by Jeff Buick
“Her office is locked. I’ll put the note in her mail slot.”
“Listen to me.” His voice finally cracked and took on a menacing tone. “People are going to die if we don’t get this guy. And if you read in the newspaper that two or more people were brutally murdered because we couldn’t get the necessary information from the clerk who controlled the adoption records, you’ll know that person is you.”
“Well, I don’t see what else I can do.”
“Tape the damn message on your boss’s door. Stand in the foyer when she arrives and tell her she has to get me that name by eight-fifteen. Don’t leave her side until she does it. That’s a good start.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
George Harvey slammed the phone back into its cradle. “Bitch,” he screamed at the phone, his emotions exploding. “You stupid, fucking, pencil-pushing, bureaucratic bitch.”
Leona Hewitt and Mike Anderson were in danger. Of that, he was sure. He felt it, like cops always feel bad things that are about to happen. The sixth sense they covet some days and hate on others. Whether their lives were in jeopardy tonight was debatable. He didn’t know how quickly the killer would track Leona, but he suspected it would be fast. He briefly considered pulling one of his men off a sanctioned stakeout, but nixed that thought. The man was needed where he was, and Leona was with Mike Anderson, a resourceful ex-cop.
They should be okay for one night. He kept telling himself that, but it wasn’t working.
63
Darvin parked six houses down from Anderson’s, on the opposite side of the road. He checked his watch. Eleven-fifteen. Dinner had taken a long time, but he was partially responsible, having sipped his solitary glass of wine before ordering a steak and finishing with dessert. His hunger was sated, his predatory urges stimulated. A perfect combination.
He exited the car without locking it. The keys were next to the console, out of sight but easily retrieved if a quick getaway were required. He’d learned years ago not to take keys or change into a quiet environment—for obvious reasons. The sidewalk was deserted and he walked to the street corner at a leisurely pace, counting the number of houses. Ten. Mike Anderson’s was the tenth from the corner. He crossed the street and walked to the alleyway that bordered the rear of the subject property. With a quick glance in both directions, he entered the lane and blended in with the darkness.
Gravel crunched softly under his feet as he hugged the fence line. A tabby cat hissed at him, then leapt onto the fence and disappeared into an adjacent yard. Darvin counted the houses carefully. Mistakes at this point were very ugly—either for him or whoever was in the house. It was best if he found Leona Hewitt with a minimum of hassle. In—kill—out. Everything was so simple.
He reached the back of Anderson’s house and crouched by the fence. There was little sound, mostly traffic noise from the nearby roads. A small child’s cries carried through an open window in one of the town house–style homes and the odor of fresh-cut grass floated on the night breeze. There was a small knothole in one of the boards and he peeked through. The yard was narrow, but long. A solitary tree was tucked in the corner of the lot, useless as concealment. Once he opened the gate, he would be completely visible to anyone watching from the rear of the house. He retreated to the fence bordering the house next door, found a small crack in the boards, and peered in. The windows were dark and kid’s toys were visible in the faint moonlight. He tried the handle on the gate. It opened to the touch and he slipped inside the yard, sidestepping the tricycle and sandbox. He flattened himself against the side of the house and waited, listening. The bricks felt rough on his skin.
Ambient background noise drifted into the yard and he took a couple of cleansing breaths. It would happen soon. The adrenaline surged and his heart raced. His gun was tucked into a shoulder holster and he quickly checked the clip, then snapped it back in place. His hand touched the cold metal of his knife, hidden in a sheath against the small of his back. The time was now. He grabbed the fence boards and jackknifed his body onto the upper horizontal board. A quick roll and he was over the top and sliding down the opposite side. He landed silently on the grass and tucked himself up to the house. There was no reaction from the house—no exterior light coming on, no footsteps on the rear porch.
He waited thirty seconds, his pulse even. It was quiet, very quiet, and he screwed the silencer onto the gun barrel. Silencers were heavy, and when attached, shooting accuracy was severely diminished, but he was going to be in close quarters and the sound of a gunshot would carry through the neighborhood. The benefits of using the silencer far outweighed leaving it in his pocket. Six short steps and he was at the stairs to the back door. He counted seven risers as he started up. His eyes remained focused on the door and the handle, not the stairs. When he had counted seven he didn’t need to look down. The porch was wood and his steps were light. If a board creaked now, the sound would transmit into the house. He reached the door and tried the handle. It was locked. No surprise there, and inside five seconds his lock-picking tool was in his hand, working the tumblers. A low click resonated across the porch. He slipped the thin metal back into his pocket and twisted the handle. It turned and he pushed the door inward.
The aroma of coffee was faint in the air as a crack appeared between the door and the jamb. That meant they would be awake, caffeinated and on edge. Not good news. The view through the crack was of a small, unlit mudroom. He worked the door open a few more inches, the gun firmly gripped in his left hand. He knelt on the porch and slid his left hand through the opening, feeling for anything that Mike Anderson may have set against the door to warn him if it opened. His fingers touched something smooth and he wrapped his hand around it and pulled it back so the door could open without tipping it over. He could see it was a glass vase with a handful of marbles—just enough to cover the bottom. A well-planned warning device, but rendered useless by his skills. He pushed open the door and entered the house.
The mudroom was tiny, only six feet square, with hooks on the walls for coats and a shelf for boots. Darvin stood in the muted light, every sense on high alert. A low sound drifted to him—voices. Hushed tones, probably a normal conversation in a room near the front of the house. He quietly closed the door and moved into the kitchen. The lights above the counters and over the eating area were off, but illumination filtered through a doorway about halfway along the far wall and threw enough light for him to see. He moved toward the door leading to the front of the house, the voices becoming clearer. He reached the entrance to the living room and paused.
The time had come, as it always did.
Mike Anderson felt the presence before he saw the movement. He scrambled for his gun, on the arm of the chair. That simple motion saved his life. A slug tore into the couch where his torso had been a split second earlier, ricocheting off the metal springs and blowing stuffing out the front and back of the couch. Mike’s hand hit the gun and it skittered off the arm onto the floor. He rolled onto the floor and grabbed Leona’s arm, yanking her out of her chair and sending her sliding across the floor and into the stairwell leading to the basement. She bounced off the first couple of stairs and came to a stop in a heap on the landing. A second later, Mike flew through the doorway and landed half on top of her, half on the landing.
“Down,” he yelled. “Get downstairs.”
She tumbled off the landing, caught the handrail and managed to take a few steps before missing one in the dark and crashing headfirst into the concrete wall at the bottom of the stairs. The impact knocked her sideways and she fell to the floor, somehow managing to get her hands out to break the fall. She crawled blindly across the floor, like a crab searching for a hiding spot on the beach. Behind her, she heard Mike coming down the stairs. She turned, just in time to see a second figure appear on the stairs. A muzzle flash lit the room for a split second and Mike’s head snapped back from the impact, his body careening sideways into the wall. He slid to the floor and lay unmoving in the darkness.
The figure on the stairs continued down to the basement floor. She could see his features, barely lit in the soft glow of light from the upper floor. The hair, the face—it was the man from the restaurant. The whites of his eyes reflected the shards of light in the darkened room, and they looked to be on fire. He walked to where she lay and looked down at her.
“Mother warned me about girls like you,” he said. His voice was a low hiss.
Leona skittered backward until she hit the wall. He came toward her, a shadow with the outline of a gun in his right hand. He stopped a couple of feet from her and squatted down. Despite the darkness, she could see the face clearly, the evil in the eyes. She pushed back but there was nowhere to go. Her hands ran across the rough concrete, searching for anything to use as a weapon.
“Dirty thing.” He raised the gun. The words sounded detached from reality, like he was functioning more by instinct than reason.
Leona scrambled to one side and her hand touched something lying on the floor. It had a handle and four long tines. A handheld tool for tilling the garden. She grabbed the handle and swung it at his arm. The tines hit him in the fleshy part below the elbow, puncturing the skin and slicing into the muscle. He screamed in pain, a wolf’s howl that resonated through the dank cellar. She released the tool and it hung from his arm, the tines embedded deep in the muscle. She tried to get up, but he kicked her in the rib cage, a roundabout boot that cracked a couple of ribs and sent an excruciating wave of pain up her side and into her brain. She fell back to the cold cement, writhing in agony. A second later his face was inches from hers.
“You bitch. You dirty, fucking bitch. Now you don’t die so easy. Now you’re going to suffer. I’ll make you wish you were dead, you whore.”
She saw the gun butt coming at her head, then nothing.
The room was spinning, wild and out of control.
Mike Anderson fought to bring his equilibrium back in check. What had happened? The scene replayed in his mind—the figure on the stairs, the gunshot, then waking up. He had been shot. How bad? He had no idea. He struggled to his feet, his head pounding at the exertion. He glanced about, taking in the surroundings.
Leona.
Where was she? He used the wall as a support and flicked on the light. There was no body on the floor. A fresh blood trail snaked across the cement to the stairs. Drag marks accompanied it. Leona or the killer, one of the two was injured. And she must be unconscious. He had dragged her to the stairs then carried her up to the main floor.
Anderson started up the stairs and fell backward. He grabbed at the railing but missed and landed in a heap at the foot of the stairwell. Standing up was impossible—he had no sense of balance. He crawled up the stairs on his hands and knees and followed the blood droplets through the kitchen and across the front room. They led to the main door. The window was closer and Mike pulled himself up on the jamb and stared out into the street.
Across Sargent Road and down a few cars was the killer, loading Leona into a car against the far curb. The thought of going after them ran through his head but he immediately discarded it. He was barely hanging on to consciousness and they were already at the car. He must have been out for a couple of minutes, no more, or Leona would be long gone. There was one chance. The license plate. He steadied himself on the window ledge and concentrated on the vehicle as it pulled out. For a split second the plate was visible. He recognized the insignia immediately as West Virginia. The series of letters and numbers registered in his brain, then the car was gone.
Anderson let himself sink to the floor and pulled a coin from his pocket. He used the metal edge to score the drywall under the window, scratching the plate number into the wall. He looked at what he had written, the room getting dimmer and dimmer. He fought the impending unconsciousness, but it was no use. Slowly, his brain shut down and a quiet darkness settled over his still form.
64
The first rays of the new day woke him.
Mike Anderson shook his head to clear the cobwebs and almost screamed at the pain. This was like no other headache he had ever suffered from. Even the slightest movement was excruciating. He used the arm of the couch to drag himself onto his feet, then staggered across the wood floor to the bathroom. Visions of the previous night flooded back. The shadowy figure. He and Leona crashing down the stairs. A gunshot. Then the car pulling out from the curb, with Leona, unconscious in the front seat.
He reached the bathroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror. If he had wondered why he had a headache, he now knew the reason. His head was a mess of scrapes and blood. But the places where his face had slid on the concrete were not the worst. It was the bullet wound. The flash of light from the top of the stairs was a gunshot, and the bullet had hit him in the head. A groove at least a quarter of an inch deep and four inches long ran down the left side of his scalp. That impact had jerked his head and sent him crashing into the wall or the floor. It had knocked him out and saved his life. The killer would have seen the impact and in the poor light had assumed it was a killing shot. Mike had been lucky. Very lucky.
Mike carefully washed the wound and applied some antibiotic cream. Then he popped three extra-strength Advil and sat down by the phone. He dialed a number from memory and waited. A deep voice answered.
“Billy, it’s Mike Anderson.”
“Holy shit, Mike, what’s up? I haven’t heard from you in over a year.”
“I need some help, Billy. I need you to run a plate for me.”
“Where are you, Mike?” the voice asked.
“Washington. But I don’t know anyone on the force here. Can you access West Virginia plates from your New York precinct?”
The response was guarded. “Yes, but I need an authorization. I can’t run a plate for no reason.”
“Billy, this is me. When I tell you I need this guy’s address, I mean now. Not three minutes from now. You do this or a woman is going to die.”
“Jesus, Mike. I don’t see you for a year, then you call out of nowhere. Ask me for something sketchy.”
“I can’t take the time to explain, Billy, but she’s going to die.”
“Christ, Mike . . .”
Silence hung on the line.
“What’s the plate number?”
Anderson repeated the letters and numbers and waited while the homicide detective pulled the information from the government computers. The minutes dragged, then the voice came back on the line.
“Got him.”
“Go ahead.” Mike held the pen in his hand, poised over a sheet of paper.
“His name’s Darvin. I’m going to spell the last name—it’s unpronounceable.” He recited the letters over the phone and Mike repeated them. “That’s right. His address is Forty-five Oak Shade Road in Culpepper County, West Virginia. I’ve got the GPS directions to the house. You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Take sixty-six west and cut off on fifteen/twenty-nine at Gainesville. Stay on it to Opal, then head west five miles. Turn south on the first secondary highway, then take a right about half a mile down the road. That’s Oak Shade Road. His house is a few hundred yards down on the left.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
“What are friends for?”
“You got that straight, Billy.”
Mike hung up and headed for the door. The Advil was starting to kick in and the pain was diminishing by the minute. He checked his watch. Eight-fourteen. He pulled the door closed behind him and walked unsteadily to his car. He had an hour of driving to regain his senses. And he was going to need every one of them. His mind wandered to Leona as he turned the key in the ignition. Whether she was alive, or already dead.
He didn’t want to know the answer to that question. Not yet.
65
“The room’s a bit messy. I didn’t have time to clean up. But I don’t think it cares.”
Leona slowly opened her eyes, the light from the window like tiny daggers pushing into her brain. She focused on the man in front
of her. It was the same person who had visited the restaurant. The man with the perfect hair. She glanced down at his arm. It was bandaged where she had impaled him and fresh blood soaked through, staining the white gauze a deep red. Her head rolled on her neck and the rest of the room appeared, like the horizon from the deck of a steeply pitching ship. She sucked in her breath and tried to hold back the bile. It didn’t work and she vomited on the floor beside the chair to which she was tightly lashed.
“Christ. As if I didn’t have enough to clean. Now look at what it’s done.” Darvin’s voice was unemotional, almost clinical.
Next to her, still lashed to a chair, was Derek Swanson’s body. His skin was sliced off in strips and the white of bone showed through the mess of severed tendons and muscles. Both eyes were cut from the sockets and dangling by the optic nerve. Beyond the horror that had been a living person was a wheelchair occupied by an emaciated corpse, its mouth locked in a primal scream.
“They were bad,” he said as she looked at him with fearful eyes.
“You’re one sick bastard.” Her lips and throat were almost too dry to speak.
His hand shot out and punched her in the face. Blood spurted from her nose. “That’s not polite. Not nice at all.”
Leona spit out the blood that trickled into her mouth. “Why? Why did you kill these people? Why did you kill my staff?” She stared him straight in the eyes. “One of my cooks had a baby. Now that kid doesn’t have a father.”
The coldness melted from his eyes and fury took over. His jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists. “Don’t talk to me about not having a father. The man who said he was my dad was spineless. Useless. Pig shit.”
“Everyone has good in them,” Leona said. “Your father included.”
“You know nothing about him.” His voice rose in pitch and volume.