Stirred (20 page)

“I can’t play your game right now, Luther. I’m in an emergency room.”

Now I hit my camera button, showing him the waiting room. Then I looked frantically around for Phin. If I could let him know what was happening, he could find Herb and maybe we could figure out where Luther was.

Luther said, “Blessed Crucifixion? Is it the preeclampsia again?”

If his knowledge of my condition was meant to unnerve me, it worked. I took in a quick breath through my clenched teeth to steady myself.

“How about we do this another time? Let that guy go. You can always find someone else to kill later on.”

“That won’t do. It has to be this man, at this time. But he has one chance. You. If you hang up, he dies. If you don’t want to play, he dies. If you get the wrong answer, he dies. Are you ready? Tell me you’re ready, Jack.”

Phin still wasn’t back. I set my jaw. “I’m ready.”

“Where am I?”

“That’s the question?”

“That’s the question.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve been giving you clues, Jack. If you’ve been paying attention, you should know where I am right now. I’ve practically spelled it out for you.”

I closed my eyes, thoughts racing so fast I felt dizzy.

My feet and hands tingled.

My blood pressure was probably off the charts.

But I focused. I focused hard.

I considered the two previous murders.

The data points I’d written out this morning.

The similarities and differences.

“Where am I, Jack?”

Where was he?

“You have ten seconds.”

The first murder had occurred at the Kinzie Street railroad bridge.

The second was at the aquarium.

What did they have in common?

“Oh, look who’s awake.”

The camera switched from Luther back to the suited man on the floor, whose eyes were bugging out.

“Mr. Roe, let me introduce former Chicago police lieutenant Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels, this is Mr. Peter Roe. Peter, if Jack doesn’t answer this question correctly, you’re going to die. How’s that sound? All she has to tell me is where we are.”

The man screamed through the duct tape and writhed on the floor.

“Six seconds, Jack.”

The first two murders had taken place outside.

But this was inside.

“You have four seconds, Jack.”

Jessica Shedd was killed at the Kinzie Street bridge…

Reginald Marquette was killed at the Shedd Aquarium…

Marquette.

Is he killing people at locations based on the last name of the previous victim?

“Two seconds, one second, and—”

“Marquette,” I screamed into the phone.

“—we’re all out of time.”

The man on the floor was nodding violently.

“What was that, Jack?” Luther asked.

I thought about locations in Chicago with the name Marquette, and could only come up with one.

“Marquette Park.”

Luther smiled. “Epic fail, Jack. Does this look like a park to you?” He panned the camera around what appeared to be an office. Diplomas and certificates on the walls. “Do you see any pigeons or squirrels running around? Were you really a lieutenant? Don’t they make you take some sort of intelligence test for that?”

Shit. Of course.

“The Marquette Building,” I said. “You’re in the Marquette Building, downtown, on Dearborn.”

Luther nodded, looking off to the side. “Yes, but that wasn’t your first answer. We’ll have to go to the judges, see if it’s acceptable. Can we accept that answer?”

The camera switched to Mr. Roe, nodding so frantically that he was probably giving himself whiplash.

“Looks like the judges will allow it. Which means that now we have the bonus question.”

I heaved myself onto my feet and started through the waiting room. Where the hell was Phin?

I said, “You told me you’d let him go if I got it right.”

“I said no such thing. I told you I’d murder him if you got it wrong. And that applies to this question as well.”

“Is this the last one? Or will you just keep doing this over and over until I get one wrong?”

“We’ll make it three questions total. If you get all of them correct, Mr. Roe will live to see the fall. Here’s number two. Precisely what time was Reginald Marquette killed?”

I passed the check-in window and spotted Phin hunched over a water fountain at the end of the corridor.

“How precisely?” I asked, stalling for time.

“Down to the minute.”

I was practically jogging down the corridor now, waving an arm, trying to get Phin’s attention, but he was taking the longest drink of water ever.

“Hello, Jack? You seem distracted. Are you walking around?”

“Stretching my legs a bit,” I said, breathing heavily.

“Switch cameras. Show me what you’re looking at.”

I stood next to Phin, and then hit the camera change button, showing the waiting room. Into Phin’s ear I whispered, “Luther is killing a guy named Roe at the Marquette Building.”

Phin nodded and whipped out his phone.

“Okay, Jack, switch back to your chubby little face, and hit me with that answer.”

“I’m thinking.”

“You either know it or you don’t.”

Time of death.

Time of death.

Marquette.

Dropped at the aquarium around two.

Come on, come on.

I pictured the page of notes.

“Ten seconds, Jack.”

Jessica Shedd’s murder pointed to Marquette’s death. Her name was the next location—the Shedd Aquarium. So then what clue predicted the next time of death?

“Seven seconds.”

The book itself?

No, too broad.

The dog-eared page. It had to be.

The dog-eared page found in Shedd’s stomach was from chapter thirty-one of
The Scorcher
.

“Five seconds.”

The page number.

What was the page number?

102.

The coroner had said that Marquette had been killed just prior to being dumped at the aquarium at two
P.M.
Probably within the hour.

“Four…three…two—”

“You killed Marquette yesterday at one oh two
P.M.
”

Luther nodded, looking somewhat disappointed. “Maybe you aren’t as slow as I thought. Okay, last question. How does the novel
The Killer and His Weapon
end?”

“I haven’t read that one yet. I only read
The Scorcher
.”

“Really? Did you like it?”

“I did. The author was really able to get into the head of a psychopath. Is he still alive, by the way? Andrew Z. Thomas?”

“Andy will live forever, through his words. Now answer the question.”

“At the end of
The Scorcher
, the hero burns himself alive.”

“That wasn’t the question. I asked about
The Killer and His Weapon
.”

Goddamn it. Why didn’t I read that one instead? I closed my eyes, remembering the back jacket copy. It was about an everyday Joe who embraces his homicidal instincts. Thomas wrote nihilism. He had a thing for Dante.

“Five seconds, Jack.”

“He…”

“Yes?”

I took a shot, hoping I was right.

“He goes to hell,” I said.

Luther stared at me for a moment, and then nodded. “Not bad. You figured that out without reading it?”

“I took a guess.”

“Good guess. You’re correct. And now Mr. Roe will live to see the fall.”

Luther switched the camera view to Mr. Roe, and I realized with a sickening clarity exactly what was going to happen next.

April 1, 1:45 P.M.

T
he man calling himself Siders set his iPhone on the desk and stared down at Roe with pitch-black eyes. He drew a folding knife out of the front pocket of his jeans and pried open the blade.

Silver. Gleaming. Laughably sharp.

It looked more like the talon of a bird than a knife.

Roe said, “Please don’t do this,” but it came out only as a muffled scream through the duct tape covering his mouth.

As Siders lowered the blade toward his leg, Roe tried to say, “Oh, please, God, no.”

Felt himself begin to pass out.

A slap brought him around again.

“These are your last moments of life, Peter. You want to sleep through them?”

Roe whimpered as Siders made an incision in his seven-hundred-dollar pants and tugged the blade through the wool, cutting all the way down to his knee. Then he pulled out a roll of duct tape from his duffel and went to work taping something encased in bubble wrap to the inside of his leg, winding the tape around and around and around.

Siders finally set the tape aside and took hold of Peter’s leg, gave it a good shake, said, “I think that’ll work.”

He walked around the desk and Peter heard his footsteps trailing away toward the door, followed by the sound of the lock clicking into place.

Siders returned and hoisted the fire-ax off the floor.

“Glass cutting at its finest,” he said.

Swung.

April 1, 1:45 P.M.

I
grabbed Phin’s phone away from him and yelled at Herb to hurry.

He said, “Cops are on their way. Roe is on the twelfth floor. Security is already on their way up.”

“I’ll see you there.”

“Jack—” Both Herb and Phin said it at the same time, but I was already storming out the automatic exit doors, looking for McGlade.

His Tesla was parked in a handicapped spot.

He was playing TowerMadness.

“Hiya, Jackie. Almost beat the Dice level.”

I tugged open the passenger door and slid into the seat. “How fast does this bucket go?”

“Zero to sixty in three point seven seconds.”

“Show me.”

April 1, 1:48 P.M.

T
he pick end of the ax head punched through the office window, which spiderwebbed into a million fractures but stayed intact. Siders ripped the ax head out and struck again, and again, and again, tiny squares of plastic-coated safety glass raining down on Peter’s face as the cool April air streamed in.

Peter was screaming against his gag, wondering if Kelly and his associates could hear the noise, but in truth, it wasn’t that loud, and it didn’t matter if they did.

He recalled the speech he gave to every new hire (which, considering his turnover, was a frequent occurrence) where he preached his open-door policy, with one caveat:
Never, under any circumstance, come into my office when the door is closed. Don’t even knock.
Because I’m either sleeping or naked.

That policy had sure come back to bite him in the ass.

Bound and gagged and watching this maniac tear a hole through his window, Peter Roe realized he was an asshole. Greedy, selfish, demanding. He’d been okay with it up until this moment, because of the money. That balm of being rich that soothed so many of life’s ills, including a guilty conscience. But soon, he was going to be dead, that money unreachable, and so now he only had the knowledge of what an asshole he’d been. A douche bag, as his son would say, and it was his douche baggery that had landed him in this spot.

Siders tossed the ax onto Peter’s sofa and wiped the sweat that was pouring off his brow.