Suddenly, he had a use for the gun that had lain in his footlocker for the last six years, last registered in Connecticut, in the name of Donna Boyd.
Jack had never considered violence an answer to anything. But this was something altogether different. This was truly self-defense. Or was it? Deep down, he wondered if he actually hoped Goss would break into his house. As he sat back in the sofa in his living room with the ammunition he’d just purchased, he thought hard about his real motivation for not calling the cops. But the possibility that he was subconsciously looking for a showdown with Goss was ridiculous. Goss was the killer. Not him.
The phone rang. Jack muted the nine o’clock Movie of the Week on TV and snatched it up.
“Have you checked your mail, Jack?” came the familiar voice.
He hesitated. He knew that stalkers thrived on contact and that any “expert” would have told him just to hang up. But he was nearly certain he knew who it was, and if he could just get him to speak in his normal voice, he’d have confirmation. “This is not clever, Goss,” Jack goaded. “Knock off the funny voice. I know it’s you.”
A condescending snicker came over the phone, then a pause-followed by a decided change in tone. “You don’t know shit, Swyteck. So just shut up, and check your mail. Now.”
Jack blinked hard, frightened by how easily he’d set off the man’s temper. “Why?”
“Just check it,” the caller ordered. “And take the phone with you. I’ll tell you what to look for.”
Jack wondered whether it was wise to play along, but he was determined to get to the bottom of this. “All right,” he answered, then headed down the hall with his portable phone pressed to his ear. He looked through the window before stepping outside but saw nothing. He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. “Okay,” he said into the phone. “I’m at the box.”
“Look inside,” the caller ordered.
Cautiously, Jack reached for the lid on the mailbox beside the door. He extended one finger, pried under the lid, and quickly popped it open, jerking his hand back as if he’d just touched molten lava.
“Do you see it, Swyteck?”
Jack stood on his toes and peered inside from a distance, fearful that he was about to see bloody gym shorts or torn panties or some other evidence of Goss’s latest handiwork. “There’s an envelope,” he said, seeing nothing else inside.
“Open it,” said the caller.
Jack carefully took the envelope from the box. It was plain white. No return address. No addressee. It had been hand-delivered, which meant the stalker had been on his porch-an unsettling thought. He unfolded the flap and tentatively removed the contents. “What is this?”
“What’s it look like?”
He studied the page. “A map.” A route had been high-lighted by yellow felt-tip pen.
“Follow it-if you want to know who the killer on the loose is. You do want to know, don’t you, Swyteck?”
“I already know it’s you, Goss. This is a map to your apartment.”
“It’s a map to the killer on the loose. Be there. Meet him at four-thirty A.M. tonight. And no cops. Or you’ll be very sorry.”
Jack bristled at the sound of the dial tone, then switched off the portable phone. At first it didn’t even occur to him to actually go to Goss’s apartment. But if Goss were going to kill him, would he do it in his own apartment? Would he invite Jack over and give him directions to the scene of the crime? No, he must be up to something else, and Jack’s curiosity was piqued.
But it was more than just curiosity. He was thinking of the night two years ago when he’d refused to give his father enough “privileged” information to stop Raul Fernandez’s execution. His rigidity had resulted in Raul’s death, and he was determined not to make the same mistake again. In dealing with a confessed killer who was continuing his evil ways, he had to be more flexible with privileged information.
It was time to issue an ultimatum. Months ago, when he and Goss had been considering an insanity defense, Jack had pumped him for information about his past crimes-some of which included murder. His client had told him plenty. Now it was time to confront Goss and let him know that if he wanted to stay out of the electric chair-if he didn’t want a prosecutor to get an anonymous tip about his most perverted secrets-then he’d better change his ways.
He stepped to the window and looked outside. It was getting dark and starting to drizzle. A storm was brewing if he was going to meet Goss, there was no reason to wait until four-thirty in the morning. In fact, it seemed safer not to wait. He started toward the door, then stopped. He went up to the attic, opened his footlocker, and found the.38. Downstairs, he spent several minutes cleaning the gun, then loaded it with bullets.
Just in case.
Chapter 14
Rain started to fall as Jack pulled his Mustang out of the driveway. The downpour was a continuation of a violent Florida thunderstorm that had flooded city streets that afternoon. The nasty weather didn’t bring him down, though. He was determined to get to Goss’s as quickly as possible, before he could change his mind. He raced his old eight-cylinder down the expressway at a speed only a fleeing fugitive would have considered safe, exited into a section of town that no one considered safe, and screeched to a halt outside Goss’s apartment.
The old two-story building stretched nearly a third of the city block. It was bordered on one side by a gas station and on the other by a burned-out shell of an apartment building that some pyromaniac landlord had probably figured could generate more income in fire insurance proceeds than in rent. Rusty iron security bars covered most of the ground-floor windows, plywood sealed off others, and noisy air conditioners stuck out of a few. Weeds popping up through cracks in the sidewalk were the closest thing to landscaping.
The rain beat loudly on the convertible’s canvas top and I seeped in where the twenty-year-old rubber window seals had rotted away. Jack jumped out and dashed through water that ran in wide rivulets down the street. He was at the apartment entrance in only fifteen seconds, but that was long enough for the rain to soak his clothes and paste them to his body. Dripping wet, he stepped inside the dimly lit foyer and checked the rows of metal mailboxes recessed into the wall. He had the right place. GOSS, APT 217, read one of them.
He ran up a flight of stairs to a long hallway lined with apartments on either side. It was even darker here than in the foyer, the tenants having stolen most of the bulbs to light their apartments. Spray-painted graffiti covered the walls and doors, forming one continuous mural. Most of the ceiling tiles had been punched out by kids proving how high they could jump. Rainwater leaked in from above and streaked down the water-stained walls, forming little puddles on the musty indoor-outdoor carpet. All was quiet, except for heavy raindrops pounding on the flimsy flat roof.
He started down the hall, checking the numbers on the doors that still had them. His pace quickened as he approached 217, the fifth door on the left. He was convinced that the only way to stop Goss was to threaten him-and to do so in a way that only his own lawyer could. If Goss was to report him to the Florida bar for threatening to reveal a client’s secrets, it could end his career. But it didn’t matter at this point. The stark contrast between his one tragic failure in the Fernandez case and his siring of “successes” in sending men like Goss back onto the streets to prey on an unwary public had weighed on him too long. He’d reached the lowest point of his life.