Redheads (3 page)

“I could smother you. What could you do about that?”

Chris couldn’t answer. He was choking, but his stomach was a mile away and he didn’t retch.

The man pulled his hand away and Chris felt a little air trickle into his chest.

“Saw you eight months ago in Vancouver,” the man said. “Hanging around the docks. I couldn’t grab you then. This time I was ready. Wait’ll you try this.”

Chris could do nothing but wait.

He was screaming in his mind, begging his arms to move. The inside of the van felt like a pool of quicksand. He was sinking. The man had a new syringe in his hand.

“It’ll put you down.”

He felt the second needle’s sting, and this time, the wave that spread from it was black and empty.

Chapter Five

Chris had no idea how much time had passed. He wasn’t in the van anymore. He couldn’t open his eyes. It was cold; his skin had tightened into goose bumps. Something was squeezing his face and there was a rushing feeling in his nose. It was too cold to be blood. There was a whirring noise from somewhere behind him. He kept trying to open his eyes but couldn’t. He felt himself slipping back into the drug that had knocked him out. He told himself to focus. Where was the man in the mask? There was no noise but the mechanical whirring from below and behind.

I’m going to lose this fight
, he thought, and slipped back.

Later, his eyes were open. He was looking at man in a chair for a long time before he realized he was awake. He was seeing himself in a full-length mirror. He was naked and was sitting in an ancient wheeled office chair. His arms were taped to the armrests and his ankles were taped to the single column that supported the seat. Many wraps of duct tape went around his chest and held him upright against the back of the chair. His mouth and nose were covered with a clear rubber mask that was held in place with webbing straps. A flexible hose led down and disappeared behind the chair. The whirring noise came from back there.

The mirror was about five feet away and might have been the door to a closet. There was thin carpet on the floor and an aluminum stand with a canvas webbing top. A fake marble sink was backed by another mirror and he could see plastic cups wrapped in plastic bags, and a basket of sample-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

The only light came from the vanity over the sink. The rest of the motel room was dark. The mirror showed him the front wall of the room and the ends of two tiny beds. The window was covered by a curtain the same wet-sand color of the carpet. The mask and its machine whirred on and on and forced cold air up his nose and down his wide-open mouth. His tongue felt rough and dry. He couldn’t move it. He studied the mirror again but couldn’t see his clothes anywhere. He assumed they were in the room. The man would not have stripped him before bringing inside. Of course the gun was probably with his clothes and was no use anyway when he was taped to a chair, naked, and couldn’t even close his mouth.

He heard the bedsprings creak and then heard steps across the carpet. He still couldn’t turn his head but he could move his eyes. In the mirror, a shadow passed on the front wall of the hotel room. He had never felt this cold, but his muscles were so useless he couldn’t even shiver. He heard a quiet click.

“He’s awake. White male, I’m guessing mid- to late-thirties, approximately one hundred eighty pounds. No ID. Beginning interview.”

It was the same gravelly voice. It sounded excited.

“Can you talk yet?”

He couldn’t. All that came out, muffled through the mask and the forced air, was a low
aahhh.

“Subject was given a muscle relaxant. Pancuronium. Not taking any chances with this son of a bitch. It might wear off in the next fifteen minutes.”

There was another click. The man must have switched off his tape recorder.

Chris didn’t try to say anything. He just looked in the mirror, waiting for the man to show himself. The TV turned on. He couldn’t see it in the mirror, but from the sound he presumed it was mounted on a wall bracket in a corner of the room. The show sounded like a documentary about great white sharks.

The TV switched off when the show ended. Maybe an hour had passed; he’d heard a lot of commercial breaks. He’d suspected for the last five minutes that he could talk. The numb deadness in his face had given way to tingling and then to pain. He’d managed to work his jaw shut and to move his tongue side to side. His mouth was so dry he could not swallow. The same tingling was spreading down his arms and legs, but he did not try to move them. He told himself he wouldn’t get the chance; it was useless to hope for one. He told himself if the time came, he wouldn’t scream. He would hold on to the picture of Cheryl in his mind and swim down deep with it and wait until it was over.

“My name’s Chris Wilcox. My wife was Cheryl Wilcox. If you ever knew her name.”

He heard the man walk close to the corner, just out of view of the mirror. There was another click.

“Subject says his name is Chris Wilcox. Wife is Cheryl.”

The man stepped into view. He was still wearing the ski mask—or had put it back on before stepping around the corner. He was taller than Chris and bulkier, and the rasp in his voice said he was past his fifties.

“You’re not what I was expecting when I took you,” the man said.

Chris just looked at him in the mirror. He could see himself as well, tied to the chair and hooked to the breathing machine. The image didn’t fill him with confidence.

“I watched you go in. Perfect touch with the lock. Stupid to come out the way you came in. Who the fuck is Cheryl Wilcox?”

“Cheryl Arianne Wilcox, M.D. Red hair, green eyes. Murdered December 13, 2003, in Honolulu.”

“You’re the husband?”

Chris just looked at him.

“Shit.” The man disappeared behind the corner. Chris heard the sound of a laptop booting up.

“You say you’re Chris Wilcox, I can check that right now.”

“Do it,” Chris said.

He flexed the toes on both feet and tried his ankles out. They were working fine again. He tried his knees and found strength there. The tape securing his ankles to the chair was too strong to break, but he could feel it stretch very slightly. He looked at the chair in the mirror. It was a rolling office chair from the early sixties with five steel wheels, a central column, and adjustable arm rests that moved up and down with the push of a thumb button on the inside edge of each armrest. The steel, painted battleship gray, felt cold and thick against his legs. He pressed the left armrest button and lifted his left wrist. The armrest slid upwards on its steel post. Another centimeter and it would lift free of its mounting bracket. He pushed the button again and slid the arm rest back to its original position.

Chris closed his eyes, held his breath and imagined he was choking. His stomach lurched and when it came, it was painful and loud. The clear rubber mask filled up with vomit, which the air tube blew back into his mouth. He coughed and heaved, then threw up again. Now he really was choking.

From his doubled-over position, eyes tearing up from the spasms, he saw the man in the mask come around the corner. Chris was struggling to breathe, retching and convulsing. Some of it was real. The man took three steps closer, then moved to the front of the chair and leaned down to pull back the mask. Chris’s right shoulder was angled away from the man, so he chose that arm. The distance would give him a longer swing. He pushed the button on the armrest, and pulled it, together with its steel rod, up and out of the chair. In the same motion he leaned back as far as he could, threw his arm out to the side, and then swept it back against the man’s head. The impact caught the man on his left temple. The force of the blow spun the chair all the way around. The tube to the breathing machine tangled in Chris’s feet. The man had fallen on one knee and was struggling to get up. Both his hands were on the dirty carpet. Chris pushed the button on the other armrest, freed it, and clobbered the man in the nose with his left fist. He had never hit anything so hard in his life. His hand exploded in pain, but the punch was perfect. The man was down. The front of his ski mask was wet with blood. The man jerked twice and then lay still. He was breathing through his smashed nose, blood oozing from the ski mask at his nose and from his temple. Chris swiped his forearm across his face and dislodged the rubber mask with its load of vomit. He took huge gasping breaths. He wanted to pause, to just breathe and wait for his heart to stop pounding, but knew there was no time.

Chris spun in the chair and caught the wall next to the bathroom door. He looked behind himself, gauged the distance and the amount of resistance he’d get from the carpet, then pushed hard. He rolled backwards, going diagonally across the narrow hall to the bathroom. He came to the wall on the other side, swiveled in the chair, pushed off the wall, and rolled backwards to the foot of the closer bed in the main part of the room. He pulled himself along the end of the bed, then pushed across to the second bed. His things were bundled against the headboard. He pulled his way up and grabbed his clothes, feeling immediately for the heft of the Glock in the sweatshirt. The gun tumbled out but he caught it before it fell on the floor. He could tell it was still loaded by its weight, but he took a second anyway to yank out the magazine and see the cartridge at the top. Then he slammed it back into place, chambered a round, and took the safety off.

His folding knife was still in the pocket of his jeans. He cut his shins twice and his wrist once in his hurry to slice through the duct tape. Then he was free of the chair and he stood up, the pistol in his left hand and the knife in the other. The man’s cell phone was on the foot of the other bed and Chris picked that up too, carrying it so he could drop it quickly if he needed to use the knife. The man was just starting to sit when Chris came around the corner and leveled the gun at him.

“Lie on your face and put your hands on the back of your head.”

The man hesitated and Chris came within three feet of him.

“This is a forty-five,” Chris said. “I’ve been shooting a hundred rounds a week for six years. Right now it’s loaded half with steel jackets and half with hollow points. Your guess is as good as mine which is first. Lie on your face.”

This time the man lay and clasped his hands together over the back of his head.

“Take off your mask. Easy and slow. Set it to the side.”

The man complied.

“Lift your face so I can see it.”

The man had close-cropped white hair and a tan face with small crow’s foot wrinkles next to his eyes. Chris had never seen him before.

Without taking his eyes off the man, Chris turned on the phone, switched it to speaker mode, and dialed. Mike picked up on the third ring.

“This is Chris. I got you on speaker. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Good. You got something to write on?”

“Yeah.”

“I got a guy here with me. He’s going to tell you his full name, birth date, and social security number.”

Chris held the phone out to the man.

“Go.”

“Aaron David Westfield. September 24, 1947. Five three three, two four, eight two seven six.”

“You get that?”

“Got it,” Mike said.

“Good. Now Westfield is going to tell you the names of every bank that has an account in his name. Westfield, go.”

The man paused, thinking. “Wells Fargo, checking and savings. Citibank, credit card. Morgan Stanley, various investments. USAA, savings.”

“Mike?”

“Got it.”

“Westfield is going to tell you his home address.”

“1042 Thistle Way, Edmonds, Washington, 98603.”

“Rent or own?” Chris asked.

“Own.”

The man put his face back on the floor, resting on the carpet on his left cheek.

“Mike?”

“Here.”

“Check this guy out as fast as you can. I want a picture of him. Email it to me; I can use this phone to get it. And see if the phone I’m calling on is registered to him. Send me everything you can in ten minutes.”

Chris hung up the phone. When he moved to put it in his pocket, he realized he was still naked.

“Crawl into the main room and lie on your face.”

The man crawled, and Chris backed up, keeping pace with him. He kept the gun leveled at the man’s head. When the man was on the floor between the ends of the beds, Chris went back to the pile of his clothes. He sat on the bed and kept the gun trained at the man while he pulled on his underwear and jeans one-handed. He kept it at that, because he wasn’t about to risk pulling the sweatshirt over his head with the man still in the room.

“Your man as good as you hope?”

“Yeah.”

“P.I. or cop?”

“P.I. Shut up.”

Chris felt in his sweatshirt pocket, finding the wax paper evidence bag holding the fork from Allison’s apartment. He opened the bag and looked inside. The end of the fork was still smeared with oil. In the brighter light of the motel room, he could see tiny droplets of blood on the tips of three of the tines.