I ran to the front and tried the door, but it was locked. I pushed the after-hours bell. After a long pause, Mrs. Coltrain asked in a quavering, tinny voice who it was. When I identified myself, there was another long pause before she buzzed me in.
The lights were turned off in the waiting room, I suppose to deter would-be patients from thinking anyone was here. In the greenish light that filtered in through the glass fire blocks, I felt as though I were under water. Mrs. Coltrain wasn’t at her station behind the counter. The whole building appeared deserted—absurd, since she had just buzzed me in.
Sharply calling her name, I pushed open the door that led to the examining rooms. “Mrs. Coltrain!” I called again.
“I’m back here, dear.” Her voice came to me faintly from Lotty’s office.
She never called me “dear”: even after knowing me for fifteen years I’m always “Ms. Warshawski.” I pulled out my Smith & Wesson and ran down the hall. She was behind Lotty’s desk, her cheeks white underneath her powder and rouge. I couldn’t take in the scene at first; it took me a second to notice Ralph. He was wedged into a back corner of the room on one of Lotty’s patient chairs, his arms tied to the chair arms, a piece of surgical tape over his mouth, his grey eyes black in his very white face. I was trying to take this in when his face contorted; he jerked his head toward the door.
I turned, bringing up my gun, but Bertrand Rossy was close behind me. He grabbed my gun arm, and my shot went wide. He was using both hands on my right wrist. I kicked him hard on his shin. His hold slackened. I kicked again, harder, and wrenched my gun hand away.
“Up against the wall,” I panted.
“Fermatevi.” Fillida Rossy spoke sharply behind me. “Stop or I will shoot this woman.”
She had appeared from some hiding place to stand behind Mrs. Coltrain’s chair. She held a gun against Mrs. Coltrain’s neck. Fillida looked strange; I realized after a moment that she had covered her blond hair in a black wig.
Mrs. Coltrain was shaking, her mouth moving wordlessly. My lips tight with fury, I let Rossy take the Smith & Wesson. He pinned my arms behind me, wrapping them with surgical tape.
“In English, Fillida. Your newest victims can’t understand you. She just said I should stop or she would shoot Mrs. Coltrain,” I added to Ralph. “So I’ve stopped. Is that another SIG, Fillida? Do your friends at the consulate smuggle them in from Switzerland for you? The cops can’t trace the one you used on Howard Fepple.”
Rossy hit me on the mouth. His smiling charm had sure disappeared. “We have nothing to say to you in any language, whereas you have much to say to us. Where are Herr Hoffman’s notebooks?”
“You have a lot to say to me,” I objected. “For instance, why is Ralph here?”
Rossy made an impatient gesture. “It seemed easiest to bring him.”
“But why? Oh—oh, Ralph, you found Connie’s desk file and you took it to Rossy. I begged you not to do that.”
Ralph shut his eyes tightly, unwilling to look at me, but Rossy said impatiently, “Yes, he showed me that silly girl’s notes. Silly, conscientious little creature, keeping all her desk records. It never occurred to me—she never said a word to me.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “She took her clerical procedures for granted; you know nothing of the details of work at that level.”
They had killed so many people, these two, I couldn’t think of a way to talk them out of killing three more. String them out, string them out while it comes to you. Above all, keep your voice calm, conversational: don’t let them see you’re terrified.
“So was Fepple threatening to reveal that Edelweiss really had a huge Holocaust policy exposure? Would Connie Ingram even have understood the implications of that?”
“Of course not,” Rossy said, impatient. “In the sixties and seventies, Herr Hoffman began to submit death certificates to Edelweiss for his European clients—the ones he had sold life insurance to in Vienna before the war.”
“Can you believe such a thing?” Fillida was incensed over Hoffman’s effrontery. “He collected the life insurance for many Viennese Jews. He didn’t even know that they were dead, he had no proper procedures, he made up the death certificates. It is a total outrage, the way he stole money from me and my family.”