Midnight Betrayal (26 page)

Conor pulled over and turned on the dome light. He counted the streets past Broadway, drove through three more intersections, and turned right. Before he navigated the next two turns, he turned off his headlights and crawled forward in the dark. The Porsche bumped along. The paved-over backstreet was worn down in spots to its original cobblestones.

Boarded-up row houses lined the street. An occasional chain-link fence corralled God-knew-what. Buildings slated for eventual demolition were tagged with red-and-white signs. A house with fresh paint on the door and flowers in urns on the step was the saddest sight of all, a sign that someone cared. The streetlights were dark. Half the lots were vacant and knee-high with weeds. On the left, a six-foot rusted privacy fence ran the length of the street. Dogs barked behind it.

Several wrong turns wasted precious time. The star on the map was just up the block. Conor pulled over behind a Dumpster.

He called Detective Jackson again, this time leaving a detailed message with the address of the mapped star. The Philly cops would have to coordinate with the Camden police. Conor didn’t have time for any of that bullshit. If Louisa was here, he’d find her.

Then he got out of his car, opened the trunk for the tire iron, and headed toward the boarded-up brick row home halfway down the block. He paused, hiding behind a rusted Cadillac on blocks, and sized up the house. Bricks crumbled. Graffiti covered most of the surfaces.

Tire iron in hand, Conor crept toward the side of the house. Like all the others, the side window was boarded up.

Sweat trickled down his back, and his heart thudded, loud as a bass line. But now was his chance to check inside. Moving toward the rear of the building, he climbed the cracked cement stoop and checked the door. Unlocked. He pulled it open. The inside was beyond dark. No moonlight penetrated the boarded-up windows. He stepped to the side and listened, easing the door closed behind him. The inside of the house was dead silent. He didn’t even hear any rats or insects rustling around.

He gave his eyes and ears a few minutes to adjust, but he still couldn’t see six inches in front of his face. There was zero light for his desperate pupils to absorb. Conor pulled his phone out of his pocket, held it an arm’s length away, and turned on the screen. Nothing attacked him. He let out his breath. He brightened the display and swept it around the space. More graffiti tags decorated the walls. Trash, a rotted mattress, and bottles littered the floor. The odors of feces and urine burned his nostrils. He shined his phone at the floor. Something had been dragged through the dirt. Stepping around a scattering of used needles, Conor followed the path to a doorway. Stairs descended into the black cellar.

He turned up his phone’s brightness to maximum and started down the steps.

Pain lanced behind Louisa’s eyeballs and swelled in her temples, radiating downward through most of her body. She cracked an eyelid to total darkness. Judging from the hard coldness seeping through her clothes, she was lying on cement. A basement? Curled on her side, she wriggled, but she could barely move. Her hands and feet were bound and fastened to something solid behind her back. She tried to open her mouth but couldn’t. She moved her lips. Something sticky tore at her skin. Tape.

Where was she? What had happened?

As she lay still, a memory pushed past the agony in her head. The museum. She’d gotten into the town car and . . .

The memory—and all its associated betrayal—clarified in her mind.

Fear and nausea rose in her throat. She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose, willing her stomach to settle and her panic to subside, but hysteria bubbled inside her chest. Perhaps choking on her own vomit would be preferable to what lay ahead: multiple stabbings, a knife slicing through her throat, fire eating at her flesh. The wounds on Riki’s body played in her own private slideshow.

How much would it hurt to bleed to death?

A wave of grief spilled over her. Conor. She’d finally fallen in love, finally found a good man, only to die before they could enjoy any happiness. Before he even told her he loved her.

Did he? Would he be devastated by her death?

A scuffing sound prompted the involuntary reopening of her eyelids. A floorboard creaked overhead. She strained to see something, anything, in the darkness. A faint glow descended toward her. She blinked to clear her blurry vision. There were stairs on that side of the room. With another bout of queasiness, she remembered tumbling down, her head striking a tread, her vision blackening.

The light flickered over her. She closed her eyes and braced herself for more pain. Fear swept through her. Her numb, restrained limbs trembled.

“Louisa?”

Conor!

Relief rolled over the pain in her head. The glow crossed the cement toward her. He set his cell phone on the floor beside her and checked her binds.

“Hold still. The plastic ties are digging in.” Keys jingled as he pulled them from his pocket and sawed at the zip ties. A few minutes later, her hands and feet were free. Conor gently peeled the tape from her mouth. She gulped air.

“Can you sit up?” he asked in a whisper, his hands running over her arms and legs. She winced at every movement of his fingers. Every inch of her body felt bruised from head to toe. “Do you think anything is broken?”

She tried to answer, but all she could do was cough. Her voice was an unintelligible rasp.

“I’m going to get you out of here.” He lifted her upper body until she was sitting up.

Her head protested the change of position. Her stomach heaved. She twisted sideways and vomited on the cement. Conor’s strong arm supported her until she was finished. His fingers went to her head, sweeping gently through her hair. When he touched a spot on the back of her scalp, her vision turned red. She nearly blacked out.

“I’m going to pick you up.” He scooped her under the knees and back. Muscles strained as he stood.

Conor froze as footsteps thudded on wood.

32

A bright flashlight beam blinded Conor. He set Louisa down on the cement and stepped in front of her. One flashlight. Did that mean one person? Was he armed?

“Drop the phone.”

The familiar voice stunned Conor. He released his grip on his cell. It clattered to the cement.

“Now step on it. Hard.”

Conor stomped a heel on the screen. The display went dark.

The flashlight beam dropped, playing over Louisa’s still form. Then the light moved toward the wall. With the click of a switch, the soft light of a camp lantern illuminated the basement.

Six feet in front of him, Zoe stomped her foot. An oversize sweatshirt concealed her slight frame. A gun shook in one hand. A large duffel bag dangled from the other. “You can’t have found me. It’s impossible.”

Conor didn’t point out the obvious.

Zoe shook the flashlight. She was wearing the same miniskirt she’d been wearing the night of her disappearance. It was wrinkled and grimy. From the smell wafting across the space, Zoe hadn’t showered that week. Her dark hair hung in a greasy ponytail. “I only needed twenty more minutes. That’s it. Then everything would have been in place.” She gestured toward Louisa. “
She
would be dead. The scene would be staged. You would walk right into my trap.” She dropped the bag on the concrete. Metal clanged. She pulled what looked like a disposable camera from her pocket. Two wires protruded from one end. A homemade Taser. “A quick zap with this would render you immobile enough for me to get you into position to shoot yourself in the head.”

He shifted his weight, judging the distance between them. Could he tackle her before she shot him?

Probably not. If Louisa were able to run, he’d try it. But the crack on the back of the head had rendered Louisa helpless. If Zoe killed him, Louisa would be next.

“Zoe, put the gun down,” he said with authority. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“No way. And don’t even try to tell me everything will be OK,” Zoe spat. “Because it won’t. You two screwed everything up. I was supposed to
escape
this week. I would be the sole survivor of
your
killing spree.”

“So Isa is dead?” Conor asked, sadness rolling through the turmoil in his gut.

“Yes. Now there’s no one in my way.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Pendleworth grant,” Louisa breathed.

No way.
“You killed three women and planned to frame me for murder and suicide over a grant?”

Louisa had mentioned academic competition, but she’d had the players backward. Of course, the major assumption of her theory had been that Zoe was a victim.

Zoe rolled her eyes. The whites gleamed in the dim. “Of course. It was no accident I went to your apartment and the police found the evidence I left. It would have worked perfectly if the cops hadn’t been completely incompetent. They should have arrested you that first night.”

The police hadn’t been totally incompetent, thought Conor. They hadn’t charged him without physical evidence to corroborate the circumstantial. In the end they’d figured out the killer wasn’t Conor. Not that he was going to point that out right now. Maybe she didn’t even know. “Too bad you couldn’t predict that.”

“I gave them way too much credit.” Her eyes went crazy wide. Her face twisted into an angry, animal-like snarl. The girl was freaking out, the gun in her hand trembling out of anger, not fear. “I’d thought they would follow the clues to the logical conclusion. You and Dr. Hancock were involved with that ritual killing in Maine together. You were the last person to see me. I left some strands of hair in your apartment and your car. It should have been airtight.”

“It’s been a rough day.”

She waved the gun. “Oh well. I’ll have to improvise. At the end of the night, it’ll still look like you killed Louisa, then turned the gun on yourself.”

Yeah, dying or letting Zoe kill Louisa were not items on his to-do list for the night.

Just behind Conor’s boots, Louisa stirred. Without moving his head, he dropped his gaze. He could just see her in his peripheral vision. She was struggling to sit up. Even if she got to her feet, she couldn’t run. Not with the concussion he suspected she’d suffered. Rage competed with panic in Conor’s chest. Zoe had done that—and much, much worse. All because she wasn’t the star of the university? No, there had to be more.

Conor needed to keep Zoe talking. The police had the address. It was only a matter of time until they showed up. “Isa was older than you and a year ahead in school. Why would Professor English give you the grant instead of her? She’d been working with him for a year already. Dr. Hancock told me you’d probably get the grant next year. Why not just wait?”

Zoe’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Age has never been a factor for me. I’ve gotten everything I’ve set out to achieve, except the grant that bitch stole from me. Working with Dr. English? Is that how you think she got the grant? She was fucking him. She thought she was so smart, but he was fucking other girls too. Professor English isn’t very discriminating.”

“What about Riki and the other girl? Who is she? Why did you kill them?”

Zoe glared at Conor as if he was an idiot. “I killed the other two girls to cover my tracks. I threw Dr. Hancock in to cement your guilt, to make my plan a complete circle, and because she wrote me up for being late a few times. Tardiness. What the fuck does tardiness have to do with brilliance?”

Conor let the truth wash over him. Zoe had killed a fellow student over a grant. But not in a fit of jealousy. This had been cold, calculated, premeditated murder. Zoe had planned every detail. She’d taken opportunities to improve her scheme along the way, like adding additional killings and framing Conor for the deaths.

She’d done a bang-up job of it too. She might have gotten away with it if she hadn’t gotten cocky and kidnapped Louisa. Actually, Conor thought, staring at the gun, she might still get away with it.

The threads of her twisted logic were unknotting in Conor’s mind. “How are you going to win the grant if you’re presumed dead?”

“I’ll be found at another location, dehydrated but alive.” She lifted her hands toward him. Plastic ties encircled each wrist. The too-tight binds had left bloody rings in her skin. “See? I have ligature marks on my wrists. They’re on my ankles too.” Pride beamed from her smile. “I won’t know why you didn’t kill me. Maybe you were driven to suicide when you killed Dr. Hancock. I won’t dwell on that. I’ll consider myself lucky and not look back. I’ll be the brave survivor of a crazed serial killer.”

“What was my motivation for killing the girls and Dr. Hancock?”

Zoe lifted a hand in a
that’s an easy one
gesture. “Before you blow your brains out, you’ll write a note of apology to your siblings. You’ve always had a violent side. You’ve managed to keep it in check, but the killing in Maine whetted your appetite. And since Dr. Hancock was the only one who figured out the truth about what you were doing to her interns, she had to be killed too. But you also loved her and couldn’t live without her.”

“No one who knows me will believe that.” As he argued, terror swept cold over Conor. She’d studied him.

“The opinions of your friends and family don’t really matter. The police will buy it. You were a boxer. That implies a certain comfort level with violence. You’ve been in two physical altercations in the past two weeks. The media has blown them both out of proportion. Heath will attest to your bloodlust. If that gangbanger dies, I’m sure the police will try to hang his death on you too.” She smiled as if she knew a secret. “I’ve been watching the news at night on my laptop. You’ve been on the top of the suspect list the whole time. Convincing them won’t be hard.”

No, it wouldn’t. Jackson and Ianelli had wanted Conor so badly for these crimes. They’d jump on Zoe’s explanation. Conor already thought he knew the answer to his next question, but he asked anyway. Anything to spin out some more time. “Did you stab Hector Torres?”

“Is that his name?” She lifted a
barely interested
shoulder. “I went to the alley behind your bar this morning. I tossed Isa’s bloody clothes in the Dumpster. He was hiding and saw me. I couldn’t risk any more variables.”

Conor’s stomach turned. “The cops didn’t find Isa’s clothes.”

“I can’t say how disappointed I am with the police.”

“You really think you’ll be able to pull off pretending to be a victim?” She wasn’t just crazy. Zoe was evil. Her eyes glittered when she talked about her plan. She hadn’t killed those girls just to get ahead. She’d enjoyed being smarter than everyone else, jerking the cops around—and Conor suspected she’d also enjoyed the killing.

“Yes. It’s the perfect alibi.” Her knowing smile faded. “Now, enough talking. It’s time for you to die. Dr. Hancock will have to be next.”

He had to admit, Zoe’s plan was brilliant and devious. He’d never suspected she was the killer.

Suddenly a look of curiosity crossed her already crazed features. “How did you find me here?”

“Louisa found the map you hid in the museum.”

“Those were supposed to go into the incinerator. But I’d planned out the buildings I was going to use in advance. I didn’t want to make any mistakes. Then Cusack changed the cleaning crew and beefed up security. He screwed up my plan to return to the museum to destroy everything.”

Thank you, Dr. Cusack.

“Enough questions.” Zoe pointed the gun at Conor’s chest. Her finger moved. He lunged sideways. At the same moment, Louisa launched her body at him from the ground. The gunshot reverberated on concrete. Louisa’s body jerked. She hit the cement slab and didn’t move. Conor rolled and kicked the camp lantern. The light shifted in crazy arcs.

The gun went off again. The shot went wild, pinging off the concrete and thudding into the wooden stairs. Conor rushed Zoe. His shoulder collided with her ribs. He felt the air whoosh from her body as they hit the ground. The gun skittered across the floor. She reached for it.

“Oh no you don’t.” He landed on top, sitting up and pinning her to the floor just as sirens sounded outside.

Footsteps thudded above. “Police.”

“Down here,” Conor yelled. “Call an ambulance.”

“Hands up.” Four uniformed cops came down the steps, guns and powerful flashlights sweeping the basement. The guns pointed at Conor. “Get off the girl.”

Conor put his hands in the air.

Below him, Zoe sobbed. “He tried to kill me.”

A cop tackled Conor and flipped him on his stomach. He knelt on his spine and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. Another uniform helped Zoe to her feet. “Are you all right, miss?”

“Don’t take your eye off of her. She’s a murderer.” Conor’s blood ran cold. Once again, the cops thought he was the killer. As long as they took care of Louisa, he’d deal with whatever happened later. “And get an ambulance!”