The Midnight Caller (Jack Widow Book 6) Read online

  The guard looked Widow up and down, fast.

  “We should call the ambulance. I think.”

  Eva said, “No! We need to get in there!”

  Silence. He wasn’t buying it—not quite.

  Widow started to think of backup plans. He could just pull the gun on the guy and make him produce the key. They could lock him up in a broom closet and take away his cell phone. Or Widow could just knock the guy out. A swift, not-too-brutal punch to the face would do the trick.

  However, he hated the thought of it. A security guard staying up all night on a long graveyard shift probably made minimum wage at best. He probably already had an inner resentment about having to guard a property that he couldn’t even afford to live in, not even if his salary had been doubled or tripled.

  Then Eva said something brilliant.

  “Gerald, Edward is diabetic! He probably had an attack! The paramedics won’t get here fast enough!”

  Gerald stayed quiet, but the expression of disbelief in his eyes completely faded away and the look of concern overtook him.

  Eva said, “I know Edward! If the ambulance is called, his insurance will go bullets.”

  She had meant ballistic, not bullets, but Widow got it and it seemed that the guard named Gerald had as well.

  Widow half smiled.

  She was good.

  The thought made him terrified of what else she could convince a man to do. He figured with her training and mannerisms, plus her looks, she probably could convince a four-star general to leap off a ledge.

  Suddenly, he wondered if she had ever done that.

  Gerald said, “Oh man! Come on! Let’s go!”

  Which wasn’t the response that Widow had hoped. He had hoped that Gerald would turn over the key without going up with them. But he figured that was a long shot.

  Gerald turned around and pulled a long drawer open.

  Widow heard the sound of clanging metal, like a drawer full of keys would make.

  Gerald pulled out a key, fast like he knew which one it was. It must’ve had been organized into cubbies.

  He put the key into his pocket and pulled his coat off the back of the chair.

  Widow and Eva started walking to the elevator. Gerald came up behind them and slid his jacket on. The back of it said “Security” in generic lettering. There was no name of his company labeled anywhere.

  Gerald had also scooped up a Maglite, which Widow figured was because of him. Maybe it was out of caution or simply second nature. Either way it was a good clubbing weapon.

  They all got on the elevator and rode up.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE SECURITY GUARD SAID, “Did you call him? I should’ve tried that first.”

  Eva said, “Of course we did. No answer.”

  Widow said, “We’re already here now.”

  Gerald nodded and pulled the keys out of his pocket, held them in his hand.

  He tucked the flashlight under his armpit and held it there. He used his free hand and knocked on the door, twice.

  “Mr. Daniels? Are you in there?” he called out.

  He listened. Widow and Eva pretended to.

  No sounds.

  He knocked again and again he called out.

  Eva said, “Come on! We got to get in there!”

  Gerald retracted his knocking hand and pulled up the keys. Widow noticed he started to tremble, which was a natural reaction when you think you’re about to walk into an emergency situation where a guy might be slipping into a diabetic coma.

  Quick and without hesitation, Widow reached his right hand back and grabbed the Maxim 9, ready to draw it. He placed his other hand out and just behind the security guard in case he had to jerk the guy out of the way.

  There was no telling who was on the other side of the door, waiting for him.

  The door was heavy and Gerald had to push it open. He did this slow and knocked on the door.

  “Mr. Daniels?” he called out.

  No answer.

  Eva moved her eyes side to side, scoping out the place. She had the advantage over Widow because she knew exactly the layout of the apartment. She knew where all the furniture was placed, where the bathrooms and closets were.

  It turned out not to be that hard because continuing with the industrial design of the apartments, this unit was completely open and very spacious.

  The door opened to a kitchen to the left. All stainless steel appliances. All new.

  There was a large bar top that doubled as a cooking island. Three white stools were tucked in on the right side and cutting utensils and a stack of cutting boards and bar glasses were neatly placed on top.

  Straight ahead of them was an open living room area with a twenty-foot ceiling and a metal stairwell that led up above them to a loft, which was probably the bedroom.

  To the immediate right was a small half bathroom. The door was wide open and the light was off.

  With a quick glance, Widow saw the sink and the toilet. The room was empty.

  To the right, past the bathroom was the living room area. There was a huge television placed on top of a modest entertainment center, with a coffee table and two white leather sofas with three yellow leather chairs.

  The apartment was dimly lit.

  The television was on, but not to a program or a movie. It played a screensaver that kept changing between different earthly backgrounds.

  There were two good-sized speakers on the floor.

  Low lounge music that Widow didn’t recognize hummed from them.

  There were huge glass bay windows on the wall, with the best view of a combination of cityscapes and some of the East River that Widow had ever seen.

  There was a glass door that led out onto a balcony. Edward Daniels wasn’t out there. That was clear.

  Nor was he upstairs, hiding or simply asleep.

  He wasn’t in either of these places because he was lying on the flat of his back on the floor, near the back of one of the sofas. And he was dead.

  His face stared up at the ceiling above and his eyes were wide open. His skin wasn’t white as a sheet, as was often written in books or seen on TV.

  He was as blue as the afternoon sky.

  At least his entire face and head were.

  The cause of death hadn’t been diabetes; even Gerald could see that.

  The cause of death had been strangulation and with a garrote. That was obvious.

  Widow had seen a lot of deaths and murders in his career. Next to a gunshot wound, strangulation by a garrote was one of the most obvious ones because of the damage left behind.

  Edward’s neck was black and blue and there were severe up and down lines left on his skin like he had struggled with a sharp piano wire, while someone who knew what he was doing, nearly sawed his head off trying to choke him.

  CHAPTER 29

  “OH MY GOD!” Gerald said.

  In a mad dash, he ran straight for the body. Maybe he had never seen a dead body before. Maybe he though the guy was still alive. Maybe he even still believed that Edward had an attack from diabetes and was only in a coma.

  Running to the body wasn’t Jack Widow’s first instinct. He had seen dead bodies before. His first instinct was to make sure that no one else was there, waiting to ambush them.

  No reason to keep up the charade anymore, Widow drew his weapon.

  Eva saw it first. She was smart. She didn’t run to the body.

  She stayed back in Widow’s line of sight.

  He took out the other gun and reversed it, one-handed and offered it to her.

  She took it, left-handed and held it down and out that way. She clicked the safety off and racked the slide back, chambering the first round.

  Widow shouted, “Gerald!”

  He had to shout only to stop Gerald in his tracks.

  The guard stopped and flipped around, saw the guns and froze. He dropped his Maglite so fast, and moved his hands straight up in the freeze position that Widow was certain he had definitely seen a
gun before. No question.

  “Holy hell!”

  “Keep calm,” Widow said.

  “What’s going on?”

  Eva motioned for Gerald to stay quiet, one finger over her mouth.

  “Come back this way,” she commanded.

  Gerald moved back to them and stopped.

  Widow said, “I’ll check out the rest of the place.”

  Eva nodded.

  Widow didn’t wait to hear what she told Gerald about what they were doing. He imagined it was some kind of lie involving them being law enforcement or undercover cops maybe.

  Although a pair of undercover cops with high-tech, expensive handguns with built-in silencers was a stretch. Still, the guy would probably buy it. Why not?

  Widow moved out into the kitchen and stopped. He saw a hand towel hanging off the oven door handle. He reached out and pulled it off. With the dead body there, it would be a good idea not to leave fingerprints. Although, the building had security cameras. But clear images of a person from a camera feed weren’t the same as fingerprints or DNA. With an image the only way to identify someone was to actually recognize his face.

  He was pretty sure that his face would not pop up anywhere to be identified.

  He continued on, passed the body, but didn’t look down at it.

  He swept the corners of the room, which were shrouded in dark shadows, quickly. Then he pointed the business end of the Maxim 9 at the stairs, checked the darkness underneath. Nothing there but rows of sneakers and sealed moving boxes.

  He looked up the stairs, followed the metal railing above. The room above him was black, but he figured that if anyone had been there, waiting, then they would’ve made themselves known with a bullet. If they had a gun.

  Widow stepped on the bottom step, which clanged like rungs on a metal ladder.

  Luckily, he wasn’t worried about being silent. They had already destroyed that tactic.

  Widow climbed the stairs with giant steps, two at a time. Within seconds, he was at the top. He crouched, gun out.

  One quick sweep, checking the corners, checking the bed, checking the open doorway to the bathroom, which did have a low ambient light on. It was one of those plug-in nightlights. Maybe it doubled as an air freshener, because there was the smell of factory-made lavender in the air, like a burning candle, purchased from any grocery store or low-cost department store found all over America.

  The dim light from the bathroom cut a cone of light out onto the bed.

  It was a king, platform thing. It was made. Unlike the cheap-smelling lavender air freshener, the sheets and the bedding and the bed itself looked expensive.

  There was a modern-style headboard, up against the wall. No footboard.

  The thing about the headboard that Widow noticed, without trying to notice, like a reflex, like an involuntary instinct had looked for it, were the bruises on the wall behind the headboard. He had seen those kinds of scuffs before.

  In the Navy, Widow had had to room with guys, lots of different SEALs and sailors and even Marines, over the years. Whenever he had been stationed dockside or wherever, it was rare that he got a hotel room all to himself.

  Suddenly, he could recall all the socks that he had seen left out for him, tied around door handles. A universal indicator from one guy to another that the room was occupied for a while.

  For some reason, Widow was struck with a little jealousy. He didn’t know Eva and the feeling wasn’t warranted, not on a logical level. She was basically a stranger and a foreign agent at that. But on the other hand, they had shared an intense first meeting. And there was something about her that he felt drawn to.

  Widow shook off the jealousy and checked the other side of the bed. No one was there hiding.

  He flattened himself up against the wall, slid down to the corner of a massive walk-in closet. No door, but lots of darkness.

  He saw a light switch, flipped it. Waited.

  No gunshots. No one reacting to the light being switched on. No breathing.

  There was no one there.

  Instead, Widow looked on in awe at the collection of suits and ties and dress shoes, polished, and neatly stacked on wooden shelves.

  The bathroom had been next to the walk-in closet, making it easy for him to take a peek inside. Which he did.

  He flipped on the light, but he didn’t need it.

  The bathroom was a big square box room. Huge glass shower that looked more like an empty aquarium than a shower. There were towels neatly folded on metal shelving above the toilet.

  The vanity was a plain, white thing with decent counter space for a single man, but not big enough for a woman to use effectively.

  There was a single large mirror hanging above the sink and rising higher than necessary toward the ceiling. Which made him think that it was designed for a tall guy like himself.

  There was a small, cube-shaped wastebasket, lined and half full on the floor next to the toilet. Widow looked in and saw a red toothbrush tossed in. Underneath it was a woman’s shampoo bottle, a half-used pack of pink razors, and an empty tampon box.

  Widow lowered the Maxim 9, but kept it in hand, moved away and out of the bathroom. He returned to the closet and checked it.

  There was a pair of matching suitcases on rollers, pushed up to the inside wall.

  On a shelf, next to a shelf with folded ties, was a good amount of expensive-looking jewelry. All for a man, he guessed. There were watches and bracelets and gold chains.

  There was one empty shelf, which Widow wondered might’ve once been for Eva.

  He left the closet and left the lights on for a moment.

  Then he took a towel and wiped the switch, walked back to the bathroom and wiped that switch as well.

  He hadn’t touched the handrail on the way up the stairs, so he didn’t wipe it on the way down.

  At the bottom of the stairs he saw Gerald was seated on one of the armchairs, facing the kitchen and the body.

  Eva stood near him.

  She asked, “Anyone there?”

  “No. It’s empty. Whoever killed him is gone.”

  “We know who killed him.”

  Widow said nothing to this.

  Gerald asked, “What the hell is going on?”

  Widow said, “It’s a need-to-know thing. Basically, we’re the good guys. And the bad guys did this.”

  Gerald said nothing, but he didn’t have to. The look of fear in his eyes said it all.

  Widow walked close to them, kept the Maxim 9 down by his side and the hand towel in his other hand.

  Widow asked, “Who was the last person to come out of here tonight?”

  “No one. You guys are it.”

  “He didn’t have any other visitors tonight?”

  “I saw no one.”

  Eva said, “He smells. Maybe he was killed yesterday?”

  “Could be,” Widow said. “You don’t remember anyone coming in and out of here yesterday either?”

  Gerald shook his head, said, “I’m not the only desk guy. I mean there might’ve been someone come out and I wouldn’t know. This ain’t a bank or nothing. People come and go.”

  “Someone was here.”

  Eva asked, “What now?”

  “Now, we leave.”

  “Go where?”

  “Not sure, just somewhere else.”

  “What about him?”

  Widow looked at the guard. He said, “Gerald, when’s your shift over?”

  “Four hours.”

  “I’m really sorry about doing this to you.”

  “Wha...What are you going to do?”

  “Sorry, but we have to put you somewhere. We can’t have you calling the cops when we leave.”

  “I won’t! I swear!”

  Widow cocked his head at him, but he said nothing.

  “Is there any duct tape in here?” he asked Eva.

  “Under the sink. There’s a toolbox.”

  Widow nodded, tucked the gun into the back of his waistband and
went to the sink.

  He used the towel as a glove and opened the cupboard, pulled out the box, set it on the floor.

  He popped the top and took out a roll of duct tape. He took Gerald to the downstairs bathroom, without incident since he was terrified and Eva still had her gun out.

  He taped the guy up, bound his wrists and feet together, and then put one strip over his mouth. He checked the guy’s pockets and pulled out the contents. He placed them on the vanity while he ran another series of tape strips around the guy’s feet to the back of the toilet piping, to hold him in place.

  Widow scooped and then carried the guy’s possessions out to the kitchen and dumped them in the sink. He took the cellphone, and held down the home button until the thing went off. He left it on the kitchen countertop.

  He returned to the bathroom and shut the door.

  Before shutting it, he said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe.”

  Eva asked, “What do we do?”

  “Let’s take off. And we can decide somewhere else.”

  “What about the guard? What if they come back?”

  “They won’t.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Would you?”

  She shook her head.

  They stepped out into the hall. Widow wiped down the doorknobs, both sides of the front door and tossed the towel back inside the apartment.

  He used the guard’s key to lock the deadbolt behind them, slid the key into his pocket so he could keep it until he found someplace safe to ditch it.

  CHAPTER 30

  CAPTAIN KARPOV’S feet were killing him because he had been zip tied with his hands out in front of him and told to stay on his feet.

  The submarine dove down deep and would remain there for the rest of its mechanical life, right after they surfaced once more, but the captured crew onboard didn’t know that much.

  They were nearing the moment when they would surface soon, in a few hours.

  Frank Farmer stood still, leaning over a console on the bridge of the submarine. Green lights reflected back at him, washing over his face. He stood behind the only member of this team who spoke perfect Russian, as well as knew the controls of the submarine like the back of his hand.

  Farmer had never even been onboard a submarine before. He wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to handle it due to a slight concern for claustrophobia, but if he could overcome the fear of death, he could deal with a little claustrophobia. No problem.