Kill the Messenger (13 page)

He could hear someone moving through the front rooms slowly, as if trying to take it all in, or trying to find something. Objects being moved.

Maybe the guy had panicked when Jace came in, and bolted without whatever it was he had come here to find. Maybe he’d come back to get it. Maybe he’d come back with a weapon.

A weapon. He needed a weapon.

A long triangular shard of glass stuck out from the broken mirror. Jace wrapped the bloody towel around his hand and plucked it free. He stepped behind the bathroom door and waited.

Maybe a neighbor had already called the cops, and there were two uniforms picking their way toward the back of the apartment with guns drawn.

The shattered mirror gave a distorted, surreal reflection of the person stepping cautiously into the room—an eye here, a nose there, a live Picasso painting.

Jace dropped his weapon, kicked the door shut, and grabbed Abby Lowell, clamping his hand over her mouth to muffle her scream. She tried to jab him with her elbow, kicked backward, connecting a boot heel to his shin. Jace tightened his arm around the middle of her, kept his palm flat over her mouth as she tried to bite him. She was strong and athletic and determined to get away from him. Jace shoved her forward, as his assailant had done to him, trapping her up against the sink.

“Don’t scream,” he ordered quietly, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear. “I’m not here to hurt you. I want to help. I knew your father. He was a good guy.”

She was watching him in the mirror, her brown eyes round with fear and distrust.

“I came here to see you, to talk to you,” Jace explained. “Someone had ransacked the place. He beat the shit out of me and left.”

His chin was on her shoulder. He could see himself in the broken mirror. With the swelling and bruising and bleeding, he looked like a freak from a horror movie. Abby Lowell’s attention had gone from him to the message on the glass. The red lipstick had smeared on the word
you,
but the message was clear enough.

Next You Die.

“I didn’t put that there,” Jace said. “I didn’t get a look at the guy who did, but I swear it wasn’t me.”

She had gone still in his arms. He loosened his hold on her slightly.

“You won’t scream?” he asked. “I’ll take my hand away if you promise you won’t scream.”

She nodded her head. Slowly, Jace took his hand away from her mouth. She didn’t scream, didn’t move. He loosened his hold across her stomach, stepped back a couple of inches so that she was no longer pressed against the sink, but he could pin her there again if she tried to bolt.

“Who are you?” she asked, still watching him in the broken mirror.

“I knew your father.”

“How? Were you a client?”

“I did some work for him once in a while.”

“What kind of work?”

“That’s not important.”

“It is to me,” she said. “How do I know you didn’t kill him? How do I know you didn’t do this to my home?”

“And then beat myself into a stupor?” Jace said. “How did I manage that?”

“Maybe Lenny did that to you before you killed him.”

“And I’m still bleeding? Maybe if I’m a hemophiliac.”

“How do I know you didn’t kill him?” she said again. “And now you’re here to kill me.”

“Why would I want you dead? Why would anyone want you dead?”

“I don’t know. One minute my life was normal, and the next my father is dead, and I’m being questioned by detectives, and having to make funeral arrangements, and now this,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. She pressed a hand to her mouth and tried to steel herself against the emotions threatening to overwhelm her.

“I know,” Jace said softly. “I know.”

She twisted around to face him. They stood as close as lovers sharing a secret. He could smell her perfume, something soft and musky. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“I know he was killed,” Jace said. “I read in the paper you found his body.”

“That’s not true. I don’t know how that got in there.”

“They seemed to know a lot about you.”

She looked away, upset by the idea. “I wasn’t there. Not until . . . after.”

“So you didn’t see anyone leaving the scene?”

“No. The police were there by the time I got there. Why would you want to know that? Do you have some idea who killed him?”

Jace shook his head, though in his memory the dark sedan slid past him, and he saw the stone-faced guy behind the wheel. “No. Do you?”

“I was told it was a robbery.”

“What about this place?” he asked. “The perpetrator of a random crime kills your father, then seeks you out to rob you and leave a death threat on your mirror? That’s pretty far-fetched. I’d say somebody was looking for something here. Do you know what?”

“I can’t imagine,” she said, watching him like a poker player. “Do you know?”

“Was anything missing from Lenny’s office?”

“Money. I don’t know how much. There was money in the safe. He was waiting for a bike messenger last night. The police think the messenger did it. Killed Lenny, took the money, and skipped town.”

“Doesn’t look to me like the killer skipped town,” Jace said.

“Maybe it wasn’t the killer who did this. Maybe this was just a thief.”

“And why would a common thief write that on your mirror?” he asked. “‘Next you die.’ It would be a pretty amazing coincidence if the night after your dad was murdered, an unrelated serial killer just happened to single you out to be his next victim.”

Abby Lowell put her hands over her face, rubbing at the tension, trailing her manicured fingers down her throat as she tipped her head back and sighed. “I need to sit down.”

Jace didn’t stop her as she slipped past him to sit on the edge of the bathtub. He lowered himself onto the closed toilet. He wanted to lie down. His head felt like someone was hitting him over and over with a lead pipe. He raised a hand to his face to check for bleeding.

“Who are you?” she asked again. “Why would you come here? I don’t know you. You’re not the usual sort Lenny did business with. Even if you were, why would you come to me? Why is this any of your business?”

Jace studied her for a moment. She sat with her back straight and her legs crossed, elegant and ladylike. How the hell had Lenny ever managed to produce a daughter like this? Maybe she was adopted.

“You haven’t answered my questions,” she said.

She tilted her head, dark hair spilling from behind her ear like a curtain. She pushed it back and looked at him, sort of up-from-under. Sexy.

“If you know something about Lenny’s death,” she said, “you should go to the cops. Ask for Detective Parker. If you know something about why this unknown assailant broke into my apartment, you should go to the cops. You can use my phone,” she offered. “Or I can make the call.”

Jace glanced away. She was cornering him. He stayed cool. “I’m not interested in talking to cops.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Do you know what your father was involved in?”

“I didn’t know he was involved in anything.”

“Someone thinks you do,” Jace said, looking at the mirror. “Someone thinks if they didn’t get what they wanted from your father, then you must have it.”

“Why don’t you want to talk to the police?” she asked. “If you aren’t involved in something yourself. If you don’t know anything about it, why are you asking all these questions?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Because you know something,” she said, standing. She was getting angry, agitated. She paced a couple of steps one way, then the other. “And the only way you could know something is if you’re involved.”

“Someone tried to kill me last night,” Jace said, coming to his feet as his own anger bubbled up. “That’s what I know. I was doing something for your father, and someone tried to kill me. And on my way back to ask Lenny what the fuck he’d gotten me into, I found out he was dead. I think that gives me a right to be interested, don’t you?”

“You’re him, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re the bike messenger.”

In a heartbeat she was out the door, yanking it shut behind her. Jace bolted, flinging the door back and running after her.

She grabbed a portable phone on her way toward the door, then stumbled over books that had been flung to the floor in the ransacking.

Jace lunged at her, knocking her down, landing on top of her. She cried out for help, and twisted beneath him enough so that she could swing at him with the phone. She landed a glancing blow off his right eyebrow. Stars burst before his eyes. He blocked a second blow, and tried to knock the phone out of her hand.

“Goddammit, stop fighting!” he growled. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

“What the hell’s going on up there?” a male voice called from somewhere outside the apartment.

Abby started to shout again for help. Jace clamped a hand over her mouth. Footsteps sounded on the stairs in the hall.

“Miss Lowell? Are you all right?”

She twisted her head to the side to slip his hold, and bit down hard on a finger. Jace yanked his hand back and she shouted “No!” before he could cover her mouth again.

Out in the hall the man shouted to someone else, “Call 911!”

“Shit!”

Jace pushed himself up off her and bolted for the door.

Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit!

An older man, with thinning gray hair and wild eyebrows, jumped back, startled. He had a big wrench in his hand.

Jace shoved past him and ran down the stairs so fast, he couldn’t believe he didn’t fall on his face. The poodle woman was sticking her head out a door at the bottom of the staircase, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.

Jace skidded around the base of the staircase and ran for the back door, feet slipping on the old polished pavers. He kept his eyes on the double doors and the courtyard beyond.

He hit the doors running. Burst outside. The little courtyard had flowers and shrubs, and a seven-foot stucco wall surrounding it.

Don’t think. Act. Don’t think. Act.

He grabbed a wooden bench, dragged it to the wall.

Stepped back, took a deep breath.

The guy with the wrench came through the doors, shouting.

Jace hit the bench seat running. Launched himself.

Grabbed the top of the wall. Hurled himself over.

He couldn’t help crying out as he hit the ground on his feet and pain exploded in his ankle and shot up his leg like glass shattering.

Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

Jaw clenched, he struggled to his feet and moved forward, limping heavily. He had to get gone. He couldn’t hide. The cops would bring a dog. And a chopper wouldn’t be far behind.

Across the street, down the alley. Cut between houses. Across another street, down another alley. Doubling back toward the Mini. If he’d been riding The Beast instead of driving a car, he could have jumped on and been gone, flying down side streets and alleys in a blur. No one could have touched him.

His head was pounding. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t hear a siren. He couldn’t hear anything but the jarring thud of his feet beating the ground, the rasping of air sucking in and out of his lungs.

He could see the car. He stuck his hand in his coat pocket and yanked out the keys, nearly fumbling them.

Unable to stop his momentum, he ran into the side of the Mini, pushed himself back, yanked the door open, spilled into the driver’s seat. He was dizzy. He felt sick. He couldn’t get the key in the ignition.

Now a siren sounded in the distance.

The engine turned over and he threw the car into gear and started to spin a U-turn in the middle of the street. A horn blasting, tires screeching. The nose of a minivan just clipped the Mini, knocking the tail of the car sideways as its tires spun on the street, squealing.

And then he was moving. Right turn, left turn, right turn, left turn, headed east.

He slowed his pace as quickly as he dared. He didn’t want a trail of complaining citizens for the cops to follow.

A radio car would arrive on the scene at Abby Lowell’s building. There would be confusion, excitement. It would take time to sort it all out. Maybe there wasn’t a chopper cruising the skies nearby. If a chopper got on him, he was screwed.

He kept moving east at a normal pace, like a normal human being in a normal situation. Behind the wheel he was shaking, sweating, his heart still racing. His throat squeezed closed every time he thought he saw a black-and-white.

He couldn’t have fucked up any bigger than he had. What had he thought, that Abby Lowell would offer him a drink and they would sit down and discuss the situation calmly? Her father was dead. And as innocent as she pretended to be, she had to know something. Why else would some thug leave a death threat on her mirror?
Next You Die.

Next,
as if Lenny had been a warning, or just the first on a list of things to do.

Jace put a hand against his stomach and felt the package. He wondered how she would have reacted if he had told her he had it.

Shaking himself free of his thoughts for a second, Jace glanced to either side of the car. He had worked his way north and east, north and east, all the way to Silverlake, about five miles northwest of downtown.

Silverlake had been a happening place in the twenties and thirties, when silent film stars and movie moguls built homes and studios in the area. The hills above the reservoir were full of homes from that era that had been refurbished for modern, hip, artsy types with bucks.

Jace found a place to pull over and park near the reservoir. He got out of the car to move and stretch and gather his thoughts. He walked to the back of the car and swore under his breath. Madame Chen’s pride and joy was no longer pristine. Half the taillight cover was gone, left shattered on the street where the minivan had clipped him. Scratches and paint marks from the pale-colored van highlighted the area below the taillight.

What now?

Now he was wanted for a murder
and
an assault, home invasion, and vandalism. And for stealing who knew how much out of Lenny Lowell’s safe.

He played back the few minutes he had been in Lowell’s office last night. He remembered thinking the place was a mess. He had glanced around, looked at the television, touched Lenny’s bowling trophy and left a great set of fingerprints. He didn’t remember any safe being open.