Since he had picked up the phone, the woman’s voice could no longer be heard, but after a second he nodded. “Okay. We’ll do this letter by letter. When I get to the right letter, I want you to stop me, okay? We’ll get you out of there. Here we go. A . . . B . . . C . . .”
In the background, Tatum was talking rapidly on the phone. He was trying to get someone in the FBI to trace the call. He turned to Zoe and mouthed, Phone number.
Martinez’s voice droned on. “D . . . E . . . F . . .”
Zoe grabbed the list and rushed to Tatum, handing it to him, pointing emphatically at Lily’s phone number. Tatum gave her a curt nod, his face grave. He began reading the phone number to the man on the other side of the line.
Her fists were clenched. Her heart pounded, its rhythm aligning with the letters as Martinez spoke them.
“G . . . H . . . I . . . is it I? Is it H? Okay, good. Again. A . . . B . . .”
Zoe turned to Martinez and waved her hand at him frantically. He glanced at her, frowning.
“Vowels,” she said. If the first letter was H, the next one would be a vowel.
He paused, then nodded. He cleared his throat. “E . . . I . . .”
Mel was tapping on her keyboard furiously, the sounds merging with the voices of Martinez and Tatum.
“O . . . U . . .”
Zoe glanced over Mel’s shoulder on the screen. There was a list of names there. Street names. All starting with H.
“Is it U? Okay, good. Okay. Third letter. A . . . B . . . C . . .”
Mel hit the letter U, and the list shifted, displaying only the street names starting with HU. She frantically sent it to the printer, then dashed across the room to where the printer was located. Zoe clenched her fists, focused and alert as she listened to the one-sided conversation, a macabre version of the ABCs.
Mel grabbed two pages as they slid out, then jostled past Zoe and slapped the pages in front of Martinez. He stared at them, then nodded.
“Okay, Lily? Are you there? Good. Listen, I have a list of Chicago streets here starting with HU. I am going to read you their names, and you stop me once I get to the right one, okay?”
Zoe could imagine the woman grunting as she understood what Martinez said.
“Hubbard . . . Hubbs . . . Huber . . .”
Tatum stopped talking, and Zoe turned to him as he slammed the phone in its cradle. He strode to his own computer, tapping. A map of Chicago appeared on the screen. Did he have a location? She walked over to him, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow. He was looking at a Chicago neighborhood, but the scale was small. The location was far from accurate. She felt sick. She couldn’t imagine what Lily was going through right now.
CHAPTER 32
Lily listened to the man drone the street names. Too slow. Much too slow. Her eyes didn’t budge from the battery indicator. Two percent.
“Huck . . . Hudson . . . Huguelet . . .”
She wanted to shout at him to hurry up; the call would be disconnected any second. But she couldn’t stop him. Could only grunt.
“Hull . . . Humboldt . . . Hunt . . .”
He was nearly there. And then they’d have to get to the house number. Was it 3202? Or 3204? She wasn’t sure. Either way, it was a large number. How would she be able to convey the number to him? Her throat constricted in despair.
They’d have to do it digit by digit, she realized. Four digits. It could be done. The cop sounded intelligent; he’d figure it out. And then she’d have to give him the apartment number. Though probably once they had a house number, they could send some squad cars . . . she began to feel hopeful.
The battery indicator changed. One percent.
“Hunter . . . Hunting . . .”
She tensed. Almost there. She had to be alert. If she missed the street name, they’d never find her.
It was then that she realized she could no longer hear the radio outside her door. Instead, she heard footsteps approaching the door.
“Huntington . . . Hurlbut . . . Huron . . . Hussum . . .”
The door flung open, flooding the room with light, the silhouette of a man in the doorway. She barely noticed that Martinez had said the correct street name and gone right on, intoning street names in a calm, steady voice. She started screaming hysterically into her gag.
“Is it Hussum Street? Hello? Lily? Is it Hussum Street?”
The man walked forward, picked up the phone from the floor, and disconnected the call. He looked at her, trembling. He crouched down, and his hands shot forward, grabbing her throat.
His fingers squeezed. Hands tied behind her back, she could do nothing but squirm, trying to breathe.
CHAPTER 33
“Damn it!” Martinez shouted. “The call disconnected.” He hit redial, and after a second the prerecorded voice of a woman informed him that the number was not available.
“I have an approximate location from the cell towers,” Tatum called. “I have the map over here.”
Martinez rushed to Tatum’s computer, joining Zoe.
“It’s within one mile of 805 North Trumbull Avenue,” Tatum said, pointing at the map.
“Any streets there starting with HU?” Martinez asked, scanning the map. “There. Huron Street.”
He turned around and barked at Mel, “Get dispatch to send squad cars to Huron Street, now. We’ll try to get you a more accurate address.”
Mel was on her phone, already talking by the time he finished his sentence.
“Any way we can get more specific?” he asked Tatum.
“One mile from that address pretty much encompasses all of this part of Huron Street,” Tatum said, pointing at the screen. “I’ll talk to the cell company, try to get a better estimate.”
“He’ll make a run for it,” Zoe said, looking at the map. “And he’ll take her with him.”
“Why?”
“He’s not done with her yet. The women he takes mean a lot to him. He keeps each one for a week or more after killing them. He won’t give her up easily.”
“Tell dispatch to alert all squads,” Martinez shouted at Mel. “The suspect might be on the move. Stop any man walking alongside a woman or carrying sizable luggage. Stop all the cars on the street. We can’t let this guy get away.”
“He might manage to leave the area by the time they get there,” Tatum said.
“He’d have to be damn fast,” Martinez growled.
“He will be,” Zoe said. “And he’ll have the cover of darkness and the rain working for him.”
Martinez was nodding as he held his phone to his ear. “Sir,” he said to someone on the other side. “We know his approximate location, and he’s making a run for it. His victim might still be with him. Yes, sir. I need a helicopter and—”
There was a pause, and then Martinez said, “Yes, sir.” He hung up and hollered, “Get a helicopter up above that neighborhood. And I want roadblocks. Stop any car driving north from Huron Street to Chicago Avenue and any car going south from Huron to West Ferdinand Street.”
“He might go west, via Kostner Avenue,” Tatum said, scrolling the map.
“And a roadblock on the crossroad of Kostner and Pulaski,” Martinez called to Mel, who was rattling the instructions to dispatch. “We’ll get him.”
CHAPTER 34
He teared up as he dragged her body to the embalming table. That was what happened. That was precisely why so many couples broke up. Spouses cheating on each other, backstabbing each other, calling the police. Before he changed them, there could be no trust, no reliance. No real love.
He didn’t have much time, he knew, but he had to do this before they left, or their relationship would never last. The neighbors would complain about the smell again.
No, if he really loved her, he had to risk it all and do this. He made the incision, his fingers trembling. His hands worked fast, frantic, mixing the embalming fluid. No time to be accurate; he would just have to hope he got it right. How soon would they find him? How had he screwed this up? Why the hell hadn’t he checked if she had another phone? It was love. Love had made him careless.
He put in the tube and started pumping the liquid in. After a few seconds, he realized in frustration that he’d forgotten to make an incision for the drainage. He reached for the jugular vein, cutting hurriedly, and a spurt of liquid drenched him. Blood.