As he paced, he also kept glancing at the phone.
What the hell had happened to Adam Morrow, anyway?
For the first time since losing those initial fourteen trials, Arthur K. Halliwell had the terrible feeling that he had perhaps gotten himself involved in something that was, in equal parts, foolish and self-destructive…
Had Uncle Walter at last come up against a problem he couldn't solve? Worse a problem that had been of his own making.
He limped to the phone, arthritic fingers touching arthritic knee, a lion of an old man, silver-haired and handsome in a jowly, somewhat angry way and dialed.
Dialed as he had every half hour for the past four days.
Just where in the hell was Adam Morrow?
The last Halliwell had heard from him was that frantic, furtive call a few days ago when he'd whispered that Rick Corday 'might be on' to them.
The phone rang several times. He waited for the answering machine to pick up, for Adam's deep voice to invite the caller to leave name and number and date of call.
But the phone machine didn't pick up.
Instead, somebody human did.
'Hello?' Arthur K. Halliwell said.
But the person who'd picked up said nothing. Simply listened.
'Hello?' Arthur K. Halliwell said again.
Breathing now.
'Adam, is that you?'
Breathing.
'Adam, are you all right?'
Breathing.
'This is Arthur K. Halliwell. I demand to speak to Adam Morrow.'
Now not even breathing. Just… silence.
'Damn you, I am Arthur K. Halliwell and I do not brook this kind of treatment!'
He laughed.
The bastard laughed.
Uncle Walter composed himself. 'Is this you, Rick?'
Silence again.
'Rick?'
The breathing.
'Rick?'
And then the person on the other phone hung up.
Uncle Walter slammed the receiver down.
Where the hell was Adam Morrow, anyway?
CHAPTER 53
Lieutenant Sievers said, 'Mitch? I was waiting for your call.'
'How'd it go?'
'She came in just fine, no problem,' Sievers said.
'I mean matching the prints on the murder weapon with her prints.'
Lieutenant Sievers said, 'Mitch. They're a perfect match. I'm going to charge her with murder. I'm sorry.'
PART THREE
CHAPTER 54
One week later, it snowed in Chicago. Being the first really heavy snow of the season, everything traffic on the expressways, schoolbuses picking up the kiddies, pushers going to meet their customers got backed up a couple of hours. In Elmhurst, a man woke up in bed with a woman not his wife and realized that he'd passed out around midnight. He hurried out of his lover's arms so quickly that he tripped going down her icy front steps and broke his leg in two places. In Park Forest, a man who was planning to rob a bank that morning (he had pulled three successful bank robberies in the past two weeks and was beginning to believe this was one easy gig) started shoveling out his driveway and keeled over with a heart attack, dead by the time the wailing ambulance got there. In Lawndale, a hooker finished up the aerobics she always did to her old Jane Fonda videotape, and then went into the bathroom for a leisurely shower. She threw back her shower curtain and promptly screamed. There squatted a rat the size of a grown cat, all black and glistening and red-eyed. Then she remembered the gift her pimp had given her a few months ago. She fled into the bedroom, grabbed something from beneath her bed and returned to the bathroom, her pink fluffy mules going clack clack clack on the shiny hardwood floors as she ran. 'You little shit,' she said. And promptly pumped three armor-piercing rounds into the devil's hairy chest. The rat basically came apart in two big bloody chunks.
Nothing so exciting was going on with Marcy Browne. She was out near the suburb of Northbrook, parked an eighth of a mile from a large hip-roofed ranch house that had no close neighbors. Perfect for a guy who liked to do things he didn't want other people to know about.
She'd had to give up the black pick-up. Too obvious for this kind of work. Instead, she sat in a plain Chevrolet six-cylinder she'd rented for the week. The body shop said it'd take them a month to get her car fixed, what with ordering the parts and all, but that they could recommend a real good rental agency, leading suspicious Marcy to believe that body shop and rental agency were owned by the same people.
It was 7:35 a.m. and still snowing hard and there was virtually no music to be found on the radio. Everything was school closings and traffic reports and warnings to drive safely; everything was stay-tuned-for-further-traffic- and-weather-updates… all delivered in a tone that let you know that these radio station folks were virtual saints. We love your collective asses off, folks. We really do. That's why we're giving you all these groovy facts about the blizzard.
All Marcy wanted was a little music.
Well, and one more thing: she wanted the guy who came out of the ranch house to match the James Coburn lookalike on the photo that Jill had taken.
In the past week, Jose had been able to come up with forty-seven blue Volvos in the Illinois vehicle registration computer. By now, Marcy had visited thirty-nine of the owners. They had been fat, bald, black, crippled, red-haired, brown-haired and shaven-headed… but not one of them had been white-haired and not one of them had borne even a passing resemblance to James Coburn.
She only had eight to go.
Please God, make this the right one.
And please God, while You're at it, could You give us a little respite from traffic reports and all that stuff? You know I don't wake up in the morning unless I have three cups of steaming black coffee and a lot of really loud rock and roll.
The coffee she had. She'd filled a thermos at 7-Eleven.
It was the rock and roll she missed. Unlike her own car, this renter didn't have a tape deck.
She really needed some rock and roll.
Really really.
