The Kill Radius

by Nichole Christoff

  Slowly, steadily, I made my way toward her. She could’ve had something in her pockets designed to disable me—like a gun or an Air Taser—so I trod carefully. I kept my ears open, too, just in case someone rolled up on me from behind, but that didn’t happen, and when we were only a yard apart, I halted.

  “Did you bring the money?” Monique asked.

  I pulled a dog-eared envelope from the pocket of my tweed blazer. “Come and get it.”

  Monique did, grabbing for the cash like a starving man on the street grabs a proffered sandwich: quickly, carefully, and with both hands.

  She peeped into the envelope and ran her thumb across the fifties tucked inside. As if to match her rain slicker, she’d painted her nails petal pink. Her well-worn cowboy boots were powder blue, however, and so was the deep-V T-shirt she wore with her faded jeans. Her blond hair had been woven into two loose braids, Pippi Longstocking style. Monique was childlike and way too adult at the same time, and as I watched her face closely for any flicker that would indicate trouble, I realized she was older than I’d thought.

  Seeing her across the Lady Luck’s saloon and on the arm of Specialist Damon Maddox, who’d only recently said goodbye to high school himself, Monique Wells, with her tight little body and baby doll’s face, had appeared to be in her early twenties. But up close and in the growing light of day, the hint of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and the slightest of frown lines put her just past thirty. Fortunately for her, she didn’t look as if she’d suffered the ill effects of radiation poisoning. She’d made it off the boat in good time. Now, I wanted to know how—and why.

  Monique’s brows drew together as she finished counting her cash. “There’s only two-fifty in here.”

  “I know.” I drew a second envelope from my pocket, but kept this one firmly in my grasp. “I wanted to be sure we got the chance to talk before you said goodbye.”

  Wariness flared in Monique’s baby-blue eyes. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Lots of things. But let’s start with your boyfriend, Bran Laurent.”

  “I don’t know anybody with that name.”

  “Sure you do. Blond hair down to his shoulders, wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of a romance novel, got all cozy with you against the rail of the Lady Luck…”

  Monique flushed to the roots of her blond hair. She turned on the heels of her cowboy boots. She stalked up the street.

  I caught the sleeve of her slicker.

  Slapping at my hand, Monique rounded on me. Sadness sparkled in her eyes. “Did that jerk send you to find me?”

  “Bran? He didn’t like seeing you with Damon Maddox, did he?”

  Monique burst into tears. She covered her face with her hands, but she couldn’t hold back her great, gulping sobs. And because I wasn’t completely devoid of every human feeling, I laid what I hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  The contact steadied her.

  “Damon was decent,” she said. “We were going to get married. He was going to help me. He was going to make the payments stop.”

  “What payments?”

  Monique blinked at me with wet lashes. “That jerk really didn’t send you, did he?”

  “Bran? No.”

  She began to tremble. She shook from head to toe. But not with anger or with humiliation.

  Monique was terrified.

  “That monster swore he wouldn’t tell,” she whispered. “If I paid, he wouldn’t tell. And I paid and paid until I couldn’t pay anymore.”

  “You paid Bran?”

  “When I said I couldn’t pay, he showed up, on the boat. That monster sent him. That monster sent you, too. You tricked me!”

  “No, I—”

  She threw down the envelope I’d given her. “This money’s a trick!”

  “Monique—”

  “Give the money to him. He’ll hunt me down if I don’t give him something. He wants his money!”

  “Who? Say his name and I can help you.”

  “Give that monster the money so he won’t tell my father!” she cried. “You don’t know what my father would do…”

  “Who’ll tell your father?” I demanded. “Hunch Nevis? Or Eddie Jepson?”

  “Eddie isn’t like you! He never meant to hurt anyone. He only did what he did for the money. You don’t know what it’s like having to do things for money.”

  Monique caught her plump pink lip between her teeth. She glanced over her shoulder, a sure sign she was looking for an escape route. I seized her wrist before she could get away.

  “Who gave Eddie money to bomb the boat, Monique? Was it the monster?”

  But Monique went wild.

  With a shriek that could wake the dead, she rushed me. She ripped her wrist from my grasp and shoved me to the ground. As the impact reverberated through me, Monique kicked my bruised hip with the pointed toe of her cowboy boot.

  Gritting my teeth against the stinging pain, I curled into a tight ball and rolled away so she couldn’t kick me again. I leapt to my feet, ready to fight. But Monique was running away, up the narrow street, hell-bent for leather.

  I tore after her. She reached the alley streaks ahead of me. She rounded the corner, disappeared from my sight.

  I dug in, poured on the speed, but I couldn’t quite close the gap. I turned into the alley at full tilt. And saw Monique sliding into the passenger seat of a white Chevy Malibu.

  The driver stomped on the gas and the car’s tires squealed on the uneven pavement. The Malibu roared down the alley, careened onto the main street to a chorus of honking horns. But before Monique left me in her dust, I could’ve sworn I caught a glimpse of the person behind the wheel—and that person was Eddie Jepson.

  Chapter 26

  With the Malibu streaking up the street, I couldn’t get back to my rented SUV fast enough. I still had a chance to catch up with Monique and Eddie—if I could only make good on it. And that chance came through when my cellphone rang.

  “Talk to me,” I ordered, hopping into the Escalade and cranking the engine.

  Marc’s voice was music to my ears. “I’ve got a white Chevy Malibu turning north on Webster.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  When Monique had called me at the crack of dawn, I’d managed to come up with the common sense to call for backup. In short, I’d called Marc. Barrett, I knew, would have a fit over my choice—if he ever found out about it. But he had his hands full with the task force, tracking down the domestic terrorism angle. And I wasn’t selfish enough to want to divert him from that. But I also wasn’t foolish enough to think that Monique wouldn’t blow the whistle on me again. In case Nevis’s goons showed up for another kick at my can, I’d wanted someone capable at my side.

  And Special Agent Marc Sandoval had always been more than capable.

  Case in point, he tailed Monique—and presumably Eddie—like a pro. And within seven minutes, he reported the Malibu had rolled to a stop in front of a questionable-looking tenement building in the low-rent district of Water Street. I reached the address two minutes later, parked in front of a seedy bar with beer lights sputtering in its window, and leaving my SUV there, hustled to slide into the passenger seat of Marc’s vehicle.

  “They’re still in the car,” Marc said. “They’ve been having quite the conversation.”

  Marc was right. The interior of the Malibu was dark, but I could still see two figures with their heads together. Unless I missed my guess, Monique was sobbing again while her confederate gave her advice with the help of broad hand gestures.

  The chat ended abruptly and the car’s doors opened. Monique took to the sidewalk, wiped her tearstained cheeks with her palms. The man emerged from the driver’s side.

  It was Eddie all right.

  He popped the trunk and grabbed a flowery duffle bag from it. He tossed the bag onto the passenger seat. And to my surprise, Monique threw her arms around his neck. She gave Eddie a big squeeze. To his credit, he didn’t try to cop a feel or p
ull any of the other stunts sleazeballs like him are known for. And when she let him go, when she jumped into the Malibu and drove away, it was Eddie who seemed to dash away a tear.

  Slowly, he shuffled toward the building. Slowly, he mounted the shallow steps of the ugly tenement and went inside. Back in the day, the place might’ve been a grand hotel. Now, it was nothing more than a flophouse. Big black block letters jotted on a strip of cardboard tacked to the door promised rooms to rent by the month, by the week, and even by the hour—and it was in such a place that Eddie was hiding.

  “You’ve got him,” Marc told me. “I’ll go after the girl. You call in the jarhead and the feds. You’ll be a national hero.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure I want to do that.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “For starters? Monique’s not going to tell me much more. And for seconds? Three little words: enhanced interrogation techniques.”

  “Torture gets answers.”

  “Maybe. But are they the right ones?”

  Disgusted with my point of view, Marc frowned.

  “Didn’t you notice?” I said. “Monique is afraid of me and whoever she thinks I’m working for. She called him ‘the monster.’ But she’s not afraid of Eddie.”

  “Women in her profession are broken, babe. The young ones are often brainwashed. Do you really think she’s a good judge of character at this point?”

  “I don’t know. But Monique said Eddie only bombed the Lady Luck for money. He won’t know anything about domestic terrorism or terror plots. And that won’t stop some specially trained government operatives from putting the question to him really roughly. You and I both know those kinds of guys rarely know when to quit.”

  Still Marc shook his head. “Consider the stakes. Forty-one people were killed on that riverboat. You could’ve died. The jarhead could’ve died. More people could die if someone slips Eddie a few more bucks. Will you be able to live with yourself if that happens?”

  I didn’t reply because I didn’t like my answer.

  Marc took my hand in his. The warmth of his touch was reassuring. And I needed some reassurance just then.

  “Jamie, if Eddie coughs up the name of the guys who paid him—and it saves precious lives—I’d say that’s worth whatever happens to him. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe.” I slid my hand from Marc’s. “But maybe I can ask Eddie to cough up names as easily as anyone.”

  I yanked open the car door and got out. I crossed the street at a fast clip, wanting to be in the shade of the building before Eddie had a chance to glance out a window and see me coming. Like a reluctant shadow, Marc tagged after me, and I was glad he wasn’t going to leave me to confront Eddie on my own.

  But just as I reached the swinging door of the down-and-out hotel, my cellphone rang.

  And recognizing the number, I halted to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “You at the airport, kid?”

  Ray’s breath came through the phone in short, scratchy bursts.

  And that scared me.

  “No,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Corinne,” Ray replied. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “After everybody left the party,” Ray said, “I tidied up a little. I sat down on the sofa a second. I must’ve fallen asleep. This morning, I got the coffee going, went to take her some tea. She was gone, kid, and I can’t find her.”

  Being that Corinne was eight months pregnant, gone wasn’t good. And given that she’d seen Eddie Jepson skulking around her deck, and eyed a string of other thugs tailing her through town, gone wasn’t just bad. It was dangerous.

  “Kid,” Ray confessed, “I’m about to go out of my mind.”

  I glanced up at the building’s façade and scanned the old hotel’s windows. Eddie Jepson could be behind any one of them. He could be holding Corinne in his room, though I had no idea why.

  “Call the police,” I told Ray, “and the hospitals up and down the coast.”

  But saying as much was a waste of time. Ray knew how to hunt for a missing person as well as I did. In fact, he’d been the one who’d taught me how to do it.

  “I’ll be with you soon,” I promised, “and we’ll find her.”

  Ray huffed out a sigh that sounded something like relief.

  “Hurry, kid.”

  As I shoved my phone in a pocket, I found Marc’s eyes on me.

  I filled him in on Corinne’s disappearance.

  “If Eddie Jepson’s got Corinne,” I told him, “he’ll wish I turned him over to the feds.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Marc pledged.

  And with that to bolster me, I pushed into the flophouse’s lobby, setting off a clanging bell on the back of the peeling door.

  The smell of the place nearly knocked me back a step. Mold and mildew had been allowed to run rampant behind the walls for generations, it seemed. Cigarette butts overflowed an ashcan standing in front of the newel post of a well-worn staircase. An old elevator shaft—probably one of the first in the state—was barricaded with nothing more than a couple of strips of duct tape. Last year’s leaves and crumpled fast-food wrappers moldered against its door. And on the long countertop that served as the check-in desk, an abandoned sandwich gave off the odor of overripe cheese.

  Behind the desk, a man emerged from the office, and either he didn’t realize the 1970s were over or he was single-handedly trying to bring back muttonchops as a facial-hair fashion for men. A gold chain, thick enough to hoist the anchor of the Titanic, gleamed in the open neck of his dirty Hawaiian shirt. When he saw me waiting at the counter, he paused to belch in my general direction before taking another swig of beer from the can in his hand.

  “Which room is Eddie Jepson’s?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” Muttonchops propped an elbow on the countertop and slurped some more of his beer. “It’s not like they give me their real names, sweetheart.”

  “All right. Which room belongs to the guy who walked in here two minutes ago?”

  “About yay tall?” Muttonchops asked, holding out his hand to indicate a man exactly Eddie’s height. “Gets his hair color from a bottle? Dresses like he wants to join the country club?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Never seen him, sweetheart.”

  In the wink of an eye, Marc reached across the counter, grabbed the thick gold chain nestled in Muttonchops’s furry chest. He yanked straight down, dragging the guy forward and slamming him onto the desktop. “That’s Miss Sweetheart to you, and I suggest you answer her questions.”

  “Okay, okay!” Muttonchops squealed. “He’s in three-twelve. That’s at the back.”

  “See?” Marc released the poor man. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Muttonchops straightened, rubbed the spot where he was probably missing some chest hair now.

  “If you talk to Eddie before I do,” I warned him, “I won’t be happy about it. Understand?”

  The man nodded. He gulped down another mouthful of beer. And as Marc swept through the lobby to secure the backstairs, I took the main staircase’s steps two at a time.

  The third floor was as silent as a library at midnight. Most of the regular tenants would be out and about at this hour on a Monday morning, trying to scrape up a living. Others would still be in bed, having worked late the night before. The rent-by-the-hour folks, prostitutes and lovers who loved the idea of slumming it, wouldn’t be in until noon or later. And that meant when I caught up with Eddie, we could have a nice, quiet chat.

  Marc set foot on the floorboards on the opposite end of the hall, flashed me a thumbs-up. On cat’s feet, we met in front of Room 312. I pounded on the door, loud and long.

  Eddie didn’t answer.

  I pounded on the door again, and in my best imitation of a Southern accent, I called, “Eddie, honey? Open up. It’s me.”

  Still, I got no response.

  Stuffing my hand in my jacket pocket, I gra
sped the doorknob through the fabric. It turned in my hand. And though I had no right to do it, I gave the door a little nudge and let it swing open on its hinges.

  “Eddie?”

  But Eddie didn’t answer because Eddie wasn’t home.

  Across the room, tatty lace curtains fluttered at the open window despite the morning’s chill. I moved to the sill, looked out and down. A fire escape ranged along the side of the building, and apparently, Eddie had made good use of it.

  The rest of the room yielded nothing. Eddie had stashed nothing in the moldy bathroom. He’d tucked nothing between the sheets of the sagging bed. The crusty hotplate could hide nothing. And nothing but two shirts, a pair of pants, and a stack of underwear occupied the narrow closet.

  No evidence pointed to Eddie’s employer. And none indicated that he’d ever built a bomb. Worse yet, I found no sign that Eddie had had contact with Corinne, that she’d been brought here overnight, or at any other time.

  And that left me with one question.

  Where the hell was she?

  Chapter 27

  I took the turn into Ray’s driveway at high speed, spewing gravel behind the Escalade’s tires. Marc’s rental skidded to a stop behind me as I bolted from the SUV. Ray lumbered out onto the back deck to meet us. His face was ashen, his forehead moist. And I didn’t like the look of that.

  “Cops came and went,” he confided. “They’ll do what they can, but we can’t wait for them, kid.”

  “I know.”

  While law enforcement officers will certainly take a preliminary report, nearly every police department in the United States mandates a twenty-four to forty-eight-hour waiting period before beginning a missing person’s investigation. After all, spouses go off on benders. Best friends forget to check in. And even sons and daughters sometimes need a lark. Because some missing persons aren’t really missing at all.

  Unfortunately, however, there are plenty of exceptions. A missing child, an impaired person, or a person with a serious medical condition warrants an immediate investigation—and a late-term pregnancy is a pretty damn serious condition. Two lives could be at stake instead of one. So I knew the police would do their best. But that might not be good enough.