Nine forty-five, Ryan thought. Ryan remembered glancing at the clock as he was going to the bathroom. It read nine forty-five. So when his cell phone rang, Anne must have heard it; she checked to see who the caller was, saw Syd’s name and turned off the phone.
That bitch.
Okay, this was good, he thought. I’m starting to get mad. Fuck Anne. Fuck that manipulative, lying bitch. I let her ruin my life seven years ago but I’m not going to let her ruin my life again. I was a happy, satisfied man before she popped into the bullpen, so just forget about the last forty-eight hours, man up, act like they never happened and focus on something constructive, like catching the Lady in Red.
Ryan aimed the Mustang toward Malibu and hit the speed dial for Syd.
Syd’s cell phone rang. She took it out of her purse and stared at it. It rang again. Syd saw the Caller ID, Ryan. She just stared at it. It rang again.
“You going to get that?” the Lady in Red asked.
“No,” she said. “He can leave a message.” Syd turned off her phone.
A lot had happened since Syd met the Lady in Red at the door with a gun in her hand…
When Syd pulled up to Blake’s Malibu home, she saw a white Prius parked in the driveway. Alice’s parents bought her a used white Prius so Syd knew she’d found her. She pulled her automatic as she approached the door. She was about to try the doorknob when the door swung open and she was face to face with the Lady in Red.
“Hello, Alice,” Syd said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Oh, shit, Alice thought. Not now, not yet. I have one more man to kill.
“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head or I will shoot you.”
Alice looked at the redheaded cop. She looked young, but there was steel in her tone and a don’t fuck with me glint in her green eyes.
Alice wondered if all handcuff keys were the same. She’d pocketed the keys to Blake’s handcuffs after she’d freed herself. Here’s hoping, she thought as she dropped to her knees.
With practiced precision Syd cuffed Alice. “Where’s your gun?” Syd asked as she slipped on a pair of surgical gloves.
Alice’s eyes dropped to her purse. Syd opened it, saw the Colt and scalpel. She took them out of the purse, slipped them into her jacket pocket. Then, just to be sure, she searched Alice. And found just one thing, a handcuff key.
What the hell, thought Syd.
Shit, thought Alice.
Syd was about to ask about the handcuff key when she noticed a crimson stain soaking through the shoulder of the Lady in Red’s shirt. “You’re bleeding.”
“You should see the other guy,” Alice said.
My thoughts exactly, thought Syd. Where the hell was Blake Hunter? She grabbed Alice by the handcuffs and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go,” she said.
It was only a few feet from the entry hall to the living room and Blake’s bloody corpse. Syd clocked the cock sticking out of his mouth. There was blood everywhere, his face a bloody pulp. “Jesus Christ,” Syd muttered. “Not up to your usual surgical standards.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens.”
Syd checked the body for a pulse, found none. She noticed the playing card on Blake’s chest, four of hearts. Then her eyes took in the rest of the crime scene. There was a trail of blood from the body to the middle of the room, where a small pool of blood stained the wood floor. Then she noticed something shining in the doorway to another room — a pair of handcuffs. That explains the key, Syd thought. Syd bent down picked them up. They were fur-lined. “Curiouser and curiouser,” Syd said.
She needed to search the rest of the house, make sure they were alone. “Don’t move,” she said to Alice and then quickly made her way down the bloodstained hall to the guest room and master bedroom, both clear. Then she stepped into the master bath. “Holy shit,” she muttered as she saw the bloodstained sink and towels.
She hurried back to the living room; Alice was where she left her. “You want to tell me what happened here?”
Alice stared at Syd in stony silence.
“Look, Alice,” Syd said. “I know what Adam, Colin and Blake did to you. I just came from your parents. I know what they did to you. I understand what you’ve been through. Why you’ve done what you’ve done. And I’d like to help you. But I can’t help you unless you help me help you. So please, tell me what happened tonight.”
Alice could hear the honesty in Syd’s words. She sensed she could trust her. “I could tell you, or you could watch it yourself.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Blake Hunter wanted to make a documentary. He knocked me out, handcuffed me and was videotaping me when I tried to escape. It’s all on a tape, in my purse.”
Syd grabbed Alice’s purse, pulled out the tape. Then her eyes settled on the DVD case. She took it out, turned it over and saw the handwritten title, High School Pool Party. “Is this what I think it is?”
Alice nodded.
“He was videotaping you watching yourself get raped?” Syd ask, astounded.
“That’s right.”
“Motherfucker.”
“You should watch the rape, too. But start with the other one.”
Alice showed Syd where the camera was in the office. Syd loaded the digital tape.
“You’ll have to watch it on the camera’s monitor,” Alice said.
Syd flipped open the monitor, it was a small screen, maybe six inches wide, certainly big enough to watch the video.
“It’s cued up,” Alice said. “Just hit Play.”
Syd did.
The angle is over Blake’s shoulder to a handcuffed and bound Alice. She says, “Fuck you.”
“That’s more like it,” Blake says then walks towards her on his way to the door. Alice suddenly kicks Blake in the back of the knee, he falls down.
“Bitch,” he says as he tries to get to his feet. But the Lady in Red has dragged her feet toward his head and she kicks him in the head. His head hits the wall with a crack.
“Cunt,” he says as she kicks him again and again. Finally his body has gone limp and she stops kicking.
The Lady in Red crawls over him, flips onto her back and fishes the handcuff keys out of his pocket. She unlocks the handcuffs and tosses them away, then quickly unties her feet and hustles out of the room.
“I ran into the living room to get my gun out of my purse.”
Blake stirs, leaps up and dashes into the kitchen.
“But Blake had obviously found it earlier and hid it so I took the only weapon I had, the scalpel.”
The kitchen is visible through the office doorway. Blake re-enters frame, pulls open a drawer, takes out a gun, aims and fires.
“He hit me in the shoulder, but I went down like he’d killed me and played dead,” Alice said.
Blake stands there a moment, trying to decide what to do. He aims off screen, seems about to pull the trigger then reconsiders and walks out of frame.
“Fuck,” Alice said. “He was about to shoot me from the kitchen.”
“Thank God he changed his mind,” Syd said, completely wrapped up in the video.
Syd’s sympathy caught Alice by surprise. Just who the hell was this cop?
There’s a scream from off camera and three quick shots, a loud THUD and the gun slid into the right side of the frame.
“When he got close to me, I slashed his ankle with my scalpel. I cut him and he went down. I jumped on him slashing his face, but he shoved me off.”
A bloody Blake pulls himself into frame and reaches for the gun. Alice suddenly appears and jabs the scalpel through the back of Blake’s hand. He screams in agony as she picks up the gun.