Vendetta Stone (29 page)

I stood with Jackson under the protective picnic shelter watching it rain and watching Clarkston’s car pull away. Alone at last, or so I thought.

Wolfe
kept his distance, whipping his car into one of the park’s side entrances once he saw where Jackson was headed. He parked on the far side of the lake, grabbed his Super Hearing device and dashed across the park’s open field to the Parthenon. Climbing the massive steps of the structure and using the columns as cover, Wolfe closed to within a hundred yards, but needed to cut that distance in half to listen in on our conversation. He backtracked and came up on the other side of the lake. Moving within range, he stepped from behind the tree cover to take a spot on the stone bridge. The rain didn’t bother him as much as what he heard.

In fact, it
almost blew his mind.

“I guess we’re going to New York,”
I told Jackson. “I don’t know if that’s what you planned, but it explained our meeting without raising more suspicions.”

“So let’s see what you’ve got.”

I opened my cell phone, clicked on the photo, and handed Jackson a manila envelope. He looked at the visitation picture of the man’s back and compared them.

“It’s not very good,” I said, “but at least you can see the profile and most of his face. That other shot ran full on our website.
You can see they’re one and the same.”

Jackson
handed the cell phone back, reached in his jacket pocket, and unrolled the photo printed off the security cam at Eddie Paul’s Pub.

“I was about
a dozen feet away when this—”

BOOM!

A lightning bolt shattered a nearby tree limb, the thunder clap instantaneous. Exploding in Wolfe’s brain, it nearly burst his eardrums. He didn’t scream, but yanked the Super Hearing earpiece off his head and backpedaled, teetering on the bridge. So Wolfe didn’t hear the rest of my conversation with Jack.

“
Sheesh, was taken,” Jackson finished, handing me the printer image.

Jackson
stared at the charred tree. I looked at the photo and then toward the movement I saw from the corner of my eye. It was
the
last person I ever expected to see at Centennial Park.

“Jack, you’re not going to believe this,” I said, trying to remain calm and not give anything away. “The man in this photo? He’s about fifty yards behind you.”

Jackson froze, but his eyes flashed left and right like an abacus, calculating.

“You’re kiddin
g! Where? What’s he doing?”

I squinted over
Jackson’s shoulder, watching a dazed Wolfe rub at his temples, trying to regain his senses and his balance. Wolfe looked up and saw me staring.

“He’s on the bridg
e by the lake. Looks pretty disoriented, maybe from that blast. “Wait. Looks like he’s leaving.”

Jackson
stepped into my field of vision and locked eyes with me.

“I’m going to my car.
Got to find him. You follow him on foot, see where he’s going, call me, and tell me what kind of car he’s driving. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

I understood the situation, all right. I understood
Jackson’s intentions.

“
It’s him, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

Jackson bolted for the parking lot as recriminations racked his brain. He should’ve brought the Tokarev with him. But why take it to a meeting with a reporter? Who is this guy? Did he kill Angela and the others? If so, he’s dangerous. If not, why’s he following me? How’d he find me? As Jackson reached the car, he dug the Russian pistol from under the seat and tucked it in his waistband. Putting the car in reverse, Jackson hit speed-dial.

“Red, I need you now,” he shouted, straightening the tires and peeling out.

Realizing
he’d been seen, Wolfe headed for his car. He’d stalked enough victims to know danger lurked, caught in the rain, in an open field, exposed and with no plan of action. The tire iron and a knife remained behind in the car over a quarter-mile away. His powerful hands were killing weapons. But he’d feel better if armed.

Still stuck downtown, Red needed a distraction so he could go find Jack.

“Where’s the bathroom?” he asked the bartender, who produced a key.

Red left a twenty on the bar and went to the back, ducking around a corner. He unlocked the door, then went to the bar’s emergency exit and pushed open the door. Officer Mendez entered when Red went to the back. When he heard the distinctive beep that meant the emergency door opened, he sprinted to the rear of the bar. The door stood wide open. He ran out to the alley and looked both ways. Empty. Mendez pulled on the locked bathroom door. He cursed and ran back into the alley, desperately needing to find Boyle.

Inside the bathroom, Red felt the tug on the door and wai
ted two minutes before exiting. Outside, he hailed a cab. As the taxi pulled away, so did Mendez. The chase resumed.

Jackson Stone pulled into the main lot, tires screeching on the wet pavement as he hit the brakes and got out of his car. He headed for the temple and made a quick recon around the perimeter, then cut between several columns. No sign of the man, but Jackson worried that he might lurk behind one of the columns or on the other side. He might never find him at this rate, but the guy couldn’t leave without being seen. Jackson headed for the entrance.

As Jackson launched his war, I waged one myself as I tried to think the situation out before committing to his plan. Could I be a responsible reporter and a responsible citizen at the same time? I’d pointed Jackson in the direction of the man whom we were certain murdered Angela. Did that make me an accessory? Was a crime in progress? I tried calling Sergeant Whitfield, but the line buzzed busy. I dialed the direct number for Executive Editor Judy Flint, who expressed her concern for my safety after I explained the situation.

“Forget the story and get out of th
ere, Gerry. Let the police handle it. I’m calling Chief King.”

Judy hung up without
giving me a chance to argue for staying. I knew I should leave, that I could be fired for disobeying a direct order. But how many times in a career did a story like this come along? I’d often asked myself: If I’m on an airplane about to crash, with time for one final call, would it be to my newspaper or my wife? The answer came more easily than I imagined.

I would stay, even if it meant boarding a doomed flight on the last story I would ever cover. I turned back toward the Parthenon as the driving storm grew ever stronger.

On
the far side of the museum, Jackson wiped rain from his face as a hysterical woman came running out.

“Call the police!”

Jackson
grabbed her by the shoulders as she broke down and he nodded inside.

“Are you okay? What’s going on in there?”

“I work in the gift shop,” she sobbed. “A man came in and I heard Mrs. Nelson shout. I found her on the floor. I just ran.”

Jackson
gave the woman his cell phone, told her to call the cops, then ran inside and saw the unconscious woman in the corner, a bloody gash on her head. Feeling a pulse, he knew she was alive, then he felt the tension of knowing he didn’t have long before the cops arrived. He didn’t know if he pursued Angela’s killer, but no longer doubted that the man posed a danger. Cautiously, he moved into the museum, fingering the trigger.

Jackson
turned the corner and stepped on glass from a shattered display case. The placard identified the missing piece as a fifth century B.C. dagger belonging to the great warrior Phideas. So the man was armed. Jackson kept his back to the wall as he climbed the stairs to the museum’s main level and entered the cavernous temple where Athena towered at the empty room’s far end. Eerily quiet after a few wet tourists fled from the loud screams, Jackson felt certain at least one other person lurked nearby. He clicked a cartridge into the gun chamber.

Beginning a method
ical search pattern, he slipped around the giant, two-tiered Greek columns supporting the Parthenon’s colossal roof. Twenty-three plaster-white pillars, three right behind Athena and ten down each side, separated the main chamber. Each imposing Parthenon column stood about three feet around and spaced some six feet apart, meaning that someone who didn’t want to be discovered might never be found in this deadly version of hide-and-seek. Moving into the temple to begin his search, Jackson saw nobody and the lone sound came from his shuffling footsteps. But that meant the man on the move could be as stealthy as he. Maybe waiting to strike first. Jackson went on his first hunting trip at age ten, but never for bigger game or with higher stakes—not even in the Gulf War. Jackson’s objective? To flush out his quarry.

“Why’d
you kill Angela?”

His shout
echoed through the chamber, startling Wolfe as he circled for a killing blow. He froze.

“What did she ever do to you?”
Jackson growled, desperate to know.

Wolfe
couldn’t tell where Jackson hid, the way his voice reverberated.

“Wrong place, wrong time, man,”
Wolfe answered, adding a phrase Jackson heard many times over the past three weeks. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Jackson
shifted to his right, then backpedaled. But he wasn’t backpedaling from his mission.

“I’m go
ing to kill you,” he said.

“I was thinking the same thing,”
Wolfe replied.

I couldn’t reach Whitfield, who was on the phone with the officer trailing Red’s cab.

Red
figured he’d outfoxed the officer, but he couldn’t get through to Jack, who sounded frantic a few minutes earlier. He wasn’t going to let Jackson down or let him die if he could help it. He’d find Jackson fast.

“Step on it
, mister. I’ll double the meter,” Red said and tried Jackson’s cell phone again. This time, a hysterical woman answered and asked if the police were on the way yet. Red cussed a blue streak, but the cabbie couldn’t understand his Lynchburg accent.

Less than two miles away, Sergeant Whitfield hung up with Mendez, apologized for the interruption, and returned to his conversation with Doctor Karnoff as they waited for Jackson, already two minutes late for his scheduled appointment.

“Explain
again why it’s so imperative to find Mister Stone,” Erica said. There were strict codes of ethics, and she followed protocol. Prior knowledge of a crime about to be committed required her to tell authorities or face possible charges. But what did she know? Nothing more than what the media reported, except, she reminded herself, the true motivation behind Jackson’s desire for revenge. Should she tell this police sergeant and betray a confidence? Technically, Jackson had withheld information pertinent to an investigation.

“I have a picture of a man we think may be involved,” Whitfield said, reaching into his hip pocket for his cell
phone. “I want to see if Jackson can identify him.”

“May I see it?”

Whitfield punched up the image, then handed it to Doctor Karnoff, who prided herself for her cool demeanor in dealing with emotional patients. She gasped.

“I saw this man yesterday.”

Before Whitfield could react, the phone rang. Mendez.

“I thought we were headed your way, but it looks like Boyle might be going over to Centennial Park instead. His cab’s in the far right lane. There’s still no sign of Stone.”

“Jackson called here, said he might be late. Maybe that’s why. Call if you spot him.”

Whitfield wanted to know where the psychiatrist
saw this man and if she knew his identity, but the cell phone rang again before he could inquire. This time it was Chief King, scrambling out the door himself and strapping on his gun.

“Get over to Cent
ennial Park now!”

As he bounded down
four flights of stairs, Whitfield called Mendez.

“What’s your ten-twenty?”

“Boyle just pulled into the park. I’m about to.”

“Don’t lose him.
Stone’s there, and so is our mystery man. I’m on the way.”

Jackson
narrowly avoided the dagger thrust, thanks to his war-honed instincts for survival. The stakes raised, just one would walk away.

Jackson
had moved around the columns, pressing his back against the slabs to steady his aim. In a dual role as both hunter and hunted, his foe found him first. He admitted killing Angela, which told Jackson he conceded responsibility for the Fletchers’ deaths and who knew how many more.

Jackson
worked his way down the right side row of columns when the silence shattered, making him jump as it echoed throughout the chamber.

“Jack! I didn’t hear you pull u—.”

Angela? What the—

A shiver ran up his
spine at once again hearing a golden voice, now silenced, but he understood the recording was supposed to distract him.

“Hiya, Angie baby. Remember me?”

What did he mean, they’d met before, Jackson wondered as his heart thumped in his chest. Barely conscious of his breathing, he calmed himself and tried to focus on the very real danger somewhere in front of him.

“
You won’t get away with this,” his wife’s struggling voice echoed. “My husband will be home any minute. He’ll kill you. You don’t know his temper.”

T
he shock of hearing his wife’s voice again produced the opposite psychological effect on Jackson.