register under?”
“No name. No registration. She paid cash up front. That’s another reason I pegged her for a whore. Now, seeing how you’re after her, I’m guessing maybe she’s something a whole lot worse.”
Shepherd heard a click as the phone was picked up, then a snap of chewing gum and a laconic voice saying, “Alvarez.”
“I found her.”
“What took you so long?”
“That’s funny. I need you and a patrol unit right away.”
“I’ll bring Galston and Bane, the ones who I.D.’d her. They’re still here filling out the report. It’ll be a nice little reunion for Miss McMillan, don’t you think?”
Shepherd nodded. “She’ll be thrilled.”
33
Walter came out of the bathroom.
Elizabeth twisted onto her side, making one last effort to stand, knowing it was hopeless.
“Kill her,” Walter said.
Where was Detective Shepherd anyway? For the first time in twelve years, arrest was not her greatest fear.
Walter bent over her. His hands, so huge, loomed like figments of a nightmare.
“Break her neck.”
She drew up both legs and delivered a double kick to his midsection, aiming for his groin.
He only blinked, perfunctorily acknowledging the blow.
She scooted back, banging her head on the base of the TV table — another shimmer of pain — but fleeting, insignificant, as Walter stooped lower, closing for the kill.
Nowhere to retreat. Behind her, only the table and the wall and a tangle of insulated wires — the power cord and cable connection for the color TV.
She grabbed the wires with her right hand, not knowing why. They couldn’t help her, not when Walter was reaching out, his eyes level with hers, his bald head gleaming like a bullet.
Her grip on the wires tightened, and she pulled, straining, the muscles of her arm and shoulder bursting with sudden, desperate exertion.
The wires were screwed into the back of the TV, and the TV was bolted to the tabletop, and the table was tall and narrow and just a bit unsteady, and she felt it move.
Hands on her throat.
Walter on top of her, foul breath in her face, pressure shutting off her windpipe.
“Kill her. Break her—”
The table rocked, tilting back, banging the wall.
Walter glanced up.
The table swayed forward, top-heavy with the weight of the TV, and Elizabeth tore free of the hands that held her and gave the taut cords a final, violent yank.
She heard Walter make a small noise, something midway between a grunt and a groan — a scared, childish noise that made her feel almost sorry for him.
Then the table pitched forward, the TV cracking free of its bolts, and the picture tube exploded around Walter’s head in a brief, sizzling fury of sparks and smoke.
He slumped, maybe unconscious, maybe dead.
Elizabeth was pinned beneath him. She thrashed and flailed, fighting to wriggle free. The man was two hundred pounds of dead weight, with the table and the ruined TV fixing him in place.
He stirred.
Alive.
Regaining consciousness.
And she was still stuck beneath him, his heavy midsection and legs draping hers.
She had to liberate herself, and do it now.
Gasping, she twisted onto her side and dug her fingers into the short carpet fibers and clawed until she had a secure handhold, then dragged herself forward an inch at a time.
Walter murmured, his face showing a flicker of animation before going slack again.
She got one leg free, then planted her shoe against his shoulder and used the leverage to pry loose her other foot.
Now get out. Get out now.
She tried to stand, but at first the effort overwhelmed her, and she fell on one knee.
Walter moaned.
On her second try she stood without falling. Some blind reflex guided her to her purse, which she had dropped on the counter when she was packing her suitcase in a rush.
There was no time to salvage her belongings now. Half of them lay scattered across the bed and the floor.
The purse was all she could take with her, all she had left.
She sprinted for the door, then heard a clatter of wood and glass behind her, and turned instinctively to look back.
Walter was on his feet. He’d come fully alert, swept clear of the table and the smashed television set, lurched upright. And he had done all this in less time than she had taken to cross ten feet of carpet.
Run.
Outside, into the glare and heat, fishing her car keys from her purse and stumbling, her shoes pounding asphalt, heart vibrating like a plucked wire, currents of dizziness all around her.
Then she was at her car, thrusting the key at the keyhole of the door on the driver’s side, and Walter was loping toward her in a coltish, loose-limbed gait, covering ground with deceptive speed.
The key turned, the door unlocked, and she was behind the wheel, trying to find the ignition slot, missing it, missing again.
Her hand was shaking wildly, and strands of hair had fallen in hectic disarray across her face.
Finally she got the damn key in the slot, and she cranked the ignition and heard the motor rev and fail.
It wouldn’t start, the damn car
This had happened before. The Chevette was old. It had been used hard for many years. Sometimes she had to nurse the engine to get it to turn over.
Walter was ten feet away.
“Come on, Kaylie,” she whispered, “do this right.”
Distantly she realized that she had just called herself by her true name for the first time in a dozen years.
She took a long, slow breath and forced herself to turn the key slowly while gently, gently depressing the gas pedal.
A feeble growl, the motor coming alive, then a cough and a rattle and silence.
Slap of a hand on the windshield, Walter’s left hand, leaking blood from the cuts on his arm, leaving long pink smears on the glass.
