Merciless games, p.26
Merciless Games, page 26
“Javier,” I said. “We’ll work something out—”
He turned to me.
“That cake you brought was my sister’s favorite dessert. I wanted to try it one last time before I…I…”
“You what?” I said, taking a small step forward.
He pointed at his jacket in my arms.
“Take that and save yourself. That’s all you need.”
What’s he talking about?
Javier closed his eyes.
I took another stealthy step forward. Katy took one on her end.
“I will pay for my sins,” I heard him whisper.
Before we could grab him, he spun around and jumped off the cliff to the shores below.
Katy and I screamed.
Chapter Sixty-one
“In the boat, now!”
“But—”
“No arguing!” bellowed the uniformed officer.
Her face told us she wasn’t in the mood for a conversation.
I wasn’t sure what Oliver had told them on the radio, but the Coast Guard and marine police teams that were scouring the island were all in a nasty mood.
Javier had made one mistake in his calculations.
If his jump from the cliff had been another attempt to take his life, he had failed again.
He’d stumbled down and landed on a ledge below, caught in the branches of a tree growing from the cliff face.
The helicopter swooped over him in a split second.
By the time Javier untangled himself and was ready to jump again, a first responder had descended from the helicopter. Within seconds, the rescuer had grabbed Javier by the waist and the poet went limp, like he’d given up.
Katy and I watched from the cliff edge as they hoisted him back up to the chopper. It had all happened so fast, I don’t think I blinked through the entire operation.
But something about the way Javier reacted to his rescue gnawed at me.
He hadn’t struggled. He hadn’t even spoken to his rescuer, who had called out to him several times.
Javier was a man who had fooled everyone.
He had calmly and patiently planned the deadly revenge of all who’d hurt his sister a decade ago. Someone with that level of intellectual prowess had to have something up his sleeve when he went quiet like this.
The helicopter had scarcely lifted off, when half a dozen officers in uniform rushed toward us from the back kitchen door.
We stood rooted to our spots, petrified, as they ran up, handguns pointed our way.
It had been easy to identify the senior officer in the team.
With her hair pulled back into a smart ponytail, a scowl that rivaled any bulldog’s, and a uniform with more stripes than the other men, I knew instantly who was in charge.
“Hands up!” she hollered.
We obeyed.
I wanted to explain everything to her, but she wasn’t having any of it. She commandeered one of her men to pick up the manuscript and gun lying at my feet, another two to take photos of the backyard and the coffin, and ordered the rest of her team to march Tetyana, Katy, and me to their skiff on the shore.
“Why are they arresting us?” whispered Katy when the two junior officers escorted us to the largest boat tied to the island’s pier.
“Stay calm and do what they say,” said Tetyana in a low voice. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”
Katy and I nodded.
We took our seats on the hard bench on the deck while the two officers stationed themselves at the two ends of the police boat.
Where would we escape to, even if we had wanted to, I wondered, watching them, watching us?
I clutched Javier’s camouflage jacket to my chest like a security blanket, still reeling from everything that had happened over the past hour.
At least they hadn’t handcuffed us.
“Are they going to think it was us who did all this?” whispered Katy again.
Helen will get us out of this, I thought, crossing my fingers. She will tell them what happened.
But she wasn’t here to help us. She’d instantly fainted at the sight of the Coast Guard rushing at us and had to be airlifted by the helicopter.
Only a few minutes after we watched the chopper take Javier, it picked Helen up on a stretcher. Then, it picked up a hysterical Sophia, who looked like she was having a hyper panic attack.
Within minutes, the helicopter turned around and took off in the direction of the mainland with Javier, Helen, and Sophia on board.
“Where are you taking them?” I asked, turning to the officer stationed nearest to us on the boat.
“Hospital,” he said. “Medical emergencies. All of them.”
I doubted Sophia had any medical issues, but I was glad Helen was going to be taken care of soon.
I hoped Sophia wouldn’t get away with what she’d done.
A pang of guilt went through me to think I’d made Helen talk after being buried alive. She needed water, rest, and more psychological counseling than I could imagine.
“What about Javier?” whispered Katy. “Is he going to go scot-free?”
I reached over and squeezed Katy’s shaking hand.
She was distraught, certain we were going to be thrown in jail for something we didn’t do. I was anxious too, but I wasn’t about to show it in front of the officers. That would only make them more suspicious.
“They have good forensics teams and investigators who know what they’re doing,” I said. “They’ll connect the dots. Plus, Javier was alive when they took him. They’ll make him talk.”
“Unless he’s got more games up his sleeve,” said Tetyana, who’d been calmly watching the frantic police activity, with a grim look on her face.
“I can’t believe what he did to poor Helen,” said Katy, shaking her head. “Imagine getting buried alive. It’s my worst nightmare. He’d better pay for that at least.”
“Who’s that?” said Tetyana.
Four figures had appeared at the top of the cliff, near the entrance to the walkway.
“Oliver and Mary,” I said, perking up.
They were flanked by two officers and were making their way down the walkway. We watched as they came down slowly.
I crossed my fingers, hoping they’d join us in the boat so we could ask them what had happened.
What did they tell the police?
To my dismay, the officers ushered them into the smaller dinghy. Mary looked over her shoulder at us and gave a subdued wave.
I wondered if we’d been too trusting of them.
A police officer stood in between the two boats, discouraging any conversation.
The shoulder radios on the officers crackled to life and a female voice came through the air.
“Four deceased bodies,” said the voice. It was their sergeant. “We need a coroner, a forensics unit, and a vehicle to take them back, once done. Get on it immediately.”
The two officers in our boat exchanged a surprised glance.
“Did Sarge say four bodies?” whispered one to the other.
“What the hell happened here?” replied the other, turning to us.
“It was a nightmare,” said Katy. “It was the poet from Mexico. He was going around killing everyone to avenge his sister’s death.”
“The poet?” said the second officer.
“We only learned about it now,” said Katy. “You have to make him talk. He will tell you everything.”
“A poet?” said the man again. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Did he go psycho or something?”
“If you didn’t come,” said Katy, “we would have been next.”
“Jeez. What a horror show.”
They were in a talkative mood. Time to strike.
“Do you know what happened to Mike, the ferry operator? He never came to pick us up.”
The first officer nodded.
“Found his boat smashed on the rocks near the mainland,” he said. “Got a call from a local kid who saw the wreck.”
“Oh, no. Is Mike okay?” I asked.
“The boat was rammed and abandoned,” he replied. “If you ask me, he’s gone off to Mexico already.”
If he only knew.
“Insurance scams are a dime a dozen,” said the second officer, shaking his head, “nothing as spectacular as this usually, but they happen all the time.”
So they don’t think any of this is related?
I was about to reply, when we saw another figure come down the walkway.
It was their sergeant.
We fell silent. The officers got back to standing at attention.
Their sergeant ran down the walkway, surefooted and steady, a deep frown on her face. I felt a growing sense of dread, the closer she got to the boat.
Chapter Sixty-two
“Did you take their statements?”
The two officers jumped to attention as the sergeant approached the boat.
“No, Sarge,” they replied in unison.
“Get to it, then. What are you waiting for?” she said in an impatient voice as she walked over to the dinghy where Oliver and Mary were sitting.
“Get the Hudsons back to the mainland ASAP,” she said to the officer guarding the dinghy. “I will come in the other boat.”
Mary turned and pointed at us.
“They helped us,” she said in a shaky voice. “They were trying to—”
“I’ll be the judge of that, Mary,” said the sergeant as she marched to our boat.
That was when I realized the butler and cook no doubt knew almost everyone in town, including the local police and Coast Guard detachments. They had been on this island for over two decades.
It was us who were from out of town. We were going to be under suspicion.
The sergeant jumped up the plank and onto our boat. She came over and loomed over us, hands on her hips, while the two officers took their phones out to record our statements.
While Katy nodded and uttered encouraging uh-huhs, and Tetyana listened silently, I laid everything out. The more I told our story, the more unbelievable it sounded even to my ears.
And I’d seen the dead bodies, and I’d heard Javier’s confession.
The officers’ facial expressions vacillated from disbelief to intense shock and back again.
“The darnedest thing I’ve ever heard,” said the sergeant when I was done. “Haven’t heard anything like this in my entire career. This is too fantastical.”
“Please talk to the Mexican poet,” I said. “You should have handcuffed him and taken him to jail, not to the hospital.”
The sergeant stared at me as if she was gauging my honesty.
“Please, believe us. We came here to help,” pleaded Katy.
“Helen Jenkins, the novelist, will tell you what happened,” I said. “She’ll corroborate our story. Between those two, and Oliver and Mary, you’ll find out what—”
A loud crackle from her radio stopped me. She turned away from us to listen in.
I sighed and sat back against the bench. I was drained and disappointed. I’d hoped to solve a puzzle and get recognition from the local police, not get arrested by them.
I pushed Javier’s jacket behind me to serve as a cushion between me and the hardwood, when something jabbed my back. I pulled the jacket from behind me and felt its pockets.
Katy gasped as I pulled out a set of keys.
“Master keys,” I said. “That’s how Ratcliffe got out. Javier opened his door after opening his first.”
“He had these all along,” said Katy, taking the keys from me to examine them. “So, there were two sets of master keys, one with Mary and one with Javier.”
There was something else inside the jacket. I put my hand in and pulled out Javier’s phone.
Tetyana leaned in.
“Now, there’s a find,” she said in a low whisper. “Win can unlock that for us.”
“If they don’t confiscate it from us first,” I said, holding my finger on the main button.
The screen flickered and came to life.
“It’s unlocked,” said Katy.
I looked up at the officers.
The crackled voice coming through their radios was speaking in code, but the tone was urgent. One of the officers raised an eyebrow. The other gave his colleague a surprised look.
The sergeant walked away from us and paced the pier, barking orders and shouting at the person on the other end. Something had agitated her.
I turned back to the phone.
Javier’s email account was locked and so was the contacts list.
“Check the photograph app,” said Tetyana. “Might be something there. Killers take souvenirs.”
Javier wasn’t a typical killer, I thought, but clicked on the camera icon, anyway.
“It’s a video,” I whispered, taking a sharp breath in.
The three of us bent over the phone on my lap and watched as a horror scene played out on the small screen.
Javier had left his phone in a strategic position in the lantern room.
We watched as Ratcliffe came up the stairs and walked over to Javier, who was standing by the balcony window. In the video, the publisher shows a piece of paper to Javier, the same piece of paper I’d found in his dead hands.
Javier takes it and turns around, as if he’s reading it.
Ratcliffe walks over to the electronic panel on the wall, unsuspecting of what’s about to happen next. Javier doesn’t waste any time. He slips the swordfish out of its hanging hooks and rushes toward Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe turns around in shock, but his fate has already been sealed. Javier rams the swordfish into his throat, slamming him against the glass wall. Ratcliffe doesn’t struggle for long and falls to the ground with the fish bill still stuck to his throat.
Javier props the fish against the glass, wipes his hands on Ratcliffe’s trouser pants, and walks up to the camera.
“Three down, three more to go,” he says, wiping the blood splattered on his face. “This is for you, Maria.”
Then the video is turned off.
We stared at the still of Javier’s contorted face for a long time.
I sat back with a sickening feeling in my gut.
“Take that and save yourself,” I whispered.
“What?” said Tetyana.
“That’s what he said before he jumped,” I said.
The police sergeant was yelling into her radio now, visibly upset at something that happened on the mainland. But I had a hard time paying attention. My stomach was churning and my mind reeling from seeing the video.
“There are more videos,” said Tetyana, plucking the phone from my lap. She played the next one, but I’d had enough.
The scrunch of heavy boots on the pier made me look up.
It was the sergeant coming over, a perturbed expression on her face.
“You heard,” she snapped at her team. “Hop to it.”
One officer jumped from the boat and scampered to the railing where the boat had been tied. The second officer stepped into the cockpit and started the engine.
They were in a hurry, and it looked like they’d forgotten we were here.
Something is wrong.
“Hey, Sergeant,” I called out.
She spun around.
I snatched Javier’s phone from Tetyana and turned it around to show the screen to the officer.
“You need to see this.”
With a deepened frown, she took the mobile from my hand and stared at the screen.
“It’s Javier. He took videos of all the murders,” I said, shouting over the engine noise. “He handed this to us just before he jumped off the cliff.”
The sergeant looked up, squinting at me.
I held up the camouflage jacket. “This is his. The phone was in the right-hand pocket.”
For a moment, I thought she looked even more suspicious of us than before. She leaned over and took the jacket and handed it over to one of the men.
“Well, that explains it,” she said with a resigned sigh.
Something about her demeanor told me she already knew.
“What’s going on?” I asked, hearing more force in my voice than I expected. I wanted information, but it wouldn’t be smart to make this officer any more annoyed than she already was.
“This man in the video,” she said, shaking her head. “This Javier. He just walked out of the hospital.”
Katy gasped. “You let him get away?”
The officer gave her an angry look, but I could see her mind was miles away, wishing she was on the mainland right now.
“Javier escaped?” I said. “Why didn’t you secure him?”
“I’ve called for a search,” said the sergeant, turning away, her lips set in an angry line. “Come hell or high water, I’m going to find him.”
“Sarge?”
We all turned to the junior officer, holding his radio.
“What is it, Constable?” snapped the sergeant.
“There’s a David Basha waiting for these folks on the other side.”
David?
David is here?
I let out a long breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. In that one moment, I felt all the heaviness of that weekend lift from my shoulders.
I couldn’t wait to go home.
Four Weeks Later
Chapter Sixty-three
“More tea?”
Helen nodded.
I filled her teacup with the steeped Ceylon tea and put the pot down.
Helen picked a sandwich and put it daintily on her plate.
“If I’d known about your bakery before, I’d have come here every day,” she said. “Then, maybe I’d have avoided that hellish weekend in the first place.”
“I can’t believe we survived,” said Katy, picking up a scone filled with jam that Luc, my chief baker, had brought to the table only moments ago.
“Fresh out of the oven, ladies,” he’d said, as he’d placed the plate on the coffee table next to a tiered tray with mini cakes.
It was a sunny day, and Harlem was bustling as usual.
It was sizzling inside the bakery. The heavenly smells of fresh baking came to us and we could hear Luc and his team’s high-spirited chatter as they worked inside the kitchen.
