Someone Always Knows (20 page)

A familiar raspy voice said, “I'll take care of her, Don.”

Renshaw.

The son of a bitch had been in the house the whole time.

I tried to wrench away, angry with myself for having been caught off guard this way. The anger gave me strength and I almost broke his grasp. He tightened it, jerked me around, and slammed me face-forward into the foyer wall. At the same time I heard him growl at Macy to turn on the light, to shut and lock the door.

Macy did as he was told. I struggled in the sudden brightness, but Renshaw had me pinned with one hand and the weight of his body. “Well, what have we here?” he said, and I felt him reach under the hem of my short jacket and pull my .38 from the waistband of my pants. Then he released me, stepped back. I turned away from the wall to face him.

He stood with his feet planted, holding my gun in one hand and a small-caliber automatic in the other. Two-gun Renshaw. My stomach muscles clenched, and not only because both weapons were pointed at me.

God, he was a caricature of his former self. Once perfectly groomed, he now smelled of stale sweat, of tobacco, of fried food, of generally bad hygiene. Two buttons were missing from his plaid shirt, and in between I could see tufts of matted gray-black chest hair. His eyes, which had always been keenly intelligent, bulged and blazed with a maniacal light, their whites threaded with broken blood vessels. Yellowed teeth showed through a self-satisfied smirk.

“Gage…” Macy's voice was a nervous squeak. He was afraid of Renshaw, and with good cause.

“Shut up, Don. Go turn on the light in the living room.”

Macy immediately hurried through an archway to our right. Light bloomed in the room beyond.

“All right. Now go get the bracelets from my bag.”

Bracelets?

“Why, Gage? What're you—”

“Don't ask questions. Just do it!”

The burly man bobbed his head, disappeared into the rear of the house.

“Surprised to see me, huh, McCone?” Renshaw said.

I didn't reply.

“Didn't figure I was here, did you? No better place to hole up the past few days with my computer, get everything set on my big deal.”

Sitting in the dark like an animal in a cave. He really has gone around the bend.

“Well, I'm glad you showed up,” he went on. “Saves me the trouble of having to go hunting for you.”

I didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer.

“What's the matter, McCone? Cat got your tongue?”

Fuck you, Gage.

He chuckled, then gestured with my .38. “Into the living room. Go on, move.”

I moved. The living room was a pack rat's lair, crammed with mismatched and haphazardly arranged furniture and miscellaneous objects: here a rusted lawn mower, there a shopping cart filled with baled newspapers; here an old thick-bodied TV set on a sagging metal stand, there a cardboard carton overflowing with empty bottles. Books, both hardcover and paperback, spilled over the floor. Rolled rugs leaned against one wall, a large cracked baroque mirror beside them.

Macy came back down the hallway, stopped next to Renshaw.

Renshaw said to me, “Hold it right there. Take off your jacket and drop it on the floor.”

I obeyed.

“Macy, check it for a weapon.”

Macy scuttled forward, picked up the jacket, and shook it. My car keys fell out, and he snatched them up and pocketed them.

Renshaw motioned with my gun. “Turn all the way around. Arms out. Slow.”

I did that too. I was wearing a bulky sweater with no pockets and a pair of jeans. He could plainly see that I wasn't carrying any other weapon.

“Now go over to the fireplace. Stand with your back to it.”

The fireplace was one of those small ornamental ones you find in old houses like this, carved with the kind of curlicues and flowers and cherubs' smiling faces that had adorned many a Victorian parlor. Along both sides were long, slender vertical posts of marble cemented into the brick facing.

“Go ahead, Don, cuff her to one of those posts.”

A jangling sound. Christ. Now I knew what Renshaw had meant by bracelets.

Macy moved over beside me, snapped one cuff around my right wrist and the other around the marble post.

“Search her,” Renshaw said. “See what she's got in her pockets.”

Nervously Macy patted me down. I stood stiffly, submitting to it with my jaw clenched.

“Nothing, Gage.”

No, not a damn thing. My purse was locked in the car.

“Okay, Don. Now you get out of here, go wait in the kitchen while I have a little time alone with our guest.”

“But the appointment…we've got to leave pretty soon.”

“I know it. Just do what I told you. This won't take long.”

Macy went away again.

“Well, McCone? Anything to say now?”

No.

“Don't you want to know about my deal? Sure you do. It's big, the biggest one I've ever pulled off, thanks to those bearer bonds.”

He had lowered his voice into a confessional mode. He was going to tell me his whole story to feed his out-of-control ego. Of course it didn't matter to him what he revealed, because he intended to kill me.

“You know about the bonds being in the old house on Webster Street, right? Bernardo Ordway in Santa Iva told me they might still be there. He's been peddling information to me for years; has quite a cottage—pardon me, hacienda business going for himself. He said those bonds were a kind of family folklore with the Smithsons; their nerdy son ran away years ago, got put in prison for something he pulled in San Diego. But as soon as he got out he hurried up here to look for them. He'd been sniffing around the house for quite a while before I sent Macy there to see what he was doing. Too bad for him he ran into Don.”

Macy. So it was Macy, not Renshaw, I saw running away from the burning house.

The crazy light grew brighter in his eyes. “Aha! You figured it was me you chased that night, huh? Me who killed the Smithson guy. You should've known better, McCone. I wouldn't've panicked like Macy did, knocked the guy out, and then torched the place. No need for all that.”

He was right, I should have known better. Renshaw never did his own dirty work when he could find someone else to do it for him.

“Not that it matters now,” he went on. “All that matters is that I got the bonds. Ordway brokered them for me down in Mexico. Half the face value, a million five in cash, less Ordway's commission. Tonight's when I collect from Ordway's representative. That's what Don was doing before he got here, setting up the meet. We'll go in his car with me on the floor in back, just to be safe. Jesus, I'll be glad to get out of this crappy house full of junk and mouse shit. It ought to be condemned.”

I stood as still as the marble I was cuffed to. He was in the mood to gloat, as many megalomaniacs do, and he'd lost all sense of logic, perspective. He didn't need any comment or prompting from me, but I asked, “What're you going to do with the money, Gage?”

“What do you think I'm going to do with it?”

“Live luxuriously, I suppose.”

“More than that. I've already hired myself a hacker, guy named Maloof, better than that boy wonder of yours, the best money can buy. He's pulling up everything in M&R's files, a lot of other people's confidential files as well. Info on all sorts of nasty secrets that people in this country'll be grateful to pay to keep covered up.”

So that's your bottom line. But what you don't know, you crazy bastard, is that M&R has the details of your failed arms deal and the FBI's warrant on you. And we took care never to enter a word of those files into our computer system.

“Well? What do you think?”

I didn't reply.

His mouth tightened with anger. Men like Renshaw don't like to be stonewalled. He'd once been the unflappable partner at RKI, bringing calm to highly charged situations, dealing smoothly with panicky clients. But that was the old Gage. This nutjob was the exact opposite, as volatile and deadly as a stick of dynamite with a lighted fuse.

“I could kill you right now,” he snarled, “only I'm not going to. You think you're such a goddamn ice maiden, but you'll sweat plenty before I'm done with you. So will that bastard you're married to, because he won't know if you're alive or dead until I get good and ready to tell him.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want me dead and Hy to suffer? What did we ever do to you?”

“What did you do? Jesus! Years ago Ripinsky screwed up a major deal for me in Southeast Asia. Then when the two of you merged your companies you made absolutely no effort to find me, bring me back into the fold. And when I came back from south of the border and looked you up, still no offer to compensate me for my rightful share. Instead you've been scrambling to get rid of me, get something on me that'll make it impossible to claim my share.”

His share! My God! As if he were entitled to anything from us!

“Gage, in the first place, after you disappeared we thought you were dead. You left without a word—”

“You
hoped
I was dead. You two smart operators and your crack team of investigators could've found me easily enough if you'd tried. But no, Gage was gone and you rejoiced in it. Well, now it's my turn to rejoice. And that's just what I plan to do.”

Macy appeared in the archway. “Gage, it's almost midnight.”

“Yeah, all right.” Renshaw backed away, paused, then held up my .38 and smiled slyly. “Nice little piece you've got here, McCone. Know what I'm going to do with it?”

I shook my head.

“Just watch.” He crossed the room to where a large, clear glass vase sat atop a file cabinet a dozen feet from me and dropped the gun inside it. “Right where you can see it the whole time you're waiting for us to come back.”

He laughed, went to join Macy. “Yell your head off,” he said to me then. “There's nobody close enough to hear you. Struggle all you want, tear your wrist to bloody shreds, but I guarantee you won't get free.” He laughed again, and then the two of them were gone.

As soon as I heard the sound of Macy's car pulling out of the driveway, I slid the cuff on my bound wrist up and down the support post from top to bottom. Marble has a reputation for solidity, but actually it cracks easily enough if you can find a flaw in it.

But there was no flaw in this piece. No cracks, no chips, not even a hairline fracture.

The cuffs themselves had a cheap look, as if they'd been bought at a surplus equipment store. I ought to be able to pick the lock if I could find something to use, or to wrench the mechanism loose by continually pulling and yanking on it.

Wrenching didn't work.

Renshaw had been right: I couldn't get free.

1:05 a.m.

O
ddly enough, through all this time and chaos, my watch had not stopped. Its luminous dial reminded me that the window of time before Renshaw and Macy returned was growing smaller by the minute. I had to get loose.

But how? How?

My wrist was already bloody from all the futile yanking and twisting I'd done over the past hour. No escape that way. I had nothing I could use to pick the handcuff lock. My jeans were of the stretchy zipper-less style, so I couldn't even use the pull tab. And my boots were also pull-ons, with low square heels.

If only there were some heavy object within reach that I could use to smash the marble post. Only there wasn't. The closest pieces of furniture were an overstuffed chair to one side of the fireplace and an old scratched-up credenza on the other. Sitting on the hearthstones, as I was now, I could reach the credenza by stretching out my leg, but it was too heavy to move and there was nothing on it I could dislodge that might be of use.

For the dozenth time my eyes roamed over the room, avoiding my .38 in the big glass vase on the file cabinet. Damn Renshaw. The nearness of the gun was the torment he'd intended it to be.

Stapler on the arm of the overstuffed chair. Could I stretch out far enough to reach it? No. And even if I could have, the stapler didn't look heavy enough to break the marble.

The only other possibility was that floor lamp in front of the credenza. I hadn't been able to reach that either, but I had nothing to lose by trying again. It was one of those old, heavy metal ones with a faux onyx base and legs like little lion's paws, and a stained glass shade. If I could manage to bring it down and break the shade, maybe I could use a shard somehow.…

I wriggled around on the hearthstones, pulling, stretching body and legs. Still couldn't quite reach the lamp. By all but tearing my arm out of its socket, I managed to gain the necessary inch for my flattened foot to touch the base. The lamp teetered slightly, then stood pat.

I hated those lamps! There had been one next to the keyboard in my piano teacher's house the year my parents cajoled me into taking lessons. I hated those lamps almost as much as I hated pianos—

No tangents, dammit.

I stretched out again, until the pain in my wrist and shoulder became unbearable. My foot touched the base again, but all it did was wobble the lamp and nudge it away from me. The damned thing remained erect and now was completely out of reach.

Shit! Now I
really
hated lamps like that!

I wiggled backward to ease the strain on my wrist, arm, and shoulder. Sat up with my back against the fireplace next to the post. Blood trickled down from my torn wrist; I could feel it wet and warm inside the sleeve of my sweater. My whole body ached from exertion, frustration, the sharpening edge of panic.

Car outside. I held my breath. It went by without stopping, its tires swooshing on the pavement. Had it been raining?

Concentrate. Focus.

Focus on what? There was nothing nearby now but dust balls beneath the credenza—

Wait a minute. Was that a glint of metal under there that I hadn't noticed before?

I bent forward as low as I could for a better look. Glint of metal, yes. Metal and wood.

Mousetrap!

My pulse rate jumped. That was exactly what I needed, didn't matter whether it was set or unset or held a squashed rodent. If I could just reach far enough with my foot to slide it out…

I scrunched down again on the hearth, extended my leg, flattened my foot as much as I could. The space under the credenza was narrow, and at first I thought I wasn't going to get my foot under it. I kicked off my boot and tried again.

This time I was able to squeeze my toes underneath. But I still couldn't reach far enough to touch the trap. The edge of the credenza bottom bit into my instep, scraped painfully. I gritted my teeth and kept struggling, gaining a fraction of an inch with each forward push—

There! My big toe touched the trap.

I managed to ease it up, hold it in place. Then, slowly, I drew it back toward me.

My toe slipped off. Damn! Carefully I lifted it into another hold and again slowly eased the trap backward. It wasn't set, or if it was, the movement didn't release the spring. The last thing I needed was to have it snap down and crush my toe.

Now I was able to get two toes onto it, a third. That made moving it easier. I managed to draw it out far enough that the credenza edge was no longer scraping my foot. Then I was able to pull with all five toes.

Once I had it into the open I saw that it was an old-fashioned kind with a slender metal lever used to set the spring. Good! I dragged it as close to me as I could, twisted my body until I was able to reach it with my free hand. It must have been under the credenza a long time. Not only was it caked with dust, it contained a tiny mouse skeleton.

My free hand was shaky from the strain. I willed it steady, then anchored the trap with my foot and lifted the spring mechanism far enough to dislodge the skeleton. The trap was ancient, the metal corroded, but dismantling it one-handed seemed to take forever. I was oiled with sweat when I finally wrenched the lever free.

I pulled myself up until I was leaning back against the fireplace next to the marble post. Then, using the lever as a pick, I went to work on the lock of the handcuff circling my wrist.

I'd been at it for less than a minute when I heard the sound of another car approaching outside. But this one didn't pass by—it pulled into the driveway, onto the concrete slab.

Jesus! Renshaw and Macy were back.

Frantically I dug at the handcuff lock.

A door banged open at the rear of the house. I heard the mumble of voices, then distinct words.

Come on, dammit, release! Release!

Come on, come on, come on!

Got it!

The lock snapped and the steel staple was loose. I yanked it out, freed my wrist. Lowered the cuffs to the hearth to keep them from jangling. Put on the boot I'd kicked off. Crossed the room as fast and silently as I could.

Out in the kitchen I heard the clink of glass on glass.

My legs were wobbly; one of them gave out just as I reached the file cabinet. I couldn't stop myself from staggering against it. Off balance, I went down on my right knee—the one I'd injured a few years before. Up top the vase teetered, toppled. I grabbed for it as it fell, but it slipped out of my blood-slick fingers and crashed to the floor.

Shouts from the kitchen.

I lunged for the .38, caught hold of it, dragged it from the shards of broken glass. Straightened and assumed my shooter's stance just as Renshaw and Macy came charging in.

“Hold it right there, both of you! Hands up!”

They skidded to a stop. Macy squeaked, “Christ, she's loose!” and then froze. But not Renshaw. His mouth twisted, his face congested with fury, and he clawed for the automatic shoved into his belt.

I remained with my legs spread, .38 held in both hands at arm's length. “Don't do it, Gage!”

“Fucking bitch! Not gonna let you stop me now!”

He pulled the automatic free, started to bring it up.

I fired a second before he did.

His shot went wild, the bullet smacking into the ceiling. My shot didn't. It nailed him high on the right side of the chest, jerked him half around and made him lose his grip on the automatic. His knees buckled and he went down. Flopped over, grunting, against the ornate Victorian baseboard.

I moved quickly, kicked the gun out of his reach. Macy was cringing against the archway wall, both hands as high in the air as he could reach. “Don't shoot me, I'm not armed, don't shoot!”

Renshaw tried to get up, but couldn't make it. He lay there clutching at his bloody chest, glaring hatred and spitting obscenities. Lucky for the crazy bastard I hadn't aimed a couple of inches closer to his heart.

Lucky for me too. I didn't want another death on my conscience, not even Gage Renshaw's.