Tracer, p.10
Tracer, page 10
Natasha gripped it tightly in hers, and as she jumped up, he clenched his arm muscles and pulled hard. She grabbed hold of the opening with her other hand and clambered up the rest of the way within seconds. Once she was in, he let go of her and she lay down on her stomach on the wooden flooring opposite him.
‘We could do with some light,’ he said.
She pulled her phone from her back pocket as Korso reached over for the access panel. He was glad to see this side had a recessed handle at each end. Clasping both, he waited for Natasha to activate her phone, then once the light came on he carefully lowered the panel until it fit snugly into the space.
‘So now we’re trapped,’ she whispered, her face a white mask from the harsh light.
‘Only if they find us,’ he whispered back. ‘Play that light around. Let’s see what else is up here.’
She got to her knees and rotated herself slowly in a full circle, right arm outstretched, the phone’s light strong enough to illuminate even the furthest corners. There wasn’t much to see. None of the usual battered boxes or garbage bags full of old possessions. Only the angled wooded rafters inches from their heads and the rolls of insulation stuffed between the naked floor joists. Either fibreglass or rock wool, he couldn’t tell which. They were both sitting on a three-foot-wide wooden platform that ran down the length of the attic. Other than that, nothing.
‘Obviously not a hoarder,’ he said.
‘No place to hide at all,’ Natasha said. ‘Korso, I promise you if one of them decides to check up here, my face will be the last thing he ever sees.’
‘There you go, jumping the gun again.’ Then he swore softly, under his breath.
‘What?’
‘I just remembered the rear door. You didn’t latch it behind you, I suppose?’
She winced. ‘It didn’t occur to me. But can the police here enter a private residence without the owner’s permission?’
‘If they’re responding to a 911 call, they can. And if the door’s unlocked, they will.’
Korso lay on his stomach and placed an ear against the access panel, listening. But he could hear nothing down there yet.
‘We have to assume they’ll check the inside of the house,’ he whispered. ‘When you took the Sig, did you cover up that floor hatch again?’
‘Not very well,’ she said, laying herself flat. ‘If they are even halfway competent, they’ll observe something is amiss in there.’
‘And once they see the boxes of .38 ammunition and an empty space where two guns should be, they’ll know their suspects are now armed and danger—’
He suddenly stopped and raised a finger to his lips, sure that he’d heard voices down below.
Natasha was as motionless as a statue, breathing through her mouth. Watching him. Neither of them made a sound. Korso pressed his left ear hard against the wood, straining to hear anything that would give him some clue as to what was happening.
Then he heard a faint, muffled voice say, ‘…got anything?’
‘Zip,’ came the equally muffled reply. This one was louder, though. Which meant nearer. ‘Hold on.’ Silence for a few more moments, then, ‘Hey, Tanner, get in here.’
After a few seconds, the first voice said, ‘Well, how about that. Guess whoever called this in wasn’t pulling our chains, after all.’
His partner said, ‘Dispatch, this is Adam 31. We got signs of intruders at that Willoughby address, possibly the same two suspects as initially reported. The rear door’s open, most likely from forced entry, and there are handguns missing. No sign of the homeowner yet. Still searching the house. Over.’
‘They’ve found Adamson’s stash,’ he whispered, and saw Natasha was already gripping the Sig Sauer, still watching him with great intensity.
He ignored her and thought for a moment. The two cops clearly weren’t dummies. It hadn’t taken them long to find the hidden panel in the wardrobe floor. So how much longer would it take before they noticed the hatch to the attic and decided to check there too?
Not long at all, was his guess.
Not good, but he’d been in worse situations. There had to be a solution to their problem. He thought of the caller the cop mentioned. Apparently, somebody had seen them and done the exact opposite of what Korso had predicted. Which was all wrong, according to what he knew about human behaviour in neighbourhoods like this one. Unless. Unless the unknown caller hadn’t seen them at all. At least, not in person.
And that gave him an idea.
Korso reached into his back pocket, and carefully pulled out the burner phone he’d brought along. He activated the screen, lowered the volume and called 911.
‘What are you doing?’ Natasha breathed.
‘Complicating matters.’
After two rings, a female voice came on the line. ‘Nine one one, fire and police. This call is being recorded. What’s your emergency?’
Korso whispered, ‘Police. Can’t talk any louder or they’ll hear me.’
‘Who will hear you?’
‘Two guys with handguns. They ran into my backyard, then jumped over my fence and are trying to break into my neighbour’s house at seventy-four.’ Still keeping to a whisper, he added some intensity. ‘I’m outside right now, at the side of my house. I was just dumping some trash. I don’t dare move or they’ll see me.’
‘Please remain calm, sir. Just give me your name and address.’
‘My name, right. This is Victor Jimenez. I live at seventy-two Goulding Avenue, in Northside, Fort Worth. I think they came from one of the houses on Willoughby. Just get the police over here, right now… Oh, Christ, they’re looking this way.’
He ended the call, and turned the phone off. He opened the back and removed the SIM card and snapped it in two.
‘Goulding Avenue?’ Natasha said under her breath. ‘Where is that?’
‘It’s the street directly behind this one.’
‘So what did that accomplish? It will only take the dispatcher seconds to check that address against the police database. Once they see the name you gave is false, they’ll treat the call as a hoax.’
‘Who says it’s false?’ he whispered, lowering his ear to the panel again. Waiting.
Seconds passed in silence. They turned into a minute. Finally, a voice right underneath them said, ‘Hey, Lew, what about the attic? Worth a look, you think?’
Korso and Natasha glanced at each other. Nothing needed to be said. They were down to the wire now. He pulled the Ruger from his waistband, and very slowly and silently chambered a round.
‘Yeah,’ came the eventual reply, also right underneath them. Just inches away from their position. ‘They’ll chew our asses out if we don’t check everywhere. Go grab a chair from the kitchen. I’ll take a look.’
Here it came. Presumably, the other one was getting the chair. Korso carefully slid his whole body away from the panel until both arms were at full stretch. He aimed the Ruger at the opening. Natasha did the same opposite him. She raised her phone, arched an eyebrow. He nodded back at her. She turned off the light.
The resulting blackness was total.
‘Your play,’ Korso whispered. ‘I’ll back you up.’
‘Copy,’ she whispered back.
They heard the jarring sound of a chair being dragged along the floor, and getting louder. Then the sound stopped.
‘Okay, give me your flashlight.’
Seconds to go. Korso had done what he could to avoid this, but it was out of his hands now. They’d have to move fast, in tandem with each other. He knew Natasha would double tap the first cop the moment he showed his face. So as soon as he dropped, Korso would have to scramble forward and lean his top half out of the opening and put two in his partner as well. It was messy, but you couldn’t always choose your battlefield.
Korso controlled his breathing, flexing and unflexing his shoulders. He could already feel his pulse slowing. Just as it always did before a combat situation. And his mind also felt clearer than before. Sharper.
He was ready.
Just then he heard the familiar sound of somebody communicating through a walkie-talkie. He couldn’t make out the words. It was too muffled. It sounded like a female voice, but he wasn’t even sure about that.
Once the message had been relayed, one of the cops said, ‘Say again, dispatch.’
More chitter-chatter. And even more unintelligible than before. Long seconds passed.
‘Copy that, dispatch,’ the cop said, finally. ‘Seventy-two Goulding. We’re moving now.’
‘Sounds like our perps, all right. I’ll take the back way. You drive round, cover the front. And watch your ass, okay?’
But Korso noticed that voice was already growing fainter with each word. As though he was running from the hallway.
He remained in position for a while longer. Counting the seconds. Always better to be safe than sorry. He judged a minute had passed without a single sound coming from below when Natasha said, ‘They are gone.’
Korso thought so too. Placing the Ruger back in his waistband, he slid his body forward carefully until he felt the access panel, then clasped each of the recessed handles on either end. He gently pulled it up. Light flooded the attic again. And still no sounds from below. He looked down and one of the kitchen chairs was directly underneath him. Gripping the opening with both hands, Korso hung down until his feet touched the chair, then he let go and stepped down onto the tiled floor.
He saw nothing. Heard nothing. Except for the two of them, the house was empty once more.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’re clear.’
Natasha’s face appeared at the opening. She dropped lithely down to the chair, reached up to slide the panel back into position, then joined him on the floor.
‘It won’t take them long to conclude the call was not genuine.’
‘I know it,’ he said, jogging into the living room. He peered through the net curtains again, but this time the street outside was clear. No black and white. And just as importantly, no interested locals. At least, none in sight.
‘Looks clear,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave by the front. It’ll look more natural that way.’
Pulling up her shirt and slipping the Sig into the belt holster she’d taken from the bedroom, Natasha stepped over to the front entrance and pulled the door open. She waited for Korso to join her, then took his hand in hers. He blinked at her in surprise.
‘This will also look more natural,’ she said. ‘What can this loving couple have possibly done wrong? Those policemen must have been looking for somebody else.’
They exited the house together, walking down the driveway hand in hand. Korso forced himself to keep his walk casual and unhurried. She looked over at him and smiled before facing front again. He couldn’t help noticing she had a very attractive smile.
‘Now I’m telling you about something amusing that happened to me yesterday,’ she said. ‘And whatever it is I’m saying you find funny, so you laugh lightly.’
Korso laughed on cue, and said, ‘Or you could actually tell me something amusing. Wouldn’t that be more natural?’
‘Not for me.’
This time his chuckle was genuine.
Crossing the street, Korso handed the keys to Natasha, and she used the remote to unlock the Chevy. They got in. Natasha started the engine and turned to him.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘Anywhere but here.’
Sixteen
74 hours, 57 minutes and counting…
Natasha kept them under the speed limit as they left Northside behind. Korso continued checking the mirrors to make sure nobody was following, or taking undue interest in them. It seemed clear.
Once they’d passed through a few similar-looking neighbourhoods, Korso saw a road sign for Arlington Heights. Left at the main crossroads, one mile up ahead. He told her to take the turn when it came.
‘Why there?’
‘Why not? We need to be somewhere until we figure out our next destination.’ From his jacket pocket he pulled the bill from the Motel Neuvo Cortez while musing on the best way to get the information he wanted. ‘You should smile more often, by the way. Makes you look less lethal.’
She frowned. ‘Was that a compliment?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘And just what is there to smile about anyway?’
‘How about the world and everything in it, for a start?’
She nodded at that. ‘Ah, now I begin to understand. Life is the biggest joke of all, and we’re all insignificant specks whose little power games are beneath contempt to those who remain above it all. Like yourself. Is that what you mean?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have put it in those exact words…’
‘No doubt.’ The crossroads she’d been waiting for came. She indicated left and took the turn. ‘And what makes you so high and mighty when compared to the rest of us?’
‘Nothing. I’m down there in the mud with everybody else. I’ve just got a little more perspective than most, that’s all.’
‘How fortunate for you. And does this perspective help you sleep at night?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had trouble sleeping. Not even when I was with Nikolic. How about you?’
‘My sleeping habits are none of your business.’
A faint smile flickered across his mouth. ‘Naturally. But I’ve found perspective breeds clarity, which is essential in my line of work. It always helps to see the bigger picture.’
Korso lowered the side window, threw out the burner phone he’d used at the house, then raised the window again. He reached into the back seat for his bag, unzipped it and pulled out his thin laptop. ‘Let me borrow your phone again, Natasha.’
‘As long as you don’t throw it out the window.’
She removed her cell from her pocket and passed it to him. He busied himself configuring his MacBook’s wifi to her mobile data connection. ‘Did you notice anything strange about what just happened back at the house? Stranger than usual, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We were there less than fifteen minutes before the police showed. That was very odd. And I don’t believe any of Adamson’s neighbours called them.’
‘Me, neither. In fact, I’m sure they didn’t. Not in that neighbourhood.’
She glanced at him for a moment before turning back to the road. ‘You said we could have tripped a security alarm when we broke in.’
‘I said that then, but I’m not so sure now. I think we tripped a sensor of some kind, but a home security system with a linked-in police response seems unlikely. For one thing, Adamson doesn’t strike me as a man who’d want police showing up at his door for any reason. And for another, there’s nothing in that house worth stealing, except for maybe a couple of handguns. And their worth is negligible.’
Having successfully set up the gateway connection, Korso opened up his browser and went straight to the Google home page. He began searching for what he wanted.
‘But somebody must have called 911,’ she said. ‘Maybe via a hidden motion-detection camera we missed?’
He nodded. ‘That’s what I think. And these days they make spycams so small they’re practically invisible unless you know precisely what you’re looking for. Which we didn’t.’
Natasha was silent for a few moments. ‘So we trip the sensor when we break in, which activates the camera while also sending an alarm to whoever installed it.’
‘Right. Probably via a simple cell-phone app. My guess is there’s a password-protected web page where this person can access a live video feed whenever the alarm goes off. And possibly from more than one camera, too. So this person sees us enter the kitchen and immediately calls 911, pretending to be a concerned neighbour, like I did, and tells them they’ve just seen two armed intruders break into Adamson’s house. The police show up and arrest us. Problem solved.’
‘So who installed the alarm?’ she said.
‘You know who. Unless there are other interested parties unknown to us, it can only really be one person.’
‘Kujan’s murderer.’
‘Correct. And if you know the who, you also know the why. If he’s tying up loose ends, it means he’s thorough. And a thorough person would want to make sure his back’s covered at all times. He’d assume Nikolic wouldn’t lie down over the missing shipment, and would send people in to investigate. Hence, the hidden alarm system.’
‘Maybe he set one up in Kujan’s apartment as well,’ Natasha said. ‘That could explain the ambush by those three thugs.’
Korso shook his head. ‘It’s possible, but that whole situation felt too haphazard and random. And I don’t believe the killer would have stayed in that apartment any longer than necessary to set up a tripwire, not with a fresh corpse in the fridge. And if he had, alerting the Mexican police would have been a far surer method of getting us out of the way than using those three morons.’
‘Yes, that makes sense. So you believe this Adamson is dead too?’
‘I suspect he is. But I’m keeping an open mind.’
She continued driving in silence, lost in her own thoughts. Korso looked up from what he was doing and saw they were on a main street, possibly in Arlington Heights. Various stores passed by on each side. Some shuttered, but most open for business. He saw a familiar green and red sign up ahead. ‘Stop at the 7-Eleven over there. I could do with a sandwich, and maybe some coffee.’
She signalled right, then pulled in to the small parking lot and found a space. She looked over at Korso. ‘You can access the internet just as well on my phone. Why bother with the laptop?’
‘I was also checking my emails, and I never do that on a phone.’
‘What are you searching for anyway?’
‘I’ll tell you when you come back with my sandwich.’ He smiled. ‘And coffee.’
‘Yes, master.’ She sighed and got out, taking the keys with her.
He watched her go into the convenience store, then reached back and grabbed another burner phone from his bag. He activated the screen and keyed in the number he’d found for the hotel.
