Riptide (17 page)

“Only if you stay hidden in here while I check the rest of the house.”

“I promise. Pull me up, hurry. I don't like this, Adam. She was alone here. I know he's done something bad.”

A lone owl hooted fifty feet away, from the safety of the woods and a tall tree. The moon glistened down on her face. Adam pulled her over the ledge and she swung her legs to the floor.

She watched him walk toward the closet door, listen intently, then jerk it open. Nothing. Then she watched him walk to the closed bedroom door, staying to the side, never directly facing the door. He slowly turned the knob, then smashed the door open, sending it banging back, and stepped into the hallway, his pistol up. Then he was gone. She stood there shaking, wishing she wasn't, listening to
that owl, loud and clear, sounding from the forest.

Where was he? Time passed as slowly as it did in the dentist's office. Maybe even slower.

Finally, she heard him shout, “Becca, go back out the window and tell Savich it's okay for everyone to come in. He's not here.”

“No, I want to come out—”

“Out the window, Becca. Please.”

When he was sure she was outside, Adam stepped out onto the sagging front porch with its scarred and peeling railing and said, “He's gone. Savich, come here a moment. The rest of you just stay outside and keep watch, okay?”

“Yeah, we'll keep watch, but this is nuts,” Tommy said and pulled out his pipe. “No one moved after we got here and we converged on the place not ten minutes after you called, Adam.”

Savich said slowly, “Then he knew, of course, that we'd tapped the phone.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “The bastard knew, all right. In the kitchen, Savich.”

“I don't like this,” Becca said to Sherlock as she pressed toward the front door. “Why can't we go in the house?”

“Just stay there for the moment, Becca.”

Several minutes passed. No one said anything, but one by one the men walked into the farmhouse through the open front door.

Becca didn't know what to do. Sherlock, who was standing on the small front porch, her 9mm SIG drawn, sweeping in a wide arc around her, scanning the perimeter, said, “I'll go check. Becca, why don't you wait out here just a while longer?”

Becca stared at her. “Why?”

“Just wait,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. “That's an order.”

Becca heard the men talking, knew all of them but her were in the house. Why didn't they want her in there? She ran around to the back of the house and slipped in behind one of the men who was standing in the middle of the back
door. The kitchen was painfully bright with two-hundred-watt bulbs hanging naked from the ceiling. The kitchen was small, the appliances were harsh white, clean, and very old. There was an old wooden table, scarred, a beautiful old vase holding dead roses in the center. It had been pushed against the wall. Two of the chairs were overturned on the floor. The refrigerator was humming loudly, like an old train chugging up a hill.

She slipped around the man in the doorway. He tried to hold her back, but she pulled free. Tommy, Savich, and Sherlock were standing in a near circle staring down at the pale-green linoleum floor. Adam rose slowly.

And suddenly Becca could see her.

T
he woman had no face. Her head looked like a bowl filled with smashed bone, flesh, and teeth. He'd struck her hard, viciously, repeatedly. There were two broken teeth on the floor beside the woman's head. There was dried blood everywhere, congealed and black on her face and on the worn linoleum, streaks of blood, like lightning bolts, down the white wall. Her hair was matted to her head, blood-soaked dark clumps falling away onto the floor. And there was dirt mixed in with the dried bloody hair.

“She's young,” she heard a man say, his voice low, calm, detached, but underlying that voice was a thick layer of fury. “Jesus, too young. It's Linda Cartwright, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “He killed her right here in the kitchen.”

Linda Cartwright lay on her back on the floor wearing a ratty old chenille bathrobe that had been washed so many times it was nearly white rather than pink, except for the dirt that clung to the robe, dirt everywhere, even on her feet, which were bare, her toenails painted a bright, happy red. Becca eased closer. It was real, it was horrifyingly
real, in front of her, and the woman was dead. “Oh, God. Oh God, no, no.”

She watched Savich bend down to unpin a note that was fastened to the front of Linda Cartwright's bathrobe. She saw for the first time that the woman was heavy, just as Savich had read off her driver's license. “Don't let Becca come in here,” he said to Sherlock, not looking up as he read the note. “This is too much. Make sure she stays outside.”

“I'm already here,” Becca said, swallowing again and again against the nausea in her stomach, the vomit rising in her throat. “What is that note?”

“Becca—”

It was Adam and he was turning toward her. She put up her hands. “What is that note?” she asked again. “Read it, please.”

Savich paused, then read slowly, his voice firm and clear:

“He wrote it in black ink, a ballpoint,” Savich said, his voice flat, emotionless, as he carefully eased the paper into a plastic bag he pulled out of his pants pocket and closed the zipper. “It's just a plain sheet of paper torn out of a notebook. Nothing at all unique about it.”

“Do you think he's out of control?” Sherlock said to no one in particular. Her face was pale, the horror clear in her eyes.

“No,” Adam said. “I don't think so. I think he's really
enjoying himself. I think at last he's discovering who he really is and what he really likes. I can practically hear him thinking, ‘I want to scare Rebecca shitless, prove to her I'm so bad that when I call her again I won't hear any more cockiness from her. No, I'll hear fear in her voice, helplessness. Now, what can I do to really make this happen?'” Adam paused a moment, then said, “And so he decided to kill Linda Cartwright and make her into his fictional dog.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, “I think Adam is right. There's nothing but control here. Too damned much of it.”

“I need to make some calls,” Savich said, but he didn't move, just stared down at the note and at what had been Linda Cartwright.

There was silence in the small, bright kitchen and the harsh breathing of six men and two women, one of them drawing hard on a pipe that wasn't lit. Then Becca broke free, ran out the back door, and fell to her knees, vomiting until her body was jerking and heaving and there was nothing more in her belly. Still she crouched there, holding her arms around herself, shuddering, wanting to die because she'd brought death to Linda Cartwright, just as she had to that poor old woman standing outside the Metropolitan Museum, just as she'd nearly brought death to the governor of New York. She felt him coming up behind her, knew it was Adam.

“Her face—he obliterated her face, Adam, for a sick joke that only he thought was funny. He murdered her and smashed her face so—”

“I know.” Adam fell to his knees behind her, pulling her back against his chest. “I know.”

She felt him begin to rock her, back and forth. “I know, Becca.”

“I'm responsible for her, Adam. If I hadn't shot him, if I hadn't—”

Adam pulled her around to face him. He handed her a handkerchief, waited for her to wipe her mouth, then said, “Now, you will listen up. If you feel any guilt about that poor woman, I'm going to deck you. None of this is your
fault. He's the evil one. This guy will do anything to terrorize you, to hear you whimper, beg, plead with him to stop. Anything.”

“He's succeeded.”

“Yeah, you've got to stop that as well. You can't let him crawl under your skin. That means he wins. That means he's got the control, he's got the power. Do you understand me?”

She pulled away from him and began kneading his arms with her hands, not even realizing what she was doing. “It's hard, Adam. I know he's evil. I know there must be a reason he's doing all this, a reason that makes perfect sense to him, but in my gut, it feels like I smashed in that poor woman's face. Oh, God, if I hadn't fired at him, hit him—”

“Stop it,” he said and shook her good. “Now, here's the bottom line. We're going to leave her just as she is in the kitchen and make an anonymous call. No, don't argue.” He lightly tapped his fingers against her mouth. “Listen, I know this is very hard to do, given the fact that we're breaking the law and she's not going to get the attention she deserves right away. Even Savich and Sherlock are having a real problem with it.

“Even though they're part of the highest police force in the land, they realize that nothing good would be served if the world suddenly found out that you're here and you're up to your ears in another murder. The cops and the Feds would fight to see who could hold you and question you. On the other hand, you'd be protected, and that's something, but not enough. All of us agree that you would be charged with murder and accessory to murder. It would be a nightmare and it would continue even if they ever let you go. Why? Because he would still be there, just waiting, and it would start all over.

“So, Savich and Sherlock have agreed to keep our connection under wraps for a while. He's getting the woman's phone records right now. We'll find out how long he's been here, holding her prisoner. We'll find out who he called besides you. All the guys are going over the house, top to
bottom, right now. They're pros. If there's anything to find, they'll find it. If there are fingerprints, and I'm willing to bet there are, they'll pull those up, too. But it's going to take time because we'll have to clean up after ourselves. The last thing we want is to have the police notice some stray fingerprint powder. So we can't call in her murder for another couple of hours.”

“He knew the phone was tapped.”

“Oh, yes, he knew, and that's why he had the surprise all ready for you. He can't be far away now. He's close. Real close. It's possible he's watching all of us right this instant, hiding in the pine trees, but I don't think even he is that reckless. We'll get him, Becca. You have to believe that. He'll pay for what he did to Linda Cartwright.”

“Oh, God,” she said suddenly. “You're right, Adam, he is watching. Maybe he's a goodly distance away and using binoculars, but I don't think so. I'll bet he's just over there, somewhere in those trees, and I think he watched you climb through that window, watched me come out here and puke up my guts. You said he was finally realizing who he is, what he likes, and this is it.”

Her eyes went blank, then she said, “He's seen Tyler and Sam. Oh God, he knows I'm close to them and doesn't that make them targets, too? What if he goes after them?”

“He could, but I doubt it and here's why. He knows we're not fools. He knows there are a lot of us. He wants you. He's made his point. I can't see him veering off course to kill Tyler or Sam. Why? He wants to nail me, but I'm with you, staying with you, taunting him. That's why he wants me. Now, Dave and Chuck will start looking around here when they finish in the house.”

“He'll be gone by then.”

“Probably.”

“Do you think he killed her in those short minutes between when he called me and all the men got here?”

Adam hesitated, then shook his head. “No, she'd been dead for several hours, at least.”

“But her face, Adam, her face. It looked—fresh, even though all the blood looked dried and clotted.”

“He did that after he called you, after he realized the phone was tapped. She was already dead, Becca.”

“How did he kill her?”

Adam didn't want to say anything more about it, but he knew she wasn't going to let it go, she couldn't let it go. “He strangled her.”

“Why was there dirt all over her? God, it was even on her feet, in her hair.”

Oh, shit, he thought. He didn't want to say it but there was no choice. “There was dirt on her because he dug her up to smash her face.” There, it was said, and he thought she was going to vomit again. She closed her eyes, her arms fell to her sides, and her head dropped forward against his chest. But she didn't vomit, she cried, making no sound at all, just cried, her hands fists against his Kevlar vest.

“Oh, God, Becca,” he said and squeezed her hard. “I swear I'll get him, I swear it.”

She said nothing for a very long time. His knees were starting to hurt when she finally whispered against his neck, “Not if I can get him first.” She shuddered, then he felt her stiffen and slowly, slowly pull back from him. She said, “He was through with her, probably planning on leaving here, and so he killed her and buried her and then decided it would be fun to play this big joke on me.”

“Yeah, that's about the size of it.”

“He's still here, Adam. He's close. I can feel him. It's like something very black and heavy crawling over my skin.”

He said nothing.

“But why? I just don't understand why he picked me. Why is he doing this to me?”

Again, Adam said nothing, but he thought,
If Krimakov is really dead, then there isn't a motive, and I don't have the foggiest idea, either, why he picked you.

***

B
ecca couldn't get Linda Cartwright out of her mind. She kept picturing her, lying there, her face smashed, and no one to take care of her for hour upon hour.

Sherlock handed her a cup of coffee, steam rising from the mug like cigarette smoke. “You only slept a couple of hours, Becca. Here, drink this.”

“None of us slept for more than a couple of hours,” Becca said. “Where are Adam and Savich?”

“Adam is out talking to Dave and Chuck. They just took over outside patrol. He's going to get some other people here, some of his own people, to free up these guys.”

“Maybe Hatch is coming.” At Sherlock's raised eyebrow, Becca added, “I heard Adam talking to him on the phone. Yeah, I was eavesdropping, so Adam had to tell me. He said Hatch speaks six languages, has lots of contacts, is really smart, and smokes. Adam is always trying to get him to stop smoking by threatening to fire him.”

Sherlock laughed and lifted her mug to toast Becca's. “I want to meet this guy. If he dares to light up a cigarette, Savich won't threaten to fire him, he'll take his head off.”

“So Adam doesn't work for Thomas?”

“No, not now. They've been friends for a very long time. Adam is sort of like a son to Thomas. No, I won't tell you any more about him.”

Becca didn't say anything.

“Listen, Becca, it doesn't matter right now. Now, my husband is concerned that the local cops won't be able to do a thing about Linda Cartwright because they're going in completely blind. But we agreed this is the way we'll play it for a while. The cops have been there for a while now, Becca. They're taking care of her. But they won't be able to figure anything out because we're holding back. That really sticks in everyone's craw, probably always will.”

“Sherlock, do you know who Krimakov is?”

Sherlock couldn't help it, her eyes gave her away before
she could pull down the automatic blinders, and she wanted to kick herself. She shrugged. “Yes, I know. But it would have to be his ghost who killed Linda Cartwright. Evidently, Thomas got information that he was killed in an auto accident just a short time ago in Crete, where he supposedly lived. So it's all academic. If he's dead, then he can't have anything to do with this.”

“And Thomas has double-checked that this guy is really dead?”

“I would assume so.”

“If this Krimakov were alive, and he were behind this terror, why would he be doing it to me in particular? He's what—Russian? What could he possibly have against me? Why would Thomas think it was him?”