Omega Dog (14 page)

Venn had done this kind of thing in Kosovo, and in practice exercises during his time in the Marines. You sit very still and observe the minutiae of the territory you’re about to enter. Sooner or later, if you’re being lured into a trap, little signs may make themselves visible. A noise, a camouflaged shape distinguishing itself from its backdrop, an unfamiliar odor.

After ten minutes Venn decided there was nothing to note.

In his jacket was his Beretta. He reached into his waistband and took out the Glock that Corcoran had given him, and which he hadn’t had occasion to use yet.

He held it out, grip first, to Beth. She stared at it as if he were offering her a severed hand.

‘You ever fired one of these before?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Any handgun?’

‘No firearms of any kind. As you pointed out earlier, Venn, as a doctor I’ve seen the damage they can do.’

‘They can also save your life.’ He urged it on her. ‘Take it.’

She reached out, touched it, then grasped the grip. It sagged in her hand. Like most novices, she underestimated its weight.

‘Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to,’ he said. ‘But if you do need to, don’t hesitate.’

And try not to shoot me in the ass
, he thought.

Venn got out, unable to keep himself from flinching for a second as he waited for a shot to ring out, a bullet to pierce his chest. But nothing like that happened. He went round to Beth’s door and held it open for her. Uncertainly, she stepped out, the Glock dangling awkwardly from her hand.

‘Put that away,’ he said. She shoved it inside her raincoat, where it sagged rather obviously.

‘Keep close,’ Venn muttered, taking her wrist. She snatched it away.

‘I can walk by myself. Thanks anyway.’

He rolled his eyes, jerked his head. ‘Come on.’

They approached the brownstone at a brisk pace, passing an incurious dogwalker who looked half-asleep. The drapes were drawn in front of the windows, unsurprisingly, and there were no signs of lights on.

Venn climbed the steps, Beth close behind, and stood in the porch examining the heavy oak front door. No signs of forced entry. The windows on either side in front had looked intact, too.

Didn’t mean anything. Dr McNeill could be lying inside, dead, just the same.

Venn turned the doorknob and pushed. The door didn’t budge. That didn’t mean anything either. There could be an intruder in there who’d locked the door after him.

‘What are you going to do?’ Beth said quietly.

Venn tilted his head. ‘Can’t bust in. This door’s too solid. And the noise would just wake the street up.’ He shrugged. ‘Guess it’ll have to be the polite way.’

Gripping the Beretta inside his jacket, he pressed the doorbell.

Somewhere in the depths of the house, an old-fashioned bell chimed.

Venn tensed, listening hard for sounds within. After thirty seconds he pressed the button again.

This time, he heard footsteps approach, the cautious padded sounds of slippered feet. There was no fisheye lens in the door. Venn heard a heavy lock tumbling before the door cracked open on a chain.

A man’s face appeared in shadow, under a tousled mop of graying hair.

‘Yeah?’ His voice was gravelly, Brooklyn. ‘What the hell do you want?’

Venn made an assumption. ‘Mr McNeill?’

‘Who wants to know?’ Through the crack of the door Venn saw the glint of light off steel. He knew he was
supposed
to see it. The guy was armed, and wanted it known.

‘My name is Venn. I’m a detective lieutenant. I need to speak urgently with Dr McNeill.’

‘What? Mister, until you show me some ID, you’re not speaking with anybody. Least of all my wife.’

Venn felt Beth jostle him and push herself forward to the crack in the door. He grabbed her shoulder to pull her back, thinking she was crazy, that the guy might open fore at any moment.

But she shook him off impatiently. ‘Mr McNeill,’ she said. ‘I’m Dr Beth Colby. We haven’t met, but I’m a colleague of your wife’s. We’re currently working on a research project together. I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but it really is important that we speak with her.’

Past Beth, Venn could see confusion and suspiciousness fight for control of the man’s features.

Then a new set of footsteps approached, and from behind the man came a woman’s voice.

‘Beth? What’s going on?’

‘Keep back, Peggy,’ the man said, but she cut him off and crowded past him into the crack. A woman in her fifties, like her husband tousled with sleep.

‘Beth!’ she gasped. ‘You look awful.’

‘Margaret, please hear me out,’ said Beth. ‘You’re in danger. This man, Venn, is helping me. He can help you too.’

Venn saw the woman glance over him. She had that wary look he got from a lot of people.

After a few seconds’ hesitation she said, ‘You’d better come in.’

––––––––

‘U
nbelievable,’ said McNeill.

They were sitting in the living room with the drapes still closed and the lights turned low. Dr McNeill – Margaret, as she insisted on being called – had made coffee for them. She and Beth sat in armchairs. McNeill and Venn were opposite each other on dining room chairs, eyeing one another. Like two males in a dispute over territory, Venn thought.

McNeill still had his Remington shotgun close to hand, on the dining table.

In her armchair, Margaret McNeill gripped her coffee mug in both hands. She was a small woman in her late fifties with a keen, intelligent face. Both she and her husband wore their dressing gowns. Venn saw that she held the mug steady, but her knuckles were white. Her face, though, remained calm.

Beth had told them the whole story, including Venn’s role in it. Venn was impressed by the succinct way she summed it all up, leaving out nothing essential but omitting all unnecessary detail.

All the while, McNeill stared in growing horror. He occasionally glanced across at Venn as though he was responsible for all that had happened. Responsible for including Margaret in all of this.

When Beth had finished, Margaret sat in silence, thinking. Then she said, ‘So you think it’s to do with the Zylurin trial?’

‘Zylurin?’ asked Venn.

‘The compound I was telling you about,’ said Beth. ‘The neurotransmitter enhancer. It’s not commercially available yet, so you won’t have heard the name.’ turning back to Margaret, she said: ‘We don’t know. But it’s possible. It’s the biggest project any of us is working on at the moment.

‘What doesn’t make sense, is why these people, whoever they are, are trying to kill me. We don’t know if Professor Lomax has been killed or not. He’s been missing now for several days, and these people who hired Venn seem to think it’s likely he’s been kidnaped. But if that’s the case, why try to kill the professor’s co-workers? Why not either kidnap us too, or leave us alone?’

‘You said co-
workers
.’ McNeill spoke up in his raspy voice. ‘Plural. You don’t know that. Don’t know that Margaret is being targeted as well. For all we know, these killers are after you for some other, unrelated reason.’

‘Is that a chance you’re willing to take?’ said Venn. ‘Yes, we could just walk away. Leave you and your wife out of this. But if these people come calling, you won’t stand a chance on your own. Not even with that.’ He nodded at the Remington.

McNeill glared at Venn as if he’d just made a derogatory remark about a certain part of his anatomy.

Beth said, ‘Margaret, did you know the Prof was missing?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘No. I had no idea. I last communicated with him...’ She paused to think. ‘Friday? That would be four, five days ago. He emailed me some references I’d asked for. Just a brief, chatty message. Nothing to suggest anything was wrong.’

‘And there’s been no contact from him since? No voicemail messages, anything like that?’

‘No. Nothing.’ She looked across at Venn. ‘I don’t work in the same department as Professor Lomax, you see. Collaborative research is like that. You work alongside somebody but often don’t have contact for days, sometimes weeks. I had no reason to suspect he was missing.’

Venn felt his heart sinking. This was a dead end. Dr McNeill wasn’t going to be able to help them at all.

‘So now what?’ said her husband.

‘Now, we hole up here,’ said Venn.

‘What?’ McNeill sounded as though he genuinely hadn’t understood.

‘If these people are coming for your wife, they’ll be here soon,’ said Venn. ‘I’ll be waiting for them. If I get lucky, I’ll take one of them alive.’

‘How many of them are there?’ asked Margaret. For the first time, she allowed fear to flicker over her face.

‘I don’t know,’ said Venn. ‘We’ve encountered one so far. He’s a professional. An assassin. I don’t know if he’s still alive. His car exploded. But there’ll be others. Especially now that we’ve evaded the first guy twice. It’s upped the ante.’

Margaret looked at her husband, who in turn stared grimly at Venn. 

‘You said you’ll take one of them alive,’ said McNeill. ‘No. Wrong. Any son of a bitch comes through that front door, he gets his head blown off. No questions asked.’

Margaret got up and came back with the coffee pot. As she refilled their ups, she paused.

‘Hang on a minute.’

‘What?’ said Beth.

Margaret gazed off, recollecting. ‘Leonard – Professor Lomax – did once do something I thought was a little odd. He was –
is
– eccentric, as you know, Beth. But this made me wonder for a moment if he wasn’t slightly... well, paranoid.’

‘What?’ This time Venn said it.

‘Around three months ago, when we were meeting to discuss some aspect or other of the Zylurin study which was already underway, he gave me the key to a luggage storage locker near Grand Central Terminal. Said I had to keep it in a safe place.’

‘Huh,’ said her husband. Margaret gave him a quick smile.

‘Don’t worry, Tom. He wasn’t making a pass or anything. It wasn’t a place for us to leave love letters to one another or anything like that. But when I asked him what it was for, he just said that he needed somebody he could trust to be able to access the box if necessary.’

Venn felt the stirrings of hope.

‘Have you still got this key?’ he asked.

Margaret gave him a withering look.

‘Yes, Mr Venn. I promised to keep it safe, and I have done.’ She walked over to a heavy oak bureau against one wall of the room. From a drawer she took out a small metal box. Opening it, she held up a tiny key.

Venn held out his hand. ‘Give it to me.’

Margaret snapped her fist closed around it. ‘No.
I
keep it. I don’t know you.’ She slipped it into the pocket of her dressing gown.

‘We need to check out this locker ASAP,’ said Venn.

He stood, glancing round at the others, considering. A middle-aged couple and a young doctor. They’d be an encumbrance if he dragged them all along back to Manhattan. But he couldn’t very well leave them here alone.

Then he heard it. The sound of a car door, being shut softly.

Venn strode over to the window and tweaked the drapes apart with a finger.

Two figures were walking rapidly toward the stairs leading up to the brownstone’s front door. One female, one male.

Venn recognized them.

He turned.

‘The cops are here.’

––––––––

V
enn herded the three of them toward the corridor leading away from the living room, where they were out of sight of the front windows. As he did so he hissed orders.

‘Beth, get back there. Go upstairs. You two, Mr and Mrs McNeill, answer the door. You’re early risers, you were both up already. You haven’t seen us, you haven’t heard of us. You don’t know anything about Professor Lomax’s disappearance. Just answer their questions and they’ll go away.’

The doorbell chimed, sounding shockingly loud.

‘What are you talking about?’ said McNeill. ‘If these people are cops, we need their help.’

Venn winced, motioning with his hands for McNeill to keep his voice down. ‘They can’t help you,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll just arrest me, take Beth away, and you’ll be left unprotected. The killer or killers will get you for sure then.’

‘The hell with this –’ McNeill started to say.

Venn stepped in close, squaring up to him. McNeill was big, if a little stooped with age. Venn was bigger. He eyeballed the other man, giving him the demonic stare that had reduced some of the most hardened scumbags on Chicago’s streets to quivering wrecks.

‘You tip those two cops off about Beth and me, and I’ll come back and kill you afterwards. That’s a promise.’

‘
Venn!
’ From farther back down the corridor, Beth sounded horrified. Venn nodded at her.

‘I told you to get up those stairs. We haven’t much time.’ To McNeill he said, ‘Hide the shotgun first.’

Venn barged past the McNeills, shoving them none too gently back toward the living room. Shaking his head, McNeill went, Margaret following. 

Venn hustled Beth up the stairs. Beneath the staircase there was a gap. Venn crouched there, and drew the Beretta.

He heard the doorbell chime again, and McNeill bustle to the door, snarling irritably.

‘Yeah?’ came his voice. ‘What do you want at this hour?’

Venn heard the police officers introduce themselves. They asked if Dr Margaret McNeill was home, and explained that she might be in considerable danger. Just as Venn had.

Venn wondered how they’d made the connection between Beth and Dr McNeill. He decided it didn’t matter right now.

He listened to the male cop’s voice, low and gruff, and the woman’s, lighter and more reassuring. They were a good pair, he reflected despite himself. A natural partnership. He suspected they’d make a good interrogation team, too.

The McNeills were holding up well, Venn thought. There was a little fear in Margaret’s voice, as you’d expect from someone who the cops had just told was in danger for her life. And there was surliness, but also alarm, in her husband’s tone. They answered the questions just as Venn had coached them. No, they hadn’t been approached by anybody, or seen anything suspicious. No, Dr McNeill had no idea Professor Lomax was missing.