Night Hunter (59 page)

A small child in bright yellow rain boots and a yellow slicker walked with her mother, the two sharing an umbrella. The little girl stared at Corinne with wide, frightened eyes, then turned and buried her face in the thick wool of her mother’s coat.

It wasn’t fair.

At 1:15, two hours after going to the police station to meet Wilma, John was still waiting for Detective Lillard. He had reached the end of his patience. Regina had not returned and there was no answer at her apartment when he called. Wilma had ceased her pacing. She stood at a nearby desk, on the phone, trying to track down the detective.

John squeezed her fingers gently, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Wilma, I can’t wait any longer. I’m going to find Regina. If Lillard ever shows up, call me at my place. Okay?”

She smiled weakly, nodded.

John took a cab home.

He was about to enter his apartment when his aunt opened her door and called to him.

“
Aunt Anna, have you seen Regina?” John asked.

She frowned. “Regina?”

“
Mrs. Van Raven. Have you seen her in the past couple of hours?”

Ilona came up behind Anna Szabo. “Hi, Johnnie,” she said.

“
Ilona has come to help me with the day’s supper. You must stay.”

“
Aunt Anna, Ilona, I can’t, really. There’s something very important I have to do.”

“
What could be so important?” His aunt took his hand and pulled at him.

He resisted.

“
Johnnie, Johnnie, go do what it is you have to do and come back.” Anna released his hand. “Time will only make the soup better.”

It was useless to argue. John nodded. “Give me a few minutes,” he said. He climbed the stairs two at a time to the second floor. He used the spare key, the one he’d taken from his aunt’s place the night Regina had narrowly escaped being attacked, and let himself in.

After a quick search of the rooms revealed neither Regina nor a note, he checked her answering machine for messages. None. He suddenly realized she could be waiting for him in his apartment.

He hurried downstairs, entered his apartment, and called out to her, searching the rooms. He again looked for a note and finding none, sank heavily in the wingback chair to think.

She must still be with Kristy, he told himself. Instead of coming back to the apartment house, he should have gone to the restaurant where Kristy worked.

He rose, grabbed the phone book, looked up the number and dialed.

“
Farm House,” a woman said.

“
Kristy Van Raven, please. It’s important.”

“
She’s not here, sir.”

“
Is Sonya Newman there?”

“
That’s me.”

“
Sonya, it’s John Davie, Regina’s friend. Did Kristy leave with her mother?”

“
John, something freaky’s going on here. Kristy gets a call and leaves. Then her mom comes in and she gets an urgent call from some guy and leaves too.”

“
How long ago?”

“
An hour. Maybe an hour and a half.”

“
Any idea where Regina went?”

“
No.”

John hung up absently, a sense of dread knotting his gut. An urgent call from whom? Kristy? The police? The hospital? The man stalking her? How many people knew she was meeting Kristy at work?

He began to pace the living room. Corde was on to them. He was on to them and now he had them somewhere. No. Don’t think like that.

On the coat rack in the entry he caught sight of the wool print scarf that had fallen from Regina’s coat the night they’d made love on the fleece rug. He crossed the room, lifted the scarf off the hook, and, bunching it up, brought it to his face. He breathed in the rich, exotic aroma of her perfume. Images of her, soft and sensual in his arms, played across his mind’s eye.

Christ, what the hell had he gotten himself into? After all these years of keeping a clear head about love and relationships, he had to go and get himself romantically involved, Both Corinne and Darlene had met with tragedy after he fell in love. And he’d walked into this one with his eyes wide open. Was he jinxed? Was it inevitable that suffering and death come to those he
loved?

Regina, oh God, Regina, be safe.

“
Call, damnit,” he said harshly under his breath.

He wrapped the scarf around his neck and resumed his pacing.

He led her down the basement steps.

Outwardly he appeared kind and attentive, holding her arm loosely, telling her to watch her step. Despite his solicitous words and actions, Regina knew better than to relax her guard. She had seen the smoldering hatred glowing feverishly in his black eyes when he looked at her. He had no fear she would try to get away. He knew she would cooperate as long as Kristy was a hostage, that she would do whatever was asked of her in order to save her daughter.

They crossed the concrete floor to a wall of wine bottles. He reached into a pigeonhole in the wine rack. Regina heard a click, then another, and a portion of the wall, wine rack and all, began to move. It was a door. Beyond the doorway was a brightly lit room with bookshelves and expensive office furniture.

“
Welcome to my sanctuary,” Corde said, ushering her in.

Regina stepped across the threshold, her gaze searching frantically for her daughter. There was no one else in the room.

“
Where is she?”

“
You’ll see her.”

“
I want to see her now.”

“
You’re in no position to make demands.”

“
Where’s Amelia?”

“
They’re together. Contemplating the error of their ways.”

Amelia a prisoner as well? Regina wondered.

“
Kristy’s done nothing wrong. Let her go.”

“
Oh, but she has. Upstairs, when I gave her the opportunity to enhance her odds, she rejected me. Just as her mother did twenty years ago.”

Regina’s mind raced. What was he talking about?

He stared at Regina, a wily grin on his face. “I like to be near pretty women. I like to have them around me, tending to my needs.” He slipped the strap of the handbag from his shoulder and dumped the contents onto the floor. With the toe of his shiny ox-blood shoe he stirred the items around, and seeing nothing that could help the prisoner, dismissed them. “I bet you never dreamed I have women catering to me. Lovely women like yourself and your daughter. Well, nor did I when I was young.

“
Rejection is not easy to accept,” he said, reaching a coarse, hairy hand to her face, caressing. “Of course, you wouldn’t know that, being the beautiful woman that you are. I lived with rejection all my young life. Women I wouldn’t waste words on today cruelly spurned a young man’s advances. I can pick and choose now. And if they choose not to desire me, then
they
are no longer desired. Cases in point: Corinne, Donna, and ...” He paused. “... others.”

Marilyn Keane, she thought, and Carmenita Flores. How many more? “You’re doing this because I rejected you?” She fought the urge to slap his hand away from her face.

“
You and the others.”

“
You learn that ‘City Gallery’ intends to do a show with all the finalists and this awakens your hatred toward us?”

He laughed without mirth. “It was
my
suggestion to air a show with the finalists. Fortunately for me, Nolan Lake jumped at the idea. You see, it was essential that the public be reminded of that tragic incident.”

“
Why?”

“
You’ll find out soon enough.”

“
Why bring me here? Why not just splash me like you did the others?”

“
Patience.” A hardness glinted in his bulging eyes.

He quickly reached down and cupped a breast. Regina instinctively pushed his hand away.

He eyed her shrewdly, then grinned, nodding his head. “Some never learn,” he said.

Regina opened her mouth to speak. But no sound came out. She shook her head instead.

“
I’ll bring your daughter now. I trust you won’t do anything foolish. There’s no reason she should suffer . . . unnecessarily.” He went to the door and inserted a straight, picklike object into a hole. The door opened and then he was gone, closing it behind him.

Regina quickly bent down and grabbed her container of mace from the scattered contents of her purse. The relief she’d felt when he’d overlooked the small blue leather case had been overwhelming. She unclipped the keys and dropped them back to the pile, then shoved the mace into her coat pocket. When he came back with Kristy, she would attempt to disable him with the burning chemical.

She stood in the middle of the room and looked around. There were no windows and only one door. It was like an office within a vault. Light radiated from fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. The desk top was bare. She quickly moved around the room, trying drawers and cabinets. All were locked with the exception of a bottom drawer in a file cabinet. There she found a Polaroid camera and a wooden box. The box was filled with photographs of nude women in countless compromising positions. Hastily she sorted through them until she found Wilma Greenwood among the bunch. A much younger, very striking, Wilma.

He had left this material out for her to see. To prove to her the power he’d had over these beautiful women. If they played the game, they had only to live with the degradation of that repulsive monster committing consensual rape, using their bodies whenever he wanted, any way he wanted. But if they didn’t play ...

She shuddered.

Where was Kristy? God, had he already —no ... no, she guessed that wasn’t his style. He would want her, the mother, to witness some horrific act as part of the punishment. Then what would he do? Disfigure her and Kristy? Perhaps. But she felt that was just a prelude to an ultimate goal. She and Kristy knew their attacker. Judge or no judge, he couldn’t expect to get away with it. There was only one conclusion.

Like Carmenita Flores and Pandora, they wouldn’t live to tell anyone.

John slammed down the receiver, then pounded a fist against the wall. He had just spoken to Wilma. No word from Regina. Wilma would call the courthouse and check on Judge Corde. John prayed the judge was in trial.

As he waited for Wilma to call back, he resumed his pacing. He had to do something. He couldn’t just hang around wearing down the carpet while the woman he loved had disappeared into thin air.
She was in danger.
He felt it in his gut. She would have called if she could.

The phone rang. He snatched it up.

“
John, Corde’s not at the courthouse,” Wilma said.

“
Christ.”

“
More bad news. The investigating police found a matchbook at the scene of the psychic’s murder. The matches are from the Bull’s Blood Lounge and there’s a very clear fingerprint on it. John, it’s yours.”

“
Aw shit,” he groaned. “He’s setting me up. Jesus, I should have seen it coming.” He remembered the pistachio shell in the utility room of the gym. Somehow Corde knew his habits, likes, and dislikes. “You know I didn’t do it. I was with Regina at the time that woman was killed.”