Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (276 page)

The table toppled sideways, barely missing him, but one of the monitors beaned him on the head. Pain exploded, radiating through his skull like an electric charge as the monitor tumbled to the floor and landed next to him. For a moment he thought he might pass out again, but he held fast, willing himself to stay conscious.

He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and looked at the monitor. It was the one showing the lobby door. He thought he saw a shadow onscreen, approaching beyond the frosted glass.

Langer about to enter the building.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

Turning now, he frantically searched the floor, looking for the knife. But the only light in the room had come from the monitors, and the second one had either blown or landed face down. There were too many pockets of darkness around him, and the knife could be anywhere.

Remembering his cell phone, Hutch jammed his hands into his pants pocket, hoping to Christ Gus hadn't taken it. Then his fingers touched plastic. Relief washed through him as he worked the phone free, then touched a button on the side to activate it.

Shining the light from the screen toward the mess around him, he caught the glint of a blade and saw it poking out from beneath the edge of the overturned table.

He dove toward it, ignoring the protests of his aching skull. Scooping up the knife, he shoved the handle into his mouth and clamped his teeth against it, so that the blade pointed to one side. Then he rolled onto his back, turned his head to angle the blade toward the ceiling, and brought his wrists up to the sharp edge, positioning it between them.

Moving his hands back and forth, he frantically sawed through the gaffer's tape, straining to watch the monitor as he worked.

Onscreen, the lobby door was opening, the creep stepping inside.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

Hutch moved his wrists faster, cutting through the thick layers of fibrous tape strand by strand, all the while pulling his wrists apart, trying break them free. The seconds were ticking by and this process seemed to be endless, taking forever. This goddamn tape had to be made of buffalo hide.

On the monitor, Langer was at the stairs now, his dead eyes looking straight into the camera as he mounted the steps. He had five flights to go and he wasn't wasting any time, and all Hutch could hear were Ronnie's terrified sobs.

Hutch watched the creep clear the first landing and disappear from view, and knew he was running out of time. There was no way he could beat the clock.

Then finally, thankfully, the tape came loose and his hands broke free.

Ripping the knife from his mouth, he grabbed the edge of the overturned table and pulled himself upright. The room spun around him. A new wave of nausea swept through him as he leaned forward, using both hands to saw at the bonds around his ankles.

Bile rose in his throat and for a moment he was sure he would puke, but he swallowed hard and forced it back as his hands kept working, kept sawing, kept hacking away, as he flexed his ankles, trying to pull them free.

Finally the tape came lose and he quickly unwound it and tossed it aside, then grabbed hold of the table edge again. Using it for leverage, he pulled himself to his feet. The room tilted sideways, and his knees buckled, threatening to send him sprawling.

Catching his balance, he reached up with one hand, touched the back of his head and found something wet and oozing there, along with a knot about the size of a golf ball.

It was a wonder he could stand up at all.

But he didn't have time to be thinking about this. Listening to Ronnie's sobs rise from the speakers, he steadied his legs, turned, then launched himself toward the front door.

The room was still spinning but he didn't stop. He kept moving forward until he reached the knob, yanked the door open, then staggered out into the hallway.

Across the hall was the door marked STAIRS, and he realized that he was in the first apartment. The one he'd seen when he stepped out of the stairwell.

Turning, he barreled down the graffiti-scarred hallway toward the apartment at the far end, its door hanging open a crack. Langer was nowhere in sight and there were only two possibilities here—either he was already inside, or he hadn't yet made it to this floor.

Hutch much preferred option two.

Stumbling forward, he attacked the apartment door with his body weight, slamming it open, then held the knife in front of him as he barreled inside.

But something felt wrong the moment he passed the threshold.

Something was different.

There should light coming from the bedroom at the end of the hallway.

He should be able to hear Ronnie crying.

He spun around now, grabbing the wall to steady himself, and looked back toward the door he'd just come through.

Either this wasn't the right apartment or Ronnie had been moved.

And he doubted Ronnie had been moved.

As he stood there trying to get his bearings, a faint but familiar sound trickled down from overhead: muffled sobs, coming through the ceiling.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

He was on the wrong goddamn floor.

Gathering himself, he took a deep breath, tried to ignore the throbbing in his head, and went back out into the hallway.

And that was when Ronnie started to scream.

CHAPTER SIXTY

WHILE HUTCH WOULD be the first to admit that he was no Bob De Niro, there were times in his career that he had found himself in the zone.

The zone, as he defined it, was that moment when the cameras started rolling and the external world fell away around him. No distractions, no crew members, no hot lights strategically placed to make the visuals pop. He was so singularly focused that he began breathing the character's energy, getting lost in it.

And at that point, the choices made themselves.

When Hutch heard Ronnie scream, he immediately slipped into the zone. He flew across the hallway and ran up the stairs, no longer a victim to such trivialities as pain and fear and dizziness and nausea and a body that didn't want to cooperate. This wasn't a role he was playing, and the stakes here were much, much higher than the Nielsen numbers or a weekend's worth of box office bounty.

He took the stairs two at a time, bounding onto the fifth floor landing and into the hall, then made a straight line for the apartment door—the
right
apartment this time—Ronnie's terrified screams the fuel that drove him forward.

When he reached the room with the lights and the overhead camera, Frederick Langer was kneeling on the mattress, trying to smother Ronnie's cries as he raised the switchblade—about to plunge it into her naked, heaving chest.

Hutch shouted, "Langer!" then launched himself across the room.

Hutch tackled him, hard, driving him off the mattress, slamming him into the wall. One of the work lights toppled and began to stutter and spark as they bounced to the floor and rolled across the threadbare carpet.

For a moment they were a tangle of flailing limbs and desperate grunts, Hutch struggling to gain momentum. But he was still in that zone, still acutely focused, and he anticipated the creep's moves before Langer even made them. The switchblade arced toward his face, but Hutch deflected the blow with his forearm and brought his own knife down, burying it in Langer's left shoulder.

Langer howled and fell back, pain and rage in his black eyes. He dropped the switchblade and began to cry like a child, clawing at his shoulder, trying to get at the knife, which was still lodged there, as Hutch pulled himself free and staggered to his feet.

He looked at the man without pity and didn't hesitate. Swinging a foot back, he kicked Langer as hard as he could, square in the face. The glasses went flying and bones crunched as the creep's head snapped back and he crumpled to the floor and stopped moving.

Hutch didn't know if the guy was dead or alive and didn't give a damn.

Scooping up the switchblade, he scrambled back to Ronnie and began cutting away the tape that strapped her to the mattress. As he pulled her free, she lurched into his arms, sobbing, and he hugged her tight, smoothing her hair.

"It's okay," he said. "It's okay…"

She trembled uncontrollably. "Christopher… He took Christopher…"

"I know… I know."

"Gus said he wanted to help us get out of town. But then he drove me here and left me with that sick fuck and took Chris with him." The tears were still flowing. "Oh, my God, Hutch. Oh, my God."

"We'll find him," Hutch said, remembering Gus's promise, hoping that he was a man of his word. "Help me with this mattress."

"What do you mean? Why?"

He pulled her to her feet. "There's something underneath it. A gift from Gus."

She eyed him skeptically, but didn't protest. They grabbed hold of the mattress and flipped it up against the wall—

—and laying face down on the carpet was a rectangular piece of white paper or cardboard.

Hutch grabbed it and turned it over, expecting to find a note of some kind.

Instead he saw a familiar photograph: the shot of Ronnie kissing him in the back of Andy's Mustang. The same shot that had been sold to
The Gab Bag
by one of her neighbors.

Ronnie wiped at her eyes and stared. "What the hell is this supposed to mean?"

Hutch was at a loss, thinking it had to be another of Gus's games.

But then it hit him.

One of Ronnie's neighbors.

One of Ronnie's neighbors had taken this shot.

Hutch knew what this meant. "Find your clothes," he said, digging into his pocket for his cell phone. "I'll try to get hold of Andy. We need a ride out of here."

"Hutch, what's going on? Where are we going?"

"To your neck of the woods," he told her. "Roscoe Village."

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

THERE WERE NO paparazzi or tabloid reporters camped out in front of the Baldacci home. No news vans parked at the curb. The buzzards had already picked at the carcass, and satisfied that Ronnie Baldacci wasn't coming home, they'd moved on to the Next Big Story.

For now, at least.

The neighborhood was remarkably quiet, asleep for the night, and as Andy steered his Mustang around the corner, Hutch wasn't surprised to see Gus's blue Volvo parked in the driveway of a two-story bungalow across the street and to the left. Judging by the angle of the photograph, this had to be where the photographer lived.

Ronnie shuddered when she saw the car.

"Oh my God," she said. "He's here. He's waiting for us."

"I don't think so." Hutch slipped an arm around her, remembering what Gus had told him. That he would be long gone, off on another adventure.

Assuming the old psycho had told him the truth, that is.

"He just wanted to make sure we found the right house," Hutch said. "I'm guessing it's a rental?"

Ronnie nodded. "It has been for years. There's been a half dozen different families living there. Do you think Christopher's in there?"

"I hope so, but let's not—"

Before Hutch could finish, and before Andy could even pull the Mustang to a complete stop, Ronnie broke away, threw her door open, and was out of the car.