Sue drew her knife from her backpack and showed it to him, knowing the exact moment he realized his plight. The lecherous look in his eyes became stark terror.
She laughed, unable to contain the rush of sheer joy, then flipped the TV on to a noisy channel. “Let’s have a heart-to-heart, Fred.” She sat on the bed and unbuckled his belt. “You know, you used to make us do this, back at Hillsboro.” She pulled the belt from his pants. “Unbuckle your belt, that is. I figured that in some sick way you were able to convince yourself that if we unbuckled you, unsnapped you”—she unsnapped and unzipped him—“and unzipped you that somehow that made this a consensual act. Well, today you’ll be happy to know I consent at last.” She slid the knife down his pants, cutting the fabric from his body. “I guess you don’t.” He was bucking like a bronco, trying to get away.
Fucking moron. He couldn’t get away. “Hold still, Fred. You wouldn’t want to lose anything important there, now would you?” He stopped the frantic bucking as if he’d been unplugged. “Didn’t think so. Of course you’re going to anyway. But business before pleasure.” On the nightstand she put the cooler she’d bought especially for this purpose. “I need your fingers, Fred. Don’t worry, it’s for a really good cause.” His eyes widened and he pulled his hands, but went nowhere of course. Sue grabbed his first finger and sliced it off. His howl of pain was twice muffled, once by the socks in his mouth and again by the noise of the TV. Focused on her task, Sue repeated the action nine more times, until Fred lay quivering and shaking and moaning and crying.
And bleeding. He was doing a hell of a lot of bleeding. Sue dropped the severed digits in a plastic bag, and put the bag in the cooler. The fingers would be a nice incentive for the Vaughns to do her bidding. What parent wouldn’t pay to keep a similar fate from happening to their kid? It was bloody brilliant, if she did say so herself.
She had to hurry though, because Fred was going into shock and she didn’t want him to miss the final cut. So to speak. “That was business, Fred.” He just looked at her, his eyes dull with pain. “Now for pleasure. You’ve had your pleasure. Ninety-eight times over ten years according to my count. That includes last Friday, of course. Now it’s my turn, Fred.” She took his flaccid cock in her hand, sliced, and was rewarded by a low moan. She looked at his member with disdain. And tossed it in the garbage.
With care she showered and cleaned the bathroom, making sure she wiped every surface clean. She dressed, watching him lie there on the bloody bed, still. But not dead. She put a bullet through his skull. Now he was dead.
Gathering the cooler, her backpack, and his wallet, she stopped for one last look back. Then turned off the TV, hung the DO NOT DISTURB card on the doorknob, and drove Fred’s car back into the city. She’d had a productive morning, all in all. Opening the bank accounts, sending another e-mail to the Vaughns. Picking up Fred’s quarter kilo before whacking his various appendages. She was tired, but she still had one more stop to make.
She had a package that absolutely, positively had to get to Wight’s Landing overnight. Next stop, FedEx, then back to the shelter before Dupinsky’s doctor arrived to examine Erik. Dr. Lee was due to arrive at three, Scarface had told her before she’d left this morning, want ads in hand. Sue might even have time for a nap before he got there.
Chicago, Tuesday, August 3, 1:30 P.M.
Detective Mia Mitchell looked up when a shadow fell over the dead woman’s body. From her position on one knee she had to look pretty far up. Her partner was a big man. “Gunshot wound to the head, just behind the ear, Abe. Exit wound at the temple. Her purse is gone, no ID. Based on the scrubs, I say she’s a nurse.”
Abe Reagan crouched down, his eyes sharp, his hands gloved just as hers were. “Pediatric,” he said. “Winnie the Pooh scrubs.” He looked up. “The nurse in Kara’s pediatrician’s office wears the same ones.”
Kara was Abe’s seven-month-old daughter. “Do you know this nurse?”
“Nope.” He shot a glance over to the guy from the ME’s office who was waiting with the body bag. “How long has she been here?”
“Not more than seven or eight hours,” the ME said. “You ready for me to take her?”
“In another minute or two.” She pulled out her cell, dialed missing persons, and in a minute they had their answer. “She’s Kristie Sikorski,” she told Abe. “Husband reported her missing this morning when she didn’t come home from work.” She slid her phone in her pocket. “He’ll meet us as soon as his parents arrive to watch their three kids.”
Abe was examining her hands. “No sign of a fight here.”
“No, but there are cuts on her face where it looks like she got smashed against this wall.”
“She’s still wearing her diamond ring.”
Mia frowned. “I saw that. Whoever mugged her took her wallet, but left her jewelry.”
Abe stood up, brushed at his slacks. “I don’t know that it’s a mugging. I’ve seen a lot of execution-style murders that look just like this.”
From his days as an undercover narcotics cop, Mia knew. “Well, let’s go talk to the husband. Maybe he can help us out.”
Chicago, Tuesday, August 3, 1:30 P.M.
Ethan flopped into his car seat and jacked up the AC. Nothing. Six hours of combing every shop and alley in a one-mile radius around yesterday’s copy store had turned up absofuckinlutely nothing. No one had seen her. He’d hit a dead end and had nowhere else to go. Not until she chose to contact them again. They were at her mercy. So was Alec.
He groaned when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It couldn’t be good news.
“Another e-mail,” Clay said tightly.
Ethan pulled the car into traffic. “I’m on my way back to the hotel. What did it say?”
“She wants a good faith deposit of twenty-five grand by tomorrow noon. It’s an offshore account. We have the number.”
“Then that’s all we have. I don’t have anything from my search today.”
“Hell,” Clay grumbled. “But I do have other news on that slug we pulled out of the wall. There weren’t any matches locally, but my old pal has a pal at the Bureau and they ran a trace. It matches a slug pulled from an elderly woman shot during a home burglary in Florida about six weeks ago.”
Ethan rubbed his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know,” Clay said. “But guns change hands. There may be no connection.”
Ethan sighed. “I’m so damn tired of having no connections. I’ll call you when I get to the hotel.”
Chicago, Tuesday, August 3, 2:35 P.M.
Dupinsky would be next. That’s all Sue could think when she walked back to Hanover House and saw a strange car parked in the alley with a pile of mail on the front passenger seat identifying the driver as Dr. George Lee. He wasn’t supposed to be here until three o’clock. But he was early and Sue had no doubt about how or why.
Dupinsky. Meddling bitch. Calling the doctor in early to check the kid when she’d explicitly told them not to. When this was over, Dupinsky would pay. Getting Caroline out of the way had been business. Teaching Dupinsky not to meddle would be purely personal. The scent of Fred’s blood was still in her nostrils and for a moment she allowed herself to entertain fantasies of Dupinsky tied and gagged and bleeding. Gagging her would be the only way to get the damn woman to shut up. But for now she had bigger problems. Even now the good doctor could be discovering that little Erik had no bruises. No signs of physical abuse. Oh, the good doctor would be discovering all kinds of things about Erik if she didn’t stop him.
Sue crept around to the back and slipped in the kitchen door which only Dupinsky remembered to lock. And there was the doctor examining Erik. Evie and Dupinsky were nowhere to be seen. Somebody’s kid was wailing to beat all hell upstairs, so Sue bet Evie was up there, too. Dupinsky was probably still at the hospital with darling Caroline.
Dr. George Lee was a small man. No more than five feet six. Perhaps a hundred thirty pounds. He was very old, at least seventy. She could take him down. Easily.
Her gun drawn, Sue cleared her throat. The doctor looked up and in an instant she could tell he’d accurately evaluated the situation. Slowly he pulled his stethoscope from his ears. “You must be Jane.”
She smiled. “Let’s go, Doc,” she said. “Get your bag.”
“I could scream.”
“And I’d kill you and the kid and be gone before anybody came.” She held the pistol at an angle. “Nice silencer. It really does the job. Now come, before I finish the kid off.”
Lee looked down at the boy. “You’ve been poisoning this child. Starving him.”
“Oh, just a little.” She took a step closer and grabbed the doctor by his shirtfront and placed the pistol at the boy’s temple. From the corner of her eye she watched the kid’s eyes go glassy with terror in his thin face. “I have killed six people this week, Dr. Lee. Unless you want the kid to be number seven, you will move. Now.”
His hands shaking, the doctor took his bag. “I’m going. You won’t—”
“Get away with it, I know, I know. That’s what everybody says. Wait. On second thought, take a letter, Doc. Right there on your little notepad.” With his hands shaking badly, he picked up his pen. “Smart man. Write that you got an emergency call and you had to go. That the boy is just suffering from post-traumatic stress. Write it.” He started to scrawl, his handwriting barely legible. “Did you bring the kid’s epilepsy medication?”
The doctor drew in a breath. “I did.”
“Then put it on top of the note. Now move.” She moved the end of the silencer to the good doctor’s temple as he shuffled to the door, then paused and looked the kid straight in the eye. Performed the three signs she’d learned from the American Sign Language book she’d perused in the bookstore that doubled as an Internet café that morning. She could send his parents a ransom note and learn how to threaten their kid all under one roof. And drink a damn good double mocha latte while she did it. Talk about one-stop shopping. Mom . . . will . . . die.
The kid went pale and she figured she’d done the signs well enough.
She walked the good doctor to his car, urged him to take the wheel, checked the address on his mail, and forced him to drive a few blocks from his home, then had him pull into an alley where she forced him out and up against the wall. She took his wallet, his car keys, and on a lark pulled his spectacles from his face. Then she turned him around to face the wall and shot him in the back of the head. Kicked at his bag until it opened and dumped the contents on the ground. Picked up the few bottles of medicine he carried. It would look like a drug-motivated theft. All too common, she imagined.
In an hour or so she’d return to the shelter, seemingly exhausted from her job search. She was, actually. Exhausted. She hadn’t had such a busy day since she’d taken the kid.
Chicago, Tuesday, August 3, 5:15 P.M.
“I hate identifications,” Mia muttered, leaning against the morgue’s viewing window. Her eyes stung and she rubbed them hard. “They never get any easier.”
Abe sighed, his shoulders hunched. “I need to go home and kiss my wife and play with my baby.” He cast a glance down at Sikorski’s young husband, who sat on a bench alone, his head in his hands, quietly weeping. “I’ll make sure he gets home all right. You go home, too, understand?”
“I will. I promise,” she insisted when he shot her a disbelieving look. “I’ve got a date tonight, so there’s no way I’m sticking around to do paperwork.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I just need a few minutes, though.”
Abe squeezed her shoulder. “Have fun on your date.”
She forced a grin. “He’s a fireman. How could I not?” She watched him walk away, help Mr. Sikorski to his feet, and support him as the two men walked away from the morgue. From Kristie Sikorski’s lifeless body. Three little girls didn’t have a mommy anymore and it was Mia’s job to make somebody pay.
Some days, though, it was just too much. Too much suffering and grief. There was a tapping on the glass behind her and Mia jumped and spun, startled. Then scowled at Julia VanderBeck, the ME, who stood looking at her through the window with a perplexed frown. Julia motioned her to come inside the morgue, and biting her lip, Mia obeyed.
“Did Abe go home?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because I have something I wanted the two of you to see,” Julia said, leading her past Sikorski’s body to another sheet-covered body. “This guy came in a half hour ago. He was found in an alley.”
The hairs rose on the back of Mia’s neck. “Nine mil to the head?”
“Yeah. You know the silencer pattern I showed you on Sikorski’s skull? The way the skin ripples away from the entrance wound?” She pulled the sheet back, exposing an elderly Asian man. “Same pattern, same place. I lay you odds that ballistics will say it was the same gun.”
Mia flipped the toe tag and frowned. There was something familiar about him. “Lee.”
“Dr. George Lee,” Julia said. “His wallet was gone, but he has a Medic Alert bracelet.”
Mia let the toe tag drop. “Oh, hell. I know this man. He does pro bono work for a friend of mine that manages a shelter.” She looked at Lee, trying to put the pieces together. “This is the second person that works with my friend to be assaulted in two days.”
“Too much coincidence,” Julia murmured. “Was the other person shot?”
“No, vehicular. Hit-and-run. You remember Lillian Goodman, the domestic DOA from last week?”
Julia grimaced. “Not one I’ll soon forget. These are all related?”
“Maybe. But Sikorski’s shooting doesn’t make a bit of sense. Damn, I’ll have to tell Dana about Dr. Lee. This is going to kill her.”
Chicago, Tuesday, August 3, 6:00 P.M.
“Dana. Dana, wake up.”
Dana came awake with a start, scrambled to sit up, staring at her hands. There’d been so much blood. Everywhere. Blood on her hands. God. But her hands were clean and Max Hunter was staring down at her with compassion. He was one of the few that knew the content of her dreams. Still stunned, she stared back up at him.
Max squeezed her upper arm. “Caroline’s fine, but you were dreaming.” Translated, she was saying things in her sleep she wouldn’t want others to hear. “It’s dinnertime.”
She checked her watch and yelped. “It’s six o’clock.” Ethan said he’d call about dinner. All the thoughts were starting to reassemble in her mind. From her pocket she pulled the small cell phone and pushed buttons until she reached the call log. He hadn’t called. Disappointment swamped. But he had said he didn’t know when he’d be free.