Plain Jane (23 page)

Use him as bait.

“Hey!” Kent yelled again, yet the computer screen only showed a peaceful underwater scene.

Ignoring the pain in his head and neck, Kent craned to look up at his shackle. Shit. It was a shiny new O ring, as thick as his thumb. His chains were older, but still solid.

Jerking on them again, he watched the O ring. It didn’t budge. Not a speck of dust indicating that it might be loose in the wall. As a matter of fact, on closer inspection, the damn thing had been cemented into the brick. Short of pulling a power drill out of his ass, Kent doubted there was any way he could break his restraints.

His anger grew. “Answer me, damn it!”

In response, the screen filled with twirling hourglasses and flashed, “Busy at the moment.”

Throwing all his weight forward, Kent only succeeded in nearly dislocating his shoulders.

“Don’t do it, Nic,” he whispered to the dank room. He knew his appeal reached deaf ears. Nicole would be racked with guilt. Racked with “what-ifs.” What if they had not fought? What if she hadn’t let him walk out?

With nearly a sob, he said, “Don’t go, Nic. Don’t go.”

CHAPTER 91

At the sound of the door chime, Nicole swung around. Could this new customer be him? Be Plain Jane? The shopper appeared to be a young male. It was hard to tell, as he wore his sweatshirt hood pulled up over his head, tied tightly around his face. Gangsta-style.

While his attire screamed “street cred,” his manner was nervous. His steps came too close together. His shoulders slumped too far forward. His chin dipped to his chest as he made a beeline for the magazine stand. Instead of taking a few seconds to scan the racks, he picked one, apparently at random.

Fairly certain he hadn’t seen her, Nicole slowly made her way across the back of the store, keeping the aisle displays between her and the new man. She stopped as she came to the last row. There was a good ten feet between her and the magazine rack. Ten feet where he could spot her. Ten feet and her cover would be blown. The man changed position, ever so subtly, shifting his weight to his right leg. His shoulder turned toward the front of the store. He was staking out the door.

Knowing this was her best chance, Nicole cautiously came up behind him, shoving her gun into his ribs.

“Where is he?”

He tried to turn, but she dug the barrel into his side. “Eyes forward.”

“Is that a gun?” the man asked. His voice high-pitched and crackly. Certainly not “gangsta.”

“Yes, and I
will
use it if you don’t tell me where he is.”

In a whirl of arms and legs, the man knocked the magazine rack onto her and tried to flee out the back door. Nicole slipped on a slick Playboy magazine and lost a good two steps on him. He was fast, sprinting for the exit like a rabbit. If he got out onto the street, he could easily disappear into the night.

That wasn’t about to happen, as Ruben burst in along with three cops. They easily subdued the suspect.

“Let me go!” he screamed, almost like a little girl.

These psycho bastards didn’t hold up too well under real- life circumstances. With a certain amount of satisfaction, Nicole re-holstered her weapon.

“Did you really think I’d come alone?”

She wasn’t Kent. Every once in a while she did things by the book. Especially when someone’s life was on the line. When Kent’s life was on the line.

Nicole walked up to the hooded man. Soon he could not hide in anonymity. Confidently she jerked the material away from his face, then took a step back. She knew him. Knew that face.

It was the morgue attendant.

“Joshua?” she asked.

“Detective Usher, what’re you doing here?”

“Me?” the detective asked perplexed. “What are…”

Then it registered. She looked at Ruben, whose mind was obviously processing this new information as quickly as hers. The question was on both their faces. Could the killer have been right under their noses the whole time? Could Josh be Plain Jane?

“The missing uteri,” Ruben commented.

“The knowledge of police procedure.”

They both stared at the morgue attendant.

“What?” he asked, as if had not just been apprehended at the rendezvous point picked by the killer.

“Joshua, you’d best come with us.”

“Are you arresting me?” the young man squealed. “For looking at soft-core? If the bondage stuff bugs you, I’ll quit. I promise.”

Ruben had obviously heard enough. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything—”

“I don’t want to remain silent!” Joshua squealed.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of—”

Josh hopped up and down. “I don’t want to go to a court of law!”

Nicole put hand on his shoulder. “This is serious.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” he implored.

“Then why were you here tonight?” Nicole asked.

CHAPTER 92

Instead of answering Nicole, the morgue attendant squirmed. Ruben had seen enough. “I’ll call in for a search warrant on his apartment and locker at work.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa there!” Joshua shook his head violently. “That’s just crazy talk, that’s what that is.”

Both he and Nicole glared at the morgue attendant. So far all of this had been crazy talk.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Josh conceded. “But if he strikes because of this, it’s your fault. The blood’s on your hands.”

Nicole squinted. “What’re you talking about?”

The attendant went for his pocket, but Ruben was right there. He cranked the man’s arm up and behind his back.“That’s enough.”

“Ouch! It’s in my pocket. The printout.”

Ruben wasn’t about to let the attendant go, so he nodded to Nicole. His partner fished through his right pocket and came out with a condom.

“Jeez! The other pocket,” Joshua protested.

Nicole found a piece of paper carefully folded into quarters. She opened it and read it out loud. “I’m tired of all this. I can’t stop myself. If you wish to meet the real Plain Jane, come to the convenience store at…” Nicole skimmed a section. “Blah, blah, blah… Come alone or else you—” his partner indicated to the bottom of the torn page. “It’s cut off here.”

“I spilled Jolt on it. He said I wouldn’t make it home alive if I didn’t do exactly what he said.”

Ruben could tell that his partner was vacillating. She was considering believing him. He had to cut that impulse off at the pass. “He could have sent it to himself.”

“But I didn’t. I swear!”

“If this was real, you should have contacted either Torres or myself,” Nicole said.

Damn right, Ruben thought.

“Come on, like you would have taken me seriously.” Ruben tightened his grip on the attendant’s arm to let him know that excuse was not flying. Joshua hurried on. “I had a buddy of mine at Forensics trace the e-mail address, but the trail ended at an Internet café.” The attendant was nearly frantic. “Which didn’t have any security surveillance. I checked!”

Bored by the attendant’s tirade, Ruben glanced at Nicole, but she seemed to be buying it.

“So I thought I might as well try. I mean the meeting was at a public place. I thought—”

Ruben had had enough and shoved the attendant into one of the uniform’s custody. “We’ll see what the search warrant turns up, than have another chat.”

Joshua began to rant again, but Ruben turned to Nicole, but she was no longer beside him.

Instead she strode out. “Usher,” he called after her. She didn’t stop so he grabbed her by the arm, forcing her. “We’ll find Harbinger, but we’ve got to stay calm. Rational.”

But when Nicole turned to face him, tears welled in her eyes. “It’s a little too late for that.”

CHAPTER 93

Nicole turned away before Ruben could think of another clichéd, patronizing thing to say to her. She strode out and into the crisp night.

Despondent, Nicole leaned against the wall and slowly slid down until she was sitting on her heels.

Cops flooded in and out the door.

Too little, too late.

Or too many, too soon.

She had blown her one chance, and she knew it. Nicole had thought she was safeguarding Kent’s life by playing it by the book. Now she could see psychos did not follow any rules.

Kent would have shown up alone. He would have followed the creep’s instructions to the letter. Then in a fit of brilliance, Harbinger would have sprung a trap. Of what type, Nicole had no idea. She wasn’t that damn smart.

“You Nicole?” a young voice asked.

The detective wiped the tears away and looked up. It was the boy with the cough. “Yes.”

“The cop?”

“Yes. I’m sorry if I scared you in there.”

The boy shook his head. “Nah. He warned me that would happen.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

The kid acted like she was a little slow in the head. “He said you’d probably bring lots of friends with you.”

Sitting straight up, Nicole pushed her hair behind her ears as if that would help her comprehend the boy’s cryptic statement. “Who said that?”

“The man that gave me twenty bucks to pretend to have a cough so my mom would bring me down here.”

“What else did he pay you for?”

“To tell you to go down that alley, but this time, really come alone.”

Was it possible that she was being given a second chance? Was this really a message from Plain Jane? “What did he look like?”

The boy shrugged. “Some bum on the street. A guy gave him twenty to tell me from another guy.”

Yep, that sounded like the psycho. Covering his tracks seamlessly. Nicole looked down the alley. It was dark and stretched well beyond her field of vision.

Alone, huh?

Down there?

Nicole looked back into the store. Ruben was busy coordinating the cops. She couldn’t read lips, but knew procedure well enough to know he was rolling out a canvas of the neighborhood. Should she involve him?

“
Alone
,” the boy emphasized the word. “He said he’d be watching.”

The detective licked her lips. She bet the killer would be. Nodding, Nicole pointed inside to Ruben. “See that detective in there?”

“The mad one?”

“Yes, that one.” Rapidly, she tried to think like Kent. How could she spin this situation to her advantage? “He’ll be coming out to look for me in a little while. I want you to tell him exactly what you told me. Exactly. Okay?”

“Okay,” the boy said extending his hand. Nicole went to shake it, but he pulled back. “No, I want twenty bucks.”

Nicole gave a grim smile, then pulled out her wallet. She pulled out two bills. “Here’s forty. Make sure I’m out of sight before you tell him, right?”

The boy pocketed the money so quickly it was almost a sleight of hand. “Right.”

Without hesitation, Nicole walked away from the boy and into the darkened alley. Once out of sight, she drew her weapon and slowed her pace. This guy had taken Kent, and without much of a struggle.

What chance did she have against him?

As Nicole progressed down the alley, the light waned even further. She looked back over her shoulder. Safety was only forty feet away. Everything in her head told her to turn back. Get a strike team to assault whatever structure there was at the end of the alley, but her gut said to go forward. One step at a time. One foot at a time.

Halfway down the alley, a brick wall came into view. And up above that dead end was a small camera, its red light blinking ominously.

Her gut was right.

With more urgency, Nicole covered the rest of the distance to find a large, rusted metal door slightly ajar. She checked all around it. Nothing. The detective opened it further as the hinges screamed in protest.

She was going to have to squeeze through. Not the best strategic position to be in going into an unknown, hostile environment. But what else could she do?

Figuring it was exactly what Kent would do, Nicole shimmied her way through the door and found that it led into a large, dark warehouse. The rafters were so high that Nicole could not clearly make out the ceiling. A sniper could be up there. A net waiting to sweep down.

Anything.

“This is such a bad idea,” she whispered.

Taking her first step across the wide space, something scrambled under foot. Startled, Nicole tried to track the movement with her gun, but it was too erratic. Finally it stopped. Two yellow eyes blazed from under a desk.

A cat. A black cat.

A black cat had just crossed her path. She wasn’t normally superstitious, but come on.

“Why couldn’t he just have kidnapped me?”

Stilling the shake of her hands, Nicole continued across the cavernous warehouse. “Kent is so much better at this lurking crap than I am.”

CHAPTER 94

Kent tugged against his chains. Intellectually he knew there were at least four fulcrum points along his restraints where they were the most likely to break, but his chafed wrists were telling him it just wasn’t happening. Plain Jane wasn’t a risk taker. He wasn’t impulsive. Finally giving up, he slumped back against the damp wall.

“You should’ve kidnapped
her
,” he said.

The screen saver dissolved as letters typed. “Why?”

“Because,
duh
.” Kent rattled his chains. “This is a little uncomfortable.”

“So sorry to inconvenience you.”

Kent sighed and leaned back. If the psycho was busy talking to him, he couldn’t exactly be out killing Nicole. He needed to buy as much time as possible.

“So, why uteri?” Kent asked, slipping back into his I’m-not-laughing-with-you, I’m-laughing-at-you attitude. “Were you an overdue baby? Not breast-fed long enough?”

“You would like it if it were that simple.”

“Yeah, I would.” That was probably the first truthful statement he had made to the killer. This whole typing, mechanized-voice thing was not giving Kent the insight he needed. Tone of voice. Cadence. Eye position. Those were the needles on the compass.

“You’re going to have to do better than that before Nicole gets here, or I won’t let you watch.”

That got Kent’s attention. He sat more erect. His back stiff. Unfortunately by doing so, he was giving Plain Jane way more information than he was getting.