“No, that’s okay.”
He pushed her toward the bed.
“I believe you,” she said, turning back to him.
“No, you obviously don’t. So go see for yourself.”
She edged forward. Shaw followed her.
“He’s in full rigor,” he said. “That happens about twelve to twenty-four hours after death. I’ve only been in here for fifteen minutes.”
More curious than scared now, Katie touched the man’s arm. It was like a rock. His skin was ice.
“What killed him?”
He pointed to the pillow where she could see dried stains.
“Gunshot wound to the back of the head.”
She stepped back from the bed and gazed around the room. Shaw had a flashlight that he used to sweep the area. Furniture was overturned in here too and there were drawers pulled out and contents dumped on the floor.
“A struggle?” she said. “A search?”
Shaw pointed toward the closet. “Look at this.”
They stepped inside the room. In the back a portrait was hanging off its hinges. Behind it a chunk of wall had been ripped out, revealing a cavity.
“My guess is there was a safe there. Whoever did this took it with them.”
“So it was just a burglary that went wrong? The dead guy is fully dressed. He might have come home, stumbled on them, and they killed him.”
He stared at her. “You really believe that?”
“No.”
“Good. Because it’s all been staged. Just like everything else in this whole damn thing.”
“But this is the right house, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “I checked the car in the garage first. Sticker’s on the back. And there’s a slight scratch on the back panel that I noted from the video. It’s the right car.”
“And the dead guy?”
Shaw picked up a photo that was on a shelf and shone his light on it. It looked like the guy on the video.
“It’s the owner of the house. Richard Pender,” said Shaw.
“We better get out of here.”
“No, I want to finish searching the place first.”
“Shaw, what if we get caught?”
“You can leave.”
“Damn it, do you always have to make everything so complicated?”
“I didn’t ask you to follow me tonight.”
“How do you know I was following you?”
“Maybe it’s the fact that you’re standing in this house with me right now.”
“I could’ve come here on my own. I can memorize addresses too.”
“If you had memorized the addresses you’d know this was Pender’s house. And last but not least, I saw you about a dozen times tonight in your car following me.”
“Wait a minute. If you knew I was following you, why didn’t you stop me? Or try to lose me?”
Shaw started to say something but then stopped. He looked away, and said quietly, “I’m no murderer.”
“I’m glad you realized that.”
A brief moment passed, and then Shaw asked, “Are you going to help me look or not?”
“I’ll help. Let’s just make it quick.”
A half hour later they’d found nothing of any use. Richard Pender owned a firm called Pender amp; Associates. Shaw had never heard of it. They got the office address from some letterhead they found in a desk drawer.
Katie stared at the paper. “I know this name for some reason.” She thought for a moment and then shook her head. “It’s not coming.”
They left out the back door.
Or tried to.
They never made it.
CHAPTER 90
SHAW AWOKE FIRST, the synapses in his head screaming out intense messages of pain to the rest of his body; yet that busted-up nerve mailbox was pretty full. He tried to sit up and push back the feelings of nausea rolling over him. He assumed he’d be bound. But he wasn’t; his hands and feet were free.
He heard a groan and looked behind him over the top of the seat. Katie was lying on the floor there.
“Katie? Are you all right?”
Another groan was followed by a soft moan, and then came a bit of movement as she slowly sat up.
She rubbed her head. “Yeah, but I’ve got the mother of all knots on the-”
There was a grinding sound, like metal against something equally hard.
“What was that?” she said. “Where are we?”
She looked around. They were in a car. Her car. The one she’d followed Shaw in.
“Don’t move,” Shaw hissed.
“What?”
Another grinding sound came, and Katie had the sickening feeling of the floor slipping beneath her.
“What’s going on?”
Shaw inclined his head at the window. Katie stared out and saw nothing but black. No, not entirely black. She saw some trees, large trees and thick bushes.
“Did they leave us in the woods?”
“Yes, but not exactly on level ground.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look out the windshield but do not move.”
Katie slowly turned her head to stare straight ahead and her breath got lost halfway up her throat. She was looking straight down, or at least it seemed that way. It was like being on a roller coaster about to go over the edge, or a plane in a death spiral and you were the pilot watching the ground coming at you sickeningly fast.
“Where are we?” she whispered.
“In a car on the side of what appears to be a very steep hill with a clear path of two hundred feet in front of us at least until we get to the bottom. Then we hit a wall of trees. And if we manage to plow through those, we go right into the river.”
“River?”
“The Potomac.” He slowly raised his arm and pointed out the windshield. “That looks to be Georgetown over there, doesn’t it?”
She gazed at the pulse of lights from across the water. “Then we’re off the George Washington Parkway?”
He nodded.
“Can you open the doors?”
“They’re locked, and if I try to open one, we’re going for a short ride way too fast.”
“How did we get here? The last thing I remember is leaving Pender’s house.”
“They must’ve been waiting for us. I’m an idiot! They were waiting for us at the graveyard in Germany. Why not Pender’s house? They must have figured out what we’d done on the call, gotten to Pender first, and then waited for us to come poking around.”
Katie shuddered. “They made his death look like a burglary and now we’re going to end up as a traffic accident.”
Shaw grimaced as yet another pain shot through his battered head. “A run off the road and down the hill where we burst into flames when the gas tank ignites as we smash into the trees down there. I’m sure the skid marks off the road were professionally done.”
“So why hasn’t the car rolled down already?”
“We seem to have gotten stuck on an outcrop of rock.”
“Are we really that close to going down or am I becoming almost hysterical for no reason?”
“None of the tires are touching the ground. It’s like being on a seesaw and the rock is the fulcrum. We move too much, down we go.”
“And if we don’t move, at some point, we go down anyway. Can you call somebody? Frank? Royce? The president?”
Shaw gently felt in his pocket. “They took my phone. How about you?”
“It was in my purse. I left it in the car. Do you see it?”
Shaw eyed the floorboard. “Yeah, but if I try to get it, we’re going over.”
“Can you slide into the backseat? With your weight back here it might anchor the car.”
Shaw tried to ease himself backward, but another long groan and a few more inches of the car sliding stopped him.
“Okay, that’s a no-go.”
“We can’t just sit here waiting to die,” Katie exclaimed.
He moved his weight a little to the left. The scraping sound came immediately and they could both feel the car move forward another inch.
“Okay, that tells me something.”
“What?”
“Not to move again.” Shaw eyed the interior. The keys were still in the car. They would have to be, he thought, to make it look like a real accident when the police found the charred wreckage. He edged his hand forward and carefully turned the keys one click to the right. That didn’t turn the engine on, but it did do something else. He slowly reached over and depressed the window button. The glass slid down even as the car eased forward another inch or so.