There was a pause.
“Yep, that’s right, eighty-one minutes. Assuming he doesn’t have a gunshot wound in his leg. Now, I could wait that long. Or not. And guess what. I’m thinking NOT.” He shifted so he was looking at Imogen. He winked and mouthed the words Hi, there. He turned his attention back to the phone. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, Benton. Look, you’ve got two and a half minutes before I push Imogen off the top. After that, Rosalind takes a tumble. By the way, the elevator only takes a minute and fifty-three seconds. Plenty of time—if you’re not afraid of elevators. If you’re not chicken! Toodles.”
Cal hung up and got to his feet. He beamed at his two prisoners. “Well, look at you two. Pretty as a picture.”
Imogen felt the woman she was tied to grab her hand. She held it and said to Cal, “I suppose in the next minute you are going to tell us why you’ve done all this?”
He shook his head. “No way. That always happens in the movies and the bad guy always dies. Why don’t you tell me? That way you’ll be the one to die.”
“It was his mother,” Rosalind said throatily. “She was the one who kidnapped Benton. When she was sent to prison—”
“That’s enough from you,” Cal hissed at her. “I want to hear Imogen.”
Imogen felt the woman in front of her begin to tremble. My God, what had he done to her? Don’t think about that now, she told herself. Get him talking. Delay him. She pictured the observation deck, round like a doughnut, and tried to think of ways off of it as she picked up where Rosalind had left off. “You missed your mother,” she said. She turned her head and was staring right into his eyes and suddenly she could feel him. “You really missed her. Your father told you that she left because you weren’t a good enough boy, right?”
Cal nodded. “He said she went away because she liked another boy better. Because I was a disgusting little shit.”
“He lied to you because it was his own ineptitude he was covering up,” Imogen said, commiserating. “They caught her because of him, didn’t they? And he felt guilty. So he blamed you.”
Cal began to rock back and forth. His expression changed and his voice was a whine when he said, “He gave her up. He gave my mommy up. I was her loverboy and he gave her up. She wanted the money so she and me could run away together, I know it, and the stupid shit ruined everything.”
Imogen matched her tone to his. “You didn’t know that, know about any of it, until you were older, did you? You worked so hard to be perfect, when really it was your father who should have been working hard.”
“That’s right,” Cal said, petulant. “Nothing I did was ever good enough. Pay attention, look at me, you’re a freak, buzz, buzz, buzz.” Petulant became angry. “He was a pathetic bastard.”
“And a drunk,” Imogen said.
“Yeah, and a drunk. Every payday. Every payday he got drunk.”
“He yelled at you, didn’t he? He said mean things to you when he was drunk.”
“He said I was a disgusting shit. He called me a pig.”
“But he was the pig, wasn’t he? Wallowing in his own filth. Especially the days after he got drunk. Those days he extra needed you, right?”
Cal stared at her. “How did you know?”
“I just do.”
“Those were the days he would be so nice. He needed me to take care of him. Those days he said I was a good boy. His good boy. He said he was glad it was just the two of us. He said I was perfect and made him so proud.” Cal shook his head in incomprehension. “And then on payday he got mad. On payday—” Cal’s lip trembled and his eyes filled with tears.
“On payday he said things that erased all the ways he had been nice to you, right? So you never knew if you could trust him. Believe him? You were always waiting for him to betray you.”
“Oh, he made me feel so silly when he did that,” Cal said, talking to himself. He rubbed his arms with his palms. “He made me feel so full of sillies that I couldn’t control. He slapped me so full of sillies that I think they never went away. I just wanted to—” He stopped.
“What, Cal?” Imogen asked in a gentle voice.
“I just wanted to hurt him so bad. I wanted to hurt him so bad. The lying bastard.” His voice changed, became more shrill. “Some days he said he loved me and then the next day he’d say I was a freak. He said he hated me and I ruined his life. Took away everything. But he was the freak, you know? He was the one who was happy just to be Benton’s father’s chauffeur. And Benton’s father kept him on just out of pity. Pity.” He paused, his eyes focused like darts on Imogen. “But I showed them. I showed both of them good. I gave myself the best present a boy could have.”
Imogen nodded. “You killed them. You did something to the car that your father was driving Benton’s father in and you killed them. That was the same day you killed Susan Kellogg. After you had sex with her.”
Cal smiled hugely. “Imogen, you are even smarter and prettier than I thought. Yeah, you’re totally right. She was J.D.’s girlfriend, but she got around. She liked Benton, I could tell, so I knew she could like me. Benton was the boy my mommy wanted, after all. I had been her Loverboy but she wanted him more. So I wanted to be just like him. I’ve spent my life learning to be just like him.”
“It must be hard sometimes, though.”
“Wow, you really understand everything. I really tried to be like Benton, so everyone would like me. But sometimes I just knew they were lying to me and that made me feel so SILLY. So out of control.”
“Is that what happened when you saw that newspaper that called Benton America’s Loverboy?”
“Oh, that made me silly. Oh boy, I don’t think I’ve ever been so silly. I was my mommy’s loverboy. The real Loverboy. Not him. Me. That’s when I saw that everything was his fault. My father, sure, but it was Benton who was at the root of it. He was the reason my mommy left. So I decided to punish him. Make it look like he did all the killings. Like HE was the freak. The faker. Why did he get to be the real Loverboy? But I wanted to enjoy myself too, you know?”
“Of course,” Imogen agreed. Rosalind was squeezing her hand. “So you made yourself a family.”
Cal smiled big again. “Oh man, it was a great family. Everyone nice and good-looking. And they all liked me so much. Until the end. Then they all got a little weird. They lied to me and tried to fake me out. That was when I had to punish them too. You could sort of feel it building and building. It was just like with my dad. They said they liked me. They said they needed me to take care of them, that I was a good boy, blah blah blah. But they were fakers. Every one of them. Every fucking one of them. They tried to run away from me because they didn’t like me. They had been lying to me.” He shook his head, trying to understand. His eyes, hard, metallic, swiveled to Imogen. “You are trying to fake me out too. You’re trying to make me forget what we are doing up here.”
She did not lie to him. “Maybe. But I also want to understand. Even if you are going to kill me, I want to understand.”
The metallic edge was gone, replaced by something that looked like remorse. Cal sighed. “Oh, Imogen, you are way too good for him. You know, I was going to leave you alive, take you with me. You were going to be my girlfriend. Friends forever. But you turned out just like the others. In fact, you were worse than the others—you, who should have known better, you still chose him. I sent you presents and games. I thought about you all the time. I really felt like we were on the same wavelength, you know? And then you started paying all your attention to stupid Benton when you should have been paying attention to me.”
His voice became nasty and he leaned over Imogen. “I’m the one who brought you here, not Benton. I’m the one who called you the first day to welcome you. I’m the one who made you come back to work in the first place. ME. I wanted to be your loverboy.”
“What do you mean about making me come back to work?”
His lip curled. “Oh, no way. Haven’t you understood yet? The R in my name? The center letter? No way!”
He started to laugh. “That was for you! Or really, for your brother. My brother too.” He smiled at her.
Imogen’s mouth was suddenly completely dry. “What are you talking about, Cal?”
“Call me Loverboy. I’m talking about Sam. How I killed him. How I made him part of my F-A-M-I-L-Y!”
“He died of a blood infection.”
“Oh yeah. I mean, he was sick, that’s true, but he had another two or three weeks in him. Maybe even a month. Ask the doctors. Ask Dr. Stephen Gold, or better yet, ask his frisky receptionist. That’s what I did. Anyway, he could have lived longer, but the problem was, I couldn’t wait. I was on a schedule and you were part of it. I helped your brother in Rochester, Minnesota, so you’d come back to me.”
Rochester. R. Imogen stared at him. “You killed my brother?”
“I needed you here with me.”
An extraordinary sense of calm washed over Imogen. For only the second time in her life, she tasted nothing.
Cal cocked his head, looked at his watch, then at her. “I’m afraid now, Imogen, it’s time for you to die too.” He untied her hands from Rosalind’s but kept her wrists and legs bound together.
Imogen held reassuringly on to Rosalind’s fingers until the last possible moment. But when she let them go, she turned all her attention to Cal. To Loverboy. Freed from having to worry that she would be risking another woman’s life if she acted, she threw herself on him.
“You bastard, you killed my brother,” she said, bashing at him with her taped-together hands.
She caught him by surprise and he fell down under her onslaught. Imogen fell with him, striking him as hard as she could with the force of her combined fists. She no longer knew who she was or what she was doing. She had only one thought. “You killed my brother,” she repeated over and over.
Cal was fighting back, fighting to push her away, but she was unstoppable. He had stolen Sam from her. He had stolen the only thing that mattered and she was going to make him pay.
“You bastard, you murdering bastard, you killed my brother, and you—”
Suddenly there were arms behind her, pulling her off, wrapping around her. “Shh, Imogen, it’s all right,” Benton’s voice said in her ear.
In front of her, Cal lay curled in a ball on the ground, blood trickling from his lip. Four police officers had guns aimed at his head. “She hurt me, Mommy. She hurt me,” he moaned, rocking back and forth. His eyes locked on Imogen. “Imogen, why did you hurt—”
His hand snaked out and caught one of the officer’s pistols. Before the man realized it, Cal was on his feet, cheetahlike, aiming behind him.
“ ‘Bye, Imogen,” he said, pulled the trigger, and took off.
Imogen staggered against the shot and fell to the ground, pulling Benton with her. She felt him crawl out from under her, lean over her, and saw him limp away. Footsteps pounded all around her and men ran in both directions around the circular observation deck to cut off Cal’s escape.
She tried to crawl over to the dark form she thought was Rosalind but she couldn’t do it. Everything was growing fuzzy, her range of vision shrinking. Stay awake, she told herself. Pay attention. Pay—
She heard more gunshots, this time from the other side of the building. There was a shout, a groan. The sound of horrible, manic laughter. Cal’s voice screaming, “You’ll never, ever get me, losers!”
Then silence. Silence that stretched forever. Stretched until the screeching of brakes and the dull thud of cars colliding and the horrified scream of a woman from 108 stories below pierced the air.
Imogen did not need to be told he had jumped. She did not need to be told it was over. She heard Rosalind say, hoarsely, “Benton, thank God you’re here,” and knew everything was back to normal.
Imogen lay back against the side of the building and lost consciousness.
CHAPTER 90
The hissing of the compressor was the first sound Imogen heard when she woke up. Sterile white walls, white gown, not hers.
The room was filled with balloons and flowers. It couldn’t be her room, she thought, it’s Sam’s room, what was she doing back in Sam’s room? Sam was dead, she was just dreaming about him.
Could she be dead too?
Ouch.
She tilted her chin down to see her arm and was looking at a tangle of tubes. She looked up and was staring into Cal’s face.
She opened her mouth to scream and her eyes cleared and the face became Bugsy’s.
“Hi, boss.” He leaned over, smiling. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Imogen tried to speak. “How—” It came out like a croak.
“You’re not supposed to talk yet. The bullet grazed your collarbone near your vocal cords. You can talk tomorrow,” Bugsy told her. “Want to draw pictures?”
Imogen rolled her eyes. Looked around.
“Benton and Rosalind are down the hall. Julia had them put in a room together. Lex wouldn’t let me put you in there too. He wants you under surveillance.” Imogen followed his eyes to the door, where she saw two guards. One of them was chewing pink gum. As she watched he blew a huge bubble that popped on his face.
She rolled her eyes again.
“I know. Yes, they are both going to be fine,” he said to the question in her eyes. “You managed to get there before he really started doing anything horrible. Besides getting her ears pierced, all of Rosalind’s injuries are superficial, cuts and bruises. Mentally, she seems okay too. He really terrorized her, but she’s a strong woman and she’s determined to get past it. And knowing Cal was pulverized when he fell from the top of the Stratosphere certainly helps.”
Imogen made a disgusted face.
“Pretty grim, I agree,” Bugsy went on, to be talking, filling the silence. Trying to distract her. “Yep, about the only thing intact was the Western Linen Service uniform he was wearing so he could smuggle the laundry cart with you and Rosalind up in the service elevator. Make those from the same stuff they use for prison clothes. He got all that from a van at the motel where we found Dannie. The driver, Eddie, is still alive—just knocked him out, stripped off his uniform, and took the van, but for some reason didn’t kill him. Anyway, they have had to get an anthropologist in from UNLV to piece together Cal’s jaw for the final identification. They want to match it to the hickey on Marielle’s neck and on that woman in Boston all those years ago. But they say it’s going to take at least another week before they have enough pieces.” Her attention drifted, so Bugsy changed the subject to one he knew she would care about. “They found out how he got to Sam.”
Imogen looked up at him, clearly interested now.
“The bridge problem that Benton couldn’t figure out? It was a code that Martina Kidd and Cal were using. They each posted bridge problems in the newsletter. That one was posted by Martina, who somehow found out the name of Sam’s doctor. Benton deciphered it right before you shot him, but he didn’t know what he’d found, since he’d never heard of Stephen Gold.”
Imogen nodded and thought, Payback. That was the reason Loverboy had sent her to see Martina the first time, in exchange for the information about her brother.
Another puzzle solved. Too late.
She thought for a moment and mouthed the word Julia.
“She is doing better than you would expect. Right now I think she’s keeping herself too busy to think by clucking over Benton and Rosalind, but I caught her in the hospital cafeteria yesterday and she seemed all right. She admitted, when she was questioned, that Cal wasn’t with her the morning that Rosalind disappeared, but that she covered for him because he asked her to. He made it sound like it would just be simpler, that he didn’t want to have to explain he’d been working at the Garden. She did not suspect him, her mild husband who thought only about cars and periodically couldn’t get it up and sometimes came home smelling of another woman’s perfume, so she didn’t see anything wrong in going along with him. It also spared her having to admit publicly that she was with Rachel that morning. It
seems like Cal knew exactly what his wife was doing, but rather than let on, he used it subtly, to control her. Like with her hairless dog—he wasn’t allergic to dogs, he just did not want to risk leaving any telltale hairs around his crime scenes. But now Julia is completely out, at least to her family, and I think that is making her happy. She confided to me yesterday that when she told Sadie, her grandmother, Sadie said, ‘Well, of course you’re gay, dear. Everyone’s known it for years.’ ”
Imogen tried to smile, but didn’t manage very well. Something was tickling the back of her mind.
“Oh, and remember how Benton told you they moved the Arbor Motors operations from the Speedway because of sabotage?” Bugsy went on, hoping to lighten her expression. “It looks like Cal did the sabotage himself in order to get them to transfer everything to the Garden so he could keep Rosalind there. He planned it months ago. Harold had even run the security tapes from the convenience store you called me from, and they showed Cal buying frozen food and popcorn, which we now know was for Rosalind, but we never spotted it as an anomaly because he worked next door.”
Imogen began to nod. Stopped and stared in front of her. Then struck her leg with her fist, shaking her head at herself in disgust. Julia had told her that she ran into Rosalind in the kitchen of the villa the morning Rosalind disappeared. Rosalind was throwing away champagne bottles and Julia was pouring coffee for me and Cal. But Cal did not drink coffee. He had told Imogen that himself when he came up to point out the clue in the Emergency! poster. How had she missed that? How could she not have seen—
Bugsy, misunderstanding her reaction, said, “Benton’s fine too. It’s a good thing you’re not a very good shot or you two might not ever have children. You only grazed his kneecap. He can’t walk, but the rest of him is in good working order. In case you were wondering.”
Imogen swallowed hard. She and Benton. She had not even been able to aim at him properly, she remembered. Aiming low because she still had some glimmer of feeling for him even when she suspected he was a monster.
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