The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  He stared for a long time. His thin lips parted enough that I could see the tip of his tongue playing across the edge of his straight white teeth. His eyes shone with a quavering anticipation, and when his weight shifted from one foot to the other, I knew I had him. Now, what to do with him?

  I turned to drop my bag in the nearest chair. “So, you have a thing for flight attendants.” Before I could turn back, he was on me. He had slipped in and clamped his arms around me from behind, one arm pressed against my throat.

  “Whoa—”

  My first thought was that he wanted to hurt me. His arms were rigid and inflexible. But then I felt him awkwardly but persistently grinding his hips against me.

  “I wanted to do it onboard the airplane,” he whispered. “I wanted to be in the Mile-High Club, but they said they didn’t sell those. They said I could get the uniform instead. They promised me that.”

  He was much stronger than I would have guessed, and though he might not have wanted to hurt me, the faster he pumped, the tighter he squeezed my throat. I could feel his excitement mounting. I could feel his control slipping away and my head getting lighter. I reached up to pull on his arm, then thought of a more vulnerable target. I worked my arm around behind me, grabbed a handful of his most excited appendage, and squeezed through his pants. Hard.

  “Owww!” When he released me, I released him. I spun out of his grasp and backed away, where I could observe from a safe distance.

  He looked up, genuinely perplexed. “What was that?”

  I rubbed my throat where his wristwatch had dug in. “I thought we were playing rough,” I said. My voice was squeaky from the pressure on my larynx. “Isn’t that what you were doing?”

  “No. That hurt.”

  “That’s the point, sweetie. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and powder my nose.”

  As I headed for the bathroom, I spied the Spectravision tent card on top of the TV. Dirty movies. Perfect. “Hey…” I took the card and tossed it onto the bed. “Do you like to watch? Pick something to set the mood. I’ll be right back.”

  I left him still holding his crotch and reaching for the remote.

  There was no lock on the bathroom door, so I sat on the floor with my back against it and tried to calm down. My face felt hot, and the tiles were cold, and I closed my eyes and tried to split off, to make myself into two different people. That must have been what these women did, anyway, split off and disconnect from their bodies. How else could they do this night after night? One puny, horny guy had grabbed me from behind, and I was reeling.

  I pulled my phone out of my bag and held it against my chest as though it could absorb the shuddering of my heart. I listened for the sound of the movie to begin on the other side of the door. For the first time, I began to really consider what Harvey had said about being in over my head.

  The moment the cheap porno sound track kicked in, I flipped open the phone and called Harvey’s number. This time, he picked up right away.

  “Alex?”

  “Harvey, you were right. I shouldn’t have come here, but I did, and if you don’t give me something in the next thirty seconds that I can use, I’m in trouble. Please tell me you’ve been working on this. Please tell me you found something.”

  “I was sitting down to call you. I think I have what you need.”

  As I listened, I felt all the tension in my shoulders drain out. My core temperature came down from triple digits. After I hung up, I stood in front of the mirror and reorganized myself. I straightened my hair and smoothed my skirt. When I came out of the bathroom, my date was lying on the bed, staring at the small TV screen. Judging from the bulge under the sheet, he had started without me.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said.

  “I can see that. I’ve been thinking about you, too … Reverend Cole.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I was out of the good R​everend’s hotel room in half an hour, which was not soon enough for him. He had readily agreed to vouch for me with the powers that be and insisted on making the required contact right in front of me so I would have no reason to doubt him. I insisted he do it with his pants on.

  I tried to pry more information out of him, but he was a basket case. He had only the Web site we already knew about. His ID and password were temporary since he was new. My guess was, it had expired after he’d booked. Since this was his first time, that was all he had to offer. Judging by his horrified reaction, it would be his last.

  Feeling good about the successful operation, I called Harvey on my way back to the crew hotel. He managed to act as excited as Harvey can, only once referring to the dangerous circumstances. He never mentioned our disagreement, but something had shifted in our relationship. I could feel it. He knew he could no longer trust me. I had meant what I said when I told him I wouldn’t go in unless we were both comfortable. In the end, I had done what I always did—exactly what I wanted. It had worked, but at what cost? I hadn’t meant for it to happen, which only proved something else. When it came down to it, maybe I couldn’t trust myself.

  Yawning and creaking from the long, tense day, I unlocked the door to my own hotel room, pushed through, and dropped my key on the dresser. I wasn’t listening for the door to close behind me. I wasn’t thinking about it at all until it didn’t close. When I turned, it was already too late. A big man in a yellow sport coat had followed me in. With one large hand on the door and one foot already in, there was no way he could be pushed back out, but I tried anyway, throwing all my weight against the formidable metal and wood door. It was no contest.

  He reached his other oaken arm up and pushed back so hard the door slammed into my head, and I was on the floor. When I looked up, he was inside my room. With a calm manner that I found chilling, he closed and locked the door. The snap of the dead bolt as it slipped into place was like a rib cracking in my chest.

  Oh, God.

  Phone. They were usually… it was across the room on the far nightstand. I crabwalked backward to the bed. I was on it, across it, and down the other side in seconds. The base of the phone went flying when I grabbed the receiver. I crouched low and peeked at him across the top of the bed. He lingered at the door with his back turned.

  Where the hell was the O? I couldn’t think. There was a sea of information plastered across the front of the phone. Housekeeping… messages … bell stand… the O. It was there. I punched it, punched it, punched it. The line began to ring. It kept ringing, the sound teasing me into thinking someone would pick up. Answer. Someone, please answer.

  He was moving toward me now, buttoning his jacket on the way, a jacket that was the color of lemon chiffon pie. I looked around for anything that wasn’t nailed down. Lightweight floor lamp. Heavy chair. Clock radio. Fight or run? Notepad. Magazine. Pencil. Run or fight? Pillows. Run where?

  He cleared the corner of the bed. Since his hands were at my eye level, that’s where I focused. They were big. His nails were smooth and square. His only adornment was a ring large enough to fit around a bratwurst. Gold with a red stone, gaudy like the rest of his attire. I was halfway to my feet with the receiver pressed to my ear. I reached down around my thigh, found the cord that led from the base of the phone to the wall, and started to wrap it around my hand.

  “Hang up the phone.” His voice was heavy with a choppy accent that sounded eastern European.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to hang up the phone.”

  “Um…” I needed a few more twists of the cord. It was slow work because of the way my hand was flopping and jerking. “Who are you?”

  “If you do not hang up now, I will be forced to take the telephone away from you.”

  I tried to look as if I were thinking it over. Hard to do when I was actually checking for ways to get around him. I could slip over the bed. If I waited for exactly the right moment, I could beat him to the door. I was quicker, more agile. Probably.

  “Do not try to run from me. You will not make i
t, and it will go worse for you.”

  What would go worse for me? “All right, I won’t.”

  I jerked the phone cord from the wall and used it as a whip to sling the base at his head. He batted it away. I dove across the bed and landed hard enough to crush the air from my lungs. His hand closed around my ankle. I kicked at him with my other foot. Hit nothing. Kept my legs churning and my arms swimming toward the side of the bed. Tried to scream but couldn’t draw enough breath to get anything out.

  He yanked my leg, but I held tight to the far side of the mattress. He yanked again, this time snapping my hipbone in its socket. The sharp pain of bone jammed on bone pissed me off. I kicked harder. When he yanked for the last time, I shot backward and over the side and back to the floor. The heavy bedspread with sheets, still bunched in my fists, came with me. I pulled it over my head. He tried to grab me, and I scrambled under the bed. He found my wrist and used it to fish me out. With my free hand, I reached up and felt the top of the bedside table for anything I could grab to fend him off, drive him away, stop or at least delay whatever it was he was about to do to me.

  Then I was on my feet, back flat against the wall, with his face close to mine and my right wrist caught in his left paw. It felt odd to be suddenly still. Breathing was hard, because I was so scared and choked with panic and because his other hand was clamped around my throat.

  His respirations, on the other hand, were quite normal, his shoulders relaxed, and both grips steady. The only physical response my frantic fleeing had caused in him was a slightly ruddier complexion and a glistening of the deep gouges that lined his forehead.

  “Please, I asked you not to run. You said you wouldn’t.” His voice held more than a little disappointment.

  “Sorry.” My voice was a dry croak. “It’s in my nature.”

  He stared down at me for a few seconds, and I thought I saw a hint of a smile ghost across his chiseled lips.

  “I am here to deliver a message. It stops now. Do you understand?”

  “Okay. What stops now? I don’t—”

  “Stay away from Arthur Margolies,” he said. “You will not call. You will not send e-mails. You will not see him. If that video ever sees the light of day, I will find you, and I will kill you. If you contact the police, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t… I didn’t—” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I couldn’t talk. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t listening.

  In one seamless motion, he gripped my throat, lifted me nearly off my feet, and slammed me so hard my head bounced off the wall. The pictures rattled. My hands flew up to claw at his.

  “Don’t try to fight it.” His voice had a soothing, almost-comforting quality. “It makes it worse.”

  I couldn’t not fight. It wasn’t a decision my brain made. Tears streamed from my eyes like blood from a fresh wound. I felt them on his hands as I tried to pry his fingers loose. My mouth stretched open. My stomach wanted to squeeze up the back of my throat. I gagged against the feeling of his hand on my windpipe. My chest heaved, trying to pull in oxygen. Every time I thought I would pass out, he’d ease up just enough to let air in so I wouldn’t.

  “You get one chance, and this is it. Do you understand? Stop what you are doing. Destroy the videos.”

  I tried to dig my fingernails in, but he only squeezed harder. I felt the tips of his thumb and his fingers almost meeting at the nape of my neck. I felt his palm, dry as sandpaper, against the concavity of my throat. He eased off again.

  “This is the end of the message.”

  The pressure resumed, and I felt myself drifting. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing, and everything turned black.

  I woke up in the dark, the side of my face mashed against a pillow. I rolled onto my back, reached for my throat, and stared up at the ceiling. For the longest time, the only messages that got through to my congealed brain were those telling me how many parts of my body were in pain. My hip and my side just below my armpit. My wrists and my ankle and the back of my head. I reached back and touched it, felt the scar from another time, another mishap. Everything in my throat felt improperly arranged for swallowing, so that hurt, too.

  Eventually, other stuff started to seep in. I was on a bed. I pushed up against the headboard until I was sitting. I squeezed my eyes shut and held still, both hands cradling my head. In time and with great effort, I remembered that I was in a hotel room and had been attacked. What I couldn’t remember was climbing onto the bed. I didn’t like having whole swaths of memory deleted from my consciousness.

  I moved to the side and dropped my legs over. The floor seemed like a long way away, so I sat with my legs dangling, thinking about standing up. A glass of water sat on the nightstand. Everything else that had been on either nightstand was scattered on the floor, knocked there during the fracas. But there sat a glass of water, and why was my bed made? I vividly remembered dragging the linens onto the floor.

  I tried to stand, but the room slanted and slid across the surface of the earth, so I went down on my hands and knees and crawled into the bathroom. After a short rest leaning against the bathtub, I stood up and checked the mirror. Lint from the carpet had collected on my face in streams made damp by my tears. My eyes were bloodshot. My pale face made the pools of bright red around my throat burn that much hotter. I leaned in to take a closer look at the violated area. The splotches were red fingerprints in the configuration of his hand on my throat. Remembering the pressure and what it had done to my body almost made me vomit.

  The water when I turned it on was cold. I leaned over the sink and started with a few slow splashes to the face that would have made me shiver if I wasn’t already racked with violent spasms. As the water turned warm, I unwrapped a bar of soap and used it to wash, scrubbing every inch of my face with the pads of my fingers, trying to massage the pain out. I wobbled to the shower and started it running. The double bolt on the door did not seem formidable enough, so I pulled the dresser across the carpet to block myself in. It was so heavy it took me almost twenty minutes. By then, the whole room was humid from the shower. I went to the windows and checked those locks, then back to the bathroom, where I peeled off the little black dress, the same one I’d worn to visit the reverend, and disappeared into the steam. A long time later, I was on the floor of the tub, legs pulled up and gathered in by arms that couldn’t hold them tight enough, rocking back and forth and trying to stop shaking.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Harvey stood next to me, laying the crime-scene photos of Robin Sevitch on his desk one at a time, pausing after each one for emphasis. It was his subtle way of saying “I told you so.”

  They were hard to look at. In the wider angles, you could see the position of the body, the way it slumped against the wall of what the police described as a concrete drainage canal. Her left hand was caught behind her back, but the other lay on the concrete at her side, palm up, with fingers curled in. She looked as if she were beckoning for help. Or showing her nails—torn, split, and painted with the brownish tint of her own dried blood.

  When he got to the close-ups of her face, I reached up and touched the bruises on my throat. Her nose was broken, and she had a gash that looked as if she’d bitten through her lower lip. One eye was pinched shut by the cauliflowered mass around it, but the other gazed out from behind dark and bruised tissue.

  “Harvey…”

  “She died of a broken neck.” He continued with the parade of grotesque images.

  That her spine had been snapped at its most vulnerable point was obvious from the awkward way her head hung from her shoulders. An unbroken arc of pale skin pressed against the smooth curve of muscles and tendons that ran from the base of her left ear to the hollow of her throat. Absent blood and bruises, it gleamed under the camera’s flash, obscenely undamaged to be hiding such a catastrophic rupture beneath. My heart shuddered against its vulnerability, this last part of her that still looked like her, offered up by the exaggerated tilt o
f her head, undefended by arms that lay still at her sides.

  I reached over and stopped him from putting any more down. “Harvey, enough.”

  He stared down at me, looking more vigorous than I had ever seen him. His strength was fueled by his anger. I had waited until I had flown back to Boston from Chicago to give him the news of my attack, thinking it might go better in person. I might have been wrong about that.

  “How could you not tell me? How could you keep this from me? Why did you not call me right away?”

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “A large man attacked you in your hotel room in a strange city and tried to kill you. Why would that upset me? I told you your plan was too risky.”

  I wanted to pull my feet up in the chair and curl myself around my legs. This day had already been difficult enough. I had worked my trip home as scheduled, moving through a world of strangers like a big, raw nerve, wondering which of them might, without warning, raise a hand or a weapon and try to hurt me. It had taken a lot of energy. I wasn’t sure I had enough in reserve to properly defend my incautious and possibly stupid behavior.

  “You told me the fake date was too risky. This was something different. Besides, he wasn’t trying to kill me.”

  “Alex, please.” He took a step back to lean against his desk. “Even you cannot be this obtuse.”

  “There was something odd about this whole thing. He left me on the bed, Harvey. After I passed out—”

  “After he choked you to unconsciousness.”

  “—he put me on my bed with my head on a pillow, and he left a glass of water for me on the nightstand.”

  “How gracious. A turndown service to go with the strangling.”