Sins of the Past

by Julia Derek

  * * *

  Chapter 41

  They got their next call from Trevor when Larry was about to take a left and head toward the 34th Street mall. They were close now.

  Kate gazed nervously at Wil. “He’s calling again. What should I do?”

  “Answer it and put it on speaker like before. Tell him you’re about to get to your sister. Act like you’ll do exactly what he wants. Try your best to stall him.”

  Nodding, Kate pressed the Talk button and brought the phone close to her ear. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Kate, how are you?” Trevor spoke in a mocking polite tone.

  “As long as my children are okay, I’m okay,” Kate said in a trembling voice. “Are Anna and Luis okay?”

  “Yes, they are fine. However, I’m gonna need you to make a choice.”

  “A choice? What do you mean?”

  Trevor let out a cool chuckle. “Please don’t act stupid, Kate. You know exactly what I mean.”

  “We’re about to get to my sister, Trevor. I’ll do whatever you want me to do to her, okay? Just a few more minutes and we’ll get to her.”

  “That’s good, Kate. Very good. I’m glad you’re willing to kill her for me. But it occurred to me that you should already have done that, though.”

  Kate sucked in a distraught breath. “What are you talking about?”

  “You should already have killed her.”

  “I should already have killed her?”

  “Yes. You told me you were aware of her having been involved in a death of a teenager. The more I think about it now, the angrier I get that you didn’t even make a citizen’s arrest. Why didn’t you alert the cops? Why did you just let her go?”

  “I—I—”

  Trevor sighed. “You don’t have to answer, Kate. What’s done is done. But that was very, very wrong of you…”

  “Yes, Trevor. It was very wrong of me. I’m very sorry about that. But I’ll fix it now, I promise. I’ll do anything you want me to do.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to say that it’s not enough. I’m very mad at you. Very, very mad. I’m realizing that you would have spared me a lot of effort had you done the right thing. And now you need to pay for it. Pay for it by losing one of your children. Simple as that. I’ll kill one of them right now. So who do you love the most, Kate? Who do you want to save?”

  Tears were streaming down Kate’s face now. “Please don’t do this, Trevor…”

  “Pick which one of your kids you want to save or I’ll do it myself, killing one of them right this second. If you pick one, I promise you I won’t kill him or her right away. I will give you an hour to kill your sister. If you haven’t by the end of that hour, the child dies. So who will it be, Kate? Who do you love the most? Pick one to save forever, or I’ll kill one of them right now.”

  Kate was crying so hard that she couldn’t speak. Wil took the phone from her. “Trevor, this is Detective Cooper. Kate is so upset she can’t get a word out, but she just pointed at a photo of the kids. She wants to save the girl the most, okay? Do not kill any of the children, do you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, Detective,” Trevor answered. “Well, I would rather that Kate had told me in person who she wanted to save, but, okay, I’ll take it from you. Now you listen carefully to me, Detective: Tell Kate that if she hasn’t killed her sister by four p.m. today, her son dies. But if she does what I want, she’ll get both her kids back. In order for me to know that she’s fulfilled her end of the deal, I want someone to film it when she shoots her sister in the head so I can be sure she’s really dead. How much time do you need to reach her sister?”

  Wil checked the time on the phone. “Ten, max fifteen minutes.”

  “Where is she? In her apartment on the Lower East Side?”

  “No, she’s in the 34th Street mall. In a store, waiting for us.”

  “Okay. Go get her and bring her to a safe place where Kate can kill her for me. Pick whatever place you want, but make sure you don’t get disturbed, or I’ll guarantee you one of her kids will die. Kate can use one of your guns to shoot the bitch. I’ll call you in twenty minutes from another number. By then I want you to have everything ready for me. The sooner we can take care of this, the sooner Kate can get both her children back. Got it?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it.”

  “Good.” The line went dead.

  “We need to find this bastard.” Wil put her own phone to her ear. “Do you know where he is right now, Nick?”

  “Yeah, they’re in Brooklyn now,” Nick answered. “In Williamsburg. Very close to the Lorimer Street Station on the L train.”

  “Nilsen & Nilsen is located in that area,” Larry pointed out. “He can’t be heading there, can he?”

  “I doubt it,” Wil said.

  Kate muttered something unintelligible between all the tears wetting her face.

  Wil turned toward her. “What did you say, Kate?”

  She wiped at her tears and cleared her throat, saying in a remarkably clear voice given her upset state, “His fiancée lives in that area, too. Clementina Hayes. But they broke up, so he’s probably not going to her. If they were ever actually together.”

  “His ex-fiancée lives in that area?” Wil asked the red-faced widow.

  “Yeah,” Kate said and sniffled, taking the tissue Wil was extending her that she had finally found in the car. “She lives and works in Williamsburg. On Lorimer Street.”

  “Do you know where she works?” Wil asked.

  Kate screwed up her face. “At some antique shop. I don’t know the name of it. Wait, that was a while ago. She quit and started working for some bank instead.”

  “I don’t think it’s just a coincidence Trevor’s in that area,” Larry intercepted. “I’m wondering if he’s not heading for the ex-fiancée’s place. Maybe they’re tighter than you think,” he told Kate.

  “I agree that he’s likely heading for the ex-fiancée’s place,” Wil said. “Let’s go there.”

  “I’m heading there as we speak,” Larry said and drove across a bridge over the East River.“It’s close.”

  “Nick,” Wil said into her phone. “Has Trevor’s location moved from the one you just told me?”

  “Yes, but not by much,” Nick answered. “And at the moment, it’s not moving at all. My guess is that he’s now dumped the phone in that area the way he dumped the other disposables to have you go after him in those locations.”

  “Thanks, Nick,” Wil said. “Can you look up the address of a Clementina Hayes who lives in the Williamsburg area? Near Lorimer Street?”

  “I’m on it,” Nick said.

  “Do you really think he’s going to his ex-fiancée’s house?” Kate asked. “Why would he do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Wil replied, “but we believe it’s too much of a coincidence that he’s in her area right now. It’s possible that she’s not only involved with him still—at least on some level—but that she has also helped him throughout his quest to get revenge on your sister.”

  “I have the address for a Clementina Joan Hayes in Williamsburg,” Nick said in Wil’s ear a minute later. “She’s thirty-six years old.”

  “Great,” Wil said. “Can you email it to me?”

  “It’s on the way.”

  “Can you also check the work history of Clementina Joan Hayes?” Wil asked Nick.

  “Sure.”

  While Nick worked on his latest task, Wil checked the email on her smartphone. She quickly found the address Nick had sent her and read it aloud so Larry could hear it.

  “It’s on the other side of the park, so we’re not far from it,” Larry said and nodded at the park on the left side of the highway they were driving on. “But with this traffic, it’ll take us at least twenty minutes to get there. It might be too late.”

  “I have Clementina Hayes’s work history,” Nick said in Wil’s ear. “Wanna hear it?”

  “Yes, give it to me,” Wil told him.

  “After she finished college, sh
e worked at Urban Outfitters as a sales associate for five years. Then she worked as a sales person in a store in Williamsburg called Nilsen & Nilsen, and then—”

  Wil straightened in her seat. “Hang on, Nick. Did you just say that she worked at a store in Williamsburg called Nilsen & Nilsen?”

  “Yeah,” Nick answered. “It’s an antique arms store.”

  “Between which years did she work there?”

  “From 2008 to 2015. After that she started working at Bank of America as an account representative, and it looks like she’s still there.”

  “We’d get there much faster on a motorbike,” Larry interrupted then.

  “Thanks so much for that info, Nick. I need to talk to Larry now.” Wil looked at Larry. “Are you saying we’d get there faster if we can cross the park?” She gazed out the window.

  “Yeah,” Larry answered. “It’ll take a while to drive around the park with this traffic.”

  “How about if I cross the park on a regular bike?” Wil asked, her eyes zeroing in on two bicyclists beside the road.

  “That could work,” Larry said. “If you bike fast.”

  “I’m taking one of their bikes and crossing the park to her street. It’s our best shot at getting hold of this creep. Find out where the others are and meet up with them and the sister. And let me know if you hear from him. Nick, call Larry’s cell.” She rattled off Larry’s number to Nick and made sure he’d gotten it right. “I’ve gotta go, Nick. Hang up and call Larry in thirty seconds.”

  “Okay,” Nick said and disconnected.

  “Drive up to the shoulder and let me out, Larry,” Wil said to her partner.

  As soon as Larry had done what she’d asked of him, Wil opened the car door and ran toward the two bicyclists who had just passed them in the biking lane along the road. If she ran fast, she should be able to reach them.

  * * *

  Chapter 42

  Wil ran as fast as she could toward the two people on the bikes. They had taken a turn and were now heading into the park she needed to cross to get to Clementina’s street. Getting near them was not as easy as she had hoped, as they had both picked up speed now. Her lungs burning, she kept running, trying to increase her pace. It was to no avail, however; the two bikers reached a downward hill and biked even faster. Wil could see them reach the bottom and then take a left, disappearing behind a few trees that blocked the road they were on.

  “Shit,” Wil hissed between clenched teeth, the sweat pouring down her back and sides of her ribcage despite that it was only forty degrees out. What the hell should she do now? She turned her head left and right in search of other bikers in the park, but all she saw was a woman walking her dog, a jogger with bright orange sneakers, and a homeless guy bundled up on a bench. None of them would be able to help her.

  She fished out her phone and used Google Maps to see how far away she was from Clementina’s street at the moment. Staring at the map, she tried to estimate how quickly she could get there on foot. If she ran as fast she could. She was a good runner, so maybe she could make it. It was hard to tell how soon she could get there based on the map, however. Maybe it would take her twenty minutes, maybe ten. Maybe something in between. Would that be enough?

  She decided that it had to be enough. She could always hope that she bumped into another bicyclist as she ran, or even someone on a motorbike who could give her a lift. After having allowed herself to catch her breath for another precious second, she took off running in the direction of Clementina’s address, sprinting like a maniac.

  Ten minutes later, she had yet to spot any form of biker on the walking path she was on, and she was exhausted. But the thought of how this was possibly their only chance to get to Luis and Anna, not to mention save Luis from dying, gave her energy, enabled her to keep moving her legs when they felt like they were depleted. A couple of minutes later, she could see the edge of the park. She was almost there. Just a little more and she’d get there.

  She kept pushing and pushing, then finally reached the street that ran alongside the park. Gasping for breath, she checked her phone for any messages from Larry or anyone else. Her screen showed no messages or missed calls, and she had good cell phone reception. Because of the possibility of Trevor having access to a police scanner, they needed to use cell phones as much as possible when communicating.

  Well, at least that was good, she thought and stumbled across the street. If Trevor had called them again or anything else crucial had happened, Larry would for sure have notified her about it. That meant there was still time. Still time for her to get to him and the kids. If their theory was correct, that is. Maybe they were wrong about Trevor heading to Clementina’s place, and then they would have wasted valuable minutes. She prayed her hunch was right. Now that she knew that Clementina had worked at Nilsen & Nilsen up until a year ago, giving Trevor access to the store, how could she be wrong? It was too bad that the owner had only given them a list of current employees. Too bad that they hadn’t thought of asking him about recently employed people as well. Then they would have put two and two together a lot sooner.

  Her phone vibrated with an incoming text then, making her jerk. She brought the phone to her eyes and saw that it was from Larry:

  Four officers are with Kate McBride. They’ve taken her out of the mall and into one of their cruisers. I told them to drive toward us and meet us. Trevor hasn’t called again. We’re about five minutes away from the officers. You okay?

  She typed OK and asked him to ask Nick if Trevor’s phone was still at Clementina’s, then pressed Send. She was only a couple of blocks away from Clementina’s address now. Picking up her pace, she jogged toward it, her head down. Thankfully, she was wearing a hat today that hid her bright blond hair well. She needed to be careful not to draw too much attention to herself in case Trevor was around.

  Larry texted her back with a yes when she reached the front door to Clementina’s four-story apartment building. As she checked her phone, she felt how she was completely drenched in sweat. The woman lived on the top floor. Wil tried the door to see if it was open, but it wasn’t of course.

  Damn, she thought. Now she would waste valuable time trying to get inside the building. She pressed all the intercom buttons except for the one leading to Clementina’s apartment and hoped that someone would let her in. She waited several seconds and no one did, neither did anyone leave or enter the building. Her phone buzzed again with an incoming text. She checked to see who it was. Larry again.

  Trevor is calling Kate’s phone again. Call me.

  She speed-dialed her partner’s number. He picked up before the first ring had gone through.

  “What is he saying?” Wil asked.

  “He wants to know our status, if we have reached Kate’s sister yet,” Larry whispered. “Kate told him we’re about five minutes away still and he’s not happy about that. Where are you?”

  “Outside Clementina’s apartment building. I can’t get in. Do you have Nick on the line still? Ask him if Trevor’s still in the apartment. Maybe he left.” She highly doubted that was the case. It had already become clear to her that he wanted them to think he had just planted a phone again to fool them. This time he was with the phone, though. She was sure of it.

  “Hold on,” Larry said. As Wil waited for Larry to ask Nick, she pressed the intercom buttons again, hoping for better luck this time around. No one had buzzed her in when Larry was back on the line.

  “Yeah, he’s in Clementina’s place,” he said, sounding excited. “You need to get in there, Wil. You can rescue these kids. It’s not just his phone this time. They’re there, too.”

  “Yeah, if someone would just open the damned door to the building, I would,” Wil hissed with frustration. “If I shoot it open, he’ll know something’s up. We don’t want to risk that.”

  “No, you’re right, he’ll flip out for sure if he thinks we have outsmarted him.”

  “Keep stalling him. One way or another I’ll get inside this buildi
ng.”

  “Hurry up. I’m not sure the others will get to us with the sister soon enough. He’ll be pissed about that too, thinking we’re fucking with him.”

  Wil inhaled a deep breath. “Okay.”

  Staring at the building entrance door made out of metal and its glass window, she wished she had her titanium pen with her. The pen also served as a glass breaker. She checked her pockets for it again, but it was nowhere to be found. Damn it. It was so useful she always brought it along; why did she have to forget it today of all days? She didn’t think she would be able to smash the very thick glass using the handle of her gun any time soon; she’d have a much better chance with the pen. She couldn’t believe that none of the tenants were answering their intercom; were they all out? Probably not, she thought. Some of them were likely home and, like most people in New York, didn’t bother to answer the intercom unless they were expecting someone. She decided that she’d have a better chance getting into the building quickly if she used the grip of her gun to break the glass. She didn’t think shattering it would cause too much noise. If she tried hard enough, it would break eventually.

  She went to work, beating with her gun at the window, which proved to be as sturdy as she had feared. She slammed at it as hard as she could over and over, but it didn’t look like it was about to give any time soon. Frustrated, she pressed the intercom buttons again, hoping that someone would finally buzz her in. But no one did.

  Nearly two minutes had gone by when she was forced to take a break, the repeated pounding on the seemingly unbreakable glass tired her out so much. Leaning against the wall, she rubbed her sore wrist at the same time as she tried to think. There must be another way to get into the building. She heard steps then, approaching her. As she looked up, a short girl with purple, choppy, short hair and a nose ring stood before her.

  “Are you okay?” the girl wanted to know with a raised brow. There was a key chain in her hand.

  “You live here?” Wil asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Wil found her wallet and flashed her NYPD badge. “Please let me into the building. One of your neighbors has kidnapped two small children. If I don’t get to them very soon, one of them will die.”