Chapter 21
THE OUTNUMBERED FBI AGENTS HAD BEEN CONTAINED on the floor below, and Lieutenant Coffey stood outside the door to Ian Zachary's studio. He had lost his satisfied smile. According to Mallory, there was a lethal weapon in play, and the game plan had radically changed. The narrow corridor was crowded with police, and yet the only sound was the tap of Mallory's foot.
Special Crimes Unit had never used the lower ranks for cannon fodder, and so they waited for a uniformed officer to fetch two bulletproof vests, one for the lieutenant and one for his detective. With a wave of his hand, Jack Coffey motioned the remaining uniforms to move back down the hall. The metal studio door was thick enough to offer protection from a.45-caliber bullet, but the surrounding wall might not. Prescient Mallory had known that this arrest would not go down nicely. She had brought her own drill to the party, and she handled it like a gun. In her other hand was a wiring diagram of the electronic door lock.
Coffey stared at the power tool. "You're sure you can't electrocute yourself with that thing?"
"No electricity," she said. "The lock has its own circuit breaker." Her voice was testy. She obviously resented having to play this out by the book and respond to silly questions. "The body armor should have been here by now."
"Maybe we shouldn't bore out the studio lock." Ian Zachary's door could only be opened from an interior control panel. The doors to the booths had locks made to open with keys, but they had both been fused shut with a glue that had hardened to the temperance of steel. The studio door was Mallory's own preference for the first strike. The lieutenant was not yet convinced. "Zachary might not hear the drill if we go through one of these side doors. They've both got windows on the studio."
"And the glass is four inches thick, unbreakable." Mallory looked up from her reading to glance at the ruined lock on one of the flanking doors. "You know why those locks are glued shut. One of them doesn't want any witnesses – probably Dr. Apollo. We can't wait for the body armor."
"Lieutenant?" A uniformed officer was monitoring Zachary's show on a pocket radio. As he walked toward them, he removed his earpiece and turned up the volume on the noise of violent breakage. "It sounds like he's taking the place apart."
Without waiting on orders, Mallory put the drill to the lock, knowing that the sound would alert the people inside. Jack Coffey stayed her hand before she could power up the tool and give them away.
"Cover me," he said. "I'll drill the lock."
"It's my drill." She held it tightly in both hands.
The lieutenant could only stare at her. What a hell of a time for this silly kid stunt. However, it was her drill, her case – her show all the way. Jack Coffey removed his hand from the tool. Stepping back, he drew his gun, demoting himself to Mallory's backup, then waved the uniforms farther down the hall. "Okay, Mallory, nowl"
He had not expected so much noise. The loud squeal of metal grinding on metal made all his nerve endings stand at attention. Zachary and Dr. Apollo would know they were coming, but which of them would be holding the gun when the door opened? He trained his own gun on the door, ready to kill whoever pointed a weapon at Mallory. She was halfway through the lock, and a death might be only seconds away.
His detective looked up from her work, saying, "We'll never make a case if you shoot my corroborating witness."
"Mallory, later you can remind me to fire your ass." He turned to the sound of footfalls pounding down the hall at his back. Two uniformed officers came on the run. Instead of the requested flak jackets, they carried two large bulletproof shields.
Johanna Apollo was startled to hear her own voice on the radio. She had not expected Zachary to play that interview tape on the air. How could she have guessed wrong about that? If he thought he was impervious to an investigation, he might not come tonight.
Or was he already here?
She turned off the radio and held her breath, standing very still in the dead quiet of the front room. Had she actually heard a noise in the hall? Or had she intuited a presence out there – sensed it in the fashion of Mugs or Timothy Kidd? Tonight there would be no buffer of FBI agents downstairs in the hotel lobby. The federal bodyguards were looking for her elsewhere.
No interruptions, no witnesses.
Gun in hand, Johanna settled into an armchair and braced her elbows on the upholstery. The recoil of Riker's revolver would be stronger than Victor's smaller gun, and she would not risk it falling from her trembling hands, for one bullet might not do the job. After turning off the table lamp, all that illuminated the hotel room, she could see the shadows of two shoes in a crack of yellow light below the door. The narrow foyer's walls seemed like an extension of the gun's barrel.
A knock. How polite – and unexpected. Johanna called out, "It's not locked!"
The door opened slowly, and this was something she should have anticipated. She could see that now – her error. Ian Zachary would pride himself on theatrics. His dark silhouette filled the door frame, backlit by the lamps in the hall.
She had rehearsed this moment inside her head so many times. It had always begun with immediate violence, a body barreling through the door, rushing in with a view to unbalancing her with cold, paralyzing terror. That had been Timothy Kidd's imagined recreation of the juror murders, but that was not to be – not here and now. And what else might she get wrong before this night was over?
The room suddenly flooded with light from the ceiling fixture. Her eyes were still adapting to the brightness when she saw his hand on the wall switch and heard him say, "I should come inside." His voice was in the range of seduction, and this was another surprise. "If you shoot me in the hall," he said, "the police might not buy the idea of self-defense."
During her training days as a crime-scene cleaner, Riker had told her that hesitation should be listed as the cause of death for most homicide victims. Educable Johanna raised the gun. She must kill Ian Zachary now.
He closed the door behind him – and locked it.
The gun was so heavy.
"There, that's better," he said. "Now you have privacy for a murder – and a better story for the police." Zachary strolled toward her, smiling, all but laughing at the gun in her hands, only sparing it one glance. He stopped a few paces from her chair, then raised his arms to show her the spread of his empty hands. "I don't have a weapon, but here's a thought – maybe you could plant one on my dead body." He lowered his arms. "You might have time to run to the store, some all-night bodega where the clerk won't remember a distraught hunchback buying a penknife."
The gun barrel wavered. Her finger touched lightly on the trigger, and he became an easier target as he closed the gap between them. She fancied Timothy inside her head, screaming to the rhythm of a banging heart, Kill him, kill him, kill him!
Her script for this event was already in shambles. It should not have surprised her so when Zachary leaned down and simply plucked the gun from her shaking hands, saying, "Not quite the scenario you had in mind? Too civilized for a cold-blooded killing? You don't know what you're missing, Dr. Apollo." He pressed the gun to her forehead an inch above her eyes. "What a rush. Better than sex."
She looked down at her hands, limp useless things, and waited for the shot.
Riker sailed through another red light, avoiding collisions by the grace of providence, for his eyes kept wandering to the rearview mirror, expecting Mallory to climb up his taillights at any moment. She would have discovered by now that Jo's interview was on tape, and it would only take her six seconds to steal another car.