City of Fire (49 page)

“He’s gone,” he said. “I got here just in time.”

He was trying to justify his presence, but it wasn’t working. Her eyes flicked across the shards of glass on the carpet. Her gun was by the bedroom door. Too far away to reach on a night that had the look and feel of a doubleheader. What Fellows didn’t accomplish, Rhodes would.

“Why the gloves?”

“I don’t want to leave fingerprints,” he said. “This is a crime scene now.”

She shook it off, watching him light a cigarette. He still appeared nervous. All wound up like he was when he chased her through the parking garage. As she sat up, Rhodes snatched her gun off the floor and whispered something.

“What’s that?” she managed.

“Your blouse is open.”

She lowered her eyes, still groggy. Her breasts were
exposed, her jeans pulled down to her knees. Although her underwear was ripped, it was still in place. She replayed the attack in her head and tried to calculate how long she had been unconscious. Seconds, she thought. Not minutes or hours. No real damage done except for the terrifying memory.

“Do you need an ambulance?”

She shook her head, fastening her bra and buttoning her blouse. As she zipped up her jeans, she wondered if he had seen the luminol in her bedroom. Her mind was beginning to clear. She needed an escape plan. Some way of reaching the broken slider. And if all else failed, some way of connecting Rhodes to the crime scene. Something that would stick when it hit the system, even if she wasn’t here anymore.

The phone rang. Rhode’s eyes flickered. After the third ring, he said, “Answer it, Lena. But use the speaker. I want to listen.”

She took a deep breath and rose to her feet. Moving to the counter, she clicked the phone on as Rhodes got rid of his cigarette in the planter outside and grabbed the stool beside her. When she heard Novak’s voice, her body flooded with relief.

“I’m here with Rhodes,” she said.

Rhodes didn’t react when she mentioned his name. Something was going on she couldn’t see. The relief vanished.

Novak groaned. “What’s he doing there? Put me on speaker.”

“You’re already on,” Rhodes said.

Maybe it was the way Rhodes had his hands wrapped around her gun. Maybe it was the tone of his voice or that he let Novak know that he was here. Either way, it looked as if Rhodes had reached the finish line. He had a plan of his own and didn’t care.

“I’ve found him,” Novak shouted. “I’ve found the second house. It’s up by the reservoir.”

“How?” Lena said.

“Phone records. I figured a guy like Fellows didn’t have too many friends. But he probably kept an answering machine he checked every once in a while. He made regular calls to
someone listed in the phone book as M. Finn. It was a toll call because it crossed town. I drove out and woke up his next-door neighbor. When I showed him a six-pack, he pointed at Fellows’s picture and said that’s him.”

Novak gave them the address and said that he was already there and would call Barrera after he hung up. Lena gave him a three-sentence summary of the attack and warned him that Fellows was probably on his way home. She knew the street. And from the look on Rhodes’s face, he knew it as well. The service road to the Hollywood reservoir was open to the public. Anyone who lived in the hills and rode a bicycle or liked to walk or run in a safe place had to drive right by Fellows’s second house.

She turned the speakerphone off. When she glanced back at Rhodes, he was staring at her.

“Let’s go,” he said.

THE carport was empty. Novak gazed through the smoke at the house looming on top of the hill as he thought it over.

It was a question of balance, he decided. Like all things good or bad, in the end it always came down to balance. Karma. Doing what was right to make up for what went wrong.

From what Lena had told him over the phone, Fellows was on his way home. Novak figured that he had at least three minutes to get inside the house, find the girl, and, if she was still alive, pull her out. Three minutes that could possibly save her life. With road visibility hovering near zero, he might be able to stretch his time inside the house to five.

He checked his watch. The second hand appeared stuck on the number ten. When it started moving, he realized that there was nothing wrong with his watch. It wasn’t a bad omen. Just a case of deep-fried nerves.

His eyes rocked back to the empty carport. Because Fellows wasn’t home, he could search the house without worry. Rip through the rooms from top to bottom as fast as his legs could carry him.

He started up the steps, his heart pumping quick but steady. Reaching the house, he moved around back until he found a window that looked about the right height beneath a tall tree.

Novak drew his gun, punching the muzzle through the glass and breaking it away from the frame. Then he climbed into the living room and headed for the stairs.

Quick and dirty, he kept telling himself. Don’t waste time looking for anything but the girl. And if everything goes to shit, start shooting and keep shooting. Take the alien out.

He cruised through the bedroom, checking the closets and bath. Then a second room that was furnished exactly like the first in every detail. He turned his brain off and kept moving as the oddity cut through. He kept searching. No one was on the second floor. As he hustled downstairs, he checked his watch. Two and a half minutes had blown by.

He needed more octane. More speed. He followed the hallway around the stairs and found a den and powder room but not Harriet Wilson. Doubling back to the kitchen, he glanced in the pantry and found the basement door. When he flipped the light on and saw dried blood staining the concrete floor, he knew the girl was down there.

He spent ten long seconds listening to the silence. He could feel time running out. Instead of pulling back, he checked his gun and raced downstairs.

MARTIN FELLOWS NEEDED
a quick glass of mineral water. Something clean and fresh to slow the anger and cool his jets down. His dick was still hard. Nothing had gone according to plan. He wanted to hit something. Smash it open and gut what was inside.

He locked the front door and headed for the kitchen. Halfway through the living room he stopped dead in his tracks. The window was broken. Shards of glass littered the floor.

Someone was here.

He tried to get a grip on himself and sniffed the air. He could smell their odor. Faint traces of perspiration. The intruder was male.

He pricked up his ears, breaking the silence down into multiple components. There was the sound of his heart beating like a champion. The sound of fire engines spilling through the broken window, up-front and personal as they rolled toward the reservoir. And then there was the stillness. A heavy stillness that no longer included Harriet Wilson.
After he’d given the woman her birthday present, the bitch had become so ungrateful that he taped her mouth shut. It wasn’t Harriet in the stillness. It was someone else, poking their fucking nose around.

He gazed at the carpet and saw the blood still dripping from his hand. The shape of Lena Gamble’s wide mouth permanently sculpted into his finger. He craned his neck around and peered into the kitchen. Someone had left the basement door open.

He felt the power rack through his shoulders. The heat percolating on his cheeks and forehead and igniting his hands and legs. Moving silently into the kitchen, he prepared a needle and found an injection site on his arm. Then he drew a ten-inch carving knife from the block and started downstairs.

Slowly. Evenly. Without making any sound.

He reached the last step and peeked around the corner. A man was standing in the tunnel just outside Harriet’s room. Fellows lowered his body, hiding in the shadows.

It was Lena’s partner. The cop he’d seen at the Pink Canary and read about in
The Times.
From every appearance, the detective one reporter called “experienced” was alone.

He could see the man’s face. The beads of sweat raining down his forehead and bleeding through his suit. The gun he held in his right hand.

The man must have just arrived. He looked eager and worried and kept glancing at his watch. He probably came in alone thinking he could save the girl. And now he was staring at Harriet chained to the cot, checking the tunnel in the gloom, and hoping for silence so he could listen and make sure everything was good.

Fellows couldn’t help feeling sorry for the stupid man. He could hear the springs from the cot jiggling up and down and guessed that Harriet was hysterical and wouldn’t play along. When the detective couldn’t take it anymore and rushed into the room, Fellows slid behind the furnace for a better view.

He could see Harriet’s big blue eyes wild like a cat as she tried to scream through the tape. The cop with his back
turned, all revved up and ripping through the pile of handcuffs on the workbench searching for the keys.

Fellows inched toward the door. His opponent was middle-aged and right-handed. Although he carried excess body fat and obviously no longer worked out, he looked as if he could still throw a punch. As Fellows thought it over, he realized that his success depended on surprise. Neutralize the right hand, and the big man would panic and wilt.

NOVAK FISHED THROUGH
the handcuffs, snatching the keys and rushing over to the cot. He could feel time streaming by. Fear cutting a hole in his stomach and gusting through his chest.

Harriet Wilson had obviously been tortured and needed medical attention in a hurry. Stretched out on a soiled mattress, she was completely naked and sweating profusely. Her inner thighs were smeared with blood and her eyes were glued to her vagina. Even worse, she was riddled with body tremors and appeared to be slipping into shock. Novak couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think she even knew that he was in the room.

He leaned closer, fumbling with the keys as he held on to the gun. When she started thrashing her arms and legs, the keys slipped out of his fingers and dropped onto the floor. He scooped them up and holstered his gun. Reaching over her head, he held her hands down and inserted the key.

And that was when the handcuff slapped over his wrist and there was no need to check his watch anymore.

He tried not to panic, but couldn’t help it. He wrenched his body around and saw Martin Fellows yanking the other end of the cuffs and locking them around the steel tubing at the foot of the cot. His heart started pounding as he heard the telltale click. When he reached around his waist for his gun, he couldn’t make it. Just his sweaty fingertips stabbing at the handle and slipping away. He tried to focus. Tried to stretch and extend his reach. Then everything he ever stood for burned up as Fellows lifted the gun out of his holster and stepped back.

He looked at the madman standing in the corner. His lifeless eyes were locked on him, and his mouth was clamped shut. When Novak lifted the bed up and lunged at him with his left fist, the piece of shit didn’t even move.

FELLOWS TOSSED THE
gun on the workbench.

It was over, he thought. And the intruder knew that it was over, every inch of his body shaking now. He could see the man twisting his wrist in the cuff and heaving the bed up and down. His wheels turning as a hot load of panic rushed his senses and everything went numb.

Neutralize the right hand and the big man would fall.

Fellows reached inside his pocket for the camera and snapped three quick pictures. As he gazed at the digital images, something about them smacked of genius. The terror in the man’s eyes. The sweat dripping down his forehead. That ghostlike expression on his face as he looked down the line and stared at the end.

Fellows picked up the carving knife, grasping the contoured handle firmly with his bloody hand and using the pain to give him the ultimate strength. The high-carbon-steel blade flashed and glistened and lit up the small room. He could see Harriet bouncing on the springs again and making grunting noises through the tape. Destiny turning its black thumb down and giving him the final okay.

The frightened man backed into the wall, flinching as he ran out of space and time. When Fellows raised the knife and moved in, the man took another wild swing but missed. All he hit was air.