“No, I thought I’d entertain you with a little live video feed. Watch.”
The image of his face stuttered, blinked, and the screen went dark. Then another image came up, fuzzy and indistinct, but it took me only a few seconds to recognize my bedroom. The image slowly zoomed in on the bed. Kate lying there. Her head on the pillow.
Strange blue light flickering over her face.
“There’s the wifey,” Kurt said. “Couple of nights ago. Guess she fell asleep watching TV while you were out somewhere. Desperate Housewives, maybe? She’s a desperate housewife herself.”
My heart was going ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.
“Lots of opportunities to install that camera. Hell, she was always inviting me in. Like maybe she was attracted to me. A real man. Not a pathetic fake like you. A wannabe. You were always the armchair athlete, and the armchair warrior.”
Another scene appeared. Kate and me in bed. She watching TV, me reading a magazine.
“Oh, wait,” he said. “Here’s an oldie. From before she went to the hospital.”
Kate and me in bed. Making love.
The image had a greenish, night-vision cast.
“No comment on your sexual technique, bro,” Kurt said. “Let’s just say I’ve been seeing a lot of you two.”
“I guess you don’t want the other half then,” I said.
“The other half?” The image of Kate switched to Kurt’s face. Big, looming close-up. A curious look.
“The steering shaft in the Porsche Carrera is eighteen inches long,” I said. “The piece I gave you was, what-maybe ten inches? You figure it out.”
“Ah,” he said, chuckling. “Very nice. Maybe you did learn something after all.”
“I learned from the master,” I said. “Taught me to play hardball. You want it, you bring me back up to the twentieth floor. To my office. I get it from the hiding place, hand it to you. And then you let me go. I retrieve Graham. And it’s over.”
Kurt’s big face stared at me. Blinked a few times.
“Do we have a deal?” I said.
He smiled. His face pulled back, and I could see my office. He’d been sitting at my computer. Maybe a camera hooked up to it. Maybe the concealed one. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
All I cared about was that this looked like it might work.
The elevator made another jolt, and it started to move.
I turned away from the ceiling-mounted eye. Watched the buttons on the control panels light up orange: 12…13…
Hit redial on the cell phone. This time the call went through. It rang once, twice.
“Police emergency.” A man’s voice, clipped.
“I’m in an elevator in the Entronics building in Framingham,” I said. “My name is Jason Steadman. My life is in danger. There’s a guy on the twentieth floor who’s trying to kill me.”
“Hold on, please.”
“Just send someone!” I shouted.
The orange 20 button lit up. A ding. The elevator doors opened.
On the phone, another voice came on. “Trooper Sanchez.”
I didn’t understand. “Sanchez? Where’s Kenyon?”
“Who’s this?” Sanchez said.
I could see a figure in the shadows in the twentieth-floor lobby. Kurt, it had to be.
“Jason Steadman,” I whispered. “I’m-I know Kenyon. I’m in the Entronics building-you’ve got to radio Kenyon, send someone over here now. Hurry, for Christ’s sake!”
“Steadman?” Sanchez said. “That scum-sucking piece of shit?” His Hispanic accent was even thicker now.
Two figures emerged from the shadows. Kurt was holding a cell phone to his ear. “Would you like Sergeant Kenyon’s voice mail,” Kurt said in his Sanchez voice, leering.
Another man, holding a pistol.
Ray Kenyon.
In his other hand was a pistol. Kenyon waved it at me. “Let’s go,” he said. “Go, go, go. Hand me the other half.”
I stared in shock. I’d pressed 911. Nine, one, one. I was sure of it. I hadn’t hit redial, hadn’t called Kenyon.
“Jerry,” came Kurt’s voice. “Hand me the weapon. I’ll take over.”
Jerry. Jeremiah. Jeremiah Willkie. His Special Forces brother. The one who wouldn’t testify against him. Who owned the auto body shop.
Who was “Ray Kenyon.”
Jeremiah Willkie handed Kurt the weapon. It looked like the Colt I’d stolen from Kurt’s storage locker, but I couldn’t be sure.
“The guys are never going to believe this one,” said Willkie/Kenyon.
“No, they won’t,” said Kurt, and he pointed the barrel at Jeremiah Willkie and fired. “Because they’re not going to hear about it.”
Willkie collapsed to the floor. His left temple was bloodied. His eyes remained open.
I stared at Kurt.
“Jeremiah has a drinking problem,” Kurt said. “Get a couple vodkas in him, and he talks too much. But he made an awfully convincing cop, didn’t he? He always wanted to be a cop. His uncle was a cop.”
“I called 911.”
“It’s called cell phone phreaking. Cloned your phone so I could listen to all your calls. And pick up on outgoing calls too. Your old cell, your new one, made no difference. So let’s finish our business here.”
He pointed the gun at me. “Sounds like you hid the part in your office. You tricky, tricky guy. Let’s go.”
I walked to my office, and he followed. I entered the office, stood in the center of the room, my thoughts racing. The wind howled. Papers covered the carpet, and piles of whitish glass fragments.
“Well, I know it’s not in your desk,” Kurt said. “Or in your bookcase. Or any of the usual hiding places.”
My eyes flicked toward the briefcase, then quickly away. It was still there.
“Ceiling panel,” I said.
He’d seen my eyes.
“No, I don’t think so,” Kurt said. “Hand the piece over, and you’re free to go.”
“I’m not going out that window,” I said.
“Hand me the rest of the shaft.”
My eyes darted again, almost involuntarily, toward the briefcase next to my desk.
“I’ll need your help,” I said. “I need a ladder or something so I can reach the ceiling panel.”
“A ladder?” he said. “Boy, I sure don’t think you need a ladder.” He stepped toward my desk, grabbed the English leather briefcase. “Didn’t I teach you about the ‘tell’? Those little giveaway signs in a person’s face? You’re good at reading them, but not so good at hiding them.”
I tried to grab the briefcase back from him, but of course he was much stronger, and he wrested it from my grip. Both his hands were on the briefcase, and as he fiddled with the latches, I took advantage of his momentary distraction, backed away from him.
“Nowhere to run, Jason,” Kurt said, loud but matter-of-fact. I backed away slowly as he flipped open one of the brass latches, then the other, and then my back was against the doorframe. Twenty feet away, maybe.
A tiny scraping sound.
I saw the realization dawn on Kurt’s face, an expression of fury combined with something I’d never seen in his face before.
Fear.
But only for a fraction of a second before the blast swallowed him, blew him apart, limbs flying, horrific carnage like something you might see in a war movie. The immense explosion threw me backwards, slammed me against something hard, and as I tumbled I felt hard things spray against my face, fragments of wood and plaster, maybe, and I didn’t know what else.
I struggled to my feet, ears ringing, my face stinging.
A block of Kurt’s own C-4 plastic explosive connected to the confetti-bomb apparatus he’d put in my briefcase that day. I’d left it in my briefcase and gone back to using my old one.
And he was right that a little C-4 was enough. I knew there was no chance of him surviving.
Reached the elevator banks, then stopped. Wasn’t going to try that again.
The stairs. Twenty flights was nothing. I’d learned that. I was in great condition now.