The Prettiest One: A Thriller (37 page)

He pulled his motorcycle into Mike’s driveway and up around the bend toward the house. He saw Mike’s car and wondered idly why the trunk was open as he pulled his bike to the side of the house. He doubted that anyone saw him pull in, and the house was secluded enough that no neighbors would see his motorcycle, but still . . . can’t be too careful. He trotted around the house to the front door. There was no need to hurry on Mike’s account; he wasn’t going anywhere. But again, better safe than sorry. Get in, find whatever there was to find, grab the money, and get the hell out.

The front door was unlocked. The place smelled rank, which wasn’t surprising given the dead body he now saw on the living room floor. Two bullet wounds, one to the shoulder and a kill shot to the gut. It looked like the redhead and her friends had been telling the truth. Donnello had taken a hell of a chance that they were, but he really hadn’t wanted to kill them. Mike would have murdered them without a second thought. But he wasn’t Mike. He’d never killed anyone and wouldn’t unless it was absolutely necessary. And Mike could no longer tell him what to do.

Donnello looked at Mike’s dead face and still felt nothing close to sentimentality. The guy had been a prick, and the world was probably a better place with him dead. Just ask any of the women he’d brought here. Donnello had never taken part in any of that, and he’d turned down Mike’s only offer to watch one of the videos, but he knew that there had been quite a few women Mike had drugged and “entertained” here, as he used to put it. Prick.

Enough time spent on reflection. Time to look for anything the cops could use to tie him to Mike, along with the cash. He turned away from the body to find someone standing close behind him. Donnello hadn’t even heard him. The man didn’t move. He stared down at Donnello from just two feet away. The guy looked a
hell
of a lot like Mike Maggert—bald, pale, and ugly—though this man was at least half a foot taller and a little less thin, and where Mike’s dark eyes had always seemed almost completely lifeless, even during moments of excitement, there was something down in the darkness of this guy’s eyes . . . a deeper darkness that somehow seemed to be a separate living thing. Then Donnello noticed the knife. His thoughts immediately flicked to the gun at the small of his back.

“Did you kill my brother?” the man asked.

This guy’s brother was dead on the floor and he showed no emotion . . . just the slightest squirming of whatever it was that lived in the darkness of his eyes.
God, what a creepy thought,
Donnello realized. He struggled to speak. “No . . . I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . . we were friends.”

“Not good enough friends to call the cops, though. He’s been dead a while. Why are you here?”

“I’m . . . looking for something,” Donnello said as he backed up a step. The other man moved forward, staying close to him.

“Money?”

“No,” Donnello lied.

“What, then?”

“Something that might . . . incriminate me.”

“In my brother’s death?”

“No,” Donnello said quickly, “I swear to God. Something . . . anything . . . you see, the thing is, your brother and I used to . . . well, we did some things together, illegal things, and I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything the cops would find here to point them to me. You see?”

Mike Maggert’s awful brother looked down at him. “How did you know he was dead?”

“Because I just talked to the person who killed him. She told me.”

“She?”

“Yeah. It was a woman. A redhead.”

“I’m sure there are a lot of women who had a good reason to kill my brother, but did this one tell you why she did?”

“She said he was stalking her.”

Maggert frowned as he considered that. “Where can I find this woman?”

Donnello quickly told him the address. “She lives there with her boyfriend. I left her there just a half hour ago.”

“Was she alive when you left her?”

“Yeah.”

“Some friend you are,” the man said. “Now, I’m going to give you a choice.”

Donnello allowed himself to feel the slightest sense of relief, the smallest glimmer of hope. He hadn’t wanted to find out if his draw was quicker than a knife thrust, and it looked like he might not have to. If Mike’s brother were planning to kill him, why would he bother letting him choose anything?

The brother said, “Would you rather I cut your throat or slice your stomach open? The first way ends you quick. The second is more painful but gives you a few more seconds of life. You probably have less than a hundred left, at most, so every one is precious.”

Donnello backed up a step, his gun hand inching behind his back. The guy stayed with him, knife in hand.

“But why?” Donnello said. “I told you I didn’t kill Mike. And I told you who did.”

“Because when people start finding the various pieces of the woman who killed my brother, you’ll know it was me who chopped her up. And I can’t have that.”

Seconds later, as Donnello lay on the floor next to Mike, spilling his life on the faded carpet, he knew two things: his draw hadn’t been quick enough, and he’d made the wrong decision. As soon as he’d hit the floor with his gut torn open, he’d been given another chance to have his throat cut, to end it quickly. He should have taken it. He’d hoped the few extra seconds his choice bought him would be filled with a sense of relief that his miserable time on Earth was over, a sense of peace that he’d be moving on to whatever new life waited for him beyond this one. Instead, he’d merely had more time for sadness and regret and pain.

Detective Charlotte Hunnsaker stood in the living room that Caitlin Sommers shared with Desmond Bixby, her boyfriend. Hunnsaker had no warrant and no one had answered the door, so under normal circumstances she shouldn’t have been standing inside the apartment, but through the window near the front door they had seen the overturned table and broken lamp, and because good cops are interested in the welfare of the community, Hunnsaker felt she had an obligation to enter the premises to ensure the safety of anyone who might be inside and possibly be injured. Anyway, that was how she’d spin it if she were ever questioned about it. The door had been unlocked, which was stupid in this neighborhood, but it made things easier for Hunnsaker.

Nobody was home, which annoyed Hunnsaker. Then again, that would have been too easy. It never seemed to work out that way.

They searched for additional evidence that a crime had been committed here—further justifying their entry into the home—while also looking for anything that would help in their investigation of the warehouse murder. They couldn’t touch anything without a warrant, but things in plain sight were fair game. Hunnsaker’s eye fell on an open cardboard box with several random items inside, including bits of trash, a wrinkled takeout menu from a restaurant called the Fish Place, duct tape, and a pack of cigarettes. Nothing terribly helpful at first glance, but something here might turn out to be significant if they came back later with a warrant. What she most wanted to find, though, was something telling her where Caitlin Sommers was right now. She let her eyes drift around the room, then across the hall, into the kitchen, where they fell on a phone book lying open on the table. She walked over to it and saw that a page had been roughly torn out. The page on the left side of the book had listings for horses, hospice care, and hospitals. The page on the right, the one that came after the one that had been ripped out, listed hotels—alphabetically, of course, starting with the Lullaby Inn Motel. Apparently, motels didn’t get their own section but were instead listed in the hotel section. Hunnsaker used her cell phone to snap a picture of the book and called out, “They’re renting a room in the area, Javy.”

Padilla walked into the kitchen from the bedroom down the hall.

“Any idea which one?” he asked.

“Not sure. Probably a motel, but we can’t rule out hotels, either. We need to get some of our people to start calling them alphabetically, but stopping at the Lullaby Inn.” She pointed to the open phone book. “And let’s see if there are some uniforms on patrol who can pop into a few, too.”

“Want me to start a warrant application for this scene?” Padilla asked.

“I don’t think that’s a priority at the moment. Let’s find Sommers and Bixby, then we’ll get our warrant and come back and take the place apart, see if anything here ties them to the warehouse or the victim. For now, though, I need a copy of the page that’s missing from this phone book.”

“Gotcha. Want to post someone down the block?”

“Yeah, let’s get an unmarked car out there in case we’re wrong about the motel.”

“Are we wrong?” Padilla asked.

“No.”

“And what’s next on our agenda?”

“We’re going to hit a few motels ourselves,” Hunnsaker said. “What do you say, Javy? You, me, cheap motels?”

“I’ve been waiting years for you to ask, but what will Elaine say?”

“I think she’ll be happy for us,” Hunnsaker said. The truth was, it was Hunnsaker who was happy, or at least getting closer to it. They now had a name for the redhead, they knew where she lived, and now they knew generally where to find her. It shouldn’t be long now.

Caitlin looked down at the page Bix had torn from his phone book.

“How about the Deluxe Motel on Larchmont Avenue?” she asked.

They had decided to spend the night in a motel. The police were looking for them. Who knew who else might be doing the same? They certainly hadn’t known that One-Eyed Jack had been. And if he had been able to find them, someone else could, too. Bix had argued that they should just keep driving, get the hell away from Smithfield and out of Massachusetts altogether. But Caitlin still intended to turn herself in to the local police, though both Bix and Josh had convinced her to sleep on it and make sure it was what she wanted to do, at least so soon. She knew she wasn’t going to change her mind, but the thought of spending one more night a free woman sounded appealing. Either way, though, if Caitlin wanted to go to the Smithfield police in the morning, they had to stay in the area, which led to their search for a nearby motel.

“Deluxe Motel?” Josh said. “Simple name, gets right to the point, but is there such a thing as a deluxe motel?”

“Larchmont Avenue’s a little close to our place,” Bix said. “I mean, my place. What else you got?”

Caitlin scanned the list. “This only goes through most of the
L
s.”

“We were in a hurry. I figured there had to be a good one for us on that page. It’s two-sided, you know.”

“I’m looking,” Caitlin said. “How about the Eagle Inn Motel on Rossdale Boulevard?”

Bix nodded. “Sounds good.”

Caitlin gave the address to Josh, who typed it into the GPS application on his tablet. The feminine robotic voice had just given its first direction when Bix’s cell phone rang. He looked at the screen and said, “It’s my cousin.”

He answered and listened for a moment. “No shit? Hang on, Terry, I need to put you on speaker . . . Because I’m in the car, that’s why. Hang on.” He shot a
Be quiet
look at Caitlin and Josh, then switched the call to speakerphone. “Terry?”

“I’m here,” a voice said.

“Okay,” Bix said, “so you were saying that the woman in the paper who the cops are looking for—the one who’s a dead ringer for Katie—saved the life of one of your girls?”

“Thanks for bringing me up to speed on what I just told you, Bix.”

“Just making sure I heard you right.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. So, the other night my girl Evangeline gets in this dude’s car; it was only supposed to be a blow, but instead of pulling around the block, he keeps driving.”

Caitlin realized that the man on the phone, Bix’s cousin, was a pimp.

“Then he offers her a bottle of water,” the pimp said, “which was already open, and he gets really angry when she won’t drink it. Evangeline gets scared and asks to be dropped off at the next corner, and the guy hits her. The next thing she knows, they’re going too fast for her to get out of the car.”

“When was all this, by the way?”

“Tuesday.”

Three days ago. The day before Caitlin killed Mike Bookerman.

As Caitlin listened, Terry the pimp told Bix how the guy took Evangeline to his house, where he made her drink the water that obviously contained a drug. Then he handcuffed her and spent a day raping her every few hours. Finally, he said he had something he had to do, so he made her take another drink that knocked her out for a while, though she had no idea how long. All she knew was that it was daytime when she took the drink and it was night when she came to and found him standing over her. He was really pissed off about something and seemed to want to take it out on someone, and Evangeline said she knew it was going to be her.