He reached Ocean Avenue and turned north into heavy traffic, typical on a Friday night. Bikers and low-riders surrounded him. Rough crowd, the sort that drew a lot of cops on patrol. He scanned the sea of car roofs for a lightbar. Couldn’t see one, but that didn’t mean police units weren’t out there—maybe behind him—maybe closing in.
Panic started his heart racing. He thought he might throw up.
The traffic thinned a little as he entered a better neighborhood. On his left was the park on the palisades, busy with tourists and teenagers. Hotels and restaurants and condominium towers rose on his right. It occurred to him that soon, even if things went exactly as planned, he would be either dead or in custody. He would never again walk in a park or eat at a restaurant. He would not see the moon, which hovered over the ocean beyond the palisades, unless he saw it through the barred window of a cell.
But if he lived, he would see Kris in his memory. She would be with him every day, bloodied and torn, his victim, his sacrifice. Every time he closed his eyes, he would see her. He would give up the moon for that. And if he didn’t survive…
With death came immortality. He would be remembered. His name, his face, would be known. He, not Kris, would be on the covers of magazines. He, not Kris, would stare out at a world of television viewers from a million picture tubes. And who could say? Maybe there was a life after this one, when all destinies were fulfilled. If so, he would be with her forever, as he deserved.
But only if he killed her first. To do that, he had to get to Malibu, and time was ticking down.
Ahead was the incline to the coast highway. He eased into the turn lane, then got stuck behind a line of cars at a red light. A minute of waiting followed. He was helpless. If a patrol unit spotted him now, there was nothing he could do except go down shooting.
Finally, the stoplight cycled to a green arrow. He followed the traffic downhill, breathing hard, his chest heaving with strain. There was sweat on his face, sweat pasting his shirt to his armpits and his underpants to his crotch. He smelled bad. But he’d made it at least this far.
He pulled into the fast lane, racing between the pale cliffs and the sea. Fear of attracting attention competed with the need to make up lost time. Urgency won.
Hickle accelerated—sixty-five miles per hour, seventy, seventy-five—breaking the speed limit as he hugged the curving shoreline of Santa Monica Bay on his way to Malibu.
Okay, think, Abby. Think.
Plan A had proven unsuccessful. Time to go to Plan B—if there was a Plan B, other than just lying here till the whole place went kaboom.
She shook her head, rejecting pessimism. There was always a Plan B, and if that failed, a Plan C and D and so on through the alphabet for as long as she lasted. Never give up, that was the spirit.
Plan B was to try variant combinations based on Kris’s birthdate—August 18, 1959. Abby moved the four cams to 0859, 1859, 5918, 5908. No luck. How about Hickle’s birthday? Travis had told her. It was October 7, 1965.
The cams seemed to be getting slippery. No, it was her fingers that were slick with perspiration. She wiped her shaking hands on her blouse and spun the disks. 1007, 1065, 0765, and reversals of all these sequences. Nothing happened.
The gas odor was worse than before. Her stomach coiled. Nausea threatened.
All right. Plan C. Kicking off her shoe, she tried to slip her foot through the chain. No use. The circle of steel links dug like small teeth into the skin above her heel, gripping fiercely. Either the chain was too tight, or her darned foot was too big.
Something like panic welled up inside her. She pushed it down. Mustn’t freak out. Freaking out was not a survival tactic.
Time for Plan D. So what was it? Well, she could pound the floor, scream for help. Trouble was, she didn’t think she could get enough air into her lungs to force out a decent scream, and if she banged on the floor, the downstairs neighbors would either ignore the noise or call the cops. And the cops would take hours to respond to a low-priority call in this district, if they responded at all.
She didn’t have hours. The gas was thick. Before long, it would reach the critical mass necessary to set off an explosion and a flash fire. The temperature in a flash fire could hit 1300 degrees. That was hot enough to fry her up pretty good.
“Damn it, Abby.” She blinked sweat out of her eyes. “You’re supposed to be smart, right? And highly trained, with all these advanced skills…”
Skills. She did have skills. Among them was the skill of picking locks.
She had no tools, but maybe she didn’t need any. She pulled the shackle taut, then fingered the cams. The second one had tightened; it turned with difficulty. That was the one to work on first. Carefully she dialed the cam through its ten-digit range. On six it loosened. The second number in the combination was six.
Her heart fluttered. Her vision was blurring in and out. Her general condition was not good, and the prognosis was poor. On the menu tonight, rotisserie Abby, served charred.
Quit it. She needed to concentrate. Easier said than done. Her head was squeezed in a vise of pain, and the bedroom had begun to imitate a carousel, and there was the stench of week-old diapers in her nose and mouth.
Maintaining pressure on the shackle, she tested the other three cams. Now the first one resisted turning. She worked it slowly, trying not to think about the gas and the pilot light and what 1300 degrees would feel like. Hotter than Phoenix in July, if such a thing was possible.
The cam loosened when it was set to eight. That was the first number in the combination. Six was the second. Eight. Six. Put it together, Abby. Eight. Six.
Channel Eight. The news at six…and ten.
The last two digits were one and zero. 8610 was the combination. Had to be. She set the cams in that sequence, and the padlock released. She was free.
Now get the window open. Hurry.
Prone on her stomach, she crawled across the floor. Her breathing was awful to hear. Her chest heaved, and she couldn’t get oxygen into her lungs, and her head was sizzling, and there was pain like a crushing pressure at the back of her eyes. Sometimes, she thought, I really hate my job.
She came up against the bedroom wall. The window was just above her. Close, but she couldn’t reach it, couldn’t raise herself off the floor. Too weak. Come on, she chided silently, you can do a pull-up, can’t you?
With one arm extended, she got hold of the windowsill and, using it as leverage, lifted herself to her knees.
The window was locked. Hickle, the bastard, had actually taken the time to secure the latch. She fumbled at it, but her fingers, glazed with sweat, couldn’t find a grip. This whole situation was starting to get on her nerves in a big way. Nothing was easy. And time was running out.
Finally she got the latch open. Okay, lift the window. She put both hands on the sash bar and strained. Nothing happened. She had no strength. She battered the glass with her fists. Her blows fell like sighs. A kitten could have done more damage.
Again she tried to raise the window. Still no luck. Weakness overtook her, and she lowered her head, coughing. God, she was tired. She wanted to sleep…
Plenty of time for rest later. Eternal rest, if it worked out that way. At the moment she was still alive. She would not waste whatever time she had left. The explosion could come at any moment. She had to dilute the fumes with clean air, or she was dead. Open the damn window. Do it now.
She put everything she had into a final effort, pushing upward with her last strength, and the window cracked open a few inches.
Success.
She rested her head on the sill and tried to draw a breath, but her throat had closed. There was air coming in, pure air, and she couldn’t breathe it. What the hell was wrong with her lungs?
But it was simple, really. Her vision was graying out, and her ears hummed, and she was going to lose consciousness. She had driven herself to the point of collapse, and although she had forced the window ajar, it was not enough to save her.
; “Nice try, girlfriend,” Abby murmured, “but no lollipop.”
The floor rushed up, and she fell away into the dark.
32
“…vehicle is a VW Rabbit wanted for felony evading, license plate…”
Wyatt heard the call on his radio as he cruised back to Hollywood Station after supervising a crime scene on Highland—drugstore hold-up, nobody injured. The suspect had taken a hundred bucks out of the cash register and three packages of Trojans. Apparently he had a big night planned.
It was nothing major, and Wyatt had passed the time pondering what to do about Abby. He had decided on a confrontation tomorrow. Call her, arrange a lunch meeting, then demand to know what she’d gotten involved in. And once she told him? He didn’t know. His planning hadn’t made it that far.
At 11:40 he had been relieved of responsibility for the crime scene by the arrival of a bored detective, accompanied by an equally bored forensic photographer. Now he was driving down Melrose, listening to the dispatcher report a CHP stop gone awry on the Santa Monica Freeway, miles away, twenty minutes ago. He wondered why the BOLO was going out over a Hollywood Division frequency. As he turned onto Wilcox, he got his answer.
“…registered to a Hollywood resident…”
That explained it. There was a fair chance the suspect would be stupid enough to return home. Patrol units in Hollywood were advised to watch for a VW Rabbit with the reported plate number, and to keep an eye on the suspect’s residence.
“…address, 1554 Gainford…”
Wyatt stiffened. The Gainford Arms.
“…name, Hickle, Raymond, that’s Henry Ida Charles…”
It was Hickle who had been speeding on the freeway, Hickle who had fled a traffic stop. Wyatt had no idea what this might mean, except that Hickle was out of control and dangerous and crazed.
“Abby,” he breathed, a cold feeling in his gut.
The time was 11:48 when Hickle abandoned his car in a small beach parking lot off Pacific Coast Highway. He’d made it. He was in Malibu, on Kris’s territory. The police had not intercepted him.
The access path to the public beach was never closed. He lugged his duffel down the dirt trail, then headed into the woods that bordered Malibu Reserve, his flashlight probing the foliage.
Midnight was close, the time frame tight, but he no longer feared failure. He was destined to succeed. He could feel it. Kris had messed with him, and she would pay, as Abby had paid.
Thinking of Abby made him wonder if she was dead yet. Fifty minutes had passed since he’d released the gas. By now she must have been asphyxiated or blown to bits.
Now it was Kris’s turn to die.
Not far from the Reserve’s perimeter fence, he located the mouth of the drainage pipe. The pipe was two feet in diameter, jutting out of a mound of earth under a eucalyptus tree. There was a small brackish pond nearby, and evidently the pipe had been laid down as a flood control device, its purpose to channel overflow from the pond away from the path and into the ravine that ran through the fenced compound.
On hands and knees Hickle bellied inside, dragging the duffel after him. The bag got stuck in the opening, and briefly he was afraid it wouldn’t fit—he’d never brought weapons on his previous outings, only the Polaroid camera—but when he turned the bag sideways it slipped through. He crawled over leaves, twigs, candy wrappers, and other detritus washed in by storms. Beetles skittered out of his path. Some backtracked and flitted over him, tickling like light fingers. He didn’t mind. He had come this way before, and there were always bugs.
He’d never made the passage at night, though. His flashlight traced pale loops and whorls on the pipe’s soiled interior. Past the light there was only darkness, not the reassuring glow of sunshine that had drawn him forward on past occasions. He guessed he had come halfway, which meant he was under the fence. Inside the Reserve.
Kris had surrounded herself with a fence and a gatehouse, a bodyguard at the wheel of her car and other bodyguards stationed in her guest cottage, yet all these precautions had proven useless against him. He was unstoppable. He was a force of nature, a man of destiny.
He crawled faster.
Wyatt parked by a fire hydrant outside the Gainford Arms and mounted the front steps two at a time. The lobby door was locked, and he didn’t have a master key. He buzzed Abby’s apartment, got no answer. He went around to the rear door, locked also. He scanned the parking lot and saw her white Dodge Colt in its assigned space.
She was home. She wasn’t answering the buzzer. And Hickle, the man she’d been spying on, was running from the police.
With his side-handle baton he smashed the glass panel adjacent to the rear door, then reached in and released the latch. Inside, he stabbed the elevator call button, but when the elevator didn’t instantly arrive he gave up on it and ran up the stairs. At the fourth floor he exited, slowing to a walk. There was a remote chance Hickle had already come back and was waiting to ambush the first cop who arrived. Might have been a good idea to call for backup or at least check the parking lot for Hickle’s Volkswagen. A little late for either plan now.
He drew his service pistol, approaching Hickle’s apartment. He tested the door. Locked. He heard no movement inside. Even so, he ducked low, dropping below the peephole, as he passed by.
Abby’s apartment was next. Number 418. He rapped his fist on the door, then frowned. He smelled something. “Oh, shit,” he whispered.
He tried the knob. It turned freely. He stepped into a den of fumes, moving fast, unafraid of an ambush now. Hickle wasn’t here, wasn’t coming back. He’d made Abby’s apartment into a giant bomb and fled before it could explode.
The stench was overpowering. The gas must be nearly at critical mass. Any spark could set off a detonation. Wyatt advanced into the room, grateful that the lights had been left on; he wouldn’t dare flip a light switch now.
He saw the dislodged oven immediately, the ruptured inflow line spewing gas. He cranked the shutoff valve, sealing the pipe, then got the living room window open. Leaning on the sill, he took a deep breath of fresh air to dispel any dizziness. He was shaking. It seemed okay to shake. He was standing inside an apartment that had been converted into a large-scale explosive device. It could still go off at any moment.
In the bedroom he found Abby. She lay unmoving in a twisted pose before the window, which was unlatched and a few inches ajar.
Hickle hadn’t left it open, that was for sure. Abby must have raised it. The effort had exhausted her, but by bringing in a small quantity of clean air and diluting the lethal concentration of vapors, it had also saved her life.
If she was still alive. Wyatt didn’t check until he had raised the window fully. Then he knelt, feeling her carotid artery. His fingertips detected the flutter of a pulse.
He hauled Abby through the window onto the fire escape and set her down. She was barely breathing. He tilted her head back to open her airway, pinched her nostrils, sealed her mouth with his and blew air into her lungs. He did it a second time, then paused, studying her chest, waiting for an exhalation. None came. He repeated the procedure, expelling air down her throat, forcing her chest to rise. Still she wasn’t breathing. He did it again. He would not give up. He would not let her die.
33
Hickle struggled out of the drainage pipe, toting the duffel bag, and scrambled through a shallow ravine, emerging near Gateway Road. Gateway was two lanes of pitted macadam lined with eucalyptus trees, the only way for vehicular traffic to get into or out of Malibu Reserve. The guardhouse with its lowered gate lay at the end of the road, the coast highway beyond.
He needed to cross Gateway, a risky endeavor if the guard happened to be looking in this direction. He took a breath and scurried across, the heavy bag slapping his hip with every step. At the far side of the road, he disappeared into the woods, sure he had not been seen.
Fast through the trees, heading toward the smell of the sea. He could hear the crash of breakers. Malibu had been named for that
sound; the Chumash Indians had dubbed it the place where the waves are loud. But tonight there would be something louder than the surf. There would be gunshots. And screams.
Hickle reached Malibu Reserve Drive, which intersected with Gateway and ran parallel to the beach. The Barwoods’ house lay on the far side of the street, one of a row of beachfront homes built close together, most fronted by guest cottages and elaborate entryways.
He hunkered down behind a tuft of weeds and studied the house. The lights in the guest cottage glowed, and there was restless movement in the windows. As he watched, a man in a dark blazer and turtleneck stepped out of the cottage, looking around. A moment later the man went back inside, but he kept the door open.
This was bad. The two security agents stationed in the house seemed to have been put on alert. Was it possible TPS had already been notified of the explosion in Hollywood? He doubted that the news would travel that fast. More likely, Abby’s earlier reports had triggered a higher state of readiness.
His idea had been to cross the road and hide in the bushes alongside the Barwoods’ driveway, then fire at the Town Car when it pulled up. Now he wasn’t sure the plan would work. He might be spotted as he approached the house or when he took cover close to the cottage.
He checked his watch. Midnight. Kris could arrive at any time. If he was going to rethink the ambush, he had better do it fast.
The TPS man slipped out of the doorway again, casting another wary glance up and down the road. That decided things. There was no chance of success if he stuck to his original plan. He had to improvise.
Hickle slipped through the woods, moving parallel to Malibu Reserve Drive, until he reached the intersection with Gateway. After entering the compound, Kris’s Town Car would proceed down Gateway, then turn left on Malibu Reserve Drive, heading for the beach house. It was a sharp turn, forcing the driver to cut his speed. When the car slowed and the driver was turning the wheel, Hickle would strike.
The Shadow Hunter Page 22
