Omega Dog (11 page)

As the Corolla slipped into line, the girl spoke. Her voice startled Venn after the prolonged silence.

‘Before you kill me, at least tell me why.’

Her tone was flat, without fear.

Venn kept his eyes on the road. ‘If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d have done it back there.’

She said nothing to that.

He went on: ‘It probably escaped your notice, but I was protecting you back there. Both times. From the guy in the car, and before that, when he tried to shoot you on the fire escape.’

A long silence followed again. Then she said, ‘Why did you take me prisoner? Away from those detectives?’

‘If I hadn’t, you’d be dead now. The cops wouldn’t have reacted as quickly as I did. If you’d stayed with them, that guy would’ve gone by in his car and taken you out before any of you knew what hit you.’ Venn braked as the lights came on at the rear of the car in front. He forced himself to relax a little. He knew he was jumpy.

‘Plus,’ he continued, ‘you can’t trust those cops. You can’t trust anyone.’

‘Just you.’ There wasn’t any mockery in her voice. Venn responded in the same spirit.

‘That’s right. Just me.’

Somebody had stalled up ahead and the cars were having to slow. Venn didn’t like it. He felt shut in.

To distract himself he said, ‘Do you have any idea why anybody would want to kill you?’

She turned her face to him. He glanced across, and saw that she looked faintly surprised.

‘I assumed you would know,’ she said.

Venn shook his head. ‘No clue. I don’t even really know anything about you, except that you’re Dr Elizabeth Colby.’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Joe Venn.’ He left it at that.

They emerged on the Jersey City side. It was still hours before dawn, but Venn fancied he could see a reddish lightening in the sky over to the east.

He drove apparently aimlessly through the empty streets. Colby said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere we can get coffee, and talk.’

At last he spotted an all-night diner near a silent industrial plant of some kind. Venn pulled over, got out and once again opened the door for the woman.

When she stayed put, he jerked his head.

‘Come on. Out.’

He didn’t show her his gun. He didn’t particularly want to threaten her. Besides, she’d be well aware he had it in his pocket.

The diner was empty apart from a waitress with a tired but friendly smile, and two solitary men who looked like construction workers, each nursing early breakfasts with their heads buried in newspapers. Venn found a booth near the back, and took the seat facing the door.

The waitress ambled over. Venn ordered black coffee for the both of them, without asking Colby. Also eggs, bacon, tomatoes and hash browns.

Dr Colby raised a hand. ‘No. I don’t want –’

‘Shh.’ Venn nodded at the waitress and she went to fill the order.

To Colby, Venn said: ‘You need to eat. Whether you’re hungry or not. Protein, carbs. You’re in deficit after everything that’s happened, and you’re going to need a lot of energy for the foreseeable future.’

Her hands began to shake, then. She clasped them together but it didn’t make any difference. The tremor spread to her shoulders. She bowed her head, and through the tangle of hair hanging down over her face, Venn could see her features contorted. Long, barely controlled sobs began to wrack her body.

Venn watched her for thirty seconds, letting the delayed reaction take its course. Then he laid a gentle hand on her forearm. She jerked away, then relaxed. He left his hand there lightly.

‘It’s a hell of a lot to take in,’ he said quietly. ‘A
hell
of a lot. Better that you face it now, than go to pieces later when you need to have your wits about you.’

He handed her a fistful of paper napkins from a dispenser on the table. She took them gratefully, dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose.

The waitress came back with the order. She gave Dr Colby a pained, sympathetic smile.

Lover’s tiff
, Venn could see her thinking.

He attacked his food, realizing suddenly that he was starving. He nudged her plate toward her but she ignored it. Just sat there shredding a paper napkin in her fingers.

Without warning she lifted her head and said, ‘You’re on the run from the law.’

‘We both are, now,’ Venn said. ‘Technically.’

‘No. I mean... before this. You’ve got that tag on your ankle.’

‘You’re very observant.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘In a manner of speaking, you’re right. On the other hand, I
am
the law. Kind of.’

She peered at him through swollen eyes, as if trying to decide if he was insane as well as intimidating.

‘It’s something to do with Professor Lomax, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘When I phoned his home tonight...
you
were the one who answered.’

‘Yes,’ said Venn.

And he began to explain.

––––––––

‘G
od
dammit
!’ Gomez punched the brickwork of the nearest wall.

Shelly Anderson was surprised. Despite his gruff demeanor, she’d never seen her partner lose his cool like this before.

Around them the street brimmed with civilians, swarming around out of curiosity or simple fear. Gunfire in this Upper West Side neighborhood wasn’t common, nor did cars tend to explode. Already the uniformed cops were cordoning the street off, controlling the crowds.

But for Anderson and Gomez it was too late. Their charge, Dr Colby, and the man who’d abducted her, were both gone. Swallowed up in the crowd, and probably several blocks away in a boosted car by now.

Shelly was the first to act, hurrying back to their car and getting on the radio. She requested an APB on the fugitives. One woman in her late twenties. The other a man in his thirties.

Tough-looking. Maybe ex-military.

Armed and highly dangerous.

Gomez was at the burning wreck of the car when Shelly got back. His face was sheened with sweat, and she knew it wasn’t just from the heat.

‘You okay?’ she said.

He puffed out his cheeks. ‘What the hell was all that about?’

‘God knows.’

A little distance away from the wreck, a couple of uniforms squatted by the man who’d leaped from the vehicle just before it had gone up. The man who’d driven up in the car, and with whom they’d exchanged gunfire. Shelly and Gomez hurried over.

The man’s features were hard to make out, blackened as they were by smoke. His eyes had rolled up in his head, but he was breathing, his limbs twitching faintly.

One of the uniformed cops had his gun out, and was touching the barrel to the injured man’s chin.

‘Officer,’ said Shelly, her tone warning.

The cop looked round. His face was twisted with hate.

‘He shot Lou Harris,’ he said. ‘The cop-killing son of a bitch.’

Gomez turned away, muttering, ‘Ah, God.’

Shelly glanced over toward her car, where several of the uniformed cops had emerged from the lobby of the apartment block when the shooting had started. One of them had been hit. She saw several others huddled around his body, trying to do some half-assed form of CPR.

To the cop with the gun, Shelly said: ‘He might not be dead.’

‘Sure, he’s dead,’ the cop snarled. ‘Shot damn near took his head off.’

The first of the ambulances arrived in a scream of tires and sirens. The cops directed it toward their fallen comrade. As the paramedics began to pour out, Shelly beckoned one of them over.

To the cop pointing the gun at the wounded man’s face, she said, ‘Look. I sympathize. I’d like to see this asshole with a bullet through his head too. But we need him alive. We need to find out from him what the hell this is all about. So don’t do it, okay? Put the gun down.’

For a moment, she thought he was going to ignore her and pull the trigger. End the captive’s life, and end his own career at the same time. But at last he holstered his piece, muttering.

The paramedic arrived and shouldered the cops out the way. He bent to the injured man, giving him a once-over, checking his vitals.

‘Well, he’s not hit as far as I can see,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘No hemorrhage. But he’s out for the count.’ He yelled over to one of his colleagues in a second ambulance that had just pulled up.

Shelly and Gomez stood back, watching, as the EMTs loaded the guy onto a gurney and trundled him toward the open rear doors of the ambulance.

The cop who’d pointed the gun at him stepped forward. ‘I’m riding with him,’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ asshole tries anything, he’s dead.’

Another uniform joined him. Shelly and her partner watched the ambulance as it tore away, its lights washing across them.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Gomez said.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Those guys were fighting each other.’

‘I know.’

Shelly couldn’t figure it out, either. The man who’d snatched the woman, Beth, from them, the military-looking tough guy, had been kidnaping her. That was what it looked like.

The other guy, the one in the car, had been trying to kill her.

‘Knew we should’ve left her at the station,’ Shelly sighed.

Gomez gave her a sour look.

They headed toward their Crown Vic. It was shot up a little, not much. Not enough to stop the engine from turning over.

There’d be a rainforest’s worth of paperwork to complete on this little episode, Shelly though glumly, as she pulled away, Gomez in the passenger seat. But not yet.

First, they needed to get to the hospital to be there when their prisoner woke up.

––––––––

I
n the end, Beth did make an effort to eat something. Mainly because it gave her a reason not to look at the man opposite her while he spoke.

There was nothing inherently frightening about his appearance, she realized. He was a big man, tall and broad in the shoulder. His black leather jacket, jeans and cropped hair gave him a faintly thuggish air, and his face was grim. But it was a normal enough face, nonetheless. Everything was where it should be, in any case.

His
eyes
, though. They were scary. So dark they were almost black, Beth found them unreadable. Found that by gazing into them, she could discern nothing of what was going on behind them. She hadn’t met many people like that before.

Beth found it deeply unsettling.

She had to admit, despite her initial revulsion at the thought of food, the meal was helping. She felt a little strength returning to her limbs, a degree of clarity appearing in her thoughts once more.

Not that any of what had happened made any sense, though.

And his story wasn’t much more comprehensible.

He told her very little about his background. Just that he was an ex-cop, and now some kind of private investigator here in New York. He’d been framed just last night for murder, and some sort of mysterious government agent had offered him the chance to redeem himself by finding Professor Lomax.

And had tagged his leg.

Beth had spotted the tag when she’d been flung to the pavement, after the car had come speeding round the corner and the driver had opened fire on her and Venn. Even in her dazed, shocked condition, she’d taken in the metallic band round the man’s ankle as his trouser leg had ridden up when he’d leaped up onto the car’s hood. She was a doctor, and she was trained to notice details.

The leg tag marked him out as a criminal.

So did the fact that he’d taken her prisoner.

And stolen not one but
two
cars, from blameless people, in the past hour.

As if reading her mind, Venn put down his coffee cup – he was on his third or fourth refill – and said, ‘If I hadn’t taken those cars, you’d be dead now.’

When Beth didn’t answer, he said, ‘I’ve memorized the license plates of those two cars. When this is over, I’ll find the owners. Recompense them.’

The disbelief must have shown in her face, because he held her gaze for just a second before rolling his eyes.

‘Jesus.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t expect thanks,’ he said gruffly. ‘You learn as a Marine and as a cop that nobody will ever thank you. It comes with the territory. You man up, and you suck it up. I saved your life tonight, not once but
twice.
But I don’t expect thanks.’

‘So?’ Beth noted the reference to the Marines. Interesting. He hadn’t said anything before. ‘I sense a
but
there.’

He nodded in acknowledgement. ‘
But
, it’s this nitpicking I can’t stand. This fussiness over something as trivial as a stolen car. When I’ve just saved your life.’

‘Saved my life? Maybe,’ Beth said, the words coming out in a rush. ‘But you also kidnapped me from the cops at gunpoint.’

Even as she spoke, she realized she was being unfair. But suddenly she didn’t care. It had all become too much for her. The news of her friend Luisa’s death, then the attacks in her apartment and out on the street, all on the back of a thirty-hour shift at the hospital. Her nerves were frayed, the tension taut as a bowstring in her.

Suddenly she wanted to be away from this city. Away from the death and violence and terror.

Away from this frightening, intense man sitting opposite her, whom she associated with danger.

Again it was as if Venn had read her thoughts. ‘You’d never make it,’ he said, staring into her eyes.

‘What’s that?’

‘Never make it on your own,’ he went on. ‘Sure, you can take a hike. I won’t stop you. To be honest, your snotty attitude is getting a little tiring. But they’ll find you. Gun you down as soon as look at you. You won’t stand a chance. These people are professionals.’

‘They haven’t managed yet.’

‘We got lucky,’ he said. ‘Plus, you had me with you. If I hadn’t been there you’d be on a morgue slab right now with a couple of 9 mm slugs in your head. You’re a doctor. You must have seen what those things do to a human cranium.’ And he stabbed the prongs of his fork into a plum tomato on his plate, bursting it in a spray of juice and seeds.

Her appetite gone again, Beth put down her own fork. ‘So why are you helping me?’ she said, unwilling to give in and make nice. ‘What’s in it for you? If I’m a target, and such a liability, why don’t you just cut me loose?’