Murder Games Read online

  The same people who had taught me how to kill had also taught me a few things about keeping someone alive. It wasn’t quite med school, but it was a little more advanced than the Boy Scouts.

  Elizabeth had worse than a collapsed lung. The severe shortness of breath, jugular vein distension…too much air had entered through the wound, leaking between the chest wall and her lung. She was in danger of what’s called a tension pneumothorax, which also nailed it in terms of being as bad as it sounded. Next came shock. Then death.

  Over my dead body.

  I put my palm back on the entry wound, applying pressure. With my other hand I yanked off my belt. Ideally I’d have something sterile I could use. Next best thing was the back of my cell phone, because the case was stainless steel.

  “I’ve got to lift your back for a second,” I said, looping the belt around her chest to seal the phone in place over the wound. For what I was about to do next, I needed both hands free.

  The sirens were louder; help was close. Not close enough, though.

  The first ambulance to arrive would have a gurney to unload and stairs to negotiate. Wheels up or wheels down, gurneys and stairs don’t mix. Most of all, the EMTs carrying it would have a decision to make as first responders.

  Whom to treat first?

  Unless I decided for them.

  Chapter 91

  I LOOKED over at the circle gathered around Judge Kingsman. I couldn’t see him; there were too many people. Same for Emily Louden.

  Making it even harder was the circle that had now formed around Elizabeth and me, including a cameraman and a few reporters.

  I turned back to Elizabeth, her dark brown eyes staring up into mine. “Trust me,” I said.

  She had at least one more word left in her. “Always,” she told me.

  There was no time for a countdown. I scooped her up, cradling her in my arms. Don’t move a shooting victim, the book says. Screw the book.

  Run, Dylan. Run like hell…

  Down on Centre Street in front of the courthouse, I could see the first of the ambulances approaching as I made my way down the steps. The pandemonium had spread. There were police lights flashing, sirens blaring, a cop waving frantically as he tried to part the heavy sea of cars, cabs, and trucks with their rubbernecking drivers. A news helicopter whirled overhead.

  “Almost there,” I told Elizabeth. “Hang on.” But as I glanced down at her, she was even paler and barely breathing. Her lips were blue.

  Faster, Dylan! Faster than you’ve ever run in your life…

  I reached the bottom of the steps and sprinted into traffic, on a collision course with the grille of an ambulance. Stop or hit us—that was the choice.

  It stopped. Out came the driver. He was pissed for a split second, or about as long as it took for him to look down and see Elizabeth.

  “She’s going into shock,” I said.

  “C’mon,” he told me.

  He led us to the back of the ambulance, where his partner had already bolted from his shotgun seat, popping open the doors from the inside. I handed her off, the two placing her on a gurney and immediately strapping it down. I climbed aboard.

  “Out!” said the driver.

  “But—”

  He grabbed my arm, nodding at Elizabeth’s badge clipped to her slacks. “We got her,” he said, handing me my belt and cell phone.

  I hopped out, watching the doors close in front of me. I didn’t want to argue, not if it meant wasting one more precious second.

  I didn’t know how many Elizabeth had left.

  Book Five

  Showdown

  Chapter 92

  I KEPT staring down at my shoes.

  I had washed up in the bathroom near the surgical suite on the fifth floor of Manhattan South Hospital. My hands had been covered in Elizabeth’s blood. My shirt and jacket were, too, but they had long since been tossed in the garbage in favor of a sweatshirt from the lobby gift shop. I ♥ NEW YORK, it read.

  I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  I kept staring down at my shoes because I’d missed a spot, as it were. There was a drop of Elizabeth’s blood on the toe of my right loafer, and all I could do was keep looking at it. The waiting room was packed, but I had blocked out the chorus of hushed conversations around me, various loved ones talking to one another if only to help pass the time and maybe, just maybe, not be consumed by the worries that would otherwise eat them alive.

  As for me, I was getting devoured. Will she make it? Please, please, let her survive.

  I suddenly got this weird sense. A vibe. I tried tuning back to the surrounding conversations, only they were gone. They’d stopped. The room was utterly silent save for one sound—a voice from the TV that hung on the far wall. I looked up, my head on a swivel, to see everyone staring at me. I then looked at the TV and saw why. The local news was showing me racing down the steps at the courthouse, Elizabeth in my arms.

  “The shooter, identified as Emily Louden, was declared dead at the scene. Her intended target, Judge Arthur Kingsman, survived the shooting and is currently listed in stable condition. A second victim, shown here, is believed to have been hit by a stray bullet. She’s been identified as Detective Elizabeth Needham of the NYPD, although there’s been no official statement as to her condition. The man seen here carrying her to an ambulance is unknown.”

  I bounced some quick glances around the room as if to say, “Yeah, that’s me.” Most of the people went back to whatever it was they were doing—talking, reading, staring at their phones. The few who didn’t stop staring, though, received a longer stare back from me, the kind with no ambiguity. Mind your own effin’ business.

  Back to my shoes.

  Only for another minute. Another pair of shoes had walked right up to mine. Wingtips. “You look like shit,” said Beau Livingston.

  “If you’re about to tell me that I need to get some sleep, save your breath,” I told him.

  “Okay, I won’t tell you,” he said. “Any word on Elizabeth?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “She’s still in surgery.”

  “I saw what you did. You may have saved her life.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He sat down in the empty seat to my left only to realize that about half a dozen people were within earshot. That was half a dozen too many.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  The last thing I wanted to do was listen to Livingston, but he clearly had news about something.

  I followed him out to the hallway, down to an area near a soda machine. We were alone; no one could hear us. Still, he whispered.

  “Doctors won’t allow us to question Kingsman yet,” he said.

  “You’ll want to wait anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s most likely sedated,” I said. “Any judge, including him, would rule it inadmissible.”

  “Good point,” said Livingston. He sighed. “Fuckin’ Grimes and the Gazette, huh?”

  “The story or the fact that they gave no one a heads-up?” I asked.

  “Both,” he said. “Could you imagine if they got it wrong?”

  “What makes you so sure they got it right?” I asked.

  Chapter 93

  “THAT GUY you and Elizabeth brought in? Timitz? I got off the phone a few minutes ago with the captain of the Fiftieth,” said Livingston.

  “Did the lawyer ever show?” I asked.

  “He did, but only after Timitz called him a second time, or so I was told. Not just any lawyer, either. It was Peter Xavier.”

  I followed the legal world about as closely as I did cricket matches in Mumbai, but Xavier was a name I knew. The guy was a killer defense attorney, as high-profile as they come. The joke I read about him once was that he had to have his suits custom made with a slit in the back to make room for his dorsal fin.

  “Why did he need a guy like that?” I asked, although I didn’t intend to say the words out loud. It was a reflex.

  Nonetheless, Livingston had an answer
. “According to Xavier, Timitz was afraid he might be wrong about his boss.”

  “What do you mean wrong?”

  “Timitz had told Xavier days ago that he suspected Judge Kingsman might be involved with the Dealer killings. He claimed he overheard Kingsman on a pay phone in the courthouse.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Timitz was afraid to go to the police because he’d be risking his job if it turned out Kingsman was innocent.”

  “Exactly. Of course that doesn’t explain the knife in Timitz’s car,” said Livingston. “Now ask me what does.”

  “It’s not Timitz’s car,” I said. “It’s Kingsman’s.”

  Livingston looked shocked. “How the hell did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess,” I said.

  “For years, Kingsman has let Timitz borrow the car on the weekends, a perk for his working on the case files,” said Livingston.

  “So Kingsman could’ve easily been the one to leave the knife in the car,” I said. “Why even bother testing the blood on it, right?”

  “The results came in an hour ago,” he said. “It’s AB negative, Jared Louden’s blood type.”

  “The rarest of rare blood types, to boot,” I said. “Imagine that.”

  Livingston cocked his head at me. “What are you saying?”

  Nothing yet, Beau, at least not to you…

  “Where’s Timitz now?” I asked.

  “Naturally Xavier said we had to arrest him or release him, one or the other. We couldn’t arrest him. Still, the captain at the Fiftieth put four of his guys on him until we know for sure that Kingsman was the Dealer.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Around forty-five minutes.”

  “Did Timitz know about Kingsman being shot?”

  “While still at the precinct? I don’t know,” said Livingston. “Why? Do you want me to find out?”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “But bring Timitz back in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean bring him back in.”

  “I told you, Reinhart, we can’t arrest him.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that,” I said. “Just make the call.”

  Chapter 94

  I WALKED back to the waiting room and began staring at my shoes again—and that drop of Elizabeth’s blood. Ten minutes later, Livingston’s wingtips appeared again.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “Same as before,” I said. “Lucky guess.”

  “Bullshit.” He sat down. He no longer cared who heard him. “Word just came in. Timitz had gone home and then out to a supermarket after leaving the precinct. One officer had the front entrance, another had the back. Two others followed him inside. Somewhere along the way they lost him.”

  “A supermarket?”

  “He must have known he was being followed.”

  “Gee, you think?”

  Livingston’s phone beeped, and he looked at the screen. By the way his jaw tightened, I could tell it was a text from the mayor.

  “He wants you back at City Hall pronto, right?” I asked. “He’s demanding to know what’s going on.”

  “Yeah,” said Livingston, “and you’re coming with me.”

  “The hell I am,” I said. “I’m staying right here.”

  He knew he wasn’t going to persuade me otherwise, not while Elizabeth was fighting for her life.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be coming back, then.”

  “Duly noted.”

  Livingston left in a huff. I actually smiled, if only because it made me think of how Elizabeth would’ve been smiling. She would’ve loved to have seen me piss him off like that.

  What she wouldn’t have loved, though, was the thought of my sitting here and doing nothing while Timitz was out there, whereabouts unknown. I could almost hear her voice, saying what I was thinking, putting it together.

  Timitz didn’t really call his lawyer from Kingsman’s house, did he? He wanted to wait until we knew about Grimes’s front-page story, and that could only mean one thing. He was Grimes’s source.

  I quickly stepped out to the hallway again, dialing Grimes’s number at the Gazette. Three rings felt like an eternity.

  “No, he’s not in,” said the young woman who answered his line. It was Grimes’s assistant. I could tell she knew my name when I gave it to her.

  “Are you sure he’s not there?” I asked.

  “Very sure,” she said. “He said he’s working from home today.”

  “You spoke to him? He told you that?”

  “Yes, he called about half an hour ago,” she said. “Why?”

  Chapter 95

  IN THE movies, a father working for the CIA would never want his son to follow in his footsteps. You could almost picture the heartfelt scene. A park bench or an old booth in a bar, the ink barely dry on the son’s college diploma. There would be long stares, furrowed brows, and the perfectly scripted dialogue about the risks being too great.

  Life ain’t the movies.

  At least not my father’s life. Besides, he hates the movies. As he once told me, “Who needs to watch some made-up crap when you can soak up the real-life stuff?”

  Not only did my father not have a problem with my working for the CIA, he also recommended me. There was one caveat, though. Words to live by. Literally.

  “Sometimes, they’ll have you do something crazy. Other times, they’ll have you do something stupid. Just don’t ever let ’em make you do crazy and stupid at the same time.”

  I never did.

  All these years later, though, I was suddenly like my dad and the movies. Who needs the CIA when you can combine crazy and stupid all on your own?

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. Then I rang the doorbell.

  Silence followed, but I knew he was on the other side of the door. With any luck, Grimes was still there, too. Still alive, that is.

  “I came alone,” I announced.

  The silence that followed this time somehow sounded different. Sure enough, I next heard the snap of a dead bolt. The door opened.

  Grimes simply stared at me, saying nothing at first. I stared back at him, noticing the down vest he was wearing. It was wired to the hilt with explosives. Give him credit: he managed to crack a joke about it.

  “I saw it on the rack at Barneys and just had to have it,” he said.

  If only I could’ve laughed.

  “Come in and close the door,” said the voice behind Grimes. “Oh, and be sure to lock it.”

  I stepped inside as Grimes followed instructions, the dead bolt snapping back into place. In front of me, past the foyer, I saw Timitz sitting on one of the couches in the living room, a lit cigarette in one hand and a detonator in the other.

  He held up the cigarette and smiled. “I know. These things will kill you, right?”

  Grimes walked past me, sitting down in an armchair kitty-corner to Timitz. In front of the chair, on a glass coffee table, was an open laptop. What are you writing, Grimes, and what’s with all the scribbled pages spread out around you?

  “You should sit as well, Professor,” said Timitz.

  He was dressed in a black suit now with a white shirt open at the collar. He was freshly washed and scrubbed, a shine to his face. However he managed to elude the cops tailing him, he apparently never broke a sweat.

  I walked the length of the living room, settling into the couch opposite his. All I knew was that I wanted to be facing him. And the detonator.

  The thing was the size of a roll of quarters, with Timitz’s thumb resting on top of the pressure release, a.k.a. the dead man’s switch, which was surely linked to the vest via Bluetooth. All in all, easy to make if you know how. Thanks a lot, Internet.

  There are two types of serial killers. Those who want to get caught and those who really want to get caught.

  “You never intended to get away with this, did you?” I asked.

  Timitz took a drag off his cigarette, ignoring
the question. “This is quite an apartment,” he said, glancing around. “Don’t you think?”

  Grimes had clearly done well for himself. High ceilings, sleek furniture, gallery-quality artwork. The ultimate bachelor pad.

  “It’s very nice,” I said.

  Timitz smiled again. “Who says crime doesn’t pay?”

  I glanced over at Grimes as he forced a smile. His strategy was clear. Go along, get along…and maybe get to live.

  “At least answer me this,” I said, my eyes locked on Timitz and the detonator. “Have you been planning this moment all along?”

  “It crossed my mind,” said Timitz.

  “More than crossed,” I said. “I’ve learned you leave nothing to chance. Almost nothing, that is.”

  He knew exactly where I was heading.

  “Yes, our grieving widow this morning,” he said.

  I nodded. “A wild card, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Timitz. He leaned forward, his thumb twitching on the detonator. “I hate wild cards.”

  Chapter 96

  MY MIND raced with thoughts of Timitz’s childhood. Possible OCD, anger issues, a stunted internal conscience. None of it mattered, though. Not now. He was on a couch, but it was too late for therapy.

  Still, there was a mind to pry. Answers to get.

  “Judge Kingsman is only good to you alive, isn’t he?” I asked.

  “Of course,” said Timitz.

  “You want him healthy and on display, an innocent man jailed for all the guilty people he set free,” I said.

  “That wouldn’t make him innocent, now, would it?”

  “Exactly the point you wanted to make,” I said.

  “Well, if we’re laying all our cards on the table,” said Timitz, “I don’t need a conviction. The indictment would be enough.”