by Karen Rose
“All right,” Olivia said urgently. “If nobody uses their real name, how do we find him?”
“Follow the money,” Kane murmured. “That’s what Web was doing, when I went all over town tracing Axel Girard’s credit card. Can you access Irene’s financial info?”
Eve clicked, then frowned when a scolding message popped up. “ ‘You do not have access to this information. Account blocked.’ ” She looked up at Kane, frustrated. “Apparently, there’s a super-executive access for credit card info. And I probably just shot a big ole flare to ShadowCo that I’m here.” Rapidly she logged out. “If they’re any good, they already know where I’m sitting. Dammit.”
“We’ll deal with the fallout,” Olivia said. “We have one name. Irene Black.” She pushed her chair away and pulled Eve to her feet. “Put on your coat. Kane, get her out of here and into that safe house before Abbott gets back and kicks our asses.”
Eve buttoned up her coat. “You’re not coming?”
“No, I’m going to call Abbott with this, then I’m going to have another go at Dell. I’ll visit you, bring you a cake with a file in it,” she joked soberly. “This will be over soon.”
“I hope. Tell Noah…” Eve’s cheeks warmed. “Tell him to be careful.”
“You bet. Now get out of here. You’re safe with Kane. I trust him with my life.”
Blinking away her fatigue, Olivia watched them go. Six dead women, two Lincoln Navigators, a lunatic Farmer, and a drug dealer named Damon. And now they’d added one Irene Black to the mix. She’d pulled out her cell to call Abbott when it rang in her hand. It was the DA’s office. “Sutherland.”
“It’s Brian Ramsey. I’ve got a little good news. I’m authorized to deal with your dealer, Damon. Meet me in Interview in twenty. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Olivia set out to meet Ramsey, calling Abbott on her way.
Thursday, February 25, 11:30 a.m.
Eve’s mind was still racing as she and Kane went down in the elevator to his car. “All right, so we have Irene Black, but it still comes back to the list. Whoever did these murders had access to that damn list.”
“Jeremy Lyons did and he’s missing,” Kane said.
Eve sighed. “Donner did and he’s dead. I guess knowing he was sick puts some of his responses into a different light. He was running out of time.”
“He wanted to leave a legacy,” Kane said quietly. “Most people do.”
“True. I wonder if he really believed we were testing often enough or just convinced himself we were. I tried to tell him that we were affecting people’s lives, but without the personality testing scores, he wouldn’t believe me.”
“I doubt it would have mattered.”
She looked up at him as the elevator doors slid open. “What do you mean?”
Kane shrugged. “He was dying. Desperate. Desperate people do unexpected things. It’s possible he would have ignored the results even if you’d done the tests.”
“No, he couldn’t have ignored them. He wouldn’t even have seen them. The results went straight from the independent third-party therapist to the committee. It was part of the checks and balances. If personality tests started showing huge swings, as they would have done with the red-zones, the committee would have stopped the study.”
“My car’s on the right,” Kane said as they walked through the parking garage. “So who was this third-party therapist?”
Eve stopped. “I don’t know. I wasn’t supposed to know, just as I wasn’t supposed to know the subjects’ real names.”
Kane had stopped, too. “Would Donner have known who it was?”
“Yes.” She let out a breath. “And what Donner knew, Jeremy knew. He told me so.”
“And would that person have had access to the list?”
Eve opened her mouth to reply, then watched in shock as Kane dropped to the cement floor of the garage like a rock. She looked up, stunned.
Between two parked vehicles a man wearing a fedora was sliding a club into his coat pocket. In his other hand he held a gun with a silencer. “I’d say he almost certainly would have access to that list.”
She stood, staring into a face she knew. But that she had never quite trusted. Then instinct surged. Run. Eve swung her computer bag at his arm, knocking the gun from his hand. His grunt echoed as the gun skittered a few feet away.
She turned and ran as fast as she could. Then stumbled to her knees on a cry of pain when fire bored through her thigh. Goddammit. He shot me. She pushed herself to her feet and had gotten a little farther when he came from between two parked cars and dragged her backward. His arm was over her throat, bending her backward, cutting off her air.
Eve grabbed at his arm over her throat, trying to breathe, trying to drag in air to scream. Then she felt a prick on the side of her throat. In seconds her body went limp, her vision blurred. From far away she heard his voice in her ear, distorted and slow.
“Eve. Didn’t your parents teach you not to get into cars with strange men?”
Thursday, February 25, 12:10 p.m.
Noah burst into the bullpen, followed by Abbott and Micki. His heart was pounding out of his chest. Eve was gone. “What the fuck happened?”
Kane sat at his desk, an ice bag on his head. Olivia stood at his side, pale, but her eyes were clear and focused.
“Status?” Abbott demanded. He’d barked orders into both his cell and the radio the whole way back from Virginia Fox’s house while Noah drove like a bat out of hell.
“Garage is locked down,” Olivia said steadily. “BOLO is out, cars all over the city are on alert. I put a watch on the interstates and roadblocks at the major arteries out of town. State patrol is en route with air support.”
Abbott’s nod was tense. “Good work.” He gave Kane a visual once-over. “You didn’t see him?”
Kane shook his head miserably. “No.”
“What happened?” Noah bit out.
Kane looked up, pain in his eyes. “One minute we were talking, the next I was waking up.”
Olivia sat next to him. “Kane came to about seven minutes later and called it in. I looked at the security video right away. Somebody came up behind him and hit him with a club. Eve slung that computer bag of hers at him and ran. She knocked the gun away, but he got it back.” She hesitated and Noah’s heart stopped.
“What? What happened?”
“He shot her in the thigh, then dragged her away.” Her hands were shaking. “A different camera showed him put her in a black BMW, plate registered to Donner.”
Noah wouldn’t think about what he’d just seen, the grotesque butchering of Virginia Fox’s eyes. He wouldn’t think about what a killer was doing to Eve, right this minute.
Except it was all he could think about. Don’t hurt her. Just don’t hurt her. But he would hurt her. He would kill her. Stop it. Be a cop, for God’s sake. Noah clamped his fingers into his head and made himself look up. “How badly was she bleeding?”
“Not gushing,” Olivia said, “so it’s unlikely he hit anything vital.”
He hit something vital. He hit Eve.
“I’m sorry, Web,” Kane said hoarsely.
“Not your fault.” Numb, Noah sank into a chair. “What did he look like? He was on the camera, for God’s sake.”
Olivia shook her head. “Not when he was hitting Kane. He came up between a minivan and an SUV. All you can see is Kane dropping. Once he’d shot Eve, he kept between the cars and when he dragged her he was bending over. He’s on the short side. I’m guessing he’s five-eight. He was wearing a beige overcoat with the collar up and a black fedora so you couldn’t see his face. I already asked for the video to be sent up, so we can look at it again. I put everything we have in the BOLO. Everyone is searching.”
“How did he get out of the garage? How did he pay?” Noah asked desperately.
“He was there less than thirty minutes,” Olivia said wearily. “He put his ticket in the slot and the arm we
nt up. No charge. God, Noah, I’m sorry.”
“Then he’d parked here before. He knew if he was there less than thirty minutes that he’d be able to exit without needing a credit card or going through the attendant booth.”
“I thought of that. Right now security is checking the tapes for that BMW on other days that it might have parked here.”
“And I put a team in the garage,” Micki added, “in case he left something behind when he struggled with Eve.”
He nodded numbly. “Dell. He knows something. We need to make him talk.”
“We tried all night,” Olivia said harshly. “He won’t talk.”
Let me talk to him, Noah thought viciously. He’ll talk to me.
“Don’t even ask,” Abbott warned.
Noah looked away. Think. “What did we find on Dell? In his vehicle?”
“The GPS tracking screen,” Olivia said. “Kurt Buckland’s cell phone and a couple of untraceable cell phones. A copy of MSP. Newspaper articles about you and Jack going way back. All your cases. Transcripts of times you’d testified in court.”
“Lots of pictures,” Micki added. “Going back months. We found cameras in both Dell’s and Harvey’s cars, so they were both surveilling.”
“Let me see the pictures,” Noah said, his voice flat.
“Noah, just go home,” Abbott said. “We’ve got eyes all over the city searching for his car. Everyone understands the urgency. We will find him.”
“Let me see the fucking pictures,” Noah repeated, hostilely, and Abbott shrugged.
“Fine, let’s see them. Faye,” he called, “get the head of security up here with a copy of the tapes. I want to review them myself.”
As a group they moved to Abbott’s office and Micki dumped a stack of photographs on Abbott’s round table. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, Web,” she said.
“Neither do I. Where are the cameras?”
“In the evidence room,” Micki said. “I’ll get them.” She left as Olivia’s cell rang.
Olivia grimaced at the ID. “Ramsey’s waiting for me in Interview with Damon.”
“Go,” Abbott said. “Good luck.”
Noah didn’t look up when she left. He was sorting photos with single-minded focus. There was something here. There has to be.
Thursday, February 25, 12:10 p.m.
Didn’t your parents… Eve couldn’t breathe. She could only stare up into Winters’s face as he grabbed the twine and pulled. Can’t breathe. Going to die. Again. Didn’t your parents— No. I won’t go there again.
She opened her eyes with a hard jerk and found herself looking into the amused face of Dr. Carleton Pierce. He smiled at her, patting her face mildly. She tried to bite him but when her head turned it moved slowly, as if through molasses.
“What did you give me?” she asked him, her words slurred.
“Ketamine. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off. And it’s not addictive, although that doesn’t really matter. You wouldn’t be living long enough to care if it were.”
“Noah… will find you.”
Pierce laughed out loud. “No, he won’t, my dear, but you go on thinking that if it makes you feel better. How’s your leg?”
“Shot,” she said, her teeth clenched. She was lying on the backseat of his car and her thigh burned where his bullet had pierced her flesh.
“Well, I’ve bandaged you up,” he said, mockingly benign. “Don’t want you to bleed out. I’m not done with you. In fact, I haven’t even started.” He smiled and Eve tasted true fear. She’d seen that smile before, on Winters’s face… before he killed me.
“Very good,” he said. “I can see the fear in your eyes. Did you like my message?”
Pain mixed with fear to back the breath up in her lungs. “I thought it was Dell.”
“And it suited me for you to think so. But now, I find I want the credit.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out another syringe and she twisted hard to roll, move, anything to get away. But his knee clamped over her thighs. “It’ll hurt less if you don’t fight me.” He plunged the needle into her neck. “That will hold you until I get you where we’re going. Listen, Eve.” He put a microrecorder near her ear and clicked a button.
And once again Eve heard Winters’s voice. “I stabbed her, eight times. She tried to claw at me. Feisty little thing she was. So I slashed her hand, then her face.”
“Why her face?” another man asked. “I mean, you’d already all but killed her.”
“Because she thought she was pretty. Because I wanted to. Because I could.”
She was fading fast, faster than before. She blinked hard, and clicking off the recorder, Pierce leaned close. “I’ll kill you,” he whispered, “because I can. Because I wish it. Because it will give me pleasure. But it won’t be quick. You’ll wish you were dead, but I won’t make it as easy as Winters did. Don’t worry, Eve. You’ll see.”
He stepped back, drawing sweet cold air through his nostrils. This was going to be so good. He’d been in a constant state of arousal since he’d forced Eve to the back of his wife’s car. The knowledge he’d been carrying his wife and Liza in the trunk all this time… This was going to be so good.
He wouldn’t limit himself to killing her only once. Eve had died twice before. I’ll let her relive that, moment by moment, again and again. He had visions of his hands around her throat, taking her almost to death. Then letting her come back. And letting himself go. Again and again. It was going to be an amazing experience.
He slid from the backseat and looked both ways. No one was coming. He’d pulled to a side road, well outside the city limits, a smart move given the chatter on his police scanner. They were searching the city and the highways, but they’d never look for him way out here. Still, he needed to hurry. He was only another twenty minutes from his place.
He prepared another syringe to administer to Eve just before he took her into the house. She was tall, and stronger than she looked. She’d nearly gotten away, back in the garage. Bitch. He rolled his shoulder gingerly. That computer bag of hers had been as hard as a brick. That’s why he always went for the petite types. They took far less effort to subdue, leaving him more energy for the main event. He didn’t want to fight with Eve again until he had her tied to the narrow bed in his basement. But when he was ready… He liked it when they fought on his terms. It made it so much better. Eve was going to be the kill of his life.
He went around to the trunk to check on his other passengers. His wife was still quiet. Being dead did help that. And Liza was still in a stupor. She wouldn’t give him much trouble. She’d been bordering on catatonic since she’d realized she was riding with a dead woman. She probably still thought it was her sister. That made him smile.
“You shouldn’t have come looking for your sister,” he murmured. “And she shouldn’t have been a hooker. But she was, and you did, and now you’re mine.”
He closed the trunk and headed for his place. Arranging the details to explain his wife’s upcoming extended absence had taken most of the morning. It was only sheer luck that he’d been back to his car in time to hear police scanner chatter about the discovery of another homicide. He couldn’t let the opportunity to watch Webster’s horror at his final “Red Dress Kill” pass by unenjoyed. And it was good that he had not. Good to know Donner was dead before he set him up any further.
Of course the best thing to come out of his visit to Virginia’s this morning was the news that Eve was going to a safe house. Once she’d been so ensconced, it would have been nearly impossible to get to her without arousing suspicion.
Taking her in the police garage had been a necessary risk. And, he had to admit, an awesome thrill. But even better thrills were to come.
Thursday, February 25, 12:45 p.m.
Noah put his head in his hands. Eyes all over the city and no one had seen anything. She’d been gone an hour. Time enough for whoever took her to be miles away. “Where’s Pierce? We need a better profile.”
�
�I’ll call him,” Abbott said and Noah began searching each pile of photos again as Micki returned with two cameras, both with a long-range zoom.
“Here it is,” she said. “And I think I found out what he meant by ‘he almost got you.’ ”
She showed Noah the view screen, pointing at the shadowy interior of, surprise, a black SUV. “Whoever that is had a gun trained on you and Eve.”
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“Farmer’s got pictures here of you in front of Jack’s house last night,” she went on, “but most of the rest of what’s on this memory card he’s already printed out.”
“So we keep looking,” he said, and started searching again. Everyone at the table picked up a stack, even though none of them knew what they were looking for.
Abbott rejoined them. “I left Carleton a message. Give me those pictures, Noah. You’ve looked through them twice already. Look at something different.”
Noah handed him the photos from Martha Brisbane’s and picked up a new stack. They were from Christy Lewis’s house. Monday night. He put the pictures in sequential order, trying to remember what had happened that night three days before.
They’d arrived first, he and Jack. There was a picture of him taking Eve out the back of the patrol car and the officers uncuffing her. He’d put her in his own car and then the rest of the team had arrived in waves—Ian, Micki, and Carleton.
That was the night Jack was afraid of the snake. Noah saw the picture of Jack leaving the house, getting in the car with Eve. Then Ian left, he remembered, followed by Carleton. Noah frowned, not knowing how to order some of the pictures. He squinted at one, unsure of even what or who it was.
“This is Eve’s car parked in front of Christy’s,” he said. “But who is this?” He angled the picture toward the light. It was a man, hunched over near the hubcap.
“That’s Carleton,” Micki said. “I’d recognize those Bruno Maglis anywhere.”