“It says here there’s a video,” I said, moving on to the Scottsdale PD report. “I want to see it.”
He hesitated. “It’s not an easy thing to see.”
“Show it to me.”
He took out his laptop and opened it. A few seconds later, I was watching the silent video of Martin T. Livermore and a dead woman in a Scottsdale bedroom.
Approaching her body on the bed.
Taking off his clothes.
Reaching out with one hand to touch her skin.
Climbing onto the bed to lie next to her.
There was an unreality to everything I was seeing, and the fact that there was no audio made it even worse. The silence should have given the images a certain distance, but somehow it did exactly the opposite. I knew I’d be seeing this, running in a continuous loop in my mind, for the rest of my life.
When it was done, Madison closed the lid on his laptop. Before he could say another word, I got to my feet, feeling stiff and uneasy. My left knee was throbbing again, but I barely noticed it. I had to leave the building, had to breathe clean air.
As soon as I was outside, as soon as I had taken three deep breaths and made myself stand still, I looked across the road at the empty desert.
I remembered everything Livermore had said to me in that interview room. How he had taken my life apart, piece by piece. Showing me every failure, every reason to believe it accounted for nothing. I had resisted the thought at the time, but I knew when I finally closed my eyes that night, I’d lie awake and wonder if there was some small grain of truth in what he was telling me.
There’s one thing I can do, I said to him. One act that will balance out everything else in my life.
I’m going to find you, wherever you are, no matter how far away, no matter how long it takes . . .
And I’m going to kill you.
CHAPTER NINE
LIVERMORE STARED at the stranger’s face in the mirror.
He’d already stopped at a drugstore in Anthem, a few miles north of Phoenix. One more advantage of coming back down this way, he could be off the road a lot sooner. Spend a few hours here, let them start fanning out. Take his time and then follow behind them.
After the drugstore, he had checked into a motel, paid his ninety bucks for the room, and got to work in the bathroom. He stood in front of the mirror and ran the electric razor over his head, watching the light brown hair collect in the sink. He made a point of putting it in a bag so he could get rid of it when he left. When he had all of his hair trimmed down close, he mixed up the dye and slathered it on his head. It didn’t take much, because he didn’t have much hair left. He waited the twenty minutes suggested on the package, then five minutes more. Then he rinsed it out and looked at himself. His whiskers were starting to come in, now that he had stopped shaving for a couple of days. He got out the eyebrow pencil and darkened in his eyebrows, then his mustache. He took the pair of low-strength reading glasses he’d bought and put them on.
He spent a long time looking at himself, studying himself from every angle. He tried to imagine what other people would think when they saw his face, what assumptions they would make and how Livermore could use those assumptions to his advantage.
He still looked good. The same smooth skin, the strong jawline. The piercing eyes. And, with or without the glasses, the intelligence still burning in his eyes. A light that he could never dim, even if he wanted to. But with his hair shorter and darker . . . Yes, he looked younger now. That could be useful. The older man with the long hair, the man whose description was already on the radio, the face that would soon be broadcast around the country . . .
That man was gone.
Now it was time to leave this place. Too risky to stay the night, not with a drugstore cashier who had seen the old version of Livermore buying his supplies just down the street, and a motel clerk who had taken his money and given him the key. As he repacked his bag, he noticed the antiseptic smell that every motel room in the country seemed to share. It took him back to another day, the last time he’d stayed in a motel, and everything that had happened afterward. Everything about Liana and how that had led to him standing here, six months later.
* * *
—
HE’D BEEN ON HIS WAY back to Phoenix, after taking Sandra to be with the others. He came back through Flagstaff, after so many hours driving, stopping at a restaurant for dinner, in no rush to go those last two hours down to his apartment. It was a Monday night, he remembered, two restaurants closed before he finally found the little steakhouse. He went in and ordered a drink, watched the woman bring it to him. Some men might not have liked the little bump in her nose or the way her eyebrows came a fraction of an inch too close together. But there was something about her that appealed to him.
Not yet, he told himself. It is too soon.
But he kept watching her and the surprising way she moved like a dancer around the tables, her hair pinned up, a white dress shirt and black skirt showing off her body. She smiled at him when she brought the drink over, and he smiled back. The way he’d taught himself. The science of robotics is, after all, a science of imitating human movement. Even, if you take that idea to the next step, human behavior. Which meant Martin T. Livermore was a trained expert in watching humans, observing what they did well and what they did not. Designing a machine to do things better.
I can be a machine myself, he had realized. It was an insight that came to him after spending so much time in Japan, where kaizen, the continuous pursuit of improvement, was such an important part of the culture. I can design myself the same way I design a robotic arm to assemble an automobile, can fine-tune my own programming in the same way, to be even more effective today than I was yesterday.
He started going to bars. Not to try to pick up women. Not yet. He went there to observe, to listen, to study. To learn what worked and what didn’t.
Then he started to develop his own style, using what he had learned, adding his own touches, turning up the shining light of his own raw intelligence just the right amount, confident but not arrogant. He was surprised at how well women responded to his hair, especially when he wore it loose.
“What do you really do?” he said to her. “No way this is your true calling.”
Picking his words carefully, using the exact phrases that had worked in the past. Your true calling. Women loved that. They loved it even more when you listened to the answer like it was the most important information you’d hear all day.
“I’m a guide at the Grand Canyon on weekends,” she said.
He leaned forward and watched her carefully, watching her eyes, watching her mouth.
“I love the Grand Canyon,” he said. “That must be fascinating.”
She smiled again. Responding to him, just as he knew she would.
“I get a little tired of saying the same thing over and over,” she said. “The canyon is two hundred and seventy-seven miles long. At its widest point, eighteen miles across. Most of it more than a mile deep. There are two billion years’ worth of rock exposed . . . Unless you’re one of those nutcases who thinks this whole thing was made in a flood six thousand years ago.”
He laughed at that and asked her how many tours she typically did in one weekend.
“Seven or eight,” she said. “We fly down to the floor in a helicopter. Which is what I really want to do.”
He opened his eyes wide in surprise. “Fly helicopters? Really?”
“This job is just to pay for flight lessons.”
“I’ve always wondered . . .” he said. “Do you have to learn to fly a plane first? Or can you go right to helicopters?”
She got called away to another table before she could answer. But he knew he had her hooked. He took his time over dinner and ended up sitting at the bar until closing. She came over and sat next to him when she was done with her shift, finally able to answer his question.
“Yes, you can go right to helicopters,” she said as soon as she sat down. “But most people don’t. I’d love to fly planes, too, so why not learn it all?”
He raised a toast to her plans, then answered some questions about what he did. Robotics engineering, and the time he’d spent in Japan. He knew that would work. A man who travels the world, who can make his way in a foreign country for years at a time . . .
“I worked for Seiko Epson,” he said. “At the Nagano robotics center.”
“Wow, you must be really smart.”
“I helped design a new robotic arm. With a six-axis range of motion, instead of four. But you don’t want to hear about that.”
“I bet that was amazing,” she said, moving a little closer. “But why Japan?”
“There were seven hundred thousand industrial robots in the world then. Five hundred thousand of them were in Japan.”
He saw her eyes wander, just for a moment.
Don’t talk about numbers, he reminded himself. Women do not care about numbers.
“But it was the culture that really turned me on,” he said. “The Japanese people seem so . . . restrained. And yet underneath, there’s this amazing sensuality . . .”
Yes, she’s reengaged.
“Why did you come back?” she said.
“I missed American steakhouses.”
She laughed and moved even closer. He took out his wallet to pay the bill, the wallet with the American Express Platinum Card displayed prominently. Left a hundred-dollar bill with clearly no expectation of getting any change back. Another move that never failed.
He finally got her name. Liana. He told her it was the loveliest name he’d ever heard.
“I know you’ll be closing soon,” he said to her after another beat. “Where else can a man get a drink in this town?”
“There’s a place down the street. They make the best martini in town . . .”
He looked at her and smiled. “I’ll drive.”
He followed her outside, opened the passenger’s-side door to his Mercedes, made sure she was safely inside and buckled up before closing the door and going around to the driver’s side.
“I don’t usually get in cars with men I don’t know,” she said when he was behind the wheel.
“This time,” he said, “I’m glad you did.”
They lingered over the martinis and another hour of conversation, Livermore remembering to make it all about her without seeming obsessive about it, slipping in little references to himself when he felt the timing was right. A little bit more about his time in Japan, how tiresome it was to travel around the world so often, how hard it was to have a relationship with such a busy life, how he was finally ready to settle down and find something real.
Another thing women loved. Something real.
They went back to her apartment, just outside of town.
“This place must have a great view in the morning,” he said to her. Presumptuous, and yet he knew it was time to make that move. To push without really pushing. He could see from her shy smile that it was working.
They went inside and had another drink, listened to some music. Some “good old Motown,” as she called it, and of course he was quick to say that was his favorite music ever—even though the truth was he found the subtle bass note hum inside his own head preferable to any music he’d ever heard. He waited for her to move closer, then finally kissed her, making her wait for it. Even when they went to bed, he made sure to do everything right. Focusing on her pleasure first, making her feel like she was the most beautiful, most desirable woman on the planet.
It was good. Livermore was almost surprised by it. That certain something he had seen in her . . . How she had reminded him of the one woman who had set the standard so long ago. And how she was still living up to everything that something had promised. Even when, toward the end, he had taken her wrists, had drawn them together over her head and held them down tight . . . How he felt her responding to this, how he could feel it rippling all the way through her body. This hunger inside her, something almost like desperation.
Yes, he said to himself as he lay next to her. This could finally be the one.
Then she lit up a cigarette.
In her own bedroom, with Livermore right there in the bed next to her, this woman lit up a cigarette.
“That’s a nasty habit,” he said to her, keeping his voice even.
“I know,” she said, taking another long drag and looking at the cigarette. “I’m trying to quit.”
He got out of the bed and put his pants on.
“Hey, come on, where are you going?” she said.
He kept getting dressed. His shirt, then his belt.
“To get a breath of fresh air,” he said.
“Okay, look,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette in a coffee mug next to the bed. “No more smoking. I didn’t know it would bother you.”
He stopped and looked down at her. At this woman who smoked in her own bed and put out her cigarettes in the same coffee mug she’d be drinking out of the next day. Somewhere in his mind a single green light flickered, then went off. After a moment of darkness, another light came on in its place.
This light was red.
Livermore smiled at her.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
She kept watching him as he left the room. When he was in the living room again, alone, he took a long look at the place. There were details that he hadn’t noticed until that moment, indicators that marked this woman’s life. From the dirty dishes in her sink to the pile of junk mail left on the table. A disorganized mind. Even for a woman.
He went to the bookshelf and turned his head sideways to read the titles. He stopped when he came to the erotic novels, or at least what certain people would consider to be erotic. Whitewashed and Americanized, huge bestsellers—but the kind of trash that would be laughed out of any Japanese bookstore.
You should have seen these signs, he told himself, before you let yourself get involved with her. She used the human part of you to make you believe she was different.
She tricked you.
He left the apartment and went out to his Mercedes, came back to the door with his leather bag. Liana was standing in the hallway when he came back inside the apartment. She had put on a thin black robe, decorated with blood-red flowers.
She looked uncertain when she saw Livermore coming toward her. “What’s in the bag?”
He didn’t answer her. He put the bag on the floor and opened it. Then he reached inside and took out one of his ropes.
He had them in different lengths, from four meters to fifty, but each one was exactly six millimeters thick, and each one was a fine three-stranded jute that he had boiled himself, then dried for several days before finishing with a thin coat of mineral oil.
Her eyes went wide when she saw it.
“What are you going to do with that?”
She kept looking at the rope, mesmerized, as he slowly wound it into a tight coil.
He stayed silent as he finished making the coil. It was part of the process. The way you quiet your mind as you prepare for what comes next.
“I’ve heard about this,” she said. “What’s it called, shibari?”
“Kinbaku,” he said. “Only Americans call it shibari.”
“I don’t know,” she said, taking a small step backward. “I’ve never done this.”
Her eyes stayed fixed on the rope as he came closer to her. He reached out and touched the coil to her face, gently brushing her skin.
Her face flushed. “Are you going to punish me?”
“Turn around,” he said.
She hesitated for a moment, then obeyed. He gave her a slight push, and she went to the center of the room. Her face was still turned away from him.
“Take off your robe,” he said.
“Yes.” Her voice was low, and she was already breathing hard. She closed her eyes. Then she opened her robe and let it fall to the floor.
He felt himself stirring again, willed himself back into the quiet darkness inside his head, where only the single red light burned.
“Put your wrists together,” he said. “Behind you.”
When she did, he tied them, then he looped the rope around her body, twice beneath her breasts, twice above. He joined these loops to her wrists. Then he kept weaving the ropes around her, forming an intricate pattern.
The kikkou. The tortoise shell.
Around and around her body, reversing the ropes behind and in front, until she was wearing the rope like the tightest, most intimate clothing ever made.
“It feels nice,” she whispered. “These ropes are soft.”
He didn’t answer her. There was no more need to talk now that she was tied. When she tried to speak again, he quickly looped the rope across her open mouth. He knew this would work better than any gag. She shook her head against it, her whole body suddenly going tense. Her eyes were wide open now, her mouth working against the gag. A muffled sound came out.
He looked in her eyes, still silent. His smile was gone.
She kept shaking her head, kept trying to speak. When she tried to step away from him, she nearly fell over, because the ropes had been tied all the way down her thighs, to her knees. Livermore caught her and held her upright. When her eyes locked on his again, that was the exact moment.
The moment she knew.
The moment she could see it in his face. See the man he really was.
See what was about to happen to her.
“Only dirty whores smoke in bed,” he said, and then with one push he sent her to the floor.
She tried to scream. Another muffled sound that would go no farther than this room. She kept fighting against the ropes, writhing across the carpet. He stopped her and tied her ankles together. Then he looped the rope around her neck.
Once.
Twice.
Dead Man Running Page 8