Cherry Bomb (3 page)

CHAPTER
4

T
HE MAN’S WRINKLES
are caked with filth, and the layers of soiled clothing wrapped around his thin body smell of BO, urine, and worse. Alex takes no joy in slitting his throat. She mixes business with plea sure when possible, but for this old crazy bum it’s a mercy killing. Alex derives no plea sure from mercy.

She holds his shoulder, keeps him turned away so the spray of the carotid doesn’t splash her Dolce & Gabbana. He moans a little, but resigns himself to his fate quickly, collapsing into a clump of bloody, dirty rags. The alley, like most in the area, is narrow and deserted.

Alex lights a cigarette and waits for him to stop breathing. She doesn’t inhale, because she doesn’t smoke. If someone happens to walk by, a nicotine break is a good excuse for standing around in an alley.

Two minutes pass. No one walks by. For a population of six hundred thousand, there aren’t many people on the street. Maybe it’s the crummy weather.

“D…deh…deh…”

The bum is trying to talk, but he’s having some problems; most of his breath is bubbling out through the hole in his neck. She nudges a patch of unbloodied clothing with her toe.

“Last words are important. Try to finish.”

“D…deh…
devil
,” he manages, somewhere between a whisper and a gurgle.

Alex smiles, but only the right side of her face moves.

“The dev il isn’t real, buddy. I am.”

The bum expires, rheumy eyes going dull, and the blood finally stops pumping. Breaking his neck would have been quicker, but that would have meant getting behind him, finding a good grip. Changing her hair color is annoying enough. Alex doesn’t want to fuss with lice shampoo as well.

Alex peels back his sweatshirt, and the smell gets so bad it activates her gag reflex. She removed the bandage from her nose a few days ago, not because the break was fully healed, but because it drew more attention than her scars, even under a veil. Now she wishes she’d waited; a nose brace and plugs would have prevented this awful odor from assaulting her.

The money roll is in his pants pocket, almost the diameter of a soda can. During her stint in the marines, she knew of an MP who would roll drug dealers and pimps when he needed fast cash, the logic being they always had a wad. The downside was they also carried weapons, and had unsavory friends.

When Alex needed money, her solution was less complicated. Homeless people carry their entire fortunes on them. Though some were drunks and druggies, spending their last nickels to score, the schizos and psychotics tended to hoard cash. It took her less than an hour to find one on the street, muttering to himself. When she shoved him into the alley, he was more interested in protecting his plastic bags full of precious cans than his own throat.

She flips through the bills, which are surprisingly clean and crisp, and concludes she’s just made around six hundred bucks. Alex tucks the roll into her laptop bag, checks the sidewalk for pedestrians, then steps out of the alley and heads for her car. It’s parked on the street next to a small bookstore. A recent model Honda Accord, so popular it’s anonymous. In her younger years, she preferred to steal sports cars. But those are conspicuous.

Or perhaps,
Alex thinks,
I’m simply mellowing with age.

She approaches it from behind and inspects the trunk, satisfied that the car’s previous owner hasn’t begun to leak any bodily fluids. Since killing Jack’s fiancé three weeks ago, Alex has switched vehicles three times. Perhaps a bit overly cautious, but she doesn’t want to leave Jack such obvious bread crumbs. She prefers to keep the lieutenant guessing.

Exactly twenty days have passed since Alex was a guest of the Heathrow Facility, a maximum security prison for the criminally insane. She’d been put there by Jack, who had torn off half of her face in the process. The skin grafts, done by unskilled surgeons on the public dime, left Alex pink and mottled from her eye to her chin. She looked like a crazy quilt made out of Spam.

While in Heathrow, Alex had a lot of time to think. About revenge. And about the future. She planned two elaborate schemes. The first was to exact some payback. The second was larger in scope, but would be even more satisfying than killing Jack and company.

After a dramatic escape, Alex paid the lieutenant a visit, intending to kill her and everyone she cared about, including Jack’s mother; her partner, Herb; her fiancé; and two old friends, Harry McGlade and Phineas Troutt. But there were…complications, and everything went to hell.

Alex had been thinking about that night a lot. About how it could have gone differently. Jack and her friends got very lucky, no doubt. But Jack had also stood toe-to-toe with Alex, and broken her nose.

Alex had been in scores of fights, with both men and women. But no one had ever broken her nose before.

So, scheme number one got flushed down the toilet. But scheme number two is still viable. Scheme number two will make everything right. And there’s room for Jack to take a big role in it.

A very big role.

Alex takes out her keys and presses the button to open the car door. After she climbs in and buckles up, she considers her next move. It’s a little past two p.m. There’s time to buy some dye, do her hair, before her four o’clock date. Alex uses the onboard GPS system and searches for
drugstore,
finding one less than a mile away.

She chooses red for her new hair color. The dead bum would have approved.

Then Alex heads toward the Old Stone Inn near the airport, picked because the name is absolutely perfect, and muses about all of the people who are going to die in the next few days.

There will be quite a few.

CHAPTER
5

I
WANTED TO GET GOOD AND DRUNK,
but I’d been pretty much good and drunk for the last few weeks. Mourning. Hating myself. Wallowing in a pool of alcohol, antidepressants, and self-pity, biding time until I was able get my shit together.

The time had finally come.

I walked past acres of tombstones through freezing rain, exited the Graceland Cemetery on Clark and Irving, and hailed a taxi.

“UIC on Roosevelt.”

The cabbie glanced up at me in the rearview. I was soaked and shivering, my clothes sticking to me like they’d been painted on, my nipples jutting out like gun barrels.

“Wet out there,” he said.

I didn’t answer. He turned up the heat without being asked. I didn’t deserve warming up, but I had no will to argue.

Forty blocks later and thirty bucks lighter, I was spit out by the cab at the University of Illinois Chicago. The rain had changed its style of attack, cold fat drops replaced by wind-driven drizzle, which stung like needle pricks. The campus, normally gorgeous in the autumn, looked barren and dead. The trees were skeletons, their leafy skins shed in clumps all over the ground, brown and wet as mud.

The Illinois Forensic Science Center was on the south side of the street. Before it merged with the state police more than a decade ago, it was just known as the Crime Lab. One of the most advanced in the country, containing over fifty thousand square feet of crime-busting technology.

I showed my badge at the front desk, declined the offer of paper towels, and took the stairs to the second floor and Officer Scott Hajek, whom I’d phoned earlier.

Hajek had a roundish face and large blue eyes magnified to cartoon-ish extreme by his thick glasses. The top of his head came up to my nose. He had a crush on me, and had asked me out several times over the years. I always deferred, saying I already had a boyfriend. Hopefully he’d have the tact not to ask me again.

Per our call, I met Hajek in one of the many labs, this one crammed with computer equipment, expensive-looking electronic devices, and an impressive collection of empty pizza boxes stacked neatly in the corner.

Hajek, sitting in a swivel chair and peering at a computer, glanced over his shoulder at me when I entered.

“Still raining?”

I held my thumb and index finger an inch apart, indicating a wee bit.

“There are some takeout napkins on the table there, next to that container of Parmesan cheese.”

“I’m fine.” My teeth were only chattering a little.

“You hungry? I still got some pizza left over from lunch. Double pepperoni.”

“No thanks.”

“You don’t like pizza?”

“I just came from a funeral. I’m not very hungry.”

Hajek stared at me, and for a moment I saw his eyes flicker to my boobs, which felt ready to fire two shots across his bow.

“Maybe later to night? You have to eat, and if you want to talk, I’m a good listener.”

“Thanks for offering, Scott.” I tried to sound genuine, even though I was tired and he was annoying me, squinting to see through my dress. “Tell me what you got on the cell phone I sent over.”

Hajek blinked, swallowed, and turned back to his desk.

“It’s a PP Tangsung 117EX. Quad-band, GSM 1900 network, MMS and EMS. Or, in non-geek terms, a pay-as-you-go model with enhanced video and messaging capabilities, and a good antenna. I lifted two prints, both belonging to Alexandra Kork, but you probably already knew that.”

I shivered. “Traceable?”

Hajek swiveled to face me, except his eyes didn’t meet mine.

“She bought the phone at the mall in Gurnee, Illinois, six days ago. I called them, spoke to the employee who sold it to her. Said it was a tall woman, well built, with bandages on her face. Used a credit card in the name of Shanna Arnold. I ran a check; Mrs. Arnold was recently reported missing by her husband.”

“Were you able to trace the call? Where Alex called from? Her number?”

Hajek didn’t answer. His eyes were having a telepathic conversation with my breasts. I folded my arms over my chest.

“Officer Hajek?”

He blinked.

“Captain Bains called me. Said you’re on a leave of absence. You’re not part of this investigation.”

My demeanor grew as cold as my skin.

“So you’re not going to tell me?”

“I could get into trouble, Lieutenant.”

“She killed my fiancé, Scott.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

I could have gone all superior officer on him, but instead I lowered my arms, knowing he’d look at my boobs again. Girl power.

“Please, Scott. Between you and me.”

He licked his lips, then slowly nodded.

“There isn’t a record of her activating the phone. That means she unlocked it, and used a different SIM card as a new number.” He cleared his throat. “Then she spoofed the caller ID.”

“In non-geek, please.”

“Basically, she hacked the phone to make it usable with any network, then put in a stolen Subscriber Identity Module so the calls are being billed to someone else’s account.” He held up the cell. “This phone is using Shanna Arnold’s SIM.”

“Can we find out the number Alex called from?”

“No. Because of the spoof. Alex used this phone as a remote camera, switching it on by calling it. When I checked out the caller ID recorded on the SIM card, it showed that fake number Hollywood uses in movies, 555-5555.”

I’d seen the 555 number myself, on calls from Alex. She probably thought it was funny. “How is that possible?”

“There are Internet ser vices you can sign up for that let you place a call and leave false caller ID numbers and names. You use a VoIP—a Voice-over Internet Protocol service—and punch in the ten-digit number you’re calling, plus the ten-digit number and name you’d like the recipient to see.”

I frowned. I’d been hoping there was a way to trace it through the provider.

“Can we get all the names of customers who had phones recently stolen, see if we can connect Alex with one of those?”

“Do you know how many people lose their phones every day? And not everyone who does reports it. In Mrs. Arnold’s case…”

He let the words trail off. I knew what he meant. Shanna Arnold was probably dead. It wouldn’t be beneath Alex to kill just to get a cell phone.

“So there’s no way to find out where she called from?”

Hajek grinned shyly, like a schoolboy.

“Tell me, Scott.”

“You sure you don’t want to have a bite to eat later? I live real close.”

The little extortionist. If I hadn’t been on a mandatory leave of absence and warned away from this case, I would have gotten seriously pissed.

“Not to night, Scott. But I’ll have some free time next week.”

“Tuesday?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

He grinned. Something was caught in his two front teeth. Probably double pepperoni.

“MMS sent through GSM is stored on the SIM card, which also records the unique TAP/CIBER, which can be put into the HLR database—”

I held up my palm. “The bottom line.”

“If Alex sends video or text messages, I can use the SIM card to get the phone number and basic location of the phone she called from. She activated this camera from a phone in Deer Park.”

“Do you have the phone number?”

“There’s a problem.”

“What problem?”

“I tried calling the number already. When I did, this one rang.” He held up the phone from the cemetery.

“Meaning?”

“Alex must have known the SIM cards could be traced, so she set up a call-forwarding daisy chain. She calls phone number one, and it automatically forwards the call to number two, and so on, to as many phones as she wants, until the last one in the chain receives the call.”

“But if I find the phone, I can bring it to you, and you can trace it to the next one?”

“Sure. But it won’t be easy to find. A cell phone can only be traced to within three hundred meters of its location. It could be in a hotel room, in a parked car, or plugged into an outlet in some public place, like a library or a bus station. She bought twelve phones in Gurnee, plus she could keep adding more to the chain.”

“I’ll chance it. Gimme the number.”

“You need help, Lieutenant. A big team, working on this, is the best way to go.”

I chewed my lower lip, which still was sore from the same encounter with Alex that resulted in twenty-six stitches on my scalp.

“What if we had a phone that wasn’t part of the daisy chain? That was a direct link to Alex?”

“What do you mean?”

Alex had sent me a cell phone in a floral arrangement, during my hospital recuperation. I hadn’t told anyone, even Herb, because I didn’t want it taken away. I wasn’t on Latham’s murder investigation, but I wasn’t about to give up my only link to Alex.

Unfortunately, I needed Hajek’s expertise, and that meant disclosure. I didn’t know if I trusted Hajek. He’d done good by me in the past, but he was a by-the-book kind of guy, all about protocol and chain of evidence and forms in triplicate.

I weighed my choices, realized I had none, and took a leap of faith.

“Alex gave me one of those twelve phones. She’s called me, text messaged me, a few times. Could we get her location from the SIM card?”

Hajek’s face fell. “She gave you a phone?”

He sounded a bit more upset than I would have liked.

“I just said that. Can we get her phone number from it?”

Hajek rolled his chair a few inches backward, like I’d suddenly become a leper.

“Withholding evidence in a murder investigation is a felony, Lieutenant. Obstruction of justice.”

“Blame stress.”

“How long have you had the phone?”

The look on his face told me he’d gone from ally to adversary. I pulled the friendship card.

“Scott, this is really important to me.”

“I’ve followed this case. Read all the files for research. She’s seriously evil, and totally dangerous. If you’ve had the phone for more than a day or two, keeping it to yourself might have cost the lives of several people.”

I switched to the sympathy card.

“If that’s the case, I’ll head straight for the hundred and third floor of the Sears Tower with a glass cutter and a laminated photo ID so they can identify my body afterward. Come on, Scott. Alex killed the man I loved.”

He shook his head. “You have to turn it in.”

I tried the vamp card, walking up to him with a forced smile and trying my damnedest to get my voice low like Kathleen Turner in
Body Heat
.

“I’d be really grateful if you could help me out, Scott.”

Instead of melting into putty, Hajek grabbed for the landline on his desk.

“I’m not losing my job over you, Lieutenant. It’s my duty as a police officer to inform your captain that—”

I played my last card. The tough bitch card.

“Officer Hajek.” There was so much steel in my words that he flinched as if hit. “Put down that phone right now or this is going to get ugly.”

Hajek obeyed.

“Give me the number.”

“I…uh—”

“Now!”

Hajek grabbed a sheet of paper off his desk and offered it meekly. I spun on my heels and headed for the door, hearing him pick up the phone again as I left.