The Guise of Another (19 page)

Drago Basta watched through the window of the bar and waited for the three detectives to part company. When they finally left, he paused a couple more moments before stepping through the door of Delancy's Pub and onto the sidewalk. He glanced up and down the empty street, waited again and listened. They were gone.

The world had taken on an unfamiliar hue in the hours since he entered Delancy's Pub. People—detectives—knew his business. They knew his name. They knew his crime. They couldn't prove their case yet, but they were on the right path. He didn't like this version of the world, and as he made his way back to his car, he shuffled and stacked hypotheticals in his mind, playing each out to conclusion before starting down the next path. The sidewalk seemed to be quaking beneath his feet, but he knew that the quake could be managed if he found the right plan.

He fed his parking ticket into the machine and was told that he owed eight dollars. He inserted the credit card bearing the name Walter Trigg into the slot, keeping his face turned away from the security camera and his cap pulled down over his eyes. The cop named Max and the female detective planned on meeting with Ianna Markova in the morning. Drago knew that the meeting wouldn't take place at her apartment—not after she came home to find it destroyed. He knew that he could follow Ianna using the tracker in her car to find their meeting place, but what if she didn't take the car?

Drago pulled his receipt from the machine and made his way to the elevator.

He would need to find a way to plant a bug on one of the two men—maybe both. If he could hear their conversations, he would know if and when they found the flash drive. They would lead him to it,
and if he could find the flash drive in one of their hands, all the better. He could kill them, take back his property, and be one dead body closer to flying home to Costa Rica.

As he neared the elevator, it dinged and the doors opened. And there, a mere ten feet ahead of him, stood Detective Rider, examining a small parking-ramp ticket in her hand. Drago felt his body pull as if trying to turn away, to hide his face or run, but he knew that any such reaction would draw the attention of the cop. Instead, he willed himself to stand still and wait. Maybe she would be too distracted to notice him.

Detective Rider looked up as she stepped out of the elevator, glanced at Drago, then went back to her ticket. Drago still wore his tinted glasses and had his cap pulled down—an excellent screen from the security cameras, but it couldn't hide his scar or the contour of his nose and chin from the sight of a passerby. He stepped toward the elevator with the calm gait of a man walking down the cereal aisle at a grocery store.

As they passed each other, he saw it—a glint of recognition, a tightening of her lips, a twitch of her brow. She looked again at Drago as they passed each other, her eyes locking on the scar on his cheek. He stepped into the elevator car and listened as her footsteps stopped behind him. He could hear the grind of grit under her foot as she pivoted to face the elevator. With his back still to her, he reached out his left hand to the panel and pushed the button for the third floor. That movement caused him to turn slightly, blocking her view of his right hand as it snaked beneath the front of his jacket and wrapped around the grip of his gun.

With a final glance over his shoulder, he saw her right hand follow the command of her training and move to her right hip. If she'd been in New York, she would've found her service weapon holstered there. But she wasn't in New York, and she had no weapon.

Drago pulled his Glock from his shoulder holster, the silencer gleaming like the teeth of an animal. He watched her eyes grow large, registering the gun pointed at her chest. He saw the first twitch of her knees as the impulse to flee overtook her, but she didn't flee. She didn't have the time to react. The first bullet pierced her chest before she
could move. The second and third followed in such close order that one might swear that there had been only one shot. Blood painted the wall behind Billie Rider, and she fell, dead.

This was not the plan, but it had to happen at some point. The chess pieces in Drago's mind shuffled into all new positions. The detectives would not see this as a mugging—not with the security camera showing him shooting from the elevator. Soon, Ianna Markova would arrive at her apartment to find it destroyed. The two events would be tied together. They would soon know that Psoglav the Beast had arrived in their quiet city. They would know that he was there to find the flash drive.

As the doors of the elevator closed, Drago picked up the shell casings from the floor and contemplated a thought that had crossed his mind often over the years: Did Detective Rider know that he had killed her? When the three bullets ripped through her chest, they would have stopped her heart from beating, but what about her brain? Would the blood that already fed her brain be enough to allow an extra second or two of thought? Would she be alive in her head long enough to understand what had happened? Would she know that she was dead in that split second after her heart left her body in shredded bits?

He hoped that she would. He hoped that Detective Louise Rider knew that she had been killed by Psoglav the Beast. He hoped that she retained just enough clarity of thought to feel the cold concrete crack against her cheek as she fell to the floor.

Max pulled his unmarked Dodge Charger out of the parking lot reserved for City Hall employees and headed north for his home in Logan Park. As he crossed the Third Avenue Bridge, the river valley parted the curtains of the cityscape and exposed a rising moon, full and bold on the eastern horizon. It was one of those tangerine moons that demanded attention. Max slowed to a crawl, watching the view before it again disappeared behind the concrete and brick of the city. The chatter on his police radio hummed in the background, beyond the reach of his attention, until he heard the dispatcher say: “Possible deceased female, first floor of the Halsey Parking Ramp, near the entrance.”

It was as if a sheet of thin ice beneath his feet splintered and plunged him into icy water. That was the parking ramp where Billie had parked. He hit the emergency lights on his unmarked car and made the U-turn with one hand on the steering wheel and the other grabbing his microphone. “This is seven-seven-two-nine. I'm in the area and responding. Do you have a description?”

Dispatch came back with: “No description beyond female lying by the elevator doors on the first floor, covered in blood.”

“I'm two blocks away.” The air in Max's squad car fell thin as he talked. “I'll be on scene in one minute.”

He skidded to a stop within five feet of the door. As he ran from his car, he could see the lights of three marked squads converging on the parking ramp from different directions. Two young men stood just inside the door to the ramp, one of them pointing to the body on the floor—Billie Rider, piled in a red heap like stained laundry. She lay facedown on the concrete, her face turned to her left, and her lifeless
eyes staring ahead as dull as dried tar. Max bent down onto one knee and felt her carotid, knowing that he would find no pulse.

The first patrol officer stepped through the door and began to usher the two men out. Max knew this officer, an old-timer named Mickie Halverson, who had a good head on his shoulders and wouldn't get unnerved at the sight of a dead body. “Mickie, secure those witnesses and have the other officers hit the exits and set up a perimeter around the building. No one comes or goes. I want this ramp sealed.”

“You got it, Max,” Mickie said.

Max could hear more squad cars pulling up and Mickie shouting orders to watch for anyone trying to slip out of the parking ramp.

“Jesus Christ!” Max recognized Alexander's voice behind him. Alexander had put one hand on the wall to steady himself. “Is she…”

Max slumped his shoulder and nodded. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Dispatch. “Tracy, Max Rupert here. I want to get a message to the shift commander, and I don't want this going out over the radio.”

“Go ahead, Max.”

“We need crime scene at the Halsey Parking Ramp. One deceased female. Cause of death appears to be gunshot wounds to the chest. Victim's name is Billie—”

“Louise,” Alexander interjected. “Her real name is Louise Rider.”

“Correction. Victim's name is Louise Rider, aka Billie Rider. She's a visiting police detective from Manhattan. Tell the shift commander that we have the garage in lockdown and are beginning a car-to-car search. Have all responding units be on the lookout for anyone leaving the area of the Halsey Parking Ramp in a hurry.”

Alexander nodded to Max and then signaled for two patrol officers to join him. The three pulled their weapons and disappeared into the parking ramp, looking in, under, and around every car in the ramp.

Officer Halverson came back to Max after organizing the lockdown, and Max asked him to secure the scene where the body lay until the mobile crime lab and medical examiner showed up. Max then stood and made his way to the garage office.

The office, a toll-booth-sized cube near the exit, housed a single desk, a single chair, a single computer monitor, and a young man with the name Jason pinned to his shirt. Jason stood beside the desk, careening his neck to watch the bustle of police activity lacing through his garage.

“I'm Detective Max Rupert,” Max said.

“What's going on? What happened to that lady?” Jason nodded in the direction of the surveillance monitor on the desk.

“Did you hear anything unusual in the last fifteen minutes or so?”

“Unusual? No. What was it?”

“No loud noises? No screams? Arguing?”

“I ain't heard nothing.”

Max pointed at the surveillance monitor. Were you watching that screen when it happened?”

“No. I was texting my girlfriend. I don't watch that unless I think there's a problem.”

“Can you rewind the footage?” Max asked.

“I think so. It's digital, and I never done it before, but it should be easy.” Jason sat at the desk and moved his computer mouse around to pull up a menu. On the menu, he found a rewind command and clicked it. “Fifteen minutes, you said?”

“Yeah, that should do.” Max waited as the computer loaded the footage requested. The screen split into boxes. The main box, which filled most of the monitor screen, contained footage of the first-floor vestibule and the elevator doors. Seven smaller boxes lining the bottom of the screen held shots from the other cameras in the building. At first, the screen showed an empty vestibule. Then Billie Rider walked into view, pushed the elevator button, and entered the elevator. “Do you have a camera inside the elevator?”

“No. Just by the doors on each floor and here at the exit.”

“Where does she get off ?”

Jason leaned in to see the smaller boxes. Then he clicked on one of them, and the fourth-floor elevator doors popped onto the screen. Billie exited the elevator, happy and smiling. She walked out of view.
Max and Jason waited a minute, and she returned, holding her ticket. She reentered the elevator, and Jason clicked on the first floor again. On the first floor, a man stood in front of the kiosk, waiting.

“Can you back it up? I want to see him enter.”

Jason rewound the footage to the point where the man entered. He stood around six feet tall and wore all dark clothing, including dark glasses—at night. The man entered the vestibule and paid for his parking, taking pains to keep his face hidden from the camera. When he arrived at the elevator, the doors opened, Billie stepped out, and the man stepped in. Max paid close attention to Billie's movements, the way she tilted her head as though pondering a question. She turned, and her hand went to her hip.

Both Max and Jason jerked in shock as Billie's chest exploded and her blood sprayed the wall behind her.

“Fuck me,” Jason whispered.

“You said that you didn't hear anything? No gunshots?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“Where'd the guy get off the elevator?”

Jason leaned in again to see the tiny boxes. “Third floor,” he said, pulling up that window. The man walked past the camera and disappeared from view.

“Pull up the exit camera,” Max said. He watched the screen until a car came into view. “Freeze it.” Jason paused the screen, and Max leaned in to make out the license-plate number. He took out his cell phone and called Dispatch again. He read the license plate to Dispatch, and she came back with a name. Jason then forwarded the tape to the next car, and Max again gave the number to Dispatch and got a name.

The third car to leave came back to a car-rental company. Max had Jason back the tape up and run it again. The grainy footage showed a dark figure behind the wheel. The car had its visor pulled down, and the driver put a hand over his face as he passed through a slice of light that illuminated the interior of the car. He covered his face, but there was no mistaking the baseball cap and sunglasses.

“You son of a bitch,” Max whispered.

“Detective.” One of the patrol officers called to Max from outside the office. Max stepped out of the office, and the officer pointed at a line of cars that he had been preventing from leaving. “These folks here are getting antsy. They're bitchin’ about me holding ’em here without a warrant and all that bullshit. I got their information, and they want to know if they can vamoose.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “Our guy's already gone.”

Max walked back to Billie's body and found the lab techs breaking out their cases, preparing to explore for trace evidence. Alexander squatted just inside the door, the edges of his eyes tinged red.

“We have the whole thing on tape,” Max said. “The perp is about six feet tall, athletic build, I'd guess around midthirties for an age. He was getting on the elevator when she was getting off it. She turned around, and he shot her. No struggle. Not even a conversation. And the attendant on duty—just a hundred feet away—didn't hear any gunshots.”

Alexander's eyes narrowed as he contemplated what that meant. When the deductions slid into their proper slots, he suggested, “Suppressor?”

“That's where I'd go with it,” Max said. “No struggle. No robbery. A detective murdered, using a silencer.”

Alexander looked at his brother as the final button clicked. “Patrio's in town.”

Max simply nodded.

“Jesus—” Before he could finish his thought, Alexander's cell phone rang. He looked at the screen and answered. “Ianna, where—”

Ianna's voice blasted through the phone so loudly that Max could hear her. “Alexander, someone tore my apartment apart. They destroyed everything. I'm scared.”

“Is your security guard on duty?” Alexander asked. “Okay, go down to the front desk and stay with him. I'm only a few blocks away. I'll be there in a few seconds. Go down now. I'm on my way.” Alexander looked at Max. Max nodded toward the door and Alexander charged out of the parking-ramp entrance.