“Do I?” the man asked with a snicker.
Their voices were hollower in here, bouncing off the bathroom tile with a dull echo. “Oh, yes, you do. I’m your bargaining chip. Billie will never come to you if she knows you killed me just for stalling in the shower. They call it a shower stall for a reason.”
“You expect me to laugh? Or don’t you know how serious this is?”
Before Gus had a chance to answer, he was startled by the sound of shattered glass. He poked his head out, craned his neck, and saw a crack in the mirror over one of the sinks, pieces of glass and pottery in an angry pattern on the floor. “What the hell, Richard?”
“I’m mad.”
“Yeah. I can see that.”
Richard had removed a plant from its pot and had thrown the giant clay vessel at the mirror. “We’re wasting time, and I’m hungry.”
“Then get out of the bathroom and I’ll dry myself off and get dressed.”
“Five minutes. I want my breakfast.”
Ten minutes later, Gus emerged, refreshed but wary. The steam should have loosened his muscles, but it didn’t.
Now, it’s 10:35 a.m. And Gus is cooking egg whites with spinach and provolone at gunpoint. He fries up turkey bacon. Every move aches. He brews a fraudulent pot of coffee as he did yesterday. He tells Richard the coffee’s regular, but it’s really decaf because there’s no way in hell he’d give that nutcase caffeine. Gus doesn’t know how this is going to end. But just as he did last night, Gus has a dread in his gut, a sickening dread that there’s no turning back for Richard Knight, that today’s the day. So, Gus has to will himself to stay rational, steel himself to stay calm.
He does this by watching from the audience’s perspective. Gus is an observer of the terror, but he won’t be terrified. He watches frightful scenes unfold, but he won’t be frightened. This is how he suppresses the fear. It’s only a movie. Only a movie. He’s watching a movie, and sometimes it’s tragicomedy. Sometimes he can actually laugh, like right now, watching his captor spread cream cheese on a bagel.
After breakfast, Richard, with the gun to his hostage’s head, forces Gus toward the game room. On the way, Gus thinks he sees a flash, something outside the family room overlooking the pool. It’s like a giant bird, or the shadow of a bird, diving toward the French doors. It’s here and gone in an instant, so it could be his imagination, but he sure wishes whatever it was would strike hard and fast, and crash through the glass. That would cause a distraction. But the instant is over the instant Richard shoves him into the game room.
Billie never uses the game room. It’s just here for parties. Two pinball machines. A pool table. A small bowling lane and a bar. “We’re going to throw our engagement party in here,” the man says. “But it’s going to be a surprise. We won’t tell any of the guests why they’re invited, and then once everyone is here Billie will make the big announcement.”
Gus is sitting on a stool at the bar. Richard leans on a pinball machine across the room. Gus regards him with a rational nod.
“Cat got your tongue?” the stalker asks.
“No.”
“Then say something, goddamnit!”
“Like what?”
“What do you think of our plans?”
Again, he wants to laugh, but he can’t. He hears those erratic echoes of psychosis in the man’s voice that sound like a teetering desperation. “I think this is a great room for a party, Richard.”
“Good! Now do you want to know the plan for today?”
“I suppose.”
“It’s easy, Gus. Just a phone call and an email, and you could be a free man!”
“To whom?”
The man comes forward, then takes a seat at the bar next to Gus. He smiles. “To Billie. Come on, Gus, keep up. You have to call Billie today and break it off with her.”
Gus cocks his head. “Really?”
“Really! How will she ever feel free to be with me unless you let her off the hook?”
“I don’t know if she’ll go for it, Richard.”
The man balls up his face, and it turns red. His eyes emit fury. “Of course she’ll go for it,” he cries, slamming the gun against the bar. “I’ve been planning this forever. It’s destiny. I just can’t believe you’re so stupid that you didn’t understand my plan from the start. Stupid. Stupid. God! You’re so stupid!”
Gus offers nothing but silence. He sits there, an elbow on the bar, his hand supporting his head. Too early to order a drink. He closes his eyes, knowing that Richard is staring at every inch of him. He tries to hum his way into a meditation, aware his murmurs will only exasperate his captor. But fine. It’s all fine. There are so many rooms and doors in this house Gus will find an escape. He’ll have to come up with a plan of his own. Then his arm collapses. Richard has knocked his elbow off the bar, and Gus’s head almost crashes against the surface.
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” the man warns.
“But, Richard, I haven’t slept for two nights. I mean, really . . .”
“You have things to do for me. You need to call Billie and break it off. Then you’re gonna send her an email so she knows you’re serious.”
Gus eyes the gun resting on the bar top. “What if I don’t?”
He raises the gun. “Then I kill you,” he says. “You can cooperate with me and get out of here alive, or I’ll shoot you dead for getting in my way. You decide.”
“You’re going to have to give me a few hours,” Gus tells him. “Billie doesn’t wake up before noon.”
Then the man smacks him in the face. Gus reels back. The stool slides out from under him, and he tumbles to the floor. “Jesus, what was that for?”
“You’re stalling!” Richard cries, slamming the gun on the bar again.
“What? I’m not stalling,” Gus insists. “She doesn’t get up before noon. And I should know.”
Richard is on top of him now, his hand around Gus’s neck. “You should know, huh? You should know because you fuck her? Because you fuck her every morning?”
The man squeezes at his windpipe. Gus’s voice is barely a squeak when he says, “Get off of me. I can’t breathe.”
“Billie will cleanse herself of you! She will detox her body of your contamination! And then she’ll be mine.”
Gus struggles for a breath. Fighting is not in his nature. But neither is dying. So he attempts to roll away out from under the man who’s now drooling in his face. The man is probably twice his weight. Gus can’t roll. Richard takes his free hand, the one not squeezing Gus’s neck, and pins Gus’s right shoulder. Gus knows nothing about wrestling but instinctively he shoots his right arm upward and curls it around Richard’s restraining arm at the elbow and yanks as hard as he can. It’s a fast move and a good move because it pulls Richard off-balance, and that’s enough to knock the man’s hand from Gus’s neck. Richard rolls to the floor with a thud. Gus gets to his knees. He grabs the fallen bar stool, raises it over his head, and brings it down on the man’s chest. Richard lets out an “oomph,” and Gus slams him with the stool again. And then once more. There’s another “oomph,” but this time the stalker grabs at the barstool. He rips it from Gus’s hands and, sitting up, starts to swing. Gus dodges the first try, jumps to his feet, and gets it on the shins on Richard’s second try. The impact stings, sends shooting pain up his legs, but doesn’t immobilize him. From the corner of his eye, he can see the gun sitting on the bar. The barrel is pointed at him like a sober reminder. In the other direction, the door. Damn, damn, damn. He has to make a choice. Make a run for it or grab the gun. The door leads to the hallway, which leads to the family room that overlooks the pool. He could get out there, run down the side yard to the front. But, then what? He can’t jump in his car and take off because he doesn’t have his keys. Now the barstool goes flying across the room. Richard is on his feet, and he’s between Gus and the doorway. It’s too late. Gus has hesitated just a few seconds too long. He’s nearly hyperventilating as he lunges for the bar and grabs
the gun. He’s about to lift it and turn when both of Richard’s hands come down on his. Gus and Richard try to push each other off-balance. Without surrendering the gun, Gus lands a good hip check, but it bounces off the man’s fleshy middle. Richard pulls Gus with his heft, their hands sliding down the counter as their arms wrestle for control. Gus is out of his weight class. The sheer physics of his stalker’s size and force handicap him. His wrists are about to snap. One more drastic pull and his shoulders will come out of their sockets. He tries to elbow the man in the chest. He makes contact but not with enough impact. The man lifts Gus’s hands now, the gun still cupped within. The whole struggle remains in the air for a moment before Richard forces their hands back to the bar with a crash. Repeatedly the guy smashes their entwined ball of fists against the bar. The metal of the gun digs into Gus’s flesh. He can count the bones about to break in his hands. But Richard keeps lifting and smashing until the pistol comes loose. Gus didn’t let it go. It had to be friction, alone. However it happened, the gun is no longer in Gus’s hands. And then it goes off.
It turns out the FBI did preserve DNA samples from Kimberly Harrington’s hotel room. The bureau can now test the DNA against the hairs found in Gaffing’s car and entwined under his fingernails. That’s the word from Ken Preston.
“I’ll have our lab send the samples over,” Mills says. “It’s a long shot, but come on, can you imagine if that woman is still alive, hiding out, exacting revenge on the anniversary of her disappearance . . .?”
His squad gazes at him uninspired. It’s noon, and not one of them looks awake. They’re all sitting in the conference room, and Mills watches as his colleagues yawn in relay around the table. “Late night?” he asks them.
“Karaoke,” Powell says.
“Seriously? I wouldn’t have figured you for karaoke. What about the boys?”
“Karaoke,” Myers says. “And beer.”
Preston nods. “Guilty as charged.”
“What? All of you together?” Mills asks.
“Oh, yeah,” Powell says. “You should see us.”
“What do you mean? This wasn’t the first time?”
“No,” she replies. “We’ve been doing it for a few months.”
He looks at Preston in disbelief. “I wouldn’t have figured you for karaoke either.”
“Because I’m over the hill?”
“Yes,” he says. “But thanks for the invite, everyone.”
“Would you have come?” Powell asks.
“Probably not.”
“There you have it. You’re not social,” she tells him.
“Right,” Myers says. “So what’s your excuse for not sleeping?”
“Who said I didn’t sleep?”
“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror?” Powell asks.
“I’m taking care of a friend’s dog. She snores.”
Powell leans in with a big smile. “I know how fascinated you are by Kimberly Harrington’s DNA,” she says, “but you really did miss something last night at the karaoke bar.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Mrs. Al Torento,” she says.
“Jennifer Torento does karaoke? I definitely can’t picture that.”
“It wasn’t that Mrs. Torento,” Preston says.
“It was Your Pal Al’s second wife,” Powell explains. “And she had a few interesting things to say about her ex.”
Mills can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You just met her at a bar and started talking about the case?”
“Of course not,” Powell tells him. “I met her in the ladies’ room. She wanted to borrow some lip gloss.”
“You wear lip gloss?”
“Anyway, we were standing there and we got to talking about stuff, and she asked what I did for a living, and she asked if I was married, and I kind of thought she was hitting on me, but she wasn’t. She told me she was divorced and never remarried, and I said something like, ‘One of my friends with me is like a little boy and the other is a much older man,’ and she said either one would be better than her ex-husband. And then, you know, one thing leads to another and I find out that her ex is Al Torento!”
Mills can feel his face light up. A smile emerges. “No shit,” he says. “I love it.”
“So, she tells me the guy’s a bit of an asshole. I think ‘bit’ was probably an understatement. Of course, it’s an ex talking, but still, she described him as overly ambitious and extremely narcissistic. And occasionally violent.”
“With her?”
“Yeah, but she won’t go on the record. She signed some kind of nondisclosure agreement in the divorce.”
“Won’t prevent her from being deposed,” Mills reminds them. “What about the first wife? Should we be looking at that?”
“If you’d like to visit a cemetery in San Diego,” Powell says. “She died of breast cancer not long after the divorce. He divorced her as she was getting sick. . . .”
“This is according to Mrs. Torento number two?”
“Yes,” Powell says, “and she said he had a habit of shoving, sometimes punching, when things didn’t go his way.”
“Good to know,” Mills says. “Not entirely surprised.”
“He gave her a black eye once,” Powell explains. “She heard he was more violent with his first wife.”
“Well, I can’t see the current Mrs. Torento standing for that crap,” Mills says. “But, speaking of the congressman, we know he left the country for a trade mission on Monday, and there hasn’t been another body since. Interesting, huh? No activity the whole time Al Torento’s been away. Supposedly he’s back tomorrow.”
Preston arches an eyebrow. “Harass him ’til he talks,” the older detective says.
Powell rests her hand against her chin and nods emphatically. Myers yawns. It’s a huge yawn, one that threatens to suck up all of the air in the room. Mills takes that as his cue to dismiss the meeting. He stops into the restroom and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. There’s worry all over his face. Not so much about the case. More so about Gus. His gut tells him Gus is probably at Billie’s, despite the failure of the drone mission, but his gut also knows that Gus could be anywhere. Anywhere people vanish.
On the way back to his desk, his phone rings. It’s his personal cell, and it’s Billie Welch calling again. She’s panicked, her words rushing out. “I’m coming back there. PV says there’s no sign of him at my house. I’ve tried calling him. Beatrice has tried calling him. You’ve tried calling him. What the hell’s going on, Alex? He can’t just disappear into thin air.”
“Catch your breath, Billie,” he tells her. “You know Gus can take care of himself, right?”
“Unless he’s already dead. Unless Richard Knight—I don’t know—took him out to the middle of the desert and shot him in the head. . . .”
“I think Richard Knight is a very disturbed man. I don’t think he’s a killer.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“From what I know of how he stalked you,” Mills says. “He wants you, Billie. He doesn’t want to kill anyone.”
“If he wants me badly enough . . .”
“We don’t even know if Gus is with him.”
“Where else would he be?”
What can Mills reasonably say? He won’t tell her about the failed drone mission; that would just make her more distressed. He decides he’s not going to tell her about the malfunction of her driveway gate; that would just panic her. Storming it would not necessarily yield the favorable result, anyway. In fact, it could prove lethal for Gus. This isn’t good. He notices his fingers drumming the desk, his temples throbbing to the beat.
“I’d think Gus, as a psychic, would be one step ahead of trouble,” he says.
He’s met by silence. A kind of disdaining silence. He thinks he hears in the vapor of a whisper, “Oh, my God, this is fucked.”
“Billie?”
“You know he’s in trouble, Alex. Psychic or not.”
“I’m calling over to PV
now,” he says.
“Why can’t you people track him on his cell phone?”
“We’re working on it.”
“I’m cutting Nashville short. I’ll leave for the airport in an hour,” she growls. “Call you when I get to Phoenix.”
He stares at the phone for a few seconds after the call ends. He’s about to pick it back up and dial Obershan when it dings with a reminder. Shit. He has to go. The mediation session begins in forty-five minutes. It’ll take at least half an hour to get there. He dashes out stealthily, avoiding curious eyes. He dials Obershan once he hits the I-10 curve on the way to Chandler. After an exchange of the mandatory minimum pleasantries, Mills asks, “What’s your follow-up today with Gus?”
“Given the fact that Knight made direct threats against your friend, this is our top priority.”
“Maybe Knight has him somewhere not so obvious, after all.”
“Maybe,” Obershan says. “We’re talking to his parents again today. Also, his probation officer. We’re looking to see if there are surveillance cameras anywhere near Gus’s job. The timing suggests Knight could have met up with him shortly after Gus left work. That coincides with the last ding from his phone.”
“What about his phone? Any progress there?”
“Contrary to what we thought, it’s not the cell towers. It’s not the service. Everything’s operating fine,” Obershan tells him. “It’s like Knight grabbed Gus’s phone and tossed it into Tempe Town Lake.”
Of course. No different than what the graveyard killer likely did with his victims’ phones. A lake, a riverbed, a wash, a dumpster, all the same when criminals are tech savvy enough to elude police. “Well, shit,” Mills says. “That’s a dead end.”
“Probably,” Obershan concedes. “But we’ll chase down whatever we can today. I’ll keep you posted.”
Then he’s gone.
When Mills steps into the office of Bernice Goodman ten minutes later, everyone is there waiting: Kelly, Trevor, the Heathrows.
“Am I late?” he asks.
Dig Your Grave Page 36
