Prey (Jefferson Winter)

by James Carol

  ‘Shit, Winter! We lost her.’

  ‘It’s not all bad news.’

  ‘She’s still out there. That doesn’t sound like good news to me.’

  ‘She’s taking more risks than ever, which means there’s more chance of her making a mistake. That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while.’

  Winter went over to the back door. It was wider than an average door to make it easier for deliveries. You opened it by pushing the bar across the middle. Beyond the doorway was a narrow alley. The tall buildings on either side kept everything in shadow, and the dumpsters stunk of garbage. Once Amelia had reached this point she was home and dry. A quick jog along this alley and in no time she would have been swallowed up by the city.

  ‘How did you find out which room she was in?’ he asked.

  ‘She used the Wren J Firestone alias again. Her room was up on the fifth floor.’

  Without another word, Winter ran out of the kitchen and retraced his way back through to reception. There was a queue for the elevators so he headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. By the time he reached the fourth floor he was out of breath. He stood there for a second, his hand on the rail, breathing hard, then got going again. Mendoza had caught up with him by the third floor and sailed passed him without breaking stride. Her face was a little flushed but she looked as though she could easily manage another four flights.

  ‘You really should think about quitting the cigarettes,’ she told him.

  ‘Really not the time for a lecture. So which way to Amelia’s room?’

  ‘This way.’

  Mendoza banged through the heavy door that led to the corridors. Winter took one more deep breath then followed. It occurred to him that their journey from the kitchen to the fifth floor was the exact same journey he’d heard Amelia taking, but in reverse. Mendoza turned left and walked quickly along the narrow corridor, glancing at the room numbers. Room 516 was two-thirds of the way along the corridor. The door was ajar, wedged open with a bath towel. Winter looked at the towel, looked at Mendoza.

  ‘I figured we might want to take a look at the room,’ she said. ‘This way saves all the hassle of finding someone to unlock the door.’

  The room was decorated for a business traveller from the lower rungs of the ladder, or a tourist on a budget. It was comfortable and functional with a funky modern vibe. Lots of white interspersed with bright splashes of colour. The throw on the bed was bright purple and the surrealist prints on the wall veered heavily towards primary colours. There was a suitcase on the stand in the corner. It had a hard shell and was small enough to be taken on to a flight as carry-on luggage. Mendoza walked over and popped the catches.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother. It’s empty.’

  She ignored him and lifted the lid, peered inside. She checked the pockets, ran her hands over the lining. ‘You’re right. It’s empty.’

  ‘It’s probably the same suitcase she used back at Myrtle House.’

  ‘And I’m thinking she brought it here for the same reason. Someone checking into a hotel without luggage is going to stand out, right? And it’s empty because she knew that there was a good chance she might have to clear out in a hurry. Carrying this with her would have slowed her down.’

  A chair was positioned in front of the window, just like there had been back at the guesthouse. The biggest difference was that this chair was pushed up close to the window. Clearly Amelia wasn’t as worried about being seen here. New York was much busier than Hartwood so it was easier to blend into the background, and being on the fifth floor made it difficult for anyone looking up from the street to see into the room.

  It was a different story for the person sitting in this chair, though. They’d have a great view. Winter sat down and peered through the gap in the drapes. The window was open and a fresh breeze was blowing in, cold against his skin. The rowdy noise of the street rose up from below, fragmented jigsaw-puzzle pieces of sound. Car engines and horns and a stereo playing too loud. Laughter and shouting.

  Straight ahead on the other side of the street was the Hyperion. Five stories up and twenty yards away it looked just as shabby as it had done from street level. Shabbier, perhaps, since there weren’t so many distractions up here. Winter leant on the window sill and peered left, peered right. The view on the near side of the street was restricted to a block in either direction. He could see way into the distance on the other side of the street.

  Mendoza pulled one of the drapes aside. ‘She would have seen us coming from a mile away.’

  ‘Yes she would. Any idea what disguise she was using?’

  ‘The guy at the desk said she was dressed like a business woman. Dark hair, brown eyes, somewhere around five-eight or five-nine, and that was about as much as he could tell me. It didn’t help matters that it was a very quick conversation. After all, I was in a hurry to find her.’ She paused, frowned. ‘Chances are she changed her disguise as soon as she got outside. She probably hit the streets as a blue-eyed blonde.’

  ‘Probably. Not that it really matters what disguise she’s using.’

  ‘Of course it matters. What are you talking about?’

  Winter grinned. ‘I’ve arranged to meet her.’

  Mendoza stared at him. ‘And you’ve only just thought to mention this. Is there anything else you’re not telling me?’

  Winter was staring out of the window again. He could picture Amelia in his mind’s eye. She didn’t look anything like a businesswoman, though. The version his imagination conjured up had platinum-blonde hair, bright green eyes and a baggy leather jacket. He saw her walking out of the hotel kitchen, saw her reach the end of the alley. She glanced over her shoulder like she had done two nights ago back at the diner in New York, and then she was gone. He turned around and looked at Mendoza.

  ‘Yeah, there is one thing. I think I know how to catch her.’

  Winter sat down on the edge of the bed and spent the next couple of minutes outlining his idea. The whole time Mendoza just stood silently in front of him, the frown on her face slowly morphing into a scowl.

  ‘No way, Winter,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘It’s too risky.’

  ‘Okay, if you’ve got a better plan, let’s hear it.’

  ‘You’re not doing this without backup. It’s crazy.’

  ‘Still waiting to hear your plan.’

  ‘Winter, Amelia is a psychopath.’

  ‘No argument there. She probably scores higher than me on the Hare psychopathy checklist and that’s saying something.’

  ‘This isn’t funny. She stabbed that cook with a cutlery knife.’

  ‘I know. I was there.’

  Mendoza closed her eyes. She had her fingers pressed against her forehead like she had a migraine coming on. She opened her eyes, lowered her hands, then took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know who’s crazier, you or her.’

  ‘I’m going to be fine, Mendoza. She’s not going to lay a finger on me.’

  ‘And you’re sure about that?’

  ‘I am. If she wanted to hurt me she would have done so already.’

  ‘She cuffed you to a bed.’

  ‘But she didn’t hurt me.’

  ‘But she could have.’

  Winter jumped up from the bed and Mendoza took a step back in surprise.

  ‘Look, Amelia isn’t going to hurt me, and the reason I know that is because she craves an audience, and right now I’m that audience. Her brother, her father, Ryan McCarthy. She wasn’t just toying with them, she needed them to validate herself.’

  ‘And as a result of getting mixed up with her, two of them are dead and one is looking at spending the rest of his life in prison.’

  ‘I’m going to be fine,’ he said again.

  ‘I don’t like this, Winter.’

  ‘You don’t have to like it, you’ve just got to help me out here.’

  Mendoza’s head started moving slowly from side to side. He doubted she was aware of what she was doing.

  ‘Are you goi
ng to help me or not?’

  A sigh. ‘Yeah, I’ll help you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go thanking me just yet. Let’s see how this plays out first.’

  ‘It’s going to be fine. I’m going to be fine.’

  Mendoza smiled at him. ‘To be honest, I’m more concerned that you catch her.’

  54

  Winter pulled up the collar of his sheepskin jacket and lit a cigarette. Darkness had fallen over an hour ago, and the temperature was slowly dropping. He clicked the Zippo closed, then clicked it open again and flicked up a new flame. Click, click, flick. The smell of lighter fluid drifted up towards his nose. Central Park was busy. It was a perfect fall evening and people were making the most of it. December was just around the corner. Snow, sub-zero temperatures and everybody praying for spring.

  The Alice in Wonderland statue was hidden away in its own secret grove. Trees crowded around in a circle, stealing away the city and giving the impression that you’d actually tumbled down the rabbit hole. Hugging the curve of the trees were benches for the parents to rest on, and laid out inside that was a circle of paving slabs that had been worn smooth by millions of little feet. The main path led down to a lake but there was a smaller path off to the side that wound away between the trees.

  The kids clambering all over the statue were probably here on vacation. No doubt they’d been allowed to stay up late because all the usual routines had been put on hold. Winter stood watching them for a moment, a dusty old memory surfacing. He was three and a half and he was sat up on his bed with his back against the headboard, a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland lying open on his lap. This book was one that he kept coming back to. He could recite whole sections from heart. The caterpillar had always been his favourite character. He was rude and chain-smoked. What wasn’t to like?

  His mother was sat beside him, listening and smiling, her body warm through the thin material of his pyjamas, the smell of her soap and perfume comforting. Looking back, what got to him most was how relatively normal the scene was. Relatively normal. Most three-year-olds weren’t reading books this advanced, but that was just a detail. The point was that back then he’d had no idea that ‘normal’ was just an illusion, that real life was as screwed up as anything that Lewis Carroll could dream up.

  He took a drag on his cigarette and scanned the area around the statue to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Mendoza had promised, but she was a cop, and you could never completely trust a cop. He finished his sweep. Nobody had set off any alarm bells.

  There were three benches to the left of the Mad Hatter. It was a good position since it gave an unobstructed view of both entrances. The old woman on the middle bench was staring off into the distance. Her expression was tinged with sadness, but there was an air of acceptance there too, a sense that this was the way things were and there was nothing she could do, so why fight it. Whatever memory she was lost in, she’d made peace with it long ago.

  Winter stared a little longer than he should have, just in case it was Amelia. He knew she was good with disguises, and the best disguises were the ones that enabled you to merge completely into your chosen environment. Dressing up as an old woman would definitely fall into this category. Nobody ever paid much attention to the elderly.

  He looked away then glanced back. If it was Amelia then it was one hell of a disguise. To start with you’d need a Hollywood make-up artist and hours of work to come up with a prosthetic mask that good. Amelia was driven and resourceful, but he doubted even she could pull off something like that.

  He sat down on the empty bench to the left of the woman, arms outstretched along the top of it. For a while he just sat there smoking and thinking, and did his best to appear as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Butterflies were buzzing in his stomach and his nerve endings were jangling. There was just too much information coming in from his senses.

  He checked his watch. Still a couple of minutes to go. He did another sweep, checking faces. Checking the way people moved. Undercover cops moved in a certain way, even the best. Unless you were deep undercover there was always going to be the occasional giveaway, no matter how good you were. Even then, it was hard to stay consistently in character. No cops. No Amelia.

  Winter counted off the seconds in his head. At T minus sixty seconds he took a final pull on his cigarette, crushed it under his heel and dropped it into the nearest trash can. He checked his watch, counted down the last ten seconds. Still no sign of Amelia. Patience, he told himself. It wasn’t easy. He hated inactivity. He took out the last Snickers he’d bought back in Hartwood and ate it quickly.

  The old woman was still on the next bench. He glanced over again, just in case he’d called this one wrong. He hadn’t. The woman had to be well into her seventies. She was still staring off into the distance as though the rest of the universe had ceased to exist. A laughing family came up the main path. Mom, dad, two boys. Scandinavian accents and good genes. Tall, strong, blonde. The kids were young. Five, six, seven, somewhere around there. They broke away from their parents and sprinted towards the statue, racing each other, laughing and squealing.

  Winter contemplated having another cigarette. He needed something to do with his hands, something to do with his mind. The wait was killing him. If there had been another way of doing this then he would have done it, but he’d needed to arrive first to assure Amelia that he wasn’t being followed. And she needed to arrive late to show him that she was calling the shots. Because he had chosen the venue for their meeting she would be looking to redress the balance of power.

  He checked the time again. He figured that she’d want to be nine minutes late. The figure wasn’t entirely random. If she just wanted to show who was in charge then she’d aim to be fifteen minutes late, maybe twenty. She’d want him to sweat. But it wasn’t just about that. She was as anxious to see him as he was to see her, so she’d be aiming to be ten minutes late, but she’d be in that little bit too much of a hurry.

  A Japanese family came up the path. Mom, dad and a little girl. Because the girl was on her own she wasn’t anywhere near as hyperactive as the two Scandinavian boys. She wandered timidly over to the statue and her father started snapping photographs.

  Winter kept glancing at his watch, counting off the minutes. Six, seven, eight. He took another quick look around. No undercover cops. No Amelia. He reached nine minutes and realised he’d called it wrong.

  Patience.

  As it got closer to the twenty-minute mark, he began wondering if she’d gone to the wrong place. Except that didn’t work. If she’d done that then she would have called by now to find out where he was. So where the hell was she? It crossed his mind that she might have left the city. It was possible, but he wasn’t convinced. Whatever game she was playing, it wasn’t quite over yet.

  A kid on Rollerblades came skating into the clearing and did a fast circuit of the statue. He was about eighteen or nineteen with acne scars on his cheeks and piercings in his ears, nose and upper lip. Despite the temperature he was wearing baggy shorts that came down past his knees and a black T-shirt with a stoned yellow smiley face on the front. No coat or jacket.

  The kid skidded to a stop near the old lady and pulled out his cell phone. He thumbed the screen and put the phone up to his ear. The call connected and he said ‘Hi’. A pause, then, ‘Tell me where the money is.’ Winter’s first thought was that he was probably a low-level dealer chasing up a debt, but the explanation didn’t ring true. Another pause then, ‘Yeah, he’s here but I’m not putting him on until you tell me where my money is.’

  Winter didn’t need to hear any more. He covered the distance between them in less than two seconds, barrelling into the kid and knocking him to the ground. The kid might have been pushing six foot but he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds. For once Winter had the weight advantage. He pinned the kid down, knees on his arms, weight on his chest. The kid was squirming around and trying to break f
ree, but Winter was just about managing to hold him. He plucked the cell phone from the kid’s hand and put it up to his ear.

  ‘Hi, Amelia.’

  55

  ‘You sound like you’ve got your hands full there, Jefferson.’

  ‘Yeah, give me a second.’

  Winter pressed the phone against his chest and looked down at the kid. His face was red and he looked worried. People were starting to stare, and a few of the braver ones were moving in closer.

  ‘FBI! Please stay back!’

  It had been a while since he’d played this particular card, but he was able to deliver the warning with enough authority to make it sound convincing. People were still staring, and some didn’t look convinced, but he’d planted enough doubt to keep them at arm’s length. He turned his attention back to the kid. ‘How much did she offer you?’

  The kid just stared.

  ‘Fifty bucks? A hundred?’

  The kid’s eyes narrowed. ‘It was actually two hundred.’

  Sure it was, thought Winter. ‘And she was going to tell you where you’d find the money after you delivered the phone, right?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘But you don’t trust her to pay up, hence the reason you were stalling.’

  ‘Man, you can’t trust anyone these days.’

  Winter stared at the kid until he had his full attention. ‘Okay, listen carefully. She was never going to pay up. You need to understand that. It was never going to happen. On the other hand, I will pay up. That’s a promise. So here’s the deal. I’m going to get off you and you’re going to sit on that bench over there until I’ve finished my call, and then we’re going to have a little chat. Do that and I’ll give you two hundred bucks. However, if you try to run I will use every resource at my disposal to hunt you down, and when I catch you, I will make sure you go to prison.’