The Stranger You Seek

40





The sign on my dashboard identified me as a delivery person. No hassles that way from garage security and I could park in a courier slot directly across from SunTrust Plaza. I was in the Neon and practically invisible—shields up.

We’d been watching her for three days, switching shifts, dealing with day jobs and balancing personal lives, and all of us spending whatever time we could at the hospital. Thinking about Christmas being around the corner felt like jerking my guts out in my hand. Finding time with Rauser at the hospital and giving White Trash some sense of normalcy had been challenging. Rauser’s children had called almost daily, but there was nothing for them to do here, so they had not returned, nor had his ex-wife. Neil had decided to end his office work boycott and really pitch in. He was doing his best to put the fires out until I could come back full-time. Diane was helping him and, he had reported, doing a great job organizing us.

Three days earlier, sickened and angry, I’d called Diane after leaving Margaret’s towering office. I’d described the confrontation to her. Diane was stunned. I’d heard the bewilderment and fear in Diane’s voice. She knew she could never return to Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze after that, at least not while Haze was free. Apart from the obvious shock of knowing your boss and someone you’d admired had a dangerous secret career in murder, Diane now had the added burden of unemployment. I made her an offer that was nowhere near what Haze had paid her, but the benefits were in knowing there was almost no chance she’d be knifed to death by her new employer. Diane was worried about me. She and I talked every night. On days she hadn’t been able to get to the hospital, she asked about Rauser’s condition. She wanted to know what intelligence our surveillance operations had gathered about Margaret. She wanted to know about my emotional state and if I’d eaten anything besides doughnuts while I sat in front of 303 Peachtree these last couple of days. And on more than one occasion she’d gone to my place to hang out with White Trash and spoil her with half-and-half.

Margaret Haze stepped out of the revolving doors that empty onto Peachtree Center Avenue, and my pulse shot up like mercury. She crossed the street, headed for the parking garage where I waited in the dinged-up Neon and where she kept her silver Mercedes. I sank down low in my seat, ducking my head so that my face was in the shadow of my hat brim. I was wearing a blue Braves cap. I saw Margaret stride past in the rearview mirror, slim and erect, briefcase at her side. A pair of seven-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choos clicked against the concrete and reverberated throughout the enclosed garage.

The silver Mercedes took Peachtree from downtown past the Georgian Terrace all the way through Midtown into Buckhead. I kept my distance; let her get a good lead. She turned onto Piedmont and we drove past the executive hotel where David Brooks had been murdered. I thought about that hot summer night—the fireplace, the wine, the single wineglass—and what we now knew about David’s final hours. They’d had dinner a few blocks from here in a Buckhead restaurant. And while Brooks was naked and sexually aroused, Margaret Haze had shoved her knife deep into the cavity above his sternum. I imagined her lips brushing against his ear as she reached around from behind to murder him.

Haze pulled into a Mercedes dealer and I waited for twenty minutes. Finally, she emerged and climbed into a cab. I ran inside to the service department, where Margaret had left her car. There were several counters. Parts, service, rentals, leases. It took too many minutes to work out what had happened. I called Brit Williams when I knew. “Haze just dropped off her car at Buckhead Mercedes. It was leased.” Outside, I looked right, then left, and spotted a cab turning onto Peachtree from Piedmont Avenue. I thought it was the one Haze had taken. Buckhead isn’t like downtown. It’s not wall-to-wall taxis. Chances were pretty good I could catch up to it. “Why would she give up her car? Brit—she’s leaving town.”

“It’s the holidays, Keye. Everybody’s leaving town except us. And she doesn’t have any travel restrictions on her.”

I jumped in my car and pulled out onto Piedmont. “She’s trying to hide something. If there’s evidence in that Mercedes, you’ll need it for the court case once this breaks. Can you seal the car before it’s contaminated?”

“Shit. Chief finds out, I’m gonna get my ass handed to me.”

The taxi returned Haze to her office building and she disappeared inside. By seven that evening, there were five of us on duty to keep an eye on Margaret: Lieutenant Williams, me, Detectives Balaki, Velazquez, and Bevins. I parked in one of the courier slots on the Peachtree Center Avenue side of the building and put up my fake dashboard sign.

She came out at 7:32. Her auburn hair was pulled back tightly off her forehead and temples. She wore a high-collared black coat that clung to her and opened in an upside-down V, exposing soft black boots that rose up over her knees. If she had any concerns about being watched, it didn’t show. Not in that outfit.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk, walked twenty feet, and turned left into the restaurant there, a two-hundred-dollar-a-meal steakhouse.

I left my car, crossing the street and dodging traffic, and went into the restaurant. Low lights, warm, the hushed murmurs of a well-dressed clientele. I asked to sit at the bar. I needed to keep my eye on her.

Chief Connor still didn’t consider Margaret Haze a viable suspect. That Margaret had openly discussed her savage double life with me in an unrecorded conversation was not credible evidence, he reminded me, pissed that I wouldn’t go away. Neither were the Buckhead restaurant employees who recognized Margaret’s photograph. Balaki had made some excuse to Brooks’s wife for showing her a picture of Haze. Yes, Haze had attended the backyard barbeque she and her husband had hosted around the swimming pool last year—another connection to David Brooks and now a connection to the BladeDriver blog. I met his wife and f*cked him twenty minutes later behind his own pool house. I hoped the stack of circumstantial evidence would soon grow too tall to ignore. But as Williams had pointed out over paella at La Fonda and Margaret had so arrogantly confirmed in her office, Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze was a giant shark in Atlanta’s political ocean. And the chief was fully convinced the right person was in custody for the killings. We had no proof against Margaret. The murders had stopped. And Margaret, having a pipeline to the mayor and therefore knowing everything that was happening inside the police department, was cleverly biding her time. But I was certain she would not be able to resist the itch for long.

The bar was high-glossed cherry and reflected the glittering wall of liquor bottles and glasses behind the bartender. I parked myself in one of the cushion-backed stools and scanned the restaurant until I spotted her. Wishbone. Our eyes met and she smiled, gave a little finger wave.

The bartender came for my order. I could smell the Dewar’s he’d just filled with soda from the tap in front of me. I ordered a drink and saw Larry Quinn walk in the door. He was alone. He always looked dressed for court. He glanced around and broke out his famous smile when he saw me.

“Keye! I been meaning to call you. Big Jim was so pleased everything turned out. I told him up front we didn’t usually do missing cows.”

I glanced at Margaret. She was nursing a martini. “Are you meeting someone, Larry?”

“Date. Wish me luck.” He shook my hand. “It was nice to see you, Keye. Hey, there she is now.”

To my horror, he walked straight to Margaret’s table. They embraced. I couldn’t let Larry have a date with Margaret Haze! I knew far too well how her dates turned out. And Larry was famous for his television advertising and personal injury suits—too close a connection to Margaret’s headline-greedy attorney father. I thought she had been trying to finally extinguish her father’s memory when she’d murdered Brooks. I didn’t want her working out her issues on Quinn too.

I whipped out my phone and found Larry’s number. I heard it ringing from my end but not in the restaurant. Was he carrying his phone or was it simply silenced? Then he pulled it from a pocket, glanced at the display, and put it down. Damn. I didn’t want to make a scene in the restaurant, but I would if I had to. Quinn wasn’t leaving with her. I quickly typed out a text message. Do not leave with that woman. Murder investigation. Danger.

A few seconds later, Quinn picked up his phone. If he’d read my message, it didn’t show. He returned the phone to the table next to his plate. A waiter appeared and they ordered. Quinn had one drink before he got up. He didn’t look at me on his way out but my phone vibrated almost as soon as he’d stepped onto the street.

“What the hell, Keye? You know how long it’s been since I had a date?”

I watched Margaret gathering her things to leave. “You’ll thank me one day, Larry.”

He cursed. I snapped my phone shut.

Haze stopped by the bar and touched my arm, squeezed it affectionately as if we were old friends. “Might as well go home, Keye,” she whispered. “Looks like I’ll be working late. Seems my date had an emergency.” She glanced at the glass in front of me. Her green eyes lit up. “Don’t go back there, Keye. Drunks are no challenge.”

I lifted the fluted whiskey glass to my lips. It was heavy and felt right in my palm. More right than anything had in a while. I left it on the bar. The ice was beginning to melt into the remains of my Diet Pepsi.





In the evening, the elevators at 303 Peachtree, SunTrust Plaza, require a key card. The elevators and elevator lobbies on all floors are equipped with security cameras. Getting to the elevators requires signing in or out at the guard station on the main lobby level. Margaret was accustomed to this routine, as were most of the occupants—investment bankers and attorneys whose jobs necessitate long hours. She knew most of the guards by name, was always careful to be pleasant, to take a moment to speak, to remember them on holidays.

Behind the desk at the guard station, a row of monitors displayed shots of the elevator lobbies from all fifty-three floors. Usually, one guard watched the monitors while another handled the sign-in sheets and traffic. Margaret had studied their routines carefully, had asked about the building’s security systems and how they worked, where the cameras were located. All in the interest of safety, of course, since she was a woman who, on many occasions, worked long after others had gone home to their families. She had quietly picked the guards’ brains over the last couple of years, and they had taken her concerns seriously, happily answering questions to make her feel more comfortable. Margaret Haze was, after all, one of the most famous criminal attorneys in the city and also one of the best tippers. Each and every security guard and cleaning person had received an envelope from her last Christmas.

Margaret had taken a break, enjoyed a drink, then greeted the guards downstairs with small talk upon her return. She wanted them to remember her tonight. She carefully signed back in at 8:52 before taking the elevators to her fifty-third-floor office.

It was a weekday evening and the fifty-third floor was empty. The lower floors, occupied by the hundreds of young lawyers and legal assistants, would still be humming, but tonight she had fifty-three all to herself.

In about an hour, she knew, the cleaning crew would begin to arrive, having entered through the loading docks and parked in the basement. One person would sign in for the entire crew, then they’d all come into the building via the freight elevators, which were located away from the main elevator lobbies in a hallway on each floor. Their routines, uniforms, and the tools they used had all been of great interest to her.

The freight elevators’ location on the main floors had made it easy to slip out of her office wearing the blue scrubs of the crew, flat shoes, head down, no makeup, hair pulled into a bun and hidden under a bandanna. Many of the cleaning women wore them that way to keep their hair out of their faces while they worked. She could come and go using the loading docks while still signed in at the guard station in the main lobby. Later, when she was finished with her work on the outside, with the thing that drew her, called her out into the city, she could return. She could change back into her corporate clothes and leave through the main lobby. She’d done it many times.

Two nights ago she had walked right past Detective Velazquez and he hadn’t even looked twice. Just another cleaning person. Nobody special. Idiot.





My phone rang and I saw Balaki’s number on the screen. I thought about Rauser. I missed his calls. I’d never told him that I chose Aerosmith’s “Dude” for him or that it made me laugh every time he called.

“Keye, go home and get some rest. Me and Williams got this. And Bevins is at the hospital with the lieutenant, so everything’s handled.”

I looked at the dashboard clock. Ten-thirty-six. “Andy, I don’t how to tell you guys how much I appreciate what you’re doing—”

“Listen here, girl,” Andy Balaki interrupted in his South Georgia drawl. “He’s our family too.”

I didn’t argue with him. I wanted to go home, needed to rest. I hadn’t been there since early that morning, just a quick visit to feed the cat, scoop the box, change clothes, and shower. Diane had made a midday visit to White Trash to help relieve my guilt.

Traffic was at a trickle. Lamp-post wreaths lit up Midtown and reminded me again that Christmas was coming. I flipped on the gas in the brick fireplace in my bedroom, turned out the lights, and curled up with White Trash and Dexter on Showtime. It took me no time at all to fall asleep. This was normal. The problem usually came in staying asleep.

It was White Trash who first alerted me. With a strange low growl deep in her throat, she scurried over my head and leapt off the bed, nudging me awake.

Then a darting prism of reflection. The streetlights filtering through my cracked curtains had caught something, and when I realized what it was, when I understood that the light had reflected off a knife blade, when it hit me that Margaret Haze must be standing over me, she struck me hard, with something heavy. My whole world went abruptly cobalt blue. Pain tentacled out of every nerve. Hurt. I hurt. I fought to keep from losing consciousness.

She slid gracefully onto my bed, straddled me between her knees, leaning so near my face that I smelled her coffee breath. What was she doing? I struggled to get my vision, my senses back. What the hell had she hit me with? She was on top of me, bending over me. My body hurt. It was the lamp. She’d hit me with my bedside lamp.

Then raking pain—a cold, thin wire digging into my wrist. I needed to get my bearings, needed to get free. Wire, my fuzzy brain kept warning me. Wire, struggling, ligature abrasions, the victims, Rauser telling me they all had the abrasions. I was going to die. This silent killer was wrapping wire around my wrist and fastening me to the slats under my bed.

Too late, I started twisting and bucking, desperate to get her off my body, desperate to find some strength. I hit at her with my one free hand.

Margaret pressed down on me. She was watching me as the reality fought its way past the blow she’d delivered, watching as each thought, each realization, each new terror crossed my face. She knelt over me, studying me as if I were a laboratory experiment. Nothing I could say now would touch her, would alter her plan in any way. I wasn’t human to her anymore. Not real. Just a thing to be toyed with.

Then she leaned over me and reached for the wrist she had already wired to my bed, and in one precise stroke, she sliced it with her knife. Jagged pain like a saw splitting my skin cut a headlong path to my nerve endings. Blood poured from my wrist and spattered off my fingertips.

“Can you feel her power now, Keye? And mine?”

I was beginning to shiver. My lips were tingling. I knew what it meant. I was losing calcium and blood too quickly. How quickly, I couldn’t be sure. It’s impossible to keep that kind of time.

She hit me hard again, and the room spun. I thought I was going to vomit in terror. “You never took me seriously,” she said, and I saw her pick up a spool of wire and with great efficiency slice off a section with her knife.

“You?” I gasped.

I had changed my locks to protect myself, then given her a key. Jesus.

She leaned forward to pull my arm up and get her wire around that wrist too, and I struck her with every bit of force I had left inside me. She tumbled off me and hit the bedroom floor.

“Diane, why?” My voice was a mutilated whisper. “Why would you do this?” Blood and saliva gushed out of my mouth.

She was on her feet, screaming at me. “Because you f*cking won’t stop, will you? Not until you ruin everything!”

She launched herself at me.

I squeezed the trigger.

In the darkened room, it looked like black oil exploding out of her neck. Blood and tissue sprayed my face and filled my mouth and nostrils. It was rusty and warm. She made a sound like a straw at the bottom of an empty cup, and dropped.

The last thing I remember is my gun, the one I’d pulled from beneath my pillow, hitting the floor.