drawer quickly, pulled out the bottle and one of the crystal tumblers and poured.
He should never have looked back to the drawer. The packages were there, just as he'd left them, except that when he'd pulled free the scotch, he'd also knocked free a photo. A single image.
It was Cherie that met his gaze, satiny skin gleaming in the bright fluorescent gleam of his desk lamp. Her eyes were far away and empty of will. Her mouth was set in a firm, unsmiling, unheeding line. She seemed to be grinning at him, inviting him.
Hiram grabbed the photo with a furtive motion, yanked it out of the drawer, and grabbed the envelope full of the others with his other hand, dropping them onto the desk. The familiar warmth crept through him, and he felt the warped, unmanageable reaction his mind had to the girls on the film taking command. Christ. Even now he was losing it, even in the face of potential disaster.
Each was different. The pile was not a grouping of photos of two young women, but a collection of different treats. Each image was stolen from Greve's mind and the girl's body. Each had its own attraction, its own pseudo-life.
He wished things were going more smoothly, wished he could see the latest work – the photos of Veronica. If things had continued smoothly, would be more and better photos to come. It was a shame that the guy was such a lost cause, such a fucking psycho. The pictures held his gaze as surely as the scotch drew his thirst.
Hiram cursed under his breath, wanting to burn them, wanting to put them to the flame one by one and watch them sizzle to ash. He could not. His hands shook, and his gaze remained glued to the photos. It was sinking home, this problem he was facing, sinking home and taking deep, deep root in the base of his brain.
This was where it would all end. This was where Madeline would end up, not the Maddy he knew, and not the Maddy he loved, but the Maddy that lived in Greve's sick, twisted mind. It would be many Maddy's, potential beauties that had never lived, never breathed – goddesses with Maddy's borrowed skin, her long, auburn locks framing their dead, demanding faces.
He knew this other Maddy as well, had seen her in his mind and had lusted after her, coveted her, and battled the image away. Now it was back, and he couldn't fight it anymore. He couldn't get his hands to quit shaking, but it didn't matter. He no longer saw Cherie in the photo, but instead he saw Maddy. Her eyes were gone, replaced by arrogant, unattainable glints of metal, like chips of ice.
All the warmth was drained from her image. All the life was soaked away. Only her beauty remained, cold, hard, porcelain beauty, made up like an oriental doll, or a Mardi-Gras mask. Hiram barely registered the sound of the outer door opening, or the sound of approaching feet.
When he did, he could barely tear his eyes away to glance up and pray for it to be Maddy. He had no strength to stand, no way to escape.
* * *
"Christ," Tommy said, shaking the door in disgust. "He locked the fucking place after himself. How the hell are we going to get in now?" The frustration was taking hold, and he felt like banging on the door with his fist, bashing it in with the weight of his body and the strength of his anger.
Mac looked at him, a glint in his eyes that Tommy had never seen before. The big guy really wanted this one. Motioning Tommy aside, he moved in closer and reached into his pocket. He pulled free what appeared to be a pocketknife.
"What the hell?" Tommy asked, his eyes registering his confusion.
"Swiss army knife," Mac whispered. "You'd be amazed what you can do with one of these."
Tommy watched skeptically as Mac inserted a small, hooked tool from the back of the knife into the old lock and twisted it about. It wasn't exactly a skeleton key affair, but not much newer, and the small implement fit easily into the hole.
After a few grunts and a curse or two from Mac, Tommy heard a loud click, and the door swung wide. His partner turned and grinned at him, then entered, disappearing into the shadowy interior.
"Swell," Tommy muttered. "A thousand cops in the city, and I get stuck with fucking MacGyver."
He followed Mac inside, slipped as quietly up the stairs as possible and came to a halt outside the door to the Gates Entertainment Broker's office. He nodded, and Mac reached out, turned the knob silently and pushed the door inward.
They listened, hearts beating so loudly in the darkness that Tommy was certain Gates would hear them, even if he missed the door, but nothing happened. No movement. There wasn't a sound or sign of life in the office, and they entered, moving quickly now.
Tommy had his gun out, the butt firmly planted in his palm and the familiar weight of the 9mm reassuring his jumpy nerves. It was comfortable, an anchor against insanity. It gave him enough of an edge to bolster his courage.
This was the part he hated. There was no way to know what waited in that office, no way to know there wasn't a gu
n with a psycho at the other end of it primed to blow him to kingdom come. No way to know, except to go on. Maybe his gun was an advantage, maybe not. If someone went down, though, it would not be him alone.
Tommy slammed into the office and kicked the door so hard that it cracked into the wall behind and shattered the colored glass with Gate's name emblazoned across it. The man was alone, seated at his desk, and he looked up at them stupidly as they burst through the door, staring into the barrels of their guns as if he couldn't quite comprehend what they were.
In front of Gates were a pile of photos and a glass of scotch. He held one of the photos in his hand, which had dropped to the desk as he stared at them. He gaped at them, and his jaws worked over some comment, some exclamation that couldn't quite make it free of his throat.
"Wh..." he managed finally, pushing back feebly from the desk, "What do you want? You can't just . . ."
"Oh, but we can, pal," Tommy grated. "We found a friend of yours, you see, a girl. Guess what? Just like the other one, Hiram ol' buddy, you remember Cherie?
"Well, this one's name was Veronica, Hiram. She's dead, deceased, and looking very good, I might add, for a corpse, but Veronica is dead. Of course, you probably already know that, don't you? You were her agent."
The intelligence flowed back into Gate’s eyes, the canny, twitchy look of the weasel washed over his features. Tommy had seen it a million times. It didn't matter; he hadn't even played his hole card yet. The man was working up a defense, building his nerve, but he didn't know he'd already shown them his hand. Under other circumstances, Tommy would have been amused.
"Oh, and one more thing," he added, before Gates could work up a self-righteous head of steam over their breaking in on him. "Another buddy of yours was at the station today, a customer. Funny little guy by the name of DiPalma. He had a lot to say, a lot to talk about. And do you know what, Hiram? He had the most interesting photograph."
Gates moved then, galvanized to action by his fear. He tore at the photos on the desk as though just becoming aware of them, and pulled them toward himself frantically until they dropped back into the drawer of his desk.
Mac was too quick for him. He slapped the man's hands aside and pulled up two or three of the prints before they could be swept away.
"Holy Mother of God," he said, his face going white. Without a word, he moved to where Tommy stood. Tommy still had his gun trained on the man in front of him, whose face had gone ashen and colorless. He didn't let it waver for an instant.
Reaching over with one hand, Tommy took the photos. He glanced down at the first one, and he swore under his breath. It was the girl, Cherie. It wasn't the pose he'd found her in, nor was the makeup exactly the same, but it was her beyond a doubt. Another Cherie.
Tommy shuffled quickly through the other photos Mac had handed him. One more of Cherie, and one of the first girl from a different angle than the one they'd recovered at the station house, but definitely the same girl. In both cases the backdrops were the same, and the eyes had that vacant, beyond-life stare.
"You're in a pile of shit up to your ears, my friend," Tommy whispered, raising the gun to eye-level and sighting in on Gate's quivering face. "You'd better talk, and you'd better talk loud and fast.
"You see, you're right. We can't just do this without a warrant. We're here on an illegal break-in, but there's a kind of beauty in that, you know? You see us, but you may never be able to tell, and nobody else knows it's us.
"I'd be willing to bet a man like you has made a few enemies with guns. Could have been anyone splattered your fucking head across the back wall, huh?
"In fact, I can't think of anything I'd rather do right now than blast an extra breathing hole through your filthy, perverted face, so you'd better have some answers that will help us, and you'd better spit them out now. You don't want to fuck with me, and you don't want to take a lot of time thinking it over."
Gates broke down in a rush. His quivering turned to shaking and the shaking to convulsive sobs. He let his head fall to the desk in front of him, and Tommy had to go over and grab him by the hair, lifting him from his own arms.
"I mean now, Gates. Give me a name."
"G...Greve," he blubbered. "The asshole's name is Christian Greve." Once his words broke through, the man was unstoppable, as if he had a million things to say and wanted them all out of his system in the same sentence.
"He . . . he's crazy. He dragged me into this, all of it. He has Madeline, I think . . . you've got to find them, stop them. He . . . he'll kill her. He'll fucking kill her, I tell you!"
"An address, Gates," Tommy grated, "a number. Give us something we can use."
"He has a phone," Gates babbled, spitting the numbers out so fast that Mac had to have them repeated to get them down. "He isn't there, though," the man gasped. "I've been trying to call. He isn't there, but he's always there during the day. Maddy is gone too. You have to stop him."
Tommy let Gate's head loose and it fell to the desk painfully. Mac led the way and they were out the door, headed for the hall and the street beyond. They didn't have the whole picture, not by a long shot, but what they had they could work with. It was enough.
Turning back, hesitating for just an instant, Tommy said, "Don't even think about leaving, Gates. There will be some police officers here in a little while. I'll call them for you when I get to my car. I'd let them in, and I'd tell them everything if I were you.
"You see, I think you're as big a psycho as that freak out there, and if I thought you were on the loose, well, I might have to hunt you down. That's what I do, you know. You've probably read about me in the papers. I'm Detective Doyle, this is Detective Markum. Psychos 'R' Us. You don't want to forget that. You don't want me catching you twice."
Then they turned, and they were gone, just as quickly as they'd arrived. Tommy started the engine and roared into the street, siren pumping out sound and tires screeching. They had so much, but so little. Where was this guy, and how could they find him?
He called ahead to the dispatcher, having her send cars to the address Gates had given them and he gave her the phone number. He also told them to get a squad car over and pick up Gates before he came fully back to his senses. He knew the guy would probably make a break, but it would take him a while to get up his courage. They might need him again later; anything was possible.
Somehow, though, as he rushed through the streets toward the station, he knew that Gates wouldn't help. The psycho was on the streets, probably with the girl Gates had mentioned, Madeline, and he wasn't going to be answering any messages on his phone. They had to get out there, and they had to find him themselves. Nothing less was going to do it. Nothing but direct contact was going to put this guy away.
He screeched to a halt in front of the station house and didn't even shut off the motor as he dove for the sidewalk. He hit the steps and the front door to the precinct at a run. He shouldered his way past everyone and everything between himself and his office, Mac at his heels, ignoring questions and curses as he bullied on through. It was a scene they'd all witnessed before, and the buzz of voices rose instantly throughout the station.
"Tommy must have him," they said. "The guy must have finally fucked up . . ."
Tommy didn't hear any of it. He slammed into his office and was instantly assaulted by another sound. His phone was ringing, and he picked it up without hesitation. It was Chief Brown. Swell.
"What the fuck is going on, Doyle? Have you got him, or not? What's this about phone numbers, names, addresses . . . where is the asshole? I want his ass, and I want it now!"
"You got your name, Chief," Tommy said, his patience wearing thin. "You give me some time to get his ass, that's extra."
He dropped the line without further thought and turned to the door, where Mac was deep in conversation with Caroline, the dispatcher. He might be out of a job later, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that if he went into retirement after this night, he took this fucking pervert with him.
"Cars already at his apartment, Tommy," Mac barked. "No lights, garage is empty. Looks like he isn't there."
"Damn," Tommy said, pounding his fist into his hand. "Keep surveillance on the place. We can't let this asshole slip through our hands again. We're too close. Get a tap on his line, too, in case anyone calls in."
It was almost worse than when they'd had nothing. He felt impotent, boxed in. They had a name, a face, even knew who his next victim probably was, and all of it was worth a big fat zero on the scoreboard. It looked like the final score might be psycho three, San Valencez Police zero at the closing bell, and that was unacceptable.
"I've got to get out there, Mac," he said at last. "I'm going down to Sid's, that's where he brought the last one. Maybe he'll be dumb enough to show up there again. Maybe not, but at least I'll be out there. You coming?"
"Why not," Mac agreed. They told the dispatcher where to reach them and headed out the door at a trot, leaping back into the cruiser. Somebody had turned off the engine, but the keys were still in the ignition. Tommy fired it up, and they were gone.
The air was charged, now, full of potential. Potential violence, potential death, and all of it was more weight on Tommy's shoulders. All of it was beyond his control. That was what bothered him the most. He would do anything to solve this, but there was nothing to do.
He glanced over at Mac, and he saw that his partner shared his feelings, at least a little. Somehow, after all their years together, this one had gotten through.
The look in his partner's eyes was that of a driven man. He wanted this guy so bad he could taste it, and it shone from his features, glistened in the sweat on his brow. Somehow it helped to see this, to know it. For Tommy, every one of these fucking psychos was personal. He couldn't erase the debt they owed him, not with years in prison, not with blood, but he could continue to collect it.
It had been a long time since Tommy had actually believed that anyone else really, truly knew what was going on out there. The goddamned psychos were everywhere, and he was tired of fighting alone. If he'd been able to choose one man to be at his side through that war, Mac was that man.
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