One Scream Away (33 page)

Neil punched End on his phone, kept it in his hand. “It was Bankes,” he explained to Harrison. “He’s gonna call back. Dispatch kept him waiting too long.”

“Hell.”

Neil caught Suarez’s eyes; Suarez nodded a silent promise to cover Beth. Neil stepped out to a patio.

His phone rang three minutes later. “Talk,” he said. “And then I’ll give you my direct phone number.”

“Give it to me now,” Bankes ordered.

Neil did.

“That’s very generous of you, Sheridan. Now we can talk a little. But it won’t help you home in on this pedantic little gas station too far out of the way to get to in time anyway.”

“For a smart man, you’re taking some big chances.” Play to the gamer in him. He’ll like that, maybe keep talking.

“I’m sorry about Hannah Blake.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re all broken up.”

“I am. I didn’t even get to enjoy her death. Never got to hear her make a sound. And she was kind of a pretty thing, as I recall.”

“When did you ever see Hannah Blake?”

“I had lunch with her at a show in San Francisco. She was there instead of Beth. But you already knew that, didn’t you? I imagine you know just about everything now.” He chuckled. “Except where I am and who I’ll kill next.”

“I know you’re screwed, that’s what I know.” He looked at his watch. A tiny green light throbbed with the passage of seconds—slow as cold honey, it seemed. “You think it’s so slick to use dolls to try to freak Beth out. Pretty cliché, if you ask me.”

Neil heard a chuckle at the other end of the line, also the sound of a truck driving past. Damn it, he
was
at a gas station. On a pay phone or his cell, it didn’t matter. He’d be long gone with no one ever noticing him, even if Neil did get sixty-two more seconds out of him. Sixty-one… sixty… fifty-nine…

“So what’s next, Bankes?” Neil wanted to confront him with what he’d done to Beth, but the call was being traced. He didn’t dare say anything about her rape. “Tell me why a
man
has to threaten six-year-olds and women. Didn’t you get your fill of hurting weaker things when you killed your baby sister?”

The air seemed to crackle as Neil waited for a response. So, he’d hit a nerve. Go ahead, fucker, he thought, get mad. Take
me
on.

“You don’t know anything about my sister,” Bankes ground out.

“I know it must not have taken much to kill her. An infant who was genetically fucked—”

“There was nothing wrong with Jenny! Her blood didn’t matter. Bad blood doesn’t matter.”

“Jenny was a preemie, didn’t weigh twenty pounds by the time she disapp—”

“Shut the hell up!”

Neil did, afraid he’d hang up.

“I left you a gift,” Bankes said. Hurried now, aware of the time. “You can find it at the home of Mabel Skinner, on Lexington Avenue.”

Neil opened his mouth to speak, but would have been talking to thin air. Bankes was gone. One minute, forty-two seconds after the phone had rung.

He punched in Copeland’s private number.

“We’re on it,” Copeland said. “The southeast chopper is narrowing in now on an area out in Southton.”

Neil cursed. “He’s already gone, driving on the highway right under the chopper.”

“We’ll set up roadblocks just in case, maybe catch him trying to get out.”

And Bankes would beat them to it. Everyone knew exactly where he’d been sixty seconds earlier, but sixty seconds was all he needed to get out. “Look for a car belonging to a woman named Mabel Skinner, on Lexington Avenue. He said he left a gift for me at her house.”

“I heard,” said Copeland. “I’m calling in the forces. I’ll call you with the exact address. If you get there first, stay the hell back.”

“Why? You think the gift Bankes left me will blow?”

“It’s a possibility,” Copeland said. “Meet you there.”

Neil hung up and looked at Harrison, who had gotten enough from Neil’s gestures and one end of the conversation to have already relayed it to the agents on-site at the Fosters’. Harrison punched off his phone.

“The TAC unit’s on its way to that neighborhood,” Neil told him. “Copeland will call with the exact address as soon as they get it.”

“Let’s move.”

“Wait. Beth.”

Harrison stopped. “Look, Sheridan, I’m no buddy like Sacowicz was, and it’s none of my business how you handle the lady. But I don’t think you should scare her, man. She’s with her friends now, with her daughter. She looks cool. And she’s safer here than anywhere else.”

Grief hit Neil between the eyes. It shouldn’t be Harrison giving him calm, sane advice. It should be Rick.

But Harrison was right. Neil and Beth had shared a night of sheer ecstasy, with Beth basking in the news that Hannah would survive and Neil taking shameless advantage of her good spirits. There was no need to put a damper on that now.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Mabel Skinner lived at 1322 Lexington Avenue. The scene looked alarmingly like the one that had unfolded at Beth’s house when Carter died: yellow ribbon, strobes of blue and red so dense they could be seen even in the afternoon light, swarms of uniforms fighting back cameras and shouting down reporters.

Neil pushed through the melee with Harrison and ratcheted the car into park. They jogged to the sidewalk, meeting up with Copeland and three other men and a woman, all wearing FBI jackets.

“Everybody evacuated?” Neil asked, looking at the houses on either side of Skinner’s and across the street.

“Yeah,” Copeland said. “One block in every direction’s been emptied out. No one around.”

Except the ever-increasing crush of people gathering around the yellow ribbon, hoping for a freak show. “You gotta move everyone off the street,” Neil said.

“We’re doing it, we’re doing it,” someone answered.

“Infrareds didn’t pick up anyone inside,” Copeland said, his hands riding low on his hips. “They’re setting up the mikes and amplifiers now.”

“Okay,” Neil said. It would take a few minutes, while they all stood around with their fingers up their noses and nothing to do but wait. The TAC unit had secured the exterior of the house to let the FBI’s entry team work. The entry team used thermal-imaging cameras to sense collections of heat that indicated a live being, then placed sound equipment on the outside walls. The microphones could detect any sound in rooms with exterior walls. Beyond that…

Neil shook his head. “It doesn’t feel like a trap. I don’t think he’s in there waiting to spring something.”

“He still has those guns he picked up from Hammond’s,” Harrison said. “Coulda decided to bring you over here looking for his gift, then pop you from the front window.”

“Excuse me,” said a woman in uniform. She was a local cop. “My partner and I were in the area when you rolled in, Agent,” she said to Copeland. “We’d like to help—on behalf of Lieutenant Sacowicz.”

Copeland put his hand on her shoulder. “Thank you. Hold tight; there’ll be something to do soon.”

“I found a neighbor who knows the house.”

Copeland looked at her, cracked a smile. Rick’s team was good. “And?”

“She says there hasn’t been anything going on the past few days. Except she saw the owner’s Lexus in the driveway yesterday, and wondered about it because Skinner always puts it inside.”

“Floor plan?”

The officer pulled out a rough sketch. “Front door opens into a small living room, then straight back to the dining room and opens to the kitchen on the right. Two bedrooms; both have outside walls. This bathroom doesn’t, though, and there’s a basement.”

So if someone was in either the inner bathroom or the basement, the FBI’s equipment wouldn’t pick it up.

Neil inhaled, nostrils flaring. No one was in there. Not alive, anyway.

But they listened for another ten minutes before Copeland decided it was time to go in.

“So how’s it going down?” the female officer asked Neil. “Stealth or force? Sacowicz always said the FBI likes stealth.”

Neil laughed. Stealth, with forty agents and officers on the scene in broad daylight and TV cameras from here to the moon.
Screw you, Rick.

And so they took a minute to organize, with Copeland calling the shots into a handset, and then the entry team took down the door. Every door, in fact, and every window, all at the same time. In less than five seconds, twelve people were in Mabel Skinner’s house, and in another sixty, the all clear was given.

Now, to find out what Bankes had left.

S
omething was happening. Something that had taken Neil away without a word except a cryptic message to Suarez: “I’ll call her.” Something no one was telling Beth and that left her feeling helpless and guilty and worried.

And exhausted. She’d been up much of the night. Not that she would trade those blissful hours with Neil, but a little sleep would go a long way just now.

Instead, she sat on a stool, icing cookies with Carol Foster and Abby.

“Mommy, what’s wrong with you?” Abby asked. “Want a cookie?”

“What she wants is some rest,” Carol said, wiping icing on her apron. “For heaven’s sake, Beth, why don’t you go on up to the apartment? No one’s used it lately, and Abby and I are fine. Your guard dog here can wake you if Sheridan calls.”

Juan looked at Beth. “Woof.”

She smiled a little. “I guess. I just wish I knew what was going on.”

“I’m sure the FBI will tell you when you need to know,” Carol said.

“Right,” she said, sending Juan a look of sheer skepticism. She went to Abby. “You stay with Carol, all right, honey?”

“Okay. But Uncle Evan bought me a kite for spring break, and we never got to fly it. He said it was windy enough today. Can we, please?”

Beth deferred to Juan, who chucked Abby under the chin. “Is there a place to fly it here at Foster’s?”

“In that field behind the gallery. We tried there once before, but I let the kite get too close to the trees. It ripped up.”

“Bummer,” Juan replied. “A couple of my friends will go with you, okay? And stay close to your uncle Evan.”

Abby screwed her face into a frown. “He’s not really my uncle, you know.”

“You don’t say,” Juan said.

Beth showed Juan the way to the apartment in the carriage house and flicked off her shoes in the living room. His phone rang a minute after they entered, and instead of going into the bedroom, she eavesdropped without any shame at all.

Juan looked at her as he talked. “Yeah, Carol Foster just bullied her into taking a nap. We’re in the carriage house.” Beat. “No, man, she’s still awake. Hold on.” He handed the phone to Beth.

“Neil? Where are you?”

“I’m sorry I ran out on you, honey. I got a call.”

“What kind of call?”

“Never mind. I just wan—”

“Damn it, Neil, you promised not to shut me out.”

Silence pulsed for three seconds. “Bankes called me. He killed another woman.”

No. Oh, God. “The woman… was she—”

“She was just a place for Bankes to stay and a car to drive. We found the teenager’s Ford Escort in her garage.”

“Then he didn’t leave a doll?”

“He did, but—”

“I’ll come look at it.”

“You don’t need to see this one.” He went silent for a few seconds, and she could almost feel the weariness in his bones. “It’s not an antique. Sweetheart, we’re working on the house, waiting for results from the crime lab. You’re doing the best thing you can do right now—gathering with Hannah’s friends, getting some rest, keeping Abby happy. I’ll call you again later, and I’ll stay in touch with Suarez.”

Damn it, there were tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Beth?”

She pulled herself together. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

Neil punched off the phone. Copeland came over.

“She okay?”

“Sure. She’s great,” Neil said.

“You?”

“I’m fine.”

“Hmm. I don’t know why I asked. Bankes leaves us a G.I. Joe this time—dark hair, blue eyes, big muscles. A bullet hole in his chest.”

Neil glared at him. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned.

“Son,” Copeland said, and the address took Neil by surprise as much as the hand Copeland laid on his shoulder, “the game has changed. Bankes is targeting you now, and you’re walking around bent on a massacre with your heart all tied in knots. I don’t have any choice but to pull you out—”

Neil’s phone rang. He looked at it and knew. Copeland knew, too, and cursed.

“Did you find the gift I left you?” Bankes asked.

Neil ground his teeth. “We found her. And the doll. I see you’ve decided to take on a man for a change.”

“Just a little detour. And how fortunate that killing you will only heighten Beth’s suffering, too. I get the impression she’s grown rather fond of you. Tell me, Sheridan. When you’re driving inside her, does she make that wonderful little sound, from down in her gut, every time you strike her womb—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Copeland cursed beneath his breath, and Bankes scolded: “Now, now. Insulting me is no way to keep me on the line long enough for a trace. Didn’t they teach you that at Quantico?”

“Say what you wanna say.”

“I went to the mall to get you another gift since you liked the first one so much.”

Son of a bitch.

“Did you know what easy targets women are when they’re shopping? Especially when their kids are with them. They get distracted. It’s like taking candy from a baby…”

“You’re lying.” Neil’s gut clenched.

“So I have a woman and her daughter. They’ll be at the park, waiting for you.”

Jesus. Maybe he wasn’t lying. “What park?”

“Ellis Park. Look in a culvert on the south end. Six-thirty.”

“That’s two and a half hours from now. If you really have someone, I want them now.”

Bankes chuckled. “You know, my grandfather always said, ‘Want in one hand and spit in the other. See which one gets full first.’ ”

“Are they alive?”

“For now.”

“What are their names? Let me talk to the mother.”

“No. You’ll just have to take me at my word.”

Copeland waved his hand, pointing at his watch, reminding Neil—unnecessarily—to keep talking. Another few seconds and they might be able to pinpoint his location.