Page 80 of Girl, Sought

Unless.

A plan began to form. Not elegant like his usual work, but desperation had a way of fostering creativity. He knew places in Chesapeake that didn't appear on any map. Abandoned properties he'd discovered during his research, bolt-holes that might buy him enough time to figure out his next move.

He just had to hide.

After all, he'd gotten good at becoming other people. At wearing different faces. The accountant was just another mask he wore – like the doll face for Eleanor, the insect head for Alfred, the divine visage for Joseph. Maybe it was time to shed that skin too.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

Luca found a brick propping open the entrance to the apartment building at 2951 Harbor View Boulevard. The place was four stories of institutional beige concrete that overlooked Chesapeake's naval shipyards, and it had the grayish, washed-out look of a building that had long ago given up the pretense of respectability and settled into a cozy relationship with urban decay.

He checked the address again. 2951 Harbor View Boulevard, Apartment 3C. This was the place, all right. The lair of one Lawrence Winters, mild-mannered accountant by day, psychopathic, skin-flaying serial killer by night. It was amazing the sickos you could be rubbing elbows with at the watercooler and never even know it.

The building made Luca's investigator brain itch, because why would a successful tax accountant, a man who helped millionaire collectors dodge six-figure obligations, live in this concrete purgatory? Gambling problem? Drug addict? Expensive tastes? Maybe the answer awaited inside.

Luca unclipped his Glock from its holster and strode towards the door. The building's lobby was as much of a shitshow as the exterior had promised, complete with water-stained walls and a bank of dented mailboxes with most of the names scratched out or covered with layers of spraypaint. The elevator was a no-go, even if the yellow tape plastered across its doors hadn't screamed ‘OUT OF ORDER’ in three different languages.

Three flights of stairs gave him time to think. About Ella staying back with Vanessa. About Vanessa's bruised throat. About what might be going through Mr. Lawrence Winters’ head right now. Did Winters know Vanessa was alive? If he did, his mind would be a whirlwind of conflicting ideas. To run, to not run, to hide, to throw himself off the nearest bridge.

Luca reached the seventh floor landing and paused to catch his breath and let the adrenaline settle from a rolling boil to a low simmer. Apartment 3C was just down the hall, a mere dozen yards and a flimsy particle-board door between him and the freak who got his kicks turning human skin into angel wings.

Winters might have had his head screwed on, but he was no soldier. No hardened gunman with military training and a small armory's worth of firepower at his disposal. He was just another pathetic little psycho playing make-believe with other folks' lives.

Luca hugged the wall as he moved toward apartment 3C. The door was as nondescript as any of the others. No arcane sigils scrawled in blood, no ominous Latin chanting emanating from within. Luca took up position to the side of the door with his Glock held rock-steady in a textbook firing stance. He raised his free hand, curled it into a fist. He knew that a thrice-murdering psycho might be sitting on the other side of this door, and a part of Luca would want to shoot him down and spare the justice system the hassle of processing him.

But Luca reminded himself that dead suspects didn’t talk, and death wasn’t nearly as much of a punishment as life imprisonment. Plus, Ella hated killing.

Then he knocked in three short raps. ‘Lawrence Winters? FBI, open up.’

Silence. Not even the scurry of roaches behind the walls. Luca leaned in, pressed his ear to the flimsy fiberboard, and strained to hear past his own pulse.

Another knock. ‘Winters. You’ve got ten seconds. Open up.’

Nothing. Or at least nothing that pinged on his threat radar. No muted footsteps, no telltale click of a gun's safety snicking off. For all he could tell, the apartment was genuinely empty.

He was just about to knock again, maybe add a little boot-to-door percussive persuasion for spice, when the clatter of feet on stairs froze him in place.

He pivoted, Glock swinging up to cover the stairwell.

But instead of Lawrence Winters, Luca found himself staring at a young couple. The woman's pupils were blown wide enough to park a truck in, and the man scratched obsessively at arms that looked like road maps of needle tracks. Luca didn’t have to think too hard about this one.

‘Hey.’ Luca kept his voice casual, badge visible. ‘You know the guy who lives here?’

The man shrugged, still scratching. ‘The tax man? Nah, not really. Quiet type. Keeps to himself.’

‘Seen him recently?’

‘Not for weeks.’

‘You ever talk to him?’

‘Sometimes say hello, but that’s it.’

‘Whatcanyou tell me about him?’

The woman offered, ‘Fifties, brown hair, kind of ugly, works weird hours, drives a Toyota sedan. Blue.’

Goosebumps rose on Luca’s forearms. Blue sedan. Just like the mystery car outside the library. Just like the vehicle their teenage witness had described. Combined with Lawrence's financial connections to the victims, that was probable cause in any court he could name.

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