Lilith: a novel (24 page)

Jessica’s knee was still in the small of Dave’s back.

“You shoot him, baby, you’re going to have to shoot me.”

“Yeah, yeah, baby. You made that clear, didn't you?” Travis said. The hostility in Travis’s voice made Dave wonder if he wasn't seconds away from dying, if his apparent salvation wasn’t little more than a temporary farce. These were murderers he was dealing with, after all. Serial murderers. What would prevent a man like Travis Hall from killing the woman who defied him along with the cop who pursued him?

But the bullet that Dave feared never came. Perhaps Travis Hall had a soft spot for the young woman. Perhaps he secretly feared her—or feared that he would not be able to continue his criminal activities without her. For whatever reason, by whatever leverage, Jessica Knox had won the stalemate. She stood up, removing her knee from Dave’s back in the process, and then he heard two sets of footsteps make a hasty retreat.

Dave did not stay put for ten minutes. He waited long enough, though, to make sure they were gone. He was unarmed; and there were two of them—both with guns.

When he was reasonably certain that he could move without drawing a bullet from Jessica Knox or Travis Hall, Dave rolled over, sat up, and fished his cell phone from his pocket.

They had forgotten to take his cell phone. They had been so obsessed with disarming him that they had overlooked the next most obvious weapon: the one that could instantly summon the aid of other cops.

Don't feel so damn high and mighty
, he chided himself as he speed-dialed Alan's number.
You allowed yourself to be disarmed by two amateur cons. The man was going to kill you, but the woman saved you. She did it for her own purposes, but the woman saved you just the same.

Alan answered before the second ring. He sounded as frantic as Dave felt, though he kept his voice discreetly low. He would have no way of knowing who was present, or what had transpired.

"Are you still with Griggs?" Alan asked. "Did you get my text message?"

"No," Dave replied. "And yes." He gave Alan a bare-bones summary of what had happened, adding a terse acknowledgement of his own gullibility.

"Don't worry about that right now. Just tell me where you are."

Dave told him. "Covey Avenue. Across from the Loft. It's a little alleyway. Do you know where that is?"

"I can find it. You hold tight. I'll be right there."

Immediately after Alan disconnected the call with that peremptory set of instructions, Dave had been about to ask if they should rendezvous elsewhere and pursue Knox and Hall together. But then he thought:
pursue them where?
Dave had been lying prone when the pair exited the alleyway. He had observed nothing but the gray-black, shiny-moist pavement. He did not even know in which direction they had fled.

He stood up and did his best to brush the dirt and pebbles from his clothing. While he waited for Alan, he forced himself to stop thinking about the shame of being outsmarted by two amateurs, and (even more) how close he had come to death. He forced himself, rather, to focus on a recovery plan. Knox and Hall had escaped, at least temporarily. He and Alan would have to pursue them.

He did not have long to contemplate these matters. Barely two minutes had passed following his brief phone call with Alan, when the senior detective appeared at the opening of the alleyway.

"We've got to go after them, right?" Dave blurted out, feeling like an idiot. Then he remembered how law enforcement actually worked: it wasn't like the movies.

"We need to call the Cincinnati PD," he said. "We'll need help."

"Already done," Alan said, tapping the cell phone inside his sport coat. "It's a weekend night, but I told my contact that this takes priority. That we'll explain later."

Alan shook his head, and Dave was able to instantly surmise the interdepartmental politics involved. The ODCI had jurisdiction throughout the state, more or less. Still, they usually notified local departments in advance when operating on their turf. And especially if they anticipated needing their help. Tonight they had not expected to need any local help with the Alicia Griggs undercover operation. But things had not worked out the way they'd planned.

"I screwed up," Dave said. "I let my guard down and—"

"Not now," Alan interrupted. "It was two against one and your gun was inside your shoulder holster, if I understand correctly. No time to play Wyatt Earp."

I'm not Wyatt Earp
, Dave wanted to say but didn't.
I'm an analyst. I'm our group's computer guy. And I wouldn't even have been out here tonight, if not for the fact that I fit the profile of a pathetic target.

Then he contemplated, again, the odds facing the task at hand. It was a big city, and a weekend night to boot. There were a thousand doorways and hiding places where Knox and Hall could disappear.

"I wonder," Dave said, "do we have a snowball's chance in hell of finding them now?" As soon as he uttered these words he regretted them. He did not like to sound negative, but well, there it was.

Alan was about to answer when his cell phone rang and he retrieved it from his pocket. He began talking into the phone. Although Dave could not hear the full conversation, it was clear that the party on the other end of the call was someone from the Cincinnati department.

Alan ended the brief exchange, returned the phone to his pocket, and said, "Looks like they've already found them."

Jessica watched Travis as he watched the activity down on the street. The room they were in was dark, chilly, and filled with the foul odors of years of neglect and decay.

“Get away from the window,” she told him. “Or they’ll see you.”

They were on perhaps the fourth floor of this abandoned inner-city building—one of a countless number in this blighted part of Cincinnati. They hadn’t bothered to count the floors or the landings, of course, as they had run up here, passing piles of garbage and semi-comatose addicts along the way. They had also encountered a few addicts who were more alert. A brief wave of their guns had dissuaded such individuals from paying them any undue attention.

“They’ve already seen us,” Travis said. He turned away from the window and glared at her. Jessica supposed that she deserved it. It had been her idea to leave the cop in the alley alive—the cop named Don, or the cop whose named was supposed to be Don.

Who else but Don would have summoned the Cincinnati police cruiser that spotted them literally within minutes of their leaving the alley?

She remembered—now that it was far too late—that she had forgotten to make Don hand over his cell phone. Don would almost certainly have been carrying one.

But then she recalled the tall balding cop she had seen on the sidewalk a block away from the Loft. He had obviously recognized her. He might have been the one who was responsible for the police cruiser.

Their outing had been doomed tonight—not just doomed, but doubly so, by the look of things.

The police cruiser had been rolling down one of the side streets adjacent to the Loft. The sirens were silent but the strobe lights were on, which usually meant that the police were not in emergency mode but meant serious business.

Jessica and Travis had run by the police car, making no attempt whatsoever to look inconspicuous. Their only objective had been to put distance between themselves and Covey Avenue, where Don would be on his feet by then, and therefore taking actions against them—no matter what Jessica had whispered in his ear at the end.

The cop in the police cruiser saw them right away, and was apparently already searching for two people who fit their description. There was a buzz from the police cruiser and the crackle of its loudspeaker. Then a clipped set of instructions that she could no longer remember, sitting here in the corner of this room, watching Travis peer out the window. But the gist of the instructions had been clear enough. The officer inside the police cruiser had ordered them to halt.

So Jessica and Travis had taken that as a cue to run even faster. Then Travis had had the bright idea of ducking into this abandoned building. A stupid idea. Typical Travis. On foot out in the streets in this section of the city, they might have had a chance. Instead they had placed themselves in a box. The huge, dark, cold box of a decaying building.

“We need to think,” Jessica said. “We might have some time. Maybe there’s a way out of here.”

She frankly doubted it, though. There were police cruisers parked on the street in front of the building. The police would also have either cruisers or officers stationed at any rear or side locations that might possibly allow them egress.

She didn't know exactly how many cruisers there were out front—she guessed two or three—but she could see the traces of their red and blue strobe lights on one of the walls near the window, and on Travis’s face. The glass in the window had long since been broken out, so she could also hear the static of their radios and the hum of their voices.

Twice the police had called up to them on their loudspeakers from the street below, urging the two of them to come down, to surrender. 

Nope—the police had no doubt about where they were.

The question was: Why hadn’t they stormed the building? Although they must have surmised—or learned from Don—that the two of them would be armed, they would be confident in the overwhelming strength of their superior numbers and firepower. They were the
police
, after all.

But maybe the situation was more complicated than that, even for the police. While she and Travis might be outnumbered, it was late at night, and the police could not be sure what they might find inside the building. This was not a safe neighborhood; the police would regard it as unfriendly.

Besides—the police would figure that they had Travis and her bottled up.

The cops therefore thought that time was on their side.

And perhaps it was, unless she and Travis could think of a plan. No—scratch that—unless
she
could think of a plan. The task of coming up with coherent plans had countless times proved to be beyond Travis’s capabilities.

The police clearly wanted to avoid a violent end to this. Otherwise they would have already entered the building, going from room to room with their guns drawn and blazing.

She could use the cops’ hesitation to her advantage. There might be a way out—maybe not for Travis, but for her, at least. 

“Step away from the window,” she repeated at Travis. Her attention was drawn to the pistol in Travis’s hand. Surely he didn't intend to provoke a final shootout with the police.

Surely.

“Haven’t you done enough ordering for tonight?” Travis snapped. She noticed, though, that he did take a step back from the window.

“I wouldn't have had to order you, Travis, if you hadn’t had the brilliant idea of shooting a cop. You would have killed us both with that one shot. I told you before, the police never would have rested until—”

“Shut up!” he barked. She flinched—at his rage, but also at the possibility that he may have given their exact position away.

“Don’t push me, Jess. Because I’m warning you: What you did back there, I ain’t never going to take that again from you.” With his pistol, he gestured roughly in her direction, though he came short of pointing it directly at her. “Something like that ain’t never going to happen again, or there’ll be hell to pay. You got it?” Then he added, “And there might still be hell to pay for what you did tonight—if we ever get out of here, that is.”

“Sure Travis,” she said. “Kill a cop, why don't you? Then every cop in the state of Ohio will be after us. Maybe you can even bring the FBI in.”

Travis swore under his breath and resumed his watch of the activities on the street below them. Suddenly it all became clear to her, the sum total of their situation.

She looked around the room, taking in the few discernable shapes that she could see in the stray patches of weak light that filtered in from the outside. In one corner she saw a pile of old aluminum cans and syringes—the paraphernalia of junkies. In another corner was a pile of wrecked office furniture—pieces of rolling desk chairs and what looked like the gutted carcass of an ancient typewriter.

This was the final destination of her time with Travis. This was the place that her partnership with him had brought her to.

There was no way that she and Travis would walk out of this building free and alive. They were going to die here or they were going out as prisoners. There was no third choice.

Her only viable option was to betray Travis. She could surrender, and then she could tell the police and the prosecutor that Travis had forced her into the entire Lilith routine. Perhaps she could even convince them that she hadn’t known that Travis was killing Lilith’s victims.

Once Travis realized her intentions, he would kill her, she was sure. He would try, at the very least.

But that was the point: he would
try
. She still had her gun. And she had backed him down once tonight already.

As if sensing her thoughts, Travis suddenly came to life with a loud curse at the police on the street below: “Sons-of-bitches!” he shouted.

Then he walked up to the window with his pistol supported by one outstretched arm, and fired a shot.