Caught Redhanded (22 page)

Tony walked over and stood by a shelf lined with legal references in matching bindings. He pulled one down and opened it.

I looked through my viewfinder. The light from the window fell across him, creating interesting light and shadow contrast. I also saw the clenched jaw and tense shoulders of an angry man.

Didn’t killers usually follow the same pattern in their crimes? Snipers stayed snipers. Stranglers stayed stranglers. If Tony did kill Martha with that rock, then what about the bombs for me?

A new thought made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. What about Valerie Gladstone, his dead fiancée? Could Tony have killed her? Again the question was why. Perhaps he had roughed her up as he had Martha. Perhaps she called him on it or was going to tell people and in a fury he killed her.

Perhaps I’ve read too many mystery novels.

“Relax,” I said to him even as I tried to take the word to heart myself. The last thing I wanted was for my nervousness and suspicions to be obvious to him. “Smile.”

He gave a reasonable facsimile of his usual smile and I took several shots. “Turn a little toward me. Look up. That’s good.” I clicked away like I had nothing on my mind but making him look good.

Could Mrs. Wilson pick him out in a lineup? Very questionable with the baseball cap and the evening visits to impede her view of him. Even if she did identify him, a good defense lawyer would make a big deal of her age and eyesight.

I thought of all the times I’d felt uncomfortable around Tony. I’d thought it was because he came on too strong. Had it been because he somehow gave off evil vibes?

Get a grip, Merry!

“How did things work out Saturday night with Ken Mackey at the police station?” I asked. After all, I was a reporter, so I’d better ask questions and this one seemed safe enough. He’d seen me there, even talked to me. “Did his statement check out?”

“It did.” The answer was clipped, almost snarled.

“It would be an easy alibi to verify,” I said as I snapped away. I walked around the desk so I was facing him head-on. Snap. Snap. “Not like some.”

“Like Carnuccio?”

I hadn’t been thinking of anyone or anything in particular when I made that comment. I was just talking to fill the time until I could get myself safely out of here, but I bristled at his Mac comment. Here was one too many people jumping on a man I liked and admired and I became defensive before I thought.

“Don’t say things like that about Mac, Tony. He’s a good man and I don’t believe he had anything to do with Martha’s death.” I heard myself and ordered,
Shut up, woman!

Tony closed the book in his hand and slid it into its place on the shelf. “Your loyalty is commendable, if misdirected.”

I gave a tight smile of acknowledgment. “Well, I think that does it,” I said as I took a step toward my purse. “I’ve got everything I need.”

“Really?” Tony said as he walked around the desk toward me. “I thought we were going to do some more interview stuff.” He picked up his name plaque and began fiddling with it, his fingers running over the inscribed letters. He glanced down as if checking that they hadn’t changed.

“I’ve got more than enough,” I said, forcing my eyes away from the plaque. “And if I have any questions, I’ll just give you a call.” I shoved my camera in my purse.

When he looked up from the plaque, his eyes were cold and flat. I shivered.

“Thanks for your time, Tony.” I turned and practically ran to the door. I was reaching for the knob when Tony, alarmingly close, said, “I knew you’d be trouble. I knew it.” He sounded almost regretful. Almost.

Then he brought the plaque down on my head with appalling power.

TWENTY-SIX

I
don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke up it was dark. My head throbbed, and I felt nauseated. I was curled on my side, knees drawn up, on a hard surface and I had no idea where I was or how I had gotten there. I tried to sit up, but had to stop moving immediately because my stomach screamed, “No!” and a cold sweat broke out all over my body. I lay still and swallowed repeatedly.

When I thought I wasn’t going to throw up after all, I brought up a hand to hold my head on my shoulders since it felt ready to fall off. My knuckles slammed into another hard surface. That’s when I discovered that I was in a small, cramped area, and every horror movie I’d ever been foolish enough to watch told me I’d been buried alive.

I moved my hand around and felt surfaces on four sides and below me, but there was open space above. Taking a deep breath, I slowly, slowly pushed myself into a sitting position. For a few minutes I just sat, eyes closed, resting my head against the wall behind me. How could I be so tired and sick?

When I opened my eyes, the nausea wasn’t as bad as it had been, an encouraging fact. I ran my hands over the four surfaces that hemmed me in, and it was the indentations on the fourth surface that told me where I was. I was in a closet, and the uneven surface was the inside to a door done in the traditional cross and Bible design.

Where there was a door, there was a knob.

I reached eagerly for it, only to pull back at the last minute. Whoever had put me here might be just the other side. Did I want to see him? Maybe I could look under the door and see if I was alone or not.

Again moving very slowly, I got to my knees and bent. My mouth filled with saliva and once again I battled intense vertigo. I stayed still with my forehead resting on the floor until I felt it safe to move again.

I turned and rested the side of my face against the floor and peered under the door. All I could see were floorboards and the edge of a light-colored rug. As I sat again, I struggled to remember.

The floor vibrated under heavy footfalls and I pushed back as far from the door as I could, which wasn’t far at all. But the footsteps didn’t stop at the closet. Instead I heard another door open and a man say in a raised voice, “Thanks for your time, Merry. See you later.” Then the door shut again and the footfalls passed the closet again.

The sound of the voice clicked on my memory. M. Anthony Compton. MAC, not Mac. He’d hit me! I felt outrage, a foolish emotion when I had been shoved in a closet and was being held here.

And what was with the see-you-later-Merry bit? It must have been for the benefit of the others in the office, Mr. Grassley and Mr. Jordan and the skirted Annie. The two men might be in their own offices, but Annie would see that I hadn’t left. She’d know something was wrong. Unless she wasn’t there to see?

In the total silence that lingered outside my door, I heard the faint opening of a far door and the last gurgle of a flushed toilet. I was willing to bet Annie had been using the restroom and that Tony had been waiting for just that moment for me to “leave.”

I heard a loud tap on glass.

“Yes?” Tony said.

“I’m leaving, Mr. Compton,” Annie called. “Mr. Grassley and Mr. Jordan have left already. Can I get you anything before I go?”

“Thank you, Annie, but no. Have a good evening.” He sounded so nice and friendly.

Just as I opened my mouth to scream to catch Annie’s attention before she left, the door to the closet flew open.

“Don’t even think about it,” Tony muttered at me, a baseball bat held over his head. He brought it swinging down. For a split second I was so shocked I couldn’t move. Then I dodged as much as I could in the confines of the closet. The bat caught me on the edge of my right shoulder, sending pain streaking down my arm and across my back.

I gasped and stared at him, incredulous. People didn’t hit people with baseball bats, not people I knew. I’d spent time with this man. He and I had had dinner together. He’d walked me to my car and kissed my red palm. He’d flirted with me!

And now he thought he’d disabled me. Somehow in all the time we’d spent with him talking and me writing, he hadn’t noticed I was left-handed.

“I knew you were trouble as soon as I realized you were the woman with the diary,” he said through gritted teeth, his face a mask of dislike. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you figured everything out.”

I didn’t like cowering on the floor as he towered over me. It was bad enough he had a normal height and weight advantage, but I didn’t need to let him dominate me as he so clearly wanted to. I forced myself to my feet, holding my injured shoulder, fighting off lingering dizziness from the hit on the head. I was still in the closet, still his prisoner, but at least I was upright. “How do you know I found the diary?”

“I saw you.”

I heard once again the swish that had made me think of the sliding door and screen being moved. “You were inside when I got there.”

He nodded. “I went out the back and didn’t realize I’d dropped the diary until I got to my car. Then I hid behind the evergreens out back, waiting for you to leave.”

“You were there watching?” I felt creepy all over, like little spiders were crawling on me, all but my right arm, which felt numb. I thought you always felt when someone was watching you, but obviously you didn’t.

“I was there. I saw you come outside and pick up the book. I watched you put it in your purse when that nosy old lady next door came out. Then she chased you with that burglar bar.”

For a moment, the fury in his face abated and he actually smiled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so funny as you running from that old woman.” He threw back his head and laughed.

Happy to entertain you, I thought sourly. I took advantage of his looking away to try and assess my chances of getting past him and to the door. They weren’t very high.

He sobered quickly and stared at me. “And then you showed up to interview me.”

A thought flashed through my mind. “You walked me to my car to see what I drove, didn’t you? So you could blow it up.”

He stared at me, malevolence oozing from every pore. “The car wasn’t my target.”

Like I needed the reminder. “And the house. You fixed that, too, didn’t you?”

“I timed it to twenty seconds after you opened the door. Time for you to get inside, but not time for you to notice anything wrong.”

“But Whiskers got out and saved the day. He made me cautious. When I saw the broken glass and smelled the accelerant, I never really went inside.”

“Pity. It would have been easier on us both.”

I forced myself not to show him the terror that comment induced. “I thought killers used the same modus operandi all the time.”

“First, I’m not a killer.”

“What?”

“A killer plans and premeditates. Martha was an accident. And it was her fault.”

“It was her fault you hit her hard enough with a rock to kill her?”

“She was threatening me. She was going to tell about our relationship.”

“She was going to tell about the abuse.”

“It wasn’t abuse. She always asked for whatever she got.”

“Telling her mother about you asked for a broken tooth?”

“She was misrepresenting me to her mother. I did not deserve what she planned to do. She was going to tell Grassley and Jordan.”

Amazing to me how he excused himself and made Martha the one in the wrong. “So Martha might have been spontaneous.” If you counted having a murderous rock in hand at a deserted spot at a very early hour as spontaneous. “But trying to kill me was premeditated.”

“Self-defense,” he said, and it was obvious he’d convinced himself that was true.

“So,” I asked, trying to seem much braver than I felt, “what are you going to do with me this time?”

He gave a tight smile. “Throws them off, all the different methods.”

“Knife. Rock. Explosives. Baseball bat?”

He shrugged. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

He hadn’t even blinked at the word knife. Poor Valerie Gladstone.

“Everyone knows I’m here,” I said.

“Were here,” he corrected. “Annie heard me saying goodbye. You left a good ten minutes ago.”

Just like I’d thought.
Lord, how do we trip him up?

I glanced at the window. From this angle all I could see was an apartment across the street and its curtains were pulled tight. But Main Street was down there one story and Main Street meant people and people meant help.

“Be right back,” Tony said suddenly and walked out of the room.

I ran to the window. It was tall, and I had to stretch to reach the latch to unlock the sash. I grabbed the window pulls and yanked. Pain shrieked up my right arm, and I realized that the window was too heavy to lift even if my arm had been strong.

If you can’t pull, push. I reached up and put my palms against the glass below the upper sash and shoved. Nothing. I pushed again, desperate. I felt the sash move. I readied myself for another push when an arm snaked about my waist and I was lifted off my feet.

“No, no, no,” Tony insisted. “Mustn’t draw any attention. Someone else might get hurt, you know.”

With a quick thrust of his hip and shove from his hand, he tossed me across the room. I landed against the bookshelves, each shelf digging into my back as I slid to the floor. Blinking against the shooting pain in my injured shoulder, I leaped to my feet.

“Don’t you touch me again!” Brave, empty words to a man once again swinging his baseball bat.

He moved another couple of steps toward me as I struggled to my feet.

“You can’t kill me with that bat.” Much to my disgust my voice was trembling. “You’ll get blood all over the office. It might not show on the walls, but it’ll definitely stain the rug.”

“I don’t plan to kill you with the bat, though it would give me great satisfaction to swing at you like I’d swing for the fences. All I plan to do is knock you out.”

“Just try it,” I challenged. “I won’t be taken unawares this time. But let’s just say you succeed. Then what?”

He glanced at the pillow he’d gotten from the chairs in the waiting area in the reception room. Once such a pillow had made me comfortable as I waited for that first interview.

“You’re going to knock me out, then smother me?” The man was seriously deranged.

He began moving toward me, slapping the bat against his palm. As he started around the desk, I started moving around it, too. Maybe we could play circle the desk until I came up with an idea to save myself, something short of flinging myself out a closed window thirty or so feet above concrete.