Drew out a medium-sized knife sheathed in leather.
Not a goddamned sword or athamé, Sam registered, though he couldn’t see the blade – didn’t want to see it – but the cop in him was remembering the time-wasting diversion that Beatty and Moore and their sick witches crap had lured him and Riley into.
Though it wasn’t their fault he hadn’t seen what had been under his nose all the time. His fault, as a detective and as a father and husband, for taking these bastards at face value, and if anyone ought to have known better . . .
He stared at the sheathed knife, thought of the other victims and their wounds. Looked at Grace and knew that he could not bear it, not for her.
‘For the love of God,’ he said to Dooley.
‘God doesn’t love us,’ Simone said.
‘Where do you plan to leave us?’ Grace’s voice was husky, her mouth and throat dry. ‘You must have worked it out.’
‘Of course,’ Dooley said.
‘I’m trying to think what’s left,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t think they make cooking pots our size, even as exhibits, though maybe you could have found a couple of old movie props.’
‘Much simpler,’ Dooley said. ‘Our solution.’
‘And not too far away,’ Simone added.
Running out of time.
‘I have a couple more questions,’ Sam said. ‘I mean, what difference to you if this is almost finished?’
‘Try us,’ Dooley said.
‘How did you work it with the second couple? I get that you delivered dinner to Duprez’s apartment, but then what?’
‘Good question.’ Dooley seemed satisfied. ‘I like that you haven’t worked it all out. Means we did a good job.’ He shrugged. ‘We’d expected Price to stay the night, of course, but we had a back-up plan in case she left before she fell asleep.’
‘I followed her home in the van.’ Simone was beginning to show signs of impatience, a wish to be done with them. ‘It wasn’t hard because she was out on her feet, so I took her in her garage, got her inside the house and waited.’
‘And you waited for Duprez to fall asleep . . .’ Sam looked at Dooley. ‘Or maybe you told him you’d come back to collect your dishes and he let you in.’
‘He sure did, and I told him to take it easy while I cleaned up, and he offered me a tip and told me I was a nice guy, even apologized for falling asleep.’
‘And when you’d done?’ Sam was feeding the other man’s vanity now – anything for more time, and besides, the cop in him still wanted the facts. ‘You got him down to the garage, into his car.’
Dooley nodded. ‘That guy saw me driving out, right? But I’m guessing he didn’t give you a description.’
‘Afraid not,’ Sam said.
‘It’s time,’ Simone said to Dooley.
Sam’s pulse kicked up a gear. ‘Just a little more,’ he said. ‘Call it a courtesy, guys.’ He paused. ‘Was Duprez in the passenger seat, or did you stash him in the trunk?’
‘In the trunk,’ Dooley said. ‘No one was in the garage, which made it easier, though if someone had seen us I’d just have said the poor bastard was sick.’
‘So you drove over to Elizabeth’s house,’ Sam said.
‘We moved her car out of her garage,’ Simone came in briskly. ‘Put the van in there instead, backed the BMW into the driveway, got Duprez out of the trunk into the van, finished the clean-up inside, got her into the van, drove her car back into the garage, end of story.’
‘The rest all happened here,’ Dooley said.
He stroked the knife handle.
Running out of time fast.
‘What about the sand?’ Sam asked, changing tack.
Dooley looked gratified again. ‘I didn’t get the idea till number two, but I’ll bet it had your people going.’
‘Sure did,’ Sam said. ‘One more question.’
‘No more questions,’ Dooley said.
‘Is it a hospital gurney you use, or a dolly or what?’
‘A gurney,’ Dooley said. ‘Would you like to see it?’
‘I would,’ Sam said.
‘Too bad,’ Simone said.
She nodded at Dooley.
Who unsheathed the knife.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
They were on the move.
Cathy left behind, placed almost forcibly in a black-and-white and dispatched – ‘like a parcel’, she’d complained vehemently – to Golden Beach to sit it out with David and the rest.
Not that she did not understand the necessity.
What mattered to her was that they were on their way at last.
Every available unit, along with a SWAT team, was now heading toward an address on East Meridian Avenue in North Miami, where it was strongly believed that a Miami Beach Police Department detective and his psychologist wife were being held against their will, and were at imminent risk of being murdered by the two prime suspects in the so-called ‘Couples’ case.
Extreme caution was being used.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
Martinez was on his way to East Meridian too.
He’d never intended to go to the station – that had just been a ploy to get Saul off his back – because he’d known full well no one would have let a sick man rejoin the squad.
So instead he’d been sitting in his own car listening in on the radio and devising a kind of a plan. And he knew that physically he was barely up to sitting in his backyard, let alone digging out the old SWAT black BDUs he’d gotten himself the one time he’d ever agreed to go to a costume party. Let alone strapping on his Glock and driving himself to a major crime scene. But Sam and Grace were in the greatest imaginable danger, and Alejandro Martinez’s adrenalin was pumping harder than ever.
Saul had wanted to come to the station.
‘If you come, too, they sure as hell won’t let me work the case,’ Martinez had told the younger man.
‘And you think I’d get in the way,’ Saul had said.
A realist, like his father, gone north now to Golden Beach, like Cathy. To wait with their family and maybe say a few prayers.
Martinez wasn’t sure what exactly he was on his way to, or what the hell he was going to do when he got there.
Watch and wait while the real cops did their stuff and got it right, he hoped with all his soul.
But if they did not, and if there was one more step that could be taken, if there was any damned thing he could do, he was going to do it.
And nothing much less than a bullet was going to stop him.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE
Sam could see the blade of the knife now.
Single-edged, not double. Probably a cook’s knife from the café.
Like it made a goddamned difference.
He looked at Grace, wanting, more than anything, to hold her, saw in her beautiful blue eyes the same desperate need reflected back at him.
And then he turned back to Dooley.
‘You never answered the question about what you’re planning to do with us.’
‘Give it up,’ Dooley said.
‘Refrigerator,’ Grace said suddenly.
Like it was a quiz show.
‘Close,’ Simone said.
‘Freezer?’ Sam said.
‘Give the man a prize,’ Dooley said.
‘One more,’ Sam said. ‘Last one.’
‘No more,’ Dooley said.
The knife blade glinted dully in the light from above.
‘It’s OK, Matt,’ Simone said. ‘I’d like to hear it.’
Sam looked at Grace again, praying for her continued strength. Loving her more than ever, which he would have thought impossible. Seeing the love returned, and he supposed it ought to be enough, that he ought to be grateful for all that he’d had, and he was, but he was human and he was greedy.
And he wanted more.
‘“Together forever”, you said.’ His gut was clenched with tension. ‘About the glue.’
‘He wants to know w
hich part of them we’re going to join,’ Simone said.
She was enjoying the moment, plain to see.
‘Easy enough to guess,’ Dooley said, ‘in your case.’
Grace knew she’d been right.
‘Skin,’ she said.
‘And a prize for the lady,’ Dooley said.
‘How about one last request?’ Sam tried.
‘Depends what it is,’ Dooley said.
‘I’d like to hold my wife one last time.’
‘Sure you would,’ Dooley said.
‘Except we’d have to unshackle you,’ Simone said, ‘and then you’d jump us like the big macho cop you are, and then things would get ugly.’
‘Sorry,’ Dooley said. ‘Simone always gets the last word.’
‘Thank you,’ Simone said.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR
Everyone was in position, including marksmen and spotters on the neighbouring roofs on both sides of the house in question.
Most of the street’s residents had been moved out, but not before a woman from the house to the left of the Regan home, one Miriam Guam, had swiftly and competently helped give the squad a reasonable picture of where they now believed the killers were probably holding the Beckets.
Five houses in a row on the street had screened in lanai enclosures, all constructed at the same time, except that work had been carried out about eighteen months ago on the Regan property, erecting white-painted cinder block walls around their lanai.
Miriam Guam had been shown photographs of Simone and Dooley.
‘He’s one of the builders,’ she’d said right away. ‘And she’s the daughter.’
One of the squad’s problems, so far as they’d been able to ascertain, was that the enclosure’s door was the only potentially ‘clean’ entry point, and they were going to have to reach that point via the backyard, securing the house itself before they made their move.
The likelihood was that they were either too late, or almost out of time.
Final orders were being given by SWAT commander Thomas G. Grove.
There was no possibility of a clear shot from outside.
So they were going to have to go in fast.
Now.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE
‘Police! Put down your weapons now!’
The SWAT team, having made it through the empty house into the backyard unopposed and in almost perfect silence, stormed the door to the enclosure and pounded through, yelling and dazzling those inside with ultra-bright tactical lights.
Clear shots now at both the male and female suspect.
‘Don’t shoot!’ Sam, half-blind, bellowed through the noise.
Because he’d seen Dooley drag Grace up on her feet, and now he had her pinned against his chest, holding the knife blade to her throat.
Blood already trickling from a wound.
‘Do not shoot!’ Sam yelled again. ‘He has my wife!’
Grace stood motionless against Dooley, her ankle still shackled to the bars, her right hand still clutching the filthy towel against herself.
Sam’s heart felt like it was almost out of his body.
Simone had fallen on her knees, her eyes fixed on Dooley’s face.
Dooley’s back was to the screen wall.
The movie still playing endlessly on it.
No one in the SWAT team looking at it, their eyes focused on their targets.
‘You shoot Simone,’ Dooley told them, ‘and I cut this woman’s throat for sure.’
‘This is finished, Matt,’ Sam said. ‘You know it.’
‘It isn’t finished till I say so,’ Dooley said, ‘because I’m covered by this very nice, kind, almost-naked woman, and if anyone screws up and makes me kill her now, I’d guess her handsome buck-naked husband is going to make their life a living hell till the end of his days.’
‘They can wait,’ Sam said.
‘For me to get tired, right?’ Dooley shook his head. ‘When I get tired, Simone can take over, and we can play this game for a long time yet.’
‘What’s the point?’ Sam asked. ‘It’s going to end the same way.’
‘The point,’ Dooley said, ‘is that it’s our game, not yours.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Sam said.
Trying with all his strength of will not to look at the screen behind the killer.
He’d seen the shadow move a few seconds ago, and he didn’t know who the hell it was behind there, but instinct told him that whoever it was, they were Grace’s best chance.
So long as they shot Dooley right through his goddamned head.
The shot sent blast ricochets through Sam’s panicked brain.
Dooley stood still for one endless second.
The knife fell from his hand first.
And then he went down, Grace falling with him, but alive.
‘Matt!’ Simone flung herself at him, reached for the knife. ‘Matt!’
Sam couldn’t count how many bullets hit her at the same instant.
He praised every last one of them.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX
Between the cinder blocks and the old lanai screen wall, Alejandro Martinez – wearing the counterfeit SWAT battle dress uniform that had been good enough to get him through into the backyard with the rest of the pack, and was probably going to get him arrested before the day was through – was trembling more violently than when he’d still had the chills in Miami General.
Pure gut instinct had made him separate from the pack as they’d launched themselves straight ahead through the door of the enclosure, and no one had stopped him slipping into the narrow gap he’d spotted, with weird, flash-like clarity, to their right.
Miracle or all-time horror.
And if he didn’t find out in the next two seconds if Sam and Grace were alive, he was going to puke, and then, maybe, shoot himself.
Two men were coming at him now: the real SWAT deal.
Martinez laid down his gun.
‘Detective Martinez,’ he identified himself. ‘Miami Beach PD.’
‘Holy Jesus,’ Beth Riley’s voice said from somewhere.
He squinted, thought he saw her shape a few feet behind the men.
‘He’s one of ours,’ he heard Riley confirm.
‘Did I do it?’ His voice shook with the rest of him. ‘Or did I screw it up?’
The guys backed away and Riley came to him, put her arms around him.
‘Oh, dear God,’ Martinez said, and began to weep.
‘You did it, Al,’ Riley told him. ‘You saved them both.’
And Martinez turned from her just in time, puked against the wall, and passed out.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN
March 6
Martinez, still off duty on sick leave and waiting for news of disciplinary action against him, called Sam at the office on Friday morning, his first full day back.
‘I just got bad news,’ he said. ‘Jess is dead.’
‘My God,’ Sam said. ‘What happened?’
Suicide in his mind before he could stop the thought.
‘It was a fire,’ Martinez told him. ‘At her house.’
‘Jesus,’ Sam said. ‘Al, I’m so sorry. Poor Jess.’
‘I just came from talking with Fire and Rescue,’ Martinez went on. ‘They don’t know for sure, but they think it might have been the fucking rats, snacking on wires, stripping the plastic coating, shorting it out. Little bastards electrocute themselves all the time, they told me.’
His friend sounded OK, but Sam knew better.
‘Al, sit tight and I’ll be there soon as I can.’
‘Later,’ Martinez told him. ‘After work is soon enough.’
‘You want me to bring beer or whiskey or both?’ Sam asked.
‘I already bought,’ Martinez said.
He took a big slug of whiskey before he made his next call.
To Jess’s parents in Cleveland.
Monika Kowalski answered, but handed the phone straight to
her husband.
George Kowalski, the father who’d named his daughter after the movie star, was polite to Martinez, told him, in strongly accented English, that he was going to be coming to Miami to fly Jess’s body home.
‘Did you work with Jessica, Mr Martinez?’ Kowalski asked.
‘We were friends, sir,’ Martinez said.
Because if Jess hadn’t even mentioned his existence, he couldn’t see any point telling the poor guy they’d been engaged to be married.
‘I’m sorry not to know that,’ George Kowalski said.
‘It’s not a problem, sir,’ Martinez said. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help you with the arrangements, I hope you’ll let me know.’
‘The truth is,’ Jessica’s father went on, ‘her mother and I hadn’t heard from our daughter in over a year, and that was just a Christmas card.’
Martinez thought about all her stories of home, the tales of Thanksgiving and Christmas visits, the photos in which her mother had looked strained, but which had been the only hint that life back home hadn’t always been straight out of a Frank Capra movie.
Except, of course, for the oddness of not wanting to share their happy news.
‘You probably think we’re bad parents,’ Kowalski said now.
‘Why would I think such a thing?’ Martinez said.
‘Life with Jessica wasn’t always easy,’ the other man said. ‘She was a needy child, but sometimes very hard to help or even to understand. But we loved her, and at least I can do this much for her.’
‘A lot of people here were very fond of Jess,’ Martinez told him. ‘She was a very good person, always helping others.’
‘It’s nice of you to say so,’ Kowalski said.
The pause that followed felt awkward.
Martinez figured it was time to tell the poor guy goodbye.
And then Kowalski said: ‘We always knew it would be too much for her.’
‘What exactly, sir?’ Martinez asked.
‘Life,’ Jess’s father answered.
And put down the phone.
Sam and Grace came together at the end of the day.
‘I hope you don’t mind my coming along,’ Grace said.
‘Are you kidding me?’ he said.
Caged Page 29
