CHAPTER ELEVEN
A couple of dead bodies.
A storm.
Elevator broken.
Empty stairwell.
Girl alone in a stairwell.
Lights out.
I’m officially living a B horror flick, only someone screwed up and gave the chick, who’s alone in the dark stairwell, a gun. Correction. Someone screwed up and gave the crazy-as- fuck chick, who will shoot your ass, a gun. This realization, that I’m that chick, is pretty darn comforting right now. Because I will shoot your ass. I will shoot whoever is in this stairwell with me. Well, unless it’s someone I like, and that list isn’t long. I consider my options and decide that whoever is in here with me, is trying to scare me, which means, it’s Umbrella Man. This news isn’t terrifying at all. He’s fucking with me, as Kane said a few minutes earlier, which means he’s not done with me. He’s not going to shoot me the minute he hears my steps.
With that in mind, I start feeling for steps and inching my way upward. One step, two, five, ten. I make it to another level and repeat, stopping to listen in between my upward movement, hearing nothing but then I’m a stealthy bitch. I know my visitor can’t hear me either. In other words, silence doesn’t equal absence. Two flights up, I sense his nearness, and I want this done—perhaps I’m not so patient after all. I flip on my flashlight and rush forward. In the same moment, or perhaps a moment later, another flashlight comes on, and in a split second, I’m on a landing, facing off, gun to flashlight, with a tall, big man. A familiar man.
“What the fuck Sergeant Morris?” I demand. “What is this?”
“What the fuck is right,” he growls. “No one is supposed to be in here unless they clear it through me first. Use the radio.” He curses under his breath and lowers his weapon. “The last thing I need is you thinking that I’m trying to kill you, too. I setup a procedure, and Agent in Charge or whatever the fuck you are, you still have to follow it or end up getting fired on.”
I don’t lower my weapon. “What fucking radio? Houston didn’t tell me about a radio.”
“I didn’t even know Houston was in the building. I have a point man downstairs.”
“Well, he failed miserably. Why the hell are the lights out?”
“I’m on my way to the utility room now, but in case you didn’t notice, there’s damn near a hurricane outside.”
“This is a high-end building. I guarantee there’s a backup generator.”
There’s a slight sound, a barely-there echo that has me turning and standing next to Morris, both of us raising our weapons and pointing. Seconds tick by while we both wait for what comes next. And then the lights flicker and turn back on. A door somewhere several floors down opens and then shuts. We weren’t alone but that doesn’t change my opinion of Sergeant Morris. It doesn’t change my opinion of Williams. Something with the two of them just doesn’t add up.
The door opens again. “Morris! You in here? Agent Love? Everyone okay in there?”
Morris relaxes. “Yes, Nick. We’re good.”
“Maintenance guy got the generator going,” the man calls out. “It was a lightning strike that threw out the power.”
I don’t know if I buy that, but I lower my weapon. I don’t, however, put it away.
Sergeant Morris turns to me and eyes my weapon, harnessing his with exaggerated precision. “You going to shoot me, or should I escort you to the crime scene?”
“Walk,” I order, motioning him toward the stairs. “You first.”
His jaw flexes. “You trust me that much, huh?”
“I trust you not at all.”
“But I need to trust you and give you my back?”
“That about sums it up. So hurry the fuck up the stairs. I have a dead body waiting on me that isn’t yours. Yet.”
He shakes his head in evident disgust, but he starts walking. I eye the stairwell beneath us, even going so far as to lean over the railing to confirm that no one is following me before I fall into step behind him. Three floors later, he opens the door, and when he holds the door for me, I grimace. “Really?”
“Whatever, Agent Love,” he says, walking ahead of me and exiting to the hallway.
Then, and only then, do I holster my weapon while Morris speaks to someone over his damn radio. Where the hell was his point man when I came upstairs? I catch the door and exit to the hallway to find him waiting on me. “I need to follow up on the power outage,” he says, motioning around the corner. “You’ll find the apartment secure.” His lips thin, and he just stands there.
“Say whatever the fuck you need to say because it’s taken me way too long to get to that body.”
“That’s not her apartment.”
My brows furrow. “Then who the fuck’s apartment is it? Did she have a sugar daddy?”
He scowls. “No, she didn’t have a sugar daddy. What the hell, Agent Love?”
“What the hell, exactly. Who the hell does the apartment belong to?”
“It’s hers, it’s just not hers.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
Then a realization hits me. “You knew the victim?”
“She’s one of Detective Williams’ sorority sisters. Both of the twins were. They were all close.”
“And you know this because you weren’t fucking Williams?”
“I told you. We dated. We had dinner here a few times.” He grimaces and presses his hands to his hips. “My point is,” he continues, “that I was here. I saw the apartment. Karen lived in chaos. That apartment is not chaos. It’s like someone else lived there.”
He means it’s been turned into an OCD field of dreams, which means, somehow, Umbrella Man made that happen here, in this building. We’ve just determined that he was here, in this building. We’ve determined he might have been jealous enough to target Ralph Redman, Williams’ recent boyfriend. I should be celebrating cornering a killer, but it’s too easy.
“She was messy as hell,” he rambles on. “Just like Detective Williams. That was a problem for us. I like clean and neat. I’m a bit anal that way. She’s not. She’s wasn’t. She was a slob.” He cuts his stare, seeming to choke up before he looks at me. “That apartment, Karen’s apartment, now looks like mine. Perfect. She didn’t keep her apartment like this. She didn’t.” He scrubs his jaw. Again. “Me being a neat freak doesn’t mean I did this. I didn’t have to tell you that. You wouldn’t know I was ever here.”
“There are cameras in the building,” I remind him. “Maybe you were preempting me seeing you in the feed. Or preparing me for what I’d find in your apartment should I search it.”
“I could just mess my apartment up.”
He could, but extreme OCD might make him feel he was better off explaining his neatness.
“I didn’t kill her,” he says.
“I didn’t kill her,” I say. “And that’s the only statement I consider true right now. What’s the sister’s name?”
“Katy.”
“Tell me about Katy,” I order.
“I didn’t meet her, but Karen said that she’s a model and an aspiring actress. That’s why she moved to LA last year. To act.”
And there it is, the missing piece of the puzzle.
Now I have the connection between Detective Williams and the other victims.
Holy fuck.
The obvious just hit me. Why the hell it took me this long I don’t know. This isn’t all about Williams. She’s not even the main victim. She’s the “family member,” in this case, the sister, and I use that term lightly, who lured me into that alleyway to save her sorority sister. Umbrella Man chose a circle of friends who complement one goal. He’s drawing me a picture of blood and death.
The posed, primary victims include two models, one of which was retired and in advertising, a literary agent, and an actress, all involved in the media. They all live in the world my mother inhabited. They connect to me by way of my mother’s stardom, her career.
This isn’t me solving his random crimes.
This is him killing on my behalf, because of me. Maybe even killing for me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He thinks he’s perfect.
That’s what the whole OCD clean is all about. I’m not sure he’s actually OCD. I think it’s more about him telling me he’s perfect, he’s unbeatable. He just doesn’t know how fucking perfect a slob like me can be, but he’ll find out.
“Agent Love,” Sergeant Morris says, “I want—”
“And that’s your problem,” I snap. “This is still about you. You want. That, and you talk way too fucking much.” I step around him because really, truly, he’s not the guy. He’s not the killer. He might, in fact, be another victim who actually lived.
I stop walking and turn around. He steps around the corner to face me. I close the space between me and him. “Were you being blackmailed by the killer?”