Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)
“I’m talking Hollywood, baby. I just heard from the Tonight Show,” he lied. “Leno’s hot to have me on. It’s going to fix everything, Wendy. I promise. Hey, come on upstairs with me. I’ll cook you breakfast. You loved it when I did that last time, right? How about some fresh Belgian waffles?”
She turned away from him, trying to remain angry. But she failed, and started slurring out words in drunken honesty.
“You don’t know how much I missed you. After that night we had, and then you didn’t call me, and?—”
The Teacher put his finger to her lips. After a few more seconds of resistance, she nibbled his first knuckle.
“We’ll have a better time tonight,” he said. “If you’re really good—or should I say, really bad?—I’ll even warm the syrup,” he said, deepening his killer smile.
Finally, she smiled back. She removed a compact from her purse and touched up her hair and makeup. Then she took his hand and walked upstairs with him to the apartment.
Inside, he locked the door behind them.
“What’s it going to be first?” he said. “Food or e-mail?”
“I want to see that e-mail. Are you kidding?” she said, kicking off her high heels excitedly. “I can’t wait!”
/> “It’s in here. Follow me.”
As they walked through the spare room doorway, her gaze flicked across the corpse on the bed. She took two more steps before she stiffened and spun back to stare at it, abruptly seeming sober.
“Oh, my God!” she breathed. “What is that? What’s going on here? I don’t understand.”
Unceremoniously, the Teacher shot her in the back of the head with the silenced .22. Then he dragged her into the hall closet, dumped her Manolo Blahniks on top of her, and shut the door.
“Yeah, well,” he said, wiping his hands. “It’s a long story.”
When he fell back into his bed, his eyelids suddenly felt like manhole covers, and his breathing slowed to its usual peaceful rhythm.
Who needs warm milk? he thought as he softly faded into sleep.
Chapter 51
WHEN MY CELL PHONE WENT OFF, it took me a second to distinguish the sound above the constant hacking of the Bennett sick ward. I groped for it in a stupor, noting that the time was just after three a.m. For all my big hopes, I’d gotten maybe ten minutes of real sleep.
“Yeah, Mike, Beth Peters here. Sorry to wake you, but we just got word. A fashion photographer, shot dead on a sidewalk in Hell’s Kitchen. Looks like you-know-who.”
“I’m just waiting for my chance to send you-know-who to you-know-where in a handbasket,” I said grimly. “Any witnesses?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But one of the uniforms said he actually wrote some kind of a message. I didn’t quite catch that part. You want me over there, or?—”
“No, you mind the store,” I said. “I’m closer. Give me an address.”
After talking to Beth, I called Chief McGinnis, hoping I’d get the chance to wake him up to deliver the latest happy news. Unfortunately I had to settle for his voice mail.
Unbelievable, I thought, putting away my phone. The shooter seemed to be speeding up, shortening the interval between kills—giving us less time to figure things out. That was the last thing we needed now.
“Don’t tell me you have to go back in,” Mary Catherine said, still camped out in the chair opposite mine.
“This city never sleeps and apparently neither does its latest psychopath.” I heaved myself to my feet and rooted around the darkened room until I lucked onto my keys, then opened the lockbox in the closet to get my Glock.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked her. It was a pretty stupid question. What was I going to do if she said no?
“We’re fine,” she said. “You be careful.”
“Believe me, if I get near this guy, I won’t give him a chance to hurt me.”
“Driving, too,” Mary Catherine said. “I’m concerned. You look like you just crawled out of a crypt.”