By Blood Written (11 page)

Michael felt restless. He was in Las Vegas, one of the most exciting cities in the world, on a Friday night in a luxury hotel room someone else was paying for, with a very generous expense budget included. And he was alone.

He reached down and picked up a spiral-bound notebook that described and promoted the various features of the hotel. The room service menu was extensive and available any time, day or night. Just pick up the phone … Maybe there was a movie on he hadn’t seen.

Then again, maybe there wasn’t.

Michael walked into the bathroom, ran water over his face and rubbed his tired eyes, then brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He pulled a navy-blue double-breasted jacket out of the closet and slipped it on, then walked to the door of his hotel room and opened it. He stopped in the doorway, took one last look at the rumpled bed, and pulled the door behind him.

In the two years Carol Gee had been the senior publicist at Accent Press, she thought she’d seen just about every form of schizoid author imaginable. She’d once accompanied a best-selling author on a twelve-city tour in which the famous literary author managed to get himself arrested four times—twice in the same city. A mega-best-selling female author had once called her in the middle of the night from her four-room suite and demanded that Carol clean up the mess where her cat threw up. And she’d been hit on by famous authors so many times, she no longer bothered to record that in her mental diary.

Twenty-eight years old, Yale graduate, second-generation Korean-American, and with an IQ that placed her in the top point-five percent of the world’s population, Carol Gee was finally beginning to wonder what the hell she was doing with her life. All her career aspirations, her ambitions, her desire to achieve and succeed had been thrown into jeopardy by the behavior of one man: Michael Schiftmann.

Carol had never seen anyone like him. Charming and affable, even warm, one minute, he could in an instant become an over-controlled, seething cauldron of cold fury. In Detroit two days earlier, at an old Waldenbooks in a decaying strip mall, the two of them had arrived for Michael’s book signing only to discover that no advertising had been done, no announcement made, and the only notice of the signing was a handwritten sheet taped to the cash register with the wrong date listed. To add even further insult, the five cases of books Carol had overnighted to the store hadn’t even been opened. It took the assistant manager and the sixteen-year-old girl working the night shift five minutes to even find them.

This was not the first time Carol Gee had seen a book signing botched, although it was relatively rare to see one bungled this badly for a
New York Times
best seller. Carol was prepared to deal with it, go on to the next city, and make a note to never schedule a signing at the store again. The usual procedure was to stick around for an hour, chat up the bookstore salespeople, then sign every copy in the store so they could be sold as autographed copies, a practice known in the business as “signing stock.”

Carol had grimaced as they walked into the nearly empty bookstore only to have the teenage girl behind the cash register stare blankly and ask if she could help them find anything. Carol started to say something when Michael shot her a look, the coldest, blackest look she’d ever seen in another human being, then turned to the salesgirl.

“Let me see your boss,” he said quietly. The young girl gulped, excused herself, and disappeared into the stockroom. The assistant manager came out seconds later, a concerned look already on her face as the enormity of her problem gradually soaked in.

Michael’s voice was low and steady as he explained to the poor woman who he was and why he was there, and just how much money and time and energy had been spent in arranging this signing. The woman stammered a barely intelligible reply, then scrambled back into the stockroom and was gone for several minutes.

“Maybe we should just go,” Carol suggested.

Michael turned to her. “Not yet.”

Moments later, the assistant manager, a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead and a hank of unkempt hair down in her face, returned with a stack of hardcovers, obviously hoping to placate them by offering Michael the chance to sign stock. Michael looked at her, turned to Carol and said, “Wait here.” Then he took the assistant manager by the elbow and led her back to her office.

“What’s he going to do?” the ashen-faced girl behind the cash register asked.

“I don’t know,” Carol said quietly.

A minute or so later, Michael emerged from the office, strode quickly across the store, and met Carol at the front.

“We can go now.”

“But—” she said. Then she felt his fingers clamp down on her elbow and gently, but firmly, aim her toward the door.

The two walked out into the sparse mall crowd. As they exited the store, Carol glanced over her shoulder and saw the assistant manager emerge from her office, tears streaming down her face.

“What did you say to her?” Carol demanded. It occurred to her that she’d never talked to one of her authors like that before.

Michael continued walking quickly, staring straight ahead, with his hand still on Carol’s elbow pulling her along.

“Let’s just say that won’t ever happen again,” he said. Carol said nothing else until they got back to their hotel.

That had been two nights earlier, and ever since, Carol had wrestled with her feelings from that night. She’d been repulsed by an author’s behavior before. She’d been angry at them, frustrated by them, grossed out by them, resentful of them, and each time had managed to suppress all those reactions and emotions and do her work in the most professional manner possible. But this time …

This time was different. This time she was frightened by her author, and Carol Gee had never been frightened by an author before.

Denver had gone well, along with the side trip to Boulder, and the day had gone very well in Las Vegas. Still, Carol had kept her distance from Michael. For the first time, she was beginning to think she wasn’t cut out for this line of work.

Fatigued and stressed, she had gone straight up to her room after the evening’s signing. She was awaiting a FedEx package with the next group of airline tickets, the block of tickets for the last phase of the tour. Several of the signings in Southern California were so close together they would rent a car, and the contract for that was coming as well.

Carol looked down at her watch: nine-thirty. The package was supposed to have been delivered by eight. She’d been unable to get through to the toll-free number to check on the package, and the front desk had been unable to find it if it had been delivered. She was tired, but too restless to eat.

Just as she sat down on the side of the bed and reached for the remote control, the phone rang.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Front desk, Ms. Gee,” a friendly male voice said. “We found your package. The concierge got busy and forget to let us know it was here. I’m terribly sorry.”

Carol felt the muscles just below her rib cage relax. At least she could let go of that worry now. “Good, thanks. I’ll be right down.”

“I can have it sent up,” the clerk offered.

“No, I’d rather come right now. I need the walk anyway.”

Carol hung up the phone and left her room. On the elevator, she stared ahead at her own image in the polished brass.

Her hair needed trimming, she thought, and in the slight distortion of her reflection on the brass, she saw that she looked even more tired than she felt.

She exited the elevator and wound her way around a group of large men wearing fezzes, smoking cigars, and laughing.

She heard laughter and bells ringing and shouts from the casino. She wondered how people stood it.

The front desk was dark mahogany, polished to a bright luster, with a mirrored tile wall behind it. She walked over to the corner, smiled at the desk clerk, and motioned with her hand. He picked up the package and brought it over to her.

“Ms. Gee, I take it,” he said.

“Yes, thanks. We’ve been waiting on that.”

“Great,” he said brightly. “I’m glad we were able to locate it. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No,” Carol said, taking the package.

“Have a pleasant stay.”

Carol turned and headed back across the lobby to the bank of elevators. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted two people walking toward the main entrance to the casino from deep inside.

It was Michael Schiftmann, and on his arm was a curva-ceous blond nearly as tall as he. She wore a sequined, body-hugging dress, makeup so thick it could have been slathered on with a butter knife, and high heels of the type usually characterized as “do-me pumps.”

My God
, Carol thought.
Not again …

The two were walking straight toward her. Carol turned quickly and stepped behind a tree that was perhaps fifteen feet tall and in a pot as big around as a tractor tire. She turned her head away from the center of the lobby and peeked out from between the thick branches. Michael and the blond walked arm-in-arm through the lobby, weaving in and out of the throng of people, oblivious to the crowd around them.

As they passed by not ten feet away from Carol, she stepped out from behind the potted trees and watched as the two headed toward the main entrance of the hotel. A bellman held the door open as they stepped outside into the arid Las Vegas night.

Carol’s eyes tracked them through a bank of windows that ran along the front of the hotel. She strained to see past the blazing reflections of dancing, chaotic, multicolored lights in the massive plate-glass windows.

But she could see well enough to follow Michael and the blond as a taxi pulled up next to them and they climbed into the backseat together.

Carol Gee watched as the cab pulled away, then shook her head slowly and turned back toward the elevator bank.

How does he do it?
she wondered.
Night after night …

This will all be over soon
, she reminded herself, as she went for the safety of her own double-locked hotel room.

CHAPTER 9
?

Monday morning, Nashville

Andy Parks hit the pedal on his rust-streaked, ancient Datsun 280Z and prayed the brakes would hold one last time. He meant to have the car serviced before leaving Chattanooga, but he’d gotten too busy—as usual—and simply hadn’t gotten around to it. The pedal had been soft for weeks, and now with the wet cold of the last few days, they’d begun squealing terribly each time he touched them.

The construction on I-24 around Nashville wasn’t helping.

The traffic was bumper-to-bumper and a light mist was falling that Andy hoped wouldn’t turn to snow anytime soon.

He knew he couldn’t afford to spend the night in Nashville.

His boss at the newspaper had told him yesterday afternoon in no uncertain terms that he was about to max out his mea-ger expense account. The
Chattanooga News-Free Press
wasn’t known for hard-hitting reporting or for spending tons of money in pursuit of the news. This was different, though.

This was the kind of story that was guaranteed to get attention, maybe even a Pulitzer nomination, and in any event a ticket out of Chattanooga and away from that sorry excuse for a newspaper. And at twenty-seven years of age, with five years of dues paying already behind him, Andy Parks was ready for a bigger market.

The brakes screeched as the traffic came to a stop just before the Davidson County line. The outlying counties of Nashville, especially Rutherford and Williamson, were some of the fastest-growing counties in America and they each had the traffic to prove it. Andy came to a stop behind a tractor-trailer rig and tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. He looked to his left, where a blond behind the wheel of a bronze Lexus smoked a cigarette and stared straight ahead. Behind him, the massive grille of a tractor-trailer rig loomed in his back windshield.

Forty minutes of stop-and-go traffic later, Andy parked his car in the garage across from the Justice Center and walked out into the icy sleet falling steadily on the city. He strode quickly toward the James Robertson Parkway, then cut right across the plaza and through the revolving door into the main lobby. A bulletproof kiosk blocked the way into the heart of the building, with a heavy sheriff’s department deputy—shaved head, regulation brown uniform—ensconced inside. It reminded Andy of the entrance to a prison.

“Yeah?” the guard asked through the small, slotted metal vent.

Andy reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and held his Hamilton County press pass up to the glass.

“Andy Parks,” he said. “
Chattanooga News-Free Press
.

I’d like to see Detective Gary Gilley.”

The guard stared at the pass for a moment, then slid a clipboard out through a small slot in the glass.

“Sign in,” he said, “and I’ll need to see a driver’s license.”

“But my press pass—” Andy insisted.

“I’ll need to see a driver’s license.” The guy didn’t even look up at him again.

Andy pulled out his license, signed the visitors’ log, then slid the clipboard and his license back through the slot. It sat there for maybe fifteen seconds while the guard completed filling out some other form. Andy cleared his throat, which had no visible effect on the guard. Finally the guard reached up, took the clipboard, examined it, checked the license, then slid them off to one side of his desk. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a yellow tag that read VISITOR and slid it through the window.

“Attach this badge to your coat lapel,” the guard recited without looking at Andy again. “Keep it visible at all times.

Stand over there. Someone will come and get you.”

Andy took the badge and wished he’d stopped for a cup of coffee before parking the car. He was sleepy, fatigue like a brittle cap jammed too tightly on his head. He crossed the large lobby and only then noticed there was no place to sit.

Not exactly user friendly
, he thought.

He leaned against a column and rolled his neck around on his shoulders, trying to work some of the tension out.