by Osborne, Jon
Thirty feet away, the coach blew a shrill whistle. “All right, ladies, great practice! Hit the showers! Road game in Detroit tomorrow. Bus leaves for the airport at six p.m. tonight. Don’t be late or it’ll cost you a hundred dollars a minute.”
Rivers of sweat dripped from Kim’s face and dotted the shiny hardwood floor at her feet as she followed her panting teammates into the locker room and flopped down onto a long wooden bench in utter exhaustion. A metal locker slammed three feet away. Sneakers squeaked against the tiled floor. Heavy blasts of steam poured out of the shower stalls fifty feet across the room.
A moment later, LaTasha Reynolds, the Houston Comets’ all-star point guard, flopped down onto the bench beside Kimberly. “How much longer you gonna be able to play for, Kim?” Reynolds asked, still breathing hard from the exertion of the intense practice. The Comets were in the playoff hunt now, and the practices seemed to be getting more and more difficult each and every time they stepped out onto the floor.
Kimberly, the team’s lanky small forward and a third-year pro out of the University of Kentucky, wiped sweat from her face with a clean white towel. “Doctor said I can keep going for another month or two. After that, my season’s over.”
“You guys having a boy or a girl?”
“Girl.”
“What are you gonna name her?”
Kim leaned down and unlaced her high-tops. She preferred Nikes but Reebok paid the bills. “Nancy,” she said. “Nancy Rose.”
LaTasha Reynolds smiled at her. “You’re naming her after Nancy Lieberman, ain’t you?”
Kim smiled back. “Damn right, I am. Gotta pay homage to the ones who paved the way, girl. C’mon now, you know that.”
The point guard laughed and bumped her shoulder playfully against Kim’s. “Nancy Lieberman might have been the greatest female basketball player of all time, Kim, but you do know that’s a white name, don’t you? Why don’t you guys go for something a little more ethnic sounding? What do you think about Shaniqua?”
Kim rolled her eyes. “Shut the hell up, LaTasha. That’s a stupid name, and you know it. Besides, Joey’s white, so the baby’s going to be half-white, anyway.”
The point guard looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she lifted her eyebrows and said, “I don’t suppose you guys would consider a hybrid, seeing as how the kid’s gonna be a hybrid and all. How does Nanciqua sound to you?”
Kim laughed and shooed away her teammate. “Get out of here, LaTasha.”
“That’s KimTasha to you, bitch.”
Finishing up in the showers an hour later, as always, Kim was the last one to leave the gym. As she walked back across the now-deserted basketball court and toward the parking lot with her heavy canvas gym bag slung over her right shoulder, a large blonde man suddenly emerged from the tunnel on the southwest side of the arena.
The man’s bright blue eyes bulged wildly from their sockets when he saw Kim. “Please come quick!” he shouted. “My baby’s having a seizure over here.”
Kim’s heart pounded madly in her throat as she dropped her heavy gym bag to the floor and raced across the court as fast as her frantically pumping legs would carry her. A cold sweat broke across her entire body, soaking into her fresh clothes and nullifying the long, hot shower from which she’d just emerged.
Reaching the tunnel in a matter of seconds, she widened her big brown eyes in shock as a second blonde man emerged from the shadows and immediately stabbed a sharp silver knife deep into her slowly growing belly. He grunted hard with his efforts and yanked up the unforgiving steel with unbelievable force, slicing open Kim’s abdomen from her belly button all the way to her sternum.
Seizing hard, Kim flopped around wildly on the floor for a moment or two before her body finally relaxed and her world slipped away into the dark and confusing – and absolutely petrifying – void of forever.
CHAPTER 66
Dana rummaged through Marjorie Trimble’s dresser drawers in the woman’s elaborately decorated bedroom for a good ten minutes or so, finding nothing of interest other than a small pink vibrator and an unused prescription for birth-control pills. Too little, too late, in this case, Dana supposed.
As she pawed around Trimble’s intimates some more, she felt ashamed of herself for the intrusion, even if the woman was dead now. This was the part of the job she’d always hated. So insensitive, heartless and downright rude. Lord knew that she wouldn’t have wanted anyone pawing through her things after she’d passed away. Still, if the rest of the banker’s lingerie drawer could be considered an insight into the woman’s sex life, Dana would’ve had to peg Trimble as a no-nonsense type of gal. No big surprise there, however. Folks who worked in the stuffed-shirt world of high finance tended to keep things straightforward, even in the bedroom. Especially in the bedroom. Dana had learned that much firsthand when she’d briefly dated a stockbroker in the early nineties. The man hadn’t even liked to get undressed in front of her, much less anything more adventurous than that.
For her part, when it came to underwear, Marjorie Trimble owned nothing more racy than two stacks of neatly folded, clean white granny panties and about twenty different industrial-strength underwire bras – all of those also white. Still, who knew? Maybe that’s the way Reginald Craft III had liked it. Maybe dating a woman of another race had been all the excitement the corporate fat cat could handle.
Dana sucked in a sharp breath at the seemingly random thought. A weird feeling buzzed through her veins. Slipping out her cellphone from her purse, she logged onto the Internet and navigated the browser over to Amazon before typing in the name of Laura Settle’s lover – Michael Timmons. Timmons had published at least four novels under his own name that she knew of, although none of them had been especially brisk sellers.
After what seemed an eternity, Timmons’s author page finally popped up on the world’s biggest book-selling site. A pleasant-looking face stared back at Dana from the tiny screen on her cellphone, a shock of unruly white-blonde hair falling softly over a smooth forehead and directly into bright blue eyes. Dana felt her heartbeat rev up some more in her throat as she navigated the browser over to Facebook next and found Betsy Campbell’s homepage before studying the picture attached.
Bald and frail from six months of invasive chemotherapy treatments, Betsy Campbell’s husband was seated beside her on a park bench at the beach, wearing a floppy fisherman’s hat to protect his sensitive skin from the unforgiving sun that was streaming down from the cloudless blue sky above. Despite the protective headwear, Brian Campbell already showed the beginnings of a mild sunburn.
Jesus.
Dana shook her head in disbelief. Because when you added those two men to the esteemed Reginald Craft III, you got a connection so obvious that Dana wished she could somehow bend her leg at the proper angle in order to give herself a swift kick in the ass for not realizing it sooner.
All three partners of the murdered black women – not to mention the fathers of their unborn children – had been white.
She snapped shut her phone, feeling dizzy as she exited the bedroom and headed for the stairs. She needed to fill Blankenship in on the white-black connection. Now. It could prove the difference between another pregnant woman’s continued life and her horribly painful death.
Or, more accurately, two horribly painful deaths.
She’d made it halfway down the staircase when her phone rang in her hand. Frowning, she flipped it open and placed it to her ear. “Dana Whitestone.”
Bruce Blankenship’s voice sounded in her ear, surprising her enough to stop her dead in her tracks. “Hey there, Dana Whitestone,” he said. “Bruce Blankenship here. Long time, no talk, huh?”
Dana knitted her eyebrows and finished her descent of the staircase, baffled as to why Blankenship would be calling her from inside the same house. Marjorie Trimble’s mansion was big, sure, but it wasn’t that big. “Where are you?” she asked.
Blankenship cleared his throat. “In the basement. And you’d better come
down here right now.”
“Why?” Dana asked, and she thought she heard the faint whir of electronics in the background of the call.
“Because you’re not gonna believe what I just found.”
CHAPTER 67
Angel knelt beside her grandmother’s freshly dug grave and traced her trembling fingers over the engraved lettering that was flanked by beautifully depicted cherubim and seraphim on either side of the shiny marble headstone:
BERNICE ELIZABETH MONROE
LOVING FRIEND, MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER
GONE FROM OUR LIVES – BUT NEVER FROM OUR HEARTS
Angel closed her eyes and let the tears come again. A moment later, she began to sob uncontrollably. Hard, painful sobs that wracked her entire body so violently she could barely even breathe.
The source of the pain wasn’t hard to trace. It was right there in the middle of her chest. It was her heart that hurt. And why not? The goddamn thing had been broken. Pummeled. Smashed into a million tiny pieces and never to be made whole again. When Granny Bernice had died, a big piece of Angel had died right along with her. Maybe even most of her.
Angel took off her sunglasses and wiped at her stinging eyes. Then she took a deep breath and felt something snap physically in her chest, like a dried-out twig breaking underfoot on a solitary walk through the beautiful New England woods on a crisp fall day. Before she knew what was happening, a dark bank of storm clouds abruptly moved in to block out the bright sun that had been streaming down from the clear blue sky above just a moment earlier. Then the wind kicked up so hard from the east that it swirled Angel’s hair wildly around her head and plastered thick clumps of interwoven strands to her soaking-wet cheeks. The air temperature all around her seemed to drop ten degrees in the space of just five seconds, chilling her all the way down to her bone marrow and sending waves of painful goose flesh rippling across her suddenly freezing skin.
Just then, from the corner of her left eye, she caught a flash of black streaking forward. There was no time to turn her head against the force of the impending blow.
Angel jerked up her arms quickly to protect her face, recoiling in horror from the airborne projectile headed straight for her. She squeezed shut her eyes and braced herself for the impact.
But it never came.
She opened her eyes tentatively – just in time to see a fat black crow come to a gentle stop in a mad fluttering of wings directly on top of her grandmother’s elaborately engraved headstone.
“Good lord,” Angel breathed, lifting her watery stare to the newly darkened skies above. “You know, if you’re trying to make me feel better about things, you’re not doing a very good job of it, Granny Bernice.”
She shook her aching head. Somewhere up there in heaven, she just knew that her grandmother was laughing off her ample behind right now – most likely while wearing her beloved Cleveland Indians baseball cap.
But not while wearing her extra-large jersey with Randy McMichael’s loathsome name stitched across the back. Not now and not ever again. Because if Randy McMichael ever played baseball again, he wouldn’t be playing it anywhere near Granny Bernice. Because if the murdering asshole ever played baseball again, he’d be playing it smack-dab in the ninth circle of hell.
Exactly where the sadistic motherfucker belonged.
CHAPTER 68
In the clearing twenty yards into the gorgeous woods on his sprawling property in rural Massachusetts, the Race Master looked on while Bane savaged the pit bull that had been cowering in fear across from the massive Presa all morning long on the opposite side of the sturdy eight-by-ten-foot pen.
The scarred pit bull had been marketed in the periodicals that advertised such things as a veteran fighter worthy of the lofty price asked for its sparring services – supposedly a champion of some sort on the underground circuit. But Bane had absolutely no trouble at all finding his mark deep in the other dog’s throat. The entire bloody massacre concluded in a matter of just minutes.
The Race Master turned to Richard Patton and shook his head in disgust while he hooked a heavy steel chain to Bane’s thick leather collar. “Dispose of the corpse, Richard,” he said. “Dispose of the corpse and find me another dog.” He swept his free hand toward the dead body of the pit bull. “Find me a better dog. I’m sick and goddamn tired of throwing away my hard-earned money on all these fucking losers. We’ve got an important competition coming up tonight and I was hoping that Bane might get a decent tune-up for it. Seems I was painfully wrong about that, huh?”
Patton nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m extremely sorry about that. In any event, at what time will you be leaving tonight?”
The Race Master stepped out of the pen with the collared Bane, who busied himself by licking the other dog’s bright red blood hungrily off his thick black lips. “Six p.m. We’re scheduled to land in Virginia by eight. I’ll be back either very late tonight or very early tomorrow morning. Make sure things that run smoothly around here while I’m gone, Richard. With great power comes great responsibility. Always remember that. I’ll hold you personally responsible for any fuck-ups that may occur in my absence.”
Patton nodded again. “I’ll make sure that everyone stays in line, sir. Good luck with tonight’s fight.”
The Race Master turned to the young blonde man and held his stare. “Luck has absolutely nothing to do with it, Richard. Absolutely nothing at all. You should know that by now.”
He cast his icy stare back to the pen, where the destroyed body of the pit bull lay in a bloody pile of shredded flesh. “If not, then you’d better learn it pretty goddamn fast.”
CHAPTER 69
Dana found the basement stairs just off the kitchen and descended the steps, freezing dead in her tracks at the bottom when she heard a deep voice coming from no more than fifty feet away.
She reached inside her blazer and unholstered her Glock, her heartbeat pounding so ferociously in her ears that she could barely even hear herself think as she rounded a corner near a hot-water heater with her Glock at the “ready-low” position. Lifting the gun chest-high, she swept the barrel side-to-side and took quick, short steps toward the source of the noise, just like they’d taught her to do all those years ago during field training at Quantico. Not exactly like riding a bike – but not all that much different, either.
Clearing the blind spot around the corner, she lowered the Glock to her side at once and blew out a short, hard breath through her nostrils.
Twenty feet away, Bruce Blankenship was seated with his back to her in front of a small bank of television monitors.
He didn’t bother turning around. “You almost took off my head just now, didn’t you?”
Dana tucked her Glock back into its holster inside her blazer and tried not to think about how close she’d come to splattering his brains all over the television screens. “Of course not,” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Blankenship turned around and grinned at her. “Liar. I watched you the entire way down, Dana. Textbook approach all the way. I’m impressed.”
He turned again and swept a hand over the bank of television monitors. “Anyway, no harm, no foul. Long and short of it: I found a false wall behind which you now see Marjorie Trimble’s nifty surveillance hub. Wasn’t all that difficult, really. Local cops definitely should’ve found it for themselves. In any event, I followed the feed-wires from the pinhole cameras I found all over the place down to the basement. Just like following a trail of breadcrumbs. I found cameras in just about everything I looked in: the paintings, the light fixtures, some of the potted plants. Hell, I even found three cameras in the downstairs guest bathroom, for Christ’s sake.”
Dana covered the remaining distance between them and came to a stop next to Blankenship, running her gaze over the bank of television monitors. Each television screen measured eight by eight inches, with two rows of six screens each making up the entire bank. What she assumed to be recording equipment lifted three feet height off the floor next to the television
monitors, fed by a hopeless tangle of multi-colored wires that wee coming in through the wall. “Good lord,” she said. “I guess you were right about Marjorie Trimble’s ‘I-Spy’ fetish, huh? I feel like I’m the set of Candid Camera here.”
Blankenship laughed. “Yep, but that’s not even the half of it. She even went so far as to tape her, um, bedroom activities, if you catch my drift.”
Dana lifted her eyebrows at her partner.
Blankenship misread the gesture. “I know, right? Don’t get your hopes up about it, though. From what I saw, the ‘I-Spy’ routine was Trimble’s only fetish.”
Dana shot her partner another look to clarify her meaning. “Tell me you didn’t watch that stuff, Bruce. Please tell me you didn’t watch it.”
Blankenship looked offended. “Of course I didn’t watch it. Don’t be ridiculous.” He paused. “Well, not all of it, anyway.”
Dana rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Well, what did you see then?”
Blankenship shrugged his shoulders. “Not much. Just enough to tell me that nothing very interesting was going on. From the look of things, you’d think Trimble and Reginald Craft III invented the missionary position or something. Nothing more racy than that, though, I’m afraid. Kind of boring, actually, if you want to know the whole truth. I’ve seen more exciting stuff on Nip/Tuck.”
Dana smacked him lightly in the back of his head. “Pervert.” Then she glanced over at the black-and-white television screen that was located second from the left on the bottom row of monitors. A man in a dark hood had been frozen in place on the screen, his mouth half open. “What’s that?” she asked.
