The Prettiest One: A Thriller (40 page)

Caitlin squeezed Josh’s hand. “That’s the gun I brought home the other night,” she said.

Bookerman said, “Who the hell are you?”

Caitlin said nothing.

“Is that my gun?”

“Found it on a table near the front door,” Caitlin said.

Bookerman took a step toward her and Caitlin fired a bullet past him.

“Holy shit, are you crazy?”

“Maybe. But I’m not a great shot. It was lucky I didn’t put that right through you. Take another step and you may not be so lucky.”

Listening to her voice on the TV, Caitlin barely recognized it. It was strong and clear, but that wasn’t what made it seem different to her. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was; it was just . . . different, almost like that of a tough TV cop.

“I’ll ask you again,” Bookerman said. “Who the hell are you?”

Again, Caitlin said nothing.

“All right, then, what do you want?” he asked.

“Let her go.”

He looked at the naked woman handcuffed to his sofa.

“No. Shoot me.”

Caitlin seemed to be considering it. Instead, she took a cell phone out of her back pocket.

“I’m calling the police.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Why not?”

“Because you would have already done it if you were going to. I know who you are now.”

“Yeah? Who am I?” Caitlin asked.

“You’re the girl from the warehouse tonight. You’re the reason everything went to shit. Why the hell were you there, anyway?”

After a hesitation, Caitlin said, “I followed you from the fight club.”

“Why? Who am I to you?”

“You’re nobody.”

After a moment, he said, “All right, then who are
you
?”

“The one holding the gun. So you’re saying
I’m
the reason things happened the way they did at the warehouse. It was
my
fault?”

“Sure,” Bookerman said. “I got shot because of you. You were hiding and watching and you made a noise. When I turned, that scumbag pulled a piece and shot me.”

“You already had a gun on him,” Caitlin said. “You were going to kill him.”

“Yeah, but if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten shot, too.”

“Why were you going to kill him?”

“Because he tried to sell me fake hands. Fake hands, for Christ’s sake.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you care? And anyway, you were there.”

Without warning, Caitlin fired another bullet past him.

“Jesus Christ! Stop that.”

“Answer my questions, then. Why were you going to kill that guy?”

“Okay. No more shooting, all right? Shit. So the guy comes from out of town. Martin says he knows him or his family or something. He tells Martin that he has a crate of stolen smartphones to sell. Martin brings him to the warehouse and he doesn’t have any goddamn smartphones. Says he had them but found a higher bidder this morning. But he wants to sell us what he’s got, which is—now get this—a bag of fake hands.”

“Fake hands?”

“Seriously. Fake human hands. Says they’re robotic or something. He read online that they can sell for ten thousand bucks each, maybe more. He had six in his bag. Why the hell he had them in a bag and not in whatever boxes they probably came in is beyond me. Anyway, he says that’s at least sixty grand, but he’s willing to give them to us for the five grand we were gonna pay him for the phones.”

“So you decided to kill him?”

“Smartphones I can sell. What the hell am I gonna do with fake hands? Got the bag right over there.” He nodded his head toward a black canvas bag on a table near the sofa. “No idea what I can do with the things. I’ll probably just dump them. Anyway, the idiot tried to put one over on me. Of course I was gonna kill him. Wouldn’t have mattered. He was from out of town, didn’t know anybody here except other lowlifes like him and me, and people like us, we don’t care if one of us disappears. Nobody would miss him. Then you made noise or something from wherever you were hiding and watching, I turned, and the sonofabitch pulled a gun and shot me in the shoulder, goddamn it. So, shit yeah, I shot him.”

Caitlin heard those words and felt relief that, at the very least, she wasn’t a double murderer. She hadn’t killed the guy at the warehouse, after all. She’d only witnessed his murder.

“What I want to know is,” Bookerman said, “where the hell you went. Me and Martin split up and covered a lot of ground pretty quick, but you must have been
flying
, girl. I probably got a bit cocky,” he added with a grin, “wasting time yelling about all the things we were gonna do to you when we caught you.” He shook his head.

“My God, Caitlin,” Josh said. “That must have been terrifying for you.”

“Sure sounds like it,” she replied, relieved that she didn’t remember it. It did indeed sound frightening.

“But you disappeared into thin air,” Bookerman said, “and now, somehow, you found me here.” He seemed truly impressed. “You must have waited us out while we were looking for you, then followed me here, but I can’t figure where you were. We looked everywhere.”

Caitlin shook her head. “I was in your trunk. When I ran outside, I saw your car, so I popped the trunk, climbed in, and held the lid closed until you got in and drove home.”

“Seriously? You’ve got balls, girl.”

“I didn’t want to lose you. Plus, I figured you wouldn’t look in your trunk when you left.”

Caitlin sensed Josh and Bix looking at her and not at the screen.

“My God, Caitlin,” Josh said.

“Bookerman’s right, Katie,” Bix said. “That took balls.”

Caitlin kept her eyes on the screen.

Bookerman was shaking his head. “I gotta hand it to you. You’re something else. I actually drove around a bit looking for you, then my arm started hurting and I figured I’d leave the rest of the looking to Martin so I could get home and clean this bullet wound.”

He looked down at the superficial wound on his shoulder. “Yeah,” Bookerman added, “you’re crazy but brave. Not too smart, though.”

He took another step toward Caitlin and she raised the gun. Bookerman stopped.

“So now what?” Bookerman asked. “You followed me to the warehouse for some reason. You working with that cheating scumbag I killed? Were you two planning on double-crossing us?” He paused for a moment. “Hey, maybe it wasn’t me you followed from the fight club. Maybe you followed Martin’s car and were there when he picked up the idiot with the goddamn fake hands, then followed them to the warehouse. Is that it? Who is he, your boyfriend?”

“I’m not working with anyone. And I followed you, not the other guy.”

“And so you came here to what? Shoot me? You didn’t even bring a gun of your own.”

After a pause, Caitlin said, “I’m not actually sure why I followed you here. But when I looked in your window, I saw her,” she said, nodding to the naked woman. “And I saw the gun on the table, so
. . .”

“You’re not sure why you followed me?” Bookerman seemed confused by that.

Caitlin shrugged. “Not really. I’m not sure why I followed you here tonight. Or even why I’ve been looking for you at all. But when I saw you a couple of weeks ago
. . .”

Caitlin trailed off. She looked uncertain about what to do. She had the gun in one hand and her phone in the other. While she seemed to be debating her next move, Bookerman snapped his fingers. “Holy shit,” he said. “It’s you. How the hell
. . .
?” He sounded even more perplexed than before. “Different hair, so it took me a minute, but it’s the same face. It’s really you. The one that got away. The prettiest one. That’s what he used to call you, you know. My father went on about you all the time. From behind bars
. . .
all those years, he never forgot you. And I
had
you, goddamn it, I actually
had
you for a little while. But I lost you, you slippery little bitch. That was a hell of a bump you gave me.” He pointed to his head, just above his hairline. “I should have remembered I kept a tire iron on the floor. I was only out for a few seconds, but you’d already taken my car.”

He shook his head. “I looked for you ever since March, and then you show up here all on your own. Unbelievable.” He chuckled. “I don’t know how the hell you found me,” he said, no longer chuckling, “but I guess you want your revenge, huh?”

“I want to know what happened next,” she said.

“What?”

“Tell me what happened after I took your car.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I have a gun, that’s why.”

He shrugged. “After you got away, I figured you’d go right to the cops, so I stole someone else’s car and took off. I would have gone back and taken yours, but I didn’t know if anyone had seen us.”

He paused again.

Caitlin raised the gun an inch. Bookerman shrugged again and said, “I drove like hell back here and planned to split, right? Pack a few things and take off. But then they started saying on the news that you disappeared. They found your car but not you. So I realized you didn’t go to the cops after all. Who the hell knew why, but you didn’t. So I kept my eye on the news for a while, and the days went by, and you were just
. . .
gone. You went missing. Weird. So I had to forget about you
. . .
but I couldn’t.” He smiled. “I didn’t. But after all that, it’s
you
who finds
me.
”

Caitlin looked lost in thought. Bookerman moved a little closer.

“So why didn’t you go to the cops?” he asked.

Caitlin looked up. “Why did you grab me?”

“You don’t know?”

A step closer. Caitlin didn’t seem to notice. She looked caught up in the story.

“Because you’re the one that got away. The prettiest one.”

He took two sudden steps toward her and she quickly raised the gun, which had lowered an inch or two. She pointed it at his midsection. Bookerman, just three feet from her now, hesitated. Caitlin watched him. Something changed in her face then. Bookerman made a quick move and Caitlin pulled the trigger. The woman on the sofa bed screamed. Bookerman staggered back, holding his stomach.

“Holy shit,” he said as he fell out of frame.

Caitlin watched herself on the TV screen, watched herself shoot a man dead. A horrible man who did horrible things to women. A man who had stalked Caitlin and even tried to abduct her. And she had killed him. She wished she hadn’t, but she’d had to do it, right? He’d been about to rush her . . . hadn’t he?

On the screen, Caitlin let the gun hang at her side. She stared down for a few moments at the body that lay on the floor below the camera’s line of sight. Something changed in her face. Her features went
. . .
slack. Her eyes, which had been hard just moments ago when she had stared down Mike Bookerman, looked empty now, as though awareness had leaked out of them through tiny cracks. Almost mechanically, she turned her head toward the naked woman handcuffed to the bed frame, then her eyes roamed slowly around the room for a moment before settling on the table in the foreground. She walked across the room, giving the body a wide berth, and picked up something small from the table and tossed it toward the woman. It jingled when it hit the mattress. The handcuff key on a metal ring.

Caitlin walked around the body again. Seemingly without thinking, she dropped the gun into the black canvas bag on the table by the sofa; grabbed the bag by its straps; and, without a backward glance, walked slowly out of the room. A moment later, a door opened and closed offscreen.

Josh crossed to the TV and turned it off. He shut off the camera, too; disconnected its cable and cord; and stuffed it all back into its box. Caitlin watched him, unsure how to feel. Now she knew. They all did. Josh sat beside her again and took her hand. Bix had never let go of her other one.

“You rode to Bookerman’s house in his trunk, right?” Bix said. Without waiting for a response, he said, “You left your car at the warehouse. Did you walk back to your car?”

Caitlin shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess.”

“That’s almost three miles.”

That explained why Caitlin’s feet had been so tired when she got there.

“You okay, hon?” Josh asked.

“You had to do it, Katie,” Bix said.

“Did I?” she asked. She wasn’t being argumentative. She genuinely wondered.

“He was making his move on you,” Bix said.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I mean, maybe it looked that way. He definitely moved. But maybe he was trying to raise his hands. Maybe he was going to back away from me.”

Bix shook his head. “He was going for you. No doubt. Right, Josh?”

Josh didn’t hesitate. “He was, Caitlin. You saw it. We all did.”

Caitlin wondered how a jury was going to see it. They would probably be sympathetic. The man was heinous, and the fact that he was stalking Caitlin, and had even admitted to trying to abduct her, would certainly play in her favor. But a prosecutor would argue that instead of going to the police, Caitlin had gone to see Bookerman. And instead of calling the police when she had the phone in one of her hands, she shot him with the gun she had in her other.

“I’m tired,” Caitlin said. “You guys must be, too.” She stood. “Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow’s probably going to be a long day.”

Bix walked to the door and opened it. Then he turned and looked back at her. “This may not make you feel any better, Katie, but this world is a far better place without Mike Bookerman walking around in it.” Then he closed the door behind him.