Blind Pursuit

by Michael Prescott

  BLIND PURSUIT

  Michael Prescott

  writing as

  Brian Harper

  michaelprescott.net

  In memory of my grandmother, Ann Doris Kleen

  I look back on my life like a good day’s work; it was done and I am satisfied with it.

  —Grandma Moses

  1

  In darkness, the urgent buzzing of an intercom.

  Erin Reilly surfaced from sleep, blinking alert. Propped on one elbow, she studied her bedside clock’s digital display, luminous in the night.

  2:16 A.M.

  From the living room came another prolonged buzz, insistent as a stabbing finger.

  One of her patients? At this hour?

  Like any psychologist, she occasionally received post-midnight phone calls and beeper messages from anxious or depressed people in need of help. But an unscheduled visit to her apartment was something new.

  She’d never even released her home address, and she wasn’t listed in the phone book. So how ...?

  As the intercom blared again, she kicked aside two layers of blankets and swung out of bed.

  The hardwood floor was cold. Her toes curled reflexively.

  A pair of slippers lay somewhere nearby, but she didn’t take the time to hunt them down.

  Barefoot, she hurried into the living room. Carpet in there, thank God. Warmer.

  Again and again the intercom blatted at her, bursts of angry noise, distressing as a baby’s wail. She groped for the controls. “Hello?”

  The voice that crackled over the speaker was familiar, the most familiar voice in her world, but startling now: “This is Annie.”

  “Annie?” Not a patient with a problem. Her sister, and her best friend. “It’s after two a.m. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m in trouble. Please. Need to ... talk.”

  In the oddly halting quality of her speech, Erin thought she heard suppressed sobs.

  “Of course,” she said instantly. “Come on up.”

  She was already holding down the Enter button to release the lock on the lobby’s security door. After a count of eight she let go.

  Agitated, she unlocked her own door and flipped the wall switch. A brass torchiere and two end-table lamps threw crisp ovals of light on the white walls.

  She drew a breath of comfort from the pristine orderliness of her home and, by extension, her life. No muss and clutter, no untidy loose ends.

  The white sofa, glass coffee table, and teakwood entertainment center were objects of minimalist design and spare, elegant simplicity. They mirrored her soul no less exactly than the careful notations in her appointment book, the crisp lines of her signature, her manicured hands, the styling of her hair—swept back from her forehead, trimmed short at the nape.

  She returned to her bedroom and, without switching on a light, found her slippers and robe.

  Her apartment was on the top floor of a four-story building, a high-rise by local standards. The bedroom windows framed miles of moonlit rooftops and brush-choked vacant lots. In the distance the lights of downtown Tucson flickered faintly, cupped by the dark humps of mountains and canopied with stars.

  Beyond the rows of carports at the side of the building, traffic hummed past on Pantano Road, and a dry wind shivered through the fronds of palm trees.

  Erin shivered, too, as she left the bedroom. Forty-five degrees tonight—chilly for southern Arizona—though the temperature would climb to eighty by mid-afternoon.

  The desert in springtime was an environment of extremes—cold nights and hot days, long stretches of aridity punctuated by brief bursts of punishing rain, prickly pear cacti and ocotillo costumed overnight in garish floral blooms.

  Living here in this season ought to teach a person to be prepared for abrupt changes, for the constant certainty of surprise.

  But Erin had not been prepared to hear her sister’s voice over the intercom.

  Admittedly, Annie did tend to get emotional about things. But she’d never disturbed Erin so late at night, not even with a phone call.

  Something must be really wrong.

  I’m in trouble, she’d said.

  Whatever trouble it was, it must have just come up. Annie had sounded fine on the phone a few hours ago, when Erin called her to make a lunch date for tomorrow.

  Not tomorrow, she corrected herself, remembering the time. Later today.

  She paced the living room, running through a mental checklist of possible crises. None seemed remotely plausible. Well, she would find out as soon as Annie arrived at her door.

  It was taking her a long time, though. The elevator was slow, but not this slow.

  What if Annie was afraid to face her for some reason? Afraid to disclose this secret of hers?

  Unthinkable. The two of them had been close—more than close, inseparable—for their whole lives. Holding something back would be completely out of character for Annie, wouldn’t be like her at all.

  But coming to Erin’s place at this hour, desperate and mysterious—that wasn’t like her, either.

  And she still wasn’t here.

  “Damn,” Erin murmured to the stillness around her. “I’d better see if she’s downstairs.”

  She found her purse, the shoulder strap looped over the back of a dining room chair, and took out her keys. Briefly she wondered if she ought to slip on some clothes—embarrassing to be caught roaming the building in her robe.

  Oh, forget about it. At this hour no one else would be up.

  She scanned the hallway—deserted—then shut and locked the apartment door behind her. Rows of closed doors passed by as she walked quickly to the elevator, her slippered feet padding on the short-nap carpet, the terry-cloth robe gently swishing against her pajamas. She punched the call button.

  Hum of cable. Squeak of gears. The doors rattled open.

  No Annie inside.

  Erin got in, pressed Lobby. The elevator descended, groaning.

  Third floor. Second. She jangled her keys nervously.

  Lobby.

  The doors parted. She stepped into the building manager’s fantasy of potted ferns and saltillo tile.

  The exterior door was closed. A glass door. Annie was not visible outside it.

  Near the elevator was the manager’s glassed-in office, dark. No one in there, either.

  But it made no sense. There was only one elevator, and Annie hadn’t been on it.

  Had she taken the stairs? Why would she?

  More likely she’d lost her nerve, gone away. If so, she must be badly upset. Must be—

  Behind her, a rustle of movement.

  Erin turned. “Annie?”

  Froze.

  Not Annie.

  Her heart kicked. Breath stopped.

  The man was tall and heavyset, red-bearded, an uncombed shock of scarlet hair spilling out from under a baseball cap, the bill cocked low over his eyes. On the fur collar of his winter coat lay a bristle-toothed leaf, deposited there by the sword fern in the alcove where he had lain in wait.

  His hands were gloved. In his right first, a gleam of metal.

  She almost screamed, and then his left hand shot out, seized her shoulder, slammed her up against the elevator doors.

  The impact winded her. She had no breath, no voice.

  Thrust of his right arm, the metallic thing digging into her stomach below the breastbone, two sharp prongs pinching her skin through the robe and pajama top.

  From a yard away she stared into his eyes, blue and cold.

  His forefinger flexed.

  Pain exploded in her. Her jaws clicked shut and her vision blurred as the pain went on and on, singing in every nerve ending, a single high note held unwavering at its peak.

  Blindly she lashed out with
her fists, trying to drive him back. The blows fell like flower petals on his chest.

  Whistling static rose in her brain. She wanted to cry out, shout for help, but her mouth wouldn’t work.

  Her knees loosened. Her arms flapped spastically.

  The static rose to a steady, hissing roar, and Erin was gone.

  Everything was gone.

  2

  Annie Reilly, sleepless in the dark.

  Her bed creaked with each restless change of position. She lay on her left side, her right, on her stomach, on her back, under the covers, on top of the covers, the pillows pressed to her cheek, flattened under her belly, discarded on the floor.

  Hell.

  She couldn’t sleep.

  Beyond her windows, higher in the foothills, a choir of coyotes lifted their voices in piping, ululant wails. A ghostly serenade.

  Normally, Annie liked hearing those distant cries, the leitmotif of a desert night. She appreciated the reminder of her distance from the city, her closeness to the weathered peaks of the Santa Catalina range, rising like stone spires and broken battlements against the sky.

  But tonight the songs disturbed her. She pictured a coyote band, lean and scruffy and ravenous, heads lifted as they sang of strange hungers and gnawing needs.

  Blood songs. That was what they were. Songs that were the prelude to a kill.

  A slow current of dread rippled through her like a fever chill.

  She’d never envied Erin’s apartment over on the east side of town. Never wanted to live amid the strip malls and the auto lots. Preferred her townhouse in the lap of the Catalinas, remote from traffic and distraction.

  But in town, at least, the desert’s wildness was held at bay.

  Erin must be sleeping soundly now. No nocturnal predators sang to her.

  Erin. Predators.

  Her foreboding sharpened. It was less a thought than a taste, the bitter flavor of fear at the back of her mouth.

  Her hand fumbled for the nightstand. She didn’t know what she was reaching for until her fingers closed over the plastic shell of the telephone.

  Call Erin? In the middle of the night?

  Crazy.

  She released the phone, climbed unsteadily out of bed. In the kitchen she poured a glass of milk.

  There was a phone in the kitchen. Again she felt the irrational impulse to call.

  What are you going to say? That you had a premonition of danger, so you decided to wake her up at two-thirty?

  Too bizarre.

  The milk was cold and foamy. It relaxed her. A little.

  Funny how she couldn’t shake her unease, though.

  Of course, insomnia was nothing new to her. For most of her life she’d suffered occasional nights when she couldn’t sleep at all. More frequent were the nights of interrupted sleep, when nightmares would startle her awake; she often spent an hour or more chasing away their ugly afterimages before she dared shut her eyes again.

  The bad dreams were always the same, always a replay of the worst night of her life, the pivotal trauma of her childhood.

  Tonight, however, was different. Tonight her anxieties were not focused on the past.

  It was Erin she was afraid for, though she had no idea why.

  Well, they would laugh about it at lunch. Maybe Erin would offer some Freudian interpretation of her anxiety attack. Something to do with sex. It all had to do with sex.

  Annie smiled, but the smile faded as another coyote call split the night.

  She became aware of eyes watching her. Green eyes like her own, but unlike hers these were luminous in the moonlight. They studied her with an owl’s unblinking attentiveness.

  “Can’t sleep either, huh, Stink?”

  The colorpoint shorthair wound sinuously around her ankles, his fur ermine-soft.

  “Those mean old coyotes keeping you up? They’re not after you.”

  Stink didn’t answer.

  “Maybe you want some milk. That it? Does Annie have milk and you don’t? Unfair, you say? You have a keen sense of justice, Stink.”

  Stink did not really stink. His malodorous appellation commemorated a kittenish habit, fortunately now outgrown, of throwing up at the least excuse.

  Annie fixed a saucer of milk for the cat. Stink sniffed it, sniffed again, almost declined the offering, reconsidered (perhaps out of politeness), and lapped the dish dry.

  Finished, he nuzzled her leg in gratitude. She bent to caress his neck, his back. When he purred, he sounded like a very small person snoring.

  Stroking him, Annie thought about the animals outside in the night, not safely sheltered like Stink, but huddling in dark burrows or flitting anxiously from one brushy hiding place to the next.

  Bad to be alone and unprotected in the dark, with the coyotes keening.

  Again she thought of Erin, though there was no reason for it.

  Erin ... and nocturnal hunters, stalking prey.

  3

  Sprawled on the lobby floor, she twitched and flopped.

  He peeled off a glove, thumbed her carotid artery.

  Heartbeat weak but regular.

  She would live. For now.

  The Ultron stun gun went into his coat pocket. A top-of-the-line model, complete with safety trigger and double shock plates. The battery would produce 150,000 volts when the trigger was squeezed.

  On past occasions he had struck from behind. Curled a gloved hand over the victim’s mouth, rammed the gun into the nerve center of the base of the spine, and discharged the current. For some technical reason, explained by the Ultron’s manual but incomprehensible to him, the voltage could not pass into his own body even when he was in physical contact with his adversary.

  This time he’d had no chance to grab her until after she’d spun around. Then he had delivered a five-second pulse directly to her solar plexus. The resulting disruption of her nervous system should keep her immobilized for at least ten minutes.

  It was his first face-to-face encounter. He had found it interesting to watch her eyes roll up white in the sockets.

  Despite everything, he had to admit that in the past he had enjoyed this phase of his activities. Using the stun gun, then exploring a woman’s body with his hand while she lay unconscious and unresisting ... It had given him a shameful, furtive thrill of pleasure, had made him feel—for once—fully alive.

  What had come later ...

  No pleasure then, only a compulsion he couldn’t override.

  He pushed aside these thoughts. Must get moving. Someone might enter the lobby at any moment and find him here.

  Kneeling by her, he scanned the tiled floor. A key ring lay near her jerking hand. Car keys were included in the set. Good.

  The keys disappeared into another pocket. Then he lifted her in his arms. She was reasonably tall, perhaps five-eight, but slender, no more than 125 pounds. Slung over his shoulder, she was easy to carry, and the reflexive spasms trembling through her muscles created the pleasing illusion of a futile, panicky struggle against his superior strength.

  He caught the scent of her hair as he lugged her to the side door. Faint fragrance. Not perfume. Bath salts.

  The door opened on the parking lot that served the complex. Rows of automobiles, pickup trucks, and motorcycles were arrayed under metal carports. Fluorescent bars cast a pale, glareless glow on steel and fiberglass.

  In the doorway he paused, surveying the area.

  The moon, a waning crescent, hung low over the horizon, hooked in a mountain’s clawlike peak. It washed the asphalt in milky light. Anyone watching from a window or balcony would see him once he exited.

  Fortunately, the blue Taurus was parked in one of the more desirable assigned spaces, only a short distance from the door.

  He took a breath and carried her there, staying clear of floodlights. Behind him, the apartment building loomed dark against an icy spray of stars. On Pantano Road, safely screened from the parking lot by colonnades of oleanders in white bloom, cars shot by like comets, and a motorc
ycle whined past, mosquito-quick.

  If a car should turn into the lot ... if he should be pinned in the headlights ...

  He walked faster. His breath became hoarse and ragged, loud over the clicking of unseen insects.

  Only once he was under the carport roof, concealed from any likely observer, did he again feel safe.

  Fumbling the key ring out of his pocket, he unlocked the trunk and popped the lid. Gently he deposited her inside, placing her on her back.

  From a utility pouch clipped to his belt, he removed cut lengths of rope. Bound her ankles first, then her wrists. To further restrict her movements, he lashed her wrists to her right thigh.

  Good. Very good.

  A roll of heavy electrician’s tape was also among the contents of the pouch. He tore off a six-inch strip and prepared to seal her mouth. Hesitated, studying her face. His first opportunity to look at her, really look at her, up close, in the flesh.

  Dangerous to indulge himself like this, under these circumstances. Still, he could not turn away. She held him fascinated.

  Of the women he had taken, she was by far the most beautiful. By far.

  He admired her as a connoisseur of art would admire a fine painting, attentive to every detail. It was an undiluted pleasure to study her lovely face as minutely as he liked, with no risk that she would return his gaze or challenge his absolute control.

  She was thirty years old, balanced at that delicate equilibrium point between youthfulness and full maturity. Her skin was smooth, powdered with faint freckles; a light suntan endowed her with a pink, scrubbed look, wholesome somehow. Offsetting these girlish features were her strong cheekbones and blunt jaw, which gave her face a squarish shape, and her wide, serious mouth, not a child’s mouth at all.

  Her auburn hair, combed away from her forehead, shone even in the carport’s wan fluorescence. A stray lock lay along her temple like a spiral of sewing thread, reddish-gold.

  Peeling back her eyelids, he stared into gray eyes, smoky and mysterious.

  He parted the flaps of her robe. Removed one of his gloves so he could stroke her white pajama top, feel its softness. Satin.