Dead Ringer (33 page)

Shit, why couldn’t Wendy have left him the gun? Better question was: Why had he given it to her? What would she have done if he simply refused to give it back? Yeah, he could imagine what she would’ve done.

He checked his watch and then rocked his head left and right, trying to release his tight neck muscles. By now Ruiz should be over in the Georgetown area waiting for the call.

A car approached and slowed. Checking him out? Was it the same one as a few minutes ago? He couldn’t remember. It pulled to the curb across the street from the front of DFH, and the driver cut the lights. Lucas faded into the shadows as best he could and watched. Nothing happened, and it was too dark to see into the car.

He waited.

Nothing.

A few moments later the interior light of the car came on as a woman stepped out of the passenger door. She leaned in, then stood, turned, and walked briskly into a small parking lot to the side of the building. He heard an ignition fire up, then saw headlights come on. A moment later a car pulled out of the parking lot, turned right, and accelerated. The car at the curb started, the drive pulled a U-turn and headed off in the other direction.

The sound of an ignition … He thought about Laura, what it must have been like to turn the key and have your world turn into a fiery explosion. Hopefully her death was instantaneous. One moment here, then oblivion.

That son of a bitch
.

If he couldn’t kill the bastard, he’d destroy him the best way he knew how: by devastating the business that seemed to be Ditto’s life. Then he’d make sure the rest of his life was doled out day by day, year after year, with nothing but a postage stamp–sized cement floor, concrete and steel walls, a stainless steel crapper, a bunk.

The second-floor light of the DFH building went off, leaving only two top floor lights on. Jesus, there was no point waiting any longer. He dialed Ruiz’s cell. He answered immediately. Lucas said, “Go ahead. Call.”

D
ITTO WAS LEANING BACK
on the couch, legs straight out, heels on carpet, stroking himself. The phone rang. The DFH line, rather than his private one, which meant he had to take it and couldn’t let it roll over to voice mail. The good news was that calls at this time of night usually meant business. Business was always good news.

He picked up the TV remote and froze the image of a woman in fishnet stockings giving head to a butt ugly muscle-bound guy with tattooed arms. Had to admit, Baer had good taste in porn. He answered with a simple, “DFH.”

Ninety seconds later, call finished, Ditto disconnected and dialed Gerhard’s extension.

“Hey, got a pickup for you. Some beaner’s mother died, and he doesn’t know what to do with her.” Ditto felt pride at how well his advertising campaign obviously penetrated the regional market. This guy, for example. With an accent like that he was probably a migrant worker, maybe even illegal, which would mean cash. “Got something to write with?”

“Shoot.”

Ditto recited the address, then added, “Oh, I forgot to ask if he wants the ashes. But unless he mentions it, just skip it and get the contract signed. Got that?”

“Affirmative.”

“Good. Call when you get back. I’ll be sure to be up. We can see what kind of condition it’s in. If it’s fresh, we take care of it tonight.”

After disconnecting, he picked up the remote and looked at the girl again before hitting play.
Damn, she’s cute
.

L
UCAS CROUCHED BEHIND A
green Browning-Ferris Dumpster, waiting for the metal garage door to start rolling up. When it did, it made a racket he couldn’t believe. Then a black Suburban climbed the short sloping driveway to the street. Lucas was poised to be on the right side of the vehicle because it’d be harder for the driver to notice him there. The downside, he now realized, was not being able to see who was driving. Could be Ditto. Could be the person on call. Then again, did it matter?

The Suburban’s brake lights flashed as it stopped at the top of the drive.
Shit.
The driver was making sure the door was completely shut.

The metal door reached its apex, remained still for five seconds before starting down with a fresh symphony of metallic screeches.

The door was half closed, leaving Lucas no other option but to risk being seen. Crouching, he scurried down the short
driveway and rolled, clearing the door a second before it clanked shut. But he must have broken a safety beam because the door immediately began to raise again.

Lucas frantically glanced around, saw a black Chrysler and scurried to it as he heard the Suburban’s door open. He crouched between the Chrysler’s trunk and concrete wall and held his breath. He heard the slap of shoes enter the garage and then stop. For several long moments he waited. Then he heard the footsteps move away from the garage entrance, followed by the slam of the Suburban’s door. A moment later the garage door began to lower, probably triggered by a remote inside the vehicle. The door clanged shut. Lucas stole a glance around the rear fender and saw the glow of red taillights through the other side slats of the garage door. For another long moment both the vehicle and Lucas remained frozen. Then the vehicle began accelerating and the taillights vanished.

Only then did Lucas glance at the ceiling for a security camera. Sure enough, one was aimed at the door and probably had covered him as he rolled under. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. Either he’d been noticed or not.

He took a few moments to study his surroundings but didn’t see other obvious security measures. This part of the basement was brightly lit from overhead fluorescents. By its size, he assumed it accounted for maybe a third of the building’s garage space and was obviously used exclusively by DFH. A wall of bare cinder blocks separated this section from the remaining garage. A black Mercedes-Benz was also parked here.

Besides the garage door, the only other exits were a metal fire door immediately to his left and an elevator across from him, probably for transporting bodies. His cell still showed good signal strength so he speed-dialed Ruiz.

“I’m in and he’s on his way,” Lucas whispered, then powered off the phone. Last thing he wanted was for it to ring. Even if he set it to vibrate, it could give away his location.

He checked once more for hidden cameras, thinking he’d put up an obvious one as a decoy but hide the others. Assuming, of course, Ditto was all that security conscious.

Only way to find out was to get moving. Lucas debated whether to use the stairs or elevator and decided on stairs. He looked for something to prop the door open with and noticed a rubber wedge on the floor next to it. After pulling on latex exam gloves, he slipped into the stairwell and used the wedge to hold the door open before he started up a flight of bare concrete steps.

L
UCAS STOPPED ON THE
first-floor landing to listen for sounds from the other side of the door. He realized the door was metal. A mariachi band could be playing on the other side, and he probably couldn’t hear it. He slowly pushed the horizontal door release to see if the door was locked. It opened with no more than a soft click. Leaning in, head cocked, he listened for sounds of approaching footsteps but heard only an eerie silence.

Now in the darkened lobby of DFH, he allowed the door to reseat itself. Rubbing a bit of warmth back into his arms, he waited for his eyes to adapt to the weak light that came in through the windows from the streetlamps. He mentally reconstructed what he’d seen during his brief visit here. Jesus, his fingers were freezing, his heart racing.

It dawned on him that although he hadn’t used force to enter, the criminal charge of breaking and entering might still apply. Officially he was committing a felony. Worse yet, he could imagine himself lying on the floor in congealed blood, Ditto calmly explaining to the police, “It looked like he had a gun, so I fired.”

On second thought, if Ditto caught him, he’d probably just shoot him and send his head in the next shipment to Hong Kong or Berlin or wherever.

Turn around and leave? It’d be easy enough to do.

But he couldn’t go back, not after what he owed Laura and Andy.

By now his eyes were adapted to the weak light, so he headed down the hall to Ditto’s office.

Once inside, he closed and locked the door, angled the blinds shut before turning on the overheads, and settled in at the desk. He wasn’t certain how he knew—maybe from his previous visit, or maybe Wendy had mentioned it—that Ditto used the computer to check the records of the Hong Kong specimens, so that seemed the most logical place to start searching.

The tiny LED at the bottom of the blackened display glowed amber, meaning the system was probably in hibernate mode instead of off. He swiped the mouse, heard a faint screen crackle followed by the hum of the power supply fan. The screen brightened into a standard Windows log-in box.

Shit!

Stunned, he sat in silence. Had he really expected to gain access to Ditto’s records by simply sitting down at the computer?

D
ITTO CHECKED HIS WATCH.
Gerhard should be at the beaner’s place by now. He should’ve asked him to call in a report. Not that it really made any difference. Business was business. But an unusable body would make for a short night. They’d simply throw it in the oven and flip the switch and clean out the ashes in the morning for the bank. On the other hand, a primo body always required a good deal of effort. So, factoring in the time Gerhard needed to load a body and drive back,
they should have things wrapped up by three at the latest. Which might give him four hours sleep before he needed to be up and dressed for the first appointment of the morning.

Either way, something would need to be cremated, so he might as well save a couple minutes by going downstairs to set out the instruments and start warming Old Smokey.

S
HIT, SHIT SHIT!
HOW
could he have not thought of this? Lucas stared at the screen and felt like an idiot. The user name wasn’t the issue. That was already filled in. The password was the problem.

Yeah, sure, he’d heard stories of people cracking machines by guessing passwords, but that meant knowing personal things about the user. Anniversary, dog’s name, birthdays, that type of bullshit. He didn’t know squat about Ditto. Plus, that kind of guesswork took time.