It was nearly ten by the time they’d finished at the bar and walked across the street and up Potomac, to a corner building on N Street NW. His tiny apartment was up on the fourth floor, in what had once been an attic. The ceilings, especially in the tiny bedroom and kitchen, were sloped, and the place was sparsely furnished. It didn’t look lived-in.
Alex dropped her bag beside the couch in the living room and went into the kitchen, where she found a half bottle of Jack Daniels on the counter.
He carried a briefcase, which he dropped on a chair in the living room, along with his jacket. He slipped out of his shoes and took off his tie as he came to her.
Alex opened the Jack and took a deep draught before she handed it to him. “Do you have to go into the office in the morning?”
“I’m giving myself a long weekend,” he said, taking a pull on the bottle. He handed it back to her, and she took another drink.
“Sounds good,” she said. “We have the weekend. So why not get drunk and screw? If you’re up to it.”
He laughed and then took the bottle back. “I’ve been told I’m not half bad.”
They went into the bedroom, where she took off all her clothes first and then turned the covers down on the small double as he pulled off his.
“You like it a little rough?” she asked, facing him.
“I don’t know.”
She shoved him down on the bed and straddled him. “I’ll show you how we did it in Vegas.”
She bent down and kissed him at the same time she caressed both sides of his neck with her long delicate fingers. He slipped inside her, and after that it was easy.
Lightly at first, as she was fucking him, she applied pressure to his carotid arteries, and within ninety seconds he was passing in and out of consciousness, until he stopped breathing.
She held on for another three minutes, then reached down and felt for a pulse. But his heart had stopped. He was dead.
In the shower she vigorously washed her body, and after she had dried off, she rolled Jeff’s body onto the floor, then lay down on the bed and pulled the covers up. She was bone-tired. It had been a long, trying day for her. And the next few could very well be worse.
THIRTY-TWO
Schermerhorn stood at one of the bedroom windows on the second floor of the Renckes’ safe house, staring down at the quiet residential street. It was something he’d done a lot of since they’d picked him up. It was midnight, and nothing moved.
Otto was down the hall at his computer, trying to get some background on Dorothy Givens’s friend at the Chevy Chase apartment and trying without any luck to find the George needle in the Georgetown haystack.
Dotty or Alex — whoever the hell she was — had been lying, of course.
“The woman has a sense of humor,” Louise said.
“And she thinks we’re on to her,” Otto said. “The point is, will she show up at the office in the morning?”
“Absolutely,” Schermerhorn had said with conviction. “She wants to know who’s coming after her.”
“If she knows we’re breathing down her back, she’d be a fool not to run,” Louise said.
“Not Alex. Never been her style. She figures she can win with whatever hand she’s dealt.”
“Beer?” McGarvey asked.
Startled, Schermerhorn turned from the window. “Why not?”
McGarvey had brought up two bottles of Heineken. He gave one to Schermerhorn. “Why do you suppose she let us know it was her, with the George joke?”
“It’s always been her way. Whenever she walks into a room, she thinks she’s the smartest person there, and she needs to prove it.”
“Louise thinks we should just arrest her at the gate if she shows up in the morning.”
“On what charge? Thumbing her nose at us?”
“Suspicion of murder.”
“Look, McGarvey, there’s something you guys don’t understand. Even if Dorothy Givens is really Alex Unroth — and I couldn’t even tell you if that’s her real name — you have no proof she murdered Walt or the others.”
“She was gone from the office on the same weekend Joe Carnes was murdered in Athens last year, and again when Coffin was hit.”
“Check all the records, and I have a hunch you’ll find she was gone other times. Whenever the DCI was out of town and she had no work on her desk, she was free to go. Wasn’t it the same for your secretary when you were DCI?”
“Yes.”
“So that part is coincidental.”
“What about the killing of her stepfather? You said she admitted to doing it, and that she was perfectly capable of doing the same thing to Walt and the others. She and George did the same thing in Iraq.”
“Just because she was capable, doesn’t mean she killed our guys.”
“Why the sudden change of heart?” McGarvey asked. “This morning you were convinced she was the killer, but now you’re not so sure.”
“I’ve had time to think about it,” Schermerhorn said. He looked out the window again, half expecting to see her walking by or sitting in a car across the street. She was privy to everything the DCI knew, and probably a lot more than that. She would have made friends all over the place. The kind of people who fill in the blanks, the guys who tend to the details — the bits and pieces the bosses never have to deal with.
“You were in love with her.”
“We all were.”
“Still are.”
Schermerhorn focused on his reflection in the window glass, and he shrugged. “Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know.” He turned back. “But I can tell you I admire her, even if it turns out she did kill those guys.”
“Christ,” McGarvey said.
“You were out in the field. You know how it was.”
“Never as an NOC. I wasn’t that good of a liar.”
“Maybe not, but you were a damned good assassin.”
“Point?”
“The point is, if Dorothy Givens is Alex and we can prove she killed our guys, she won’t allow herself to be taken in. Could be you who’d have to track her down and kill her.”
“If need be.”
“But you’d need the proof first.”
“Yes.”
“Hold her down long enough to maybe take a cheek swab or maybe grab a glass or a cup she drank out of. Toss her apartment — toothbrushes, hairbrushes, lipstick, makeup. Lots of places to come up with a sample of her DNA, because I can guarantee the one that’s in her Company file won’t be the real one.”
“Again, what’s your point?”
“Have you seen the autopsy reports on Walt and Isty?”
“No.”
“But you know how they were killed. Their throats were sliced, their faces removed.”
“There were human teeth marks. The killer chewed open the arteries and then bit off their lips and nose and eyebrows,” McGarvey said.
“Right. But did you check the autopsies for DNA?”
“There was none. Apparently scrubbed away with alcohol.”
Schermerhorn nodded. “And it’s driving your forensics people nuts. You have a psycho killer running around loose inside the campus. But they’re smart enough to leave absolutely no physical evidence tying them to the crimes. So prove it’s Alex.”
“First we have to find her.”
“That’ll be the relatively easy part. If it is she who is doing the killing, then I’m next. She’ll come to me. But unless you catch her in the act, how will you prove it’s her?”
“I’ll ask her,” McGarvey said.
Schermerhorn was at a loss for words. Looking at McGarvey, he suddenly had a very clear understanding that everything ever said of the former DCI and more was true. And for a moment he was just as frightened for Alex that she was the killer after all, as he was frightened she wasn’t — and that the killer was George and they were all playing with fire.