DIVA (40 page)

He closed his cell and said to Kelly, “He shot two cops. One’s got an arrow in his neck. Another one took it in the leg. Vobitch thinks Stoltz might have left the house.”

“Arrows?” Her face paled and her eyes widened. “This guy’s a maniac.”

“Right. A well-prepared maniac.”

“It could have been you,” she said, gazing at him, horror-stricken.

“Well, it wasn’t.” But she was right: it could have been his neck with an arrow in it.

“Want to call Rachael? Maybe you can get more out of her.”

“Good idea.” He opened his cell phone. “Give me the number.”

______

He loped through the rain, splashing through puddles, laboring under the weight of the knapsack that held his Bushmaster M4, extra ammo and other supplies. He rounded the corner of a house and stopped.

Twenty yards away, a tan Mazda MPV stood at a traffic light.

Rain pelted the pavement, driven sideways by the gusty wind. The street was deserted, not another car in sight. Approaching from the rear, he trotted to the MPV and peered through the back window. A woman alone in the car. Perfect. Gripping the Ruger in one hand, he crept to the passenger side door and dropped the knapsack.

In one swift motion he yanked open the door and leveled the Ruger at the woman’s head. “Freeze or you’re dead.”

Her head swiveled, her mouth sagged open, and he was inside.

Training the Ruger on her with one hand, he hauled the knapsack inside with the other and slammed the door. Paralyzed by fear, she gaped at him, a chubby-faced woman, early twenties, her dirty-blond hair twisted into twin ponytails that flopped over her ears.

“Don’t do anything stupid and you’ll be fine. We’re taking a ride.”

Her chest rose and fell rapidly. “Please don’t hurt me. My baby’s in the backseat.”

Fuck-all! He turned and saw the kid, about a year old, bright-red cheeks, staring at him with dull glazed eyes.

“Do what I say, and you and junior will be fine.”

“Lucy,” the woman said in a high-pitched voice. “Her name is Lucy.”

“Whatever.” He didn’t give a damn what the kid’s name was. She wasn’t old enough to talk, much less cause trouble.

He saw the traffic light turn green.

“Drive to the nearest I-10 entrance and get on heading west.”

The woman gnawed her lip. “I have to take Lucy to the doctor. She’s got a bad fever.”

“Not now you don’t. You’re gonna take me where I want to go. Drive like your life depends on it because it does. Yours and the kid’s.”

Her mouth contorted in anguish. She gripped the wheel and accelerated. At the next corner she turned onto a wide boulevard, following a sign for the I-10 entrance.

He heard sirens. Looked in the side-view mirror. Saw flashing blue lights behind them. “Pull over and let them go by.” He touched the muzzle of the Ruger to her head to make sure she did. Then he squirmed into the foot-well beside the knapsack and ducked below the dash.

The woman pulled over.

The sirens grew louder and a police car flew by, lights flashing.

“Very good. Now get going. Take me to Lakeside Hospital. My wife’s having a baby.” This was almost fun, making things up on the fly.

The woman glanced at him and quickly looked away. “Why didn’t you call a cab?”

“Shut up and drive.”

The kid in the back seat whimpered, a soft petulant sound.

“Please, you can have the car. Just let us out and take it.”

“No, keep going.”

Her face puckered and tears rolled down her cheeks.

She swerved, and they hit something.

“If you crash this car, you and the kid are history.”

“It was a trash can. I couldn’t help—”

“Shut up and drive!”

The kid shrieked as if stabbed by a knife.

______

“No answer,” Frank said, and closed his cell phone.

“You think she’s in cahoots with the brother?” Kelly said.

“Could be. I think he’s been stalking Belinda for years. He was savvy enough to get a fake ID from the guy in London, ruthless enough to run her off the road to get her to hire him. After Jake fired him, he poisoned the brownies and got the Goines kid to deliver them. He claimed he was in Atlanta during the supposed break-in at Belinda’s house. The sister lives in Atlanta. She’s stonewalling you and—”

He broke off as the door to Belinda’s room opened. Doctor Iris Golden stepped into the anteroom and shut Belinda’s door. A handsome woman in her fifties, Golden was tall and slender, with warm brown eyes and dark hair streaked with gray. She beamed Kelly a smile. “Hi, Kelly, how are you?”

“I’m good, Doctor. Have you met Frank?”

“Briefly, before I examined Belinda.”

No high-wattage smile for him, Frank noticed. “How’s she doing?”

“Reasonably well, given the circumstances. Her heart-rate, pulse and blood pressure are elevated, but that’s to be expected. I was going to do a rape-kit exam, but she said it wasn’t necessary.” Golden gave him a grim look. “He was about to rape her when you phoned this morning.”

“Jesus,” he muttered. If he hadn’t called . . .

“She wouldn’t tell me about what happened later. She’s in shock and I didn’t want to push it. I asked if there was anyone she wanted to call, but she said no.”

“Her family died in a car accident years ago,” he said. No need to mention that Belinda had no friends to call in an emergency. The doctor was smart enough to figure that out.

“I’m going to admit her,” Golden said, jotting notes on a form clamped to her clipboard. “I want to observe her for twenty-four hours in case she has any adverse reactions.”

“Can I talk to her?”

Golden gave him a stern look. “Not now. She needs to rest. I’ve given her a sedative to help her sleep. When she wakes up, she might need to talk to someone. Will you be here, Kelly?”

“Frank and I will stay with her,” Kelly said.

Frank said nothing. Kelly could stay, but he wouldn’t. Not with Stoltz out there. Stoltz was a ticking time bomb with an arsenal, packing a rifle, shooting cops with arrows, no telling what he’d do next.

______

The woman kept crying, great gulping sobs, tears pouring down her cheeks. Traffic on the Interstate was light, cars creeping along, splashing through puddles, windshield wipers working furiously. The kid had settled into a continuous whimper, a grating sound that aggravated his headache.

To drown out the whimper he punched on the radio. A commercial was on, touting Extra-strength Excedrin for headaches. He smiled at the irony.

He had the mother of all headaches.

Because The Diva had gored him with her fucking screwdriver.

The commercial ended and a news-bulletin jingle sounded.

“Updating the hostage crisis we reported earlier,” said a male voice, “the woman escaped. Police have taken her to a hospital, no word on her condition. SWAT teams have surrounded a house where they believe the kidnapper is hiding. He’s described as a white male, six feet tall, with reddish-brown hair. If you see this man, police ask you to call 9-1-1. Do not approach him. He is armed and extremely dangerous.”

The woman made a keening sound in her throat, and the kid let out an ear-splitting scream.

“Shut up!” How could he think with them blubbering? He shut off the radio. The cops thought he was still in the house. Good. The Diva hadn’t told them he’d shaved his head. Also good. Police had taken her to a hospital. No news on her condition. But what about
his
condition?

He pressed a hand to his forehead, his excruciatingly
painful
forehead. He lowered his hand. Saw blood on his fingers. Clenched his fist.

If he knew where that bitch was, he’d go there and kill her.

Think, you idiot
. Where would they take her?

To a trauma center of course, but not Charity. Charity was closed.

Then he recalled the newspaper article about his Belinda-substitute—the one whose nose he’d broken.

“Change in plans,” he said. “Take the next exit.”

Gripping the wheel, the woman eased into the exit lane, still sobbing, but quieter now. Rain thundered on the MPV roof. They passed a strip mall with a Blockbuster and a Sears Auto Center. Two blocks later he spotted a bus stop with a plexi-glass waiting area.

“Pull over at that bus stop. You and junior are getting out.”

She looked at him, a quick glance, then away.

“Your forehead is bleeding,” she said in a shaky voice.

“Well, aren’t you sweet, worrying about my bloody forehead.”

She parked beside the bus stop and shot him another quick glance. Was she worried about the gash on his brow? No, she was looking at his gun.

“You got a cell phone?” he said.

“Yes. In my purse.” She sniffled, sucking snot down her throat.

“Throw the purse over here by my feet.”

She took a big leather pouch off the center console and tossed it into the foot-well at his feet.

“When you get out, I’ll have my gun on junior. You do anything stupid, I’ll
shoot
him.”

“I won’t do anything stupid. Please don’t hurt my baby.”

He smiled. “See how nice I am, finding you a nice dry place to wait out of the rain? Go.”

She jumped out, slammed the door, ran around the hood, opened the back door and fumbled with the car-seat release. The red-faced kid shrieked and waved its tiny fists.

“Wait in the shelter until a bus comes. Don’t call the cops. If you do, I will track you down and I will kill you and your kid.”

She yanked the squalling kid out of the car seat, slammed the door and ran. He clambered over the center console into the driver’s seat and watched her, clutching the kid to her chest, probably thought she’d died and gone to heaven, rescuing her kid from the big scary man with the bloody forehead.

Good riddance. He had bigger fish to fry. The Diva-bitch. He put the MPV in gear and touched his forehead. His fingers came away sticky with blood, and the merciless pain continued unabated. He pulled a Belinda CD out of his knapsack and put it in the disc player.

Maybe Belinda and her magic flute would sooth his headache.

The magic flute she would never play again.

Vengeance was going to be sweet.

_____

She watched the rain pelt the window, pinging against the glass, felt her heart thump inside her chest. The doctor had given her a shot to make her sleep, but it wasn’t working. Every muscle in her body quivered with tension. She shut her eyes. Saw visions of Silverman. His ghastly shaven head. Those horrible lips. Those voracious eyes.

She moaned into the pillow. She had escaped, but her beloved Haynes flute was back in that hellhole.

Music had been the center of her world forever. During the dark days after the wrong-way driver decimated her family, music had kept her from self-destructing. Lonely and heartsick, she had even considered suicide. The music had saved her. She couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t playing her flute. Nothing was more important to her.

Until her life was at stake.

Then, without hesitation, she had dropped her flute on the floor.

Dropped it. On the floor. An unthinkable act. Until today.

And now she was alive. She was in a hospital. Surrounded by people who cared about her, people like the doctor. She tried to remember the woman’s name but her brain was fried.

Her eyes closed. She was safe now.

Frank was right outside. Frank would protect her.

CHAPTER 42

He parked in a No-Parking zone near the side entrance of City Hospital and hopped out of the MPV. The torrential rain had slackened to a drizzle. Droplets of rain glistened on the green shrubbery beside the entrance, but the area behind them was dry, protected by the overhanging roof. He retrieved the knapsack from the MPV and hid it behind the shrubs. Hiding the Ruger behind his thigh, he mounted the steps to the glass double doors.

He felt like Rambo. Rambo on a mission. Kill some cops, including Renzi, and make The Diva wish she’d never been born.

He took the blood-soaked bandage out of his pocket, held it to his forehead and stepped inside. A uniformed security guard sat inside a glassed-in booth beside the door.

“I need help,” he said, making it sound urgent.

Without hesitation, the guard came out of the booth. And saw the gun.

“Turn around and go out the door.”

The guard’s eyes hardened. “Fuck you.”

He slammed the Ruger against the bridge of the guard’s nose. The man reeled back, bounced off the wall and slid into a seated position. He clubbed him again, two hard blows to the head. The guard flopped sideways onto the floor. He ran outside and grabbed his knapsack and raced back inside.

The guard lay motionless, eyes closed. Blood pooled on the gray-tile floor beneath his head. The wannabe-hero was down for the count.

He loped down the hall to the lobby. Four women looked up, gaping at him. A woman with a towheaded toddler in her lap. Two black women, one pregnant, the other one older with kinky gray hair. A pasty-faced teenager slumped in a chair, obviously pregnant, reading a paperback novel.

The woman behind the reception desk saw him and gasped.

“Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt.” To the receptionist he said, “Where’s Belinda Scully?” Got back a rabbity look, the woman looking like she wanted to run, hands fluttering to her mouth.

“Tell me or I will kill you right now.” He aimed the gun at her head.

“I don’t—” Reacting to his murderous glare, she said, “S-s-somewhere on Level Three.”

“Very good. Go sit with the patients.”

Eyes wide, she came around the desk. He hit her with the gun butt, and she went down, shrieking. The teenaged girl yelped and clapped a hand over her mouth. The black women watched him, flat-eyed and expressionless. They knew not to fuck with a guy with a gun.

“Anyone calls the cops I’ll come back and kill you. Believe it.”

He trotted down the hall to a pair of elevators, hit the call button, set the knapsack on the floor and checked his wristwatch. Not bad. He’d been inside the hospital less than two minutes.