“Where is she?”
“She works this bar, Leo and I popped in there a couple of times this week. Used to know her up in Canborough, she danced at the Kickstart. Now she waits tables, that kind of shit. Annette, her name is. She could do this.” He grinned. “She can’t say no to me.”
The old neighborhood was coming into view. Merker found his way to Trixie’s house, pulled into the empty driveway.
“Ah, the memories,” he said.
He tried the front door, wasn’t surprised to find it locked. “Let’s go around back,” he said. The sliding glass doors off the kitchen were locked as well, so Merker kicked one of them in. I waited for an alarm or something to go off, but nothing did. Merker reached through the opening, unlocked the door, and slid it open wide enough for us to get inside.
“Let’s find the key first,” he said.
We went upstairs, into the bathroom. I opened the medicine chest, started to carefully remove items from the two glass shelves—deodorant, toothpaste, bottles of aspirin and Tylenol. “Who are you, Mr. Tidy?” Merker said, and shoved me aside, grabbed hold of the two shelves, and ripped them out of the cupboard, tossing them to the floor, where they shattered amidst everything that had been on them. The few pill bottles and cosmetics that had fallen to the bottom of the chest Merker swept out with his hand.
The rear panel was now totally accessible. It was not immediately obvious that it was fake. A nail file had fallen into the sink, and I used it like a screwdriver to pry out the edges of the panel.
“It’s not coming out,” I said. I rapped on the panel with my knuckles. It sounded solid. “I don’t think this panel moves,” I said.
Merker’s face went red. He made a fist, pounded on the panel. It was drywall, and it dented only slightly from the force of the punch. “Son of a bitch!” he said. “What did she really tell you?”
He grabbed hold of my jacket lapels and shoved me. I lost my balance, went into the bathtub, grabbing the shower curtain as I toppled, snapping it off its rings. My head hit the tile wall. Merker had one foot in the tub, his fist ready to pummel me.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop it! I’m telling you the truth! That’s what she told me! She said the medicine cabinet had a false back! It has to be there! She wouldn’t lie about this, not where her kid is concerned!”
Merker was breathing like a bull ready to charge.
“Unless,” I said, thinking of the floor plan of the house we used to have two doors down, “there’s another upstairs bathroom.”
Merker was gone, running down the hall. I’d nearly crawled out of the tub when he shouted, “Down here!”
He already had everything out of the medicine chest in the second upstairs bathroom by the time I got there. He rapped on the rear panel, and there was a satisfying hollow sound.
With the same nail file, we had the back off in seconds. And there was the key, and the phony ID.
Merker looked very pleased. “Okay,” he said, pocketing the key and the document. “All we need now is the wig.”
I tried not to look at the rack in the basement where Martin Benson’s life had come to an end. I found the set of folding doors next to a wall display of handcuffs, whips, gags, and other paraphernalia, and opened it.
There were half a dozen wigs there in a variety of shades. Merker grabbed the red one.
“We’re in business,” he said. “Now we just have to get hold of Annette and we go in and get my fucking money.”
I turned to head up the stairs, and Merker called to me. “Hey, look,” he said.
I looked back. He’d slipped the red wig onto his head and was holding one of the whips that had been hanging on the wall.
“Whaddya think?” He grinned. “Am I not fetching?”
37
THE BAR WAS CALLED HANK’S, and it sat a couple of blocks north of the dockworks. It attracted local workers, but it also bordered a tourist district and was three blocks west of a community college, so there was an eclectic mix of clientele. Muscled stevedores, young kids with piercings, a middle-age out-of-town couple loaded down with shopping bags and a video camera.
The whole way back downtown, I considered my options.
If I got a chance to get away, I could call the police. But between the time that I got hold of them and the time they arrived at my house, Merker’d be able to get in touch with Leo. They’d be able to make good on their threat against Katie before the police arrived.
So that wasn’t a good plan.
If I could somehow get the drop on Merker, put him out of commission before he could make a call to Leo, then I could call the police, fill them in on the situation, and they could surround my house, with Leo and Katie and Ludmilla still inside. Once Leo and Ludmilla knew they were trapped, there wouldn’t be any point in harming Katie.