Omega Dog (16 page)

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‘I
lost the gun,’ said Beth.

Her ears were ringing still, from the cavalcade of gunfire in the confined space of the house. Her ribs ached where Venn had knocked her to the ground. Her mouth was as dry as a dustbowl and her eyes felt like sandpaper. The ankle she’d twisted earlier hurt as she hobbled along, and her entire body screamed at her to stop.

But she couldn’t.

They were weaving through the cool gray of the spring morning, down unfamiliar tree-lined streets. Beth didn’t know Brooklyn, had no idea where they were heading. She didn’t know if Venn did either.

She’d lost the gun.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ grunted Venn beside her.

A subway station sign loomed up ahead, a few early commuters descending into the entrance. Venn steered them toward it.

Beth said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Back to Manhattan. Near Grand Central.’

‘Why –’ she started to say. Then she remembered. ‘The storage locker?’

Venn nodded.

‘But we haven’t got the key. Margaret put it in her pocket.’

Not breaking his stride, Venn dipped his hand into his own pocket. He unfolded his palm.

The key sat there.

‘How –?’

‘Little trick I picked up when I was working undercover,’ he said. ‘I was posing as a small-time pickpocket. Had to learn the skill set.’

They reached the top of the steps down into the subway station. Beth stumbled a little at the top, suddenly dizzy when faced with the steep steps, and Venn caught her arm. This time she didn’t shake off his hand.

‘Won’t they be waiting there for us?’ said Beth. ‘The cops, I mean? Around Grand Central?’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Probably not. Not unless somebody other than the McNeills knows about the locker.’

‘Margaret won’t have told them,’ said Beth with certainty. ‘Her husband, I’m not so sure.’

‘Neither of them are saying anything now,’ said Venn. ‘They’re both dead.’

Beth stopped on the stairs and a man behind collided with her. She stared at Venn.

‘Dead?’

‘That woman cop. Anderson. She shot Dr McNeill dead. She was trying to hit me, didn’t care that a civilian was in the way. She’s probably killed the husband too.’

Beth put her hand up to her mouth. This was yet more madness to cope with, piled on all of the horrors of the past twelve hours.

Venn took her arm and pulled her on down the stairs. ‘She was no cop. Or, if she was, she’s moonlighting as something else.’

‘What are you saying?’

They were heading or the turnstiles. Beth struggled to keep up with Venn’s pace.

‘I’m saying,’ he said, ‘that Anderson is probably another killer, coming after you. A rival to the first guy, since they were shooting at each other. I’m guessing there’s some kind of bounty out on your head. I don’t know about the other cop. Gomez.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Beth, still trying to make sense of the notion that Shelly Anderson, so kind and elfin, was an assassin. ‘The two of them had me alone earlier. They could have killed me then if they’d both been in on it.’

‘Then Gomez is probably also dead.’ He slowed, grimacing as if he’d suddenly remembered something. ‘Damn it. Give me your cell phone.’

‘Why?’ But Beth handed it over.

Venn tossed it onto the track and pulled Beth along the platform. She stared back at the spot where he’d thrown the phone.

‘Anderson will probably put a trace on your phone,’ Venn said by way of explanation. ‘She won’t have access to my number. She doesn’t know who I am.’

They squeezed between the closing doors of a train as it was about to leave. There were seats available; the morning rush was still a couple of hours away. Beth looked round the carriage. A couple of down-and-outs sleeping off the night’s booze. Two backpacking kids off somewhere. A middle-aged businessman reading the financial pages.

Nobody in the least bit threatening, and yet the whole setting exuded menace to Beth.

Without warning she felt wetness on her cheeks. She put a hand up to her face, felt the tears flooding down on either side.

Get a hold of yourself
, she thought angrily, wiping at her face with her sleeve.

But the tears kept coming.

‘Hey,’ said Venn beside her.

Awkwardly, he put a heavy arm across her shoulders, not knowing where to lay his hand. Eventually he settled on her upper arm.

Beth’s first impulse was to pull away. But to her surprise, she leaned in and rested her head on his chest.

The tears turned into sobs. Uncontrollable, wracking heaves of terror and pain and confusion.

The businessman and the backpackers glanced over, looked away just as quickly. This was New York, after all. You minded your own business.

Venn didn’t say anything, just kept his arm where it was and let her drench the front of his shirt. He didn’t say
there, there
, or
don’t cry
.

And he didn’t say
it’s going to be all right
, because it wasn’t.

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S
helly moved her shoulder a little, testing the range inside the ridiculous sling the doctor had made her wear. It hurt like hell, but she knew that prolonged immobility would lead to lasting stiffness, and she didn’t need that.

She’d gotten off lightly. The bullet had passed through the deltoid muscle of her shoulder and just grazed the scapula bone. No major blood vessels hit, no fractures. No permanent damage done.

But the whole episode was an enormous setback.

After she left the hospital she spent the morning being questioned. Her account of events was written down by three separate interviewers.

She knew she had to go through the process, but she was itching to get after the Colby woman. Every second of delay was a second more that Colby and the big guy helping her would get further away.

The story Shelly recited went like this. She and Mike Gomez had identified Dr McNeill as a possible link between Colby and Professor Lomax. Perfectly true, this. They had paid McNeill and her husband an early morning visit to warn her that she might be in danger, and while there had been ambushed by the big man who’d abducted Colby earlier. The man had both a Beretta and a Glock. Dr McNeill’s husband had tried to get heroic with a shotgun and had missed. The big guy killed him and his wife and Gomez, and winged Shelly. Then he’d made his escape, the Colby woman with him. It wasn’t yet clear if she was cooperating with him in some bizarre Stockholm Syndrome way, or if she was too terrified of him to put up any resistance.

A messy but plausible story, and like all the best lies, it was mostly true.

All through the early morning, as she was questioned and given endless forms to complete, papers to sign, Shelly suffered a stream of well-wishers. Fellow cops, sympathizing with her for what she’d been through, commiserating over the loss of Gomez. Swearing vengeance against whoever it was that had killed one of their own.

Shelly gave as accurate a description of the big man as she could. Over six feet, two hundred pounds, maybe a little more. Dark hair, cut short. A tidy goatee. Almost certainly ex-military considering his speed and proficiency with weapons.

And the crime scene techs were, of course, scouring the Brooklyn brownstone for DNA, or any other clues to the man’s identity.

Shelly was sent home for the day around mid-morning, when they’d finally finished with her. She had to turn in her gun, as was usual procedure after a cop used their firearm. She put up a half-assed protest, saying she wanted to get out there and join the hunt for Mike Gomez’s killer. But she knew her superior would forbid it, saying she wasn’t in a fit state, and he did.

That suited Shelly just fine. It gave her time to get on with what she needed to do.

With what Rosetti had hired her to do.

As she stepped out into the early afternoon sunlight and began the walk to the subway and home, crunching a handful of ibuprofen tablets, Shelly thought back over the last 24 hours.

Rosetti had called her personally yesterday morning, asking if she could do a hit on a woman in hospital. As it happened, Shelly wasn’t on duty till five PM. She said she’d do the hit that very afternoon.

It had been a simple matter to locate the cancer ward on which the woman, Luisa Perez, was being treated, and gain access. An NYPD badge got you respect, and opened all kinds of doors. Especially if you were as innocent-looking and cute as Shelly Anderson.

Once on the ward, Shelly pilfered a syringe and a needle from a storage drawer, waited for the right moment, then administered a syringeful of air into the IV set of the dozing young woman.

She was already walking away when the cardiac arrest call went out.

An odd choice of victim, Shelly thought. Why was a mob boss like Rosetti taking out a contract on a twenty-something woman with cancer? But it didn’t matter. So long as Rosetti paid up, Shelly was happy to take the work. Especially jobs as easy as this one.

The Colby killing was proving much harder, though.

This time Rosetti had called late last night, while Shelly and Gomez had been interviewing Dr Colby across town in the station house. Shelly couldn’t believe her good luck. The very woman Rosetti wanted her to kill was sitting there in the interview room Shelly had just stepped out of.

The problem, though, was Gomez. He knew nothing of Shelly’s other life, nothing of her fantastically lucrative sideline as a hitwoman, alongside which her meager NYPD detective’s salary was chickenfeed.

She had to get Gomez out of the way and be alone with Dr Colby. And that proved hard to do.

In the end, she didn’t manage it, and then the big guy had arrived and snatched Colby away. And then that
other
man had turned up in the car, apparently also trying to kill Colby. The same man, probably, who’d tried to shoot her in her apartment only a few hours earlier.

Another
assassin? Was Rosetti hedging her bets, sending several killers into the field, letting them duke it out until one of them did the job?

Shelly figured it meant this Colby woman really was special.

That was interesting. It suggested Shelly might be able to negotiate a higher fee from Rosetti. Once she’d completed the job.

Shelly’s home was a basement apartment in NoHo. She could have afforded better – way,
way
better – but people would have gotten suspicious about how she could stretch her cop salary that far.

She’d spent a lot of money converting the inside, however. Creating all kinds of secret panels and hideyholes.

A hidden trapdoor led to a cellar. Taking care because of her injured shoulder, Shelly descended.

Flicking on the light, she surveyed her arsenal.

One wall held handguns. Glocks, Sig Sauers, Berettas, Heckler & Kochs. Plus some more exotic pieces like Jerichos from Israel and South African Vektors.

On another wall were her racks of rifles. Several Russian weapons, including the famous AK-47. A couple of British items, classy toys. An Armalite AR-10.

And then there were the big boys. A Ruger, an Uzi, and a Czech Skorpion. And a Panzerfaust grenade launcher.

Shelly stood for a few minutes, basking in the gleam off the metal, the beautiful heady smell of gun oil.

Her babies. Her pride and joy.

She was right-handed, but had trained herself to use a gun almost as well with her left hand as her right. In case it ever came in useful.

Which it certainly did now.

She chose a 9 mm Sig Sauer P226, and as a smaller piece a Heckler & Koch .22. In addition she opened a glass cabinet against one wall of the cellar and took out a Ka-Bar military knife and its scabbard.

It was time to get back to work.

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N
ew York City is notorious for its limited public baggage storage facilities. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, for security reasons none of the big terminals such as Grand Central or the Port Authority have provided anywhere to leave luggage for even a few hours.

A few enterprising places have sprung up around the major stations in order to address this need. Venn didn’t know exactly where the locker was that he had the key for. But he didn’t think it would be all that difficult to find out.

An online search on his smartphone threw up a few addresses. He and Beth tried the main one, Schwartz’s, but the woman there shook her head.

‘Not one of our keys.’

Venn and Beth were in luck at the second place they tried, a small facility on Lexington and East 46
^th
. The proprietor, a small, balding Asian man, peered at the key.

‘Number 133.’

He led them down an aisle of solid-looking lockers, then left them alone. Venn had surveilled the place before they’d gone in, but hadn’t spotted anybody watching. Now, though, he felt furtive as he pushed the key into the lock and turned it.

Inside the locker, which had room enough to fit at least two large suitcases, there was nothing but a buff envelope.

Venn reached in and pulled it out. It was sealed, and had no markings on it. By the feel of it there was a stack of paper inside.

With Beth crowding in close, Venn slit the seal with a thumbnail and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

He paged through them. They were mostly photocopies of what looked like papers from scientific journal. Five or six of them, and in a variety of languages: English mainly, but also Spanish and Italian, and one in a Cyrillic-looking typescript that he took to be Russian.

On top of the articles was a letter. Another photocopy, it was a single sheet, and looked like it had been written on an old-fashioned typewriter rather than a word processor.

And by somebody who didn’t use English as a first language.

It read:

Respected Profesor Lomax,

You do not now me. I am Papakostas, Independent sientist from New England but I am first from Greece. I please enclose some several medical papers from the jurnals. I ask you read these because i find puzzling and fritening information and I think so will you. Please, call me on tele phone number above.