A Spill of Blood Ch. 06

"Who is Elizabeth Brady?" I asked.

"Sasha," Sydney said. "I asked around and someone finally got back to me. They knew her real name and where she lived." I guess the top tier of escorting was also a small world.

"So," Jess said, "I went and gave the parking garage attendant fifty bucks, and he said that, yeah, a Bentley showed up occasionally."

The rain fell steadily, turning the street into a moiré pattern of reflected taillights and neon. There was a certain visual beauty to it. But it was also a cold rain, the kind that turned the city I loved into a menacing shadow land.

A perfect metaphor, Harry. Life is bright and alive from a distance, but sometimes it's cold and gray when you're in the middle of it.

I shook my head to clear the woolgathering and looked down the block. "Just a few doors east of a car park," Jess had said. I didn't see any lights from second-floor windows in that general vicinity and my hopes fell. I quickened my steps.

A couple of people emerged out onto the sidewalk. It was about where I thought Sasha's entrance might be, but it was hard to tell in the dim illumination the streetlights provided through the rain. One of them headed across the street toward the lavender glow of argon that spelled out "BAR" with half the B not working. The other turned in my direction. Some subconscious clues suggested the closer one might be a woman, but woman or shorter guy, it wasn't Sasha. Just the way the person walked told me that. There was none of the slink Sasha had wired into her bones.

The figure altered course to the left, hugging closer to the buildings, looking away. I stepped toward the curb and kept my eyes on my destination. It was automatic Manhattanite-at-night behavior: give space where you can, don't seem confrontational.

There was something strange about the glimpse I got of the hooded face. It seemed inhuman almost, but light made it hard to figure out. It looked ... squished.

They passed and my ears did the same thing I'm sure theirs were doing: listened to make sure the footsteps kept receding. Again, habitual wariness. Anyone can be dangerous, especially from behind.

I approached the maw of a parking garage and paused to stare up at the line of windows stretching away one floor above me. None were lit, though the streetlights did give peeks inside for those not blocked with curtains or blinds.

I was distracted from trying to figure out why the face under the hood was strange when I saw the woman step to the window. She didn't turn the light on, but the streetlights were enough. I could tell she was a looker ... and she wasn't shy. The wrap loosely tied at her waist was molded across her curves by static, concealing nothing of her shape. This block still had the older mercury-vapor bulbs in the streetlights, and the iconic orange gleam warmed the plunging V of skin between dark robe and dark hair.

I knew that skin, from the neck up at least, and it would be warm even without the lights. Luiza saw me see her and jerked back into the shadow of her apartment. I stepped to the closest doorway and peered at the wall plate. I pressed the one labeled "E. Brady." There was no answer, so I pressed it again. Then I leaned on it. Nothing.

I pressed the one that had "Cruz" written beside it. I figured it was a good guess for a last name, and it was next to the first one. It took two pushes until a tinny voice said, "Wait a couple minutes." I waited for the buzz, getting impatient in the chilly wetness. I was contemplating leaning on Luiza's buzzer like I had Sasha's when the door pushed open and a man stepped out. He turned away and headed east without a word.

She was waiting with her door cracked when I came up the stairs.

"I recognized you," Luiza said.

"I recognized you," I answered. The thin wrap was gone, replaced by leggings and a baggy sweatshirt.

"He's sort of a boyfriend but he's marr—"

"Luiza," I interrupted, "I couldn't care less who he was or what you two were doing." I was pretty certain what they were doing—or had just done—but I truly didn't care. "Why were you at the window?"

"I heard her door and was checking to see if he was leaving. I don't like him. He's bad for her." I didn't need a glossary to know who "he" was. "If he was gone, I was going to invite her over."

Oho! Mr. SortOfBoyfriend was going to have a good evening.

She disabused me of that fantasy almost instantly.

"We were going to order Chinese, and I was going to see if she wanted some. She hates to cook."

"She's not answering her buzzer, and I leaned on it."

She glanced at the doorway across the hall and frowned. "I know she's home. I heard him get here like two hours ago. Maybe they're ..." She gave a little shrug-wiggle to imply "you know."

"And he's not the type to tell me to fuck off through the intercom when I hold it down for thirty seconds?"

She looked uncertain. I stepped over to Sasha's door and knocked once, twice, then pounded. Even if you weren't the type of man Regan was, that would bring you boiling to the door. Nothing.

"Do you have a key?"

It wasn't something anyone should see. I don't care if you're a hardened homicide crime scene specialist or a forensic medical examiner, you shouldn't have to see it. Certainly not a woman like Luiza who specialized in good times. Or even a man whose day-to-day was ... had been ... skip-tracing and occasionally someone getting nookie where they shouldn't.

She was the first thing that caught your eye. Sasha was spreadeagled on the bed, wrists and ankles pulled to the corners by rope. She was naked, of course. Her eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling. I didn't need to check for a pulse. A woman's body holds about nine pints of blood. I was willing to bet over half of it made the black pool beside her.

The shape of that pool told me that it had come from an arterial wound. Her heart had pumped and pumped, creating that spray pattern until it couldn't anymore and just oozed. And then not even that. The pool's position told me where. I leaned enough to see the left side of her neck and, yes, there it was, looking neat and not at all so deadly except for the black around it, right where the carotid was.

Black because the blood wasn't fresh.

Only then did I see the other sight. Him. He was also naked. He was also tied, but not on a bed. His arms were drawn up by the rope that looped over the top of the open bathroom door and then down to fasten somewhere behind. Blood streaked down his legs and onto the floor. It was still a deep crimson.

Luiza darted back for the kitchen sink. I heard her retch. I stepped back so I didn't have to look. I took in the room as I pulled out my phone, forcing my mind away from what it had just seen. There were two wine glasses on the coffee table. Those would have been Regan and Sasha. There was a still-wet lowball glass on an end table next to a chair. Fury erupted.

The fucker sat here and had a drink after doing that. Regan, you stupid fuck. You thought Mitchell was working for you instead of watching you.

I'd been so busy paying attention to the odd little figure who came my way that I didn't pay any to the larger one walking across the street. I dialed Murray. For once, he answered.

"Another body ... two actually. It wasn't me. I want you here even if it's not your precinct, or at least someone you know can be trusted. And Mitchell may be across the street in the bar." I gave him the address of the building. I'd already described Mitchell to him. I drew my gun, and Luiza and I went across the hall to wait. After Lindqvist's threat, cops would have to use a battering ram on that door until I heard Murray's voice.

Sometimes, fate is on your side. Sometimes that fickle bitch just decides you've taken it up the ass enough and it's the next guy's turn. Sometimes she just arranges it so that one little piece of information is missing from what he knows and you come out okay.

The last time Mitchell had been to my office had been the day Regan had "hired" me. One little piece of information, sometimes that's all it took ... like that we'd added cameras since then. I saw the flicker of motion on the always-on monitor and glanced over. Mitchell was sliding to the top of the stairway, clearly moving so as not to make audible footsteps in a glide that didn't shout, "Mack truck." It said, "Tiger." A predator closing in, low and silent. Neither of his hands was empty. One carried the pistol he'd pushed in my face; the other the leaner one that Charlie Everett, Larry Beck, and Nikki Hill had met in their last seconds.

"Mitchell's here. Back stairs. Go!" I snapped. With one startled glance at the monitor herself, she went. I was already moving. I needed to give Jess time to get free, not send Mitchell darting for the street immediately. I needed to wait the long seconds while he oozed his way toward our door. I ducked into the supply closet-cum-bedroom. I left the door open four inches.

The handle of the outer door turned slowly. It didn't squeak. I bet he knew that, had tested it when he was last here. Then he came in fast, his gun already trained on Jess's chair, ready to spit death in the face of our surprise. But not firing blindly. This was experience in action, every move calculated and practiced until it had become automatic.

Looking out from the darkness into the brightly lit room, I could see his eyes dart and take in the situation. They flicked my way and I resisted the impulse to jerk, then they went toward my office. Two partially opened doors. A slight sound from my office and his attention locked that way. I felt a spike of panic.

Jess! Get the fuck out!

But then my brain interpreted what my ears had heard. It was the back stairwell door shutting on its automatic closing mechanism. His brain figured it out also, and I saw the momentary tension ease as he slid toward that door.

There were no playing fields of Eton here. Giving evil a fair chance to win was a minor evil in itself. You exterminate; you don't duel. I wanted a clean shot to his back, but he never turned fully away from where I was.

My God, that man is fast!

My first shot, intended for the heart, hit him somewhere on the far left side of his body as he spun away. He dove behind Jess's desk. Sheet metal and drywall might not stop bullets, but several thicknesses of oak and maple, and drawers filled solid with paper did the job. I put one through the modesty panel just in case he'd tucked himself in there.

The form bursting low from the other side told me he hadn't. Only my own reflexes saved me as his gun spat and one round went through the opening where I'd been and another punched through the thin panels of the door itself. He also was taking a flier on where his opponent dodged, but like me, was wrong.

I gambled that his light-adjusted eyes didn't see the motion through the door crack as I leapt over behind that door. Sure enough, two more rounds punched through on the wall side of the crack, right where I'd been. I fired blindly through the panel, trusting to my memory of the office layout. Then I dropped and scuttled as shots came in at chest height.

There was no real cover in the tiny room. I hadn't had time even to flip the mattress up, not that its thin protection would do much against a 10mm round from that cannon. If I stayed in here and he had extra clips of rounds, he'd get lucky. Mitchell seemed like the kind of guy who had extra clips. I had a ten-round magazine, now down to six shots. In a war of attrition, I'd lose.

Silence reigned as we each tried to hear movement. Suddenly, he sent three shots in: one through the wall to the right, one through the door, one through the wall to the left, all angled to strike the floor just feet inside. I looked at the angle of light streaming in. He was standing.

I readied myself for a do-or-die effort, hoping to catch him by surprise, praying it wasn't going to be die, but afraid it was. My big hope was that Jess had made it to the first floor and was somewhere he wouldn't see her when he fled.

He's off to my right. He's standing. He's fast, so I need his first shots to go elsewhere.

I eased a pillow off the bed. I rehearsed the moves in my mind, like a ski-racer visualizing the course ahead. My left foot kicked the door; my left arm tossed the pillow up into the opening. I used the momentum to twist out low.

His reflexes hadn't gotten any slower. A round exploded the pillow in mid-air and I saw the muzzle of his gun already tracking the motion lower in the door as mine tracked up to his.

Both of us buy it, I thought, but I had a premonition you'd be in my sights one day, Mitchell.

A third noise entered the fray. A sharp bark, higher-pitched than either of ours, and Mitchell lurched from the impact, blindsided. Jess stood in the doorway of my office in a classic Weaver stance. She squeezed the trigger of the gun she'd grabbed from under her desk again, and a hole punched in the corridor wall inches from Mitchell's figure. It didn't matter that she missed that second time because I didn't flinch. I led his motion and pulled the trigger twice. Both rounds tore into his chest, two inches apart, just slightly left of the breastbone.

Another Hollywood trope real life sneered at: instant lights-out from a pistol round to the chest is rare. So I tracked smoothly as he slumped back and let the credenza take his weight. But Mitchell—I suddenly realized I didn't know if that was his first name or last—Mitchell was done. I knew it. He knew it. He didn't even try to raise his gun again. No matter how fast he was, I was fast enough that he'd never get it there.

"You're pretty good with that," he said.

"A lot of practice pretending popup silhouettes were my ex."

"Huh. Women!" His voice was weak. He was going fast.

"I don't get it," I said. "Regan's dead. Why the fuck didn't you just disappear and go be a mercenary somewhere?"

I saw the incomprehension take hold. He tried to say something, but all that came out was an unintelligible mumble. The eyes gradually went vacant, and he slumped back in that completely anticlimactic way that corpses have.

"Stay back," I said to Jess and moved forward. Keeping my gun ready for a coup de grâce in case this was the world's best faking-it, I pulled his from unresisting fingers.

"We got him, Jess. The monster's dead."

Except that last moment before he went ... I thought about Regan and Sasha's deaths. Was Mitchell the only monster?

"He didn't know Regan was dead."

"What!"

I repeated it to the three other people sitting around the hotel room. Jess, Sydney, and Murray stared at me.

"But he killed Regan and Sasha," Sydney protested.

"I thought that for about a hot minute, but it bothered me because it wasn't his style. That was the first thing Regan told me about Mitchell. When Cara was murdered, he said, 'What you found isn't his style,' like that removed all possibility of Mitchell having done it. And I got the same impression when I talked to Mitchell himself. I'm not saying he couldn't be vicious, but the man had a method."

Murray and I shared a glance. We'd seen the crime scene photos from the cabin, and knew that Beck had been tortured before being killed, but it had been a horrendous beating. And Nikki had been raped, but again, the marks on her were bruises.

"He shot both Beck and Nikki at the end. He likes his guns, not knives." I shook my head. "No, he was surprised when I told him Regan was dead. I think he was Regan's man to the end. Regan knew he made a serious mistake by leaving those certificates out for someone to steal. He was trying to prove to his bosses that he could clean up his own mistakes without running to them. That's what Mitchell was doing."

"So who?" asked Sydney.

"Bertram," the other three of us said simultaneously.

"Regan had proved too unreliable," Murray went on. "He lost money. Even though they got a lot of it back, it still cost them two mil. And Bertram and Lindqvist got drawn into the light. No pink slips in that business."

"Bertram and his partner," I said. They looked at me. "I saw two people coming out of that building. You said the police canvassed, and nobody else had guests ... well, Luiza did, but that was someone else. One of those was bigger, a man. I jumped to the conclusion it was Mitchell in the heat of the moment, but now that I think of it, I don't think he was big enough. The other though ..."

I tried to picture that figure.

"It was a woman; I'm almost positive. But something was wrong with the face under the hood. It looked squished and artificial."

"Like they were wearing a mask?"

I nodded. "Exactly. And Jess and I have a theory that Coco is Bertram's partner. She's still not accounted for."

"Neither's Kimi," Sydney said.

"I don't think we'll ever see Kimi again. I think they finally cracked down on her attitude, and she's in some cathouse in the boonies or maybe Mexico." The silence held for a long moment.

"The FBI's started a case," Murray said, "but you were right. It will take forever to get any real momentum."

"And they'll find us before that happens," Sydney said. We could all hear the fear.

"So, what do we do? Can the police do anything?" she asked Murray.

"Can I have an officer here at the hotel? Yeah. But unless you're willing to never go out again, it's hard to stop something when you don't know where or when or how. And honestly, I guess we all have a few concerns about police officers right now. IA is pulling out the stops ever since they heard about New Haven, but they're looking for a needle in a haystack when they're not even sure the needle exists."

"We don't wait," I said. "We find them before they find us, and we end this. The FBI may take a long time to get a case going, but they'll make an arrest if we hand the perps to them, especially if we can get something definitive as evidence. We've got almost nothing to go on, so we scour the barren ground and hope that one little seed is out there." I went around the room.

"Jess, you seem to be able to find almost anything, so get me Richard Bertram's addresses, every one of them you can, home, business offices, clubs, anything." She nodded.

"Sydney, you see if you can find a lead to Coco. Do what you did with Sasha. See if anyone knows of a madame that fits the description. I'm going to give you the number of someone I know. She has an escort agency named Cartier's and—"

Three pairs of eyebrows went up.

"No! Not like that. Someone I almost busted when I was on the job." Two pairs went back down; they knew that the worlds of cops and escorts overlapped. I'll leave you to guess which didn't.

"Call her only as a last resort. I'm serious, last resort. I don't want to use up any goodwill I have with her. But if you do, tell her it's in relation to what I talked to her about before, and the worst case is happening. She'll know what that means. Even if Coco is his mistress and isn't with an agency anymore, I'm betting she was once. She's gotta have left some fingerprints out there. Find me someone who'll talk to me."

"Murray, what are the chances we can look through everything gathered from two crime scenes? Charlie Everett's and Larry Beck's apartment here."

"We won't be able to take anything, but I'll find a way."

"And see if the Icaria police would allow a little professional courtesy and do the same."

"You're too late. I've been and gone."

What is it with evil villains and not introducing themselves when they call you on the phone?

"Bertram?"

Murray was riding shotgun, and his head swiveled sharply my way.