“Back off!” Spectre yelled.
“You don’t want her!”
“Back off or it ends here, with her brains all over the ground!”
Sam took a step back, then another. Though his gun was still raised, it was useless to him. In that instant, Nina’s gaze locked with his, and she saw more than fear, more than panic in his eyes. She saw despair.
“Nina,” he said. “Nina—”
It was her last glimpse of Sam before Spectre pulled her into Sam’s car. He slammed the door shut and threw the car in Reverse. Suddenly they were screeching backward down the ramp. She caught a fast-moving view of parked cars and concrete pillars, and then they crashed through the arm of the security gate.
Spectre spun the car around to face forward and hit the accelerator. They roared out of the driveway and onto the road.
Before she could recover her wits, the gun was back at her head. She looked at him, and saw a face that was frighteningly calm. The face of a man who knew he was in complete control.
“I have nothing to lose by killing you,” he said.
“Then why don’t you?” she whispered.
“I have plans. Plans that happen to include you.”
“What plans?”
He gave a low, amused laugh. “Let’s just say they involve Detective Navarro, his Bomb Squad and a rather large amount of dynamite. I like spectacular endings, don’t you?” He smiled at her.
That’s when she realized whom she was looking at. What she was looking at.
A monster.
Thirteen
Sam raced down the parking garage ramp, his legs pumping with desperate speed. He emerged from the building just in time to see his car, Spectre at the wheel, careening out of the driveway and taking off down the road.
I’ve lost her, he thought as the taillights winked into the night. My God. Nina…
He sprinted to the sidewalk and ran halfway down the block before he finally came to a stop. The taillights had vanished.
The car was gone.
He gave a shout of rage, of despair, and heard his voice echo in the darkness. Too late. He was too late.
A flash of light made him spin around. A pair of headlights had just rounded the corner. Another car was approaching—one he recognized.
“Gillis!” he shouted.
The car braked to a stop near the curb. Sam dashed to the passenger door and scrambled inside.
“Go. Go!” he barked.
A perplexed Gillis stared at him. “What?”
“Spectre’s got Nina! Move it!”
Gillis threw the car into gear. They screeched away from the curb. “Which way?”
“Left. Here!”
Gillis swerved around the corner.
Sam caught a glimpse of his own car, two blocks ahead, as it moved into an intersection and turned right.
“There!”
“I see it,” Gillis said, and made the same turn.
Spectre must have spotted them, too. A moment later he accelerated and shot through a red light. Cars skidded to a stop in the intersection.
As Gillis steered through the maze of vehicles and pressed his pursuit, Sam picked up the car phone and called for assistance from all available patrol cars. With a little help, they could have Spectre boxed in.
For now, they just had to keep him in sight.
“This guy’s a maniac,” Gillis muttered.
“Don’t lose her.”
“He’s gonna get us all killed. Look!”
Up ahead, Spectre swerved into the left lane, passed a car, and swerved back to the right just as a truck barreled down on him.
“Stay with them!” Sam ordered.
“I’m trying, I’m trying.” Gillis, too, swerved left to pass. Too much traffic was heading toward them; he swerved back.
Seconds were lost. Seconds that Spectre pushed to his advantage.
Gillis tried again, this time managing to scoot back into his lane before colliding head-on with an oncoming van.
Spectre was nowhere in sight.
“What the hell?” muttered Gillis.
They stared at the road, saw stray taillights here and there, but otherwise it was an empty street. They drove on, through intersection after intersection, scanning the side roads. With every block they passed, Sam’s panic swelled.
A half mile later, he was forced to accept the obvious. They had lost Spectre.
He had lost Nina.
Gillis was driving in grim silence now. Sam’s despair had rubbed off on him as well. Neither one said it, but both of them knew. Nina was as good as dead.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” murmured Gillis. “God, I’m sorry.”
Sam could only stare ahead, wordless, his view blurring in a haze of tears. Moments passed. An eternity.
Patrol cars reported in. No trace of the car. Or Spectre.
Finally, at midnight, Gillis pulled over and parked at the curb. Both men sat in silence.
Gillis said, “There’s still a chance.”
Sam dropped his head in his hands. A chance. Spectre could be fifty miles away by now. Or he could be right around the corner. What I would give for one, small chance….
His gaze fell and he focused on Gillis’s car phone.
One small chance.
He picked up the phone and dialed.
“Who’re you calling?” asked Gillis.
“Spectre.”
“What?”
“I’m calling my car phone.” He listened as it rang. Five, six times.
Spectre answered, his voice raised in a bizarre falsetto. “Hello, you have reached the Portland Bomb Squad. No one’s available to answer your call, as we seem to have misplaced our damn telephone.”
“This is Navarro,” growled Sam.
“Why, hello, Detective Navarro. How are you?”
“Is she all right?”
“Who?”
“Is she all right?”
“Ah, you must be referring to the young lady. Perhaps I’ll let her speak for herself.”
There was a pause. He heard muffled voices, some sort of scraping sound. A soft, distant whine. Then Nina’s voice came on, quiet, frightened. “Sam?”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. No, I’m fine.”
“Where are you? Where’s he taken you?”
“Oops,” cut in Spectre. “Forbidden topic, Detective. Afraid I must abort this phone call.”
“Wait. Wait!” cried Sam.
“Any parting words?”
“If you hurt her, Spectre—if anything happens to her—I swear I’ll kill you.”
“Is this a law enforcement officer I’m speaking to?”
“I mean it. I’ll kill you.”
“I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.”
“Spectre!”
He was answered by laughter, soft and mocking. And then, abruptly, the line went dead.
Frantically Sam redialed and got a busy signal. He hung up, counted to ten, and dialed once more.
Another busy signal. Spectre had taken the phone off the hook.
Sam slammed the receiver down. “She’s still alive.”
“Where are they?”
“She never got the chance to tell me.”
“It’s been an hour. They could be anywhere within a fifty-mile radius.”
“I know, I know.” Sam sat back, trying to think through his swirl of panic. During his years as a cop, he’d always managed to keep his head cool, his thoughts focused. But tonight, for the first time in his career, he felt paralyzed by fear. By the knowledge that, with every moment that passed, every moment he did nothing, Nina’s chances for survival faded.
“Why hasn’t he killed her?” murmured Gillis. “Why is she still alive?”
Sam looked at his partner. At least Gillis still had a functioning brain. And he was thinking. Puzzling over a question that should’ve been obvious to them both.
“He’s keeping her alive for a reason,” said Gillis.
“A trump c
ard. Insurance in case he’s trapped.”
“No, he’s already home free. Right now, she’s more of a liability than a help. Hostages slow you down. Complicate things. But he’s allowed her to live.”
So far, thought Sam with a wave of helpless rage. I’m losing it, losing my ability to think straight. Her life depends on me. I can’t afford to blow it.
He looked at the phone again, and a memory echoed in his head. Something he’d heard over the phone during that brief pause between hearing Spectre’s voice and Nina’s. That distant wail, rising and falling.
A siren.
He reached for the phone again and dialed 911.
“Emergency operator,” answered a voice.
“This is Detective Sam Navarro, Portland Police. I need a list of all emergency dispatches made in the last twenty minutes. Anywhere in the Portland-South Portland area.”
“Which vehicles, sir?”
“Everything. Ambulance, fire, police. All of them.”
There was a brief silence, then another voice came on the line. Sam had his notepad ready.
“This is the supervisor, Detective Navarro,” a woman said. “I’ve checked with the South Portland dispatcher. Combined, we’ve had three dispatches in the last twenty minutes. At 11:55, an ambulance was sent to 2203 Green Street in Portland. At 12:10, the police were dispatched to a burglar alarm at 751 Bickford Street in South Portland. And at 12:13, a squad car was called to the vicinity of Munjoy Hill for a report of some disturbance of the peace. There were no fire trucks dispatched during that period.”
“Okay, thanks.” Sam hung up and rifled through the glove compartment for a map. Quickly he circled the three dispatch locations.
“What now?” asked Gillis.
“I heard a siren over the phone, when I was talking to Spectre. Which means he had to be within hearing distance of some emergency vehicle. And these are the only three locations vehicles were dispatched to.”
Gillis glanced at the map and shook his head. “We’ve got dozens of city blocks covered there! From point of dispatch to destination.”
“But these are starting points.”
“Like a haystack’s a starting point.”
“It’s all we have to go on. Let’s start at Munjoy Hill.”
“This is crazy. The APB’s out on your car. We’ve got people looking for it already. We’d be running ourselves ragged trying to chase sirens.”
“Munjoy Hill, Gillis. Go.”
“You’re beat. I’m beat. We should go back to HQ and wait for things to develop.”
“You want me to drive? Then move the hell over.”
“Sam, are you hearing me?”
“Yes, damn you!” Sam shouted back in a sudden outburst of rage. Then, with a groan, he dropped his head in his hands. Quietly he said, “It’s my fault. My fault she’s going to die. They were right there in front of me. And I couldn’t think of any way to save her. Any way to keep her alive.”
Gillis gave a sigh of comprehension. “She means that much to you?”
“And Spectre knows it. Somehow he knows it. That’s why he’s keeping her alive. To torment me. Manipulate me. He has the winning hand and he’s using it.” He looked at Gillis. “We have to find her.”
“Right now, he has the advantage. He has someone who means a lot to you. And you’re the cop he seems to be focused on. The cop he wants to get back at.” He glanced down at his car phone. It was ringing.
He answered it. “Gillis here.” A moment later he hung up and started the car. “Jackman Avenue,” he said, pulling into the road. “It could be our break.”
“What’s on Jackman Avenue?”
“An apartment, unit 338-D. They just found a body there.”
Sam went very still. A sense of dread had clamped down on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. He asked, softly, “Whose body?”
“Marilyn Dukoff’s.”
* * *
HE WAS SINGING “Dixie!” as he worked, stringing out wire in multicolored lengths along the floor. Nina, hands and feet bound to a heavy chair, could only sit and watch helplessly. Next to Spectre was a toolbox, a soldering iron and two dozen dynamite sticks.
“In Dixieland where I was born, early on a frosty mornin’…”
Spectre finished laying out the wire and turned his attention to the dynamite. With green electrical tape, he neatly bundled the sticks together in groups of three and set the bundles in a cardboard box.
“In Dixieland we’ll make our stand, to live and die in Dixie. Away, away, away down south, in DIXIE!” he boomed out, and his voice echoed in the far reaches of the vast and empty warehouse. Then, turning to Nina, he dipped his head in a bow.
“You’re crazy,” whispered Nina.
“But what is madness? Who’s to say?” Spectre wound green tape around the last three dynamite sticks. Then he gazed at the bundles, admiring his work. “What’s that saying? ‘Don’t get mad, get even’? Well, I’m not mad, in any sense of the word. But I am going to get even.”
He picked up the box of dynamite and was carrying it toward Nina when he seemed to stumble. Nina’s heart almost stopped as the box of explosives tilted toward the floor. Toward her.
Spectre gave a loud gasp of horror just before he caught the box. To Nina’s astonishment, he suddenly burst out laughing. “Just an old joke,” he admitted. “But it never fails to get a reaction.”
He really was crazy, she thought, her heart thudding.
Carrying the box of dynamite, he moved about the warehouse, laying bundles of explosives at measured intervals around the perimeter. “It’s a shame, really,” he said, “to waste so much quality dynamite on one building. But I do want to leave a good impression. A lasting impression. And I’ve had quite enough of Sam Navarro and his nine lives. This should take care of any extra lives he still has.”
“You’re laying a trap.”
“You’re so clever.”
“Why? Why do you want to kill him?”
“Because.”
“He’s just a policeman doing his job.”
“Just a policeman?” Spectre turned to her, but his expression remained hidden in the shadows of the warehouse. “Navarro is more than that. He’s a challenge. My nemesis. To think, after all these years of success in cities like Boston and Miami, I should find my match in a small town like this. Not even Portland, Oregon, but Portland, Maine.” He gave a laugh of self-disgust. “It ends here, in this warehouse. Between Navarro and me.”
Spectre crossed toward her, carrying the final bundle of dynamite. He knelt beside the rocking chair where Nina sat with hands and ankles bound. “I saved the last blast for you, Miss Cormier,” he said. And he taped the bundle under Nina’s chair. “You won’t feel a thing,” he assured her. “It will happen so fast, why, the next thing you know, you’ll be sprouting angel’s wings. So will Navarro. If he gets his wings at all.”
“He’s not stupid. He’ll know you’ve set a trap.”
Spectre began stringing out more color-coded wire now, yards and yards of it. “Yes, it should be quite obvious this isn’t any run-of-the-mill bomb. All this wire, tangled up to confuse him. Circuitry that makes no sense…” He snipped a white wire, then a red one. With his soldering iron, he connected the ends. “And the time ticking away. Minutes, then seconds. Which is the detonator wire? Which wire should he cut? The wrong one, and it all goes up in smoke. The warehouse. You. And him—if he has nerve enough to see it to the end. It’s a hopeless dilemma, you see. He stays to disarm it and you could both die. He chickens out and runs, and you die, leaving him with guilt he’ll never forget. Either way, Sam Navarro suffers. And I win.”
“You can’t win.”
“Spare me the moralistic warnings. I have work to do. And not much time to do it.” He strung the wires out to the other dynamite bundles, crisscrossing colors, splicing ends to blasting caps.
Not much time to do it, he had said. How much time was he talking about?
She glanced down a
t the other items laid out on the floor. A digital timer. A radio transmitter. It was to be a timed device, she realized, the countdown triggered by that transmitter. Spectre would be safely out of the building when he armed the bomb. Out of harm’s way when it exploded.
Stay away, Sam, she thought. Please stay away. And live.
Spectre rose to his feet and glanced at his watch. “Another hour and I should be ready to make the call.” He looked at her and smiled. “Three in the morning, Miss Cormier. That seems as good an hour as any to die, don’t you think?”
* * *
THE WOMAN WAS NUDE from the waist down, her body crumpled on the wood floor. She had been shot once, in the head.
“The report came in at 10:45,” said Yeats from Homicide. “Tenant below us noticed bloodstains seeping across the ceiling and called the landlady. She opened the door, saw the body and called us. We found the victim’s ID in her purse. That’s why we called you.”
“Any witnesses? Anyone see anything, hear anything?” asked Gillis.
“No. He must’ve used a silencer. Then slipped out without being seen.”
Sam gazed around at the sparsely furnished room. The walls were bare, the closets half empty, and there were boxes of clothes on the floor—all signs that Marilyn Dukoff had not yet settled into this apartment.
Yeats confirmed it. “She moved in a day ago, under the name Marilyn Brown. Paid the deposit and first month’s rent in cash. That’s all the landlady could tell me.”
“She have any visitors?” asked Gillis.
“Next-door tenant heard a man’s voice in here yesterday. But never saw him.”
“Spectre,” said Sam. He focused once again on the body. The criminalists were already combing the room, dusting for prints, searching for evidence. They would find none, Sam already knew; Spectre would’ve seen to it.
There was no point hanging around here; they’d be better off trying to chase sirens. He turned to the door, then paused as he heard one of the detectives say, “Not much in the purse. Wallet, keys, a few bills—”
“What bills?” asked Sam.
“Electric, phone. Water. Look like they’re to the old apartment. The name Dukoff’s on them. Delivered to a P.O. box.”
“Let me see the phone bill.”
At his first glance at the bill, Sam almost uttered a groan of frustration. It was two sheets long and covered with long distance calls, most of them to Bangor numbers, a few to Massachusetts and Florida. It would take hours to track all those numbers down, and the chances were it would simply lead them to Marilyn Dukoff’s bewildered friends or family.