Dangerous Games (42 page)

A new burst of light, stronger than the last. Closer. Not like lightning. More like…

A flashlight. Behind her.

She turned. Past the glare she saw Tess, hair writhing around her face in eerie slow motion.

Tess pushed her clear of the ladder, then, as Abby watched, pressed her gun to the handcuff chain and fired.

Abby had time to wonder if the gun would work underwater or if the action would be jammed by grime and debris, and then a muzzle flash erupted in a purple cloud. The bullet severed the chain.

Abby grabbed Madeleine’s arm. Tess encircled her waist. Together they lifted her out of the water, hauling her higher up the ladder. Abby averted Madeleine’s face from the downrush of rainwater from the grate and felt for a pulse or a breath. None.

She knew CPR, of course. No doubt Tess did, too, but this was Abby’s client, her responsibility. She tilted Madeleine’s head, pinched her nostrils, and blew into her mouth, giving her two long, slow exhalations. No response. She locked her mouth on Madeleine’s and repeated the procedure. Still nothing.

She tried again. She would try all night if she had to. She would breathe life back into this woman no matter what.

Tess hung on to the ladder, beaming her flashlight on Abby, partially shielding her from the downpour. Abby caught a glimpse of her face, haggard and pale.

Then she was expelling air into Madeleine’s lungs again, willing to woman to wake up. She couldn’t have been out for long. She could still be saved.

Distantly she remembered Wyatt saying the job had made her hard and tough. Wyatt was wrong. If she’d grown hard, uncaring, she wouldn’t be here in this flooded storm drain trying to force life back into the limp body of a woman she didn’t even particularly like. Whatever kind of mess she’d made of her personal relationships, she always had the job, and she would not fail at it.

Mouth-to-mouth wasn’t working. She pressed both hands below Madeleine’s breastbone and pumped downward, performing the Heimlich maneuver, trying to force out any water or obstruction in Madeleine’s throat. Again, again, again, a dozen times without pause, then two more rescue breaths. Some water had spilled out of Madeleine’s mouth, but her vitals were still flatlining. All right, then. Chest compressions. Restart the heart. She worked Madeleine’s chest, counting aloud until she reached fifteen. Two more rescue breaths. The Heimlich maneuver again, ten more abdominal thrusts. More water dribbled down Madeleine’s chin, but there was no coughing, no vomiting, no sign of life. Rescue breaths. Chest compressions. Rescue breaths. Abdominal thrusts. Rescue breaths—

Tess’s hand was on her shoulder, easing her back.

She looked at Tess and saw understanding and resignation.

“She’s gone, Abby!” Tess yelled above the roar.

Abby shook her head.

“She’s gone!” Tess repeated.

“Not yet.” Abby bent to administer another round of CPR. Tess stopped her. Abby tried to shake her off. “I can get her back!”

“You can’t!”

Abby looked at Madeleine, lifeless on the iron rungs. Tess was right. It was over.

She released her hold on the body, and Madeleine settled into the murk, dropping slowly, weighted down by the water in her lungs.

As Abby watched in the glow of Tess’s flashlight, Madeleine sank under the surface and was gone. It felt like a betrayal, letting her go like that.

“What do we do now?” she asked blankly. For once in her life she was at a loss for action.

Tess pointed upward, toward the grate. “We climb.”

49

Tess didn’t wait for Abby to respond. The loss of Madeleine had left her uncharacteristically dazed. What she needed was a push. Tess grabbed her by the collar and thrust her higher up the ladder.

“Climb!” she shouted.

Abby scaled the ladder. Tess followed her up the narrow shaft. The climb was more difficult than she’d expected. The step irons were slippery, coated with black algae, and rain from the drain basin overhead poured down in a furious waterfall. But her flashlight, clipped to her belt, still worked, its beam augmented by bursts of lightning through the grate.

The lightning flashes told her the grate must be exposed to view. Nobody had parked an SUV on it, thank God. But she remembered Mason saying drain lids could be too heavy to lift or could be corroded in place, immovable.

Well, Mason was dead and she was alive, so she figured his opinion didn’t count for much.

Halfway up the ladder now. It rose thirty feet, she estimated, with the opening still five yards above her. Abby, nimbler than she was, climbed faster, pulling ahead.

Tess glanced down and saw blackness below her, and a faint swirl of water flecked with white foam.

Madeleine was in that water somewhere. She would remain submerged until the putrefaction of her stomach contents produced gases that expanded her belly. Then she would float to the surface to be recovered in the tunnel network—unless she was washed out of the drain system altogether, into the sea.

Above her, Abby scrambled off the ladder, then extended a hand to Tess, helping her up the rest of the way.

They were in a drop box, the concrete basin beneath the grate that collected street runoff before channeling it into the tunnel system. The basin was narrow and low, offering no room to stand, the floor littered with fast-food containers, newspapers, leaves and twigs, and somebody’s shoe. The drain lid was directly overhead, water pouring through the rectangular iron grille.

Abby pushed on the lid, straining to force it upward. That was wrong. Tess had seen one of these things opened at a crime scene during a search for evidence.

“Not that way!” she shouted over the rain’s roar. “We have to slide it,
slide it
to the side!” Together they hooked their fingers around the bars and forced the grate sideways until it slid off the groove of its track. “Now push up!”

They heaved the lid up, popping it clear of the slot. Leaves and other debris spilled down on them from above. Coughing, Tess blinked grit out of her eyes.

Abby gestured for Tess to climb the remaining set of rungs to the surface. Using the rungs as handholds and footholds, she raised herself out of the gutter box. It was installed under a curb on a dark, flooded side street, empty of vehicles and pedestrians. She climbed out and felt a rush of light-headedness at the abrupt transition from the tunnels to the outside world. She had trouble processing her environment. Everything seemed suddenly too big and too far away, and her stomach was twisting with a surge of nausea, silvery sparkles glittering across her field of vision—

An arm around her waist. Abby, holding her.

“Let’s sit you down,” Abby said, no longer shouting, because the rain wasn’t so loud up here, in a world without echoes.

Abby assisted her onto the sidewalk and under the canopy of a store closed for the night.

“I’m all right now,” Tess said.

“Sit down, anyway. Take a load off.”

Tess sank down against the shop front, planting herself on the wet sidewalk. Abby plopped down beside her.

“Hell of a ride,” Abby said. “Wanna go again?”

Tess wondered how she could joke about it, but when she looked at Abby, she saw the pain in her eyes. Humor was only her defense mechanism. Tess was surprised she hadn’t realized it before.

She watched the sheets of rain streaming off the canopy. The gash on her cheek was starting to sting, but she barely felt it. “I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do,” she said.

Abby shrugged. “What’s to explain? Mason tried to pull an ambush, but you were too quick for him.”

“And the phone call that warned me about it?”

“Does anybody know about that call besides us?”

Tess considered the question. She’d been walking alongside Mason. He knew—but he was dead. Kolb might’ve noticed. He was dead, too. Crandall and Larkin had been too far behind to see or hear anything. “I guess not.”

“Just say you saw Mason going for his gun, and you got him before he got you.” Abby ran her fingers through her wet, tangled hair. “That’s not the way it was supposed to go down, of course. They were planning to wait till you got to the junction room.”

“How do you know that?”

“Mason wouldn’t have put Madeleine in the storm sewers if he hadn’t needed her as a diversion. He assumed once you found her, you’d let your guard down. He would hand his gun to Kolb, and Kolb would pull off a Valentine’s Day Massacre before you knew what was happening.”

It made sense. “And I never even saw it coming,” Tess said.

“You’re not paid to be omniscient.”

Tess managed a smile. “Funny. Somebody said something just like that to me earlier today. Said I can only do my best, shouldn’t beat myself up if I’m less than perfect.” She looked at Abby. “And neither should you.”

Abby didn’t return her gaze. “I’m not beating myself up. Masochism has never held much appeal for me.”

“You believe you should have saved Madeleine.” Tess touched her arm. “But you did all you could, Abby.”

With a slight repositioning of her body, Abby pulled free of Tess’s hand. “That doesn’t bring her back.”

There had to be some words to say. Tess tried to come up with them. “At least she’s the last one who’ll drown in the tunnels. The last innocent victim.”

Abby was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was barely louder than the rain. “Madeleine wasn’t so innocent.”

“What do you mean?”

“She planted the evidence that put Kolb away.”

Tess blinked. At first she couldn’t make any sense of what Abby had said. “You…you
knew
about that?”

Abby glanced at her and chuckled. “You did, too, huh? Did Madeleine tell you?”

“Yes.”

“And you kept it to yourself. Cool.”

All gentleness was gone from Tess’s voice. “How long have you known?”

“Since I visited Kolb’s apartment last year.”

“How?”

“When I picked the lock on his door, I noticed that somebody else had been there before me. Somebody who’d left scratch marks on the lock.”

“That could have been anyone.”

Abby shook her head. “I knew it was Madeleine. I’d already sized her up as a person who’d go to considerable lengths to take care of herself. I hadn’t expected her to go quite that far, however. It was my fault, at least partly.”

“Your fault?”

“In my preliminary report I gave her Kolb’s unlisted address. I indicated I’d be paying a visit to his premises in the near future. Obviously that was all the information she needed. She got there ahead of me. Resourceful woman. You have to admire that.” Abby saw Tess’s face and added, “Well, maybe
you
don’t.”

Tess still couldn’t put it together. “You never told Madeleine what you’d guessed?”

“Believe it or not, I can be discreet when I need to be. Some things are better left unsaid.”

“So when you found the kidnapping gear in Kolb’s apartment…”

“I knew Madeleine had bought it and stashed it there.”

“You knew,” Tess said.

“Yes.”

“You knew the evidence was a plant. You knew Kolb had been set up.”

“Righty-o.” Abby sounded tired. “But I also knew Kolb was our guy. His e-mails to Madeleine were stored on his computer. Madeleine couldn’t have faked that evidence. Getting into Kolb’s apartment was one thing, but there was no way an amateur could’ve gotten past the security on Kolb’s PC.”

“The e-mails were harassment. The kidnapping gear was what showed intent to do harm.”

“True. Whether or not Kolb would have carried out an abduction, I didn’t know. Madeleine clearly wanted me to think he would. Me—and the police.”

“And you went along with her plan.” Tess’s voice was colder than the rain.

“Yup. I put the evidence in plain view and brought the fire department to the scene. Didn’t you ever wonder why I resorted to setting a fire when there are easier ways to get attention?”

The question had never occurred to Tess. “No.”

“I was hoping the fire brigade would break down the door and smash the lock. Unfortunately, they got the landlord to open up, and the lock stayed intact—which meant the tamper marks were found, the DA’s office got suspicious, and Kolb cut a better deal than he deserved.”

Tess sat up straight, anger stiffening her spine. “Than he deserved? He was
framed
.”

Abby waved off the attack with a listless hand. “He was guilty.”

“The evidence was phony.”

“Only some of it.”

“Some—all—it doesn’t
matter
. Don’t you understand that? For God’s sake, Abby—”

“Would you have wanted me to wait till I had better evidence? Like Madeleine’s dead body?”

“You sent Kolb away on planted evidence. And he knew the evidence was planted. He must have assumed the city was trying to frame him.”

“No doubt.”

“That’s what turned him against the city. That’s what made him crazy enough to become the Rain Man.”

“He was borderline crazy, anyway,” Abby said with a shrug.

“And you pushed him over the edge.”

“It’s possible.”

“You
created
the Rain Man.”

Abby looked at her, no apology on her face. “Maybe I did. That’s why I had to take him out. I clean up my own messes.”

Messes
, Tess thought.
Messes
. “Angela Morris, Paula Weissman…”

“I couldn’t foresee that.”

“But you were responsible.”

“Not necessarily. He might have done it anyway, even without being framed. Prison changes people. Toughens them, radicalizes them.”

“He might not have gone to prison at all without the evidence of intent to kidnap. You made him paranoid and violent. You took a stalker and turned him into a killer.”

“Those are the risks of the game,” Abby said.

“It’s no game, Abby.”

“Sure it is. It’s a contest between them and us. It’s blood sport. I play the percentages. My assessment of Kolb was that he was dangerous. Madeleine’s freelancing gave me a way to make sure he was taken off the streets. I took advantage of it. I’m not sorry. Given the same circumstances, I would do it again.”