Stirred (23 page)

April 1, 2:08 P.M.

U
nwinding his tie and tugging it off his neck, Luther eyes the exit. The atmosphere is electric. A touch of fear in the air. Confusion. Excitement. Lots of chattering, questions, complaining. A few jokes, some of the nine-to-fivers obviously excited that something interesting is happening in their drab, dull lives.

Something to tell the kids about over dinner. Maybe they’ll even get on the six o’clock news.

There are now only four people ahead of Luther in the exit line, and police are waving a metal detector wand over each person before allowing them to leave the building.

He checks his watch, trying to appear impatient.

A minute, two tops, and he’ll be out of here.

April 1, 2:08 P.M.

H
erb checked the nameplate on the door and spoke into his radio, “David Dean, in twelve-twelve, over.”

“There was no one on the floor, Sarge. We checked every doorway. Even broke into a few offices. I don’t know about Homicide, but my team doesn’t make mistakes. When we do something, it’s done right. Over.”

The little spurt of adrenaline became a giant spike.

Herb walked behind Dean’s desk and turned on his monitor, still half-expecting to find a spreadsheet or an Excel document—some evidence of tax work.

Dean had been playing the videogame Angry Birds.

Herb lifted the Clinton photo, saw the blur lines around the president’s head—a mediocre Photoshop effort.

“Attention!” he yelled into his mike. “Suspect is in the lobby. He’s a white male, mid- to late forties, short brown hair, wearing a white shirt and a blue tie. He’s claiming to be an attorney named David Dean. Repeat, the suspect has short brown hair and is using the name David Dean.”

April 1, 2:09 P.M.

J
ack stands less than six feet away.

She hasn’t glanced at Luther again, having already dismissed him.

He’s tempted to clear his throat, make a noise, see if she’ll notice, but he’s already cutting it too close.

Instead, he takes out his iPhone, hits redial, and slides the device into his breast pocket.

Jack paws at her phone, distracted by it, as the cop at the exit begins to check Luther for weapons.

April 1, 2:09 P.M.

I
accepted the Blocked Call FaceTime request, but the screen was black.

I held the phone to my ear, heard the sound of numerous, muffled voices.

“Hello?” I said.

A second later, I heard, “Hello?”

But it wasn’t an answer.

It was my voice coming through the iPhone speaker.

An echo.

An echo meant another iPhone was picking up my voice.

It meant that Luther was here, in the lobby, with me.

Near me.

“He’s here!” I yelled, a big mistake.

While panic didn’t break out, there was an uptick in movement and commotion.

Since I wasn’t a cop, I didn’t have a radio.

I grabbed the lapel mike from the uniform standing next to me at the same time I heard Herb’s voice shouting through his earpiece that Luther was in the lobby.

As I scanned the crowd, I pressed the iPhone to my cheek, hoping to hear something that would give me his location. I plugged my free ear with my finger, focusing on the sounds coming through my cell.

It was faint, but unmistakable.

“Okay, you can go.”

I looked to the exit as a thin, brown-haired man left the building.

“Stop him!” I yelled, but all the cops in the lobby were already in motion, closing the door after the man who had just left.

I hurried to them, trying to push my way past, but one of the officers grabbed my shoulders.

“He just walked out!” I yelled.

We both pushed through the door—

—into chaos.

Outside the building, the scene was bedlam.

Firemen, paramedics, cops, swarms of people waiting for their coworkers to emerge, a slew of media sticking microphones and cameras at anyone who stood still long enough…

But no sign of the brown-haired man.

April 1, 2:10 P.M.

H
erb listened to the radio chatter. Orders were barked. Men complied.

No one found Luther.

Chewing his lower lip, Herb eyed the sawdust on the carpeting in Dean’s office. He looked at the paneling on the wall directly above it, saw that the color didn’t quite match on either side.

Herb put his fingers in the seam along the top and pulled.

The panel tore easily away, revealing a small, dark bathroom.

Herb saw a gun on the sink. A black T-shirt. Boots. A black wig.

It all came to him in a rush. Luther had planned the Roe murder perfectly. Had rented an office near him, built a fake wall over the bathroom, and after the murder, he’d simply walked to his office and hid behind the panel, waiting for the cops to leave.

With his hair recently cut and dyed, Luther had strolled through the lobby, right past Jack, and walked out of the building as David Dean.

The son of a bitch had been right there, talking about April fifteenth.

And Herb hadn’t just let him go.

He’d
insisted
he leave.

April 1, 2:12 P.M.

I
did my best to rally some officers to search in all directions, but Luther was gone.

The FaceTime disconnected without so much as a gloat from the killer, but I expected him to be in touch.

When Herb found me amid the commotion outside the Dearborn Street entrance, he had such a look of defeat on his face I thought he was going to cry.

I felt the same way.

“I screwed up,” he said.

“I screwed up,” I said a millisecond later. “I was too focused on black hair.”

“We both were.”

He gave me the quick rundown of a fake tax attorney named David Dean.

“Damn.” I shook my head. “He played us good. Don’t blame yourself, Herb.”

“Do you blame
your
self?”

I didn’t answer.

“You can’t hog all the guilt, Jack.”

“Let’s beat ourselves up later. We still have a crime scene to work.”

I followed Herb down the sidewalk to the brick planter which had been cordoned off. The crime lab team was already working what was left of Mr. Roe.

“There should be a book in a plastic bag inside of the man in the suit,” I said.

“There is no inside,” one of the techs said. “It’s all on the outside.”

“You haven’t found a plastic bag?”

“Not yet.”

I glanced down into the devastation. In the tier of ugly corpses, jumpers were a close second to burn vics.

“Got something,” another tech said. His gloved hands were running along the surface of Roe’s pants. “There’s an object on the side of his leg. A bulge.”

“Cut the pants off,” Herb said.

The tech trimmed away the pant leg below Roe’s waist with a pair of scissors to reveal more blood and bone, but amid all the wreckage, I saw where a bubble-wrapped package had been duct-taped to Mr. Roe’s thigh.

The tech stumbled back.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Could be a bomb.”

I hadn’t considered that.

“We need to get the bomb squad here, let them secure this.” He started to pull me away but I jerked my arm free.

“It’s not a bomb,” I said.

The tech looked at Herb, who said, “Jack, I gotta be honest. I’m not feeling real comfortable standing here right now. You know what this perp is capable of.”

The techs had already backed off and were helping to clear a perimeter around the two bodies.

“Herb, this is a game for him. If that’s a bomb, and he’s watching right now, with his finger on the button, he pushes it, and then what?”

“We’re blown into a thousand pieces.”

“Exactly, and where’s the fun in that?”

“I’m not following. This guy wants to kill you. And now you’re standing here, and you’ve never been more vulnerable.”

“Yes, he wants to kill me, but he wants to look in my eyes while he does it. He wants to take his time with it, drag it out. To be there, talking to me when it happens. This isn’t his style.”

I reached into my purse, pulled out my miniature Swiss Army knife, and stepped over the side of the planter.

“Jack!”

“We don’t have time for a bomb squad, Herb. There are clues in this body, and more people are going to die and it will be on our heads.”

He put his hand on my forearm, but I shrugged it off.

“Goddamn it, Herb! Let me do my goddamn job!”

“It’s not your job anymore, Jack. Give me the knife.”

The idea of my former partner and best friend doing this made me understand what a stupid idea it had been in the first place.

“Maybe we should wait for the bomb squad,” I said.

“I can do it.”

“It’s a tiny knife. You have fingers like sausages.”

“Chain of evidence, Jack. You’re a civilian. Give me the knife and get behind the goddamn police tape or I’ll have you arrested.”

The likelihood of Herb arresting me was nil. But I gave him the knife.

He squeezed into a pair of latex gloves. Then he knelt beside the carnage and opened a blade. The bubble wrap was smeared in blood, and as Herb cut away the tape, my heart stopped. I’d been expecting a book, another paperback, but this wasn’t a book. Through the plastic, all I could discern was that it was thin and gray.