Split Second - Catherine Coulter [93]
“That’s not going to cut it, Bruce.”
He closed his mouth and stared toward the pale green wall opposite his bed.
Savich leaned close, watched Comafield’s eyes dance madly with pain. “You want more morphine, Bruce? The only way you’ll get it is for you to tell me where Kirsten is hiding.”
Comafield’s dark eyes turned black, rage boiling up. He whispered, voice shaking, “You can’t do that. You think I’m stupid? You’re the law; you can’t torture me.”
“You let Kirsten torture all those women she butchered. Did you help her jerk a wire around their necks, pull it tight while your victims were helpless from the drug she’d fed them?”
“That’s different! How’d you even know about me?”
“A very sharp guy in New York described you very well. You know, the guy Kirsten set up to take the fall at Enrico’s Bar?”
Comafield knew; of course he knew.
Savich leaned close again. “I liked you better with hair. I’ve got to say, though, you fooled me. I never saw you go in the bar, and believe me, I was looking.”
“Yeah, I stuck myself right in the middle of a happy group, and hooked up with this little blonde. We waltzed right in. I’m always careful now—real careful after New York.”
He managed to preen through the pain. Savich leaned close. “Now that you had your little rush, I can see the pain’s really getting to you. Tell me where Kirsten is, and I’ll get you a ticket on the morphine express.”
At Comafield’s silence, Savich turned away from him. He walked over to the single window and looked down into the parking lot. It was nearly full at a little after nine o’clock in the morning. It was a gray day, clouds swirling low, the wind blowing fiercely. He was glad he’d put up the Porsche’s top. He began whistling.
He admitted to himself that he felt great relief when Comafield cursed him again, finally nodded, and whispered, “All right. Morphine, get me morphine.”
He gave Comafield a long look before he got Nurse Harmony, a lovely name for a nurse, Savich thought, and she nodded, said she’d just as soon leave the killer to rot. Comafield watched her hook up an infusion device to his IV. Every fifteen minutes he could press the button, she told him. When she left, he was frantically pushing the button, his eyes closed.
Savich walked back to the window, and waited.
It was Comafield who spoke first. “Like I said, you’ll never find her; she’ll be the one to find you. So, it doesn’t matter that you know where we were staying—at the Handler’s Inn on Chestnut. Hey, the room is one-fifty-one. Go search our room to the rafters, you won’t find anything, and believe me, Kirsten won’t care, she’ll be long gone.”
And he gave Savich a malicious smile, proof that the morphine was kicking in. “Why do you care, anyway? You’re going to be dead.”
“The two of you didn’t discuss where you were going after Baltimore?”
“Nope, she hadn’t decided.” Comafield actually gave Savich a small grin. “She told me her daddy was guiding her steps. Then she’d laugh and say, well, mainly it was her daddy.”
“What did she mean by that?”
“I don’t know exactly, but sometimes she’d talk on her cell phone, never told me who she was talking to.”
“Did you hold down the women while she strangled them with the wire?”
“No, that was her deal. She said her daddy always worked alone, and so would she, at least at the denouement. That’s what she called it—the denouement. She liked to say she not only wrote the scripts, she was the lead actress, and she wasn’t about to share that with anyone, even me. The denouement was always just her and the pathetic female she’d chosen to dance with.
“When I was working for Lansford, she’d call my cell, tell me where to meet her.” He shrugged, but it hurt and he grew very still.
After several minutes, he spoke again. “I met her in New York on Sunday, checked out Enrico’s that night. We left Monday night, after Kirsten was done with Genny, to drive here. We only had two nights together, and now she’s gone from me.”
Genny—Comafield had called Kirsten’s victim by her first name, like she was