Chasing Venus (49 page)

But he had read the
manuscript for her first mystery, she knew, when her editor had submitted an
early version to Maggie Boswell for a cover quote she had never deigned to
bestow.
 
Annie and Charles had
talked about it at a conference years before.

Jumbled thoughts
crowded into her head.

The killer meant to hang me.
 
That’s the murder scenario he chose for me, from my first book.
 
That’s why he had the rope.

And that explains why Charles didn’t react to the dyed blond hair.
 
It’s not new to him.
 
He’s seen it before.

Because he’s the killer
.

And here she was in his
home.
 
Alone with him.
 
In his home.

He must have seen the
recognition dawn in her face when he turned from the window and looked at her
again, because he leapt the short distance between them with a speed Annie
hadn’t imagined he could produce.
 
He
muscled her backward.

“No!”
 
She shouted, tried to beat him
back.
 
But he had the benefit of
size and surprise, and he pushed her, hard, back against the wall, then back
into an open space.
 
She tumbled ass
first onto the floor, just in time to see a door slam shut in front of her.

Pitch blackness
descended.
 
She lurched forward,
aware she was in a closet, running her hands over the inside of the door to
find a knob, some way to get the door open.
 
She heard Charles ram something against
the door.

She found the knob,
twisted it, pushed.
 
Nothing
happened.
 
Charles had rammed
something under the knob and now the door was jammed shut.

The world around her
was black and cold and all was abundantly clear.
 
Charles
Waring
was the killer.
 
And she was in his
hands.

None of this felt the
way Reid had imagined it would.

He was on the 101
freeway heading east, a few miles from Encino.
 
As was typical in Southern California,
there were four lanes in each direction.
 
At this midnight hour, unimpeded by traffic, he was well over the speed
limit, pushing 80 miles an hour, keeping an eye out for the CHP.

Not for one second of
the ride had he been at ease.
 
Oh,
he was confident of his ability to bring down Bigelow when the time came.
 
He had the advantages of surprise and
obsessive motivation.
 
The greater
risk was that Reid would harm himself by gunning down the bastard once he
finally had him in his sights.
 
Even
if you were one of the nation’s most popular crime fighters, the law didn’t take
kindly to vigilante justice.

Over the last five
years, whenever Reid anticipated this juncture in his life, he had expected
that he would feel a drive, a purposefulness, that would crowd every possible
distraction from his mind.
 
Instead
he had to struggle to keep Larry “Eight Ball” Bigelow front and center.
 
For someone else repeatedly intruded on
his consciousness.

Annie.

He couldn’t get her out
of his head.
 
He couldn’t comprehend
how he had been so cavalier with her.
 
You will be fine.
 
You will be safe. And
 
I won’t be gone long ...
 
All while she was the target of a serial
killer.

He had taken such
precautions when they moved from the cabin to the motel.
 
He had been certain, absolutely certain,
that no one had followed them.
 
If
that were true, then in the immediate term Annie truly had nothing to
fear.
 
He needn’t worry about
her.
 
She’d be fine, just as he had
assured her.
 
He’d take down
Bigelow, then go back to her.
 
No
harm, no foul.

Better than that, Reid
corrected himself.
 
He would be a
free man.
 
His hunt for Bigelow
would be over.
 
He would be free to
be with Annie, the way he wanted to be.
 
He would have fulfilled his final obligation to Donna.
 
At long last he could move on.

Reid passed a
white-on-green freeway sign that indicated his exit was a mile ahead.
 
He made his way to the slow lane, then
exited.
 
Stopped in a line of cars
halted by a red light, he caught himself looking around for an on-ramp to the
westbound direction.

His hands tapped
restlessly on the steering wheel as he fought a feeling he couldn’t deny.
 
He wanted to turn around and go
back.
 
Now.
 
This second.
 
Without nabbing Bigelow.
 
How could that be?
 
He was minutes from the lowlife.
 
Minutes.
 
The scumbag he’d been hunting for years.

The scumbag who shot
Donna, he reminded himself.
 
Him.
 
Bigelow.

Reid didn’t doubt the
worthiness of the tip.
 
Sure, there
was a chance it wouldn’t pan out.
 
But he considered that possibility remote.
 
That security guard was Bigelow.

Annie
.
 
He imagined her
back at the motel.
 
Alone.
 
Frightened.
 
Waiting for him.

Alone.
 
Frightened.
 
Waiting for him.

Just like Donna had
been.
 
All those years ago, in the
cab of his truck.

This night reminded him
of that night.
 
Although all of the
circumstances were different, in some bizarre way he couldn’t pinpoint, it had
the same hallmarks.
 
And he was
doing the exact same thing now that he had done then.

The light turned
green.
 
In front of Reid’s truck,
the traffic cleared.
 
His foot hit
the gas.
 
Within seconds he was once
again on the freeway heading back in the direction he had just come.

*

Cowering in the dark
provided Annie with ample time for reflection.
 
She had gotten past the grotesque irony
that she had put herself in the clutches of a serial murderer.
 
She still had her voice, which she had
spent some time exercising, but behind these walls, in this moneyed
neighborhood where homes were laid out for maximum privacy and minimum contact
with neighbors, she had little hope that anyone but her captor would hear her.

Nor did her cell phone
work.
 
There wasn’t a single bar of
coverage.
 
It was useless to her
here on the coast.
 
Positively
useless.

Action was called
for.
 
She could not let her life end
like this, in the hands of a mad man.
 
He had slain Michael—and Seamus O’Neill and Elizabeth Wimble and
his own wife—but she would do her damnedest not to let him slay her.
 
It was time to prove that the fearless
Annie of old was back and would fight Charles
Waring
with whatever she had.

Which wasn’t much.

The closet had little
in it, and what there was could not be taken in at a glance because the switch
for the lone bulb was outside and hence unreachable.
 
Annie quickly ascertained that the space
was perhaps six feet wide by three deep, with a bar extending all the way
across and a shelf above.

Feeling her way around
in the dark, Annie’s hands alighted upon one item and then another, finding
first spare bed linens, including a blanket and pillow, then a beach bag
stuffed with towels, swim goggles, a bathing cap, and a tube of sunblock.
 
Next a handled basket, the kind one
might carry to the farmer’s market.
 
A board game.
 
A stack of
paperbacks.
 
A small electric fan.
 
An ironing board, and an iron.
 
A yoga mat.
 
In short, a variety of items house
guests might find handy.

The question was
whether this particular house guest might find one useful.

Noises outside the
closet door informed Annie that Charles had returned.
 
A paralyzing chill coursed through
her.
 
She had no idea how much time
had passed.
 
It might have been
minutes; it might have been an hour.
 
She crammed her body against the closet’s rear wall, steeling herself
for the moment when Charles opened the closet door.

Which he would have to
do to kill her, unless he chose to burn down the guest house.
 
That was a course of action she had
weighed for likelihood and discarded.
 
He wouldn’t want to have to explain a charred corpse.

Other horrifying
possibilities seemed only too imaginable.
 
Hanging her, for one, his original plan.
 
Or he might open the closet door only to
pump a few slugs into her body.
 
That would leave him with a grisly mess, but she supposed a serial
killer might be able to find it within himself to sanitize a crime scene.

He answered the
question uppermost in her mind without her having to ask it.
 
“I’ve come back to poison you,” he
called through the closet door.

An image of the dead
curare-doped frogs unearthed from her back yard rose in Annie’s mind.
 
She had to struggle not to retch.

“You should be
grateful,” he went on.
 
It sounded
like he was bustling about.
 
His
voice was matter-of-fact, almost cheerful.
 
“I had intended to hang you, as you apparently figured out.
 
But the time is past for such niceties
as selecting scenarios from books.
 
And of all the ways I might send you to your Maker, curare is among the
quickest and least painful.
 
I
almost hated to use it on my wife.”

Annie found her
voice.
 
“Why did you kill Maggie?”

“Because she was a
self-absorbed bitch who delighted in making my life hell.
 
That’s why.”
 
Gone was the jovial tone.
 
“I knew that if I got rid of her, I’d
have the money, I’d have the house, but I’d never again have to face that
disdain, that contempt she delighted in doling out.”

“It couldn’t have
always been that way.”

“Of course it wasn’t in
the beginning.
 
But the higher her
star rose, the more insufferable she became.”
 
Annie heard the springs of the mattress
creak, as if Charles had sat down to have a chat.
 
“Everyone she came into contact with was
subjected to that arrogance of hers, but I was the only one who had to live
with it day in and day out.”

“I can’t imagine it
helped that you write, too.”

“You phrase that very
carefully, Annette.”
 
He
laughed.
 
“ ‘I write, too,’ as if I
were on a par with Maggie Boswell.
 
That’s a concept she never embraced.
 
As far as she was concerned, hell would
freeze over before I succeeded in getting a novel published.”

“She never tried to
help you?”

“Are you suggesting I’m
even worthy of help?”
 
His tone was
thick with irony.
 
“Are you trying
to get on my good side now?
 
Instead
of insulting me again?”

“I didn’t mean to
insult you before.”

“Whether you did or
not, you’re certain to tread more carefully now.
 
Not that it will do you any good.”

Annie had no idea what
would do her any good at this moment.
 
But as long as Charles was talking to her, he wasn’t killing her.
 
“Your wife may have been horrible to
you,” she went on, “but the other people you killed never were.
 
I
never was.”

“You don’t understand
yet, do you?
 
I don’t care about the
other people.
 
They were only to
muddy the waters.
 
If Maggie Boswell
were murdered, I’d be the number one suspect.
 
The spouse always is.
 
But if a serial killer is on the loose,
well …”

“Are you telling me you
killed three innocent people just to divert attention from the murder of your
wife?”
 
Her voice rose.
 
“You killed Michael as a
distraction
?”

“Michael Ellsworth had
a long and marvelous life, Annette.”
 
Charles’s voice took on a harsh undertone.
 
“He was admired and beloved and rich
beyond the dreams of avarice, thanks to that fertile imagination of his.
 
And that skilled pen.
 
I don’t feel sorry for him and neither
should you.”

“So you resented
him.
 
You were jealous,
basically.
 
Of him and Seamus and
Elizabeth as well as your wife.
 
Are
you jealous of me, too?”