by Osborne, Jon
Then he took a deep breath through his nostrils and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 56
In Dana’s dream, Nathan Stiedowe was straddling her body and throttling her neck with his huge hands, pinning her down hard beneath his heavy weight and slamming her head viciously and repeatedly against a concrete floor, collapsing her windpipe and making it impossible to breathe.
Blood leaked out of her bashed-in skull and soaked into her short blonde hair, tangling it in a disgusting, sticky mess of congealed curls before pooling in an ever-expanding puddle of crimson in the area around the back of her head.
Dana bolted upright in her seat on the plane and gasped. A cool rush of oxygen exploded into her lungs. Blankenship’s hands were resting lightly on her shoulders. He gripped firmly with his fingertips and shook gently to bring her back into the present. “Dana,” he said in a worried voice. “Dana, honey, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
Dana’s hazy world swam into sharp focus, hurting her eyeballs and slicing deep into the center of her brain with all the efficiency of a glittering razor blade coated with freshly drawn blood. A foot away, a sincere look of concern colored in Blankenship’s handsome face while he knitted his eyebrows on his forehead.
She sat up straighter in her seat and rubbed at her throat. She could still feel the monster’s hands there. She touched the back of her head and brought her hand around to the front of her eyes again. No blood.
“I… I’m sorry,” she breathed, trying desperately to control the incessant pounding of badly laboring heart, which was still slamming away against her ribcage like the war drums of a long-ago Native American tribe that was hell-bent on extracting a little revenge from the white man for all his many egregious sins.
She sucked in another sharp breath through her mouth that shot some more oxygen rushing through her body. Thankfully, it helped. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, even though the apology sounded forced and out of place even to her own ears. Still, she didn’t know what the hell else she could say right now. She knew that she was acting like a complete lunatic right now, but she just couldn’t seem to stop herself.
Blankenship waved away her awkward apology. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dana,” he said, settling back into his seat. “You’ve got absolutely nothing to feel sorry about. Comes with the job. Lord knows I’ve experienced more than my fair share of night terrors. Only shows that you care. Mine got so bad that at one point that Madison wanted me to see a professional about them. But you know what they say about men and doctors.”
Dana blinked away the remaining cobwebs in her woozy mind and glanced down at her watch. Confusion flooded through her brain. “I’ve only been asleep for ten minutes,” she said, looking back up at Blankenship for confirmation. “I feel like I was out of it for hours.”
Blankenship smiled gently at her. “Sucks that you didn’t get to miss out on the rest of the plane ride in dreamland,” he said. “I can’t stand plane rides, myself. I always feel like I’m in the air and never have my feet on the ground.”
Dana shook her head. “Uh-uh, buddy. Sucky plane ride or not, believe me, I’d much rather be up here with you than in the place where I just came from.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Dana pursed her lips. The simple fact of the matter was she did want to talk about it. But she didn’t feel like she knew Blankenship well enough yet.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m OK now.”
Blankenship frowned and put up his tray table, shifting in his seat to face her more directly. Then he sneered. “You’re a real stupid bitch, you know that, Dana?”
Dana stared at him, horrified. “What?”
Blankenship’s face melted away. When his voice filled Dana’s ears again, it sounded different – yet chillingly familiar. “‘I said, you’re a real stupid bitch, Dana. ‘Wah, wah, wah. I hurt. The bad man killed my parents and I don’t know what to do about it. Please, please, please make my pain go away.’ Give me a fucking break already, would you? Stop your whining and grow the fuck up, why don’t you? This shit’s been going on for far too long. Get a grip.”
Dana pulled back her head on her shoulders. “Hey, fuck you, asshole.”
Blankenship didn’t drop his icy stare. “No, fuck you, Dana.” He paused and laughed. The ugliness of his words froze the blood in her veins. “You didn’t really think that you killed me in that underground bunker, did you? I can’t die, you arrogant bitch. I’m immortal.”
Dana fumbled for her seat belt to get away from him, but it was already too late. Blankenship produced a long, bloody knife from the inside pocket of his blazer and yanked it above his head. Drops of warm blood slid down the sharp edge before plopping down onto her face one by one like rust-colored water from a leaky faucet, burning her skin and sizzling away into vapor with a nasty hiss.
***
“Dana! Wake up!”
Dana emerged from unconsciousness with a full scream exploding from her throat. Blankenship gripped her shoulders forcefully with his fingertips and shook hard. “Dana, wake up, honey,” he repeated, more fervently this time. “Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
Dana sat up straighter in her seat and looked around frantically. A flight attendant came rushing down the aisle. “Are you OK, ma’am?” the woman asked, coming to a stop next to Dana and shooting Blankenship a dark look.
Dana stared up at the woman, completely confused. A cold sweat had broken out across her entire body, soaking her blouse all the way through underneath her blazer. Painful goose bumps danced across her skin.
“Ma’am?”
Dana concentrated on the woman’s mouth. Flecks of lipstick dotted the top lip. Crooked teeth lined the bottom gum. A deep voice that sounded like a record player set to the wrong speed came from deep within the woman’s thin throat. The voice seemed much too slow. Much too menacing. “Ma’am?”
Dana shook her head hard, finally speeding up the flight attendant’s voice to the correct pitch and frequency. “Ma’am, are you OK?”
Dana shook herself physically and forced herself to answer the woman, hard as it was for her to accomplish. “Yes, thank you,” she managed. “I’m fine.”
But Dana wasn’t fine. Lord knew that much. And the other woman – Stella Jenkins, according to her nametag – knew it too. The flight attendant pressed her highly painted lips into a tight line. “Would you like some water, ma’am?”
“No… thank you. I’m fine. Honest.”
The flight attendant lifted her perfectly plucked eyebrows and glanced over at Blankenship again, then back at Dana. “OK,” she said, “but just let me know if you need anything. Water, coffee, tea – anything at all.” She turned and pointed to the front of the plane. “I’m just around the corner up there near the cockpit if you need me.”
Dana forced a trembling smile onto her lips, feeling utterly ridiculous. “Thank you. I’ll do just that.”
When Stella Jenkins had finally gone back up to the front of the plane, Dana turned to Blankenship. He pressed his lips into a worried frown. “A nightmare?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows.
Dana nodded.
“A bad one?”
She nodded again.
“Wanna talk about it?”
Dana shook her head. “Hell, no.”
CHAPTER 57
Randy McMichael answered the door himself. Still a man of the people, Angel saw.
The former ballplayer looked every bit as handsome in person as he did splashed across the screen of a color television set. Tall and muscular. A shock of unruly blonde hair that fell softly over his forehead and directly into his bright blue eyes. A smile that could melt an icecap. A smile that could’ve melted any girl’s heart of his choosing and served as a first-class ticket straight into her lacy white panties.
So why the hell had he been using an escort service?
McMichael seemed surprised to see Angel standing there o
n his landing, like maybe he’d been expecting someone else. He lifted his eyebrows into twin question marks high upon his forehead and tugged down his rumpled green dress shirt over a pair of faded designer blue jeans that were hanging above the worn-out moccasins covering his feet. He had the ultra-hip thing down pat without looking like he’d put too much effort into it – not always the easiest feat in the world to pull off. Angel was amazed that Abercrombie & Fitch hadn’t yet contracted with him to sell their clothing. McMichael would’ve been a natural fit for the job – a perfect poster-boy for the over-thirty crowd still stuck in its wild college days. “Can I help you?” McMichael asked.
Angel took a deep breath and cleared her throat, trying to hide the fact that she’d been completely star-struck. She felt like a total idiot, of course, but she just couldn’t help herself. Randy McMichael had been a big deal to her grandmother, so that made him a big deal to her, too.
When the words finally came, they came rushing out in a torrent. “Mr. McMichael, my name is Angel Monroe. I’m a private investigator and I’m looking into the disappearance of a young girl. If I could just talk to you for a minute, it would be a huge help to me.”
A sharp look of irritation creased McMichael’s handsome face, which Angel saw didn’t look quite so handsome when he frowned. “What the hell are you talking about, lady?” he snapped. “What young girl? I don’t have time for this shit.”
He began closing the door in Angel’s face.
“Her name is Sasha Diggs, sir, and if I could just have a minute of your time…”
McMichael continued closing the door in her face. “Sorry, lady. I don’t know anybody by that name. You’re going to have to leave now or I’m going to be forced to call security.”
Angel shook her head. So much for being a man of the people.
But the door had almost closed completely now so she needed to concentrate on that fact for the time being. “It’s about Candy, Mr. McMichael,” she said quickly, shifting her head in an effort to maintain eye contact with him through the ever-narrowing crack. “The girl from the escort agency, from Elite Escorts of Cleveland.”
The door opened again. McMichael looked embarrassed as hell, but also resigned to the fact that he’d just been caught red-handed.
He let out a heavy sigh that sagged his muscular chest like a car’s airbag after a crash. “I knew this shit was going to catch up with me sooner or later,” he said. “You got receipts? Pictures? Videotapes? You a reporter or something? Looking for a payoff?”
He opened the screen door all the way and stepped out onto the landing, towering over her like a giant. “I’m sure we can work something out if you do. I don’t think I have to tell you how much something like this could hurt my reputation.”
He paused and glowered down at her. “And it would send my bar business straight to hell,” he finished up, referring to the chain of sports-themed bars he owned all around the city. “R-Mac’s Dugout,” he said in the TV commercials, favoring viewers with his trademark Colgate smile. “It’s time for you and your buddies to order up another relief pitcher.”
Angel shook her head, ashamed of herself for feeling so intimidated. That being said, the man could have snapped her in half between his fingers like a breadstick if he’d wanted to. “No, Mr. McMichael,” she said, “it’s nothing like that at all. I’m not a reporter and I’m not looking for a payoff. I don’t have any pictures or videotapes. I’m a private investigator and all I’ve got is a sheet of paper from an appointment book with your name on it. But that’s all I’ve got, I swear. I just need to talk to you about Sasha, about Candy, for a moment. It’ll only take a minute or two of your time, I promise.”
McMichael swore underneath his breath but stepped aside to let her in, motioning for her to follow him inside with an annoyed jerk of his head. “Well, come on in then if you really have to.”
All things considered, Angel had seen much warmer receptions at an IRS audit, but she was inside the doorway now and only a few feet behind McMichael as she trailed him through his ornately decorated mansion, the pure luxury of it all taking her breath away. Italian marble tile on the floors. Original oil paintings by nationally known artists hanging on the walls. Fine French furniture scattered tastefully throughout.
When they’d reached the end of a long hallway, McMichael pushed open a set of double doors leading into what Angel guessed was his innermost sanctuary, the place inside his house where he felt the most comfortable.
His lair? she wondered briefly, then shook her head to chase away the stupid thought. It was highly unlikely that this was some sort of Phil Spector setup. The preternaturally gifted “Wall of Sound” music producer – a pop-music genius who’d worked with the Beatles on their Grammy-winning Let It Be album, among a host of other musical luminaries – had been convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Lana Clarkson, in his own home in 2003, saying that Clarkson had accidentally committed suicide when she’d “kissed the gun”. Still, nobody could be that sloppy in this day and age of advanced forensics.
Could they?
McMichael’s sanctuary didn’t seem quite a den, but not quite an office either. It could’ve served the purpose of either or both, though. A large mahogany desk was angled sharply into one corner underneath a large bay window that overlooked the flawlessly manicured back yard. Comfortable-looking leather couches surrounded a huge flat-screen TV in the center of the room. A Nintendo Wii video game system with enough controllers for four people to play at the same time lay in a tangle of wrist-straps in front of the television on the floor.
McMichael sank his huge frame deep into one of the expensive leather couches and motioned for Angel to do the same in the one opposite. “You want a drink?” he asked.
Angel shook her head and sat down. “No thank you, Mr. McMichael. Like I said before, this won’t take but a minute of your time. I’m a private investigator and I’m looking into the disappearance of a young girl named Sasha Diggs. She went by the name of ‘Candy’ at the escort agency. The appointment ledger indicated that she’d spent some nights here recently, including the night before her grandmother said she went missing. I need to know if that’s the last time you saw her. What her mood was like then. If she might’ve mentioned any troubles she was having to you. Anything you can think of at all.”
McMichael was shaking his head the entire time she was speaking. Leaning his head back into the couch, he put his large hands to his face and rubbed wearily at his bloodshot eyes. Even from ten feet away, Angel could smell the sour odor of vodka on his breath. Then again, he’d already made his millions, right? What else did he have to do with his time these days?
Besides possibly murder twenty-two-year-old Rhodes scholars who just so happened to moonlight as high-class call girls, of course.
“Listen,” McMichael said. “I don’t know about any of that shit, lady. The last time I saw Candy was a week ago, but I’m pretty sure you already knew that from that little sheet of paper of yours, right?”
Angel nodded. “So she didn’t share anything with you the last time she was here, Mr. McMichael? Nothing at all? She must’ve have been one of your favorites, considering all the times she visited. During all those nights you two spent together you never discussed any personal matters?”
McMichael looked embarrassed again, and Angel didn’t blame him in the least. After all, who the hell wanted to discuss their sex life with a complete stranger?
Especially when you’d been paying for it.
“No, Miss… what’s your name again?”
“Monroe.”
“No, Miss Monroe. We never discussed anything of a personal nature. She’d come here when I called, we’d do our thing, and then she’d leave again. That’s all there was to it.”
Angel looked down at the sheet of paper in her hands and frowned. “It says here that they were all overnight visits, Mr. McMichael.”
The former ballplayer waved a hand in front of his face, as though he were swatting away a bot
hersome fly. “Well, whatever it says there is dead wrong. Look, lady, I paid her the overnight fee for however long it took – ten minutes…twenty minutes…an hour. It was sort of like an added bonus for her to keep her mouth shut about who she was coming to see, you know what I mean? She was in and out of here the last time I saw her in less than an hour.”
Angel deepened her frown and rose to her feet, slipping out a business card from her purse and handing it over to him. “Well, if anything else comes to mind, Mr. McMichael – anything at all – I’d really appreciate it if you’d give me a call at the number on this card. Anytime. Day or night.”
McMichael rose to his own feet and took her card before tucking it away in the back pocket of his designer blue jeans. “I’ll do that, Miss Monroe.”
Angel nodded, feeling like a complete jackass as she stood there trying to think of something else to ask to him but coming up with absolutely nothing. She cleared her throat in an effort to fill the dead air between them. Wasn’t very effective. “Well, then I guess I’ll just see myself out.”
As she exited his den/office/sanctuary/lair, McMichael called out to her. “Miss Monroe?”
She turned around to face him. “Yes?”
“I trust that these, um, personal matters will remain personal?”
Angel waved a hand at him, swatting away her own bothersome fly now. “As long as you play things straight with me, Mr. McMichael, I’ll play things straight with you.”
She paused. Before she left his den, she added, “By the way, Randy, I’ve always been a big fan of yours. My grandmother, too. Pisser about those goddamn Yankees.”
CHAPTER 58
The gun in Richard Patton’s hand clicked dryly. He pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened.
Grinning maniacally, the Race Master came around the massive desk and into the center of the room, where Patton stood trembling like a leaf, his face very white. “Well now, Richard,” the Race Master said. “This is certainly a surprise. Not what I was expecting at all.”