by Parnell Hall
He unzipped his waist bag.
Cora gestured with the gun. “Don’t even think about it.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing for years. Thinking about it. Now I’m going to do it.”
He reached in the bag, pulled out a gun. Small caliber, most likely a .22. From that range, Cora knew, it would be quite effective.
“The first shot is critical. Debilitating, but not fatal. That’s the trick. That and leaving you fully awake.”
He raised the gun, took aim.
Cora couldn’t wait any longer. She pointed the gun at him, point-blank, and pulled the trigger.
The gun went click.
Chapter
44
He smiled. “Isn’t that the sweetest sound in the world? A hammer clicking on an empty chamber. There’s more of them, if you’d like to try again. I unloaded your gun before I woke you up. Simple precaution. I couldn’t count on you to do the right thing. An impetuous person like you. Couldn’t even wait to see what the right thing was. Anyway, that gun’s not going to do you much good. Unless you want to throw it at me.”
He held up the .22. “On the other hand, this one’s fully loaded. Not that I’m going to shoot you. That is the quick-over-bang solution. That is the first option. That is door number one. If you take the first option, you will be dead. Which will be a personal disappointment to me. But at least I will get the satisfaction of knowing you take your guilt to the grave. What guilt, you might ask? Well, if you chose the short, painless option, I have to shoot you. Shooting you will wake up your niece. And her reporter husband. And that baby of hers. And then I will have to kill them. Even if the gunshot doesn’t wake them, I will have to kill them. Because that’s my promise to you, and I don’t break my promises. So, you will die, knowing you doomed your family.
“But if you cooperate—if you allow yourself to be slowly and painfully executed—you have my word I will leave your family alone.
“So, you can be a hero, or you can be a mewling, whining, pathetic piece of humanity, sacrificing your own family to save yourself pain.”
He smiled. “I’m not sure which I like more.”
“If you hurt my family—”
“It will be entirely your fault. That’s right. Not what you meant, I’m sure. But that’s a particularly empty threat, seeing as how you’re totally in my power.”
Cora was hopelessly torn. Her every instinct was to fight. But could she overpower him? If she couldn’t, she’d be dooming her family. And there was no reason to think she could. He was younger, stronger, he had a gun. What was she going to do? Lunge for him, dodge a bullet, choke him to death? It was the longest of long shots. Would she risk her family on that?
The answer was easy. She couldn’t do it. So what was she going to do? Sit here and be tortured? She couldn’t do that either. She had to stall him, fend off the moment of truth until she thought of something. If she could.
What was she talking about? If she could? She had to.
“I still don’t understand,” Cora said. “What you’ve done makes no sense. Sure, I get the whole revenge bit. But the rest of it defies logic. I mean who was that guy in New York?”
“A very unlucky man. And a very careless one. Do you know how easy it was to open his safe? I closed it and locked it, of course, so it wouldn’t corroborate your story of a robber, but opening it was a snap. One picks up a lot of skills in jail. I should thank you for that. Though I’m not going to. I’m going to kill you instead.”
“You say ‘unlucky.’ Does that mean you chose him at random?”
“I had to stage a crime to set you up.”
“Yeah, but why him?”
“It had to be someone. He filled the bill.”
“How did you choose him?”
Tanner waved the question away impatiently. “That’s not important.”
“Well, what about the town clerk? That made no sense at all.”
“Part of the puzzle.”
“Yeah, but why her? And why break into Town Hall? I’m assuming that was you. What could you possibly hope to accomplish?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you. I wouldn’t want you to think poorly of me.”
“Right,” Cora said sarcastically. “I thought it didn’t matter what I think. Because I’m going to be dead.”
“Good point. Even so, I’d like you to admire my cunning. All right, I’ll tell you. You built an addition on your house.”
Cora blinked. “What?”
He grinned. “Telling you isn’t so bad after all. To see you baffled like that. Well worth it. But that’s the answer. You built an addition on your house. Can you think how that might motivate my actions? You can’t, can you? Well, my little failing doesn’t seem so bad now, does it? I’ll have to spell it out for you. You substantially altered the look of your house. It is now unrecognizable from the road. And the fact is, I forgot your address. I couldn’t find it. And it’s unlisted. Your address, your phone number, everything. From when your niece was hiding out from her husband. Not the reporter, her first husband.”
He shrugged, smiled. “The problem is, I’m a convicted killer. And if I’m gonna kill someone else, I can’t come walking into town and ask where they live. When they put together the killer’s dos and don’ts list, guess which one was near the top? I managed to bundle up so I was almost unrecognizable, drop into Town Hall, and tell the town clerk, whom I had never met, that I was thinking about buying a small house in Bakerhaven with a view toward expanding it, but I was concerned about zoning ordinances, and could she show me any recent additions that had been approved for expansion in the last few years, particularly any ranch house being expanded into a two-family dwelling. I’d have got the address, plus the layout of the house to facilitate the current situation. Knowing all their bedrooms were upstairs, for instance.
“But, no, little Miss Starchy-Bottom parrots rules at me. Of course it’s against the rules, but a human being cuts you a break. Anyway, she wouldn’t budge an inch, so I had to break in and see for myself. Which is what elevated the useless bimbo into the role of Victim Number Two. That and the danger the lamebrain might eventually associate the guy asking about building addition blueprints with the murder.”
Cora frowned. “How is that connected with the murder?”
“Not his murder. Your murder. When your body turns up in a recently expanded ranch house. It might give her cause to think. Probably not, but hey, I needed a victim anyway.”
“Okay, I understand you harassing me. But why leave a crossword puzzle at Crowley’s house?”
“You and the sergeant had been getting far too cozy. I just had to break you up.” He frowned. “You’re not asking for information. You’re just stalling for time. Well, guess what? You’re out of time. Time to play the game.”
Crowley reached in his waist bag, took out a silencer, and screwed it on the end of the automatic.
“See, I keep my word. As long as you keep yours, this is just between us. If you stop cooperating, I kill your niece. And her husband. And her daughter. I go straight upstairs, bang, over, dead. I disable you so you can’t walk, I pull that phone cord out of the wall, I go upstairs and I kill them all. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“So let’s get on with it. I know what I have to shoot in order to disable you. I just may not be able to hit it.”
Tanner raised the gun, pointed it at Cora.
Crowley stepped in the door and shot him in the back.
Chapter
45
Crowley handcuffed Tanner’s hands together behind his back, and dumped him unceremoniously facedown on the floor. Tanner never made a sound.
“You shot him,” Cora said.
Crowley shrugged. “You don’t shoot a bad guy now and then, you get rusty.”
“How many bad guys have you shot?”
“All right, you got me. He’s my first one.”
“You were there the whole time?”
“I
saw him go in.”
“You couldn’t have stepped in sooner?”
“Why? He seemed like the type of guy who might have confessed.”
“Or shot me in the head.”
Crowley shrugged. “It was touch and go when he picked up your gun. When he dumped out the bullets, I figured him for the chatty sort. And I didn’t want to get him for breaking and entering. Without his confession, that’s all we had. I mean, can I prove he did everything else? I can infer it. But unless he’s carrying the murder weapon … And he’s not. We may not have been able to match up the fatal bullet, but it certainly wasn’t a twenty-two. And until he started talking, I had no idea who he was. If I’d known he was an ex-con with a grudge—”
Tanner moaned. Pulled against the cuffs.
“Sounds like he’s coming to,” Cora said.
“Yeah. Wanna hit him with something?”
Cora gave him a look.
Crowley put up his hands. “Sorry. Cop talk, while waiting for the EMS. I keep forgetting you’re a civilian.”
“Among other things,” Cora said.
Crowley shifted his eyes. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but Aaron poked his head in the door.
“Sherry thought she heard a shot.” His eyes widened. “Oh, my God, she did.”
“It’s okay, we got the killer,” Crowley said. “The cops are on the way.”
Aaron blinked bleary eyes at him. “Cora said you weren’t here.”
“That was just a bluff to make the killer overconfident.”
“You shot him?”
“He was going to shoot Cora. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. Go tell your wife it’s okay.”
Aaron went out.
Crowley turned back to Cora. He didn’t seem to know how to begin. He opened his mouth.
There came the sound of tires on gravel in the driveway.
Cora frowned, but Crowley looked like he’d gotten a reprieve from the governor.
“Guess the cops are here,” Cora said.
But it was Barney Nathan.
“You’re early, Barney,” Cora said. “He’s not dead yet.”
“The hospital called me,” Barney said. “Some delay with EMS.” But he couldn’t look at her, and seemed uncomfortable to be there.
In spite of everything, Cora was amused. It was a strange dynamic, her two lovers there together. Barney didn’t have a clue about the situation, but Cora was sure Crowley picked up on it. The doctor was so stiff and formal and self-conscious, there could be only one explanation.
Barney knelt by the prisoner, clung to his task like a lifeline. He popped open his medical bag, took out a surgical scissors, and cut the black turtleneck away. He pressed sterile gauze pads to the wound, stemmed the flow of blood.
“How is he?” Cora said.
“He’ll live.”
“Too bad.”
Barney looked at her sharply but said nothing, turned his attention back to the wound.
Another sound of gravel from the driveway proved to be the EMS unit. Barney turned the patient over to them gratefully, but before he could make his escape, Harper arrived, followed closely by Dan Finley. The officers wanted the story, and mistakenly thought Barney was a source of information.
While Crowley was attempting to explain, Sherry arrived in her bathrobe and wanted him to start over.
Barney managed to slip away during the confusion, but Chief Harper wouldn’t let the EMS unit take the prisoner, since he was under arrest. Harper placed him in Dan Finley’s custody, relieving Crowley of the responsibility. Cora hoped that would mean Crowley could stay behind. Unfortunately, he had shot the prisoner, so he had to go down to the station to file a report. Dan Finley tagged along to handcuff him to the hospital bed.
By the time they all left, Cora was ready to collapse, but Sherry wanted to know what happened. Cora couldn’t blow her off. She had to tell her.
Leaving certain things out.
Chapter
46
Chief Harper hung up the phone and turned to Crowley and Cora, who were studiously avoiding each other almost as self-consciously as Barney Nathan had avoided Cora the night before.
Harper didn’t notice. “Well, I think that wraps it up,” he said. “Tanner’s on his way back to County to serve out his sentence for violating his parole. A couple of new murder charges are just the icing on the cake. The question is whether we can make ’em stick.”
“I should think so,” Cora said. “He confessed the whole thing to me.”
“That’s hearsay.”
“I believe it’s an admission against interest. You might wanna check with Ratface.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Harper said. “You’re a suspect in the investigation.” He jerked his thumb at Crowley. “He’s the guy who shot him. You throw out what you ‘impartial witnesses’ heard, and what have we got.”
“I imagine if you ask around, you can get some corroboration,” Cora said.
“How?”
“Get some prisoner to snitch. How did Tanner pick his first victim? It’ll turn out some prisoner told him about this wealthy schmuck with a wall-safe a child could get into. Or it will turn out Tanner knew him before. Was familiar with the layout of his apartment. That one I like, because he knew he could jump out the window and land on the balcony rather than fall fourteen stories straight down. And he knew he could get by the front desk and get upstairs.”
“How?”
“How the hell should I know? There’s a back door to the basement that’s always unlocked. He noticed when he was helping the guy get something out of the storeroom. Or something like that. If you look, you’ll find it, because it has to be there, because he didn’t go by the front desk. Frankly, I like the prisoner told him about the easy mark. Because he’s going back to jail, where the prisoner who told him will be pissed he killed the easy mark. Anyway, he picked him, and lured me up there to find the body.
“He devised this scheme. He had years to do it. It was an obsession. He taught himself how to do crossword puzzles. He taught himself how to do sudoku. He hatched a diabolical plot where crossword puzzle clues would lead me on a merry chase, getting me deeper and deeper in trouble myself, starting with a murder that I not only couldn’t solve, but looked like the prime suspect. He called Becky Baldwin, said he was Charles Kessington and he wanted to hire her, and lured her up to his apartment.”
“How did he know you’d come along?”
“He’s been following my cases in the papers. He knew Becky’d been hiring me lately. He deliberately put her in a position where she wouldn’t want to come alone. Insisting on meeting her in his bachelor penthouse. He knew she’d bring me, and he knew I’d have a gun. If he could get me to fire it, it would be perfect.
“Anyway, he gets there, kills the guy, and waits for me to arrive. I do, he makes a sound in the bedroom, and I come in with gun drawn. He turns, dives out the window. He jumps up with his gun, and pretends to shoot me. Naturally, I fire. As expected, the shot goes out the window. He runs along the balcony, over the roof, and out the escape route he planned, leaving me with a corpse and a fired gun just in time for the cops to rush in and arrest me.”
“And the town clerk?”
“I told you. He broke into town hall to get my address. He killed the town clerk for being a pain in the ass about it, and because he was afraid after I got killed she might remember him coming around asking questions.”
“Why did he need your address? Couldn’t he just follow you home?”
“He did, but it was after the first murder. That was the only time he knew where I was, and the only time he could follow me through Bakerhaven without fear of being spotted. He hung around the crime scene, followed when the police ran me in. He waited outside for Becky to spring me—he knew she would—and followed us to the garage to get our car. It must have been a kick in the chops when we went to a play instead of going home. But he hung around the theater until the play was over, waited while we g
ot our car out of yet another garage, and followed us to Bakerhaven. Both to find out where I lived, and to make me nervous. He let us spot him a couple of times, and get his license plate, the bogus one that didn’t exist in any motor vehicle records, but showed up in the sudoku.”
“I suppose.”
“Hey, you don’t like it, tough noogies. I’m the one got a gun pulled in my face and threatened with torture tactics.”
Harper turned to Crowley. “All right, I understand why he was hassling her. Why was he hassling you?”
Crowley looked embarrassed.
Cora jumped in with, “Guilt by association. He was my arresting officer. He was bringing the puzzles to me. When we went to Penn Station to retrieve the clue in the lockers, Tanner was undoubtedly watching.”
“Yeah, but he said ‘friend.’ ‘Any friend of my enemy may offend.’”
Cora smiled. “I always think kindly of my arresting officers.”
Chapter
47
Crowley and Cora came out of the police station and walked to his car parked down the block.
Crowley turned back. “Look, I want to say something.”
“I’m sure you do. You just can’t find the words.”
“I’m no good at this.”
“No kidding.”
“You’re not making this easy on me.”
“Any reason why I should?”
“I deserve that, I know. I’m just trying to tell you how it is.”
“How is it?”
Crowley took a breath. “Yes, I have a long-standing relationship with that girl. Occasionally we get together. For long stretches we don’t. We’ve both had other relationships. When we do, that’s fine. When they’ve run their course, well, we’re always there.”
“And this has run its course.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I understand. I’m yesterday’s news.”