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Keeping my own gun on me he grabs the bottle of Chivas Will left on the side table last night. “Mind if I have a drink? I don’t usually drink on the job but I don’t see you as a threat. You’re not a real opponent.”
He opens the bottle and takes a healthy slug from it all the while keeping his eyes on me. Jennifer was right about his eyes. The headlights from a passing truck illuminate the far side of the room and I can see his hard blue eyes. Ice-cold, she had said. Blue, ice-cold eyes. A killer’s eyes.
He sighs and takes another swig before putting the bottle back on the table. “I don’t understand why you’d try to take me on, Cate. You’re not, as I said, big league material. Oh, you’re tough enough. In a way, you remind me of my Victoria. Jesus, but that woman was big-league all the way. Why’d you take this Brooks-Warren case?”
“I’m an investigator. Taking on cases is how I earn my living.” I feel oddly calm talking to him. His manner of speaking is mesmerizing. Quiet, husky, male voice; even though I know how very dangerous this man is, he doesn’t sound threatening. His voice is actually soothing. That’s to his advantage; his victims are taken off guard by that lulling voice.
Voices.
“Stick to following teenage lovers, cheating spouses, and employee background checks, Cate.” He laughs softly. “Or stay with finding missing persons and pedophiles. That seems to be what you’re good at.”
He’s referring to the McElroy case from last year when I helped find a boy who had been missing for ten years. That case had inadvertently led me to a pedophile monsignor and Church cover-ups in a New Jersey archbishop’s office. The monsignor I nabbed was now spending some quality time in prison and the archbishop had been relieved of his ecclesiastical duties. Job well done there at least. But then, I wasn’t facing a professional killer in that case.
“This business with Brooks-Warren is beyond your prowess.”
“Maybe,” I say, “Then again, maybe not.” I change the subject. “Who’s this big league Victoria? Another person you killed? She proved to be your match and so you had to kill her?”
“Quite the investigator, aren’t you? Ah, Victoria. She was most certainly my match and she is dead…because of me. But…I didn’t kill her.”
“What happened?” I try to sound concerned because I want to keep him talking.
Ignoring my question, he grabs the bottle again. “Want some?” he says holding it out to me. “You look like someone who enjoys a stiff drink.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t drink on the job either and you look very much like a threat to me.”
That gets a short sardonic laugh from him. “Smart woman, Cate. Keep alert. Don’t let your guard down for one second. I like that about you.” He puts the bottle down.
“You don’t know me well enough to like or dislike anything about me.”
“I know enough about you to know that you almost got killed last year during your missing person’s case; got smashed in the head and kidnapped, but still managed to solve the case and bring a pedophile to justice. Brava to you, Cate Harlow. By the way, I hate child molesters. Those bastards I have killed for free.” Another long look at me. “You drive a SUV because it makes you feel safe on the roads, your best friend’s name is Melissa, a lady in a
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profession called the oldest one in the world. She’s very hot, by the way.” He laughs. “And I also
know that you can’t quite make up your mind which man you want to fuck, stalwart NYPD
homicide Detective Will Benigni or Dr. Giles Barrett, the head of the city’s morgue. It’s an
interesting coincidence that both men are somehow involved with dead bodies, isn’t it? That turn
you on? So you see, Cate, I do know a lot about you.”
“You certainly did your homework, didn’t you?”
He ignores my sarcasm.
“I am going to say this once, Cate. I get paid to do a job, it gets done. Stay out of my way or you could get hurt…badly.”
I make a stab at rationality. “No exceptions? Come on, Marc, you can make a change in your work ethic.” He laughs when I call him by his name. He knows what I’m trying to do. I want to make this conversation as personal as possible. First name basis and all, as if we’re going to be friends.
“This Jennifer Brooks-Warren has changed her life dramatically. She is not the person she was two years ago; not only not physically the same but emotionally as well. You can keep her money, believe me. She’s told me so. She has a new life, she’s about to be married. Let it go.”
“Married?” He seems surprised. “Now that is a very interesting turn of events.” He laughs again. “Getting married.” He looks at me calmly and shakes his head. I hear him curse under his breath.
“Yes, getting married. Let it go. You have the money. Call it off.”
He curses again then gives me a cold, chilling smile. “You’re right. She has changed; she’s very different from who and what she was two years ago. And about to enter holy matrimony, well…damn!” He pauses as if he’s calculating an option. “You know something, Harlow? I’m a sucker for love.” The way he says that chills me even more. “And…since you asked so nicely, Cate, I think I will release her from her contract. Of course I’ll keep the money. It’s sort of a professional agreement fee if you will. Sure, why not? Consider her released. Happy now?”
He’s being sarcastic. This sounds too easy, too pat. Something’s not right and he knows I realize that. “You’ll release her? That easily, huh? Why do I get the feeling that she’s still not safe from you? I guess this time you’ll be sending her a note about leaving her alone then?”
“Probably not. I’m not big on written material. Your detective skills are really not working overtime here, Cate. I said I can and will release her from her contract. No problem there. Done.” He laughs, a bit sadly I think. “But, you see, Cate, there’s one small problem. This isn’t about her hiring me anymore. There’s still a contract out on her, a new one with quite a hefty payout. Someone else, it seems, wants her eliminated. It’s a lot more money than the paltry ten thousand she paid. Once I get paid, this new contract will be fulfilled, believe me.”
Another person? Someone from her past, someone who knows she has money and is going to marry into even more money. Who? That man Kevin from whom she stole money or some relatives who feel they have been wronged? A man or woman she didn’t tell me about? Maybe Jennifer hasn’t been completely honest with me about her past or even her present.
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“Another contract? Who wants her—” I don’t get to finish my question. He shushes me the way a person might gently shush a talkative child.
“Close your eyes, sweetheart.” The hit man walks over to where I’m sitting. The adrenaline rushes through me at his approach and I am instantly on the alert.
“If you’re going to kill me, I’d rather keep my eyes open and maybe get in one good kick before I go.” All I get as an answer is a soft laugh and my Smith and Wesson, empty of bullets, dropped in my lap.
“Stay away, Cate. You’re not on a level playing field. Stick with what you know in your world and stay out of mine. By the way, your sniper buddy? He’s dead. Call it collateral damage. You didn’t really think that that old sniper could take me out, did you? Foolish mistake, Cate.”
Dave dead? No wonder Adrian and I didn’t see him after the dinner. The Eliminator is that good that he was able to kill the sniper and none of us, a top-notch security expert, a decorated NYPD police detective, and me, a pretty savvy PI, suspected anything. He must have been very close to the restaurant where we assumed Jennifer was safe with all the security. He is a White Death!
I get up quickly and swing at his face but, before I can stop him, he grabs my neck firmly and, with a practiced touch, presses down on a sensitive pressure point. The next thing I know I wake up, alone on the floor of my living room, my gun and the bullets nex
t to me. I feel as if I am just coming out of anesthesia, groggy and unsure of where I am. Damn the Eliminator is good! Out cold for, I check my watch, fifteen minutes.
I stand shakily and list slightly to my left. Then holding on to furniture I walk to my kitchen to grab a bottle of cold water from the fridge. I drink most of it then put my head in the sink and pour the rest of the cold water over the back of my neck and my face.
It’s only later, when I’m sitting down with my eyes closed, that I think of something about Marc Croft. His voice—that woman on the street, the one near the Luca Memorial building, said he sounded like a radio announcer. Croft’s voice was clear and soft, but he lacked the distinctive voice of a man who speaks for a living. His voice had a very slight mid-western sound. If this woman hadn’t heard Marc Croft, then who had she heard saying, It’s a shame when someone dies so young?
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The pressure point knock-out from Marc Croft aka the Eliminator has left me feeling as if I have a hangover. I take a shower hoping to lessen the drunk feeling. Later I drink bottle after bottle of cold water. In a couple of hours I feel better, not one hundred percent okay, but better.
Going to my computer, I sit down, open a confidential file named Duchovny and write down everything that I can remember about what Marc Croft said. I even put in the part about a woman named Victoria who seemed to be an important person in his life.
After I’m done, I walk over to the comfortable lounger that faces the window and put my head back. Mouse and Little Guy come out from wherever they were hiding and hesitantly walk around the living room. They jump up onto the lounge chair and begin a soft self-soothing purr. I like to think that they’re happy I’m alive. So I sit with a cat on either side of me and look out at the cars going by in the night. Sitting there I make a decision: I will not tell anyone about what happened here tonight, especially Will. If he knows, he’ll start his own search for the Eliminator
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and that could throw my whole case off. Thank God he has a law review class tonight. I’ll handle
this myself. The locks on my doors and the security lighting system can be fixed before he comes
over tomorrow night. What with the long hours of my day, and the emotional drain of having a
very unexpected visitor, I fall into a dreamless sleep and don’t awaken until almost eight the next
morning.
Chapter 22
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, still a little groggy, I’m down by Luca Memorial Services. I decided to do a sweep of the area, talking to the street people down there one more time, to see if I can glean any other information concerning the coffin pick-up. My security system is being fixed by the company that had originally installed it. I tell them nothing about it being disabled; let them think the security lighting failed because of some glitch in their system
As I’m walking around talking to the street people and writing notes, I get a call from Jennifer’s condo. I put my phone on speaker so I can hear without holding it to my ear. It seems that Jennifer has received a text message from the Eliminator: “Your special gift has already been picked up for you. It’s very comfortable. Happy birthday!”
“I’ll be over within the hour,” I say juggling phone and notebook. “Everyone is to just hang in there. No one is to leave the building. Got it?”
The woman to whom I paid twenty-five dollars for information last week has been standing next to me and asking if I can give her any money for a sandwich. I put my phone in my pocket and take out a five. “Don’t spend this on any more booze,” I say sniffing her alcohol-tinged breath. She smiles slyly, stuffs the bill in her shirt, looks at me and says, “So you found him, huh?”
I’m cornered by a man who saw the exchange of money. He says if I give him money too, he can tell me where the aliens have landed. I take out another five, tell him to go buy the aliens lunch, and turn to leave. The woman touches my arm, “You found him! Right? Right?” She follows me as I’m walking away. “You found him.” She grabs my wrist and nods.
“Sorry?” I’m distracted and need to get to my car, which is parked two long city blocks away. With only one thing on my mind, I’m not listening to what she is saying.
“You know, that guy! That guy!”
I’m about to sprint away from her but the woman won’t let go of my wrist. “I can’t talk now,” I say. “I have to see someone right away. This is urgent.”
“That man? You’re going to see him?” Sometimes the inhabitants on the street live in dual universes; she’s probably talking about someone she knows or met and thinks I know.
“Look, I’ll be back, okay?” I say finally releasing her strong grip on my wrist. “You can tell me about this guy then. But right now I have—”
“Okay, but I’m glad you found him. I helped you, remember that. You owe me money now.” She stands there nodding at me smugly. “You said you’d pay me more money if I knew anything else about that man who took the coffin.”
I stop and turn. “Wait a minute. Who do you think I found?”
“The guy with the radio voice.” I look at her without answering. “That guy, the announcer guy,” she says slowly as if she is talking to a child, “you were just talking with him on your phone. You found him, right? Now you have to give me money.”
Some of the street people have followed her and she turns toward them saying that I’m going to pay her because she helped me. I pull her away from them and make her face me. “Are you sure, are you absolutely sure a voice you heard just now is the same one you heard when the coffin was picked up?”
“Give me the money first,” she says defiantly.
“I’ll give you the money when you answer my question. Are you absolutely certain you heard the same voice on my phone that you heard that night?”
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She looks at my face. “Lady, didn’t you hear me? I just said so. I said that you found the radio voice man.”
I hand her two tens, all I have left in my wallet. Then I close my eyes and sigh. The call was a conference call, a four way conversation. The “radio announcer voice” she just heard belongs either to the verbose and windbag building manager, the well-spoken security expert Adrian, or to the elegant Edward Penn. All three with “radio voices”. Shit!
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“What are you going to do, Catherine?” Myrtle is incredulous at what I am telling as she sits on the couch in my office drinking a cup of tea designed to help women over a certain age lose weight.
“I’m working on it, Myrtle. At present, I have no idea. It could be any one of them.” Having returned a short time ago from Jennifer’s condo where I read the text message she had received, I am at a loss as to how I should proceed.
“Edward Penn, that distinguished good-looking man, her fiancé? The one with the beard?” asks Myrtle. “Do you really think he could be behind this murder-for-hire?”
“Maybe he wants her money. She is loaded.”
“Do you really think that, Catherine? If that’s the case, well...that bastard! Wanting to have that poor woman murdered for her money?” She looks at me and shakes her head disbelievingly. “Personally, I don’t believe it’s true. From what I understand, regardless of the fact that we haven’t been paid a cent since she wrote us that retainer check, he’s wealthy himself. He doesn’t need her money.” Myrtle sips her tea and shakes her head. “And Adrian? You’ve known him for several years, haven’t you? It is possible that it’s the manager of the building. I haven’t met him. What’s your gut instinct say about all this? You always tell me that it never fails you.”
“Well, it seems to be failing me now,” I slump down in my chair and put my feet up on my desk. “I don’t seem to know anything. I don’t even know if I can trust that homeless woman to remember that night, let alone a voice she says she heard, correctly. Today she smelled rather heavily of alcohol. That could very well addle her memory or distort what she thinks she heard.”
&n
bsp; “There is that. Still, Catherine, you’re the one who told me that sometimes what a witness hears means more than what they see. Don’t discount what she says she heard. Remember Mr. O’Leary? A very credible hearing witness.” Mr. O’Leary, my ninety-something suburban moonshiner in the McElroy case last year. His statement to me about what he heard on the day fifteen-year-old Joshua disappeared changed the entire timeline of my cold case by several crucial hours. Yet because of his advanced age he was hesitant to tell police authorities what he heard, afraid no one would believe a nonagenarian’s hearing ability. Myrtle’s right; even impaired by alcohol, that woman’s testimony about a certain type of voice she heard may have credit.
There’s only one way to find out whose voice was the one heard the night the coffin was picked up. I’m going to record each of the men on my office phone and bring that woman to here
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to listen to all three separately in absolute quiet. Before I do, I need to review what I know about
each man. I start with a review of my private interview with Jennifer Brooks-Warren.
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“When did you meet Edward Penn?” was the first question I had asked Jennifer when I had her alone in my office two days after she had retained my investigative services. Edward said he had to be at a meeting downtown and I took the opportunity to have a one-on-one with my client.
“Edward? We met over a year ago. It was outside my bank. He was going to a meeting at the Wells and Cummings brokerage firm down the block. He’s on the board there, you know, and goes to monthly meetings. Edward doesn’t have to work anymore but he likes to keep busy and being on the board is good for him, he says.
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