Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (71 page)

19

He could tell right away that the
woman regretted her decision.  Any other plan of action would have been better than the one she took.  Spencer imagined every fly in the history of the world probably felt the same way she did right now, and every spider walking its way slowly across its web to its dinner must feel precisely how he felt at that moment.  He didn’t even know this fly, but one didn’t need to acquaint themselves with every enemy to savor the flavor of an endgame.

“Hand outta your pocket,” he told her.  “Slowly.”

Spencer backed slowly into the room, and she followed.  “Shut the door behind you.”

The woman did as she was told.  “I’m not here for you,” she said
, in an accent that Spencer guessed was French.  She had the good sense to keep her hands raised without being told.

“I know.  You were here for the other guy, the one who’s key this is.”  He held up the keycard.  “The Wolf?
  At least, that’s what he called himself when he was trying to kill me.”

The woman’s eyes sparked familiarity.  “You know Shcherbakov?”

“Shcherbakov?  That was his name?  Huh.”  It didn’t fit in Spencer’s opinion, but then names were meager things.  They were important to others—useful in the spells he cast on others to get what he wanted—but to him they were flimsy and inefficient at describing the person.

“Was?” said the woman.

Spencer smiled.  “Hope he wasn’t a friend o’ yers.  He’s gone on to…well, ya know what,
I’m
not even sure what he’s gone on to.”  He gesticulated with the gun.  “Toss your phone onto the bed.  Take off your coat.  Slowly.”  She did so.  “Drop it on the chair there.”  She folded it and sat it on the end of a wooden chair in front of a desk.  “Now take of your clothes.”

“My…?”

He smiled.  “Take—off—your—clothes.  I won’t say it again.  An’ do it slow as a striptease.”

The woman swallowed hard.  “Y-you want me to…to strip?”

“I said
like
a striptease.  That’s called a
simile
.  However, if ya just wanna give me a little show, knock yourself out.  I just need to see that you’re not packin’ anything.”  The woman swallowed again, then, slowly, she started removing her garments.  Spence took a few steps back, keeping his gun trained on her while he used one hand to part the curtains, and glanced outside.  “No cops, huh?”  He looked at her.  Her top was off, but she still wore her bra, which held a pair of small, perky breasts.  She pulled her pants down slowly, watching him as carefully as he was watching her.  “Interpol?”

The woman said nothing.

“C’mon, I can just look in your wallet.  Probably got ID in there, right?”

She finished removing her pants, and stood before him only in her underwear.  She nodded, “Yes. 
I’m with Interpol.  How did you know?”

“Elementary, my dear fuckin’
Watson.  French accent.  Interpol’s headquarters is in France, an’ I know I’m still a person of interest.  I saw you recognize me when we crossed paths downstairs, but ya didn’t call the cops.  That means you’re savvy, an’ ya know not to trust the locals.”  He shrugged.  “You also have the look.  Some kinda investigator.  The eyes bein’ windows to the soul, all that shit.  But ya don’t have the confidence of a cop.  When I saw you approachin’ through the peephole, I saw the trepidation written all over your face.  Not normally your territory to arrest folks, huh?”  He shrugged.  “So, I figure you’re Interpol, or else a really, really bad informant or hitter for the
vory
.”

The woman sighed nervously.  Her hands and legs were trembling.  “Well,” she said.  “There you have it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Th-there are people outside this building.  Men staking out—”

“A lie.  As sure as puddin’, sweetheart.  You’re all alone here.”

“It’s not a l—”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” he said.  “An’ right now you’re talkin’ to Bullshit McBullshitter, mayor of Bullshit City, in the heart of Bullshit Province, in the People’s Republic of Bullshit.”  He glowered.  “You’re
name
.”

The woman sighed a quivering sigh.  “
M-my name is—”

“Sit down, on the bed.”

She did so.  “My name is Aurél—”

“Don’t move, sit still,” he said, stepping over to her coat to go through it.  Spencer kept interrupting her because it was a tool of intimidation, one he’d employed many times over the years.

The woman licked her lips.  “M-my name is Detective-Inspector Aurélie Rideau.”

“Detective-Inspector, huh?”  He lifted her coat, jiggled it, found something heavy in one of the pockets.  He rooted around, found a Makarov, a set of handcuffs, and a wallet full of money, credit cards and Interpol ID. 
The Makarov was useful—unbeknownst to Rideau, the gun in Spencer’s hand was completely empty.  “Is Russia your major region of expertise?”

“One of them.”

“Oh yeah?  What are your others?”

Rideau took another deep, quivering breath.  “France, U.S., Britain, Spain—”

“You speak all the languages of those countries?”

She nodded.  “I do.”

He laughed.  “No shit?  You’re an honest-to-god polyglot, huh?”

“I s-suppose I—”

“Me too, ya know.  Least, I think I
could
be if I wanted.  I learned to speak decent Russian pretty fast, an’ that shit’s supposed to be hard.  Dr. McCulloch always said I was incredibly good at applyin’ myself at anything, especially if it directly benefits me.  I’m very adaptable and goal-oriented, ya know?” he chuckled amiably.  The woman remained silent, looking between the window and the door.  Spencer looked at her.  “But you already knew that.  You’ve read my profile.  You know who I am, what I’ve done.  You know about my diagnosis.”

Rideau looked at him with something between fear and loathing.  “Yes.”

He smirked.  “Does it ever get weird?”

“What?”

“Meetin’ somebody you’ve been chasin’, someone that was just a face in a photo or on a computer screen until you got face-to-face with them.”

Rideau looked directly ahead now, staring at the wall.  “Maybe.  Sometimes.”

“Hm.  I’ll bet it doesn’t happen much, does it?  I mean, you’re with Interpol.  You’re not really allowed to make arrests, just communicate between police departments around the world.”  Spencer shrugged.  “But this one was different.  Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did ya try to make an arrest?  Why take the risk to get so close to someone as dangerous as me?  That’s gotta go against all kinds o’ regulations and SOPs?”  The woman remained silent.  Spencer reached out to touch her shoulder.  Rideau jerked, and shivered as though a cold chill had just gone up her spine.  He ran his fingers through her blonde hair.  “Answer the question.”

“I wasn’t after you—”

“Not initially, you weren’t.  You were after your man Shcherbakov, but he didn’t show.  Then you saw me.”  He smiled.  “I guess you’ve been kept up-to-the-minute on everything that’s gone on tonight.  You knew that asshole wasn’t likely to show, that he got cooked inside Tsarskiy Penthouses.  You were on your way out, but then you saw me.  What was it that brought you here?  Why wasn’t this place surrounded by undercovers, all of ’em waitin’ to storm this place the second Shcherbakov stepped into that lobby?”  Rideau said nothing.  He nodded.  “It was personal, and the local cops, you know they’re as corrupt as some o’ those fuckers were back in Atlanta.  Crooked as question marks, all of ’em.  The
vory
are everywhere.”

Rideau said nothing.

Spencer looked her over, examining her perky breasts.  Their perkiness could’ve been an illusion created by the black Victoria’s Secret bra she was wearing.  The underwear was neither thong nor granny panties, just snug and form-fitting.  Her skin was pale, but not so pale as his, and soft to the touch.  The hair was blonde with even lighter, subtler highlights. 

He lifted her cell phone off the bed and stepped away from her, and then took a seat in a chair across from her, grunting from the discomfort in shoulder.  He started going through the cell phone.  “Your wife,” he sighed.  “Tell me about her.”  She looked up at him sharply, defensively. 
That got a response
, he thought. 
Predictable
.  “What’s her name?”

A moment of hesitation.  “Gwendolyn.”

Spencer raised an eyebrow and nodded approvingly.  “Gwendolyn.  Pretty name.  But names are flimsy things, an’ I don’t think they suit the person very often.  You know what I think a better name is?”  He held up her phone, and showed her the screen with the last received text messages.  “Patricia.”  Rideau’s eyes looked at him, smoldering.  Names were flimsy things, true, and yet also powerful.  “So,” he said smiling, “tell me about Patricia.  That doesn’t sound French.  What is she, like, American?  British?”  Rideau didn’t answer.  “The more ya keep me talkin’, the greater chance ya have to reason with me.  Didn’t you ever take a hostage rescue course?”

Rideau looked at him.  “Why do you want to know about my wife?”

Spencer smiled.  “Good one.  Answering a question with a question, get’s me talkin’.  At least you’re not so addled now.  I just wanna talk.  No more stalling.  Tell me.”

She sighed.  “She’s tall—”

“How tall?”

“I don’t
know exactly—”

“Taller than you?”

“Yes.”

Spencer nodded.  “Go on.”

“She’s…brunette.  Keeps her hair long.”

“She keep it long for her or for you?”

Rideau shrugged.  “We both like it long.”

Spencer watched her for any deception.  “Go on.”

“She has brown eyes, and light-brown skin.  She was raised in America, but her father was a diplomat from Spain, and her mother was an interpreter at the United Nations building in New York.”

Spencer nodded
, guessing the rest.  “She was raised in one o’ those families that keep political ties.  You two met on some investigation with ties in Spain?”  Rideau nodded.  “Was it love at first sight, or was their friction?”

“Why do you want to kn
ow th—”

“Just answer the question.”

The woman sighed heavily again, obviously trying to keep her cool.  Her knee had started bouncing up and down, and her hand was still tapping her leg.  “There was…friction.”

“Why?  Because she was on opposite sides of the investigation?”  Rideau nodded.  “She was at odds with you, huh?  You were there to investigate something, came up against a wall, and she was the translator for the side you were up again.”  Another nod.  Spencer smiled.  “But then something happened.
  You offered up a piece of information, something them Spaniards wanted.  You offered it freely an’ ya saw a glimmer of somethin’ in Patricia’s big brown eyes.  It was trust.  She liked that you were so open an’ honest.”

Rideau nodded.  “Something like that.”

“What was it, exactly?”

For a moment, she considered, and he thought he might have to press her again.  Then, she answered him frankly.  “
Have you heard about the baby kidnapping scandal in Spain?”

Spencer searched his memory, found the article.  “Yeah.  A fifty-year operation.  Somethin’ like two hundred thousand babies were stolen and sold for adoption by nuns.  The mothers were all told that their babies had died, and the babies were shuffled around and sold.  The Catholic church in Spain was behind the whole thing, right?”

“The number of babies was more like
three
hundred thousand.  But yes, that’s the one.”

“You had some information concerning that?”

“We knew the name of one nun who was part of the operation twenty years before, and had since changed her name and was working at a small orphanage outside of Madrid.”  Rideau looked down at her hand, and touched the wedding band around her finger.  “I offered the information for their help in a separate matter.  As it turned out, Patricia had a special vested interest in that scandal—”

“Let me guess,” Spencer said, intrigued and leaning forward.  “A
member of her family was a victim, or was one of the babies sold?”

Rideau nodded.  “Her grandmother was one of the children sold.  The operation had been going on since 1939.”

Spencer nodded.  “Now I remember.  It started as a system for removing children from families that were designated politically dangerous to the regime of…um…um…oh, what’s-his-fuck?”

“General Franco.”

“Yeah, that asshole.  He was dictator until, um…wait, don’t tell me, don’t tell me…um, it was like 1974? 
No
, ’75!”

“Yes.”  Rideau’s gaze was still on her wedding ring.  She was spinning it around and around her finger now.

Spencer leaned back in his chair, thinking on that.  “S’funny, ain’t it?  You an’ Patricia, in love and married now, all because of some assholes back around World War Two.  Heh.  They fucked Patricia’s grandmother over, but they brought you two together.  Guess you both owe those corrupt nuns a thank-you.  Or really, if her grandmother hadn’t been switched around like she was, she probably wouldn’t have met Patricia’s grandfather and Patricia wouldn’t even exist.  Funny how evil and good are so intertwined.  It’s like…maybe we
need
the evil in the world to do good?  And the good to do evil?”