Cherry Bomb

CHAPTER 36

THE COP UNIFORM has gone from asset to liability. Showing off at the department store was a mistake, though an amusing one. Alex needs to ditch the Hyundai and the uniform, and find suitable replacements for both. She was planning to do it today anyway, but shooting a teenager in front of a dozen witnesses made it a little more pressing.

Clothing is the easier of the two. She finds a local mall, hits Neiman Marcus, and buys a Joan Vass striped tunic with matching beige boot-cut pants. The Ferragamo loafers are overpriced but cute, and that purchase leaves her with thirty dollars in cash. Not enough to even pay the taxes on a handbag, and they have a Marc Jacobs satchel that would go perfectly with the outfit.

Alex changes clothes in the mall restroom. The gun, holster, and accessory belt gets put into one of the Neiman Marcus bags. The pants from the police uniform get stuffed into the garbage. The shirt gets a nice long soak in the sink and then placed into the other Neiman bag-it’s plastic, so it won’t drip.

Then it’s time to do a different kind of shopping.

Alex leaves the mall and hangs out next to the exit doors, scanning the parking lot as if waiting for a ride. What she’s really waiting for is a single woman to come out. A single woman with some fashion sense.

It’s a nice neighborhood, with a nice mall, and it doesn’t take long for a chunky yuppie type with a four-hundred-dollar haircut and a Prada bag to stroll outside, one hand clutching some merchandise from Saks, the other fussing with the touch screen of her iPhone. Alex falls into step behind her.

Following her requires zero stealth-the woman is oblivious to everything but her electronic gadget. The parking lot is full. She stops twice to get her bearings, then eventually finds her car a row over from where she thought it was. Alex had been hoping for something sporty, maybe a BMW or a Lexus. Instead, the woman drives a white Prius.

Alex checks the parking lot, but there’s no one nearby, and she reaches inside her shopping bag for the wet shirt. She wraps it around the gun, covering her entire hand. The chubby woman keeps playing with her iPhone up until the moment Alex jams the barrel into the back of her neck and fires.

The gun is loud, but the shirt muffles it somewhat. Alex doesn’t stop to check if anyone is watching. She kneels down next to the body and opens up her new Prada bag.

Except it isn’t Prada. It’s a knockoff.

“Hell,” Alex says.

All that work for a Prius and fake Prada.

She finds the car keys, hits the unlock button on the remote, and horses the dead body into the cramped backseat, keeping low and out of sight of the cars circling the lot looking for spaces. On a whim, she checks the Saks bags. Vera Wang pajamas. They’re nice, but Alex doesn’t wear pajamas, and she certainly doesn’t wear a size fourteen. She arranges the pajamas and assorted bags over the body to cover it up, and locks the doors.

Another 360 check for witnesses. No one is paying attention to her.

Then Alex marches back into Neiman Marcus and buys the Marc Jacobs satchel. The cashier, a young blonde who probably went to a local community college and majored in giggles, asks Alex for an ID to match the dead woman’s credit card.

Alex leans in close.

“It burned in the crash, along with half my face. I haven’t gotten a new one yet, because I’m afraid to drive again. Would you like me to speak to your manager?”

Blondie declines. The fifteen-hundred-dollar charge goes through, and Alex heads back to the Prius. Once in the driver’s seat she transfers the contents of the fake purse to the real purse, and tosses the fake one onto the corpse.

“You died too young. Should have treated yourself and bought the real thing.”

Happily, there’s more than two hundred bucks in the woman’s wallet, along with half a pack of gum and a canister of pepper spray, which the woman should have been holding instead of her iPhone. Alex pops a stick of spearmint into her mouth and pulls out of the parking space. She heads back to the Hyundai, loads her previous purchases into the Prius, and drives until she finds a gas station.

She fills the five-gallon plastic canister she bought at the department store and retraces her steps.

Her previous stolen car blew up, and it’s unlikely they’ll link it to her. Plastic explosives do wonders for removing fingerprints.

Multiple witnesses saw her shoot the gangbanger, including the gangbanger, but it could take a few days before her name gets pulled into it. If ever. She left no evidence; the brass belonged to the cop and Alex wiped off the cart handle. There were security cameras, but Alex always keeps her head down in public places, a habit from before the disfigurement.

The Feds are no doubt looking for her. As is Jack, and all of Jack’s department. But they have no reason yet to think she’s in Iowa.

Unless they get lucky. Alex can’t discount that. Luck is how she got caught. Luck is how Jack got away last time. Which means it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.

If the authorities haven’t gotten lucky yet, there’s no reason to make it any easier for them.

Alex drives back to the Hyundai and double-parks behind it. All five gallons of gas get splashed around the interior. She considers tossing the body in there as well, but a homicide will get more attention than a vandalized car, so she lets her be for the moment.

The license plates are attached with nuts and bolts, and Alex removes them with the socket set she bought. She tosses the plates onto the body-something else to dispose of later-and lights up the car with a road flare. Then she climbs into the Prius and heads back to the Holiday Inn.

No squad cars in front. No men suspiciously lingering outside. Alex parks. The police band radio is attached to the cop’s utility belt, in one of the bags. Alex switches it on, finds the local dispatch frequency, listens to chatter. It’s all in code, which Alex doesn’t know, but she does hear some talk about the car bombing at the mall.

She turns it off and lugs everything back into the hotel. It’s with much amusement, and some disappointment, that she sees Alan is still tied to the bed. Unlike Lance, who butchered his wrists trying to get free, the duct tape securing Jack’s husband still looks freshly applied. The poor dear must have actually believed that BS about the motion sensor. Maybe that’s Jack’s secret to finding men: She picks the really gullible ones.

“Did you miss me?” Alex asks.

He mumbles something around the gag that sounds like bathroom. Alex shakes her head.

“You don’t want to go in there. Trust me. Single women can be sloppy.” She holds up her new satchel, posing with it. “Do you like my new bag? Marc Jacobs. It was a steal.”

His eyes are pained, tired. Alex sits next to him, gives him a gentle pat on the cheek. Then she examines the defibrillator. It has a battery pack and an AC cord. The back opens up, and Alex pulls out the battery. Since it isn’t plugged in, the unit goes dead. She flips one of the switches to manual override, then presses the big green button with a hotel pen and squeezes on enough superglue for it to stay in the on position. Theoretically, once she plugs it into the wall, it will shock Alan. And will probably keep shocking him, over and over.

The outlet timer has settings that are pretty self-explanatory. It’s made to turn on lights, or a coffee machine, or anything plugged into it, at a preset hour. Alex programs in the current time.

“How long should we give Jack to save you? Let’s make this one exciting. She’s probably in Wisconsin, but she’ll assume you’re still in Iowa, which gives her an advantage. It took me three hours to get here, but I was stopped by the police. Let’s give her two.”

Alex sets the gadget, allowing for extra time to run some necessary errands. When she calls Jack, the lieutenant will have 120 minutes before Alan gets a jump start.

She tapes an extra cell phone to the wall, switches on the camera, and checks her laptop to make sure the live feed is working. Then she uses her main cell phone to snap a picture of Alan. He looks suitably pathetic.

She gathers up her things, then plugs in the outlet timer and defibrillator.

“Thanks for the sex,” she tells Alan. “For what it’s worth, I won’t mind too much if Jack saves your life. And if you do live, I wouldn’t worry about the scars. I think they’ll heal up nicely.”

Before she leaves, Alex takes thirty seconds to jerry-rig the door latch. It’s a standard privacy lock; on the door, at eye level, is a brass knob on a plate. It fits into a U-shaped bar, which is attached to the jamb. When the bar is swung over the knob, the knob slides into the groove, preventing the door from being opened more than an inch or two.

Alex twists a screw eye into the door just behind the brass plate. She feeds the floss through the eyelet and ties it to the U-bar. She plays out a few feet of floss-enough to open the door-and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her. The floss is still in her hand, caught between the door and the jamb. Alex pulls the floss, taking up the slack until she hears a soft clink: the sound of the U-bar swinging over the knob.

She uses the key card, tries to open the door. The latch prevents it. Alex tugs on the floss, snapping it off at the knot, and then closes the door.

The lock isn’t really an effective deterrent, and won’t stop a determined criminal, or in this case a determined cop. But it will stop a maid.

Alex takes the Do Not Disturb sign off the knob, places it on a room across the hall, and heads down to her new Prius to do some hotel hopping.