Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (33 page)

‘Slow motion.’ I said. ‘And take it easy.’

In jerky, time-lapse movements, Helena Margolis skittered across the parking lot. Moving like a wooden marionette being skipped along by unseen strings. Snapping from one shaky ten-second frame to the next. The video-capture was fuzzy up close. The modern flat panel TV monitor made the VHS recording look ancient. Detail rapidly diminishing with distance. Everything in the background just big dots. Shades of grey. Indistinct.

In the fourth frame, a car cut across Helena’s path as it parked in a Disabled bay behind the hotel. In the fifth, Helena was at the driver’s door, leaning in an open window. In the sixth, she was cowering beneath a man standing next to the open door. In the seventh she was slumped in his arms. Dead.

As quickly as that.

I leaned closer. Holding my breath. Trying to make out detail in the grey fog. But the man was too far away. Too smudged. A rough human figure sketched with charcoal on a grainy canvas.

Jamie hit the remote and we watched in silent horror as frame by frame the man skipped towards the camera. Getting bigger and bigger on the screen. Carrying Helena over his shoulder like a sack of sand. Three frames between him knocking Helena unconscious and disappearing beneath the camera angle, into the pool area. Three uneventful frames later, he re-emerged. Empty-handed. Bounced across the parking lot as if nothing had ever happened.

In those brief few moments, Helena Margolis had lost her life. Recorded like one of her movies in black-and-white.

‘Rewind to the shot where he entered the pool area.’ I said.

Jamie rewound the tape and put it on pause.

We leaned close enough for our noses to touch the screen.

The man’s head was no bigger than my thumbnail. Tipped downwards. In the shade of a palm tree. Hidden by what looked like a dark baseball cap and poor quality VHS.

It was our first and best glimpse of
The Undertaker
.

But it still wasn’t enough to make out real features. Just impressions. A nose, a chin, a dark coat. Not much to go on. Certainly not APB material.

The interview room door burst open behind us.

I twisted round.

Captain Ferguson appeared in the doorway. Looking flustered.

‘Gabe, stop what you’re doing.’ He said.

‘Captain …’

‘Don’t.’ He waved a dismissing hand. ‘There’s an FBI chopper on its way to pick you up. Should be here any minute.’

I got to my feet.

92

^{___________________________}

T
he shiny black FBI helicopter fell out of the baby-blue sky like a slab of crystallized basalt. Thudded onto the Station House roof in a swirl of dust. The pilot had hit the brakes at the last second. Any later and the chopper would have crash-landed into LA’s Central police headquarters. I shielded eyes. Leaned against the wall of wind trying to bowl me off the roof.

The hatch popped open. A sour-faced FBI agent jumped out. He was a lithe, tanned slick-dude in his early thirties. A blonde, military-style crew-cut. Wayfarers. The name
Stubbs
emblazoned in white on a standard-issue navy-blue FBI windbreaker. Snakeskin boots and face.

‘You Quinn?’ He shouted over the roar of the rotor blades.

I nodded. Stooped across the roof towards him. I had my hand outstretched. He ignored the gesture. Thumbed over his shoulder at the open hatch.

‘Daylight’s burning.’ He shouted.

I climbed up and in. Dropped into a forward-facing seat. Agent Stubbs followed. Slammed the hatch. Dropped into a the rear-facing seat opposite mine.

‘Buckle up.’ He shouted.

He didn’t seem pleased to see me. In fact, he seemed quite irritated at the whole affair of whisking a cop off the roof of a city precinct this early in the morning. I guess I wasn’t much excitement for him and he had no qualms about showing it.

‘We have a private charter out of Van Nuys in five minutes.’ He added.

‘Got any gum?’ I yelled above the increasing noise of the turbine. ‘Middle ear issues. You can have it back when I’m finished.’

Stubbs twirled a finger at the pilot behind him. And the FBI helicopter leapt skywards.

93

^{___________________________}

My stomach sank into my feet and stayed there. Two nauseating minutes later, we thumped down on a private concourse at Van Nuys Regional Airport and my elastic belly snapped back with a
twang
. The breath-taking flight had been straight up and straight down, with total disregard for either physics or biology.

Stubbs threw open the hatch and jumped out. I followed.

We scurried towards a waiting Gulfstream jet that was revved up and waiting on the sun-bleached asphalt. It was a nice little number: tinted windows and upturned wing-tips. Gleaming white with red racer lines. The kind that gangster rappers leave parked in their driveways.

Another Fed, garbed in the same FBI windbreaker, was poised in the plane’s narrow doorway. This one was a thick-set African-American with a shaven head and the frame of a dungeon door. Wraparound sunglasses. His name patch read
Cherry.
The same irritated expression was drawing down his face.

I must have been such a let-down.

‘Good morning, Agent Cherry.’ I said.

‘Fuck off.’ He snapped back.

He stepped aside as I climbed the trio of steps. Looked down on me with the face of an executioner. I picked a seat at the back of the plane. Buckled up. The cabin was cozy in a penthouse wardrobe kind of way. Cream leather couches facing one another. Plush champagne carpeting. A detectable scent of vanilla. I half expected to see Snoop Dogg hanging out at the back. I didn’t.

With a
clunk
, Cherry locked down the hatch.

 
‘Either of you boys going to fill me in on what this is all about?’ I asked as the two Feds came down the aisle towards me.

‘Fuck off.’ Agent Cherry said once again, and that put paid to that line of questioning.

I’d asked Ferguson. But even the Captain was being left in the dark. Just a requisition order from Langley:
get SD Quinn to LV ASAP
. No informal chit-chat. None required.

The Feds took up defensive positions facing me. No conversation. No eye contact lasting more than a second. Body language full of expletives. I heard Rolls Royce engines purr into life. The jet began to taxi towards the runway. It picked up pace. Then sudden acceleration sucked me into the soft leather. The front of the cabin tilted up as the ground fell away.

The wound on my scalp began to throb.

Through the small window I saw the Los Angeles cityscape flash by. A crazy concrete jungle crumbling into patchy green and then into the hard brown ridges of the San Gabriel Mountains. I realized I was gripping the chair arms so tightly that my knuckles had turned white. Loosed them up. In less than a minute we left the LA airspace. Heading east.

I dug out my cell phone and called Jamie.

No signal.

Both Stubbs and Cherry were sniggering.

‘What?’

Stubbs opened up a packet of gum and let Cherry take one.

‘Take Agent Cherry’s advice.’ He said. ‘Fuck off.’

Somebody hadn’t had their grits this morning.

There was a satellite phone built into the arm rest. I switched it on and dialed long distance to the Precinct.

‘That’s going to cost you.’ Cherry said with a sarcastic smile.

‘Bill me.’ I said.

I heard Jamie pick up.

‘Jamie, it’s me. Something just occurred. Can you get together the Ramada’s guest list for the last week or so? I should have thought of it last night.’

‘No problem. You think he’s a guest?’

‘Maybe. Hopefully. And get that tape over to the Crime Lab. See if they can conjure up our killer’s face out of all that fog.’

‘Will do. Anything else?’

I thought about it. Watched the Feds share a private joke on my behalf. Scoffing behind their hands like schoolyard bullies.

‘I’ll keep you posted.’ I said. ‘In the meantime, keep the team up-to-date. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know what’s happening.’

The plane banked, sharply, sending beams of sunlight flickering around the cabin. I grabbed at the chair again.

Agents Cherry and Stubbs were giggling like schoolboys.

94

^{___________________________}

Danger came with the job. Danger came with lots of jobs. But most people got paid danger money for their troubles. To those who operated unlawfully, there was no job more dangerous than one which worked on the wrong side of the law.

The killer also known as Randall Fisk knew he was taking a big risk being here. Playing this dicey game. He stood a high chance of being rumbled. But the adrenaline rush was worth the gamble.

 
The flashy Las Vegas casino was swarming with cops and security personnel. Like termites in a mound. Scurrying this way and that. Seemingly purposeless. The casino boss had gone against police advise and kept the place open. Business as usual. Money over murder. Entertainingly, only the Media were being kept at bay. He could see them being detained outside the long glass entranceway. While a steady trickle of eager patrons was being allowed through the police cordon one at a time.

No one was being allowed out.

The casino was on a roll.

Takings up.

The big police presence was actually drawing in the punters.

The slot machine gurgled at his fingertips. Absently, he fed another ten dollar bill into its mouth. Sent its barrels spinning.

He was in his element here. Everything about the casino was patterns: the flashing lights, the rolling die, the odds for and against. Even the ubiquitous chimes of the slot machines. More patterns than he could read in a lifetime.