Target (34 page)

“P
ut your head on your knees.”

Aurelie breathed through her mouth. The sky grew lighter. Vic had driven so fast she had started to pray the police would chase the truck down, or even that they would have an accident.

“Put your head on your knees and your arms behind your back.”

She looked at him, then looked behind, searching for the Honda.

“Face the fucking front, bitch!”

Aurelie faced forward. Ahead was a sign for the turn onto 580. The miles shot beneath the wheels. Soon they would head north again and after that, across the Bay Bridge.

“Just let me out,” she said, and folded her arms. She leaned against the seat. “I'm not afraid of you. I don't have to do anything you tell me to do. Pull over to the side and let me out. You'll get away and I won't be able to do anything about it.”

He laughed. “You'd like that.” He grabbed her behind the neck and slammed her face down on her knees. They must both have heard the crack as her nose hit because he said, “Owie. That's going to hurt.”

It already did and when she moved her face a little she saw blood. “Bastard,” she muttered.

He reached behind her, held her right wrist and jerked it behind her and up her back until she screamed.

“Still not afraid of me?”

“Stop it. You'll break my arm.” Unbelievable pain and throbbing heaviness radiated from her shoulder.

“You can put your other hand behind you or I'll do it for you,” he said, his voice flat, completely without expression. “She sent you after me, didn't she?”

Aurelie put her other hand behind her. She knew he meant Joan. “We came because we found out about you. About your history. And what you've been doing in Pointe Judah.”

Seconds passed before he said, “What have I been doing in Pointe Judah, other than taking photographs? That's my job.”

She should have kept her mouth shut.

“I'm going to throw up,” she said and made retching sounds.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Knock yourself out. What am I supposed to have done?”

“Stop the car!” Aurelie shouted. “Let me out.” She moved her arms.

A blow smashed into the base of her skull. She heard the thud and felt black agony melt her mind.

 

Nick settled in behind the truck. He couldn't let anything get between the two vehicles, not again. If there was a way to force Vic off the road, Nick would do it.

He flipped open his cell phone and, with difficulty, dialed 911.

A dispatcher answered and Nick said, “Take down this license plate number. You've got to stop the vehicle. There's a hostage.” He shook his head while the woman on the other end asked for his name and location. “Just take down this number. The vehicle is going toward the Bay Bridge and San Francisco—”

“What kind of emergency is this, sir?”

He lowered his head to peer through the truck canopy to the cab. Vic's head and shoulders were visible. Only the top of Aurelie's head had been visible…He couldn't see her at all.

“You shouldn't have come, damn it!” He pounded the wheel with a fist, then tried to move toward the center of the road. If he could, he'd sideswipe the pickup. A massive truck, headlights flashing, horn blaring, headed for him and Nick pulled quickly back.

The dispatcher asked another question but Nick didn't listen. He closed the phone and threw it on the passenger seat.

The pickup rode in the fast lane. Moving streams jammed the other lanes. Nick followed as close as he dared, to the bridge.

Traffic on the Bay Bridge thundered. Rush hour lasted most of the day but at this time of the morning it resembled an inbound tsunami of metal and mankind.

Once over the bridge, the pickup shot off the Freemont exit and Nick followed on Market Street, keeping up until a delivery van pushed in and cut him off.

He looked over his shoulder, swung the wheel left and shot beside the van, in time to see Vic run a light, leaving Nick with a blockade of vehicles at a standstill in front of him. Ahead, everything slowed down and he leaned forward, willing the lights to change. “Come
on
. Come
on
.”

The light switched to green. But the traffic in the next block also moved. They were on Market Street.

Two blocks ahead, the pickup swerved in front of a motorcycle, turned a corner and disappeared between buildings.

Nick pressed his foot to the floor and immediately braked. The Honda shuddered and slewed sideway. He stared at a row of vast wheels on a truck and fought to straighten out again.

Moments he needed lost, he took the right turn where the pickup had gone and drove, searching ahead and side to side.

Nothing.

At the end of the first block, he dithered, sweating, breathing through his mouth. Another block and he was in Union Square. Panic hammered in his throat. Fighting the crammed, sluggish traffic, he drove a circle back to where he'd started, then drove the next one until he approached Market Street again.

There he was!

If Vic had walked and mixed in with the crowd quietly, Nick wouldn't have seen him, but Vic ran, the loose tails of a white shirt flapping, his elbows pumping.

A car pulled out in front of Nick, who slid into the space, leaving his right rear bumper stuck out in the nearest lane. So what. He grabbed his phone and rushed in pursuit. He'd never catch the man now.

The white shirt saved Nick. The shirt and the movement. He tore across Market, dodging honking traffic, slamming his hands onto the hood of a cab and jumping out of its way.

Powell Street BART Station.

Nick registered the shift in Vic's motions. He leaped down a staircase into the station. Nick's throat burned, he swallowed and coughed, and reached the staircase Vic had taken.

Down he went, bringing curses from others making their way.

He marked time, feet moving, staring around.

Vic left a ticket machine and headed for a turnstile.

Nick stuck money into the nearest machine and took the ticket without looking to see what he'd bought.

An employee yelled, “Watch out,” but Nick didn't. The station was very deep. Already his quarry had made too much headway on the escalator.

Nick hit the platform in time to see Vic pelting along the platform to a train's open door.

Nick followed, threw himself through the closing doors and landed at the feet of a crowd of commuters who turned their heads away from him. He stood slowly, peering between bodies.

Vic's white shirt and the back of his blond hair appeared in glimpses, moving farther along the car. He never looked behind him. Because he didn't think he was still being followed, Nick thought. But that hadn't stopped Vic from moving fast, wildly even. He pressed himself against the door, peered through the window. The train traveled beneath Market Street, heading toward Civic Center.

They slid into the station, the doors opened and the people behind him hurried Nick onto the platform.

The white shirt and Vic's dishwater-blond hair were already on their way up the staircase. Pelting along, flinging himself forward, Nick dared to hope. But he had to cool it, to make sure he wasn't seen.

Nick wasn't ready for Vic's next move. He took a leap onto the wide black marble coping that rose beside the handrails on the stairs.

Shouts went up.

People jogging upward paused to watch.

Vic bent his knees and took a jump, grabbing vertical metal banisters and hauling himself, hand over hand, until he could ram the toes of his sneakers between bars to steal a foothold on the platform above. The MUNI platform.

Go, don't think. If the cops don't stop him, pray they don't stop you, either.

In no more than thirty seconds, Nick sucker-stepped himself up banisters intended for no such purpose.
Up, hook a knee over the top and drop to the platform.

He didn't believe it when he saw Vic hopping onto the first car of a waiting train.

Nick couldn't risk getting into the same car a second time. He skirted a bank of billboards and made it to the second car in time to get on—still vertical. He slid into a seat and kept still.

One stop, Van Ness, and there was Vic sprinting for the exit.

Losing him was out of the question. Now it was Aurelie that drove Nick, and getting his hands on Vic to force him to reveal where she was. Tied up in the pickup was Nick's best bet.

God, he hoped she wasn't dead.

Once out of the station, Nick hung back as far as he dared, kept himself close to walls and windows.

Workers massed the sidewalk, sometimes slowed by delivery trucks pulling into alleyways or delivery entrances.

Aurelie, where was she? What had Vic done to her? Nick kept an eye on the white shirt and worked to melt in with the crowd. He pulled out his cell phone, and it rang.

He jumped and kept moving, looking at the readout between strides. The number meant nothing to him. He frowned and flipped on. “Yes?” he said quietly.

“It's Aurelie.” She sounded odd. “I'm okay. He knocked me out and shoved me under the dashboard. Where are you?”

“On Haight. Heading toward Buena Vista Park. I was just going to try calling you. He's a madman.”

“Tell me about it. And I don't have my cell phone. I'm calling from a restaurant.”

He winced. “Aurelie, are you okay?”

“No. But I will be. I want you to give up on this. We're dealing with dangerous people.”

“To quote you,” Nick said, “‘tell me about it.'I can't stop now. This isn't just for you and me and Sarah, but for my mother and all the others. If I walk into what I think I will, it's going to be up to me to make what we've done count. I wasn't ready before. Now I am. I want you to go to an emergency room. Then check into the Fairmont. I'll find you there. I'll call the cops myself.”

“Where's the car?”

He had let Vic cross the road and waited a few seconds before crossing himself.

“Why do you want the car?” he said.

“My purse is in it, Nick. And my cell phone. And it might be nice to drive where I need to go.”

“Of course.” At least she was more or less okay. He told her where to find the car. They had both decided on a spot to hide a spare key in a magnetic case. “See a doctor, then go to the Fairmont. Put your cell on. Mine will have to go off now.”

F
rom the upper windows of the house you must be able to look at Buena Vista Park between the buildings opposite.

A house on Haight Street, within spitting distance of As-bury. If Cooper was Colin, would he live on the street where he'd met Mary Chance?

He wouldn't care, he'd shown that in the ultimate way.

Nick had ducked just inside a convenience store to let Vic get a bit farther ahead, and watched from a window when he ran up the brick front steps and through the unlocked front door of a four-story Victorian. The facade was painted deep green and white with plaster chevrons picked out in gold.

A lovely, if typical, San Francisco Victorian.

Normal people lived in houses like that. Didn't they? Normal people with deep pockets. These properties were valuable.

Nick had to get into that house and find out who lived there. He put his hand over the left side of his waist, where he felt his gun through the baggy black T-shirt he wore.

Each of the double front doors had insets of dark stained glass. They were set deep inside a porch with a small second-floor window in the wall above. The roof over the porch could block the view of the immediate approach from up there—as long as that approach was made from the left side of the house which butted up against the next building and where there was no room for a window.

The only danger came from a bay window on the ground floor, but the draperies were closed.

As long as his quarries weren't hanging around just inside the house, he had a chance to sneak up on them.

 

Nick stood in a surprisingly bright front hallway. Light through the stained glass threw colors across yellow silk-covered walls and up banisters freshly painted white.

He stood, his hand still on the doorknob, and listened.

Not a sound, not even a creak came to him.

Straight up the first flight he could see a furnished open gallery, the back of a piano with a vase of flowers on top. Across from the stairs, the room with closed drapes made a dim focus, a contrast to the rest.

Then there was a sound. Nick didn't recognize the sibilant thud, or the slight zinging that followed, but it came from below, from the basement.

Leaving the front doors cracked open, he edged along a wall until he saw behind the staircase. The area was permanently open and reached through an archway. A ramp led down.

Nick took two long strides across and stood to one side, just out of sight of anyone looking up that ramp.

The sound came again, a little louder this time.

And a raised voice. Nick couldn't make out what it said.

He pulled his gun and took one step on the ramp, sucked in a breath at the squeaking from his tennis shoe and carefully removed both of them. His feet were bare, so at least he wouldn't slip.

All the light was upstairs. The basement consisted of a gloomy corridor with doors on either side.

Nick crept forward on dull brown carpet. At some time the walls had been badly paneled. He made it all the way to the end of the corridor, listening, but not picking up the voice again. The last door on the left, a room facing the back of the house, stood open. He went forward; one foot, waited, then the other foot.

“You've had time to think, now you can answer my questions and maybe we'll talk about keeping you alive,” a grating voice announced. It sounded as if the owner smoked heavily. He burst into spasms of coughing and spitting.

“I went to Pointe Judah with Joan.” This was Vic's voice. “She gave the story about writing a book. I worked on finding your item. I tried to follow your instructions to the letter but there was a slip.”

Nick noted that Vic didn't sound afraid.

“And I want to know about the slip?”

“I shouldn't have mentioned it. It was nothing.”

Once more the odd, breathy, singing sound issued. Then the thump and more rapidly paced zinging…or whining. The sound reminded Nick of someone playing a saw.

“Goddammit,” Vic said, but not as vehemently as Nick might have expected.

“I want you against the wall,” the stranger's voice said. “Put your arms out where I can see them and spread your legs.”

“No way,” Vic said. “Without me, you wouldn't be getting anything from this effort we've made. You're the one who made a mistake by choosing Joan to be my cover.”

“I never told her exactly what was going down.”

“She worked it out. She's a pain in the ass.”

Another zinging and thump.

Vic cried out. “Shit, Cooper. Shit. You're irrational.”

“Joan did whatever I told her to do. Always. Except get in too deep with you. Women are fools that way. Tell me what went wrong.”

“A woman died. Her name was Baily Morris.”

“I know,” Cooper said. “I know everything, I've known everything that happened around the Boards, as they call themselves, in Pointe Judah since the day they arrived there. I first caught up with them in Portland. You can always buy information and I bought lots of it. P.I.s are a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. I've had those three pains-in-the ass followed every step of the way, just in case a time came when I needed to deal with them. Like now, you asshole.”

“So why didn't you go after your fucking due years ago?” Vic said. “Why wait until it turned desperate?”

Cooper coughed, hacked and Nick heard him spit. “I'm not desperate. I've never been desperate. As long as the grave stayed closed, the way I expected it to forever, I didn't want to draw any attention to myself. I had my new life so I just kept tabs on those three and made sure I stayed out of the way. Now all that's changed. I want to make sure there's no one left who can identify me, and I want what's mine. I don't need it, but I don't want those friggin' little thieves to have it.”

“My ass,” Vic said, a violent urgency in his voice. “You need money. You're broke.”

“Shut the fuck up or say bye-bye,” Cooper said. “I wondered how long it would take you to come clean about the other chemist, you ass. I told you to avoid collateral violence. Makes things messy.”

“It was your fault for not making sure your informants did a complete job. He got the bleach job right and that Sarah worked some nights. Only she wasn't the only one and it wasn't her that night. It was this Baily Morris and she had bleached hair, too, and the same sort of long build as Sarah. And the thick makeup job. The description matched. How was I to know for sure when I hadn't seen Sarah yet? I knew I needed to work fast. The very first night I went out to the lab and I thought the woman there was Sarah. I took her up to the roof. I wanted to frighten her into telling me what she knew about your goods. She said she wasn't Sarah and didn't know anything. In the end I had to believe her. Only I couldn't leave her alive. Sarah has a history she wants to forget. That would silence her, but I had no guarantees this other one would keep her mouth shut.”

“So you killed her.”

“And got away with it. They're no closer to finding her murderer than they were when they found her.”

“Among the broken roses,” Cooper said. “I didn't know how poetic you are. When I read that I almost cried. What else?”

“Nothing else. I left Joan and came to you. She's too scared to be a threat.”

Laughter followed. “That I believe. But we will have to get her back here and see if she can be useful and kept under control. Otherwise…” The man left his words hanging.

Nick fought for patience, for the sense to wait for what sounded like the right moment to enter. He'd give anything for a look inside the room.

“Why did you come back?” the man asked suddenly.

“Because I said I would. You've been good to me.”

“You hate my guts.”

“No—”

“But you know I have people who would deal with you if you tried to drop out.” He coughed. “So you didn't pull it off and get what I sent you for. I need it, Vic—and it's mine. I like to keep what's mine.”

“Didn't you expect it to have been fenced by now? A long time ago probably?”

“If it had, I'd have known about that. A perfect Burmese pigeon's blood ruby the size of that one isn't easy to sell. It's probably the biggest in the world.”