Playing the Game (32 page)

            Leon could just about make out his gun, still tucked in his waistband, despite the accident. He couldn’t look up at the stranger, he knew his head couldn’t move and aware that he had seconds, not minutes left of his life, he knew the one thing he to do.

            ‘Yes we did’, he managed, gasping for breath, harder and harder. He resigned himself to the fact that his next words would be his last. ‘Conrad Conway ordered the hit’.

88

            Even as I stared at the beaten and mutilated body of Paul Britland-Jones in the trunk of the Pontiac, I could see the envelope, although my gaze quickly reverted back to the dead journalist. I didn’t envy the M.E. on this one.

            His body was naked from the waist up, and I could see a multitude of deep cuts all over his torso. I lost count at around thirty, unsure of which cuts and lacerations I had already counted, they all seemed to lead into each other. His face remained untouched. I supposed that this was so I could identify him as soon as we opened the trunk; a clear message from Sarah Caldwell. I shook my head, aware that his death had almost certainly not been quick or painless, and couldn’t believe that I had only been talking to him a few hours ago.

            His throat had been sliced from ear to ear; the final cut from The Chemist’s knife I suspected, but it was clear that he would have suffered an incredible amount before The Chemist finally took mercy and ended his life.

            My immediate thought was that Sarah Caldwell must have somewhere fairly close in order to carry out what she had done within the timeframe I knew we had. What she had done to Britland-Jones was something that required more than a little privacy and not one quick action like yesterday with Dave Ferguson that could be carried out quickly on the street, going unnoticed. That, at least, might narrow the search area. She would have had to have moved pretty quickly in order to abduct him, kill him and then deliver him here in time for us to find him, not knowing when we would break her last message and find the car.

            Britland-Jones’ murder also had to be opportune on her part as well though. There was no way she could have predicted his involvement at this juncture when she had been planning her games. I cursed, once again, our missed opportunity earlier today when we had been chasing her through the back alleys of Wilton.

            I moved a little closer to retrieve the envelope. I didn’t want to touch the body and strictly speaking, I should have waited for forensics before I even picked up the envelope, but I was no closer to finding Katie now than I was before we found the car, so that didn’t even cross my mind.

            As I gently picked up the envelope, which had gruesomely been placed in Britland-Jones’ hands, almost as if he was delivering the envelope to me himself, the body rolled over slightly and I could see that his back had even more cuts on than the front. I also notice for the first time, taped on the underside of the trunk hood, another pager; virtually identical to the one Sarah Caldwell used yesterday to detect that we had opened the email. We had no tech guys or CSI on the crime scene yet of course, but I fully expected that they would confirm that the pager had been triggered when we popped the trunk. Yet again, Sarah Caldwell would know exactly where we were up to in her game.

            Balfer had regained his composure, which was more than could be said for Walsh, who had put some distance between himself and the Pontiac. That was understandable. I didn’t know how much experience Walsh had, and I know for me that it didn’t get much easier seeing my hundredth dead body than it was for the first.

            ‘She must have followed you guys back to the station’, he concluded. ‘That’s the only way she would know where he was, she can’t have had long to do this’.

            It made sense. We had lost her in Wilton and I hadn’t paid much attention to the rear-view mirror as Britland-Jones had driven us back. Maybe if I had, he would still be alive.

            ‘That’s a hell of a nasty way to go’, Balfer added, shaking his head. ‘I’ve tried to count how many cuts are on there but I keep loosing count’.

            ‘Me too’, I said quietly. Should I have seen that we were being followed back to the station from Wilton? All my attention had been on the last message from Caldwell.

            ‘Hey’, Balfer pulled me up. ‘What’s done is done. Just you focus on getting your daughter back, that’s all that matters. Open the envelope’.

            Nodding, I looked down at the envelope which was dripping blood onto the floor and it was almost soaked through. I hoped that this hadn’t soiled its contents, leaving a vital communication from The Chemist unreadable.

            I opened the folded sheet of paper it contained, and as I did so, a newspaper clipping fell to the ground. I bent down to pick it up and saw that it was a cutting from the LA Times, from around eight years ago. It was reporting on the circumstances surrounding Andrew Caldwell’s death, and my picture central in the report, circled in a red marker. I read what the sheet of paper said once. If all the other messages and codes had needed an army of tech guys, and one goddamn maintenance guy, to figure them out, I had this one myself and it only took me a couple of seconds to figure it out.

           
Patton, go back to where it all began. Alone.

            Where it had all began? Well this had began with me running Sarah Caldwell’s brother off the road hadn’t it? Looked like I was going back up to Windsor Hills to where the car had spun off the road sending Andrew Caldwell to his death two hundred feet below.

            I was sure Sarah Caldwell would be waiting for me. I could only speculate as to what she had in store, but given the events of the last couple of days, I knew it wouldn’t be easy.

            I called Captain Williams, who grimly informed me that all hell had broken loose outside the station several minutes ago.

During a week where nothing was really making sense and that had seen more bloodshed and carnage than I cared to remember, the assassinations of Jameson Burr and Paul McCrane shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise as they were.

I was slowly getting the picture that several of the state’s top politicians were operating with their own agendas, and when Williams told me that there had been a report that Conrad Conway had ordered the hit, this only served to confirm my suspicions.

Two junkies had been killed when their vehicle, speeding away from the assassination scene, had collided with an oncoming Hummer. The one in the passenger seat had told the first person to check their vehicle that Conway had ordered the hit. This information made me wonder about the events at Conway’s house this morning. Was the intruder in Conway’s house there under instruction from Burr and McCrane and were their murders this afternoon retaliation for that?

Regardless of my natural interest, after all, these were people that were directly linked with Sarah Caldwell, all my attention had to be on Sarah Caldwell herself and the return of my daughter, Katie.

            I quickly told him of the findings at Cherry Street garage and he, like me, had trouble digesting the continuing and rising body count and was at a loss to second-guess what may lie in store up in Windsor Hills.

            ‘One thing I do know’, he growled, ‘is that there is no way you’re going alone. Does this sound like the end-game to you?’ I had to admit that it did. Windsor Hills would be a natural place for Sarah Caldwell to end her game. Was she planning on killing me? Planning on killing my daughter? Or maybe even both of us? Was I supposed to go now?

            ‘Patton’, Williams instructed, ‘I’ve got a shit storm here. I need to go. I’ve got Lee Brindle on the other line wanting to be briefed on what’s gone down here’.

            ‘Who’s he?’ I asked.

            ‘Works in the Whitehouse. He’s a big deal. Think he’s the joint Chief of Staff or some bullshit title. I need to take the call. Listen, Patton, this bitch is responsible for killing some of our own as well as those two poor girls. Ferguson, the guys yesterday at Sutherland and Charlie, well an inch to the right and he’d be dead too.

I stayed silent. I knew what was coming.

            ‘Nobody wants her more than you, I know that’, Williams said ‘but I’ve lost good guys, guys that should still be here. There’s no fucking way you’re going alone. I’m not losing you too’.

            ‘What do you want me to do?’

            ‘Go there with Balfer but give me ten minutes to brief SWAT. I’ll have them up there with you. I want to take this bitch out’.  My first reaction was one of defiance – I had to get there now, but then I reconsidered. The pager meant that Sarah Caldwell would know we had found the car. There would be no element of surprise on our part. Maybe SWAT was my best chance of taking her out.

            ‘No problem’, I told Williams. Have SWAT meet me on the corner of 12
^th
and main. I’ll brief them personally.

            If Sarah Caldwell wanted me she could wait a little longer, couldn’t she?

89

            Things were going according to plan, and that pleased Sarah Caldwell a great deal. Paul Britland-Jones had been the icing on the cake as far as she was concerned. She had found herself becoming increasingly adept at altering her plan in a heartbeat, and couldn’t resist adding the journalist to her plans when she had followed him and Patton back from Wilton earlier today.

            It hadn’t been her original plan to have anybody in the trunk of the Pontiac she left at the Staples Centre, but what a sight that must have been when Patton, well she presumed it would be Patton, opened the trunk to discover Britland-Jones holding the next, and final message for him.

            It had taken her around half an hour to inflict all the cuts to Britland-Jones, and he had been conscious when she had done so. She had driven back to the house in Montebello with him, checking on Katie’s condition at the same time. She hadn’t been entirely sure if she’d have enough time, but the police wouldn’t break the latest message that quickly, so she took the chance.

            She hadn’t dragged Britland-Jones down to the cellar as she wasn’t sure she would have the strength to get him back up the stairs, but had carried out the mutilation in a back room of the house, taking the precaution of lining the floor with the kind of sheets painters and decorators use which was a prudent decision; there had been a lot of blood, which had been so much easier to clean up as she just had to fold the sheets away.

            His hands and legs had been bound but she had refrained from gagging him. He yelled and screamed a lot and she had enjoyed that. Besides, no-one would hear him anyway. Finally, he had begged for his life and she had actually told him that she would spare his life. The look of relief in his eyes had been the best part of all and it was a look that changed considerably when she had sliced his throat a second later.

            She had watched, smiling, as he thrashed around on the sheets, trying desperately to breathe, bringing his hands to his throat to try and stop the blood from flowing out, but less than ten seconds later, he was dead.  She only wished that Katie could have watched this with her, giving her a taste of what might lie ahead.

            Checking the time, she knew she now had to move fast. The Pontiac with the British plates was parked, well hidden, about half a mile from the Staples Centre. She would now have to drive there, with Britland-Jones’ body and transfer vehicles, before delivering the Pontiac to the Staples Centre car park. One of the underground garages would be best, she decided.

            However, she was a little behind schedule, taking into account her latest improvisation. So perhaps she better take Katie now as well then after she had parked the Pontiac at the Staples Centre, she would run back to the Cadillac and then drive up to Windsor Hills for the final stage of the game.

            She loaded the dead journalist into the trunk of her car, which took more effort than she thought it would and commended herself for refraining from taking him down to the cellar to kill him. She then walked back down the cellar steps to where Katie was hanging, looking more frightened than ever. Maybe she would have heard the journalist’s screams as he begged her for his life?

            ‘Hello again, Katie’, she smiled, cutting her down. The girl landed on the floor with a thud, crying out in pain as she did so. ‘I think it’s time we both went to see your father, don’t you?

90

            Conrad Conway watched the news with interest. He was still at home, sprawled out on one of the several leather sofas and sipped on a large cognac as he gleefully relished the newsflash that was unfolding under his very eyes. He’d sent his wife back out, telling her that she’d had a shock and that some therapeutic shopping might do the trick. That had certainly calmed her down and had silenced her incessant bleating about the damn carpet.

            It seems that his two street soldiers had been successful. Both Paul McCrane and Jameson Burr had been assassinated by an as yet unidentified shooter, from the middle of the crowd that had gathered outside the police station when they had been released. Lighting a cigar to accompany the cognac, he reflected on his actions, wondering if there was an alternative path he could have chosen. He decided that there hadn’t been; McCrane and Burr had left him no choice. They had hired some scumbag to try and take him out this morning so he’d had no option but to take them out in return. He had been successful where they had failed. It sure had been a hell of a day. He wasn’t worried that Cyprian Hague would figure out that he had been behind the hit on two of the Animi. Even if he did, there was nothing he could do about it was there? In fact, his actions today put him in pole position for head of the Animi. They would need a couple of new members of course, he laughed, but there were several candidates he could think of. Maybe Ashley Davies, an upcoming politician very much in the same mould as himself. Or maybe Victor Antrobus, a successful property mogul who already carried considerable political sway? Well there would be plenty of time for that. He’d have no problem in convincing the other members he should take charge, and from there, well, who knows?