The First Victim

CHAPTER 45

Stevie arrived at her apartment exhausted and afraid. Melissa had gone missing, Klein had been found dead, and the link between them was obvious, and worse, a link that Stevie herself had pursued despite warnings. She locked her apartment’s front door behind her and armed the security system. She drank Armagnac from a snifter, the bottle clutched under an arm, as she first locked and checked her bedroom door, then the door to the bathroom suite, before finally running bath water and undressing. The drink did nothing to quell the image of Klein’s body slumped in the chair. She could still feel the woman atop her in the mud, lukewarm and stiff, her own sense of helplessness trapped beneath it-not a person, not any longer. She had known this woman, she had spoken to her. It was no longer an image, but something warm and visceral.

She stayed in the tub for a long, long time, running the warm water continuously and allowing it to spill out the overflow drain. She scrubbed and soaked but never felt clean, the alcohol as warm inside her as the water on her skin. She refilled the snifter with slippery fingers hoping to purge her demons, but each time she closed her eyes she felt Klein on top of her. She caught herself wishing that she lived with somebody, wishing for a roommate or lover or husband, some companion to pamper or comfort her. Her aloneness caught up to her and caused an ache that nothing could reach, nothing could numb.

At last she dragged herself out and toweled off, surrounding herself in a sumptuous terrycloth robe, wondering why she allowed herself to feel so vulnerable and threatened. She let herself out of her sanctuary to where she had a commanding view of the Sound and the city’s night skyline. She could tell it was the weekend by the number of small boats out there. She longed to be tired, but this was not a night for granted wishes. She thought of all that shipping traffic coming and going, of all the thousands of containers en route from one place to another, the body bags hauled out of the recovered container, the families of the victims, the chain of events begun by that discovery. She wanted them all back; she didn’t give a damn about the power or impact of the story; she wanted Melissa safe and warm and sharing this view. She ached for her return. She cried about it, cried hard, finishing up the contents of the snifter and looking around for the bottle that she had left by the tub. She heard voices and wondered if they were in her head or far below on the street. She cried some more.

Feeling chilled, she checked to see if she’d left any windows open, walking around the darkened apartment in a state of shock and remorse. The night air that blew off the Sound was her favorite part of the apartment, though on this night she sought warmth. She found nothing open, except the front of the robe. She tied the robe shut, checked the lock on the balcony-something she never bothered to do, being she was the penthouse-and headed to bed.

She saw a shadow out there and jumped, only to realize it was one of her tropical plants in the sea breeze.

The walk back to the bedroom seemed to take too long and included a stop at the front door just to make sure. She wished she had something more than a keyed entry, dead bolt or not, but the building regulations specifically prohibited any such extravagance. (The building’s old-timers claimed this resulted from a lawsuit brought by the family of a man who had died of a heart attack. Though he had called 911, he had left his apartment door chained from the inside, delaying the response time of the emergency service.) The hallway to the master bedroom stretched impossibly long past a coat closet, a linen closet, a guest suite and a half bath. Never before had it seemed so far away. She locked her bedroom door, slipped out of the robe and into a pair of cotton pajamas. The pajamas held their own significance for her-she usually slept with no clothes on. She refilled the snifter and took it to bed with her, knowing she must be drunk, or close to it, but not feeling anything. This she also took as a signal because Armagnac typically flattened her. Afraid to make the room dark, she watched TV, surfing from one channel to the next, in what turned out to be an endless parade of commercials. In the black screen pulses and pauses between her switching channels she saw only Klein’s discolored face and swollen tongue. She saw death. Time seemed to be both moving slowly and running out at the same time. She caught her heart racing and thought maybe the booze was having some effect. She drank some more and decided it was not.

The phone became her enemy for it teased her, taunted her. Anyone she called would respond-she felt certain of it-from friends who lived nearby, to half the Seattle Police force; but she wouldn’t pick it up, she wouldn’t admit to her own fear, much less speak it to another. She could imagine the resulting laughter behind her back, the jokes that would circulate in the industry. There was no way she was going to subject herself to that. Boldt had given her his card-she could invent something she had remembered from Klein’s, she could drag him into a hopelessly long visit until his presence convinced her she was safe or the booze finally wore her down.

As it happened, she simply fell asleep, the television remote cupped in her hand, one of the independent stations airing a colorized film. She slept half sitting up, her neck bent awkwardly, her head arched as if falling. She slept with the snifter half empty and her mind half full, the bedside light ablaze, the television’s volume muted-for a string of ads during which she had passed out-a cotton blanket pulled up to her waist, the bedside clock counting the passing minutes. She slept half in, half out of consciousness, a deadly combination of visions of Klein and an alcohol-induced coma. The dreams, vivid and dangerous, leaving her only partially asleep and very much in the grips of an endless nightmare.

Held down by the wine, she awoke to the vague but distinctive rumble of the building’s elevator, believing it at first to be the growl of a ship’s horn, and wondering why either would awaken her. The clock: 3:20, a small light indicating A.M. She shook her head gently awake. Her penthouse was on a controlled floor; the elevator required an electronic key to access the floor, and only she and the building’s doorman or night watchman had access. Not even maintenance. But why would Edwardo, the night watchman, come up unannounced at this hour? It seemed inconceivable to her. Unexplainable.

The digital display switched to 3:21, and to her it was as if someone had winked at her. Slowly her mind came into focus, the sounds sharpening. It was just plain wrong: the wrong hour, the wrong floor-everything wrong. Her ears pricked, suddenly able to hear everything: the ventilation, the city hum, her own breathing, her heart pounding in her chest. She found herself out of bed and moving wraithlike across the floor, a specter of fluid pajama and flailing limb dimly lit by ambient light that slipped in through shuttered blinds.

Her fingers deftly turned and unlocked the dead bolt to the bedroom door, no thought to the added security this extra door provided. If that corridor had seemed long before, it seemed twice as long now, extending from her toward the front of the apartment like a tunnel. Her bare feet captured the raised nap of the carpet. She remembered fighting the decorator over this carpet-the station didn’t want to go the extra nine dollars a yard, but the decorator’s job was to please her. She scoffed at such notions-self-serving importance, the struggle for absolute control. What did any of it matter-the quality of the carpet included-as she hurried down the hallway fearing for her safety?

Other thoughts entered her head: the telephone, which was now an equal distance from her in either direction; the handgun, which resided in the drawer of her bedside table but which she had left the room without; her father; Melissa; Gwen Klein’s swollen tongue. A parade of thoughts and images that came down Main Street and walked right over her, trampled her, stealing her from her single-minded intention to determine what the hell was going on out in the hall.

And then she was the yo-yo at the bottom of the string, stuck between climbing back up that tether or lying down and giving in-in her case, giving up-for the next thing she heard was a key attempting to open her lock. The sound paralyzed her, froze her, claimed her, at first because it was so utterly impossible a notion than anyone should try to break into her apartment, and then, only fractions of a second later, from the realization and understanding that that was exactly what was going on. Mixed into her confusion, images of that swollen tongue flashed before her eyes, and she knew beyond a doubt what fate lay in store for her: rape, strangulation, the oven’s gas turned on high. It was the wrong story to pursue, a story that consumed anyone and everyone involved. She felt like shouting, ‘‘Okay, I quit!’’ as if she could stop the momentum that had brought this visitor to her door, but he wasn’t a decision maker, only the messenger.

What drove her feet toward that door, she did not know, only that she found herself immediately on the other side of this person’s efforts, separated by a two-inch-thick slab of wood. She dragged over a straightbacked-chair and wedged it under the doorknob as she’d seen done in films. It seemed so pathetically fragile, cocked at an angle like that.

Her eyes found the small security monitor, a five-inch TV screen that alternated shots between the entrance lobby, the inside of the elevator, and the hallway outside her door.

The lobby appeared empty. At two in the morning, Edwardo should have been at the desk, the only possible excuse a cigarette or bathroom break. Or was it him on the other side of the door? Did she dare call out? Was this some kind of a mix-up? Did he believe she was in trouble? Was he coming to help? Had she pressed the wrong button in setting the security device? Edwardo possessed the only other key to her elevator. It made sense, in the way any reasonable explanation satisfies panic. For that instant she felt relief-a mix-up was all. The tension that held her nearly paralyzed subsided. She could move again.

The next image that appeared on the small security monitor was of the empty elevator. This made sense as well. Edwardo had ridden the elevator up to her floor.

The scratching sound continued on the other side of the door, at which point her theory went all to hell. Edwardo knew which key to use.

The next video image showed the back of a man standing at her door. The man was big. He wore a hooded sweatshirt. It was not Edwardo.

The lock opened, the alarm sounded, and the chair buckled.

Stevie ran down the hallway. It stretched away from her, growing longer with each stride.

The station had run a piece on home security alarms. Stevie knew much more than she wanted to know about them. Average police response time was twenty to thirty minutes. First the alarm signaled the security company of a breach; then the security company telephoned the resident to check if it was a false alarm or to verify its authenticity; then the company dispatched its own security officers to the scene and, if needed, it was only then the police were summoned. In her case, because of the stalking, any breach was to be treated as a home invasion-the police were to be called immediately. This change reportedly would cut at least ten minutes off the response time. But that would hardly help her. The alarm was meant as a deterrent, something to send a low-life burglar running. It would do nothing to discourage a determined rapist or killer.

The hallway stretched on.

The chair creaked and made popping sounds as its joints gave way. Her feet would not carry her fast enough. The door at the end of the hall seemed to grow no bigger, to draw no closer-an unkind illusion born of panic.

When the chair broke and splintered it sounded like gunshots. She did not look back, did not waste a single movement until she made it through that door and turned to slam it and to lock it. She looked back. He was a big son-of-a-bitch, the sweatshirt hood obscuring his face; he ran like a water buffalo, head down and charging. She bumped the door shut and pushed the button locking it.

As he hit the door running, the entire frame, jamb and all, popped out of the wall as the plasterboard cracked, giving way. Stevie dove for the bedside phone, trying for the gun in the drawer at the same time she attempted to dial 911. The phone was dead. She squeezed off a round; it went through the ceiling above the door. Another. It shot out her TV screen, eight feet from the door where she thought she had aimed.

She heard another shot-this one from the far side of the door- and threw her gun down instinctively, tossing it away as if it did not belong to her. She looked at it then and, wondering what the hell she was doing, fell to her knees and lunged for it.

From the other side of the door came sounds of a fight.

Stevie huddled by the door, one hand on the weapon, the other preparing to unlock the bedroom door, driven by an innate curiosity and an instinct that she was needed. When she heard one of the plate-glass windows break, she turned the doorknob. Someone was out there defending her. The button popped out. The sounds of breaking furniture and the dull wet slap of flesh grew louder and more easily distinguished.

The alarm deafening, she hurried down the hallway, the gun extended.

The big man with the hood crawled across the carpet in an attempt to reach the apartment’s open door. Blood ran from his nose and marked his progress along the carpet.

Another man, tall and lean, struggled across the carpet and delivered what was left of her six-thousand-dollar Hondel lamp over the back of the first man’s head. The victim erupted, turning and kicking this other man in the face, throwing him off to the side and stealing the lamp himself. But his target rolled and kicked sharply, catching the man in the shoulder.

She saw the blue glint of steel-a gun on the kitchen floor-and this inspired her to aim her own gun overhead and pull the trigger. The blast shot a hole through the ceiling and rained down grains of sheetrock, briefly winning the attention of the two. In that millisecond, the hooded man lunged for the other, caught him by the jacket, stood and put him between Stevie and himself. Then he spun the man, threw him across the living room and ran for the apartment door-all before Stevie understood any of what was happening.

The thrown man struck yet another plate-glass window and it shattered, the sound deafening. He staggered and collapsed into the debris out on the balcony. The intruder fled out the door, so fast as to be only a blur of size and color.

Stevie stood there, the gun gripped in both hands, trembling- bone-numbing cold. She took two steps to her right, aimed at the alarm’s ceiling siren from just a few feet below and shot it out, silencing the room. Not knowing herself.

In the resulting stillness she heard the fire door at the end of the hallway thump shut, the heavy winded breathing of the stranger who had gone out the plate-glass window, the panic of blood pounding in her ears. Not a single siren anywhere to be heard.

‘‘Who are you?’’ she asked, keeping the gun in front of her defensively, stepping forward but stopping short of the broken glass. ‘‘I’ll shoot,’’ she warned.

‘‘You’ll miss. .’’ he groaned. The man raised his head. It was John LaMoia.