The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1)

by Chris O'Neill

  “What are the chances that he’ll show up?” Jason asked, almost breaking her out of her reverie.

  “Slim,” Brouchard said with certainty. “He already killed today. He would not likely go back to work and show himself in public.”

  “There’s something about that that bothers me.” Lara said.

  “What?” Jason asked.

  “Killing the girl today. He usually kills in alleys, out of sight. He had to kill her because she’d seen him. But so had Beth.”

  “I don’t think he planned on the girl escaping,” Brouchard offered.

  “True, he had to make his play where he could and he took a risk doing it to keep his identity secret. Because he knew Beth had already seen him. He killed Fulvio to get to Melinda. Why not just take her back?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to,” Jason said.

  “Right,” Lara pondered, working her way to one of the ribbons. This was the thing that would bring down the sky.

  “He’s one Angel short now,” Brouchard said.

  “He takes these girls because they’re important to him, but he left Melinda back there like she meant nothing at all. There was no honor in her death, no meaning, she was more of an inconvenience.”

  A pretty young woman in her early twenties was sat with one of the sketch artists, chatting pleasantly. Lara watched the image of her face taking shape on the sketch artist’s canvass. The girl kept talking, laughing, happy.

  “They’re part of his work. Part of his art. What he did to Melinda today wasn’t art, it was necessity. Beth had seen him as a sketch artist but Melinda knew him as a killer. He couldn’t afford for her to get back to us and identify him. Melinda didn’t meet him, he met Beth. But she was taken by him. You and Beth left in the taxi, Melinda and Fulvio were on foot. Easier targets. But she wasn’t an Angel… She was bait.”

  “Wait, what are you saying?” Jason was trying to keep up, felt like he was trailing behind and he hated the feeling.

  “You got in a cab with her, that ruined his chance of getting to her. If you’d walked, that would have been you in the morgue, not your friend. He went after Melinda to draw Beth. Beth is his Angel.”

  “But she’s safe, she’s at the hotel, he can’t know where she is,” Jason said, doubting the words even as he spoke them.

  “She said she talked with him for five minutes, she could have told him anything. Look at these people getting their portraits made. They tell the sketch artists everything a man like him would need to know- where they’re from, who they’re with, where they’re staying. It’s a perfect way to select his victim. That’s how he got Janelle- that’s how he knew she was late for the plane. She was vulnerable. And he was charming.”

  “We have to get to the hotel,” Brouchard said.

  Jason pulled out his cellphone and speed dialed Beth’s number. When he looked up, he saw Lara and Brouchard were already running across the square, headed for the street, where Brouchard had parked his car. He started to follow as he heard Beth’s voicemail message on the other end of the line. His heart raced. She wasn’t picking up.

  Chapter Forty One

  Guillotine stepped off the elevator and saw a maid further down the corridor with the door open to a room she was working in, her cart parked outside. He walked to the open door of the room, saw that the corridor was otherwise empty except for the two of them. He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him, ready to do what needed to be done.

  The maid was a small, overweight woman in her fifties. She was busy cleaning the bath tub, on her knees with her back to him as he slipped inside. Although he had a knife in his pocket, he felt some kind of pity for the small woman, who was busy running water in the tub and scrubbing with the professional energy that came from years of being a hotel chambermaid. The sound of the running water had covered any noise he might have made when he stepped inside the room. His gaze was drawn to the twin mirrors on the wall. In their reflection, he saw his Aunts watching him from beneath their funeral veils. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his skull. He turned away from them, anger brimming inside him, then he bent down and wrapped his left arm around the little woman’s neck. He choked her, holding her down over the tub, using his own bodyweight to pin her there as she thrashed and writhed under him. Her bladder emptied and warm yellow liquid spilled to the floor and seeped over the tiles. He squeezed with everything he had, terrified to look behind him and see his Aunts still watching, judging his every move with superior disgust. He felt the maid’s neck snap and he dropped her, lifeless and limp, then rolled her up and over in to the tub.

  He leaned down and took her master room key card from the clip on her belt, then walked out, looking at the floor so he didn’t have to see his Aunts staring out at him from behind the mirrors. They were trying to distract him and make him fail so they could say they had been right about him. He was determined to do anything not to let that happen. They were taking seats at the ringside of his life to laugh and jeer at him, to prove he had always been an animal and belonged back in the mud and dirt of the barn, away from the world and under their control. He would prove them wrong.

  He walked out of the room and kicked the maid’s cart back inside, letting the door close and lock behind it. Then he looked down the corridor and saw Beth’s room. He moved to it, listening at the door and watching for any other guests who might come by. He strained to hear anything inside over the low and constant hum of the air conditioning in the corridor. It sounded like she had the television on. That was good, the noise would mask any sound he made entering the room now he had the maid’s pass key. It sounded like she was watching the news. She could be sat on the bed, or asleep or perhaps in the bathroom. Either way, he knew he had to strike now because time was running out and pretty soon somebody would walk by and see him, or the maid would be discovered and then he would have to flee and the night would be lost. He used the key and silently stepped in to Beth Holloway’s room.

  Chapter Forty Two

  She came out of the bathroom and put on her sweatpants and an oversized, plain white t-shirt, trying to relax. She had set the TV to the Sky News channel and was absently listening as they reported on another political faux pas in Washington DC. She poured her second glass of wine and killed it in two gulps. She walked to the window and pulled it open, looking down at the busy Boulevard below and the city spread out before her. The breeze ruffled the lace curtain around her and for a second, she was able to forget everything and just enjoy the moment. Her phone sat on the desk across the room and she dreaded what she was about to do but there was no point in putting off the inevitable. She picked up the phone and dialed the office with a reluctant sigh. She sat on the expensive looking chair by the window, reached for the bottle of wine and refilled her glass with the last of it. Last night, this room had been a lot more fun.

  She let the office line ring and there was no answer, so she redialed and waited. It went to Bill’s voicemail and she left a brief message for him to call her back. She put the phone on silent mode and tossed it over on the bed and looked around the room, feeling better after the shower and letting the warm feeling the wine had given her calm her down. It felt cool in here. She wanted to close her eyes and surrender to sleep. A pleasing warmth rolled over her now, a cocktail mix of the hot shower, the day’s exertions and the wine. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She had wanted to help Lara more but couldn’t imagine what else she could do. Melinda was gone. There was no more connection to the man who had brutally killed her. It was all up to the Police now and they should be more than able to handle it. That was their job. She had hers. She was out of her depth, had been since she got off the plane, really. She felt herself drift in to sleep, nestled in the comfy chair by the window with the evening breeze gently caressing the curtain across from her. The bottle of wine fell from her grasp and rolled on to the carpet. She didn’t know how long she dozed for, didn’t know she missed Jason’s call while she slept. When she snapped herself aw
ake and focused on staying that way, she searched for a second wind.

  “Shit,” she said, thinking about the meeting with Pascal Noir that she had missed. She stood up, put the glass aside and reached over to the bed for her phone to call the designer, running apologies through her head. There was a knock at the door and she walked across the carpet, still barefoot, and looked through the spyhole to see a Bellboy waiting patiently in the corridor. She opened the door and he smiled, handing her a large, folded, piece of paper.

  “This arrived for you earlier,” the young Bellhop said and she took it. She reached instinctively for her purse, before realizing she was wearing her sweatpants.

  “Sorry, let me get some change,” she said.

  “Not necessary, thank you. Have a good evening,” the young man said, then took off. They kept them busy here, she thought and closed the door.

  She felt a chill roll over her shoulders and down her arms as she walked back inside, unfolding the paper. When the closet door opened quietly behind her, she was lost in confusion looking at the sketch of her own face that the man outside the Louvre had drawn for her last night. The wine, the shower, the exhaustion of the day’s events had kept her mind one step slower than usual and it took her a moment to grasp what this meant, that she was holding it now in her hands. Alone, in her hotel room.

  He put the chloroform doused rag to her face and another arm around her chest to secure her to him as he gently whispered, “hello, Angel…” in her ear.

  Beth dropped the sketch, her hands going to the one grasping her face and she drove him backwards, slamming in to the wall. She could smell something on the rag that was on her mouth and nose, something chemical. She knew immediately what it was and held her breath, hoping she hadn’t already breathed in too much. He moved her forward to the bed, pushing her knees from behind so they buckled and she sprawled face first on the covers with him pinning her from behind. Her left arm hung over the edge of the bed and she felt the empty wine bottle on the carpet. Her fingers grasped the cold bottle neck and she swung it up, hard, blindly hoping to hit his face.

  The bottle smashed on his skull, shattering glass and spattering the remnants of the wine across the wall behind her, claret running like arterial blood spray. Guillotine clutched the side of his head with both hands, releasing her. He groaned more in anger than pain. Beth slammed her now free elbow in to his gut and he started gasping, fell back off her and on to the carpet, releasing her. She rolled sideways off the bed, grabbed her phone and ran for the door. She was terrified he was right behind her, could feel his fingers closing around her neck and the fear of never getting out of the room alive.

  She flung the door open and ran out in to the corridor. Not thinking, she turned right, the opposite direction to the elevators. She didn’t want to turn back and pass that room again so she kept moving, pure adrenalin driving her forward. She saw an access door at the end of the corridor and burst through it, heading up, figuring if he came after her he would assume she went downstairs. She wondered if she should have done exactly that, but didn’t want to risk doubling back now in case she ran directly in to him. She took the steps two at a time and kept going until she reached another access door, the only one up here. She opened it and ran out in to the cool night air of Paris, seeing that she had arrived on the split level roof top that now stretched out before her like a wicked obstacle course placed there just for her, just for this moment.

  She paused, catching her breath, saw there were chimneys and air conditioning vents and steps leading to the upper level. Her feet moved without thinking, heading for the upper level, maybe there was another access door that would lead to the other side of the hotel and she could get to security. The phone began to ring in her hand. Jason’s name was on the screen. She answered, wedging the phone between her ear and shoulder as she began to climb the steps, getting as far away as she could from the door that had led her here, the door her pursuer might come out of any second.

  “Jason! He’s here! He’s here!”

  “Where are you?” his shouted, urgently. It was the first time she had heard him like this, his confidence slipping. That scared her more than anything else.

  “The roof. I don’t know if he saw me come up.”

  “We’re on our way. Find somewhere to hide and stay put. We’re en route.”

  Jason hung up. She reached top of the ladder and climbed on to the upper level. It stretched out for almost two thirds the length of the entire hotel and, like the lower level, was dotted with vents and chimneys. The centerpiece of the roof was a huge glass skylight fifty feet above the grand ball room below. It was sunken in to the upper level, set about six feet down and was divided in to large square panes of glass. Lights were on in the ballroom below and she walked to the edge, looked down and saw a function in progress. People dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns, a band playing on the stage, all of them going about their night with no idea what was happening up here in the real world where men hunted women they called Angels and a pretty girl from New York was desperately fighting for her life.

  Behind her, she heard the access door open on the lower level. She looked around for somewhere to hide. She heard heavy foot steps on the ladder, he was coming up and in seconds he would be right here. The best place to hide was the elevator housing thirty feet away, but there was no time to get there. She took a breath and climbed down on to the ledge looking down at the ballroom far below, wedging herself in to the corner, praying he wouldn’t see her.

  She listened for sounds above, heard feet crunching on the gravel. He was up there somewhere, close by. The edges of the skylight were in shadow and she pressed herself against the cold stone wall, hoping to melt in to the dark so he couldn’t see her. She held her breath, closed her eyes and listened for his movements so she could track his position, but the blood racing through her head as her heart jack hammered in her chest drowned out all the other noise, making it impossible for her to hear anything else. She opened her eyes and looked up. He was staring right down on her, perched on the edge of the roof like one of the gargoyle statues she had seen around the city. She lost her breath in shock and fell forward, helpless to stop the momentum, landing on all fours on the thick glass skylight.

  “Careful there,” he said, sounding genuinely concerned.

  Beth knew she was in an impossible spot. All he had to do to reach her was slip down to the edge and reach out for her. She moved further away from the corner, going further out on the glass away from him, no idea if it would hold her weight.

  “It will break,” he said with certainty and she believed him.

  He remained kneeling, watching, perching. Beth thought if she stuck to the edges of the glass where it would be stronger, she could make it to the other side, climb up and get away. She had to stall him, make him wait until Jason and Lara showed. That couldn’t be too long now.

  She started crawling forward, feeling the cold dirty glass on her palms and her knees thumping beneath her. The man with the scars on his face stood, silhouetted by the cold silver moon in the night sky and casually strolled along the edge above her. He stopped and she saw him lean down and pick something up. Beth moved away from the edge, further from his grasp, but she knew he had something in his hand. He began to toss it up in the air and catch it in his hand.

  “You know the thing about glass…is that it breaks.”

  Then she saw that he was holding a large piece of gravel he had picked up from the roof. He tossed it up in the air, away from him and over her head. It landed near her left hand, hard enough to crack the glass and bounce, skittering out toward the center. Beth felt panic and terror explode in her chest but she was almost too terrified to move. The noise of another piece of gravel smashing in to the glass ahead of her made her stop and moan in fear. He had hit the square pane ahead of her and the stone had cracked the glass. Seconds later she looked over her shoulder and saw him throw another large piece of gravel. It bounced off the large square to her left. She knew wh
at he was doing, weakening the glass around her so she would be trapped there, unable to move for fear of shattering one of the panes and the whole thing falling out from under her. She had to move fast and get out of the trap before he finished setting it. He reached down and selected another piece of gravel and tossed it out over the edge. She was scrambling now, the panes weakening under her weight, creating a spider web of cracks.

  She just had to wait for Jason and Lara. Just buy a few minutes. He was leaning down and she saw him pick up another stone. He stood there, tossing it calmly up and down in his palm, teasing her.

  “Nowhere left to go, but down,” he said, his voice sad and heavy with loss.

  “Wait,” she said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “They think I’m a failure. I’m going to show them I’m not.”

  As he spoke, it seemed to her as though his mind was a revolving door and she kept catching brief glimpses of him before he disappeared back inside the catacombs of himself.

  “You don’t have to do this. Please. Just help me out of here.”

  “Don’t worry,” he smiled with genuine tenderness and pity. “The fall won’t kill you.”

  She caught her breath as she saw him pull his arm back to get some speed and force behind his throw.

  “Don’t-“

  He let the stone fly and it came at her like a bullet, smashing through the glass behind her, weakening the other four plates he had already cracked. The sound of the band was suddenly louder. She heard the scrape of the glass falling away on the panels around her. Her mind raced to comprehend that this was really happening and she was not still asleep in the chair downstairs. She felt weightless for a moment and a cold chill breeze moved lightly over her shoulders.