Then they all heard a small sound at the front door. A key scratching around in the lock.
‘Shit!’ Sinnott said.
Cross brought a finger to his lips to silence him. They heard the door open and someone step inside, trying to be quiet about it. Cross realized who it must be immediately. He shoved Reddick’s forty into the back of his waistband and gestured for Sinnott to stay where he was, with Reddick, then went out into the hall alone.
Iris was standing at the door when Cross found her, as stock still as a statuette, her eyes glued to the trail of blood on the floor.
‘Oh, my God. Is that blood?’
Cross closed fast upon her, doing his best to block her view. ‘Ben had a little accident. It’s no big deal, but it’s ugly. I thought you were gone for good?’
‘I was. I am. But . . .’ She knelt down, plucked something white from a puddle of crimson on the floor at her feet: a chunk of shattered tooth. She looked to Cross for some explanation, but all he did was offer a blank stare in return.
Now Iris remembered to be afraid, the reason she’d called ahead twice to make sure the condo was empty before coming back to retrieve her ID. But her fear wasn’t enough to staunch the need she suddenly had to know what lay beyond the red streak someone – Ben? – had laid down on Cross’s carpet for her to follow. She tried to push past Cross but he took her by the arm and held fast.
‘I’m sorry, Iris, but you have to leave,’ he said.
She ripped her arm free and was down the hall before he could stop her. He caught up to her at the playroom door, but by then it was too late; the door was open in her hand and she was peering in, transfixed. Horrified. Will Sinnott was holding a gun on a man she’d never seen before and a beaten and bloody Ben Clarke lay on his side on the floor, hands and feet bound with what looked like duct tape.
‘This sonofabitch killed Andy and tried to kill Ben,’ Sinnott stammered.
‘Andy? Andy’s dead?’ Iris hadn’t yet heard about Baumhower’s death.
‘Your friends have got it all backwards,’ Reddick said. ‘Actually, they were just about to kill
me
.’
‘Shut up!’ Sinnott snapped.
‘He’s crazy, Iris,’ Cross said, stepping around her into the room to bar her further entrance. ‘We don’t know who he is or what he wants, but he broke into Andy’s home last night and killed him, just like Will says, and this morning he broke in here and attacked Ben.’
Again she pushed past Cross, this time to stand over Clarke, seeking a better look at his injuries. The big man was semiconscious now but not making a sound. ‘Have you called nine-one-one? Ben needs an ambulance!’
‘We were just about to do that when you showed up.’
‘So do it! What are you waiting for?’ She flipped open her own phone, started to make the call herself.
Sinnott gave Cross a look, panic-stricken: Stop her.
Cross snatched the phone from Iris’s hand and took her by the arm again, intending to steer her from the room back out into the hall. ‘No! We can handle this ourselves. In the meantime, you have to leave. It’s for your own protection.’
He tried to move her toward the door but she wouldn’t budge. ‘No! I don’t believe you!’
A tussle ensued between them. Sinnott stood there slack-jawed, watching, barely cognizant of the gun he was supposed to be training on Reddick. In all the excitement, he failed to notice that Reddick was no longer sitting on his hands, and paid no heed to the fact that Reddick’s Smith & Wesson forty, equally forgotten by Cross, remained holstered at the rear waistband of Cross’s pants, right where Reddick could see it.
Reddick was up off the couch and holding the gun at Cross’s head before either Cross or Sinnott could blink. Reflexively, Sinnott made to shoot him, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. Nothing short of a bloodbath with Iris in the middle would follow if he did, and he knew it.
Reddick tossed Cross aside to exchange him for Iris, too fast for Sinnott to do anything about it. Everything was coming apart at the seams now and Reddick was improvising, barely able to think straight.
‘If you scream, little lady, all hell’s gonna break loose,’ he said. Then, to Sinnott: ‘Put the gun down.’
‘Fuck that, Will,’ Cross said. ‘You put that gun down and we’re all dead!’
Sinnott didn’t need Cross to explain his meaning. Reddick had come here to kill Sinnott and his two friends, and the only thing standing in his way now was the .9 millImeter Beretta Sinnott had pointed in his direction.
‘Let the woman go,’ Cross told Reddick. ‘You aren’t really going to hurt her, anyway.’
‘You believe that, asshole, come ahead,’ Reddick said. ‘But when all the shooting stops and she’s dead, that’s gonna be on
you
, not me.’
He started backing out of the room, dragging Iris with him.
‘No, please!’ she cried.
Neither Cross nor Sinnott moved.
‘First man through this door after I close it had better have Kevlar balls,’ Reddick said. And then, just like that, he and Iris were out of the room and gone, the playroom door slammed shut behind them.
Cross waited for Sinnott to give chase, said, ‘Well? Don’t just stand there, you dumbass – go after them!’
‘Me? You heard what he said! The first man out that door—’
Cross stepped forward to tear the Beretta from his hands and the two of them inched slowly toward the door, pausing at the threshold to listen for any sounds out in the hall. Hearing nothing, Cross gingerly opened the door and poked his head out . . .
The hallway was empty. Beyond it, the condo’s front door sat wide open.
‘Shit!’ Cross spun on Sinnott, blue eyes ablaze. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you shoot him while you had the chance?’
Sinnott opened his mouth to answer, outraged, only to stop at the sound of gravel being shaken in an iron drum behind him. He and Cross both turned to find Clarke laughing as best he could, down on his right side, eyes half-open, wheezing into the carpet through a mouth full of blood and broken teeth.
‘Pussies,’ he said.
NINETEEN
I
ris never screamed on their way out to Reddick’s car. He’d warned her against it before they’d exited Cross’s building, breathing hard into her ear while pressing his gun to the base of her spine where no one could easily see it, and she chose not to try him. She didn’t know who this man was or what he was capable of, but it was his animal-like desperation, more than his projected menace, that frightened her just enough to keep her silent.
A couple on beach cruiser bicycles rolled past as they crossed the street, but neither rider gave them so much as a glance. Reddick guided Iris into the black Mustang’s driver’s seat, hurried around the front of the car to get in on the passenger side, and tossed her the keys. ‘You drive,’ he said. When she made to ask where, he cut her off: ‘Just move!’
She got the Mustang started and drove off, Reddick peering anxiously behind them all the while, watching to see if Cross or Sinnott would appear in pursuit. He was holding the forty loose in his lap, a threat he had apparently forgotten he was supposed to be leveling against her.
Iris drove in silence for three blocks, then Reddick said, ‘Turn right at the next signal. I’ll tell you where to stop.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Nobody you need to worry about. I’m not going to hurt you. I just needed you to get out of there in one piece, that’s all.’
‘They said you killed Andy.’
Reddick’s eyes narrowed. ‘Andy killed himself,’ he said.
‘What about Gillis Rainey?’
‘Shut up and drive.’
A moment passed, then Iris gathered her nerve and asked, ‘Did Gillis kill himself, too?’
‘Pull over here and stop the car.’
Iris did as instructed. They were now on a quiet and narrow residential street just north of Abbot Kinney, where a kid on a skateboard or an old woman towing a shopping cart were the only ones likely to bear passing witness to their presence.
‘I need you to do me a favor,’ Reddick said.
‘A favor?’
‘I need you to give me at least twenty-four hours before going to the police.’
‘You’re letting me go?’
Reddick could barely believe it himself. ‘Yes.’
‘But you haven’t answered my question yet.’
‘Look—’
‘Did Gillis kill himself, too?’
Reddick studied her, saw that beneath all the surface beauty was a bulldog that was never easily moved, once it had sunk its teeth into something. ‘No. Your friends did that.’
Iris closed her eyes and held her breath for just an instant. It was true. Goddamnit, it was true.
‘Who are you?’ she asked Reddick again.
‘I don’t have time for this, sister. If Cross and his pals don’t send the police out looking for me, they’ll be out here looking for me themselves.’
Iris still didn’t move. It was gradually becoming obvious to her that the desperation she sensed in Reddick was behind all of this; he was dangerous, yes, but only in the way an abused woman can sometimes become dangerous, finally tortured one too many times. ‘Perry’s my fiancé,’ she said. ‘I need to know what kind of man I’m about to marry. You said they were trying to kill you. Why?’
Too weary to resist any longer, Reddick surrendered, said, ‘Baumhower and I had a car accident last weekend near the LA River. He’d just dumped Rainey’s body there and they were afraid I’d report it to the police. So Clarke broke into my home, tied my wife up at knifepoint and drugged my little boy, said he’d kill us all if I didn’t keep my mouth shut.’ Reddick let Iris take this all in, then added wryly, ‘I think I’d reconsider that engagement, if I were you.’
Iris didn’t speak for a long moment. She’d been fearing the worst but this went beyond any nightmare she could have possibly imagined.
‘So you killed Andy and tried to kill Ben.’
‘Get out of the car.’ He was pointing the gun at her again.
‘Why didn’t you just go to the police?’
‘I had my reasons. Open the goddamn door and get out before I shoot you!’
She finally opened the door and stepped out, but only stood there watching as Reddick climbed over the car’s center console to take the wheel. ‘We can go to the police together. You and me, right now,’ she said.
Reddick laughed. ‘Why? Because you can prove that anything I’ve just told you is true? Thanks but no thanks.’
He started the engine but Iris, refusing to take the hint, wouldn’t budge. ‘If I do what you ask – wait twenty-four hours before calling the police – what are you going to do?’
‘What I have to do.’
‘I don’t want Perry hurt.’
‘Yeah? That’s too fucking bad.’ He grabbed the door with his free hand, waited for her to step out of the way before slamming it shut. He rolled his window down and said, ‘You wanna make the call, make the call. I don’t give a damn. But do yourself a favor and stay away from Cross. I’m not the killer here, he is.’
He threw the Mustang into gear and left her standing in the middle of the street.
TWENTY
O
n Cross’s orders, Sinnott took Ben Clarke to the emergency room at St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. Clarke was fully conscious now and fit to argue, but in too much pain not to know better than to go. He and Sinnott had instructions to tell the doctors that he had incurred his injuries clowning around on a skateboard and tumbling down a long flight of stairs, and to stick with that story no matter how much skepticism it received.
Cross, meanwhile, stayed behind to clean up his condo and try to make contact with Iris, hoping Reddick had let her go once his escape from Cross’s place had been complete. Getting hold of Iris in any case wouldn’t be easy, however, because she didn’t have her phone; Cross had taken it away from her when she’d tried to call 911 for Clarke and it was still in his possession. He tried her at home and only got voicemail.
He knew he should call the police for her sake alone but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Reddick in police custody was the last thing he needed. As accomplished a liar as he was, Cross couldn’t imagine how he and the others might spin a lie for the authorities that could explain away everything Reddick would tell them. Rainey’s kidnapping and death, Andy’s dumping of his body, Clarke’s assault upon Reddick’s family – all would be revealed if the police got involved and found Reddick alive and conversant. Better to let them find out about Iris’s kidnapping either on their own, or with Iris’s help if she was still alive, than make the call himself. And it would be better still if they never found out about it at all.
If he could contact Iris before she filed a report, he might be able to keep a lid on things, but he couldn’t reach her. He tried her at home three times, then gave up. He had no choice now but to plan for the worst. He went to work scrubbing every trace of Clarke’s blood from his condo and tried to think of a story to tell the authorities that could counter anything Iris might choose to offer.
It took him about twenty minutes to come up with something suitable.
Iris was a mess.
She’d just been kidnapped and released by a stranger with a gun who’d all but admitted to murdering Andy Baumhower. The man who’d been her fiancé only two days before, along with his two closest friends, were very possibly murderers themselves. Her car was parked less than a block from Perry’s home, her wallet and ID were still somewhere inside, and now Perry had her cell phone and – unless she’d lost them somewhere else – her car keys, too.
Walking on shaky legs in the general direction of Perry’s condo, she knew intellectually that calling the police was a no-brainer. In spite of her kidnapper’s request that she do otherwise, it seemed like the only sane thing to do. Guns were being waved around, Ben Clarke had been badly beaten, and two other people, ostensibly, were dead. But she was afraid to make the call. She had the feeling doing so would prove to be a terrible mistake, the catalyst for a host of unintended and irreversible consequences, and try as she might, she couldn’t shake it.