Down the Darkest Street (32 page)

Emily’s scream cut through the silence that had enveloped the hallway. Pete sprinted left, toward another set of rooms and the emergency exit stairs.

He looked to his left and noticed one of the rooms was open, a pair of feet on the floor, just outside the door. There she was, he thought. He panicked until he reached her and confirmed that she was alive—in pain, but alive. She was curled up in a fetal position, her hands covering her face, her hospital gown strewn around her body and tears streaming down her cheeks. But she was alive. Pete pulled her toward him.

“Em,” Pete said. “Jesus Christ, Em. How did you get away?”

She was shivering next to him. He could feel her heart racing. She was clutching him, her nails digging into his arms. She looked up at him.

“No, no,” she said between muffled sobs. She buried her face in his shoulder. “Oh, Peter.”

“It’s OK,” Pete said. “Can you stand up?”

He felt her shivering increase, as if she was trying to pull away. Not from him, but from the room. It was only then that he noticed the man standing over them. And the gun pointed at his face.

“You misunderstood my note,” Finch said. He seemed calm, Pete thought. He was dressed well, his hair combed, and even the slight stubble on his face seemed intentional in a way that Pete could never master himself. Was he really mentally complimenting a serial killer on his style before he got killed? Probably.

“Did I?” Pete said, hoping to keep him distracted long enough to formulate some kind of escape plan.

“Yes,” Finch said, keeping his eyes and gun on Pete’s head. “You’re the loose end, Pete. Coming here, tossing your ex around like a stupid prop, was only part of it. It was all about getting you here. You’re the bow that can finish wrapping this little parting gift for me.”

Then he saw it all come together. The APB on him and Kathy. Harras bleeding to death. Aguilera’s murder. Finch was going to set him up. Pete would be the raging alcoholic ex-fiancé/serial killer who, after murdering the two agents who’d been doggedly hunting him down, killed his one true love before killing himself. It was nice, neat, and left no room for the existence of a Julian Finch. Pete shook his head in disgust. He’d walked right into it.

Finch noticed Pete’s reaction and let out a chuckle—more menacing than humorous. Pete felt Emily slump in his arms. She was resigned, he thought. This was it. He could still feel her breathing.

“You don’t think I’d just show up here without any backup, do you?” Pete lied.

“I don’t think much of you at all,” Finch said, his tone more annoyed than intimidated. “You’ve been a nuisance from the beginning. I’m surprised you made it this far.”

“I’ve got files saved all over pointing to you and Aguilera,” Pete said. “And Kathy Bentley’s got them, too. You don’t think they’ll be all over
The Miami Times
tomorrow?”

Pete noticed a slight hesitation in Finch’s eyes. He pressed on. “You think Harras and Aguilera were the only cops I spoke to? Or that I don’t have friends with connections to other places?” Pete said. He tried to rein himself in. He couldn’t lay it on too thick, for fear of blowing the top off his own tall tale. “You may be able to kill us, and you may be able to get a decent head start, but it’s over. Your face will be plastered all over every news channel from here to Alaska. You’ll have nowhere to run.”

The kick to his face caught him by surprise and sent him reeling back into the hallway.

He felt blood trickling out of his mouth, warm and slow. Emily had rolled off to the side. She was out cold. The movement, action, and fear had shut her down. Pete needed to move this away from her. Finch took a step toward him. Pete stood up and darted right, toward the elevator bank. He made a silent prayer and realized that he could be dead on the floor at any second. His gambit was a long shot: if, in fact, Finch wanted Pete’s death to look like a suicide, he couldn’t just shoot him in the back. No, that would throw his entire plan in disarray. Finch had to grab him.

Pete heard Finch curse, but for a few seconds his heart hung in place. If Finch didn’t come after him—if, instead, he took out his psychotic rage on Emily, everything was lost. His gamble would have been pointless. He heard Finch’s feet begin to race after him. He allowed himself a quick sigh of relief and then returned his attention to getting away—at least for now. He had to figure out how to escape and still save Emily. He had no idea what to do. Not yet.

On instinct, he leapt over the empty reception desk and hunched behind it. But he soon realized that was a mistake. There was no clear exit that would give him cover, and it was an obvious detour. He’d painted himself into a corner.

“Story of my fucking life,” he said.

He was tired. He was tired of running. Tired of putting his friends in danger and wondering what to do. He was tired of dealing with psychopaths who had no respect for what was around them. Most of all, he was tired of being afraid.

He leapt onto the reception desk and waited a few moments before Finch ran by, and without much hesitation, hurled himself at Finch’s back, knocking them both to the ground with a loud thud.

Finch’s face slammed into the tile, making a sound akin to boots on gravel. The scream came after, and it frightened Pete to the core. A guttural, low yell that was a product of both pain and surprise. For a fleeting second, Pete saw Finch’s gun skitter out of his hands and out of reach. They rolled across the hall, each man gripping the other to get the upper hand. Finch’s face was covered in blood. He probably had a broken nose. Through the dirt and blood caking his once pristine face, Pete saw hatred—a seething, primal hate. Pete had gone from a pesky annoyance that Finch had to eliminate before he went on to more important things to being an actual threat. Someone that had to be crushed with relish. It was a compliment and a death sentence rolled into one.

The bite came out of nowhere. Finch’s teeth clamped down on Pete’s chin, and the skin tore off with surprising ease. The pain was sharp and spread quickly. Pete saw his own blood gush out of his face and mix with the killer’s. His vision blurred and for a second he feared he’d black out. Then it would truly be over.

He didn’t even think about his actions any more. He felt his face move forward and slam into Finch’s battered and broken nose, and felt a sick satisfaction as the murderer yelled in pain.

Finch moved back, releasing Pete and covering his face with his hands. Pete took the moment to regroup. A mistake.

Finch stood up and hovered over Pete for a moment before giving him a quick kick in the midsection. He folded into himself in response to the pain. He’d lost Finch. The pain from his face and kick in the gut had made him lose balance. When his vision cleared, he saw Finch standing. His gun in hand.

“I don’t care anymore,” Finch spat out. “Let them think whatever they want. I want this over and I want you to suffer.”

Pete had little time to move, yet it was almost like he saw the bullet’s entire trajectory before it hit him, shattering his left knee. The pain shot through his leg and up to his brain in less than a second. The scream came soon after, and it took Pete a second to realize the noise—a loud, frantic cry—was coming from him. He felt his head spin. He didn’t dare look at his leg. He couldn’t move. He felt behind him for his gun. It was there. It hadn’t fallen out. The throbbing in his leg felt endless. At the fringe of his vision he could see a large pool of blood forming. Farther still, he saw Finch, running down the hall. Away from Pete.

Toward Emily.

He wants me to suffer, Pete thought. He was going to kill Emily and Pete had no way to go after him. He stifled a scream as he stood up, his entire weight on his good leg.

Pete didn’t hesitate as he lifted the weapon—the same gun his father had carried for years as a homicide detective in Miami and the same gun Pete had used to kill someone a little over a year before—and pointed the barrel. He pulled the trigger and felt the blowback from the gunshot. The pain in his leg doubled as he moved backward, losing his balance. His head crashed into the dirty white linoleum. He turned his face and saw Finch on the ground. He wasn’t moving.

The last thing Pete remembered before closing his eyes was the sound of the elevator doors opening and a woman’s scream.

Pete tried to reach for the pile of paperbacks. They were too far. He grabbed his crutches and sidled over to the stack, leaning against the science fiction section near the front of the Book Bin. He tried to crouch down, using one of the crutches for support, but realized he couldn’t. His leg would take some time to heal, and it was far from functional—even now, four months after Julian Finch.

Finch. The name lingered in Pete’s brain for a second too long. He rubbed his eyes and hoped—in vain—that his face wouldn’t be on his mind when his eyes opened up again. Maybe he’d never go away. Never leave Pete alone.

The death of an FBI agent—revealed as an accessory to a murdering psychopath—shook Miami for weeks. After two days in surgery and in varying states of medicated haze, Pete spent the next few days talking to myriad police officers and federal agents, each one trying to piece together what had happened, and how a low-rent, washed-up journalist could have figured it out with only the help of a laptop and a local columnist with a
Miami Times
password.

Pete had answered their questions to the best of his ability. It was then, in the early days of his recuperation, that he decided what he would do next. Or, rather, what he would do next once he was fully able. He wasn’t there yet. In the meantime, he went to meetings. He talked to Jack, who was now his sponsor. He had lunch with Harras—who’d somehow survived the bullet to the stomach. He drank too much coffee. He started making plans and putting things in place—some literal, like books, others more theoretical.

Kathy was on a more definite path, working on an outline for another true crime book. She’d already signed a book deal. This one about the legacy of Rex Whitehurst—his connection to Raul Aguilera and how his vicious murders had inspired another, deadlier killer to roam the streets of Miami and prey on young women. Harras, over lunch with Pete and Kathy a few weeks after his release from the hospital, let them know as much as he was comfortable with in regards to his wayward partner. How the FBI had learned of his relationship with Whitehurst, raising a red flag that, coupled with his rage issues in regards to Pete and in other, more egregious situations, led to his watered-down “suspension.” Harras expressed some regret that they hadn’t dug deeper. Pete regretted it, too.

Most of Kathy’s book consisted of interviews with the victims’ families and extensive talks with Nina Henriquez, the only known survivor of Julian Finch’s killing spree. Pete had only met the girl briefly, with Kathy, a few months before. He was amazed by her strength and bravery, but also by her ability to remain young and optimistic about a world that had dealt her such a disturbing set of cards so early. Kathy now also had information on Finch’s bloody swath of victims, including the body they originally thought was Nina Henriquez, and other cases that were confirmed as Finch’s work in nearby states.

And then another healthy chunk of the book came from conversations with Pete, conducted in Pete’s hospital room. Pete was happy for her. From time to time she’d go on about missing
The Times
—especially when she’d get the occasional offer to return—but Pete hoped this was it for her in terms of the daily newspaper grind. They had dinner once a week. She, Dave, and maybe Jack were his only friends. He wasn’t sure what to make of Harras yet.

He didn’t turn around when he heard the door chime. He used the wobbly shelves to leverage himself up from his partial crouch and back onto his crutches. Only then was he able to turn around.

“We need to talk.”

Emily walked into the Book Bin and headed toward the back, to Pete’s makeshift office. Well, not so makeshift anymore.

Pete watched her walk away before starting to shuffle behind. The crutches were cumbersome, embarrassing, and annoying. Even though some time had passed, he still hadn’t mastered them. He winced as his bad leg touched the ground.

By the time he’d reached the office Emily was sitting across from his desk. She was wearing a business suit, dark brown, with a beige blouse. She was coming from the office or a meeting or an interview, he thought. He tried to avoid thinking about how beautiful she looked. He missed her.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” she said as Pete hobbled around his desk.

He’d cleaned the office up. It was his now. Dave still ran the store—in his way—but he let Pete have his way with the place.

“Just give me a sec,” Pete said.

He moved his crutches away from him and finagled himself onto the rolling desk chair he’d reminded himself daily he should replace. The last thing he needed was to fall on his ass now.

He managed to land on the chair with minimum pushback. He rubbed the bandage that he still had on his chin. That one would take a while to heal.

He swiveled the chair to get a clear look at Emily for the first time. He could still see the faint echoes of the bruises and cuts that had almost covered her face the last time he saw her. The visual was etched in his memory.

It seemed to Pete like she’d been crying. But he wasn’t sure if that was him projecting. She looked tired. Not even angry, which was what Pete would have expected if someone told him this morning that his ex, who he’d failed to save from being kidnapped and beaten by a serial killer’s assistant, was going to swing by and chat.