Adrenaline (27 page)

Geoff said, “Are you expecting company tonight or tomorrow? A cleaning lady?”

Geoff saw the old man thinking so he shoved him hard against the wall. “Who?” he shouted. “Right now, who?”

Jansten shook his head, apparently too frightened to lie. “No one.”

Geoff shoved Jansten to the phone. “You’re going to leave a message with the service that your secretary is to cancel all your appointments for the next two days and to have no one disturb you with phone calls. That you’re not feeling well and you need the rest.”

Jansten tapped out the number with a shaking hand. Geoff listened in, his ear next to the receiver. Jansten’s voice had a quavery sound and the woman taking the message said, comfortingly, “You sure don’t sound good, Mr. Jansten. You should go right to bed and take it easy.”

“Good idea,” Geoff said, after hanging up the phone. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Geoff left Jansten’s body beside the bed.

In the hallway, Geoff caught sight of himself in the mirror and it pulled him up short. His hair was dank with sweat, and blood trickled from his temple where Jansten had gouged him.

Geoff felt tired all of a sudden.

Killing the old man had been so different from stabbing Jammer’s cousin. Not that the old man hadn’t given him a good run.

He had.

The old man had looked at him close and said, “Don’t take what little I’ve got left.”

Geoff had glanced away, feeling something like sympathy, at least for the moment.

And hope had sprung into Jansten’s eyes and he had turned away fast, saying, “Let me get you that cash. I’ll get you the cash and you can go and that’s it.”

“Stay here,” Geoff had said, but the old guy had already made it around the corner into his bedroom, talking fast about how he kept close to a thousand bucks in the house for emergencies and if this wasn’t one, he damn well didn’t know what qualified. His voice was still quavering, but he was trying to hold it together, still talking even when Geoff strode in after him saying, “I don’t need your goddamn money.”

The old man opened his dresser drawer and came out with a gun.

He was bringing it to bear when Geoff nailed him. Two shots, one under his arm, one in the throat. The old guy dropped his gun, but still kept coming. Managed to claw Geoff in the temple before Geoff clubbed him to the floor.

Now Geoff felt ill.

He peered closely in the mirror. Was he crazy?

As much as he tried to justify killing Jansten, he couldn’t find a good enough explanation. He told himself Jansten had pushed him into it, but he knew that wasn’t true. He told himself he needed the use of the house. He told himself he owed Jansten some payback for humiliating him in front of the others.

But none of it stacked up. Whereas killing Ball had exhilarated him, Jansten had only his brains and guile to pit against Geoff. Physically, he had been no match.

Black despair seeped through Geoff, feeling very much like shame. Jansten had been so frail in comparison. This wasn’t the way Geoff wanted to see himself.

And now the police were involved. They would be after him in earnest once Jansten disappeared. Geoff had not been overly worried before when the two detectives had taken his name up in Jammer’s apartment because they would have no way to tie him in to Ball’s death once Jammer was dead. And Geoff had intended to leave Jansen’s house so it would look as if Jansten had surprised a burglar. Geoff had figured the Sea Crest police and Boston police wouldn’t connect a robbery and murder with a mugging death in Roxbury.

But now that the Boston police had already interviewed Jansten, his murder would definitely send them back to the subject of the interview, Geoff Mann.

Geoff considered leaving the state right then. He wasn’t afraid exactly, certainly not of getting hurt or killed. And capital punishment held no terrors. But prison, that did scare him. Years in a little cell, the drab, mundane existence …

The thought of a cell squeezed his heart.

Having
nothing to do.
Three steps across the room to the bars, then back again to the cement walls.

The boredom would suck him dry.

A wave of despair swept over Geoff. With unsettling clarity, he saw himself as a punk—a kidnapper and killer.

Lisa.

He felt a flicker of hope. He hadn’t killed her yet. Maybe he wouldn’t.

He had to admire her. She had managed to keep her head. Conned them day after day. It made him respect her and feel a shade weaker himself.

But more than anything, the thought of her made him relax a little. Like waking from a bad dream and realizing he was still in control. Maybe he would give her that chance she had been asking for. Not a good chance, but a chance.

That made him feel better.

For a few seconds, he even envisioned Lisa as his new partner. Now that he had seen her strength, he found himself making the comparisons between her and Carly. Lisa was not only closer to him in age, she was clearly more sophisticated, more appropriate for a man like him. And a beauty in her own right …

Abruptly, he pushed away those thoughts. He
was
crazy if he thought she would ever love him after what he had done. And Carly would do just fine.

Better than fine. She seemed to love him no matter what … he could put it down to her youth, her naïveté. She wasn’t stupid; there was too much intelligence shimmering behind her eyes for him to think that. More than anything, she seemed to read something in him that she chose to see as his love for her. He didn’t know if that was true or not, but he felt a sudden rush of sentimental affection that made him laugh aloud, sweeping the blues away.

Lisa didn’t know whose house it was until she saw a picture over the mantelpiece of Jansten with a young woman. As Carly took her from one room to the next, a tear slipped down Lisa’s cheek. She had heard the gunshots.

She wiped her face with her bound hands and stood straighter. The least she could do was let them know how she hated them.

“Honey?” the girl called.

“Right here.” Geoff came in from the hallway, the gun in his belt. His eyes looked bright but Lisa noticed he avoided her eyes. He smoothed the girl’s hair, making her smile uncertainly.

“Where’s the guy?” Carly asked.

Geoff didn’t answer her. Instead, he took the tape off Lisa’s mouth, looking at her now, challenging her to say something. “Listen. The house is off by itself. Your screams wouldn’t be heard, but they would be very irritating to me and Carly.”

“What
a shame.” Lisa’s voice was hoarse with her contempt.

“I’ll show you a shame, girl,” Carly said, her hand slipping into her purse.

Geoff snatched away her purse and took out the straight razor. She tried to get it back, but he held her away with his forearm. “I’ll tell you when and if we need to do that. I’ve still got plans for Lisa. Now take her upstairs and shower her off. She stinks.”

He cut the line binding Lisa’s hands as if it were ribbon. “I’ll be right outside the door. Don’t give Carly any trouble.” He slipped the razor into his back pocket.

Carly took Lisa up to the bathroom. A moment later, Geoff threw in some clothes, a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt. Jansten’s presumably. “Put her in these afterward.”

Once the door was closed, Carly gestured toward Lisa’s clothes. “Get them off. He’s treating you like the frigging queen.” She turned the shower on and the bathroom quickly filled with steam.

Lisa hesitated, then stripped off her filthy clothes. She looked at herself in the mirror: Her hair was filthy and there were dark shadows under her eyes. She smelled bad to herself.

Carly looked in the mirror at her scar and then she turned her attention to Lisa. For a moment their eyes locked, and Lisa saw such fury there that she braced herself, ready to go at it again.

But then Carly said, “Just get in the frigging shower, okay?”

Once Lisa was inside, she let the water rush through her hair and she lost herself in the heat. When she finally stepped away to soap herself off, she saw that the girl was still standing right outside, looking in at her. The girl stepped closer, and Lisa couldn’t help but notice how young she was. Not much more than twenty, if that.

“It’s just that I tried to help you,” the girl said. “I opened that box because you said you were cold. And you cut me for it.”

Lisa resisted the urge to slap the girl’s face. She resisted the urge to remind the girl that she had kidnapped Lisa, helped store her in a box, and had helped kill Alex. That very likely Jansten’s body was lying somewhere in the house. Instead, Lisa leaned forward and said, “After Geoff jerks me and Steve around some more, he’ll probably kill us. What do you think is going to happen to you after that?”

Carly watched Geoff tie Lisa to one the beds. He was surprisingly gentle, touching only her hands and arms. Lisa was fully dressed in the clothes he had given her. “We’ll bring you some food,” he said.

In the hallway, Carly said, “Why don’t you just fuck her and get it over with?” She brushed past him and went into the bathroom. She pulled her hair back from her neck to look at the scar. “I see how you’re looking at this. It’s over with us now, isn’t it? I’m useless because I’m ugly.”

Geoff came in behind her and looked over her shoulder into the mirror. He reached past her and opened the medicine cabinet and found some disinfectant. “We’ll shower first, and then I’ll put some of this on.” He kissed her above the ear and held her close. “Is that what she said to you? I heard you whispering in here.”

“Are you going to leave me behind?”

“It’s not going to happen that way.”

“What way is it going to happen?”

He unbuttoned her blouse and slowly pulled it off her shoulders, looking at her in the mirror the whole time. “See how beautiful you still are,” he whispered. He touched the edge of her scar gently. “We’ll fix that. When we leave here, we’re going to Miami. They have more plastic surgeons than palm trees down there. Both of us will need new faces to start our new lives.”

“Our new lives?”

“Ours. Just you and me.”

Her eyes welled up. “When?”

“Ssssh. You’ll see.”

He took her into the shower. As they made love, with the steam billowing up against the old man’s walls, she wondered if Geoff was lying. And, if so, was it just to her? Or to himself as well?

Chapter 30

The guy show up?” Bannerman said over the phone.

“Finally. Not that it was so bad waiting.” Lazar was at the phone booth at the edge of the marina parking lot. “Nice life out here.”

“Learn much?”

“Nah. Dern’s not as old or the kind of stiff you’d think would be president of a big company like that. But he wasn’t volunteering anything. In fact, he was pumping me. Why I was investigating Mann? Who had filed charges? That kind of thing.”

“Nosy bastard.”

“Probably.” Lazar looked back at Dern’s boat. The guy was belowdecks now. Lazar couldn’t shake the feeling that the man wanted to talk more, but he had deftly shut off Lazar’s attempt to probe further.

Lazar continued, “Did the courier deliver Mann’s personnel files like Jansten promised?”

“No. I got his secretary on the phone just a few minutes ago. She was on her way out. Ice water, that chick. Said Jansten hasn’t authorized it, hasn’t said a word about it.”

“Shit. Must’ve forgot.”

“Yeah. Anyhow, she said he had left a message with the service saying he was going to be home for a couple of days. She said to get back to her then.”

“Fuck that. You explain that we’re officers of the law?”

“Sure I did. Made it sound like I’d have her ass in jail later tonight. She explained she worked for Jansten, and if he wanted his privacy at home in Sea Crest, he had the right.”

“She told you that, did she? Told you he lived in Sea Crest?”

“Good executive secretaries have to be politicians too, you know.”

“If you say so.”

“So the Sea Crest police came through. Got his number and address. But this can wait until we’re back.”

“Give it to me anyhow.”

Bannerman read him the information, his voice caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation. “You’ve got to get laid, man. We don’t have that much on Mann, and you’re ready to roust this captain of industry at home. What exactly has Mann done? As far as I can see, he likes a girl who
might
be a hooker, he’s been away from his apartment for a while, and he’s got an ego so big he needs to plaster his walls with pictures of himself. This isn’t the kind of evidence we arrest people on in this country. I say we’re due our two days off and we should take them.”

“Ball was killed with a sword and then Mann and Jammer disappear at the same time. Doesn’t that interest you?”

“Not even a little bit. Just because your life is boring and lonely, mine isn’t.”

Lazar laughed. “Thanks for clarifying. See you Saturday, dickhead.”