Spider's Web (35 page)

There was no one there. The meat grinder lay against the wall, its metal gleaming in a shaft of light that broke through the smoke. There was no Jovan, and no Tanessa.

Mitchell paced the room, occasionally pausing to glance at his screen, where Tanessa’s photo was displayed. He felt like his nerves were about to snap. The only reason he’d agreed to stay was because he really didn’t feel completely in control. His mind was cloudy, and he couldn’t manage to follow a single thought through. He glanced at his watch again. They’d been gone for twenty minutes. They were bound to get there any moment. Jacob would call him as soon as it was all over, he was sure. He just hoped Jacob would have some good news.

“I don’t like this,” Zoe suddenly said. She sat by her desk, staring at the wall, a frown on her face. Her eyes were red and swollen. Mitchell assumed he looked even worse.

“Me neither,” Mitchell said, pacing again. “I guess we’ll get a phone call soon enough.”

“No,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “I mean… I don’t think that Jovan plans on killing Tanessa at one o’clock.”

“You think he already did it?” Mitchell looked at her.

“I don’t know. That whole meat grinder thing? It doesn’t feel right. It feels like he’s pandering.”

“Pandering?”

“Yeah. It’s like something out of a horror movie. Why would he do that?”

“Why would he do anything?” Mitchell asked angrily. “He’s a sick asshole! I mean… Why drown a girl? Why run over one? Why attack one with a sword? He’s nuts, Zoe. Making sense of his actions is useless.”

“I don’t think you’re right,” she said. “All of his killings were more or less clean—”

“Tell that to Tamay.”

“He was inside the car when he hit her. Gore isn’t his thing. He just wants us to get worked up.”

“He doesn’t even know we have the photo,” Mitchell said, leaning against the wall.

“He’s not stupid, Mitchell. He knows that we have the photo.”

“Whatever. He might just want to go out with a bang.”

“It doesn’t fit,” Zoe said, thumping her table forcefully. “Jovan is obsessive. He never deviates from his plans. He sends a victim the image of the murder weapon, and then he kills her with the same weapon.”

“What are you saying? That he sent something to Tanessa’s phone? We have her phone, and she didn’t get any new message from him.”

“No, that would be stupid. He knows we have her phone.”

“If you’re right, he has Tanessa,” Mitchell said. “He can just show her the murder weapon, and then kill her a few minutes later with it.”

Zoe stared at the floor.

“Do you think that’s what he’ll do?” Mitchell asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Mitchell resumed pacing the room. Why wasn’t Jacob calling?

“Even that’s a deviation,” he said after a while. “I mean… He already sent her the message with the sword. If he’s that obsessive, he has to kill her with the sword.”

“Yeah, but we have the sword in the evidence room,” Zoe said. “I don’t think he’s obsessive to the point of utter stupidity. He won’t storm the evidence room.”

“Maybe he sent the meat grinder image to get all the cops to drive to that warehouse,” Mitchell said, “and leave the evidence room unguarded.”

“That sounds like a plot from
Die Hard
,” Zoe said. “And it didn’t work, right? Only the detectives left the station. No, I don’t think he’ll go for the sword. He’ll probably show her a new image. Deviate just a bit from his original plan. It’ll upset him, but—”

“He doesn’t have to,” Mitchell suddenly said. He rushed to his desk and started scrolling through his files on the computer.

“He doesn’t have to… what?” Zoe asked.

“He doesn’t have to deviate. He doesn’t have to use the sword.” Mitchell double-clicked an image and it opened on screen. It was the image Jovan had sent Tanessa. The sword, leaning against the wall in the room of his old apartment, under a window. Through the window, they could see Peterson’s Mojo.

“There are two more murder weapons here,” Mitchell said. “The window, and the building.”

“You think he’s going to throw her off a building?” Zoe asked.

“Does it fit?” Mitchell asked.

She hesitated a moment. “It fits,” she finally said. “I think it does.”

“We have to go,” Mitchell said.

“Go where?” Zoe asked. “To Jovan’s apartment or that tall building?”

“Peterson’s Mojo is closer,” Mitchell said. “But we’ll alert dispatch. Get them to send patrol cars to both locations.”

He grabbed his keys and gun, and bolted toward the door. Zoe looked at the image on the screen one more time, and then dashed after him.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Tanessa’s head spun as Jovan pulled her out of the car. Her stomach was queasy. He’d injected her with something earlier. It hadn’t knocked her out, but it made her weak and dizzy, and it was hard to concentrate. Where were they? It looked like a back alley somewhere, but she had no idea where, and her vision was a bit blurry.

He held her by the nape of her neck, his fingers gripping hard enough to hurt. She tried to struggle, but it was a pathetic attempt, and he simply squeezed harder, making her whimper with pain into the rag stuffed in her mouth. He pushed her forward toward a heavy white door, and she stumbled, nearly falling to her knees. He’d untied her feet, but her hands were still bound tightly behind her back. He pulled the door open and shoved her in, never letting go. His other hand held a gun.

There was a staircase, and for a moment she thought he was about to force her up the stairs, though she doubted she could climb even three or four of them without collapsing. Instead, he pulled her aside and she saw another large metal door. An elevator. He pressed the elevator’s button. Tanessa tried to scream through the gag, but her scream was muffled, weak. Again, his fingers tightened, and he pressed the gun to her stomach.

“Don’t make me shoot you,” he said. His tone wasn’t angry. If anything, it was ecstatic, energetic.

The elevator door opened. There was a man there. For a moment none of them moved. The man stared at them, wide-eyed. Jovan lifted the gun, and she heard two loud explosions that left a high-pitched whine in her ears. The man jolted backward, smashing against the back wall of the elevator, then slid down to the floor. Jovan pushed her inside, and pressed the button for the top floor.

She was nauseous from the drug he had injected her with, and when he’d shoved the gun barrel against her stomach, it had gotten worse. Now, as she stood above the man, a pool of blood spreading at her feet, she felt the bile rising. She choked as vomit clogged her throat and nose, her mouth blocked, unable to spit. Jovan cursed as he realized what was happening. He pulled off the masking tape that held the rag in her mouth and she coughed and spat on the floor, finally able to breathe again. She was bent toward the floor, the man Jovan had shot only inches away. He wasn’t dead, a remote part of her brain realized, but he soon would be. He was losing blood very fast.

The elevator stopped and Jovan pulled her out. She noticed that they were both leaving smudged red footsteps behind them as they approached another door. Jovan pulled a key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock. She wondered where he’d gotten the key from. He turned the key and opened the door.

A blast of chilly wind hit Tanessa in her face. As Jovan grabbed her by her arm and pulled her out, she saw the sky above them, the ledge not far away. They were on a roof.

Jovan locked the door behind them, and smiled. He still held her tightly; she could feel his fingers burrowing into her arm. To her surprise, he didn’t move; he simply stood there for a while, doing nothing.

The chilly wind, and the fact that she could finally breathe regularly through her mouth, helped her to focus. What were they doing up here? Why didn’t he just kill her and get it over with?

“Can you feel it?” he asked her. She stared at him, confused, saying nothing. She wasn’t sure she could speak.

“I could drag this moment forever,” he said. “It’s even better than Gwen. It’s… perfect.”

They stood there for a few seconds, with Tanessa hoping he would give her just a bit more. Her strength was returning. She no longer felt the weakness in her arms or feet. She was still a bit dizzy. Just a few deep breaths more, and she’d have a chance at fighting him…

“Let’s go,” he said. He pulled her by her arm, dragging her toward the edge.

They reached the edge of the roof, and she could see the street below. Tiny, ant-like cars drove back and forth in the street. It was all so far down; she felt her dizziness return.

“Look at me!” Jovan barked. She did not turn her head. He grabbed her hair and pulled, making her scream as he forced her face toward him. He looked at her. Stared into her eyes. And then he smiled.

She kicked as hard as she could, hitting him in the knee. He screamed, his hand letting go, and she was free. She bolted away, stumbling back from the ledge, hearing Jovan curse behind her. She tried to formulate a plan as she ran toward the door. It was locked; there was no point trying to open it. There were some large pipes, more than three feet wide. Maybe she could hide behind one, kick Jovan again as he came for her. If she could manage to get the gun from him, or to incapacitate him somehow, she could—

Something hit her hard in the back of her head, and she collapsed, nearly blacking out. She felt him lifting her, vaguely saw the gun in his hand. Had he shot her? No, he’d just hit her with his gun. And now he was dragging her back to the ledge. She was out of ideas; her body felt weak again, and useless. She could only struggle helplessly as the edge of the roof got closer.

The man at the front desk hadn’t seen anyone go past him, definitely not a man carrying a woman. However, he added thoughtfully, someone could have gone through the back door to the service elevator…

At which point Mitchell screamed at him like a madman, demanding to know the fastest route to the roof, shaking his badge in front of the man’s face. They took one of the elevators to the top floor. It took ages to get to the top.

What if Stokes had decided to throw Tanessa from a window on one of the top floors instead of going to the roof? What if they were too late? What if they were at the wrong place? Mitchell’s mind was buzzing. Zoe was standing by his side, her face grim. Why was she with him? She wasn’t armed; she couldn’t really help him with Stokes. It was too risky.

But it was too late to worry about that. She was here now. When the elevator finally stopped, Mitchell barged out of it, his heart feeling like an overblown balloon, ready to explode. He hurtled down the corridor, searching for the door to the roof. How would he be able to find it? There were doors everywhere. There were…

Bloody footprints. There was a service elevator on the wall to his right, and two sets of bloody footprints trailed out of it, leading toward a big door. Mitchell ran to the door and tried the handle. It was locked.

“Damn it!” He roared.

“Move,” Zoe said behind him. She was holding a key.

“Where…?” he asked, moving aside.

“The man at the front desk. He said this door is always locked. He gave me the key while you were calling the elevator,” Zoe said, fiddling with the lock. Mitchell stared at her. He had a vague recollection of Zoe talking with the man, exchanging a blur of garbled words he couldn’t really grasp. Was he losing it? His mind wasn’t really working properly. When was the last time he’d slept?

He heard the lock click, and he grabbed her hand before she could open the door.

“Stay behind me,” he said. She obliged. He slowly turned the handle, and then kicked the door open.

Time moved to a crawl as he took in the scene in front of him. A man held Tanessa by the roof’s edge as she struggled helplessly. He was pulling her arm, his other hand on her throat, tipping her toward the open air.

“Stokes!” Mitchell hollered, his voice loud enough to be heard over the wind. “Get your hands up!” He pointed his gun at Stokes, his finger wavering on the trigger.

Jovan Stokes whirled around, Tanessa’s neck trapped behind his forearm as he held her against his chest. He had a gun in his hand, and he pointed it at Tanessa’s head.

“If you shoot, I’ll take your sister with me, Detective Lonnie!” Stokes said, a smile stretched on his face.

“If you hurt her, I’ll kill you,” Mitchell snarled. Blood pounded in his head. Tanessa stared forward, her eyes unfocused, blood running down her temple. Mitchell breathed short, hard breaths. This was about to end badly, he knew. “The police and the FBI are surrounding the building as we speak,” he said, hoping it was true. “You have nowhere to go. There’s no point in delaying this.”

Stokes laughed. “Delaying this is the entire point, you moron!” he shouted back, a deranged grin on his face. “Can you feel it? Can you feel the thrill? The anticipation?”

“Is that what this was all about?” Mitchell heard Zoe ask loudly, from behind him. “Cheap thrills?”

“There’s nothing cheap about them,” Stokes said. “Put that gun down or I blow her brains out.”

Mitchell slowly bent to the floor, and laid his gun down.

“It’s all about holding off a moment,” said Stokes. “About planning it, and thinking about it, and postponing it. The anticipation—”

“Oh, please!” Zoe yelled back. “Give us a break. Planning? You nearly wrecked your car when you ran over that girl. Postponing? Lately you can’t go a few days without killing someone. You were so anxious to do it, you practically walked into our trap! You just enjoy killing women! Anticipation? Shmanticipation! You’re just a killer who—”

“You don’t know anything!” Stokes screamed, his face suddenly red with rage, turning his gun toward them. “I’m the fucking God of anticipation!”

He was distracted, and his arm was a bit loose. If only Tanessa could break free… but she seemed completely out of it, her eyelids shutting slowly. Mitchell’s mind whirred.