Authors: Parnell Hall
He chuckled. “You’re baffled. Well, guess it’s time to introduce myself.”
He reached up, took hold of the silk stocking, and pulled it off his head.
He was older than she’d thought, maybe forty, forty-five. His eyes were slightly sunken, and there were the beginnings of lines on his face. He was paler than she would have expected a man of his athletic build.
He grinned at her, a cocky, mocking grin. “How are you, Cora?”
She blinked. Stared at him. He seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place him.
His smile faded. “Oh, my God. You don’t remember me. I don’t believe it. I meant so little to you, and you meant so much to me. It figures. Egocentric, self-absorbed TV personality. Why should you remember? Just because I helped launch your career.”
Cora was utterly baffled. Launch her career? It was Sherry who’d launched her career—in fact, invented it, made it up out of whole cloth. That was back in the days when she was still drinking, which might explain it, if he were someone she’d met back then. There were lots of men from those days that she wouldn’t remember. He could have been one of them. He’d have been a little young for her, but that never stopped her before. It would make sense if he were someone from that era.
But launch her career?
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes. This is embarrassing. I’ll just have to tell you. I’m Stuart Tanner.”
Cora’s mind was turning backflips. Stuart Tanner? She’d heard the name recently, but in what context? She had no idea. If the scene weren’t so bizarre, maybe she could figure it out. But here, in the middle of the night, with an insane killer taunting her with enigmatic boasts about launching her career …
Cora’s face froze.
Killer.
Oh, my God.
He grinned. “Ah. Finally, the penny drops. I wasn’t talking about your show biz career. I meant your amateur career. I was the first killer you helped the police arrest.”
It all came rushing back to her. The dead girl in the cemetery. The crossword clues. The final confrontation with this very man. The first time she’d helped Chief Harper with a case. Helped put a killer in jail. That was where she’d heard his name. Chief Harper, telling her he’d come up for parole. After only twelve years of a sentence of twenty-five to life. Harper’d assured her he wouldn’t get it. Harper had been wrong. Why hadn’t they alerted him? Why hadn’t they alerted her? What the hell was wrong with the penal system? Letting an insane killer go, who shouldn’t have been let go in the first place, and then not alerting the people he’d have reason to resent, the people he’d want to take revenge on. If she got out of this, the correctional system was going to be sorry.
Cora snorted angrily. What was she thinking, if she got out of this? She was the one with the gun.
“Yes, I know who you are, and I know what I did. I got you arrested once. Now I’m going to get you arrested again.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“Oh, I know so. That’s what’s going to happen. Unless you force me to shoot you. Some people do that, don’t they? Death by cop? I’m not a cop, but it’s the same idea. You put me in a position where I have to kill you. Which is somehow very satisfying to you. Well, to each his own.”
He waved his hand. “Yes, yes, yes. You’re so clever with all your theories. But that’s all they are. Theories. They don’t work in real life. If fact, they’re dead wrong. I’m not trying to get you to kill me. Quite the opposite. I’m going to kill you. Right now, the only thing in question is which way am I going to do it? The short, painless way, or the long, slow, painful way? You’re going to opt for the long, slow, painful way. I know you don’t believe me now, but, trust me, you will. Well, let’s begin, shall we?”
He unzipped his waist bag.
Cora gestured with the gun. “Don’t even think about it.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing for years. Thinking about it. Now I’m going to do it.”
He reached in the bag, pulled out a gun. Small caliber, most likely a .22. From that range, Cora knew, it would be quite effective.
“The first shot is critical. Debilitating, but not fatal. That’s the trick. That and leaving you fully awake.”
He raised the gun, took aim.
Cora couldn’t wait any longer. She pointed the gun at him, point-blank, and pulled the trigger.
The gun went click.
Chapter
44
He smiled. “Isn’t
that the sweetest sound in the world? A hammer clicking on an empty chamber. There’s more of them, if you’d like to try again. I unloaded your gun before I woke you up. Simple precaution. I couldn’t count on you to do the right thing. An impetuous person like you. Couldn’t even wait to see what the right thing was. Anyway, that gun’s not going to do you much good. Unless you want to throw it at me.”
He held up the .22. “On the other hand, this one’s fully loaded. Not that I’m going to shoot you. That is the quick-over-bang solution. That is the first option. That is door number one. If you take the first option, you will be dead. Which will be a personal disappointment to me. But at least I will get the satisfaction of knowing you take your guilt to the grave. What guilt, you might ask? Well, if you chose the short, painless option, I have to shoot you. Shooting you will wake up your niece. And her reporter husband. And that baby of hers. And then I will have to kill them. Even if the gunshot doesn’t wake them, I will have to kill them. Because that’s my promise to you, and I don’t break my promises. So, you will die, knowing you doomed your family.
“But if you cooperate—if you allow yourself to be slowly and painfully executed—you have my word I will leave your family alone.
“So, you can be a hero, or you can be a mewling, whining, pathetic piece of humanity, sacrificing your own family to save yourself pain.”
He smiled. “I’m not sure which I like more.”
“If you hurt my family—”
“It will be entirely your fault. That’s right. Not what you meant, I’m sure. But that’s a particularly empty threat, seeing as how you’re totally in my power.”
Cora was hopelessly torn. Her every instinct was to fight. But could she overpower him? If she couldn’t, she’d be dooming her family. And there was no reason to think she could. He was younger, stronger, he had a gun. What was she going to do? Lunge for him, dodge a bullet, choke him to death? It was the longest of long shots. Would she risk her family on that?
The answer was easy. She couldn’t do it. So what was she going to do? Sit here and be tortured? She couldn’t do that either. She had to stall him, fend off the moment of truth until she thought of something. If she could.
What was she talking about? If she could? She had to.
“I still don’t understand,” Cora said. “What you’ve done makes no sense. Sure, I get the whole revenge bit. But the rest of it defies logic. I mean who was that guy in New York?”
“A very unlucky man. And a very careless one. Do you know how easy it was to open his safe? I closed it and locked it, of course, so it wouldn’t corroborate your story of a robber, but opening it was a snap. One picks up a lot of skills in jail. I should thank you for that. Though I’m not going to. I’m going to kill you instead.”
“You say ‘unlucky.’ Does that mean you chose him at random?”
“I had to stage a crime to set you up.”
“Yeah, but why him?”
“It had to be someone. He filled the bill.”
“How did you choose him?”
Tanner waved the question away impatiently. “That’s not important.”
“Well, what about the town clerk? That made no sense at all.”
“Part of the puzzle.”
“Yeah, but why her? And why break into Town Hall? I’m assuming that was you. What could you possibly hope to accomplish?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you. I wouldn’t want you to think poorly of me.”
“Right,” Cora said sarcastically. “I thought it didn’t matter what I think. Because I’m going to be dead.”
“Good point. Even so, I’d like you to admire my cunning. All right, I’ll tell you. You built an addition on your house.”
Cora blinked. “What?”
He grinned. “Telling you isn’t so bad after all. To see you baffled like that. Well worth it. But that’s the answer. You built an addition on your house. Can you think how that might motivate my actions? You can’t, can you? Well, my little failing doesn’t seem so bad now, does it? I’ll have to spell it out for you. You substantially altered the look of your house. It is now unrecognizable from the road. And the fact is, I forgot your address. I couldn’t find it. And it’s unlisted. Your address, your phone number, everything. From when your niece was hiding out from her husband. Not the reporter, her first husband.”
He shrugged, smiled. “The problem is, I’m a convicted killer. And if I’m gonna kill someone else, I can’t come walking into town and ask where they live. When they put together the killer’s dos and don’ts list, guess which one was near the top? I managed to bundle up so I was almost unrecognizable, drop into Town Hall, and tell the town clerk, whom I had never met, that I was thinking about buying a small house in Bakerhaven with a view toward expanding it, but I was concerned about zoning ordinances, and could she show me any recent additions that had been approved for expansion in the last few years, particularly any ranch house being expanded into a two-family dwelling. I’d have got the address, plus the layout of the house to facilitate the current situation. Knowing all their bedrooms were upstairs, for instance.
“But, no, little Miss Starchy-Bottom parrots rules at me. Of course it’s against the rules, but a human being cuts you a break. Anyway, she wouldn’t budge an inch, so I had to break in and see for myself. Which is what elevated the useless bimbo into the role of Victim Number Two. That and the danger the lamebrain might eventually associate the guy asking about building addition blueprints with the murder.”
Cora frowned. “How is that connected with the murder?”
“Not
his
murder.
Your
murder. When your body turns up in a recently expanded ranch house. It might give her cause to think. Probably not, but hey, I needed a victim anyway.”
“Okay, I understand you harassing me. But why leave a crossword puzzle at Crowley’s house?”
“You and the sergeant had been getting far too cozy. I just had to break you up.” He frowned. “You’re not asking for information. You’re just stalling for time. Well, guess what? You’re out of time. Time to play the game.”
Crowley reached in his waist bag, took out a silencer, and screwed it on the end of the automatic.
“See, I keep my word. As long as you keep yours, this is just between us. If you stop cooperating, I kill your niece. And her husband. And her daughter. I go straight upstairs, bang, over, dead. I disable you so you can’t walk, I pull that phone cord out of the wall, I go upstairs and I kill them all. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“So let’s get on with it. I know what I have to shoot in order to disable you. I just may not be able to hit it.”
Tanner raised the gun, pointed it at Cora.
Crowley stepped in the door and shot him in the back.
Chapter
45
Crowley handcuffed Tanner’s
hands together behind his back, and dumped him unceremoniously facedown on the floor. Tanner never made a sound.
“You shot him,” Cora said.
Crowley shrugged. “You don’t shoot a bad guy now and then, you get rusty.”
“How many bad guys have you shot?”
“All right, you got me. He’s my first one.”
“You were there the whole time?”
“I saw him go in.”
“You couldn’t have stepped in sooner?”
“Why? He seemed like the type of guy who might have confessed.”
“Or shot me in the head.”
Crowley shrugged. “It was touch and go when he picked up your gun. When he dumped out the bullets, I figured him for the chatty sort. And I didn’t want to get him for breaking and entering. Without his confession, that’s all we had. I mean, can I prove he did everything else? I can
infer
it. But unless he’s carrying the murder weapon … And he’s not. We may not have been able to match up the fatal bullet, but it certainly wasn’t a twenty-two. And until he started talking, I had no idea who he was. If I’d known he was an ex-con with a grudge—”
Tanner moaned. Pulled against the cuffs.
“Sounds like he’s coming to,” Cora said.
“Yeah. Wanna hit him with something?”
Cora gave him a look.
Crowley put up his hands. “Sorry. Cop talk, while waiting for the EMS. I keep forgetting you’re a civilian.”
“Among other things,” Cora said.
Crowley shifted his eyes. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but Aaron poked his head in the door.
“Sherry thought she heard a shot.” His eyes widened. “Oh, my God, she did.”
“It’s okay, we got the killer,” Crowley said. “The cops are on the way.”
Aaron blinked bleary eyes at him. “Cora said you weren’t here.”
“That was just a bluff to make the killer overconfident.”
“You shot him?”
“He was going to shoot Cora. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. Go tell your wife it’s okay.”
Aaron went out.
Crowley turned back to Cora. He didn’t seem to know how to begin. He opened his mouth.
There came the sound of tires on gravel in the driveway.
Cora frowned, but Crowley looked like he’d gotten a reprieve from the governor.
“Guess the cops are here,” Cora said.
But it was Barney Nathan.
“You’re early, Barney,” Cora said. “He’s not dead yet.”
“The hospital called me,” Barney said. “Some delay with EMS.” But he couldn’t look at her, and seemed uncomfortable to be there.
In spite of everything, Cora was amused. It was a strange dynamic, her two lovers there together. Barney didn’t have a clue about the situation, but Cora was sure Crowley picked up on it. The doctor was so stiff and formal and self-conscious, there could be only one explanation.
Barney knelt by the prisoner, clung to his task like a lifeline. He popped open his medical bag, took out a surgical scissors, and cut the black turtleneck away. He pressed sterile gauze pads to the wound, stemmed the flow of blood.