Before Hutch could respond, a voice on the intercom announced the next stop and the train braked to a slow halt. Langer shut his textbook, got to his feet, then waited until the doors slid open and headed outside without a backward glance.
A moment later they followed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
HUTCH HAD SEEN his share of spy movies in his time, had even starred in one—a direct-to-DVD stinker filmed in Romania called The Counterfeit Coffin. But neither he nor Ronnie were experts in even the most rudimentary surveillance techniques, a point well proven by their recklessness on the train.
Instead of turning this into a group project, executed by a bunch of laymen—an idea that Ronnie had rightfully mocked as bad TV—Hutch probably should have hired a professional. Someone with real expertise. Someone less visible. Someone who hadn’t spent his days parked in a courtroom chair directly across the aisle from the very man they were trying to surveil.
If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have come so close to getting himself killed.
But the truth was, Hutch’s ego—his vanity—had gotten the better of him. He wanted to be the star, the hero. He wanted to prove his instincts right and save the damsel in distress. He wanted to be the one to tag Jenny’s killer, if only to make up for his failure to be there for her when she was alive.
Besides, if he had gone with a professional, who would he have hired?
He didn’t know any surveillance specialists or private investigators or retired cops here in Chicago. The ones he’d befriended in Los Angeles considered him a drunken loser. And the kind of man who was willing to take money for a questionable exercise like this one, was probably not the kind of man you should trust. Or depend on.
There was always Waverly, of course, who could undoubtedly make some calls. But she would have asked all kinds of questions—and what would Hutch have told her? How would he have convinced her that Langer was their man?
So here they were. He and Ronnie. Several blocks from the train station, foolishly following a possible psycho killer down a busy sidewalk, thinking they could pass themselves off as an anonymous couple out for an after dinner stroll.
Problem was, Langer didn’t stroll. He moved quickly and with purpose, his book bag bouncing against his hip, an urgency in his gait that suggested he was late for an important appointment.
A job, maybe?
Hutch and Ronnie were walking at an accelerated pace past a row of outdoor cafes, the clink of dinnerware and the murmur of conversation punctuated by occasional peels of laughter. Langer was less than forty yards ahead of them—a man on a mission—and all Hutch could think was—
Don’t turn around
Don’t turn around
Don’t turn around
—Then Langer came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the sidewalk, right in front of one of the cafes.
Hutch and Ronnie nearly collided as they, too, came to a stop. They quickly turned toward the crowded restaurant next to them and pretended to peruse a menu mounted on a post near the entrance.
Using Hutch as a shield, Ronnie chanced a glance in Langer’s direction and said, “What the hell is he up to? He’s just standing there.”
“Please tell me he isn’t looking at us.”
“No, he’s staring at the people eating dinner on the patio. Like he’s catatonic or something. What a nut job.”
“I think we’ve already established that fact.”
“Wait now, wait—he’s going inside.”
“You think he works there?”
“I highly doubt it,” she said. “Would you hire that freak?”
With Langer out of view, they started to walk again, moving slowly toward the next cafe, which was adjacent to the one Langer had entered. They stopped to study the menu, Hutch once again providing cover for Ronnie.
“He’s taking a seat,” she said. “Looks like he’s gonna have dinner.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Hey, psychos have to eat, too, don’t they?”
Hutch shuddered as an image of Hannibal Lecter popped into his head, but he quickly squelched it. Taking a glance at Langer, he nodded toward the cafe in front of them and said, “How do you feel about a cup of coffee?”
“Here?”
He gestured to the patio. “If we work it just right, we’ll be able to watch him without drawing any attention to ourselves.”
“In that case,” she said, “I’d love one.”
Then she hooked his arm and they headed inside.
________
“WHAT’S HE DOING now?” Ronnie asked.
They had been sitting there for a full forty minutes, strategically positioned with Ronnie’s back to the adjacent cafe’s patio, blocking Hutch from Langer’s line of sight.
Hutch nursed his coffee, looking past her left shoulder at Langer, who was quietly cutting into what appeared to be a grilled chicken breast. He again sat alone, but for once in his life didn’t have his face buried in a book.
No, something else had caught his attention.
“Earth to Hutch,” Ronnie said.
“He’s doing the same thing he was doing the last time you asked.”
“Is he still looking at her?”
“Oh, yes.”
For nearly all of those forty minutes, Langer had been watching a petite, dark-haired waitress as she moved about the patio taking orders, clearing up dishes, smiling and laughing with her customers.
Normally, Hutch wouldn’t think much of this behavior. He could remember a time or two that he himself had been mesmerized by a beautiful waitress (and had wound up taking her home to bed), but there were two additional factors here that gave him pause.
First, this was Langer they were talking about.
And second… the waitress in question looked a helluva lot like Ronnie.
“I hate not being able to see him,” she said.
“Just keep looking at me. The view’s better anyway.”
She laughed. “Normally, I’d give you hell for a comment like that, but this time you get a pass. What’s he doing now?”
Hutch sighed. “Will you quit asking me that?”
What Langer was doing was finishing up the last bite of his chicken, his gaze still fixed on the waitress, who was pouring iced tea at a neighboring table. Then she turned and Langer immediately looked away, pretending to peer at the foot traffic on the sidewalk.
The waitress came over to his table and said something to him, gesturing with the pitcher, but Langer just shook his head, unwilling or afraid to look her in the eye. And judging by her expression, that was just fine with her.
But the moment she dropped the check on his table and walked away, his gaze once again shifted in her direction. And while Hutch couldn’t read the guy’s mind, he didn’t doubt that he was paying special attention to the way the fabric of her uniform played along the curve of her ass.
A feeling of dread washed through Hutch. He didn’t like what he was seeing here, convinced it was far more than a man admiring a woman’s anatomy. At least not in a way any normal man would.
He could imagine Langer thinking about those photographs in his book. Thinking about that poor waitress lying face up in a pool of her own blood. Thinking about what he’d done to Jenny.
“This isn’t the first time he’s been here. He’s stalking her.”
Ronnie looked stricken. “You think?”
“I’d bet my so-called career on it. And the fact that she looks just like you makes it all that more horrifying.”
“Thanks,” Ronnie said, turning a little green. “Should we warn her?”
“She’ll probably think we’re nuts.”
“Like my mom always says, better safe than sorry.”
Langer was on his feet now, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. He dropped it to the table, picked up the check, then headed inside the cafe to pay the bill.
“He’s on the move,” Hutch said. “But I think you’re right, and you’re probably not gonna like this idea
.”
“What?”
“I think you should stay here and settle the tab, then go next door and tell your doppelgänger she could be in very serious trouble.”
He could see that she didn’t like the idea, but she nodded. “What do I say to her?”
“Ask her if Langer’s a regular and if she says yes, tell her you think he’s stalking her the way he stalked you, and that she needs to be very careful. Her friends, too. Remember it was Jenny he slashed.”
“Thanks for the reminder. You think she’ll believe me?”
“I hope so.”
As Hutch stood up, Langer emerged from the cafe next door and continued down the street.
Ronnie frowned. “I probably don’t need to ask this, but where will you be while I’m having all this fun?”
“Following the sick son-of-a-bitch home.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
BUT THAT WAS easier said than done.
By the time Hutch got out of the restaurant, Langer was a good half block away and nearly lost in a crowd of pedestrians moving along the sidewalk. A red light at the intersection should have slowed him down, but Langer ignored the signal and darted across the narrow street before any cars could get moving.
Hutch had to scramble to catch up—causing the ache in his kidney to come back—and got stuck at the light as cross traffic whizzed by. He still had Langer in sight, but wouldn’t for long, and he could feel the adrenalin pumping as he waited for the traffic to clear.
Come on, come on, come on…
Then Langer turned a corner and Hutch knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He darted into the middle of the street, let a honking car pass, then beelined it for the other side.
As he reached the corner, his cell phone rang.
Shit.
He pulled it from his from his pocket, saw Ronnie’s name, and clicked it on as he turned the corner and scanned the sidewalk ahead, looking for Langer.
“Not now,” he said. “I may have lost him. I’ll call you back.”
“You sound out of breath. Have you been running?”
The ache was even worse. “Yes, and I’m gonna hang up now.”
“Wait, wait—I’m with the waitress. She says Langer’s only been here a couple times, but she thinks she saw him standing outside her apartment the other night. She figured it was just her imagination, but now she’s not so sure.” Ronnie lowered her voice. “I think I scared the hell out of her.”
“Good,” he said. “She should be scared. I’ve gotta go.”
Then he hung up. He hated being abrupt with her, but he still hadn’t spotted Langer. There was a movie theater up ahead, people milling near the box office, but Langer wasn’t among them.
Had he gone inside?
Hutch picked up his pace, moving at a trot now, but just as he reached the theater, he glanced to his left and saw that Langer had crossed to the other side. He was walking along the sidewalk past a row of parked cars, headed for the adjacent street.
Hutch immediately slowed down and fell back slightly as Langer reached the opposite corner and took a left. Then Hutch sprinted across the street, paused a moment to pull his hood back up over the baseball cap, and turned the corner.
Langer was about twenty yards ahead now, moving into a less populated area, where old brick factory buildings lined either side of the street. There were fewer street lamps here, as well, the block bathed in shadow, and the scene looked like something out of a forties film noir.
Langer was little more than a silhouette, distinguishable only because of the book bag still hanging at his shoulder. Moving at a clip, he crossed the street again, cut through a pool of light and disappeared into the darkness beyond.
All Hutch could see of him now were a few shifting shadows. He picked up speed and followed, crossing under the light until he reached the sidewalk. But when he looked in the direction that Langer had gone, he saw nothing. No sign of the guy.
He looked toward the next corner, which was still quite a distance away, but Langer was nowhere to be found.
What the hell?
He spun around, wondering if Langer had doubled back somehow—but no, there was still no sign of him.
So where was he?
Hutch turned again, looking toward the corner, and that’s when he saw it—
—an alleyway.
A narrow sliver of darkness separating two of the factory buildings.
That had to be where he had gone.
Hutch moved toward it, feeling his adrenalin rise again, his heart thumping in his ears, a dull throbbing in his side.
What if Langer had spotted him and was waiting for him in there?
Hutch had grown up on a diet of horror films, and now several of the more gruesome scenes played through his mind, all of them starring the creep as the slasher. He imagined Langer carrying an axe or a chainsaw or a machete, ready to swing it into action the moment Hutch stepped into that dark alleyway.
It was a ridiculous notion, of course, but it persisted as Hutch pushed on, getting closer and closer to his destination. The pounding in his ears grew louder with every step.
He had almost reached the alley when his cell phone rang again.
Fuck!
Goddamn it, Ronnie!
Why hadn’t he put it on vibrate?
Scrambling to pull it from his pocket before it rang again, he fell back against the brick wall and jabbed the screen, his voice a whisper as he put the phone to his ear. “This is not a good time.”
“Hutch?”
But it wasn’t Ronnie. It was Matt Isaacs.
“Jesus, Matt. I’m in the middle of something here. I’ll have to call you back.”
“Make sure you do,” Matt said, “because I’ve got news.”
“What kind of news?”
“Something that’ll blow your mind. In fact, it’s better we don’t talk about this on the phone. Where can we meet?”
“My place,” Hutch whispered. “But wait until I call you back before you head over there.”
“You got it.”
Then the line went dead.
Hutch’s heart was hammering. His side throbbing. Putting the phone on vibrate now, he pocketed it, sucked in a long breath, then turned again toward that narrow sliver of darkness.
He was about to start forward, but stopped short when a figure appeared in the mouth of alleyway, looking directly at him.
Frederick Langer.
Oh, shit.
________
“WHY DO YOU follow me?” Langer asked.
An accent.
Scandinavian?
Hutch took a stepped backwards. “I… I wasn’t following you,” he managed—
—But before the words were completely out of his mouth, Langer rushed forward with unexpected speed and agility. The next thing Hutch knew, his back was slamming against the wall and a switchblade snicked open in front of his face.
“Who are you?” Langer repeated, pressing the flat of the blade against Hutch’s neck. “Why do you follow me?”
His voice was darker now. More guttural. Dangerous. And as those black, soulless eyes stared at him from behind the thick lenses, Hutch felt an almost irrepressible urge to evacuate his bladder.
Yet the odd thing was, Langer didn’t seem to recognize him. The darkness, coupled with the cap and the hood, must have made him difficult to identify.
“I-I swear to you,” he stuttered, “I wasn’t fo—”
Langer put more pressure on the blade and leaned in very close, his breath thick and hot and redolent of rotting, maggot-infested corpses.
“I see you again,” he said, “I smell you… You die.”
Then the knife disappeared and he turned, moving quickly down the street toward the corner.
Hutch just stood there, trembling, heart pounding, side aching, watching him go. Happy to see him go. Joyful with relief, but surprised to be alive.
It took everything he had not to piss his pants.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIG
HT
HUTCH WAS LARGELY silent during the cab ride to his apartment. He was thinking about some of the parts he had played, the tough guys pushed to the limit, who, when confronted by danger, never backed down.
In such stories, everything was carefully scripted. The hero always had the right words to express himself, and when danger arose, he invariably utilized his combat training from his days in the military or his years on the police force or his upbringing among the monks who had schooled him in the deadly art of Kung fucking Fu.
But the movies weren’t real life, were they? And Hutch didn’t have any combat training to fall back on. His encounter with Langer had proven that he was pretty much ineffectual when confronted by danger. If the guy had decided to gut him right then and there, Hutch doubted he would’ve been able to stop him.
And if Langer had recognized him, had better night vision, had known Hutch was the guy who sat across from him in court, the guy he had encountered in the bathroom, the guy who seemed to be friends with the object of his obsession—or one of them, at least—Hutch would likely be lying on a sidewalk in a pool of blood.
So much for playing the hero.
Hutch didn’t consider himself to be a physically weak man. Before the fall into drugs and alcohol, he had belonged to a gym and had worked out three times a week. Sometimes more. And in the first several months of his recovery, he had once again started lifting weights, this time hiring a trainer to get him back into shape. His newly developed six pack—de rigueur for any leading man these days—had been prominently displayed in several shirtless scenes in the pilot he’d shot back in April.
But physical fitness meant very little if you failed to act—and because of that failure, because he had been too spooked to even move, Hutch felt like a fool.
He had told Ronnie that he’d simply lost Langer in the maze of streets, not bothering to mention the confrontation. Yet she seemed to sense that he was holding back. That something more had happened near that alleyway.
But she said nothing. Didn’t question him. Merely took his hand in hers in the back of the cab and pretended he had told the truth.
And for that, Hutch was grateful.
Silent, but grateful.
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