by Amanda Quick
“You like to think of yourself as a poet,” Nick said. “I was inclined to agree after I read your early works. I was impressed by your originality. Back at the start of your career you were brilliant. But obviously your glory days are behind you.”
“Shut your fucking mouth.”
Nick sensed the hysteria in the words and aimed for it.
“Maybe you should have gone into psychotherapy instead of taking this last commission,” he said. “Dr. Freud would probably have some interesting theories about your case.”
Another shot cracked in the night.
Two down. Four to go.
“I will admit I’ve got a question for you,” Nick said. “Who’s your client? The one paying you to murder Vivian Brazier.”
“You really think I’m going to tell you?”
“The information would have been helpful but it’s not necessary. You’re a spider who likes to sit at the center of a web. Now that you’re finished it won’t be hard to follow the strands to get all the answers. There are just so many details in those poems.”
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Does insanity run in your family?”
“You fucking bastard.”
Another shot cracked in the night. Three down. Three to go.
“I’ve analyzed several of your poems,” Nick continued. “Figured out how you work. You lure your clients with veiled offers to make their problems go away. For a hefty fee, of course. Make it look like an accident or natural causes. The client probably tells himself or herself that is exactly what happened. An accident. Natural causes. Suicide. But one of these days you’ll start blackmailing your clients, won’t you? It’s a clever business model but it’s got one flaw.”
“What are you talking about? There is no flaw.”
“It’s the money,” Nick said. “It always leaves a trail.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m not the one who gets excited about murdering people and then falls into a deep depression after the kill. We both know you belong in an asylum.”
“No.” The Poet’s voice rose to a shrill scream. “That’s a fucking lie. I escaped the curse. I’m in control.”
Fury and panic shivered through each word.
Interesting, Nick thought.
“Your mental state is deteriorating, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re losing your grip on sanity. It’s all there in the poems, you know. The euphoria of the kills used to last you for weeks, months even. But not now. You need to kill more often and you are no longer doing it carefully. It was just a matter of time before you got caught.”
“That’s not true. Not true. I’m in control.”
The low rumble of a powerful engine sounded in the distance.
“Hear that car?” Nick said. “My associates are about to arrive.”
“Now what are you talking about?”
“That car is bringing the people who were waiting for you at the pier, just in case my calculations were wrong. You were right about one thing. I did set up a trap to catch you tonight—two of them. The first one, the trap with the highest probability of working, was this one. I was almost certain you would find a way to stop me before I got to the pier. But if for some reason you didn’t fall into this trap, my friends would have caught you in the second one.”
“You crazy son of a bitch.”
The Poet exploded from behind the shelter of the Packard. He ran for his car, firing again and again in rapid succession.
Nick counted off the shots. Four, five, six.
The Poet yanked open the door of the vehicle. Nick broke from the cover of the rock pile and lunged across the road.
The Poet whirled around and pulled the trigger.
Shit, Nick thought. Miscounted.
The bullet caught him in the upper right shoulder but momentum and grim determination propelled him forward.
He collided with the Poet, slamming him hard against the side of the car.
The Poet grunted, dropped the empty gun, and yanked a long, slender object out from under his jacket. Nick wrapped both hands around the Poet’s arm and twisted sharply.
The Poet screamed. The ice pick fell from his nerveless fingers.
The approaching car braked sharply. The headlights speared Nick and the Poet. Luther emerged from behind the wheel. Another man climbed out of the passenger’s seat. He had a gun in his hand.
“Brandon, Burning Cove Police,” he growled. “Nobody moves.”
Nick stepped back, sucking in air. The Poet slumped against the fender of the car, cradling his wrist and moaning softly.
“Brandon, this is Sundridge, the private investigator who set this up tonight,” Luther said.
Brandon grunted. “Cut this a little close, didn’t you?”
“I could come up with only an estimate on the timing,” Nick said. He realized that his upper shoulder was on fire. The pain grew steadily. “Damn.”
Luther aimed the flashlight at him. “What the hell? You’re bleeding.”
“I noticed,” Nick said.
Brandon pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and moved forward to take charge of the Poet.
“You’re under arrest,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”
The Poet screamed, howling his fury and despair into the teeth of the storm. He flung himself forward with such speed and ferocity that Brandon, caught off guard, instinctively stepped out of the way.
As the Poet rushed past him in a mindless effort to escape, Brandon brought up his pistol and took aim.
“No, don’t kill him,” Nick said. “We need him alive.”
“Nick’s right,” Luther said. “Don’t worry, he won’t get far on foot, not in this storm. The roads are blocked in both directions.”
The Poet was silhouetted briefly in the glare of Luther’s headlights. Nick registered the trajectory and broke into a run.
“Stop him,” he shouted.
But it was too late. With a final scream the Poet threw himself off the cliff.
The shriek ended a second later.
Luther and Brandon raced forward and aimed their flashlights down at the thrashing surf. Nick found his own flashlight and joined them.
“I don’t see him,” Luther said.
“Must have been swept out to sea on a wave,” Brandon said. “With luck the body will wash up onshore.”
“He didn’t have enough speed to land in the water,” Nick said. He swept the beam back and forth across the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. “There he is.”
The Poet was sprawled on an outcropping. He did not move.
“Well, damn,” Brandon said. “That’s gonna be a problem.”
A siren wailed. A heavy engine rumbled in the night. Nick turned to watch a patrol car and a speedster arrive. Oliver Ward got out of the sleek speedster, bracing himself on a cane. Two uniformed officers jumped out of the patrol car and ran forward.
“Get on the radio,” Brandon said to one of the officers. “We’re gonna need some help recovering a body.”
Nick headed toward the nearest car, Luther’s coupe, and leaned against it. The pain in his shoulder was making it difficult to think. Luther yanked open the door. “Sit down before you fall down. We need to get you out of that coat.”
Nick half fell into the front seat.
Luther went to work, quickly stripping off Nick’s jacket and shirt. He fashioned a thick bandage out of the shirt and secured it in place with his necktie.
“You’ve done this before,” Nick said.
“More often than I want to remember.”
“The War?”
“Yeah.”
Luther finished the first aid work, propped Nick up in the passenger seat, and got behind the wheel.
“I’m taking Sundridge to Dr. S
kipton’s clinic,” he said to Brandon and Oliver Ward.
“Bad?” Oliver asked.
“Not as bad as it could have been,” Luther said. He fired up the engine. “But he’s lost some blood.”
“Go on,” Brandon said. “We’ll catch up with you later.”
Luther pulled out onto the road.
“Lucky for you that bastard was using a twenty-two,” he said, shifting gears. “Not much stopping power.”
“Could have fooled me,” Nick said. He knew his words were starting to slur. “I was trying to count the rounds. Thought he’d fired all six.”
“Hard to keep track when the lead starts flying.”
“It’s depressing, you know.”
“Getting shot?”
“That, too. But mostly it’s depressing to know that I almost got myself killed because of poor math skills.”
“Look on the bright side.” Luther drove faster. “Vivian Brazier is safe now. If the Poet isn’t dead, he’s headed for that gas chamber they’re installing in San Quentin.”
Nick tried to shake off the fog that was invading his senses. He forced himself to focus for a moment longer.
“Vivian won’t be safe until we find out who hired the assassin,” he said.
Chapter 41
Nick was sitting on the exam table in the clinic when Vivian came through the door, riding an invisible storm of energy. She was not alone. Uncle Pete was right behind her. He looked worried, too, but mostly he appeared relieved.
“What went wrong?” he asked.
“A small miscalculation,” Nick said.
“I told you your plan had a couple of weak points.”
“Yes, you did mention that,” Nick said.
Vivian halted directly in front of him and examined the bandage on his upper right shoulder.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Did you lose a lot of blood? You should be lying down. Are they going to admit you to the hospital?”
“I’m okay,” he said. “According to Dr. Skipton I have no business taking up space at the local hospital.”
The doctor stuffed some bloody clothing into a trash bin and looked at Vivian. “He’ll be fine, although he’s going to be sore for a few days. Got the bullet out. Wound is clean. Fortunately the other guy was only using a twenty-two. Not a lot of stopping power.”
“People keep telling me that,” Nick said. “I would just like to say it still hurts.”
Skipton shrugged. “Next time do a better job of counting off the shots fired.”
Nick groaned. “Easy for you to say.”
Pete’s brows shot up. “That was the miscalculation?”
“Yes,” Nick said. “Could we just leave it at that?”
An officer appeared at the door. “Excuse me, Doc, but if you’re finished in here, Detective Brandon would like you to examine the body of the guy who shot Mr. Sundridge.”
“This is turning into a busy night,” Skipton said. He picked up a black leather medical satchel and paused to nod at Vivian. “See to it Mr. Sundridge doesn’t do anything too energetic for a while. I don’t want him to ruin my sewing work.”
Vivian flushed. Nick realized the doctor had concluded it was her job to take care of him.
“I understand, Doctor,” she said.
Nick got a giddy little rush of pleasure. She hadn’t argued; hadn’t tried to push the responsibility off on Uncle Pete. Surely that was a good omen. Or maybe he was just delirious.
Skipton went out the door.
Nick concentrated on Vivian.
“Luther called you?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Lyra and Raina and Irene and I were in the lounge at the hotel. Ripley Fleming was dancing with Lyra. Luther gave us the address of Dr. Skipton’s clinic, but Lyra and I don’t know our way around town. Neither does Mr. Fleming. Raina knew exactly where the clinic was located, though. She drove me here.”
“Fleming was with you tonight at the hotel?”
“Yes.” Vivian narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“Never mind,” Nick said. He caught Pete’s eye. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Luther strolled into the room. “The Poet is dead but there was identification on the body. The name is Jonathan Treyherne. The address is an expensive neighborhood in Los Angeles. Raina is going to make some phone calls to her contacts in L.A. I’ll let you know what she finds out.”
“I need to get inside Treyherne’s house before the police tear it up,” Nick said.
“Brandon agreed to hold off contacting the L.A. police for a day or two.”
“It’s nearly dawn,” Pete said. “You heard the doctor, Nick. You need to rest up before you go tearing out those stitches.”
“Your uncle is right,” Vivian said.
“I agree,” Luther said. “You need some rest before you make the drive back to L.A.”
Nick gave up. He looked at Vivian.
“We’ll spend what’s left of tonight here,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll find out what Raina learns from her contacts. The next day we’ll drive to L.A.”
“You are not driving anywhere,” Vivian said. “The doctor put me in charge, remember?”
“We have to get the name of Treyherne’s client,” Nick said.
Luther glanced at Vivian. “I think you’re safe, at least for now, Miss Brazier. We know Treyherne’s clients are not aware of his identity. That means whoever paid him to murder you has no way of knowing that he’s dead.”
Chapter 42
Los Angeles
A day and a half later . . .
Nick stood in the middle of Treyherne’s living room and asked the questions that had been the most important ones all along.
“Why didn’t you encrypt the name of the client when you took your last commission, Jonathan Treyherne? And what about the motive? Did you intend to add that information later? Or was there some other reason for not identifying the client or the motive?”
He asked the questions aloud but there was no one around to hear him except Rex. They had found the big house closed up when they arrived a short time ago but it had been no problem to get in through the rear entrance.
Treyherne had come from New York. That much was clear from the older poems in the journal. His accent had been upper-class, educated. His bearing had been that of a gentleman who was comfortable in a rich man’s world. Old money usually meant old and valuable furnishings, silver, and art. Yet everything in the mansion looked new and modern—including the art on the walls.
When Jonathan Treyherne moved out to California he had evidently done what so many others did when they moved West—he’d left his old life behind.
Raina had exhausted her contacts in Los Angeles. In the process she had turned up little more than what they already knew or surmised about Treyherne. He had appeared on the scene a few years earlier and slipped seamlessly into the most exclusive social circles. It appeared he had no family, just money.
If not for the earliest poems recording his kills back East, one could almost conclude that Treyherne had no past.
But every man, even a wealthy professional assassin who wrote harrowing poetry, had some personal history. Nick’s intuition told him he had to find it. He needed answers.
He began the way he always did when he was on the hunt for information. He walked through every room in the house, taking his time, absorbing the feel of the place. He opened drawers, locked and otherwise. Men as wealthy as Treyherne always had a private safe. He found it behind a sensuous Tamara de Lempicka painting of two female nudes. He took out the stethoscope he had brought with him and went to work.
It did not take long to get the safe open. The only thing inside was a small financial ledger. A rush of anticipation flashed through him. He loved financial records.
He slipped the ledger inside his j
acket and continued his prowl through the house. There were more financial records in the desk in the study. Nick flipped through them quickly and concluded they were the usual mundane transactions of a wealthy man’s life—payments to a tailor, dues at various clubs, wages for a housekeeper and a gardener, the fees paid to the decorator who had furnished the mansion.
The accounts did not appear to be important but you never knew. Nick helped himself to the volume and a slim folder filled with what looked like Treyherne’s personal correspondence.
He and Rex finished the tour and left the mansion via the same door they had used to enter it. They made their way through the quiet neighborhood to where the Packard was parked and drove to an isolated location overlooking the ocean.
He spent an hour with Treyherne’s financial records. There was only one routine quarterly payment that did not have an obvious explanation. For some years Treyherne had sent checks to Maple Tree Farm. The address was in Maine. He had not missed a single quarter right up until the last check. That one was dated a year and a half earlier.
Shortly after the final check to Maple Tree Farm had been sent there was a transfer of a large sum of money from Jonathan Treyherne’s Los Angeles bank to an account at an Adelina Beach bank.
The money had been deposited into the account of Morris Deverell.
“We just struck gold, Rex.”
Rex had been leaning out the window, inhaling the salty breeze. He turned at the sound of his name and gave Nick an inquiring look.
Nick opened the folder that held Treyherne’s correspondence. There was a letter from a New York law firm addressed to Jonathan Feathergill. The first letter dealt with the transfer of a large sum of money from the Feathergill Trust to the account of Jonathan Treyherne at a Los Angeles bank. The date coincided with Treyherne’s move to the West Coast.
“He changed his name to Treyherne when he moved out here, Rex. He really did walk away from his old life.”
Rex looked as if he agreed with that analysis.
The second letter in the folder had an earlier date. It was addressed to Jonathan Feathergill at an address in New York. Nick read it quickly.
