Chapter 24
There was no avoiding a trip to the local police precinct house this time. We’d been involved in a shoot-out where three hitmen and three members of the public had died. There were four others seriously wounded and a couple with minor injuries from flying glass. And there was one unconscious killer.
We chose to take our Fifth Amendment right until Walter arrived. The cops weren’t happy, but Walter had us kicked loose under rules governing the arrest and incarceration of active CIA agents. We made nobody any the wiser. As soon as we were off the record, I told the homicide detectives what I knew about our attackers. It wasn’t much. I didn’t mention a possible connection to Wetherby because I wasn’t sure that there was one. Then we went and collected our weapons from where they’d been stored after they were seized as evidence. That raised the anger level tenfold, but there was nothing the cops could say or do at the time.
I seriously pissed off the lead investigator, Lieutenant Jonah Hawke, a big, red-faced detective with twenty years under his belt, when I asked to look at the file concerning the murders at Luke Rickard’s apartment. I actually thought that he was going to swing for me and we had an awkward moment before Walter stepped in and made the request official.
‘I only want a look at the suspect’s face,’ I told the cop.
‘Can’t help you. He’s not on record. He wasn’t the type to keep snapshots either; there were no photographs of him lifted from his apartment.’ Hawke was more than a little smug in the way he announced this. ‘We’ve checked his prints. They’ve come up in connection with a few unsolved crimes, but that’s it. The name Luke Rickard’s bogus. As of now he’s designated as an Unknown Subject. The guy’s a goddamn ghost.’
He will be if I get my way, I thought.
‘What about his physical description? You must have canvassed the other tenants in the building by now.’
Hawke held my gaze steadily. ‘Physical description, huh? I’m looking at it.’
The cop’s words struck me deeply. I was already aware that Rickard had disguised himself in order to set me up, but now I wondered just how far he’d gone in stealing my face. It wasn’t a nice thought considering that there was someone out there who was the total antithesis of me, but who was my identical double. I walked away from Hawke before he noted the shaking of my hands.
Our Chrysler had been abandoned back at the diner when we’d been taken in. We had to grab a taxi to go and collect it, and none of us spoke about what happened on the journey over. Then we went to a hotel room to hook back up with Walter and Bryce. Neither of the CIA men – active or retired – was there yet so we made ourselves busy gathering our own information. Harvey was as good at digging up data as any other person involved.
Up in Maine, the police there were a little ahead of the game. Probably it was because SAC Hubbard was pushing them for answers. Harvey brought up a couple of digital photo-fits formed from descriptions given by Imogen and by the boathouse owner who’d disturbed Rickard. There were subtle differences between both images, but they were enough alike to be the same man. Lieutenant Jonah Hawke was right: Rickard did have a resemblance to me. Slightly darker in the hair and definitely darker in the eye, but there were more similarities than there were disparities. For the purpose of incriminating me, Rickard had gone to a lot of trouble, maybe as far as having cosmetic surgery. It was an uncanny feeling looking at my evil twin.
Rickard was a fucking abomination.
I had been hoping to recognise the man’s face, but not in this way. Part of me had even wondered if Jesus Henao Abadia had risen from the grave and was tormenting me like a vengeful spectre from my past. I’d even wondered about Jack Schilling; I heard he’d killed himself, but I never saw the body. It sounds like a stretch, but Martin Maxwell had faked his own death before going on a rampage as the serial killer Tubal Cain, so I was ready to investigate any angle. But this man was neither Abadia nor Schilling. I’d never seen him before in my life – except for in a mirror.
Harvey pressed buttons on his laptop. He brought up more pictures and then tapped the screen. ‘These two are Jean Shrier and Ben Le Duke. It looks like Wetherby was telling the truth about them. They’re deployed to Hong Kong and Nigeria respectively.’
A simple glance at the men’s mugshots told me that neither of them was the killer calling himself Luke Rickard. To all intents and purposes we were back to square one. Except for one thing.
‘What about his wife?’
I’d no sooner asked the question than Walter and Bryce came in the room. Walter’s bodyguards waited outside in the hall. Maybe they should have followed him in because Walter looked like he’d need their help to aid him in standing, he was so washed out.
He sat down on the edge of one of the twin beds and let out a ragged breath. He glanced over at Bryce, who didn’t look that much better. ‘You don’t know how well off you are. I wish I could spend my days sitting beside a river watching the salmon avoiding my hook.’
‘Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ Bryce grunted. He sat down on the other bed.
‘I take it that things weren’t easy with the cops this time?’ I said.
Walter grunted. ‘There are complaints running all up and down the spout. The chief’s threatening to take this all the way to the governor, to Congress if needs be. Do you think there’s a chance you can keep things a little lower key in future?’ He looked at me, Rink and Harvey in turn.
I spoke for the three of us. ‘Not a chance, Walt.’
He shook his head, laughing softly. It had been a pointless request anyway. I wasn’t the only one who had the feeling that things could get much worse. ‘I can’t blame you guys, I suppose. It wasn’t you who went in and shot up that place with machine pistols. It took a lot of convincing the chief, though. He said they wouldn’t have shot the damn place to pieces if you guys hadn’t been in there in the first place.’
‘He has a point,’ I said.
‘You probably saved a lot of people in there.’
‘Doesn’t make me feel any better.’ People had died: a terrified guy under a table; the young girl hiding behind the cashier’s desk, among others. Their deaths weighed heavily on my soul, regardless of how many others I might have saved. Seemed my life was destined to be filled with
collateral damage
; something that would never sit well with me.
Walter waved me down, then searched his pockets for his cigar. He thumbed the cigar into his mouth and sat staring into space.
‘Haven’t you anything else for us?’ I asked.
‘Only something very strange.’
I shared a glance with Rink.
Walter shook himself. ‘There was another murder across town from where your gunfight took place. Someone was butchered with a knife.’
We were in a huge city with its fair share of crime. Knife crime wasn’t so unfamiliar in Miami – just like anywhere else – but Walter was right: it was too much of a coincidence to be unrelated. Once again I wondered about what had become of Alisha Rickard.
‘Elderly male,’ Walter began, allaying my first fears. But his next words put me right back in the same place again. ‘Knifed to death in the ladies’ restroom. Rickard’s fingerprints were at the scene.’
‘What about his wife?’
‘No sign. Only her shoes were found. It looks like she might’ve crawled out of a window.’
‘She’s running from him?’ So, it seemed that Chisholm and his team had been involved in an extraction when Rickard had killed them. They’d come for the woman and found something much worse than they – and maybe even his wife – had ever anticipated.
‘Looks that way. I’ve got someone over at Chisholm’s office going through his records to see what we can find out.’
‘Who’s looking for the woman?’
‘The police are. But at the moment they’ve more on their plate to worry about.’
I took out my SIG and ejected the depleted magazine. Fed in a full one and racked the slide.
‘I’m going out.’
Walter looked at me. ‘We have work to do here, Hunter.’
I was never that great a detective. Every man in the room was a far better investigator than me. Let them find out who Rickard really was, then point me in the right direction. That’s where my special skills lay. I was more concerned with finding Alisha before her husband did.
‘I’m going out,’ I repeated.
Chapter 25
This corner of Liberty City wasn’t a safe place to hide for someone like Alisha Rickard. It was ironic that Rickard had originally found her in this neighbourhood, but since she’d been with him she’d undergone a major transformation. Now she simply did not fit. For one, her clothing and salon-perfect hairdo picked her out as someone no longer from these parts. Her designer purse, and the probable weight of cash or credit cards she carried within it, marked her as an easy target for any of a number of people willing to take it off her. Then there were the men who watched her with the eyes of pit bull terriers. They thought only two things about her: flesh for the taking or an obvious police set-up. Neither boded well for the young woman.
Except Rickard would not allow anyone to harm her.
She was his alone to hurt.
He’d ditched his car after retrieving his weapons, replaced it with an unremarkable Ford Taurus he’d hotwired, and taken up the hunt for his wayward wife. It was a decision that had come easy to his mind, even if it meant giving up his opportunity to finish Joe Hunter once and for all. When he’d seen Hunter at the diner he’d been momentarily confused: judging by the commotion, Hunter and his two friends had been involved in the gun battle that had torn the place apart. Yet – confused or not – he’d also seen his chance to blast Hunter to death. The only thing that had stopped him was his desire to finish things with Alisha first. The hit on Hunter was professional, about the money, but Alisha’s betrayal had stung him where it really hurt: his ego. Hunter had been taken into custody by the cops arriving at the scene, but not in the manner befitting a suspected cop-killer. So had the big plan been a waste of time as he’d suspected? Rickard was optimistic enough to think that Hunter would be free within hours and another opening would present itself to take him out. So, straightening things with Alisha came first.
A quick check of the area behind the strip mall showed that Alisha had only one feasible escape route. He found the window where she’d crawled out of the restroom in a service alley that was blocked at one end by a large steel fence, beyond which construction of another building was taking place. The fence hadn’t been breached. Even if there had been a way through, the land beyond was full of trenches and semi-erected foundations from which jutted steel wires: unwelcoming terrain for a barefoot young woman. She had to have left the alleyway the same way in which he’d entered. He backtracked, searched for dusty footprints on the pavement and saw a couple of fresh scuffs next to a public telephone kiosk. A quick glance inside the booth showed a prominently displayed notice advertising a local taxicab company. Rickard dropped quarters into the slot, hit the redial button and asked for a cab.
A few minutes later his driver arrived. Rickard made enquiries with the driver, money changed hands and Rickard knew where Alisha had headed to. He thanked the driver, then shot him in the nape of the neck. After taking back the cash he’d handed over, he quickly left the area, found the Taurus and took up the chase.
And now here he was in Liberty City, a suburb of Miami, watching from a distance as Alisha limped towards a house on a street where gangstas stood brazenly on a wooden porch watching for police spies. Alisha passed them with her head down, ignoring the remarks made by the men who added colour to their comments by way of actions. She knocked on the front door.
From his hiding place Rickard watched two men in baggy jeans, training shoes and white vests push in either side of her. Both men were fit and lithe and their muscular arms were covered in gang tattoos. One of them had a handgun jammed down the front of his jeans. The other held a pistol in his hand and he pushed it into Alisha’s stomach. Rickard wasn’t worried that the man was going to shoot; it was all just part of the macho bullshit these idiots enjoyed. He saw Alisha’s chin come up and she must have said something harsh, because the gunman stepped away, raising his arms. The second man stopped pawing her at much the same instant. Rickard nodded to himself.
Rickard knew now why she’d come here. The return of the prodigal girlfriend.
Although he did not like to think that other men had been with her before him, he’d once made her tell him about her past boyfriends. She had resisted, but only until he’d twisted her hair and demanded to know the truth. She’d listed a couple of high-school boys who he had no interest in, then a guy who’d been more into computer games than he was into her. She’d mentioned in passing a man who’d picked her up in a bar who she dumped very quickly when it turned out he was a local cocaine supplier. Rickard had watched her as she’d talked about the young thug and she couldn’t disguise the lie. Then she’d moved on to more recent men, one night stands who were up for having a hot girl on their arm but not for a meaningful relationship. The one that had stuck in his head was the only other person who could be described in the same bad-boy mould as he: the cocaine dealer from Liberty City. Rickard had considered paying this man a visit – putting him out of Alisha’s thoughts for good – but hadn’t got round to it yet.