Girl Undercover 1, 2 & 3: Three-Part Bundle Page 17

  I turned my face skyward and gazed up the tall, light gray building. And there he was, climbing the wall using only his hands and feet, exactly like Spider-Man. At the moment, he was about ten floors up with no help of any ropes to get there as far as I could tell. The light of the full moon enabled me to get a fairly good view of him.

  I kept staring at him as he moved higher and higher up the building, stopping at every floor to peer into an apartment. I couldn’t believe how he was moving so effortlessly from one floor to the next without any visible help, yet that was what he was doing. I no longer held any doubts this man was the rapist a substantial part of the city was in fear of, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Pulling out my gun and simply shooting him seemed like an overreaction. It also didn’t catch him in the act. I wanted to catch him in the act.

  I briefly considered taping him with my smartphone when he stopped at the 15th or 16th floor and entered an apartment there.

  Oh, God, he was about to rape and kill someone there, I thought. I had to do something. As he fully disappeared through the apartment window, it struck me that it would take him some time before he would actually kill the victim. He had beaten the other four to death, so he would probably use the same method with this one. I had time to save her. I counted the floors to be sure which apartment he’d entered. It was easy to figure out as it was the only one that had an open window in that part of the building.

  I rushed to the front of the house and walked into the main entrance, glad to be wearing my new Red Sox hat now. An elderly, sour-looking doorman stood behind a white podium.

  Catching my breath, I rushed up to him.

  “Good evening, sir,” I burst out. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the rapist who has been terrorizing women on the Upper West Side for the last several weeks. Well, that man is currently about to rape and kill one of your tenants.”

  The aging doorman gazed at me like I was a crazy, homeless person, which made me even more annoyed. Surely he must realize I was not a vagrant!

  “Excuse me,” he said in a dour voice. “Are you here to visit one of the tenants in this building?”

  I grabbed onto the counter and glared at him, outraged. Was he actually about to just ignore what I had tried to tell him?

  “No, sir. I’m not here to visit someone who lives here. I’m here to save one of your tenants from being raped and beaten to death. Who live in the apartments on the 16th floor that face the backside of the building? The rapist is in there right now. If you don’t do something about this, I’ll call 911 right now. And that means your ass will be fired when they find out you didn’t even attempt to save the victim. By the time help arrives, she might be dead.”

  I pulled out my phone and got ready to dial 911.

  The doorman gazed at me. Then, reluctantly, his baggy eyes moved down to the big screen on his podium. They moved backed and forth a couple of times between me and the screen before staying on me.

  “There are two tenants who face the back of the building on the 16th floor,” he said.

  “Good. I assume you have a master key to those apartments?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Find it and let’s go up there.”

  The doorman pulled out a bunch of keys from a drawer and then the two of us were in an elevator together, riding up to the 16th floor. The elevator was old and rickety unfortunately, so it took us more than a minute before we had arrived. My stomach had gone into hard knots by then I was so stressed.

  We hurried toward the only apartment in which a single woman lived, a Ms. Pasternac, who I believed was most likely to be the victim. The doorman opened the door swiftly and we walked into the apartment. I had pulled out my gun and held it close to my face, but not so the doorman could see it. I didn’t want any unnecessary questions.

  “Where’s the bedroom?” I hissed at him.

  He pointed toward a doorway down the hallway and as we ran over there, sounds of commotion reached our ears.

  I hissed at the doorman to stand by as we got to the bedroom; I needed to take care of this on my own. With my gun to my face and my back against the wall, I rounded the doorway. Entering the bedroom, I pointed my gun at the people in there. A lifeless, blond woman lay on the bed and her hands were tied to the headboard. The dark-haired man I had seen climb the building like a spider was about to climb out the window.

  “Come back inside or I’ll shoot!” I ordered him.

  But he just grinned at me and continued to climb outside. Having no choice, I fired my gun twice, hitting him in the shoulder and arm. He lost his grip around the windowsill and fell backward out of the room. Lowering my gun, I rushed up to the window and looked outside, down into the backyard.

  And there he lay splayed on the dirty concrete ground I had been on only minutes earlier. He was going nowhere now.

  I turned back to the doorman, who was standing in the doorway, gazing into the bedroom with frightened eyes.

  The blonde on the bed had come to and was turning her head in every direction, a wild expression on her face. There was a big, white cloth stuffed into her mouth.

  I walked up to her and pulled out the cloth.

  “Please help me,” she said, pulling her tied hands. “He hit me. Please help me!”

  I untied one hand. “Calm down. He’s dead. He won’t be able to hurt you anymore.”

  I turned to the paralyzed doorman and motioned with my head for him to come help me untie the woman. He stumbled over and began untying her other hand with fumbling fingers.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “I was in my living room watching TV when suddenly arms were around my neck and face. He put a hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream and a knife against my throat. He told me to open my mouth or he’d cut my throat, so I did. Then he stuffed cloth into my mouth. He came around me and I could see him. I tried to hit him then to make him go away, but he punched me hard in my face. And then I was here and heard gunshots.”

  I saw then that the side of her face was swollen and red, indicating a hard blow that surely had knocked her unconscious. I managed to get her right hand loose, but the doorman was still struggling with his side. His face was ashen and his hands trembled. He must be in shock. I went around and helped him untie the woman.

  “Where is he?” she asked, rubbing her wrist.

  “He is dead on the ground below the building,” I said. “Don’t worry. You’re safe now. I’m going to go get help. Can one of you call 911?”

  I looked at the woman in the bed and the old doorman, neither of them seeming capable of such a simple act.

  “I… I’ll call,” the woman finally said. She turned to the doorman. “Malcolm, can you please get my cell phone? It’s out in the living room.”

  The old man nodded stoically and walked out of the bedroom.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to the woman. “Can you make sure you call 911 and ask for the police and paramedics to get here?”

  The woman pulled herself up into a sitting position. “Yes, yes. Are you sure he’s gone? Where are you going? What if there are more men coming to hurt me?”

  “You’ll be fine. There are no more men. Just make sure you call 911 right now.”

  I turned and left the bedroom, almost bumping into Malcolm in the doorway; he was holding a cell phone in his hand. I grabbed his arm and gazed at him sternly. “Be sure to call 911 now and get the cops and paramedics here.”

  He nodded, seeming terrified. “Yes, ma’am. Yes, I will.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m going to go check on the body.”

  “Okay.”

  I watched him walk over to the woman in the bed and hand her the phone. She had pulled herself together completely by now and resolutely grabbed the phone from Malcolm. She tapped on the phone.

  When I saw her put the phone to her ear, I left the room.

  I jogged down the hallway up to the elevator and pressed the button to make it come up. The long hallway
was eerily quiet and empty despite all the ruckus we had caused. Surely some of the tenants were at home and had heard me firing my gun. They must all be terrified in their apartments, some of them having called 911 as well.

  Yes, I didn’t need to worry about the cops getting here shortly. I didn’t want them to find me at the crime scene, though, so I hurried into the empty elevator car as soon as the doors spread open.

  I exited into the lobby and strode out of the building. Before I left, I wanted to take a look at the man whom I had shot, make sure he had gone nowhere. After what I had seen him do, I needed to see with my own eyes that he hadn’t actually risen from the dead. Anything seemed possible now.

  I ran around the building and into the backyard, fearing the worst. To my relief, he still lay splayed in an unnatural angle on the hard concrete. I leaned over him and saw that his green sweatshirt was covered in blood. There were big wounds to his head and body, the ones on the body my doing probably. He appeared to have broken his neck as he hit the ground the way it was currently twisted. This man was dead several times over.

  Satisfied, I swiveled around and left him on the ground for the NYPD to take over.

  Chapter 8

  I took a long, hot shower when I got home, and then I made some pasta to eat, not feeling like leaving my apartment for take-out. I had turned on the TV, leaving it on Channel One to stay on top of the latest local news.

  By the time my pasta was in a strainer and I was pulling out a plate from one of the kitchen cabinets, I had been home more than an hour. Any moment now, the local news should be reporting the incident.

  I didn’t want to tell Ian about it until I’d heard it on the news myself.

  As I took a seat on the couch before my TV, a big plate in my lap filled with steaming pasta and tomato sauce, parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, the anchor finally announced the breaking news:

  “A woman was assaulted in her apartment in a pre-war building on West 99th street in Manhattan. The man, a dark-haired, Caucasian man of medium build and height about thirty years old, was shot and fell out the window of the victim’s bedroom. The shooter, a young woman with a black Red Sox hat, disappeared after saving the victim. The perpetrator is believed to be the same man who has been raping and murdering women all across the Upper West Side.”

  I relaxed and began eating my pasta when the news cut to a story about a Seven Eleven burglary in the Bronx. Thank God I had the foresight to get that hat, I thought. Without knowing what my hair looked like, it would be hard for the victim and the doorman to describe what I looked like. The last thing I wanted was for the authorities to connect me with this situation. If they did, I could say goodbye to my own investigation and possibly to my job in law enforcement. Words spread quickly in police circles and it was only a matter of time before Captain Brady found out that I was in NYC instead of in Hungary.

  I didn’t think Brady would be pleased even though I had saved a woman from being raped and beaten to death, solved a case the NYPD struggled to crack on their own.

  I had almost finished my pasta when I received a text from Ian.

  Did you have anything to do with that situation on 99th street? The shooter sounded an awful lot like you, it said.

  I typed a text back. Yes.

  My phone buzzed. Good job. You’ll have to tell me the details tomorrow when I see you. Good night.

  Good night, I typed back, surprised he didn’t call and demand details this very second. I also felt something else—which I hated to admit to myself, but the feeling was too strong to ignore. I felt disappointment. I would have liked to hear his voice right now, talk to him. Share with him what had happened.

  Well, I told myself. That was only because he was one of the few I could be real with, so it wasn’t strange. It was normal to feel a little needy after what had just happened. I supposed I could call George or Dante, but it wouldn’t be the same. I would have to explain everything from the beginning for them to grasp what had just happened.

  I would also have to tell them I thought I had seen a man climb a twenty-story building using only his hands and feet.

  Even if this was what I had seen—thought I had seen at least—I wasn’t sure I bought it myself.

  I got to my feet and put the emptied plate away in my kitchen. Checking the time, I saw that it was past one at night. Time to go to bed.

  ***

  I heard the news right before my two p.m. session with Ian the following day—the NYPD had been able to determine that the man I had shot was indeed the same one who had attacked the other women. They had checked his sperm and it was the same one found in all of the victims.

  I was standing beneath the big TV in front of the fitness desk, learning all of this, when Ian joined me. He gazed up at the TV just as the anchor announced that the mystery woman who had shot the man was still at large. A sketch of my face in a baseball hat appeared on the screen.

  “That doesn’t look very much like you at all,” Ian whispered into my ear.

  “No, it doesn’t,” I mumbled back, wary of the couple of people who were standing around us, also watching the news. It really didn’t. That sketch could be pretty much anyone, though I would still be sure to use a baseball cap as little as possible in the future.

  “Of course, they might connect the bullets to your gun,” Ian whispered.

  “No, they won’t. The gun I’m using can’t be traced to me. It’s stolen.”

  “Really?” Ian sounded impressed. “How did you get your hands on it?”

  I turned and smiled at him, thinking of Dante, whose contacts in the criminal underworld were worth gold to me. I was so thankful now that he had convinced me to get an untraceable gun instead of simply using my own. “I’m a very resourceful woman.”

  Ian grinned at me. “I’ll say.”

  Our gazes locked and I suddenly felt nervous.

  “Let’s go work out,” I said and started walking away from the fitness desk.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As we walked down to the third floor and the running track, I quietly summarized what had happened last night and how I had ended up shooting the rapist. I suggested that Ian and I jog around the track so I could keep telling him all the details.

  “That is, if your legs can handle it,” I added teasingly.

  He looked at me like he honestly didn’t get what I was referring to. “Why wouldn’t I be able to handle a little running?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Because of the funny way you were walking when we had dinner the other night.”

  He looked offended. “I didn’t walk funny!”

  “Yes, you did. And I know that when someone is as sore as you were two days ago, they’ll likely be sore still. Remember, I’m a trainer. For real.” I gazed down at him as we walked out onto the track. “Even if you no longer walk like you desperately need to use the bathroom.”

  “Ha, ha, very funny. Well, don’t you worry about me, little girl. I’m just fine.” To prove his point, he started jogging. He moved without effort. Either he was just sucking up the soreness that must still be there, or he had taken some Advil. Like five of them.

  I ran after him and soon was by his side.