The Hollow Girl (27 page)

My cell buzzed in my pocket. I reached for it and was about to pull it up to my ear and answer when something told me not to do it. I looked to my right and saw the Nassau County cop eyeballing me. New York is a hands-free only state and if I had gotten the phone closer to my ear, I would have been screwed. As it was, the cop was sneering and shaking his head at me. I shrugged and waved sorry to him. He was unimpressed. When the light turned green, he was still shaking his head.

The three of us continued our little group dance as we passed the Broadway Mall. Finally, at the split between Routes 106 and 107, the cop veered off to the right for 106 and the black 300C stayed left with me on 107. Then, suddenly, the Chrysler jerked hard right to follow the cop. I yanked my rental’s wheel harder right and cut off an oil truck that locked up his brakes and blasted his air horn at me. Then, just as I made it over to 106 where I could follow the Chrysler, he jerked his wheel hard left and got back on 107. This guy was either very, very good, or very, very bad. He was certainly unconventional. I wasn’t sure if he had made me or if he had done the zigzag as a precaution.

I didn’t bother trying to match him. Instead, I continued southwest, keeping an eye on him as I went. At the next opportunity, I made a left, then a right, and fell in a hundred yards or so behind the 300C. He stayed in the right lane and began adding speed. He didn’t floor it, just accelerated at a steady rate until he hit fifty. I didn’t know what he was up to or where he was headed, so I maintained the distance between us, trying to hide myself in traffic. We were deep in the heart of Little India now, an area of Hicksville that was packed with Indian restaurants and grocery stores. We kept this up for about another half minute. Suddenly, he accelerated around a car to his left, swung into the turning lane, and made a sharp U-turn in the opposite direction. Fuck, I thought, he’d made me.

I decided that I’d had enough of this cat-and-mouse shit, so I floored the Impala, weaving my way left as I went. A block past where the Chrysler had smoked his rear wheels making the U-turn, I made a similar turn. He must have thought he’d shaken me, because he had slowed to fifty again. Not me. Once I’d gotten the Impala oriented in the Chrysler’s direction, I nailed the gas. I caught up to the 300C at Rave Street, swung left around him at Townsend Lane, and cut him off in front of an Indian restaurant, nail salon, and pizzeria. He pulled close to the curb, slammed on his brakes, and barely missed T-boning the Impala that I wedged in front of him. I jumped out of the car, .38 in my hand, but showing it only to the guy behind the wheel of the black Chrysler and not to passing traffic. I guess I sort of showed him my old badge, too. I put the badge away, not the .38.

“Out of the car, motherfucker. Out of the car, now!”

He did as he was told. Almost as soon as he got out of the car, I knew something was wrong.

First thing I noticed was that his arms were shaking and his lips were trembling. He was trying to speak but fear had robbed him of his voice. Second thing I noticed was the white press credential with his photo on it that hung around his neck on an orange lanyard. His name was Ian Kern. I holstered my .38 before I made an even bigger ass of myself.

“Relax, Ian. Relax. Nobody’s getting in any trouble. Just take it easy. Deep breaths.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was that zigging and zagging all about, and that U-turn? You could’ve gotten somebody killed,” I said, as if I hadn’t just done far worse.

“I was lost. I don’t know my way around here. I’m from Michigan and I live in Williamsburg. My boss sent me to get Indian food for the crew from this place.” He pointed at the big red and white sign on the restaurant. “My boss says it’s the best Indian food on Long Island.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“Bob Mark. He’s a producer at IENN, Independent Entertainment News Network. That’s his car,” Ian said, pointing at the Chrysler.

“What’s with the Utah plates?”

“He has a ski—Hey, I recognize you. You’re the guy who drove Nancy Lustig into her house this morning.”

“My name’s Moe Prager. I’m an old friend of Nancy’s. I’m also an ex-cop and a private investigator. So let’s keep each other’s secrets, okay? I won’t tell your boss you got lost and nearly caused a traffic accident trying to find a fucking restaurant, and you won’t tell anyone I nearly shot you.”

“Hardly seems fair,” he said.

“How would you like an exclusive interview with the Hollow Girl’s mom?”

His eyes got big and he smiled as if he’d just won the lottery. In a way, I guess he had. It seemed a long time ago that he was shaking and unable to speak.

“Are you kidding me? Fuck, yeah.”

I handed him my card. “Listen, give me a few days. Things are still a little too crazy now and she won’t do it. But you give me some time and I guarantee it.” His brown eyes were understandably skeptical and I could see him weighing his options. I decided to help him make a choice. “Look, kid, it’s worth the gamble. You think the cops are gonna give a shit about me pulling my gun on you? I’ll just say you were driving erratically and dangerously and I felt compelled to stop you. Besides, I’m an ex-cop and I got friends. Trust me, and all you got is upside. C’mon, kid, think it—” I stopped myself. My phone was once again buzzing. When I saw it was Brian Doyle, I said, “Excuse me, Ian, I gotta take this.” I picked up. “Yeah ….”

“It’s not the black Chrysler,” he shouted in my ear. “That car is registered to Robert Mark. He’s a producer at Independent—”

“Entertainment Network News. I know. What else?”

“Just when I was finished snapping shots once you took off after the Chrysler, another car pulled out. A blue 2013 Toyota Camry with New York tags. I called you about it, but you didn’t pick up.”

“Long story. What about the Camry?”

“It’s a rental.”

“So?”

“You ain’t gonna like this, Boss.”

I lost it. “Just tell me what the fuck you gotta tell me.”

“The name on the rental agreement is Siobhan Bracken.”

That knot in my gut tightened again. I hung up the phone and slowly turned back to Ian Kern. As I did, I scanned for the blue Camry.

“Everything okay, Mr. Prager?” Kern asked, sensing something was up.

“Fine,” I lied. “Go get your food. I got work to do, but I give you my word about the interview. You have a card, Ian?”

He dug one out of a black plastic case in his jacket pocket. “Here.”

“Okay, thanks. Go on.”

The kid must have had a good nose for trouble because he hesitated before starting for the restaurant. As he finally walked away, I pretended to stretch my muscles and scanned some more. It was only when I turned back to the Impala that I spotted the blue Camry.
Shit!
I’d been made. I’d gotten caught in my own trap. The Camry was parked a third of a block north of where I’d cut off the kid. There didn’t seem to be anyone behind the wheel. No one was standing near the car. My eyes darted to the right. I saw a blur of a man and that’s when the world jerked and tilted slightly to the left.

I saw the smoke, heard the wind-muted bang. It seemed that at the very instant I was hearing the bang, a crease appeared in the roof of the gray Honda Accord parked in front of the Impala. Another bang. Then a hole appeared in the Honda’s windshield, its driver’s side window shattered. Another bang. Something whistled by my right ear. I threw myself to the ground. I went down so hard, it knocked the wind out of me. I was gasping for air as I sidled under the Impala. Another bang. Another and another. To my left, the pavement spit out sparks where the bullets hit and skimmed like stones off the water. More sparks. Something exploded—a tire. Brakes screeched. Tires squealed past me. A car hit the low center divider and came to rest. My breath came back to me. The world jerked again, leveling to the right.

When I got out from under the Impala and stood up, I saw that a white Mercedes sedan had come to rest across both northbound lanes, blocking traffic. Its front right tire was shredded. The driver, a guy in his fifties, was cursing up a storm as he got out of the car. The blue Camry was disappearing around a corner when I turned to look. The time for me to be gone had come as well. I didn’t need to spend another second more with the cops than I had the night before, and I wasn’t in the mood to make any more deals with Ian. I’d already made too many promises that I wasn’t sure I could keep.

One thing was finally for sure: Siobhan Bracken was in trouble. I got Bursaw on the phone, not that he was thrilled to hear from me after the previous night’s misadventure. He was downright cynical about my certainty this time.

“Yeah, Moe, that’s what you said last night.”

“No one was shooting at me last night.”

“Shooting at you? Where?”

“Broadway in Hicksville.”

“Broadway in Hicksville in the middle of the day? Get the fuck outta here!”

“I don’t have time to argue with you now,” I said. “You keep your eyes and ears open. You’ll be getting a report of shots fired soon enough. When you hear the report, call me and we’ll talk then.”

I raced back to Nancy’s house and waited for her to return from her tennis game. Brian Doyle was there. I told him what had happened. He understood the implications immediately.

“He’ll be nervous now that he missed killing you. Maybe he’s gonna have to speed up his clock. That can’t be so good for this Siobhan chick.”

“I know, Brian. I know. But his shooting at me tells us something else.”

“What’s that, Boss?”

“He’s an amateur. What I mean to say is that he has killed, but he’s not who you would describe as a killer. If this is the same guy who killed the doorman, Rizzo—and I think it is the same guy—it says something. He tried to kill me for the same reason he killed Rizzo. It’s the same reason he’s been playing these stupid phone messages. He’s trying to buy time.”

Doyle asked, “For what? He’s basically holding all the cards. He’s got the girl, doesn’t he? Why don’t he just kill her, be done with it, and split?”

“Because it’s not enough for him to just kill her. He wants to punish her and her parents first, and he wants us to know why. He wants us to watch it. There’s a price to be paid. To just kill her without an audience would cheapen it, I think. This isn’t something he thought of on the spur of the moment. No, Brian, he’s been thinking about this, brooding over it for a long time. Believe me, I know the type. The guy who killed Katy, he was the same. He wanted her to suffer, and me to watch her suffer, and he wanted me to know why.

“This guy has a timetable, one he feels he has to stick to no matter what, even if it means killing people who get in the way. That’s why I don’t think he means to escape. Escaping isn’t as important as following through. This took a lot of planning. The thing I have to figure out is why now? Why not last March or next February? What set him off? Once I figure out why he chose now to act, I’ll be able to figure out who. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure this has to be connected to the Hollow Girl’s old posts. Get back to your office and tell Devo to drop everything else except the fallout from the Hollow Girl’s suicide post. It’s got to be that. I’ll pay you guys whatever it takes, but do it.”

Brian Doyle didn’t exactly hop to. “Boss, could you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Help me over the back wall. I wasn’t kiddin’ about the fall I took before.”

We found a ladder in the shed that made Doyle’s return climb less traumatic. When I got back inside, my phone was at it again. It was Bursaw. The report had come in. At first the guy who owned the gray Accord couldn’t figure out what had happened to the car’s roof, his windshield and side window. But when a cop pulled up to see what the deal was with the Mercedes in the middle of the road, the owner of the Accord waved him over.

“Shit, Moe, this guy’s serious. The initial report is he must’ve fired six or seven rounds at you.”

“Then I’m lucky he can’t shoot for shit.”

Detective Bursaw could taste a promotion. “What do you want me to do?”

“For now, sit tight. I haven’t told the mother yet.”

“That time’s pretty much come, don’t you think?”

Just then I saw Nancy coming into the house. “Just sit tight for now, Mike. Gotta go.”

Nancy walked in, looking as finely put together as always. And it was getting so that just the smell of her knocked me a bit off balance. The tennis seemed to have done her some good, but one look at me undid all that and then some. I was going to beg her for one more day without getting the cops involved and I wasn’t sure she would give it to me. If I had been her, I wouldn’t have. I told her all the things I’d told Doyle about the guy who had Siobhan having a timetable and needing to play this out at his own pace.

“You’re contradicting yourself, Moe,” she said, her face a map of worry. “First you say he has killed in order to keep on a certain schedule to hurt Sloane, and that he won’t kill her until he’s ready to. But in the next breath you say getting the cops involved might cause him to kill her. I don’t understand.”

“I know, Nancy. I know. And I know it’s a lot to ask you to risk your daughter’s life on a feeling I have about a stranger who just tried to kill me.”

“You’re asking me more than a lot. You’re asking me for everything.”

“He killed Rizzo and tried to kill me to buy time. That’s what those stupid phone messages are about, too, and the disclaimers. All to buy time. It seems to me his only goal is to publicly punish and humiliate your daughter before finally killing her. He wants to tell us why, but he’s not ready to. I think that’s almost as important to him as the act of killing Sloane. That’s what the framed photograph at the Hollow Girl’s feet is all about. I’m sure of it. That girl or woman in that photo is the reason. But if we call in the cavalry now and there’s some massive manhunt, he might feel forced to make a choice between killing Sloane according to his schedule, or killing Sloane before he gets caught. I’m afraid if it comes to that, he’ll—”

“God, Moe, stop. I don’t want to hear you say it again. Give me something more than all this conjecture.”