Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

  Agent Hennessey might be on the defensive, but he was showing no signs of backing down from this theory. The FBI man was adamant when he said, “Timothy Kidd’s murder didn’t have the elements of a Reaper killing except for the penknife, and that detail was in the newspapers. There was no scythe drawn in blood, nothing written on the wall of the doctor’s reception room. There was no note stuffed in his mouth. And even the cut to the throat was different, less damage and not as deep.”

  “But then that homeless man was killed with a penknife,” said Mallory. “The same sloppy cut as the one that killed Timothy Kidd.”

  “Right,” said the agent. “We figure the doctor killed Bunny, too. Argus misread the whole thing. He thought Bunny’s death meant that the Reaper was keeping tabs on Dr. Apollo.”

  Mallory seemed genuinely offended, for the agent was putting no earnest effort into any of these lies. “You knew they were both Reaper victims, Bunny and the fed. Argus was tailing her long before that. He was using her as a lure for the Reaper, and then he did the same thing to MacPherson, hanging him out as bait.”

  “Argus wasn’t on the Reaper investigation,” said Hennessey. “His only job was coordinating juror protection, and he screwed that up. No one was authorized to use the jurors as bait. The agents in Behavioral Sciences were making a case for—”

  “The profilers?” Mallory nodded. “Not a decent psych credential between them. If it hadn’t been for their interference, the case would’ve been closed by now. You never asked the right question, the one that begins every cop’s investigation—who benefits?”

  “It’s not that kind of crime,” said Hennessey.

  “Sure it is,” she said. “You messed up because you were all trying to think like psychiatrists. Dr. Apollo was the only one thinking like a cop.”

  Jack Coffey’s voice came over the intercom. “We’ve got the warrant. Let’s move, people.”

  Hennessey was rising, perhaps believing that he was invited to go along.

  A uniformed officer entered the room and set a formidable power tool on the table before Riker. “Big enough for you?”

  “That’ll do me. Thanks.”

  “What’s the drill for?” asked Hennessey.

  Riker plugged it into a wall socket to test it. “Ian Zachary’s studio has a world-class security door, three inches of metal and an electronic lock. Can’t force it, can’t pick it.” He switched on the drill for the full effect of a squadron of dentists from hell, then cut the power. “So we go right through the lock.”

  “Let’s do this the smart way,” said Hennessey, sincerely deluded in the idea that he might have some influence in this room. “We wait till the show’s over. We’ll let the doctor play it out, maybe collect more evidence that way—recorded evidence.”

  “Bad idea,” said Riker. “She’s locked in that room with a stone killer.” He turned to the one-way mirror. “Ready when you are, boss.”

  “The Reaper can’t be Ian Zachary,” said Hennessey. “The man has an unbreakable alibi for Timothy Kidd’s murder. Agents were parked right outside his door round the clock.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Mallory. “He could never get past one of your guys.”

  It was rare and wonderful to hear Mallory’s laugh, even if it was slightly evil, and Riker smiled as he followed the sound of her laughter through the door. Hennessey was right behind them when he met up with the immovable obstacle of Detective Janos.

  Mallory’s tan sedan took a corner and took his breath away. The car hung on two wheels for exactly four of Riker’s heartbeats. Tonight, she had grudgingly used the siren and the portable turret light, thus giving civilian motorists fair warning before she climbed up their tails and scared them out of their minds.

  “It was a great plan,” she said. “Almost flawless.”

  Riker hefted the weight of the drill in one hand. “You know he’ll be out on the street an hour after we book him.” He watched the cityscape flying past the passenger window of Mallory’s tan rocket.

  “I promise you, we’ll nail Zachary,” she said. “But it was a good plan. The feds were always looking for some sick, twitchy law-and-order freak hiding in a dark room. But there he was, hiding right out in the open.”

  “And we’ll never make a case against him. He’ll never do any time for murder.”

  “We’ll nail him cold.”

  “You mean—in the act, right? With Jo for bait.”

  “That was the doctor’s plan,” said Mallory.

  Riker turned up the radio and Jo’s voice saying, “Did I do the right thing? No, and I regret my errors every day. All those—”

  Mallory reached out and turned down the volume. “What do you think she’s doing? She’s calling him out. He’s rattled enough to go after her right now, but he won’t. First, he’ll want to set up an alibi. Maybe he’ll try to use the feds to—”

  The car stopped short of the curb, slinging Riker’s body forward as his partner ripped open his suit jacket to expose the empty shoulder holster.

  “Why aren’t you wearing your gun?” She dug her nails into his arm. “Your gun, Riker! Where is it?”

  And only now did he realize that Mallory, for all her crimes, was not the concerned thief who had made off with his weapon. “So you didn’t pick the lock on my desk drawer?”

  “Well, yeah, I did. But I didn’t take your revolver.”

  His eyes closed as he recalled his lecture on the stopping power of a smaller caliber firearm than his own. “Aw, Jo. It had to be her. She’s got my damn gun.” He handed Mallory the drill. “She’s planning to shoot that bastard, and she wants to do a proper job of it. You go. I’ll wait here and cover the entrance.”

  Mallory had not expected that, not from him. Her hand froze on the door’s handle and her eyes narrowed, so suspicious, unable to come up with any logical scenario where he would volunteer to remain behind, gun or no gun. Mallory did not trust him anymore, yet she opened the door. She had no choice but to leave him here. Upstairs in that building, there was a gun in play, and she was the only cop who knew about it. Time was precious; bullets traveled so fast. She broke off this conversation of the eyes and ran for the door.

  When she had disappeared into the radio station, he slid into the driver’s seat and put her car in gear. As he nosed it out into the street, he turned up the volume on the radio, confirming his suspicions. Words chopped off at the end of one segment were now repeated in the next, and this was the mark of an amateur at the switch. He watched the radio station recede in his rearview mirror.

  At best, he could only count on ten minutes of lead time. It would not take long for Mallory to discover that she had been scammed. He headed the car toward the Chelsea Hotel, then glanced at the clock on the dashboard as he listened to Jo’s prerecorded voice taunting a serial killer, calling him out for a showdown. There was no other way to read her intentions.

  Calling for backup was not an option. Neither feds nor local cops would approve of Riker’s plans for their material witness, Johanna Apollo. He intended to grab that woman, to rip his stolen revolver from her hands, then run with Jo to Mexico. No baggage, just her very life was all he wanted, all he needed. But first he must have his gun back so that no one would ever make it past him to get to her—not even Mallory.

  21

  THE OUTNUMBERED FBI AGENTS HAD BEEN CONTAINED on the floor below, and Lieutenant Coffey stood outside the door to Ian Zachary’s studio. He had lost his satisfied smile. According to Mallory, there was a lethal weapon in play, and the game plan had radically changed. The narrow corridor was crowded with police, and yet the only sound was the tap of Mallory’s foot.

  Special Crimes Unit had never used the lower ranks for cannon fodder, and so they waited for a uniformed officer to fetch two bulletproof vests, one for the lieutenant and one for his detective. With a wave of his hand, Jack Coffey motioned the remaining uniforms to move back down the hall. The metal studio door was thick enough to offer protection from a .45-caliber bulle
t, but the surrounding wall might not. Prescient Mallory had known that this arrest would not go down nicely. She had brought her own drill to the party, and she handled it like a gun. In her other hand was a wiring diagram of the electronic door lock.

  Coffey stared at the power tool. “You’re sure you can’t electrocute yourself with that thing?”

  “No electricity,” she said. “The lock has its own circuit breaker.” Her voice was testy. She obviously resented having to play this out by the book and respond to silly questions. “The body armor should have been here by now.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t bore out the studio lock.” Ian Zachary’s door could only be opened from an interior control panel. The doors to the booths had locks made to open with keys, but they had both been fused shut with a glue that had hardened to the temperance of steel. The studio door was Mallory’s own preference for the first strike. The lieutenant was not yet convinced. “Zachary might not hear the drill if we go through one of these side doors. They’ve both got windows on the studio.”

  “And the glass is four inches thick, unbreakable.” Mallory looked up from her reading to glance at the ruined lock on one of the flanking doors. “You know why those locks are glued shut. One of them doesn’t want any witnesses—probably Dr. Apollo. We can’t wait for the body armor.”

  “Lieutenant?” A uniformed officer was monitoring Zachary’s show on a pocket radio. As he walked toward them, he removed his earpiece and turned up the volume on the noise of violent breakage. “It sounds like he’s taking the place apart.”

  Without waiting on orders, Mallory put the drill to the lock, knowing that the sound would alert the people inside. Jack Coffey stayed her hand before she could power up the tool and give them away.

  “Cover me,” he said. “I’ll drill the lock.”

  “It’s my drill.” She held it tightly in both hands.

  The lieutenant could only stare at her. What a hell of a time for this silly kid stunt. However, it was her drill, her case—her show all the way. Jack Coffey removed his hand from the tool. Stepping back, he drew his gun, demoting himself to Mallory’s backup, then waved the uniforms farther down the hall. “Okay, Mallory, now!”

  He had not expected so much noise. The loud squeal of metal grinding on metal made all his nerve endings stand at attention. Zachary and Dr. Apollo would know they were coming, but which of them would be holding the gun when the door opened? He trained his own gun on the door, ready to kill whoever pointed a weapon at Mallory. She was halfway through the lock, and a death might be only seconds away.

  His detective looked up from her work, saying, “We’ll never make a case if you shoot my corroborating witness.”

  “Mallory, later you can remind me to fire your ass.” He turned to the sound of footfalls pounding down the hall at his back. Two uniformed officers came on the run. Instead of the requested flak jackets, they carried two large bulletproof shields.

  Johanna Apollo was startled to hear her own voice on the radio. She had not expected Zachary to play that interview tape on the air. How could she have guessed wrong about that? If he thought he was impervious to an investigation, he might not come tonight.

  Or was he already here?

  She turned off the radio and held her breath, standing very still in the dead quiet of the front room. Had she actually heard a noise in the hall? Or had she intuited a presence out there—sensed it in the fashion of Mugs or Timothy Kidd? Tonight there would be no buffer of FBI agents downstairs in the hotel lobby. The federal bodyguards were looking for her elsewhere.

  No interruptions, no witnesses.

  Gun in hand, Johanna settled into an armchair and braced her elbows on the upholstery. The recoil of Riker’s revolver would be stronger than Victor’s smaller gun, and she would not risk it falling from her trembling hands, for one bullet might not do the job. After turning off the table lamp, all that illuminated the hotel room, she could see the shadows of two shoes in a crack of yellow light below the door. The narrow foyer’s walls seemed like an extension of the gun’s barrel.

  A knock. How polite—and unexpected. Johanna called out, “It’s not locked!”

  The door opened slowly, and this was something she should have anticipated. She could see that now—her error. Ian Zachary would pride himself on theatrics. His dark silhouette filled the door frame, backlit by the lamps in the hall.

  She had rehearsed this moment inside her head so many times. It had always begun with immediate violence, a body barreling through the door, rushing in with a view to unbalancing her with cold, paralyzing terror. That had been Timothy Kidd’s imagined re-creation of the juror murders, but that was not to be—not here and now. And what else might she get wrong before this night was over?

  The room suddenly flooded with light from the ceiling fixture. Her eyes were still adapting to the brightness when she saw his hand on the wall switch and heard him say, “I should come inside.” His voice was in the range of seduction, and this was another surprise. “If you shoot me in the hall,” he said, “the police might not buy the idea of self-defense.”

  During her training days as a crime-scene cleaner, Riker had told her that hesitation should be listed as the cause of death for most homicide victims. Educable Johanna raised the gun. She must kill Ian Zachary now.

  He closed the door behind him—and locked it.

  The gun was so heavy.

  “There, that’s better,” he said. “Now you have privacy for a murder—and a better story for the police.” Zachary strolled toward her, smiling, all but laughing at the gun in her hands, only sparing it one glance. He stopped a few paces from her chair, then raised his arms to show her the spread of his empty hands. “I don’t have a weapon, but here’s a thought—maybe you could plant one on my dead body.” He lowered his arms. “You might have time to run to the store, some all-night bodega where the clerk won’t remember a distraught hunchback buying a penknife.”

  The gun barrel wavered. Her finger touched lightly on the trigger, and he became an easier target as he closed the gap between them. She fancied Timothy inside her head, screaming to the rhythm of a banging heart, Kill him, kill him, kill him!

  Her script for this event was already in shambles. It should not have surprised her so when Zachary leaned down and simply plucked the gun from her shaking hands, saying, “Not quite the scenario you had in mind? Too civilized for a cold-blooded killing? You don’t know what you’re missing, Dr. Apollo.” He pressed the gun to her forehead an inch above her eyes. “What a rush. Better than sex.”

  She looked down at her hands, limp useless things, and waited for the shot.

  Riker sailed through another red light, avoiding collisions by the grace of providence, for his eyes kept wandering to the rearview mirror, expecting Mallory to climb up his taillights at any moment. She would have discovered by now that Jo’s interview was on tape, and it would only take her six seconds to steal another car.

  A fire engine beat him into the intersection, stringing its long body across the entire width of the street. He slammed on the brakes, but not before he had done some damage to the other vehicle and crumpled a fender of Mallory’s car. He reversed gears and backed up by ten feet as an angry fireman climbed down from the driver’s seat and walked toward him. Now the driver was joined by other men dropping down to the pavement like combat troops parachuting in for a battle. They were all moving in tandem, and the strategy was clear: they were planning to surround Riker and take a little satisfaction out of his hide—slow torture by paperwork and forms filled out in triplicate. Flashing his badge would not save him, and he could not spare the time to do even that much.

  Taking a tip from the Mallory School of Bad Driving, Riker aimed the car at the walking wall of firemen. Brave bastards, they waited until the last possible moment to jump aside. And now the small tan sedan was running round the long red truck, using all of the sidewalk to do it, and civilians were diving into the street. Move or die—that was the message.


  Mallory would have been proud.

  “If I wanted you dead,” said Ian Zachary, “I could have killed you months ago. You were the easiest one to keep track of.” He ran the gun barrel lightly along the deformity of her spine. “Such a distinctive profile. Tell you what. Let’s do a trade—your life for Victor Patchock’s.” He reached out to a small table, picked up the telephone and carried it to her chair. “Call him over here.”

  “You’ll kill us both.”

  “No, no, no.” Zachary wore a condescending smile as he knelt down before her. “The last juror standing takes all the blame. I thought you understood that, Doctor. That’s why people keep dying in your vicinity. First Timothy Kidd, then poor Bunny. When the police find Victor bleeding all over your rug, I think they’ll have enough to close out the case.”

  “And no witness to back up the charge of jury tampering.” Johanna nodded her understanding. One of the surviving jurors must die tonight. “But if I’m supposed to be the Reaper—if I die, you have no show left.”

  “You do understand.” He rewarded her with his widest smile, then patted her hand. “Good girl. Yes, ideally there would be another trial—yours. A long, drawn-out affair. You’re wealthy, Dr. Apollo. You can hire the best legal team in the country. I promise you’ll never do a day in prison for all those murders. You’ll buy your way out with legal talent. It’s the American way.”

  “And then we start over?”

  “Right. A fresh jury. And, next time, all twelve of them die.”

  “And then another trial? Do you get all your plans from comic books?” Ah, she had disappointed him. This was not the response he had expected. But she knew he would not kill her—not yet. First, he must make her into a believer—a fan of sorts. She was all the audience that he would ever have. He wanted—applause.

  He set the telephone in her lap. “You see? I do have an interest in keeping you alive. So you know I’ll keep my word.” He pressed the receiver into her hand. “Call Victor Patchock.”