by Lee Killough
She shook her head, staring down at the photos on the desk. “Not a call, not a card.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Nothing.”
Garreth could understand why she might be hurt by that, but nothing in the story seemed to justify the father’s attitude. Did he hate being crossed that much? “Why does your father want Mitch’s head on a platter?”
Alexandria grimaced. “Before Mitch left he opened the safe in Dad’s study. I knew he’d taught himself to pick locks in high school--he had this Houdini trick with handcuffs he liked to show off--but I didn’t know he could do combination locks, too. Or maybe he’d found out the combination. Anyway, he stole ten thousand dollars in cash, a hundred thousand in bonds--which we subsequently discovered he cashed at banks all over Seattle the next day, flawlessly forging my father’s signature. But what’s really earned him Dad’s undying hatred is: he stole my mother’s heirloom jewelry, too. Some of the pieces dated from colonial times and the Civil War. And Mitch...” Her voice went bitter. “Mitch twisted them until he’d freed the big stones, then just dropped what was left in the gutter.” She straightened in her chair. “Officer Mikaelian, I can’t think of anything else that will help you. I’m sor--” She caught herself. “No, that’s not true. While I am truly sorry about your officer and everything else Mitch has done...in spite of all that, I hope you understand that I can’t wish you luck catching him.” She started to tremble. “Can you see yourselves out?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Garreth gathered up his sketch and mug shot.
Raven said nothing as they left the apartment and rode down in the elevator, just stood rigid and white-lipped. Until they crossed the lobby. She started trembling as Alexandria had and whispered, “That bastard.”
Without bothering to open the umbrellas, Garreth hustled her out and up the sidewalk into the waiting limo.
“That bastard!” Her voice rose. “The God-damned lying sack of shit!”
“Take us on back to the airport,” Garreth told the driver, and hurriedly ran up the window between the driver and passenger compartments.
“He lied to me!” She jerked the ring out of her nostril and hurled it to the floor. “He’s a fake! A fraud! Just like my father!” She twisted out the rings in her ears, throwing each the direction the hand happened to be moving. With each one Garreth winced, but Raven seemed either unaware of or indifferent to the pain. “All those places and people he talked about were just from those books!”
Garreth ducked the rings coming his directions. “He still seems to be a vampire.”
“Who lied about his age!” Angry tears spilled down her cheeks from under her glasses, bringing streaks of mascara and eyeliner with them. “His age wouldn’t matter to me. Why did he have to lie! The bastard!” She ran down the window between them and the driver. “Who’s good for doing hair in this town!”
In the rearview mirror, the driver’s reflected eyes glanced toward Garreth. “Uh...Mr. Ballinger?”
“If you know somewhere a little bribery will slide her into their schedule in time to make our two-thirty flight, go ahead and take us there.” He ran the window back up. Now was his chance. “So, would you like to get even with Ice and help me find him?”
She threw herself back against the seat. “I never want to see that lying fucking bastard again!”
“Even though he has Amber? What if he’s also lying about not letting the marks touch her? After all, she’s his only girl now.”
Raven sat bolt upright, sucking in her breath. “But...she’s no good for him in the scams. She can’t seduce anyone.”
“That’s not good.” Garreth dug in the computer case. He had to push while he could. He thrust the fax photo of the dead girl in Billings under her nose. “Do you know her?”
Raven shrugged. “It’s Twilight. She used to be with Ice but he sent her away because she got jealous and thought she should be his only servant. Where’d--” She frowned. “She looks dead.”
“She is. She was found at the Sheraton with her wrists slashed.”
Raven blinked. “You mean she killed herself because Ice sent her away?”
“I don’t think she killed herself. She’d been drinking champagne and having sex shortly before she died. There were white pubic hairs on her body and a man of Ice’s description was seen near the suite.”
She caught her breath. “Ice?”
Garreth leaned toward her. “The games have to be played his way, right? If Twilight wouldn’t, do you think he’d tolerate that?”
Raven said nothing but chewed her lower lip.
“He told you he sent Twilight away. Dying is certainly being sent away.” Garreth rattled the photo. “He’s a killer. You have to get Amber away from him. If she stops being useful...” He let the sentence trail away.
She stared hard at Twilight’s photo. “Tell me what to do.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“How’s this link work?” Raven leaned against the Porsche behind the Omaha Philos building...eyes closed, forehead furrowed in concentration. “I don’t feel anything.”
Light from the rising sun shone on the few remaining rings in her ears and on her hair, boyishly cropped and dyed a redwood color. She had traded the leather pants and duster for jeans and a pullover, but kept her camouflage of dark eye makeup and the black lipstick.
Watching her transformation in the Seattle salon, goosebumps ran down Garreth’s spine. The Raven in his vision had that same short red hair.
“Keep at it. It isn’t like a bloodhound’s scent. There’s a kind of pull, a thataway feeling. It’s the only way we’ll locate them.”
Raven frowned, eyes still closed. “But you already said you think you know where--hey! I feel something!” She twisted to point triumphantly. “Thataway!”
Good. She had the bond they needed, a stronger one, because of her emotional tie to Amber, than what he felt. With luck, it would pull a more precise direction, too. For now, knowing to go south, the same direction he felt a tug, was enough.
He had chased Ice’s ghost around the country, out to San Francisco, Seattle, back to San Francisco. Tonight’s redeye flight here, though, brought him where he finally had the actual man in his sights. “Kansas City here we come.”
It had to be Kansas City, the only other city that direction large enough to interest the likes of Ice.
“Can I drive, please, please?”
“No.”
Garreth marveled at the adaptability of the young. The hysterics of her reanimation had vanished. She wore her new life as easily as if in it for decades.
Driving, while daylight sent her to sleep in the passenger seat, a cowboy hat over her face, he focused on finding Ice. Raven said he always picked good hotels in the downtown area for himself. That he looked for a cheap room only if the area looked good for his scams. Kansas City hotel listings on the internet showed a handful in the downtown area of the class Ice like. Checking those should not take long.
Coming into Kansas City two and a half hours later, he prodded Raven awake. “Start feeling for Amber.”
She struggled upright in the seat and substituted dark glasses for the hat. After sitting silent for several minutes, she pointed ahead and to their right...south and a little west. “That direction?”
It matched what he felt. It also matched the direction a sense of menace lay. Ice...it had to be Ice. He can destroy you.
“What are our first hotels?”
She opened his road atlas and pulled out the list they drew up. “The Hyatt Regency and the Westin Crown Center. Take the next exit right.”
He and Maggie came up to Kansas City a few times so he had a rough idea of the city layout and found both hotels without much trouble. In front of neither did he feel any sense of presence, however.
“You want the next hotel?” Raven asked at the Westin.
Garreth shook his head. “First let’s see if they have rooms for us. Staying here we won’t be running into Amber or Ice by accident, or have them spot us first. Y
ou’ll like the waterfall in the lobby,” he said as they walked into the lobby.
“You’ve been here before?”
He nodded. “One year I brought Maggie up to the New Year’s bash.” Her shimmering red dress seemed to make her skin shimmer, too, and reflected in her eyes as she whooped at the confetti and balloons raining down on them.
Raven’s eyes widened in horrified understanding. “That other cop was a lot more than your partner, wasn’t she?” She paused. “If I’d been you, I’d have killed me in that hospital.”
He smiled wryly. “I almost did.”
She stared. “Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “The fell clutch of circumstance.”
“What?”
“Some line of poetry I read.” He could not remember where. “I have trouble killing in cold blood.”
She frowned. “But you’re going to kill Ice, right? You’re not going to wimp out and go all law and order?”
Would he? “There’s the waterfall.”
That distracted her. Her eyes widened. “Cool!” She stared up at the soaring ceiling and the top of the waterfall high above them, then raced for the escalator to ride up past the waterfall.
Garreth let her go while he made his way to the desk. “No, I don’t have reservations and I understand we can’t officially check in yet, but may I check in now and pick up the key later?” Staring the desk clerk in the eye arranged that. He handed her a credit card and driver’s license in the name of Douglas Stone.
“How many nights, sir?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” He scribbled the DL’s address and a false license tag on the registration. “Maybe a week...however long it takes to close the business deal I’m working on.”
Minutes later he and Raven were back in the car heading south.
When they reached their next hotel, the Seville Plaza, again Garreth felt nothing. Still, he did not risk showing Ice’s picture. In case of a police investigation he wanted no hotel personnel remembering someone asking about Ice. Amber posed less risk. Showing her photo and a private security badge and an ID card identifying Michael Sterling as a bonded operative with Madrigal Executive Security Associates, he claimed to be hunting a child abducted by a non-custodial mother.
“The mother is very tall for a woman, over six feet, thin. She sometimes dresses as a man. She may have the child dressed as a boy.”
The hotel had no current guests of fitting those descriptions and none of the desk personnel could recall any in the past week that would. He came up empty at the next three hotels, too. But they had to be close. The menace felt strong.
Raven slumped in her seat, sighing. “Amber feels close. She’s got to be some--wow!” She sat upright.
He nodded. They were coming up on the Country Club Plaza. An area of boulevard streets, of restaurants and shops housed in eclectic architecture sprinkled with towers...Spanish and Moorish and French something. The crowds gave it the same electricity as areas of San Francisco, the same symphony of sounds and scents. Plus a profusion of fountains.
“You should see the Christmas lights.”
He turned down 47th toward the Sheraton...and remembered something less appealing about the Plaza...the traffic and lack of traffic lights. When he and Maggie came down, they had quickly given up driving to park and just walk around.
Raven leaned forward staring everywhere. “This is cool. I can feel Amber somewhere close, too.”
Not in any of the hotels around the Plaza. None of the desk clerks he showed Amber’s photograph to recognized her as a child coming in recently with an adult of either sex.
Outside Ritz-Carlton, their last hope, Raven scowled in frustration. “It doesn’t make sense. They have to be staying somewhere.”
Agreed, but until he had some idea where else to look... “It’s time for plan B.”
“Which is...”
“We canvass. We’ll each take a picture of Amber and start working our way across the Plaza showing it to shop clerks, cab drivers, the drivers of the horse carriages, any street vendors, waiters at the sidewalk cafes.”
Raven’s jaw dropped. “Now? During daylight!”
He shoved her toward the car. “Yeah. You can tolerate it if you want to find Amber. We’ll stay around for evening, too, in case that’s when they’re working the area. If necessary we’ll canvass Westport, too.”
“It’ll take forever!”
He had to smile at her dismay. “It’ll save time if we each taking a side of the street. At the same time keep alert for Amber. If she’s close, you should be able to feel it.”
Raven grimaced, then squared her shoulders. “Where do we start?”
Along with persistence, luck was nice, of course.
Lady Luck did not smile. They struck out that day, accomplishing nothing more than buying some slouch style cowboy boots Raven wanted to replace her stiletto-heeled boots, and a pair of thin leather driving gloves for him. You never knew when you might need to avoid leaving fingerprints. Luck avoided them after dark, too, though they hung around until the Plaza shut down for the night.
The second day brought no better results. Garreth had to give Raven credit, though. Cowboy hat pulled down to the top of her glasses, she marched doggedly from store to store. Even when a limp suggested the new boots rubbed worse than the stiletto-heeled ones and she looked ready to crumple under the weight of daylight.
He watched her use that discomfort to evoke sympathy, extending Amber’s photo to a clerk with a trembling hand and a voice on the verge of tears. “Please, miss, have you seen this little girl? She’s my sister. Our father kidnaped her and I know she has her around here somewhere .”
The clerk clearly regretted having to say no.
Toward evening, however, when the two of them sat in the shade of a sidewalk cafe’s awning, she pushed aside her tea and leaned folded arms and head on the table. “I feel her around, so why hasn’t anyone seen her? It’s hopeless. ”
Garreth felt frustrated, too. “These things take time. We can’t give up.”
“I keep worrying what he’s doing now, and what’s happening to--” She broke off and jerked erect. “Amber!”
He stared at her. “She’s somewhere close?”
“Yes!” She stood, peering around. “I--wait...there.”
He followed the direction of her finger. Down the sidewalk a small group of people milled in confusion. One seemed to be on the ground. Amber, he realized a second later, when a male pedestrian helped her to her feet. Raven had already scooped up her sling bag and charged down the sidewalk. Garreth threw money on the table and followed.
On the way he spotted something else in the excitement...a petite blonde juvenile female brushing behind the good Samaritan. After she passed, the wallet bulge visible in his hip pocket as he leaned down toward Amber had disappeared. Well, well. Ice had found himself a pickpocket.
Losing no time about it, either. Of course. He needed pawns for his games and an audience for his ego.
While Garreth sorted through the street noises to hear Amber apologizing for her clumsiness at falling down in front of the Samaritan, he homed on the dip. She never saw him until he snatched her purse from her shoulder.
She spun, snarling, grabbing for it. “Hey! That’s my--” Only to break off as he shoved a badge under her nose.
He smiled. “Shall we see how many billfolds are in here?”
She bolted. Garreth made no attempt to follow. He pulled on his gloves and made his way toward the good Samaritan.
Amber’s apologies had given way to breathy thank you’s that ended abruptly in a shriek of joy. “Raven!” She hurtled past the Samaritan into Raven’s arms. “You’re alive! What happened? Where’ve you been? I love your hair.”
Garreth dug four billfolds out of the bag and tapped the bemused Samaritan on the shoulder. “Which of these is yours?”
The man blinked. A second later he groped for his hip pocket. “Son of a bitch!”
“No good dee
d goes unpunished, right? Which one, sir.”
The Samaritan pointed. Garreth handed him the billfold.
Amber and Raven walked back toward the sidewalk café, chattering breathlessly.
Garreth spotted a patrol unit in the far traffic lanes. Dodging between cars, he made his way to it and handed the bag to the officer behind the wheel. “A young lady dropped this and when I picked it up I discovered several billfolds in it.”
The officer peered inside. “You’re right. May I ask your name, sir?”
Before the officer looked up from the bag, Garreth backed away and dodged around a truck, using its cover to work back to the far side of the street and sit several tables away from the girls. To the officer, he should seem have to have vanished.
“...scored us a house!” Amber was saying, leaning toward Raven. “We were just coming into the city and saw this Mercedes on the side of the Interstate with the hood up and this guy staring at the engine. It was almost evening so Ice could stop to see if he could help.”
A Mercedes would draw him, yes, Garreth reflected, Ice’s thought process being something like: rich sucker in distress; there has to be opportunity here for me.
Raven doodled on a napkin. “Since when has Ice been willing to play mechanic?”
“Oh, he didn’t do anything to the car. They just talked, and finally the guy called for a tow. We waited for it with him and then we gave the guy a lift home from the garage...to this mansion. Turns out he’s a house sitter and the owners are in England for six months. I fell asleep while they were talking and when I woke up Ice told me he’d used his powers to make the guy turn the house over to us and go off to another house sitting job.”
Cold prickling Garreth’s down spine–a Feeling?–suggested something more sinister gave them the house.
“So we’ve got it for six months! You’ve got to come see it. There’s a new girl, Candy, but I know Ice will be glad to have you back, too. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees you’re alive!”
“I’ve got another idea,” Raven said. “Don’t go back. Come away with me...now.”
