The Guilty hp-2 Read online

  Crawling on all fours, Amanda moved past her desk until she was next to the door to the conference room. She peered up, looked through the small window pane. She gasped when she saw what was happening inside.

  Violet Lawrence was lying on the floor, facedown.

  Amanda recognized the purple sports jacket she'd complimented her on just that morning. She couldn't see anything else, couldn't see Violet's face. But she heard a small moan, and that meant at least she was alive.

  Nobody else was running. The office had grown deathly silent. The watercooler gurgled. Then she saw the man walk into the room, and Amanda froze.

  He was tall, maybe six one or two, lean with short blond hair. He was wearing a suit, the sleeves rolled up, sweat beading through the fabric. His face was tan, eyes wild yet focused.

  He was holding a gun. No, not a gun, a cannon. And immediately she remembered their meeting with Agnes Trimble, the image her professor showed them. The one Henry was captivated by.

  The Winchester rifle.

  That's what he was holding. The man in their office had killed four people. Killed his family, all in cold blood. What the hell was he doing here?

  Another woman ran past, screaming. The boy-William, the papers had called him-grabbed her by the ponytail. She let out a shriek. He spun her toward him. Amanda could see the veins and muscles in his forearms. The woman was crying, blubbering, tears streaking her mascara. Then he suddenly let her go, pushed her toward the doorway. She disappeared and

  Amanda heard the familiar chime of the elevator call button.

  He let her go.

  The man was standing in the middle of the room. He was holding the rifle by his side. She could see no other movement. William scanned the room, quickly crouched down to see if anyone was hiding under a desk, then stood back up.

  "Amanda," he said. Her blood ran cold. "Amanda Davies."

  It wasn't phrased as a question. He said her name the same way Henry did when he got home from work. Said it like he knew she was there and couldn't wait to see her.

  "Amanda," he said, holding his arms out wide, the rifle barrel pointing at the ceiling. "I've been wanting to meet you for a long time. Don't keep a friend waiting."

  She knelt, silent, hoped he would search the other offices, turn his back so she could make a run for it. Her heart felt like it was ready to burst through her blouse, she could feel sweat dripping down her sides.

  "Henry and me, we bonded the other day." She heard footsteps, looked up, saw he was moving through the office. "Like brothers from different mothers, we might have been. Every yin needs a yang, every bad penny needs a good one to even things out. He's my bad penny."

  The footsteps grew closer and Amanda dropped back to the ground. She scuttled behind her desk, crawled underneath and curled her knees to her chest. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. She was too scared to cry.

  Roberts moved closer. She heard a squeak as the doorknob turned. Suddenly she heard a bump come from the other office, and the knob stopped turning. The footsteps grew fainter.

  Amanda crawled back to the door, looked up just in time to see Roberts disappear into the conference room.

  "Where's Amanda?" she heard him say. There came a wheezy response from a male voice-she recognized Phil, the intern. Poor Phil had only been here a week. She hoped he was making a killer stipend.

  Amanda brought her hand up to the doorknob, slowly it turned until it stopped. Looking up, she saw that the adjacent office was empty. Slowly she eased the door open just enough to fit her slim body through. She eased the door shut. The stairwell was less than twenty feet away. She could make it. There were still noises coming from the other room. Now or never.

  She crawled along the wall, keeping her eyes on the other office where Roberts had entered. Saw William's black shoes pointing away from the door. She took it a step at a time, taking deep, slow breaths to slow her heart rate. Twenty feet.

  Eighteen. Fifteen. She was past the door, closer to the exit than Roberts. She slowly stood up. Took one more step.

  Peeked around, braced herself, planted her feet to sprint away.

  Just as she took her first step, she felt a sharp pain as a hand gripped her hair and spun her around.

  Her breath caught in her throat as Amanda looked into the grinning face and wild eyes of William Roberts.

  She couldn't fight back. His hand was on her neck. The

  Winchester was slung over his neck. And in his other hand was a knife nearly half a foot long, a streak of glistening red blood on the blade.

  "Miss Davies," he said, his voice metallic and calm. "If you'll please join me."

  "Wh…what do you mean? Where?"

  "Somewhere a little, oh, scenic. The last girl, Mya, sad to say she's probably going to make it." He smiled at her. Then he said, "Problem is, I didn't drop her from nearly high enough. That's a mistake that won't happen again."

  56

  I shared a cab with Jack. My legs were jittery as I kept redialing Amanda's number on my cell phone. It went right to voice mail every time. I called 911. Tried to figure out what the hell was going on. I got the feeling from the exasperated woman on the other end that I wasn't nearly the first to call it in. I hung up without learning anything.

  I called Curt Sheffield, praying there was some sort of mistake. His voice instantly told me the situation was worse than I imagined.

  "Dude, 911 got about a hundred calls in a three-minute span," he said, his voice breathless and uneven. "All from newspapers and television stations. The NYPD has a freaking battalion on our way down there, but man, they're going to be a few minutes, the choppers say there's already a few dozen reporters at the scene. Somehow you guys at the news desks got wind of this before the cops did. Listen, Carruthers is on the rampage. I'll call you soon as I know anything."

  Curt hung up.

  "What'd he say?" Jack asked. His voice was scared, his breath slightly sour.

  "Nothing we don't know," I said. "But it seems like the news crews got tipped off somehow before the NYPD. There might be a few reporters down there already."

  The cab rounded the corner, arrived at 199 Water Street.

  Or at least got as close as it could. Because when we saw the crowd in front of the building, both of our jaws dropped.

  Jack said, "I have a small quibble with your definition of the word 'few.'"

  Surrounding the building's entrance were at least a hundred reporters and a dozen news vans. They lined the street like a cattle drive stuck in Neutral.

  "What the…" Jack said.

  "Hell…" I finished.

  Dozens of sports-jacketed journos were in the middle of writing copy while news correspondents were already being primped for their on-camera reporting. Cameramen were pushing and shoving, jockeying for the best lighting to both hide their stars' blemishes and capture the best angle of the building behind them. It was an unmitigated madhouse.

  And there wasn't a cop in sight.

  "This has to be a mistake," Jack said. "I've never seen anything like this."

  "No way," I said. "This is no mistake."

  Looking at the building, I could see several confused people staring out their office windows down at the gathering outside, oblivious to what was going on just a few floors above or below them. And in the time I took to assess the situation, three more news vans pulled up, five more nattily dressed reporters piled out, followed by several burly not-asnattily-dressed cameramen. They all joined the horde and began applying makeup.

  There were no cops anywhere to be seen.

  Roberts.

  He couldn't have taken the office more than twenty minutes ago. That's when I spoke to Amanda. That's the last I heard from her.

  "Crazy son of a bitch," I said. "Roberts tipped off the press before hitting Water Street. Only a sick fuck would call the press prior to a crime he intended to commit. He called the press so they'd show up before the cops. He wanted it like this."

  "This isn't just one newspa
per," Jack said. "I think everyone who's ever held a press badge is here. Informing a thousand reporters about a hostage situation in New York is like throwing a slab of rancid meat into an ant farm."

  Roberts wanted the press to have the kind of unimpeded access cops would normally prevent. Right now, the news crews were free to roam. There was no yellow tape, nobody holding the crowd back, no gruff detectives or crisis management teams giving inconvenient "no comments."

  This was the very definition of a free press.

  A reporter wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and fiberglass hair walked up to the main entrance, cupped his hands and peered inside. He cocked his head, turned back and shouted, "Jesus, I think I see someone lying down behind the security desk. I think I see blood, I think the security guard is dead." He turned to the cameraman. "You think we should go inside?"

  His cameraman, six-four with a body that looked like it was fueled at the local Krispy Kreme, carried the camera over to him. He glared inside.

  "Why not? Let me get a light reading, make sure this thing will transmit."

  Suddenly I was sprinting over to the entrance. I shoved fiberglass hair against the side of the building and pressed my forearm into his chest.

  He struggled, tried to pry my arm away, yelped, "Get the hell off me!"

  "Goddamn it, you don't know who's watching. If you so much as touch those door handles I'm going to break them off and strangle you with them."

  He could see in my eyes I wasn't kidding. He relaxed. So did I. He smoothed out his jacket, told the cameraman, "We're good out here." Then he turned to me. "I had a great spot out front. If someone steals it I'll have your ass."

  "You'll have to try it with broken arms. Look, there's a nice spot, go set up. Get away from here."

  He walked away. Then I turned back to the building. That's when I heard the first siren. I could see the reflection in the doorway as half a dozen squad cars pulled up and a phalanx of uniformed officers filed out. Radios came out as the first cops to arrive called in reports. They circled the building's entrance.

  One cop came closer. I heard him say, "We don't know what floor they're on."

  "Ninth floor," I said.

  "And who are you?"

  "Henry Parker, I'm with the Gazette. My girlfriend is up there, she works here. Amanda Davies."

  The guy waved his arms and another cop came over. This cop was tall, thin, with a handlebar mustache.

  "Captain James O'Hurley."

  "Henry Parker."

  "You have knowledge of this situation?"

  "I just know I was on the phone with my girlfriend, she's an employee who works on the ninth floor, when I heard a gunshot. Then the line went dead."

  "Who's your girlfriend?"

  "Her name is Amanda. Davies."

  "Can you think of any reason why Miss Davies or her coworkers would be in danger?"

  I took a breath. "William Henry Roberts. He's up there."

  O'Hurley's face darkened. I saw a flash of anger in his eyes. The other cop looked at him.

  "That's the guy killed Joe." O'Hurley nodded. "Roberts is supposed to be the grandson of Billy the Kid or something, right? Hey, kid," he said, clearly meaning me, "you work at the Gazette, didn't you write some stuff about this guy?"

  "Yeah," I said. "I did."

  "How much do you know about him?" O'Hurley asked.

  I held up my hand, the stitches still embedded in my skin.

  The cop whistled.

  "Manners aren't his strong suit. Let's say I know Roberts a lot better than I'd like."

  "He did that to you," O'Hurley said, "and that's your girlfriend up there, then…" He paused, realized what was going on. "Maybe you shouldn't be here."

  "You try and drag me away," I said. "And it won't be pretty."

  "Fine," O'Hurley said. "But stay out of the way. If we need your help we'll ask for it."

  "No problem, but Roberts is in there and I know he's going to hurt Amanda. I know it. That's why he came here. That's why he called the press first. He wants people to see every second of this. You don't do that kind of thing if you're looking to steal a few grand and disappear to the Caribbean." I noticed the rest of the cops were hanging back. "Are you going in?"

  "Not yet," O'Hurley said. "We need to assess the situation, take his demands if there are any, and then figure out a strategy. Rushing in there might cause panic, stress and force

  Roberts's hand."

  "This sick bastard killed one of our own," the other cop added. "He's either spending the rest of his life getting reamed up the ass in the shower or he's getting a one-way ticket to the juice chair."

  "But what about Amanda?" I asked.

  O'Hurley said, "We have no reason to believe she's in immediate danger. If she is the intended target, we have the hostage negotiation team en route."

  "You might be negotiating for a body, Captain."

  "Listen, Parker, I can imagine what you're going through.

  Trust me, this freak will get what's coming to him. But we need to minimize collateral damage."

  "By collateral damage you mean my girlfriend."

  "That's right."

  "You think he called the press just so he could try out his new stand-up routine? He's going to do something terrible, and if you guys don't do something soon it'll be too late."

  "That's enough, Parker." O'Hurley pointed to where several cops were putting up blue sawhorses, stringing up yellow tape. "Wait behind the line with the rest of the press."

  I watched as the cops herded several reporters behind the barricade. They put up a fight. They always did. But in the end they always moved back, docile.

  Docile wasn't going to cut it today. Roberts was pure evil.

  He wasn't going to wait for the cops to "strategize."

  I waited until O'Hurley's back was turned, then I pushed the other cop aside and bolted toward the building.

  I heard someone yell, "Stop that guy!" but it was too late.

  I shoved the glass doors open, saw that the elevator was stuck on nine and not moving. Without hesitating I sprinted toward the end of the hallway, banged through the stairwell door and began my climb to the ninth floor.

  When I got to five, my breath beginning to leave me, I looked down. Nobody was following me.

  Four flights above was a man who was preparing to do something unspeakable to Amanda. Clenching my right fist, feeling the stitches threaten to pop, I continued climbing.

  57

  When I reached the ninth floor I stopped to catch my breath.

  If we lived through this, I promised to use the StairMaster on a more frequent basis.

  Guys like Roberts always looked like they would be a pushover in a fight. Not too big, not too heavy, but their muscles were trained. They were sleeping attack dogs waiting to be prodded. First fight I ever won was against Bruce Baumgarten in the sixth grade. Bruce was a hundred and ninety pounds, a Mack truck in seventh-grade weight. But I literally ran around him until he could barely see straight, then one punch to the stomach took away the last of his wind. He went down like I'd stepped on an empty bag of potato chips.

  The first fight I ever lost was against Kevin MacGruder in the eleventh grade. I outweighed Kevin by twenty pounds. He was president of the Math club. He had freckles and acne and a rail-thin girlfriend we called Olive Oyl, and we mocked him mercilessly. What I didn't know is that to burn off the rage from our taunts Kevin hit the free weights five times a week. He dislocated my shoulder, and I pissed blood for two days after he kicked me in the kidney. I never messed with Kevin again.

  In a strange way I was glad I knew this. William Roberts would tear me to pieces. Even if I was able to separate him from the Winchester-which seemed as doable as separating

  Linus from his blanket-I had to deal with the fact that he could pound me into sirloin, expending less energy than it took me to climb the stairs.

  I was prepared to fight dirty.

  But that didn't mean I wasn't scared shitless.<
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  Adrenaline was pumping through me. It was working, my rage concentrating.

  I'd only visited Amanda at her office once. Actually I'd meant to come more, but I could never get away from the

  Gazette during working hours. Or more accurately, I didn't want to get away from the Gazette.

  I tried to recall the office layout, seemed to remember there being a conference room with a long, mahogany table, several long-backed chairs and a speakerphone. I remembered Amanda's desk. There was a picture of us in a silver frame. I'd had it engraved for her. Only Happiness Lies Ahead.

  I stood in the stairwell, moved closer to the door and pressed my ear up against it. The stairwell was painted gray, dirt coated the steps, and the metal was rusted. I glanced around, couldn't see any security camera, so I was fairly confident Roberts wasn't aware of my presence. I couldn't hear anything inside the office, but the metal was likely muffling all sounds. But it couldn't muffle a gunshot. And I didn't hear any cops storming the stairs. Roberts hadn't killed anybody. Yet.

  I gripped the doorknob, turned it ever so gently just to see if it was locked. For a moment panic gripped me. If it was locked from the inside, I wouldn't be able to get in unless our friendly neighborhood rifleman decided to let me join the party. And I knew the cops wouldn't greet me with open arms if I slunk back downstairs. But the knob turned. I stopped for a moment.

  The last time I barged through a closed door unannounced and unwanted, a cop ended up dead and I ended up on the run for my life.

  I took three short, quick breaths, then three long deep ones and gripped the knob. It turned easily, and I eased it all the way to the left until it wouldn't go any farther. Then I listened.

  Nothing.

  I pushed the door slightly to make sure it moved inward.

  It did.

  I pushed it just enough to create a small crack between the door and the jamb. I peeked inside.

  I could see an elevator. An unmanned receptionist desk with a tall, white orchid. Nothing else.

  I pushed the door farther in, enough so that I could slip inside. There were no sounds, nobody in view.