The Assailant (28 page)

“Excuse me?”

“At the hospital. I guess you clean up messes too.”

“I wouldn't call it that. I'm a surgeon.”

“Oh, well, you know what I mean. I wasn't trying to belittle what you do.”

“You haven't.”

“Does it wear you down?”

“Does what wear me down?”

“What you see. The grief, the sadness. You know, the pointlessness of it all.”

“No. I guess I don't see it as pointless. Lieutenant, I don't mean to be rude, but it is late.”

“Of course. Sorry. I guess I'm tired. Rambling.” Hastings stood up. “Well, I won't bother you any further.” He made eye contact with Sheffield, giving him his official, serious look. “You understand what I meant earlier?”

“What's that, Lieutenant?”

“That it would not be appropriate to discuss this interview with Dr. Zoller?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. You've made that clear.”

At the door, Hastings turned to him and said, “Oh, one more thing. There was another young lady at the Adam's Mark. An Asian woman named Rita. Do you remember her?”

“An Asian woman.”

“Yes. Rita Liu.” Hastings spelled out the last name.

“Another prostitute?”

“Yes.”

“No. I don't recall anything like that.”

“. . . Oh. Well, okay.”

“Is something the matter, Lieutenant?”

“Well, it's just that she said that you were speaking to her. But maybe that was a misunderstanding. Between us, I think she may be a bit unstable. You know how they can be.”

“Yes.”

“In any event, I wouldn't worry about it. Thank you again for your cooperation.”

Raymond Sheffield nodded and closed the door behind Hastings.

It took Raymond almost an hour to switch cars.

He had to drive the Mercedes out to his property where he kept the black Ford. His secret car to help maintain his other identity. He felt better when he was in the Ford. He felt hidden, submersed. He kept the car at the speed limit and was aware of other vehicles in traffic. He drove toward the city disguised. We're all strangers to each other, he thought. Bodies in motion, each of us unaware of the other. Or, the Other. He was an unknown specter. Unknown and unknowable.

Better yet, he felt in control again. Better than he had felt in a while. He had let the woman at the hospital rattle him. He had let her silly personal defects get in the way of his thinking. His projects. But then the policeman had come to his house and made him feel better. The policeman had cheered him up. The policeman had come and seen . . . nothing.

God, he had been right. It was genuinely not in them to understand.
We're not saying Dr. Zoller is a suspect, mind you
. . . Zoller?
Zoller?
As if that little toad of a man could pull it off. Zoller. It was hysterical. There's your distraction, Lieutenant Hastings. Let Dr. Zoller explain to his wife and second-rate children and second-rate clinic partners that he'd been schtupping a
whore. Oh, the scandal. Oh, the glory . . . Let Dr. Zoller explain where he had been after they found Rita Liu's body. Maybe it would be in the river. Maybe it would be in the woods.

Yes, it would work out for the best. There would be a certain symmetry to it.

He remembered seeing the little groundling at the hotel. Zoller hadn't paid her much heed. He obviously preferred the dressed-up little white-trash experience that Ashley could provide him. The great, esteemed Zoller had been a little loose with his tongue that night, telling Raymond that he used to prefer the black girls—sugar, he called them—but there was no beating a good white-trash fuck.

Fuck, Zoller had said. Using the
f
-word, the vulgar little man. Oh, Ted. Ted, Ted, Ted. Like to fuck the little white-trash whores, do we? Like the dirty little hayseeds? What a filthy little man. And now he was being investigated by the police. Oh such joys, such joys.

When Raymond had reached Rita Liu on the telephone, he'd had to give her a false name and promise her fifteen hundred dollars to get her to meet him at the hotel. But it hadn't been easy getting her to that point. At first, she'd wanted to know if they had met before. Raymond had said no, they hadn't, and then she'd wanted to know how he had gotten her home number. He had reminded her that she was in the phone book, and then she'd wanted to know, okay, how had he known her real name? She'd said that he was supposed to contact her through the agency.
Raymond had said that a physician friend of his had recommended her but that he was not comfortable revealing the doctor's name because the man had a wife and family. And by that time, he was sure that she knew he was talking about Zoller. And Raymond had persisted, pleading gently and kindly, and eventually she'd agreed to meet him at twelve thirty, but said that he'd have to be generous with his donation. She hadn't bothered to use the word
gentleman
. She had seemed in a bad mood when he called and not much better even after he'd talked her into it. Irritable and tired. But the money had brought her around. It was always money with these types.

Now he took the Kingshighway exit off the interstate. The light was yellow as he approached. Raymond stepped on the accelerator and made the left turn as the light turned red. He heard no horns in protest.

 

•

In Rita Liu's apartment at Lindell Towers, a handheld radio squawked.

Hastings answered it.

“George,” Klosterman said, “we lost him.”

“Where?”

“He got off I-64 at Kingshighway and drove through a red light. We were a few car lengths back from him and we got caught at the light. Murph was driving ahead of him—we were doing a front and back—but Murph drove past the exit. We didn't expect him to get off.”

“Kingshighway—why didn't he keep going downtown?”

“I don't know. He's still in the Ford.”

“Goddammit.”

“I'm sorry, George. What do you want us to do?”

“Go to the hotel. We'll see you there.” Hastings put the handheld down.

Rita Liu looked at him. She was still in her black cocktail dress. An overcoat on top. She was ready to go the hotel with Hastings. They had been preparing to leave.

She said, “What happened?”

“They lost him.”

“At the hotel? He's supposed to go to the hotel.”

“I know.”

“You know? You guys lost him. What about your plan?”

“Just cool it, will you?” Hastings said. “Come on, let's go.”

He walked her out of the apartment. They took the elevator. When the door opened in the lobby, Hastings looked out before letting Rita come out. No one there but the desk clerk. They walked out the front door.

Hastings had parked the Jaguar a block down from the apartment building. It was in a diagonal space in a row of cars separated from Lindell Boulevard by a small grass sitting area. He looked into the backseat of the Jaguar to make sure no one was there, and then he opened the passenger door for the girl. Put her in the car and came back around the back and that was when he saw a black car make a sudden hairpin turn, its headlights catching
him in their wide glare. The engine roaring as the car accelerated toward him.

Hastings ran forward, trying to draw the driver away from the Jaguar and the girl inside. The car changed direction with him, pointing at him as it hurtled forward. Hastings ran and jumped on top of the trunk of a Toyota and was about to jump off when the black Ford smashed into the next car and pushed it into the Toyota, and Hastings felt himself flying through the air and then heard more than felt the impact as he hit the next vehicle and slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Rita got out of the Jaguar and ran out to the street. She couldn't see George. She saw a black car piled into two other cars. Then Raymond Sheffield stepped out of it.

It was him. God, it was him. The man from the Adam's Mark Hotel and the hospital parking lot. A lunatic. He looked in between the wrecked vehicles, checking on George before he turned and looked at her.

“Come here,” he said.

Rita turned and ran.

“
I said come here!
”

Rita ran and she heard him come after her. Heard hard footsteps rapping on the street. She tried to run faster, but she was in high-heeled shoes and it was a balancing act. She poured it on to see if it would make it easier, and it did for a little while, but it still wasn't fast enough. This time she turned around to see the fucker coming after her. He was older and she was in shape, at least three times a week at the gym. She would've been faster than he, too, but not in fucking high heels. She gauged the distance and slowed and lifted a leg, and pulled off one shoe as he drew closer, and then she hopped and dropped the other shoe and he was even closer then, but not on top of her. She ran hard, picking up the pace, regaining bit by bit the distance she'd had on him before, but her feet were
coming down hard on the concrete. and then she was approaching another street, where there were only a couple of cars approaching. She slowed and waved her arms, but it did no good, one car driving past her and then the other, and now he was gaining on her.

He wasn't yelling at her anymore, not demanding that she stop, and somehow that made it worse, chasing her the way an animal would, the way a tiger or a panther would, with quiet, cold purpose. Chase her and catch her and pull her down and kill her. And she kept on running and she saw a bus up ahead and it gave her hope, the bus stopped, but then the bus disengaged its brakes and she heard that and the bus started moving ahead and then it was gone and she cried out, anguished, and she was at the enclosed bus stop, a bench with a plastic rain cover on it. No one was sitting there, no one. She looked through the clear Plexiglas and saw him coming, saw that he could see through the glass and see her and what was she doing standing there? What was she doing there waiting to die? And it was an effort for her to stand there as he continued running to the bus stand, coming to the far side of it and running an arc around it, and when he committed himself to the arc, she ran around the other way, back to the apartment building, thinking that if she could just get to the front door, smash her fists on the front door and the desk clerk would see her before the killer could fall on her, but now the distance between them was closer and she was running out of energy and her feet were hurting and she was coming back to the wrecked cars. She looked for George but couldn't see him. Where was he? Was he alive? Had he been
crushed between the cars? And who could say why she ran to him instead of the apartment building, she was tired, God so tired and she went to the place between the cars and there he was, on the ground, a stripe of blood running down his temple.

She crouched next to him, tried to lift his head and shoulders. “George, George . . .”

He would not wake up.

 

•

He had worried when he saw the bus. He had worried that she would be able to run in front of it, get the driver's attention. If that happened, the bus driver might stop, and then it would all be over. Unless the driver accidentally ran her over, and that wouldn't be too bad as long as it killed her, as long as it crushed the little whore. But then he realized that his worries were in vain because the bus pulled away before she even got close. And it was good because she had invested her energy in the bus, gambled on it, and it hadn't paid off, the bus driving away and leaving her alone.

But then she ran again, the stupid little tramp, but he felt even stronger as he went after her this time. She was faltering now as she ran back up Lindell, and now the fool was going back to the cop, as if he would be able to do anything for her.

Did she think she could hide with him, crouched between the two cars?

Raymond thought about what line he would use when he caught her. Give her a little something to think about in her final moments. Something like, “Time's up.”

He got to the corridor between the cars. Saw the girl crouched next to the dead cop.

Raymond smiled, as the girl looked up at him.

“Hey,” Raymond said and stopped.

The girl had a gun pointed up at him.

Raymond said, “What are you—”

And the girl shot him.

The first bullet struck him in the stomach and he grunted. The girl pulled the trigger again and put one in his chest. Then twice more as he went to the ground.

Rita saw the figure about seven feet away from her. A crumple of a man and the crumple made a stir and Rita fired the last bullet into his head and that was that.

For most of the night, the area was filled with police vehicles and ambulances. Local media was there as well, their lighting already set up for the earnest correspondents. Already they were reporting that the police had apprehended Springheel Jim, even though the department spokesman was telling them not to jump to conclusions.

Detectives Howard Rhodes and Tim Murphy kept reporters away from Rita Liu. She had given Hastings's gun to Sergeant Klosterman. She asked Klosterman if she could wait in her apartment and Klosterman told her that she could.

Hastings was on his back on a stretcher in an ambulance. Two paramedics working over him and Klosterman was sitting nearby. It was Klosterman who told Hastings what had happened when Hastings regained consciousness.

Hastings said, “He's dead?”

“Yeah. She used your gun.”

Hastings felt like a glass bottle had exploded in his head. He had to struggle to concentrate. He said, “But—how could he have walked into that? I mean, he must have known I'd have a weapon on me.”

“I guess he didn't think of it. Or, more likely, he didn't think
she'd be capable of it. Or maybe he thought she wouldn't reach it in time.”

“She used all five?”

“Yeah. The last one in the head.”