"Now on your knees," Nicci said. "Pretend you're on a date."
With no small effort, the big man got down on his knees.
Jessica got behind him and saw that it wasn't a gun in Nicci's hand. It was a steel towel rack. This girl was good.
"How many other security guards are here?" Nicci asked.
Cedric remained silent. Perhaps it was because he fancied himself as so much more than a security guard. Nicci whacked him on the side of the head with the pipe.
"Ow. Jesus."
"I don't think you're focusing here, Moose."
"Damn, bitch. There's just me."
"I'm sorry, what did you call me?" Nicci asked.
Cedric began to sweat. "I'm… I didn't mean-"
Nicci nudged him with the rod. "Shut up." She turned to Jessica. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Jessica said.
Nicci nodded toward the door. Jessica crossed the room, looked into the hallway. Empty. She walked back to where Nicci and Cedric were. "Let's do it."
"Okay," Nicci said. "You can put your hands down now."
Cedric thought that she was letting him go. He smirked.
But Nicci wasn't letting him off the hook. What she really wanted was a clean shot. When he dropped his hands, Nicci wound up and cracked the rod into the back of his head. Hard. The impact echoed off the grimy tile walls. Jessica wasn't sure it was hard enough, but after a second she saw the man's eyes roll up in his head. He folded. Within a minute they had him facedown inside a stall, with a fistful of paper towels in his mouth and his hands bound behind him. It was like dragging an elk.
"I can't believe I'm leaving a Jil Sander belt in this fucking shithole," Nicci said.
Jessica almost laughed. Nicolette Malone was her new role model.
"Ready?" Jessica asked.
Nicci gave the gorilla one more shot with the club for good measure and said: "Let's bounce."
Like all stakeouts, after the first few minutes or so the adrenaline eased off.
They had left the warehouse and driven across town in the Lincoln Town Car, Bebe and Nicci in the backseat. Bebe had given them directions. When they arrived at the address, they identified themselves to Bebe as law enforcement. She was surprised but not shocked. Bebe and Kilbane were now in temporary custody at the Roundhouse, where they would remain until the operation was over.
The target house was on a dark street. They did not have a search warrant for the premises, so they could not enter. Not yet. If Bruno Steele had told a group of porno actresses to meet him here at midnight, chances were good he'd be back.
Nick Palladino and Eric Chavez were in the van, half a block away. In addition, two sector cars with two uniformed officers each were nearby.
While they waited for Bruno Steele, Nicci and Jessica changed back into street clothes. Jeans and T-shirts and running shoes and Kevlar vests. Jessica felt an enormous sense of relief having her Glock back on her hip.
"Ever partner with a woman before?" Nicci asked. They were alone in the lead car, a few hundred feet from the target house.
"No," Jessica said. In all her time on the street, from her training officer to the veteran cop who had showed the ropes of walking the beat in South Philly, she had always been paired with a man. When she was in the Auto Unit, she was one of two women, and the other had worked the desk. It was a new experience, and-she had to admit-a good one.
"Same here," Nicci said. "You'd think more women would be drawn to Narcotics, but after a while the glamour sort of wears off."
Jessica couldn't tell if Nicci was kidding or not. Glamour? She could understand a man wanting to go cowboy on such a detail. Hell, she was married to one of them. She was just about to answer when headlights washed the rearview.
From the radio: "Jess."
"I see it," Jessica said.
They watched the car slowly approach in the side mirrors. Jessica could not immediately tell the make or model of the car from that distance and in that light. It looked to be a midsize.
The car passed them. It had a single occupant. It rolled slowly to the corner, turned, and was gone.
Had they been made? No. It didn't seem likely. They waited. The car didn't double back.
They stood down. And waited.
55
It is late, I am tired. I never would have thought that this sort of work was so physically and spiritually draining. Think of all the film monsters over the years, how hard they must have labored. Think of Freddy, of Michael Myers. Think of Norman Bates, Tom Ripley, Patrick Bateman, Christian Szell.
I have much to do in the next few days. And then I will be done.
I gather my belongings from the backseat, my plastic bag full of bloody clothes. I will burn them first thing in the morning. For now I will take a hot bath, make a cup of chamomile tea, then probably be asleep before my head hits the pillow.
"A hard day's work makes a soft bed," my grandfather used to say.
I get out of the car, lock it. I breathe deeply the midsummer night air. The city smells clean and fresh, charged with promise.
Weapon in hand, I begin to make my way to the house.
56
Atjust after midnight, they saw their man. Bruno Steele was walking across the vacant lot behind the target house.
"I've got a visual," came the radio.
"I see him," Jessica said.
Steele hesitated near the door, looking both ways up and down the street. Jessica and Nicci slid slowly down in the seat, just in case another car rolled up the street and silhouetted them in the headlights.
Jessica picked up her two-way radio, keyed it, whispered: "Are we good?"
"Yeah," Palladino said. "We are good."
"Uniforms ready?"
"Ready."
We've got him, Jessica thought.
We've fucking got him.
Jessica and Nicci drew their weapons, slipped quietly out of the car. As they neared their subject, Jessica made eye contact with Nicci. It was a moment for which all police officers live. The excitement of an arrest, tempered by the fear of the unknown. If Bruno Steele was the Actor, he had brutally killed two women that they knew of, both in cold blood. If he was their unsub, he was capable of anything.
They closed the distance in shadow. Fifty feet. Thirty feet. Twenty. Jessica was just about to draw down on the subject when she stopped.
Something was wrong.
In that moment, reality came crashing down around her. It was one of those times-unsettling enough in life in general, potentially fatal on the job-when you realize that what you thought you had in front of you, what you assumed to be one thing, was not only something else, but something wholly other.
The man in the doorway was not Bruno Steele.
The man was Kevin Byrne.
57
They stepped across the street, into the shadows. Jessica didn't ask Byrne what he was doing there. That would come later. She was just about to head back to the surveillance vehicle when Eric Chavez raised her on channel. "Jess."
"Yeah."
"There's music coming from the house."
Bruno Steele was already inside.
Byrne watched the team prepare to take the house. Jessica had quickly briefed him on the events of the day. With each word she said, Byrne saw his life and career spiral. It all fell into place. Julian Matisse was the Actor. Byrne had been so close, he had not seen it. The system was now going to do to what it did best. And Kevin Byrne was right under its wheels.
A few minutes, Byrne thought. If he had gotten there a few minutes before the strike team, this would have been over. Now, when they found Matisse tied up in that chair, bloodied and beaten, they would trace it all back to him. Regardless what Matisse had done to Victoria, Byrne had kidnapped and tortured the man.