Only a few chapters to go - I'm thinking three or four more and then I'm done! But I'll be out of town for a couple of weeks and may not be able to write while I'm away. My apologies if I don't post again until later in July. The ending is coming, I promise! To those still following, thanks for sticking with me.
Robert was standing at the door the next morning, dressed and impatient to leave. Anna was blocking his exit.
"But I feel fine! I can't offer you any clearer evidence that I've recovered than I gave you – repeatedly, let me emphasize – last night! There's no reason for me to be stuck in this apartment for another hour."
"Other than the fact that someone tried to kill you just a few days ago."
Robert smiled and waved his finger. "Negative. She just wanted to get away from me."
Anna's arms were crossed. ""You really think that? This is someone who killed a woman not despite the fact that she was pregnant but because she was pregnant. According to the bartender Elizabeth would have slit your throat with a piece of broken glass if he hadn't threatened her with a bat."
Robert paused, then shrugged. "Well, in any case she's left town. Ergo, she's no longer a threat."
"She took out a hit on her husband. Elizabeth doesn't need to be in town be a threat. She can kill you from a distance."
"I can take care of myself."
"Which is what I told you not too long ago when you chewed me out for going to Kelly's for a coffee unescorted, and when you kept insisting I wear that bullet-proof vest. You wanted me to humour you by being careful – now I'm asking you to humour me. Stay here while I'm out. There's a man at the entrance to the building and another at the door to the apartment. I've told both that you're not to leave and go anywhere without my okay."
Robert leaned in toward her. "And what if I leave anyway? What will they do? Shoot me?"
Anna didn't move, didn't flinch. "Something worse. They'll call me. If you leave, Robert, I'll know. And there will be hell to pay, I promise you. Stay here, please, just until we know better what Elizabeth has planned."
She kissed him and left.
Robert considered what his next move should be.
Anna stopped first at the station and then met Rogers' replacement outside the second-hand furniture shop. She left her car and entered his when she thought the coast was clear.
"So?" she asked. "What's the situation?"
The young man in the car shook his head. "There's been absolutely no movement. Nothing. When I got here it was dark. There were no lights on anywhere in the building. I've been watching the whole time, minus a half-hour break four hours ago."
"Who relieved you?" Anna asked.
"Jackson. And he said nothing happened on his watch either. Giordano's car is still sitting on the street over there – it's the dark-blue Lexus."
Anna stared at the car. "It's possible this was a diversion. A way to throw us off his trail for a while."
"Could be. We didn't expect he'd ditch the car. But the only other exit from the building is on the side, and I have a good view of it from here. I'm sure I would have seen him come out. If Giordano isn't still in that building, he must have disappeared in a puff of smoke."
Anna sat for a moment then made a decision. "I'm going in."
The young officer looked a bit panicked. "Do you think that's a good idea, Commissioner? It might blow our cover."
"If Giordano arranged all this to lose us, our cover was already blown. I'll just go check out the building, see first if I can get in as a potential customer – who knows, maybe the store is open and maybe I'm in the market for some used furniture. I did just recently lease an apartment. And I used to have a keen eye for antiques." She opened the door to the car. "If I'm not back in thirty minutes, call the station for backup." Anna checked the time. "And don't watch too carefully just in case I see an opportunity and decide to have an unofficial look-round." Before he could say anything in reply, Anna was out and striding toward the building.
She went to the front door first, tried it – it was locked, and a "Closed" sign hung crookedly in the window. She peered in. The store looked a jumble, full of cheap, worn furniture and seen-better-days house wares collected by type: chairs, tables, desks, dishes, glass ware, linens. Anna walked along the side of the building looking for the second entrance.
She approached the steel security door and quickly realized there was no way she could coerce or force it open. She kept moving. Near the back corner of the store, she noticed a first-floor window opened just a crack – just enough. She checked to see if anyone was looking – an almost unnecessary gesture; the neighbourhood seemed deserted. With not inconsiderable effort she pushed the window up and entered the building head-first.
Robert was in the guest bedroom looking for the bag he'd ask Anna to store. He congratulated himself on wonderful foresight. To think he'd almost brought his old gear to the second-hand sporting goods store. He moved a plastic storage box in the closet and there it was – his beloved duffle bag. Inside, with other miscellaneous and sundry items, he found his climbing harness and rope, which long ago had replaced his less reliable grappling hook and line. Robert smiled.
Anna, one hand on her holster, wandered the first floor of the shop, looking and listening carefully for signs of life in the building. There were none – all the items allegedly for sale were covered with a thin layer of dust. Convinced the first floor contained no immediate threat, Anna cautiously began ascending the stairs.
On the second floor she found empty rooms but didn't get the same feeling, the same sense of abandonment. Below in the store it felt as though no one had occupied the space for years; above, it seemed almost that the occupants had left only hours before. Anna wasn't stirring up and breathing in dust just by moving through the space, as she had done below, and when she dragged her finger – gloved, to ensure she didn't leave a print – along the surface of a window sill in the back room, it came up clean. Anna suspected Giordano had met someone here. But what had happened after?
Anna looked at her watch – she was running out of time. She went back to the staircase and headed for the basement. As she did so, she undid the button of her holster and lightly gripped the handle of her gun, just in case.
Piece of cake, he thought to himself as he hid the line, still dangling from the guest bedroom window, as best he could by flipping it to the side of the many sills of windows lined from above down the multiple storeys of the building to the ground floor. He then slipped out of the harness, tucked it into the bag slung from his shoulders, and headed off down the street. It felt good to be free again.
So good, in fact, that he was distracted and didn't notice when he picked up a very professional and very subtle tail not half a block from the apartment building.
Anna pulled a small flashlight from her pocket when she reached the basement. It wasn't pitch black but dark enough that the extra light was comforting. She also had her gun in hand, though pointed at the floor – she didn't want to shoot a squatter accidentally. She was fairly sure the building was empty; she'd heard no sounds and didn't get the feeling anyone was in the general vicinity. She'd learned over the years that it was good to trust one's instincts but foolish to rely on them. The gun's safety was off, and she was a quick draw.
At the bottom of the stairs she had the choice to turn left or right. She chose left. She had the same feeling she had upstairs, even though the basement was dark and dank: it seemed lived in somehow, or if not exactly lived in, used, utilized, inhabited. Anna pointed the flashlight beam down and in front, careful that the light didn't extend past corners or walls. She didn't want to alert anyone – if anyone was there – to her presence.
Another corner. She drew up to it, readied herself, rounded it quickly, raised her flashlight quickly, gun ready. Nothing: an empty room, concrete and dirt. She backtracked to the split at the bottom of the staircase and this time went right. Another corner, another quick movement around it, another large empty room. But this one had a steel door at the far end.
Anna cautiously made her way toward it.
Robert had walked to a remote section of the waterfront not far from the Bucket of Blood – or rather, where the bar had stood years before. The building was empty now, abandoned, dilapidated. Robert found an old shipping crate up near the wall of the building; he sat on it, back to the wall (probably best to be careful – he knew Anna was right, that if Elizabeth wanted him gone, she had the means to dispose of him). He pulled out his phone, dialed a number.
When the line was picked up, he said, "I need one more bit of information from you, mate. It's a matter of life and death. My life and death, to be more specific, and maybe Anna's. Certainly others'." Robert paused to listen to the reply. "I know you will, and I appreciate it. You know anytime you need it, we'll return the favour." Robert smiled. "Yeah. Almost like old times." Another pause. "It's not going to be easy, I suspect, though it sounds like it should be. I need contact information, and if you can an address or addresses, for William Beaty. Owner and CEO of Beaty-Morrisson. And I need you to get this for me without having your inquiry flagged. Can you do it?"
Robert listened. "Okay, mate. Do your best. I appreciate it." He ended the call.
Anna almost never left home without her lock-picking kit, and she pulled it out now. She'd always been skilled at fine detail work: lock picking, bomb defusing, alarm bypassing, and later, computer hacking. She had patience many other agents lacked, including Robert. When they'd worked together at the WSB, later as private detectives, and still later when she was a special agent with the WSB and he was Police Commissioner, he'd always let her do the tasks that required a steady hand, calm focus, and unwavering persistence.
She turned the flashlight off to make herself less visible. She didn't need it anyway; she needed to work by feel and needed both her hands. It wasn't a simple lock; it was quite sophisticated, difficult for the average break-and-enter artist to open. Someone wanted very much to hide what lay behind the door. She worked on the lock for a full minute. Then she felt tumblers slipping into place. The lock clicked open.
She grabbed the handle and pulled the door toward her, gun at the ready again.
Robert sat and looked out at the water. He knew he should call Stephen but had no idea what to say. Should he tell him that Carolyn was dead, that she'd been pregnant with his child, that his friend Elizabeth had killed them both? Should Robert lie, tell him he hadn't been able to discover what had happened to Carolyn, leave him in uncertainty for the rest of his life?
Or should he tell a different lie, tell Stephen that he'd discovered a trail to Europe, suggest that Carolyn had left of her own free will, had chosen a lover over her husband, that if she'd been pregnant, the child hadn't been Stephen's at all, had been Alan's, had been another man's?
Robert thought back to Anna's disappearance. Others, friends even, had tried to suggest to him that Anna had gone willingly with Cesar. That she'd left him and not been taken. That she'd been in love with another man. Part of him had wanted to believe them – a malicious, selfish, unforgiving part, one that too often emerged from the murky depths. Everything would have been so simple if he could have believed that he was the victim of yet another double-cross, yet another betrayal. It even would have been a sweet absolution: if he'd believed that she'd betrayed him again, her guilt would have freed him of his guilt for leaving her injured, scarred, and pregnant in the hospital room in Paris. Life would have been so much easier if he'd listened and believed. Holly was back in his life. She was there; she obviously had wanted him back. He would have been able to stay with his daughter, watch her grow up, protect her, and get on with his own life in a way he hadn't been able to, believing instead what he'd believed.
Which had turned out to be the truth. At least, almost all of the time he was almost certain it was the truth. That dark part, that devil on his shoulder sometimes turned his thoughts black, whispered in his ear. Now he sensed it again, heard it: felt something bordering on hope that he hadn't been wrong to let Anna go after the boat explosion, that maybe she'd deserved to be abandoned – twice – and that he hadn't been the bad guy after all. In fact, by coming to her rescue the first time, he'd done more than enough, more than he should have, had sacrificed everything for what may have been a lie. Their love.
Robert sat and brooded. Should he save Stephen more years of pain and guilt? Should he spare him the knowledge that a woman to whom Stephen had introduced Carolyn had taken her life and the life of their unborn child? Or should he tell him the truth, let him know that Carolyn had loved him, that they would have been a family if only things had turned out differently? In hindsight, what would Robert have preferred to hear all those years ago? The truth or a lie?
Robert realized he wasn't at all sure and was disgusted with himself.
The door was heavy, solid, but swung easily: evidence that it was used regularly. The lock wasn't rusty; the hinges were oiled and smooth. Though the store probably hadn't been open in years, the door and whatever it led to had been maintained and frequented recently.
The door opened to pitch black. Anna shone her flashlight into the darkness. The beam of light hit nothing, a void, then rock. It followed a roughly carved wall excavated below the building and Anna suddenly realized what she was looking at. The store was an opening to the catacombs. Giordano had escaped – or been taken – through this tunnel while, like fools, they'd been watching and waiting for him to emerge above.
Anna wouldn't follow. She knew better than to enter the catacombs without a guide. She backed out, shut and locked the door again, and made her way back to the stairs.
Robert had brought up Stephen's number on his phone's screen, and his finger hovered over it. He could call, he thought, set up a meeting. It wasn't the kind of thing you told someone over the phone anyway. There would be a delay, he told himself, and he'd have time to decide what to say. Still, Robert hesitated.
Just as he was about to swipe the screen, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Robert looked up. A man in a short rain jacket and dark glasses had walked leisurely up to the dock and was looking out at the water. Robert slipped the phone into his pocket. He'd wait until he was alone again.
The man pulled out a pack of cigarettes, extracted one, put it in his mouth, lit it, and took a deep drag. He gave no indication that he might move on soon, seemed, in fact, inclined to stay. Robert wondered if he should move instead.
The man took a few more steps along the dock. He was close enough now that Robert could smell the cigarette smoke.
"Nice view," the man commented.
"Yes it is," Robert agreed.
Anna walked up to the surveillance car, made the universal gesture for "Roll down your window." She told the officer, "He's gone. The building's empty. We've lost him. I'll meet you back at the station and we can file a report."
She watched the car take off.
"I'm new to the city. Just got in yesterday," the man was telling Robert. "A friend told me there was a bar here that I should try. I was out for a walk, was in the neighbourhood, and thought I'd check it out. Looks like I'm a few years too late. You from around here?"
Robert nodded. "I used to live here. I remember the bar."
The man took a long drag on his cigarette. "When did it close down?"
Robert shook his head. "No idea. I left town over twenty years ago."
The man wasn't looking at Robert, was still looking out at the water. "Why'd you come back?"
Robert wasn't enjoying the conversation and wondered what the hell the man wanted. Maybe he was just overly friendly. Maybe he was a two-bit thief testing Robert out, seeing if he was a potential mark. Robert decided he wanted to find out. "My daughter and grand-daughter live here."
The man cackled, then began to cough uncontrollably. When he finally recovered, he spat, and threw the nub of his cigarette on the dock, ground it out with his shoe. "Yeah. Why is it that family's always in some shit-hole and you gotta go back to visit them?"
"It wasn't such a bad city. Not when I lived here. Things have changed."
The man looked at Robert. "That's what things do. They change. Doesn't mean we have to like it."
Anna got back into her car. She pulled out her phone, swiped the screen.
Robert's phone rang. He looked down for a moment, no longer than a second, as he reached into his pocket. He felt something hit him in the right shoulder. And then he felt nothing but pain as every muscle in his body began to spasm. His jaw clenched, his body shook, and finally everything went black.
Robert didn't answer. Maybe he was in the shower, Anna told herself. She'd wait five minutes and try again.