Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (33 page)

CHAPTER 59.

The Eisenhower Expressway was jammed with cars jammed with people headed downtown, for beers and wienies and fireworks at the beach. My shot right side started its own fireworks early, throbbing as soon as I began working the Jeep's gears. By the time I got to Damen Avenue, the few miles of shifting from first gear to second and back to first again had enraged my side into a full fury. I got off the expressway and pulled over. The bandage around my chest was still dry, but the pain was telling me there were no long-term guarantees.

I started threading north on the side streets, but it was no better. I got stopped at almost every intersection by slow-moving clusters of people toting lawn chairs, blankets, and red coolers that looked like little white-topped coffins. Each time, I patted my shirt, feeling for wet. Each time, I heard Plinnit's voice, “Because you're dumb, Elstrom. You don't know when to give up.”

Several times, I thought I spotted Plinnit's men in the maroon Chevy, trailing me. I tried to find comfort in having such protection, but with the thought came the reminder that someone might still be out there, hunting me.

Either way, it didn't matter for long. Plinnit's men finally disappeared for good into the traffic behind me, and I never did see them again.

I got to the Wilbur Wright at eight o'clock, gave my car key to the valet, and went inside.

The concierge frowned and told me the hotel manager was shut in his office, and no, the concierge didn't know anything about any arrangement to let me into the penthouse elevator. I asked him if he might knock on the manager's door.

“Strange,” the concierge said. “He almost never shuts his door. Let's wait a few moments, then I'll knock.”

Someone else came up then, a hotel guest, and that returned the concierge to grinning. I walked over to the penthouse elevator, wondering if perhaps Plinnit's man had already arrived and had unlocked the door.

I pressed the button. The elevator doors slid open. Plinnit had called and instructed the manager to unlock them. I stepped in and rode up.

The empty, hushed foyer smelled faintly of old sweat. For an insane instant, it sent my mind darting back to Minnesota and the dark of a night behind Darlene Taylor's shack. The man who'd shot me had smelled of old sweat, too. I switched on a small lamp. It made the foyer brighter, but no warmer.

I called out to Plinnit's man. He didn't answer. He might have been down in the lobby, cadging a cup of coffee, or perhaps in with the manager, behind those closed doors.

I wondered if I should go back down to the lobby and try to find the cop. Sweetie's keys were in the hands of a killer; I didn't need to be banging around the penthouse without protection from one of Plinnit's men. Then I realized the cop would have cleared the place, to make sure no one was lurking.

I stepped into the living room, lit only by the sun starting its slow settle into the west. Horns had begun honking on the streets below, drivers caught in the Fourth of July crush, anxious to find a place to park before the fireworks began.

I wanted to hurry, too. I felt like an interloper, an intruder into a space that had settled itself to die. I looked into the darkness down the hall. I was going to only one room, her study. I wanted to look again at her papers and her pictures and her notes, to see if something might trigger a fast thought about where she might have run.

Even if I couldn't find a clue, I wanted a rationalization that I could give myself in the middle of the nights sure to come, that I'd searched absolutely and thoroughly, done every last thing I could to find her and warn her that whoever was coming for her might never give up.

That is, unless she'd been the one doing the killing.

Fifteen minutes was all it would take.

A car alarm went off down below, impatient, blaring eight times before it went silent. I started through the living room, careful to step around the large stain that had dried black in the middle of the room. I switched on a lamp, and another. Fifteen minutes and I could be gone.

Sweetie's study had one small window that faced west. The building next door, taller and sided with flat planes of dark glass, was a monstrous, hulking shape that blocked out everything behind it. I turned on her desk lamp and sat down.

The contents of the file drawers seemed to be in the same disarray as the last time. I pulled out a file, then another, fanning its contents before setting it on the floor. It was all charitable stuff, one folder per charity. Each file included initial request letters, her research notes and Internet investigations, and copies of her letters informing the applicants of her decision, up or down, concerning the possibility of a donation. Sweetie Fairbairn had spent thousands of hours giving hundreds of thousands of dollars away.

At some point, I thought to look at my watch. I'd lost track of the time. A whole hour had passed. I leaned back, to rub the strain from my eyes, and looked again at the calendar thumbtacked to the cheesy corkboard. June had changed to July, but there was no one now who needed to turn the page.

I remembered, then, the postcard that had been tacked next to the calendar. It showed an old covered bridge that had octagonal windows. The postcard was frayed, and riddled with punctures at the top, as though it had been taken down and studied a thousand times.

I'd liked Sweetie Fairbairn for her old postcard, like I'd liked her for her Velveeta, the night she'd brought me into her study. It showed she had roots in soil better than some fool penthouse atop an overpriced boutique hotel.

The postcard was gone. A souvenir hunter could have taken it, a cleaning person or a cop, someone wanting some last thing of Sweetie Fairbairn's.

Something stirred faintly, outside the room.

Then came the smell I'd first noticed when I'd first come in. Old sweat.

I looked toward the hall.

The barest hint of a leg was sticking out from the edge of the doorway.

CHAPTER 60.

I pushed at the arms of the chair to get up. A hundred nails of pain knocked me right back. My right side had gone stiff in the hour I'd been sitting. I rocked myself forward and managed to stand.

What I'd ignored in my haste came clear in an instant.

A set of elevator doors that should have been guarded, because they were unlocked.

A cop, sent by Plinnit, who wasn't in the penthouse.

The faint, lingering smell of old sweat. That smell should have turned me around, sent me right back down in the elevator. Because I'd known that smell. It had been all over me, kicking, in back of a shack in Minnesota.

Now, he'd been heading toward the dark end of the hall. Down toward the emergency door, I hoped.

The foyer; I could get back to the foyer. Press the elevator button, step in, push another button. The doors would close. I'd be safe.

I moved slowly toward the door. One fast low dash past the kitchen, through the living room, and into the foyer, and I would be gone.

The desk lamp behind me went out. As did the glow down the hall, from the lamps I'd turned on in the living room and the foyer. Everything had gone dead.

The power had been cut, by the man who smelled of old sweat. He'd have a gun. Or a knife.

I froze. For an instant, my mind flirted with crazy hope: Surely they'd notice, downstairs. The glossy-headed concierge, or the manager out now from behind his closed door, would realize the power had been cut in the penthouse, and would ride the elevator up to investigate.

My gut twisted: No; they wouldn't notice. Sweetie's penthouse had been dark since she ran. Same old, same old; Sweetie's home was supposed to be dark.

I had to move. I edged into the hallway. To my left was nothing but darkness, down the hall to the back of the penthouse. To my right, through the hall, the living room sofas and chairs were blurred dark shapes backlit by the lights of the city. The man with a gun, or a knife, could be anywhere, left or right.

Red, white, and blue stars flashed outside, lighting up the living room. Car horns went off as another burst shot into the sky.

It had to be now. Hugging my side, I ran through the hall, past the kitchen, through the living room, and into the darkness that was the foyer. I misjudged the distance, slammed into the elevator doors. I found the button, pushed it hard, and turned around to put my back against the door. I'd kick at him if he came.

No sound came. No whine of a motor, no cinching of a cable.

It couldn't be. I turned around, found the button again. Still, no sound.

Elevators were always powered by a separate circuit. Master switches didn't kill elevators; they killed lamps and refrigerators and televisions. Not elevators, not ever.

Unless that damned Duggan, or some other well-meaning security son of a bitch, had installed an override that would cut power to the elevator, a fail-safe to keep people out.

Something I'd never find, not in the dark.

I stabbed at the button again and again. Nothing.

I pulled out my cell phone. I couldn't call the front desk; I didn't know the number.

I could call 911. Except the man who smelled of old sweat would hear, and know exactly where I was. I'd be slashed or shot before the first police vehicle could get anywhere near the Wilbur Wright.

Another burst of fireworks exploded outside, these blue and orange. Chicago Bears colors, I thought to think, grasping for anything but fear.

Emergency stairs. Down the long hall.

Where the bastard had to be.

Unless he was in the kitchen, or one of the bedrooms. Unless he was in the living room, only ten or twenty feet away, waiting for me to make my move.

The blues and the oranges faded and were gone. For one insane second, I wanted to shout into the darkness: There was nothing left, not for him, not for me. All that remained was old files and the dried stain of the last of the guard's life. Her money was gone. There was nothing to take, not anymore.

More fireworks would come, and I needed darkness now. I stepped gingerly out of the foyer, straining for the sound of a breath, the smell of old sweat.

A thousand yellow pinpoints fired in through the windows, lighting me up brighter than a man on fire.

I ran, clutching my side, past the kitchen on my right, the study on my left, toward the blackness at the end of the hallway. Behind me, the yellow pinpoints fell away. Again the hallway went black.

One step, another, and another, each one bringing me closer to the door, and to safety.

Something grabbed my foot, pitching me forward onto something large, bundled, and high. Pain, hot and deep, roiled up from the wound at my side. I reached out to fight the thing on the floor with my good left hand.

I touched fabric—and hair, wet, sticky hair, not moving.

Sweet Jesus, someone else was dead. Plinnit's man, had to be.

I rolled away, fighting the panic, bumped into the wall. Pushing against it, somehow I got myself up. Behind me, a new burst of fireworks exploded through the living room and into the hall, washing everything in red, soft and gauzy.

Ahead, a shape rose from a crouch.

He came low, with incredible speed, and knocked me back down onto the carpet. He had no weight; he was all fingers and long jagged nails, clawing at my skin, frantic to get at my face and neck. Lips, wet huge lips—an animal's lips—parted against the soft flesh under my chin as his teeth fought to bite into my flesh.

He smelled of oil and sweat. He smelled of death.

I pushed up with both arms. He fell back. My side ripped open, stitches tearing loose, wetting the side of my shirt with what was left of my blood.

Someone screamed. It was me.

He came again, a panther, slamming me against the wall with a soft grunt, tearing at me with his animal fingernails, biting my flesh, tasting my blood.

I kicked at the smell of him, and caught him somewhere soft. His breath came out, hot and foul, just above my head. I kicked again. He howled, and dropped onto me. I hugged his head, found a greasy ear, and tugged. He thrashed against me, working his wet jaw to find my skin with his teeth. I folded his ear into my fist, dug in my fingernails, and ripped.

He screamed.

Another starburst, blue and red and white, fired into the hall. In the new light, I saw his eyes, wet and glinting. I knew those wet eyes.

From Hadlow … and from somewhere else.

I squeezed hard at his ear. He bucked and broke free.

The pinpoints of reds, blues, and whites began to melt.

He whimpered; his breathing, ragged, panting, was becoming fainter. He was crawling away. Suddenly, he stopped and, more horribly, started scratching at the floor. In the last light of the reds and the blues and the whites, I saw him. He was clawing at the floor, like a dog.

For what he must have dropped. His gun, or his knife.

My right side was soaked. The stitches had shredded my flesh and torn loose. I'd bleed out, if I didn't get out of there.

The last of the light dissolved. The hall went black.

Somehow I stood. Nothing mattered except getting out of there. I charged the sounds of his gasping lungs and scratching hands. I kicked blindly into the sick feral noises in the dark. My foot caught his underbelly. He howled, but still he scratched at the carpet. He'd kill me when he found it, the gun or the knife. I kicked him again. He grunted, a soft exhalation. Still he kept on, clawing at the carpet.

Fireworks, incredibly happy and purple and white, flashed from behind me, their colors soft on the grease of his hair.

He stopped his insane scratching, and with the agility of an animal, certainly nothing human, he rose. Instead of turning to charge me once again, though, he ran, a twisted wretched mass, toward the back of the penthouse. He hit something solid, there was a bang and then the squeal of unused hinges, and suddenly a long rectangle of yellow light flooded into the hallway. For an instant he teetered upright, a grotesque, misshapen figure frozen in the blinding light. Then he was gone. The door slammed shut. The hallway went dark once again.