“I’ll take it,” Loverboy said, interrupting him.
CHAPTER 54
Sunk deep in the beige velveteen backseat of the taxicab, Imogen closed her eyes and sorted through the flavors.
Metal. Lemon. Peanuts.
It had taken her fifteen minutes to get to the impound lot from the time she got the phone call saying the taxi was ready for her. It was not exactly that she had been waiting by the phone.
Liar.
She had been. Waiting. All damn day. Waiting as the adrenaline rush of watching the fingerprint come up right in the middle of the taxi receipt as they fumed it with the iodine crystals at six that morning faded. Waiting for the technical report on the Loverboy phone interview tape (not ready). Waiting for Benton to come over or call and ask her what progress she’d made (didn’t happen). Waiting for J.D. to return her calls (nothing). Waiting to understand why the killings went in two-week cycles (no clue). Waiting for the crime-scene squad to put everything back in the taxi so she could sit in it and try to figure out something. Anything.
Waiting for Loverboy to kill Rosalind.
The metallic taste in the backseat of the taxi was fingerprint powder, she knew, so she ignored it. The lemon was one she remembered from her cab ride the first time. The peanut taste, new, but very faint. Had it been left by the crime-scene squad or the killer?
A flare of anger at how badly everything about the taxi had been mismanaged sparked inside her, but she pushed it down. Emotions had flavors too. She needed to keep her palate clear.
She breathed deeply, sampling taste and smell alone. She opened her eyes. Although she wore her dark glasses, the flavors on her tongue became instantly more complex with her eyes open. They fixed on the brown stain on the seat to the left of her thigh. The crime squad said it was chocolate ice cream, but she could not shake the idea that it was dried blood.
A familiar chalky taste slid over the tartness of the lemon, clicking like a memory into place, but there was a peppery pricking on the edges of her tongue. She turned her head slowly from left to right, letting the flavors creep in. The pepper was stronger near the driver’s side of the crowded dashboard. Tom had interviewed the taxi driver’s wife, who said the collection of toys glued and suction-cupped there had not belonged to her husband. Loverboy had brought them. A little audience all for himself, Imogen guessed. She forced herself to study each toy in turn, Elvis, NASA Barbie, the Smurf, the hula girl. She leaned forward, shifting the balance of the car slightly, and the three dogs began wagging their tails in unison, eager to please. But none of it registered. She sat back and closed her eyes, dredging up any detail of her trip in the taxi.
Why hadn’t she paid more attention?
She remembered looking out the window at the many skylines of the city. Remembered trying to ignore all the banal advice he was giving her. Remembered the tail of dark hair that she now thought was a wig brushing the collar of his Members Only jacket.
Come on, come on. She dragged partial thoughts from her memory. The collar of his jacket was frayed, she recalled. What about the cuffs? Did she even look at his hands on the steering wheel? Did she—
Steering wheel. Notepad. She opened her eyes and the taste of pepper flooded her mouth. That was the difference. When she rode in the car the paper on the notepad had been blank under the Don’t like my driving? Call 1-800-Jerkoff sign. Now the pad was covered over with a page ripped out of a word-search book.
Deliberately? Another game?
Word Hide-’n’-Seek.
She thought of Burt, Eureka, CA, in the Bellagio security office, with his word searches. But he could not be Loverboy because he could not have driven her taxi that morning and met her in the security office.
One of the crime-scene analysts, Larry, had even mentioned the word search found in the taxi, she realized. “Is your guy stupid or something? He did it all wrong. He didn’t find any of the words he was supposed to. Doesn’t look like he even tried.”
Imogen sandwiched herself in the gap between the front seats and looked at the paper. Larry was right. The words that had been circled weren’t the ones listed at the bottom of the page to be found. Most of them weren’t even words. XYREEN. CUBWLAI. NONOQ.
It was completely haphazard. Was he losing it? Losing control? Or did it mean—
Her eyes began to pick out the letters between the circled words, the letters that remained. Reading between the lines.
Reaching behind her, she rummaged in her bag until she found a pen. With the cap in her mouth she copied the letters as they appeared onto her left palm.
YO USH OU LD NTH AVE
TA K ENM YC A RN OW
S O MEO N EMU STP AY
Imogen copied the letters onto a scrap of paper in her lap. When she was finished she read: “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TAKEN MY CAR NOW SOMEONE MUST PAY.”
Only during her second pass through it did Imogen become aware of the regular ticking noise, like the sound of a timer, coming from somewhere behind her.
Someone must pay.
Ticking like a bomb.
Imogen sprang to the door and had her fingers on the lock when the ticking stopped.
Rachel’s face filled the window. “Bugsy said I could find you here. The tech guys are ready to report on the reporter’s interview tape for you,” she said.
The ticking had just been footsteps, Imogen told herself. Just the sound of Rachel’s heels on the cement of the impound lot. She swallowed hard.
Rachel looked at her. “Are you all right? Is something wrong?”
“No,” Imogen assured her.
Liar, liar, pants on fire, sang the killer’s voice in her head. She looked down at the note that was clutched in her white knuckles.
SOMEONE MUST PAY.
If not her, then who?
CHAPTER 55
The night before Rosalind had longed for death but now, given the chance to embrace it, she could not do it. It was not simply because of her desire to see Jason again. Not simply because she was stronger than that.
She realized, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, unable to wipe the tears from her cheeks because her hands were bound behind her, that it was because now she had a ray of hope. She was going to get the hell out of here and see that he got—
What he had coming to him!
—help. When understanding came it made her cry harder, from a sick sort of joy or from a sick horror at what she felt herself becoming, she was not sure. Finally she stood awkwardly and began pacing around the room.
Leaving her alone, with the door unlocked, was a test, just like all the other little tests before it, she realized. He was always testing, testing to see if she hated him, testing to see if she lied to him. If she was “a faker.” When he believed her, believed that she really cared about him, he treated her better. It was what had happened that morning.
The strawberry syrup soaked through the fabric of the blue velour housecoat and dried in sticky pink patches of itchiness on her arms and feet, but she did not care. He wanted her to be nice to him, to like him. He was looking for positive feedback, and even the most subtle disagreement could send him spinning out of control. He almost seemed to crave the excuse. The thing to do was keep him happy, keep him feeling confident and loved. Showing him that she had stayed this time, had not even tried to escape, would be a good start.
She had to keep her feet moving in order to stop herself from going to the door.
She would stay only until she could find a way to get out other than the door. As she moved, her eyes roamed the blank white walls. They were clean, as if they had been painted recently. All four walls were identical, the same size, the same color, except the one with the door in it. The unlocked door. The waiting door. The just-one-turn-and-you’re-free door—
Don’t look at that!
—the death door.
There had to be another way out. She banged her head against all four walls of the room to test for hollowness but found they were solid. No hid
den passages like the one he’d used to get her out of her hotel. The floor was carpeted from one side to another in a blue-brown industrial carpet that smelled dusty. Beneath it she guessed was concrete. The television plugged into an outlet that came out of the floor and was pushed against the middle of the wall with the door in it, with the two genuine La-Z-Boy recliners facing it. Hers was red vinyl. His was blue velvet. “Like a throne,” he’d told her. “Like I’m a prince.”
She shuddered at the memory.
The double bed with its restraints jutted out of the wall next to the TV. On the opposite wall was a drafting table with a drawer, a desk light, and an office chair. She had not seen him open the drawer but once, when she floated into consciousness during her first days there, she’d seen him looking over a large book. She suspected he kept it locked in the drawer. Next to the desk was the kiddie potty he’d brought in for her to use.
That recalled moments she preferred not to remember.
She perched on the edge of the recliner—she’d spent too much time in it to go back willingly—and scanned the room. There was something she had seen when she had been drugged and strapped to the bed. Her eyes moved to the bed, to the ceiling above it where the smoke detector perpetually flashed its red beacon.
That was when she spotted it. It had been painted over but it was still visible. Next to the smoke detector was the rectangular outline of a board. Screws held it into the ceiling at all four corners and in the middle of each side. Eight screws in all.
Furiously she pushed the recliner toward the wall with her knees until it was underneath the rectangle and climbed on top of it. It threatened to tip over but rocked against the wall and remained steady. Standing on the seat she might be able to reach the screws if her hands were not bound behind her, she saw. Standing on the arm she would definitely be in range.
If her hands were not bound behind her.
If she had anything to use to unscrew them.
Still, it was something. Something possible. Her heart was beating with adrenaline. The crucial thing was not to let him know she’d seen it. Not to let him know she’d thought of it.
She climbed off the arm of the recliner and leaned against it again to catch her breath. Her legs felt shaky with excitement and also weakness. She did not think she was getting enough to eat. And the medicine he insisted on giving her seemed—
The sound of someone whistling quietly outside the door broke into her thoughts. Whistling the song he’d been humming the night before. Whistling getting closer, now matched with footsteps. Whistling that had to be him. Oh God, he was back and the chair was near the wall and—
Using all her remaining strength she leaned her body against the wall and shoved the recliner back toward its position. She was checking to make sure she had it in exactly the right place when she saw the faint white line on the back of its red vinyl upholstery. It must have brushed against the wall, against the chalky paint. Shit shit shit, she thought, rubbing against it furiously with her thigh. The whistling was getting closer, each of his footsteps were audible now. It wasn’t working. She could not rub hard enough. Shit shit—
She turned around and used her nails on the place where she thought the spot was. Twisting her eyes over her shoulder she saw the mark was gone. Almost. Enough.
She looked at the wall. If you peered right at it, there was a slight mark at the same level. But you would only notice it if you were looking for it, she decided. And she would see to it that he had no reason to look.
Footsteps right outside. She heard the sound of a switch being flipped. The doorknob began to turn with painful slowness. Please don’t let him notice the wall don’t look at it please—
Skidding back into the recliner she saw that the side of her housecoat was covered in white powder. She shifted slightly so she was sitting on it, glad that with her hands bound behind her he could not see the white powder that had to be caught in her nails.
The door opened.
Loverboy, carrying three shopping bags, stepped inside and smiled at her. “Hi, Ros, I’m home!” he yelled, louder than necessary. He seemed pumped up, excited. Scary.
Rosalind swallowed. “I’m glad.” In her peripheral vision the mark on the wall beckoned to her like a huge flag. Don’t look! she told herself. “Did your errands go well?”
He had stopped two steps into the room and was looking around, checking. His eyes roved from the bed to the walls, past the mark, across the floor, up to her face. Apparently satisfied, he set down the shopping bags and closed the door behind him. This time he did lock it. “Did you miss me, Ros?” he asked.
He had not noticed, Rosalind told herself. If he had noticed he would have reacted. “Yes. It’s lonely here when you are gone.”
He smiled, a genuine-looking smile that made Rosalind’s stomach go tight. “Really? What did you do?”
“I”—DON’T LOOK AT THE WALL—“I wanted to watch TV but I could not figure out how to turn it on.”
It was the right answer. “You wanted to watch TV? Me too! I should have left you the remote control. I just wasn’t thinking.”
“That is okay. Maybe we can watch TV together?”
He looked at her with wonderment and joy. “I would love that. But not right now. Right now I have a present for you. For being so good.”
“I don’t want a present,” Rosalind assured him.
“Oh yes, you do. Look!” He held up two of the shopping bags. One of them was plain yellow. On the other were the words Carlton’s Cutlery. From the plain yellow bag he withdrew a nightgown and a matching robe.
“Real silk,” he told her, brushing it against her cheek. “You can put them on later to replace the ones you messed up, but you’d better not ruin them again. That’s not the best part, though. This is the best part.”
Rosalind could have sworn that for a moment his eyes went to the wall with the mark on it, but nothing in his face changed as he reached into the Carlton’s Cutlery bag, so she figured she had been wrong.
His hand came out holding a small leather portfolio about the size and dimensions of a travel wallet. Slowly, like a lover prolonging the moment of seduction, he slid open the zipper that went all the way around it and held it open in front of her.
“Ta-da!” he announced proudly. “A nail file, a scissors, a cuticle pusher, two sets of clippers, and tweezers!”
Rosalind knew that what he was holding out in front of her was a manicure set. But in her mind all she really saw was a pocket-sized set of instruments of torture.
“We’re going to have fun this afternoon, aren’t we, Ros? Oh boy, am I going to take good care of you! Sit forward and let’s see those hands.” He took the larger pair of clippers from the set and, pasting on a plastic smile, said, “Now, will it be blood red or flesh-colored nails today, ma’am?”
“I don’t—” Rosalind began.
His face went very still. His jaw twitched.
“Let me see your hands, Rosalind,” he said quietly. “LET ME SEE YOUR GODDAMNED HANDS RIGHT NOW!”
CHAPTER 56
Peter Brompton, head of the audio-visual forensics lab for Metro, wheeled himself over to a computer console and hit keys and said to Imogen, “Okay, now listen to it again, this time with the voice turned off.”
She nodded and held the headphones more tightly to her ears. At first she heard nothing. A low rumble. Nothing. Another low rumble.
She looked at Peter. “What is that?”
“That, Ms. Page, is a clue.” He put on a pair of reading glasses and leaned over a pad. “Eleven-fifty-eight P.M., Southwest Airlines flight 2430. Twelve-oh-six A.M., America West flight 57,” he read out. “They register on the tape almost as soon as they took off, which means that wherever the interview was given is very close to the airport.”
“Of course, the airport is in the middle of the city,” Rachel, standing behind them in the audio booth, pointed out. “So that doesn’t narrow things that much.”
“It narrows them to the eas
t side,” Peter corrected. “We can narrow it to within a mile of the airport on any side. And there’s more.” He swung the wheelchair back to the bank of audio equipment and turned a dial. “Tell me what you hear this time,” he said, nodding to Imogen.
She slipped the headphones back on and waited. This time she heard a groaning sound followed by a slow crash. She frowned for a moment. “Garbage truck.”
“Very good,” Pete commended. “Emptying a Dumpster.”
“Where do they collect the garbage at midnight?” she asked.
Rachel’s answer was not encouraging. “All over Vegas. There’s less traffic at midnight. A lot of roadwork and other city services are done then.”
“True, my dear,” Pete stepped in, “but not in residential neighborhoods.” He smiled. Imogen, catching his meaning, smiled back.
She turned to Rachel. “How long will it take you to get me a list of all the Dumpsters on the east side of the city within a mile of the airport, along with their emptying schedules?”
“It might take a while. First of all, that includes many of the Strip hotels, which each have multiple Dumpsters. Plus, waste management for the city is privately contracted and there are a few different companies. They tend to be a little reticent about working with the cops. I think it comes from a history of being Mafia owned.”
“Who did J.D. call to get us access to that garbage truck last week?” Imogen asked. “Could we get them to help us?”
Rachel shook her head. “ I don’t know who that was and I don’t seem to be able to get the boss on his phone today. As soon as I do, I’ll ask him. Service has been flukey recently.”
“I noticed. I’ve been trying since this morning.”
“I’ll give it another shot. In the meantime, I’ll start calling around and putting as much in motion as I can.”
Rachel disappeared out the door and Imogen felt Peter Brompton’s eyes on her. “There is one thing you have not asked me about, Ms. Page.”
“I know. I was”—summoning up the courage, Imogen thought. She said—“waiting.”
Bad Girl and Loverboy Page 64
