Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2) (47 page)

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“How do you want to be remembered?”

“You placating me, Detective, or just playing to my enormous ego? That’s what they say in the books about serial killers. Have you read that? We have enormous egos.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, Nabil. I don’t get much time to read. I’m looking at it from a more practical standpoint. Do you want to walk out of here with a chance to tell your story—maybe become famous, like Bundy?”

Kotar smiled and looked to the television. “How about I tell you when the show’s over? It won’t be long now.”

CHAPTER 59

T
he police cars and SWAT van finally arrived, swarming the parking lot, officers fanning out across the lot and up to the second level. Other officers were starting to empty the other rooms, whisking frightened-looking guests away from the building. The patrol units’ lights painted everything a pulsing blue and red. Tracy stood from the chair and stepped to the door, gun and gaze still fixed on Kotar.

“Tracy Crosswhite, Seattle Homicide,” she shouted. “This is my scene. Tell everyone I said to stand down.”

“Your big scene, Detective,” Kotar said. “I like that.”

“I think I’m just the supporting actor, Nabil. You’re the lead here.” She nodded out the door. “They’re all here, or on their way. You’ll have all the news media.”

As if on cue, she heard the thumping drone of helicopter blades. A spotlight lit up the parking lot. Kotar’s eyes shifted to the window. “News helicopter,” she said.

Kotar smiled. “Lights. Camera. Action.”

“The audience is waiting, Nabil. What kind of performance you going to give them?” She was improvising here, hoping Kotar didn’t see a final scene where everyone ended up dead. She didn’t think so. She got a sense Kotar wanted the applause and the accolades.

Kotar started to sing under his breath. She didn’t recognize the song at first, then it triggered something from her own childhood. Bugs Bunny. He was singing the overture before the cartoons started.

“We know every part by heart,” Kotar sang.

“Bugs Bunny,” she said.

His eyebrows arched. “You know it?”

“You kidding? Every Saturday morning my sister and I watched together.”

“Yeah?” Kotar grew pensive. “I heard about your sister. Sounds like the guy was a real psycho.”

“Yeah, he was.”

“You shot him.”

“He didn’t give me a choice, Nabil. This is a whole different situation.”

“Is that why you’re doing this? Why you care? Because of your sister?”

“Could be,” she said. “I’ve never really stopped to analyze it.”

“Too painful?”

“Maybe.”

Kotar dropped his gaze, and Tracy had to resist the urge to pull the trigger. She had no doubt she could put a shot in the center of his forehead, but she was worried he would flinch and slice the woman’s throat.

Looking up, he said, “You couldn’t stop him, you know? What he did. I mean you can’t blame yourself for what happened to your sister.”

“Easier said than done.”

“No,” he said, an edge in his voice. “You don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me, Nabil.”

“He had to do it.
We
have to do it. So this isn’t your fault either. It’s just the way it is. It’s the way I am. We’re made this way.” Kotar looked down at the woman, then back to Tracy. He gestured with his chin. “Your arm getting tired holding up that gun, Detective?”

“My shoulder, actually.”

“The lactic acid starts to build in the muscles until eventually they cramp. The only way to relieve the pain is to change positions, to lengthen and stretch the muscles.”

“Did you come up with that system yourself?”

“Over time.”

“How’s your arm?” she asked. “That knife starting to get heavy? What do you say you cut the rope and lower the knife and I’ll lower my gun, and we all walk out of here together?”

“And the state sentences me to death.”

“What, in twenty years?” She shook her head. “You know how many lawyers will want to represent you just for the notoriety, just for the chance to say their client was the Cowboy?”

“I like that name by the way. Did you come up with that?”

“No, that was my partner. The media ran with it though.”

“Kinsington Rowe. Now that’s a name.” Kotar rested his head back against the wall, suddenly looking spent. “Either way, I’m going to die—now or twenty years from now.”

“None of us is getting out of here alive, Nabil.”

Kotar chuckled and sat up. “I like that. That’s a good line. ‘None of us is getting out of here alive.’ That’s good. Who said that?”

“I don’t know,” Tracy said.

“Was it in a movie?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Nobody is getting out of here alive,” he repeated, seeming to savor each word.

“But it doesn’t have to be today.”

“But it doesn’t have to be today,” he said, his smile broadening.
“None of us is getting out of here alive. But it doesn’t have to be today.” He looked to Tracy, suddenly more animated. “How about you, Detective? You could be a hero. You could get your reputation back—the detective who killed the Cowboy.”

“I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame, Nabil. It’s overrated.”

Kotar laughed. “This is like a screenplay, Detective. You’re good. You ever do any acting?”

“Me? Scares the crap out of me to get up in front of a bunch of people.”

“Oh, no,” Kotar said. “That’s the rush. That’s the thrill of it. It’s live. Anything goes. You think someday they’ll write a screenplay about us, about this moment?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it; writers seem to go for this sort of thing. Hollywood too. Bet they’d want to interview you. Get your recollection.”

He was like a kid. “It would be a hell of a scene, wouldn’t it? Who do you think would play you in the movie?”

“Me? No idea.”

“Charlize Theron,” he said.

“I think you’re trying to flatter me, Nabil.”

“No, really. I can see it. She’s tall like you, athletic build. And you’re a beautiful woman. You know what Nash used to say about you?”

“I don’t think I want to know.”

“He said you’d have been a hell of a dancer, that you’ve got the legs for it.”

“That doesn’t sound like Nash.”

“I left out the crude parts.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Okay, your turn. Who would play me?”

Tracy had no idea but wanted to play along, still hoping she could get Kotar to see an ending in which they walked out of that room together. “You tell me.” She glanced at the woman, eyes now shut, grimacing, legs starting to shake. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a movie.”

“I’m thinking Rami Malek. He’d have to get in the gym, though, and put on about twenty pounds of muscle.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Really? He was in one of the
Twilight
movies and
Night at the Museum
.”

“I missed those.”

“You work too hard; you need to find time to relax.”

“You’ve kept me pretty busy. You mind if I sit down again?”

Kotar gestured with his free hand.

Tracy sat. She was running out of things to talk about and sensed, with the cartoon winding down, that she didn’t have much time. The blue and red strobes continued to pulse.

“Woody Harrelson would be my first choice, but he’s getting too old.”

“He’d be good,” she agreed. “So what do you say? You ready to walk out of here with me? Live long enough to see your likeness on the big screen?”

CHAPTER 60

 J
ohnny Nolasco pulled his Corvette up onto the sidewalk and quickly got out. News vans lined the curb, photographers shooting. Overhead a news helicopter hovered, the thump of the blades near deafening, the spotlight blinding in its intensity. Chatter spilled from police car radios. Nolasco badged one of several officers on crowd control and shouted over the din of the helicopter, “Whose scene is it?”

The officer pointed to a barrel-chested man barking out orders in the middle of the fray. Nolasco approached and introduced himself.

“Michael Scruggs,” the man said. “Seattle SWAT.”

“What’s the situation, Sergeant?”

“Captain,” Scruggs corrected. “And it’s one of yours, Tracy Crosswhite. She’s got a hostage situation. Man inside the room is holding a woman at knifepoint. She’s told us to stand down.”

“Get on the radio and tell them to get that news helicopter out of here.”

“Already have. Story this big, the TV station will just pay the fine. You want to try, feel free to give it a go.”

“What about HNT?” Nolasco asked, referring to the Hostage Negotiation Team.

“They just pulled up. Heading toward the door.”

Nolasco made his way through the crowd to the motel room. He stayed well back, but the room was lit up like daytime. Just inside the door, Tracy Crosswhite sat in a chair.

“Detective?” he said.

Tracy did not turn her head. “Yeah, Captain?”

“What do you got?”

“I got a cowboy in here.”

Nolasco heard a second voice, a man, shout, “
The
Cowboy.”

“I got
the
Cowboy,” Tracy said.

Nolasco felt his stomach drop. “HNT is here.”

“We’re good,” she said. “We’re just chatting about books and movies.”

“You need us to send in anything? Bottled water?”

“Nobody comes in,” the man shouted.

“I said we’re good, Captain.”

“Nobody comes in,” Kotar repeated, sitting up and adjusting the knife.

The woman moaned.

“Shut up,” he said.

“Take it easy,” Tracy said. “Nobody’s coming in, Nabil. They figure they’ll just starve us into submission.”

He looked to be calming, though he was sweating profusely. “What’s HNT?”

“Hostage Negotiation Team.”

“That’s some serious shit, huh?”

Tracy looked to the cartoon. She had no idea how much longer the episode would last, but from what she recalled from her childhood and from what she could deduce about the attention span of children, she thought the whole thing was no more than fifteen minutes total.

Kotar caught her gaze. “Just a few more minutes now,” he said quietly, perhaps sensing the reality of his predicament. “Don’t
you
have training?” he asked.

“For this kind of thing? Not really. I’ve done crisis intervention, but it’s not really the same thing.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing a pretty good job.”

“You know, Nabil, this is one of those things in which the end result really dictates how I did.”

“I can see that,” he said. Then he got silent again.

“Why do you tie them up?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Okay. Why dancers?”

He looked to be contemplating how to answer, or whether to answer at all. Then he said, “She danced.”

“Who’s that?”

“My mother. She’d leave me alone at night with the cartoons, and if I didn’t behave, didn’t have the apartment clean, she’d beat me with an electrical cord or tie me to a chair.”

“What happened to her?”

Kotar rested his head against the wall. His gaze shifted to the curtain. “Someone strangled her.”

“I’m sorry,” Tracy said. “Did they ever catch him?”

Kotar nodded. “It was one of the guys she brought home.”

Tracy wondered if maybe Beth Stinson hadn’t been Kotar’s first. “Well, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Kotar pressed the knife to the woman’s throat. Tracy’s finger tensed on the trigger, but she made a snap decision not to shoot. Kotar smiled. “Nice self-restraint, Detective.”

She was struggling to remain outwardly calm. Her heart raced, and she was getting a strong sense that this was not going to end well. She looked again to the television. “Cut the rope, Nabil. Let’s walk out together.”

Kotar’s gaze also shifted to the TV.

“This is it,” Kotar said. “This is the end.”

Porky Pig burst through a paper drum onto the television screen. Kotar stuttered with him. “Ba-dee, ba-dee, ba-dee . . . That’s all, folks.”

And he raised the knife.

CHAPTER 61

N
abil Kotar slashed the rope. The woman’s legs dropped as if spring-loaded and hit the floor with a dull thud. Her head fell forward, dangling like she was a rag doll.

Tracy eased the tension on the trigger. A few more millimeters and she’d have put a bullet between Kotar’s eyes.

Kotar rolled the woman away from him. She flopped onto her back, ankles and wrists still bound, coughing and wheezing. Kotar set the knife on the carpet and rested his head against the wall, just beneath a “No Smoking” sign. He looked up at Tracy with tired eyes and gave her a smile.

Tracy took her first deep breath since she’d entered the room. “I have to cuff you, Nabil.”

He nodded, the smile turning to a resigned frown. “I know.”