Blind Rage (22 page)

She shook her head again.

He crouched down in front of her and wrinkled his nose. “First order of business is a bath.”

She grunted loudly in protest.

“A shower, then. Would you prefer a shower?” He smiled. “I’ll take your silence as acquiescence.” Using two fingers, he plucked the blanket off her and deposited it on the floor. He hooked his hand over the ropes tying her wrists together and started to drag her on her back across the wooden floor toward the bathroom.

Mustering all her strength, she thumped her heels on the floor and squeaked a muffled scream beneath the gag.

“That’s enough,” he said.

When he dragged her past a floor lamp, she kicked at the base with the bottom of her feet and toppled it.

He dropped the rope and grabbed a fistful of hair from the top of her head. “We’ll do it the hard way, then.”

While she continued screaming, he dragged her into the bathroom by the hair and backed into the shower stall with her. He released her head, letting it crack against the tile floor, and stepped around her body. Her legs were still sticking out. He picked them up and folded them into the stall. Reaching inside, he adjusted the showerhead so that it was aimed at her face and turned on the cold water.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, and snapped the shower door shut.

She gurgled a scream to the glass.

His response was to turn up the volume on his CD player.

On her back with her legs bent up, she shivered and moaned under the icy spray. Her head throbbed. Her wrists and ankles ached from the bindings. The gag in her mouth was collecting water. Instead of turning her face away from the shower, she closed her eyes and visualized herself dead in the stall before he got back. She started to drift off, and her head tipped to one side. The cold water continued to hammer her face while her ears drowned in a booming aria from an Italian opera.

Chapter 21

ABOUT HALF A MILE LONG AND A COUPLE OF BLOCKS WIDE,
University Grove was a swath of land huddled next to the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus, bucolic and agriculture-themed, noted more for livestock studies than for student demonstrations. The hundred or so single-family homes gracing the Grove’s curving, oak-lined streets were built specifically for university professors and administrators, which meant the compact community contained a good chunk of the state’s intelligentsia. Chemists. Economists. Physicists. Architects. Anthropologists. An economic adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had lived in the Grove, as had a member of the team that developed the atomic bomb.

Bernadette had learned about the neighborhood during her research on Professor Wakefielder. While waiting for this particular member of the intelligentsia to drag a body past a window—preferably one with open blinds and excellent backlighting—she gave Garcia an architecture lesson.

“Modern functionalism,” she said, pointing to a blocky home on their side of the street. “I also detect the strong influence of the Bauhaus.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hell if I know.”

Garcia looked across the street at the handsome homes on either side of the surveillance subject’s well-kept Tudor. They all had generous lots, offering plenty of room between neighbors. “I’d love to own here.”

“Actually the U owns the land,” she said. “The profs buy the houses and pay rent for the land.”

“What happens when they want to sell?” asked Garcia.

“It can’t be to Joe Six-Pack. It has to be to another university faculty member or staffer.”

“So you and I couldn’t live here,” he said.

“Even if they sold to regular slugs, we couldn’t afford it,” she said.

He grinned. “Hey. Maybe
you
couldn’t, but I—”

“Don’t go there,” she said.

“I suppose we’re not brilliant enough,” he said. “We’d feel out of place.”

“I always feel out of place,” she said cheerfully.

Dressed in jeans and jackets, the pair sat in the front seat of an undercover beater that looked remarkably like Garcia’s personal beater. Their heap did not look out of place. It was parked between two other junkers, one a weathered Toyota sedan and the other an old VW “hippie van,” as Garcia called it. It seemed the profs on this block did not put their money into their rides.

Garcia shifted the driver’s seat back and stretched out his legs. “Does anything suck more than a stakeout?”

“You’re the boss. You didn’t have to suffer through this.”

“Nothing else to do.”

“A Friday night, and you had nothing else to do?”

He looked through the driver’s side at the two lighted rectangles on the second floor of the house. Every once in a while, Wakefielder got close enough to the windows to reveal a shadow of movement. “Yeah, well…sometimes these things can get highly…entertaining.”

“You’ve been watching too many mermaid movies.” She looked through Garcia’s side. She couldn’t tell if the windows were dressed with sheer curtains, like the bedroom windows she’d observed through her sight. The blinds were down. Had been down since they’d relieved the first shift at eleven o’clock.

The agents they’d replaced—two buddies from the Minneapolis office who had plans to leave for pheasant hunting early the next morning—said they’d spotted the subject several times downstairs, through windows with blinds at half-mast.

“Traipsing around in his boxers, scratching his balls, having a cocktail,” one reported, adding: “My plans precisely when I get home.”

They had nothing more to relate other than the time the downstairs lights went off and the upstairs went on: “Twenty-two hundred hours on the nuts.”

It was now two on the nuts.

She yawned and shifted in her seat. “When is he going to go to bed?”

“I could call him up and ask.”

“Tell him to run us out a snack first. Cheese and crackers would be lovely.”

“There’s still half a pizza left,” he said.

“It’d make me thirsty.”

“I have pop.”

“Then I’d have to pee.”

“You girls do have it rough in that department. Guys can go in pop bottles.”

“Please. Who does that?”

“That’s what you do in a deer stand. Whiz in a bottle and put a cap on it so the odor doesn’t alert Bambi.”

“You’d better not plan on doing that while—”

“Car,” said Garcia, looking in the rearview mirror.

They ducked down as a cab cruised down the street and turned into the Tudor’s driveway. A long-haired woman got out, leaving the back passenger door open, and walked up the steps leading to the Tudor’s front door. She had a big purse slung over her shoulder. At first it appeared she wore a short skirt under her pea coat. When the woman raised her arm to ring the doorbell, Garcia and Bernadette realized that that wasn’t the case.

“Nice panties,” observed Garcia.

“I’m not big on animal prints,” said Bernadette.

“It’s a look, especially with those flip-flops.”

“What sort of gal would arrive by taxi at this hour, dressed like that?”

“Call girl?” Garcia volunteered.

“This is Minnesota. Even our hookers dress sensibly.”

The woman started attacking the door with both fists. Bernadette sat up to get a better look. She was young enough and slight enough to fit the physical profile of the fragile drowning victims. Her state of undress, combined with the hysterical way she was beating the door, fit the emotional profile of the unstable girls.

Garcia pulled Bernadette back down. “Sit tight. She’s fine. Let this thing play itself out.”

The cab was still in the driveway, the motor running. The woman turned as she stood on the stoop and looked at the driver.

“There’s stuff all over her coat,” noted Garcia. “What is that?”

After more banging and ringing, the Tudor’s downstairs lights flicked on and the storm door popped open. Wakefielder stood on one side of the screen door. He’d pulled on some sweats, but his chest was bare. For a guy in his early forties, he was pumped.

He opened the screen door, put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder, and pulled her inside, slamming the screen door but leaving the storm door wide open. Bernadette and Garcia sat up and peered into the house. The prof and the woman were standing nose to nose. The woman fell against him, and he put his arms around her.

“This is juicy,” whispered Bernadette.

“You think she’s a girlfriend? A student? His ex?”

“His wives are older than that. I’m laying money it’s a combination of those first two.”

The professor eased the girl off him, took his wallet off a foyer table, and went outside. Garcia and Bernadette sank down again while Wakefielder padded over to the driver’s side of the taxi. He and the cabbie talked through the driver’s window. The prof looked in the backseat of the sedan, shook his head, and reached inside. Extracted a skirt, holding it by two fingers, and slammed the passenger door.

“There’s her bottom half,” said Garcia. “Covered in puke.”

“Drunk or stoned or acting out some sort of bulimic behavior,” said Bernadette.

The prof handed the cabbie a couple of bills. The taxi pulled away, and Wakefielder padded up the steps, went inside, and shut both doors. The agents sat straight.

“Show’s over,” said Bernadette.

“Not necessarily,” said Garcia.

Through the half-open blinds lining the home’s front-room windows, they could see the leopard print creeping up on the sweat pants. Close. Closer. The next instant, Wakefielder peeled away from his guest and approached the windows. The blinds dropped down all the way.

“Crap,” said Garcia.

Ten minutes later all the lights in the house went dark.

The two agents stared at the black windows. “I’m not liking this,” Bernadette said.

“Neither am I.” Garcia reached into his jacket, pulled out a stocking cap, and yanked it on over his head. Then he turned around and snatched the pizza box off the backseat.

“Tony…”

He opened the glove compartment and rummaged around. Pulled out a pen.

“This is a neighborhood of rocket scientists. Literally. This isn’t going to work,” she said.

He checked the Tudor’s address and scribbled a number on the box that was ten higher. “It’s never failed me before.”

“You’re not serious.”

He popped open the driver’s side. “Watch me.”

“I intend to.” She opened the passenger door.

“Meet you at the end of the alley,” he whispered.

They quietly closed their doors, looked up and down the street, and dashed across the road to the house. While he went up the steps, she slipped between two evergreen bushes growing under the front-room windows. When she heard the doorbell, she unsnapped her holster, took out her gun, and crouched down. Garcia shot her a quick glance from his post on the stoop.

Another ring, followed by Garcia’s “Pizza.”

The lights in the front-room windows flashed back on, and the storm door cracked open. A young woman’s voice through the screen: “One sec…I don’t have any money on me.”

The girl disappeared for a minute. Garcia shuffled his feet and angled his head, trying to see inside through the screen door. Bernadette could hear the heavy thump of a man coming down the stairs. Wakefielder had apparently gone up for the night while his guest had stayed on the first floor.

Their man was at the door. “Jesus Christ! It’s two in the morning!”

“You didn’t order this?” asked Garcia, raising the box.

Scrutinizing the carton’s address through the screen, Wakefielder grumbled: “That’s at the end of the block.”

Playing dumb, Garcia scratched his head through the stocking cap. “Shit. I’m an idiot. Hope I didn’t—”

The door slammed in his face, and Bernadette could hear the deadbolt turn.

Casting a look over his shoulder as he went, Garcia took his time returning to the car. By the time he got behind the wheel, the lights on both floors were out. He started the engine, piloted the heap out of the parking spot, and rolled toward the end of the block.