Omega Dog (6 page)

The line went dead.

Beth replaced the receiver, cold tendrils of dread creeping through her.

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M
arcus Royle did two complete circuits of the block before he decided on his method of access to his target.

The target’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a block on West 64
^th
Street. Royle’s reconnaissance told him there was a doorman behind a desk in the lobby. That wasn’t a problem. In Royle’s experience, doormen made access to an apartment easier, not harder. The occupant was more likely to trust an unknown visitor whom the doorman was satisfied looked respectable.

Which Royle knew he did.

Royle thought again about the information Rosetti had given him about the new target. Her name was Elizabeth Colby. She was twenty-nine years old, a doctor – not a very senior one yet, Royle guessed, considering her age – and single. Unmarried. That didn’t mean anything. He’d seen her picture, and she was very pretty. Chances were, she had a man in the apartment with her. Royle had to assume that was the case. Again, it didn’t pose a problem. It just meant Rosetti would get an extra corpse for her money.

Over dinner in the Vietnamese restaurant, Royle used his smartphone to search for Dr Elizabeth Colby online. He found her immediately, and the hospital she worked at, and the department. A telephone call to the ER of the hospital established that she wasn’t on duty, that she had finished her shift several hours ago and wouldn’t be back for three days.

That didn’t necessarily mean she was at home, but it made it more likely. Wouldn’t it be the normal thing to do after a grueling shift at the hospital? To return home for a few hours’ sleep, before doing whatever you had planned for a few days off?

Next, Royle used his phone to search other departments at the same hospital. He found what he was looking for in the Pediatrics department. On its staff web page, he saw one Dr Robert Murray, with an accompanying photo. The man was around Royle’s age, with approximately similar features. Full head of hair, swept back. Lean build. Spectacles.

He would do.

Royle had no idea if Elizabeth Colby was acquainted with Dr Robert Murray. He didn’t see why she would be. They worked in completely different fields, and their hospital was a big one, with a large doctor population. On the other hand, there was always the possibility they’d met. In which case, Royle needed to impersonate somebody whose description he roughly matched.

He approached the glass entrance doors of the apartment block. In the dimly lit lobby beyond, Royle could see the overweight doorman, who’d presumably recently started the night shift, sitting behind a desk with his feet up, reading a newspaper.

Royle pushed open the door and went in. The doorman looked up, then did a double take, as if he’d thought at first it was one of the other residents.

‘Help you, sir?’

‘Good evening,’ said Royle. He’d decided to forgo his usual English accent – it was too conspicuous, especially as he was hoping to be able to leave the doorman alive – and adopt a slightly nasal, Long Island drawl. ‘I’m Dr Robert Murray. I work at the same hospital as Dr Colby. Apartment fourteen? This is for her.’

Royle had procured a buff folder and some plain printer paper at an office supply store on his way to the apartment, and he held up the stuffed envelope.

‘Somebody in her department needed to get this to her urgently tonight,’ he went on. ‘I live nearby, and I offered to drop it off.’

The doorman – a badge pinned to his lapel said his name was Herman Spooner – glanced at the envelope, then back at Royle. His gaze ran up and down the length of his body, taking in his clothes, his demeanor.

Eventually Herman held out his hand. ‘Thanks. I’ll make sure she gets it.’

Royle lifted the packet out of reach with a regretful smile. ‘I’m afraid I have to deliver it to Dr Colby in person.’

Herman looked doubtful. ‘It’s kinda late.’

That suggested to Royle that Elizabeth Colby was home.

‘Not too late, surely?’ Royle indicated a clock on the wall of the lobby. ‘It’s ten to midnight. And this really does have to be delivered tonight.’ He leaned forward, lowering his voice. ‘It’s confidential medical material.’ Royle assumed the man would be suitably impressed, and he was, frowning and nodding as though he quite understood the importance of it.

Herman’s hand hovered over the receiver on the phone in front of him. His face was wracked by indecision.

‘Gee, I don’t know...’ he muttered.

Royle was a patient man. He nodded sympathetically, as if he understood the doorman’s dilemma.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘You’re obviously highly conscientious at your job. I wish the doorman at my apartment block took such good care of
me
.’ Herman swelled with pride. ‘But think how grateful Dr Colby will be if she gets this tonight, and knows you understood its importance well enough to tell her about it, even at this late hour.’

Royle watched Herman’s eyes calculating the situation. He probably had a shy crush on the attractive young doctor, and was looking for ways to impress her.

‘Okay,’ he said finally, and, picking up the receiver, he hit a button.

A woman’s voice answered across the speaker, surprisingly quickly, as if she’d hurried to the intercom. ‘Yes?’

‘Beth?’ said the doorman, nervous again. ‘It’s Herman. I’ve got a guy here, says his name’s... what, again? Dr Robert Murray. From your hospital. He’s got a pack of paper here for you. Medical information.’ He said the words in hushed tones.

After a moment the woman’s voice came again. ‘Who?’

Royle stepped forward so that he was nearer the phone on the desk. ‘Robert Murray, Dr Colby. We’ve met, though you probably won’t remember me. I’m in Pediatrics. One of your departmental secretaries needed to get some papers to you ASAP and someone told her I lived near you. I agreed to drop it off as a favor. I’m sorry about the hour, but she really was quite insistent.’

He waited. Herman waited.

After what seemed like five minutes, but was really only a few seconds, Elizabeth Colby’s voice came across the speaker, slow and deliberate. As if she was forcing it to be steady.

‘Herman,’ she said. ‘I want you to call the police immediately. Tell them I’m in danger. Tell them this man, the one there with you, is an impostor. That he’s tied somehow to something that’s happened to Professor Leonard Lomax. And Herman... get away from that man.’

Royle reached across and pressed the button to kill the call.

Now that was very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

The doorman was already propelling himself backward on his wheeled chair, his mouth and eyes wide with fear. His hand scrabbled for the cell phone holstered at his belt.

Royle stepped swiftly around the desk and hooked a foot behind one of the chair’s wheels, stopping it abruptly in its tracks. He grabbed Herman behind the head with one hand, knocking his cap off in the process, and slammed the heel of his hand into the man’s fleshy face. The blow drove Herman’s nose bones up into the frontal lobes of his brain, killing him instantly.

Royle heaved the rotund body under the desk, where it wouldn’t be seen unless someone came round the back, and pushed the chair back against it. Now anybody coming through the lobby would simply think the doorman had left his post.

He glanced about him at the deserted lobby, then headed toward the stairs.

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A
t first the fear paralyzed Beth.

She felt as she had the first time she’d been in the ER as a junior intern and had to deal with a cardiac arrest on her own. Then, as now, she’d been struck rigid with fright and indecision, and had experienced an overwhelming sense of being out of control.

After the man in Prof Lomax’s house had hung up, Beth had sat staring stupidly at the phone, trying to process what had just happened.

Was he a burglar? But then why had he answered the phone?

Whoever he was, Beth knew instinctively that something had happened to the Prof. That he was in trouble.

Or, worse, that he was dead.

Fifteen minutes later, brooding at the kitchenette counter, trying to decide exactly what she was going to say to the police that wasn’t going to make her sound like a crank, Beth had jumped as though electrocuted when the buzzer of the intercom beside her front door had sounded. When Herman had announced the arrival of a Dr Murray, whom Beth had never heard of, she knew there had to be some connection.

Something had happened to the Prof. And now, someone was coming for her.

Herman’s call had been cut off abruptly, the second time that had happened to Beth in the last half hour. For a moment she stood by the door to her apartment, the sudden silence descending on her like a shroud, threatening to suffocate her.

Then she did what she’d done before, all those years ago when she had that first cardiac arrest to deal with.

She sprang into action.

The man who’d been downstairs with Herman had shut him up somehow, and was probably heading up the stairs or in the elevator right now toward her apartment. Most likely he was taking the stairs as they’d be quicker. Beth considered running out into the corridor and knocking on her neighbors’ doors, but she didn’t know any of them all that well, and they might ignore banging on their doors in the middle of the night, which any sensible New Yorker could be forgiven for doing. By the time one of them opened up, whoever was coming up the stairs would already have gotten hold of her.

Instead, Beth ran across the living room toward the short corridor which led to the bedroom and bathroom.

On the way, she stepped into the pumps she’d discarded near the door. And she snatched up her purse from the coffee table where she’d left it. Inside, apart from the usual contents, was a can of Mace.

Beth reached the bathroom and shut the door, resisting the urge to slam it. Through the frosted glass of the single window she could see the blurred outline of the iron fire steps that ran downwards at a slant.

She climbed up on to the toilet lid and fumbled at the latch of the bathroom window. Opening it, she heaved the sash upward.

It was then she heard the noise that caused her innards to clench in sick dread.

Behind her came the sound of the front door to the apartment opening hard against the safety chain. Whoever was out there must have gotten through the locks – picked them, maybe – and was now up against the chain.

Finding that she couldn’t push the sash up any higher, Beth hoisted herself up onto the ledge and heaved herself out through the window into the night air. The purse went first, and once her upper body had cleared the gap she hung the purse’s strap over her shoulder once more, to free up both hands.

Halfway through, when she was out up to her hips, she got stuck.

The window didn’t open all that far, partly as a security measure against somebody who might try to get
in
that way. Beth was slim, and even though she scraped her breasts painfully against the frame as she crawled through, she made it.

Till she got to her hips and her butt.

Behind her, back there in the apartment, she could hear a rhythmic slamming sound as whoever was out there drove the door against the safety chain. Once, twice, a third time. Over and over.

Outside, Manhattan was noisy, even at midnight. Music blared, nearby and far away. Car horns tooted. Voices yelled in anger and in mirth. Beth arched her back, bracing her arms, hauling her body against the obstruction. Above her, the sky was cloudless, stars visible here and there despite the pollution from the city’s lights.

Come on
, she thought, numb with panic.
Please. Just a little farther.

The fire escape was a few feet away above her. Beth let go of the window frame and lunged for the railing, catching hold of it. She hauled on it, trying to pull herself through the window. Agony shot through her arms and her hips as she felt herself stretched taut as a bowstring.

It was working. Inch by painful inch, her pelvis was clearing the gap.

And the second after she noticed this, Beth heard the chain on the living room door give way and somebody come crashing into the apartment.

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V
enn could probably have kept the woman talking on the line for longer, but he didn’t think it would have helped much.

She already sounded suspicious, not to say afraid of him. She’d given him her name and that was all he was likely to get out of her on the phone. To obtain more, he needed to meet her face to face.

Venn killed the call, aware that she’d probably be straight on to the police. He flipped open the Filofax he’d found in Lomax’s desk and paged through it to the pages labeled K.

And there she was.
Beth Colby.
There was an address and three numbers. One each for work and home, and one for her cell phone.

Venn tore the page out and stuffed it in his pocket after memorizing the address.

Somebody who knew the professor had made contact. It might a lucky break. Then again, it might not. This Beth Colby might just be some student of the professor’s who was clueless about his disappearance.

But Venn wasn’t exactly drowning in options.

The address was in Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side. Crosstown from the professor’s townhouse. Venn figured he had a short time to get there. He didn’t think the Colby woman was going to go anyplace. There was no reason she’d suspect she was in any danger from the stranger who’d just answered Professor Lomax’s phone. But if the cops took her call seriously, not only would they send a patrol car or two round to the professor’s house, they’d likely pay Ms Colby a visit, too.

And Venn didn’t want to walk into an awkward situation.

His luck held, because he succeeded in flagging down a cab almost the moment he stepped out of the professor’s house.

Venn gave the address. ‘Step on it,’ he said.

The driver, a middle-aged Somalian, took the proffered twenty-dollar bill without a word.