She seized her chance, knowing it would be her last. Charging head down into the blackness, like a bull, she slammed into him with all her body weight. Everything slowed down then. She was aware of fingers grasping, a slipping of feet in the dust. Then a crack, like an egg breaking on the side of a mixing bowl.
Tracy waited, frozen in the dark, breathless silence.
There was a muffled thud as Cooper’s body crumpled to the ground.
Then nothing.
THE RECEPTIONIST AT THE Hotel Britannia was skinny and pale. She had twiglike arms, covered in tattoos, and long, lank hair dyed an unforgiving shade of black. Jean Rizzo wondered how long she’d been doing drugs, but only for a moment.
“Do you speak English?”
She nodded. “Leetle.”
“I’m looking for this woman. Tracy Schmidt.” He pushed a crumpled head shot of Tracy across the desk, along with his Interpol ID card. At the sight of the latter, the girl’s eyes narrowed. “What room is she in?”
“You wait. Please.”
The girl disappeared into a small back office and did not return. Instead a vastly fat man in an ill-fitting jacket waddled out to meet Jean.
“I am the manager. There is a problem?”
“No problem. I need to locate one of your guests, urgently.”
“Ms. Schmidt. Yes, Rita told me.”
“I need her room number and key.”
“Certainly.” The manager smiled nervously. Jean wondered what exactly it was he was trying to hide. “However, Ms. Schmidt is not in the hotel at present. She left this afternoon at around five and has not yet returned.”
Jean Rizzo experienced a sharp pain in his chest. I’m too late.
“Did she say where she was going?”
“I’m afraid not. But she has been interested in the chess championships we’re hosting here in Plovdiv. She attended a game yesterday. It’s the final tonight. Viktor Grinski is playing Vasily Karmonov. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d gone over to watch.”
Seven nights at three times three. Nine o’clock. Jean looked at his watch. It was already ten after nine. The meeting with Daniel Cooper would be happening now. If Tracy had found him. There was a chance she was still scrambling around in the dark, trying to solve the last piece of the riddle, just as he was doing.
Jean grabbed a piece of paper and scrawled down some numbers. “This is my phone. I’ll be at the championships. If she returns, the moment she returns, I want you to call me at once. Do not let her leave under any circumstances. Do you understand?”
“Of course. May I tell her that the police—”
“No,” Jean shouted over his shoulder. He was already halfway out the door. “Don’t tell her anything. Just keep her here.”
TRACY DRAGGED DANIEL COOPER’S limp body out of the tunnel back into the amphitheater. It was only a few yards back to the light of the outside world, but it felt like miles. Cooper weighed a ton. He was a slight man, but his limbs seemed to have been filled with lead. By the time she got him outside, she was soaked with sweat.
He was breathing, but barely. Blood poured hot and red from the gash on his head, like magma spilling out of a fissure in the earth’s crust. The whole left side of his skull had folded in, like a child’s soccer ball that had been stamped on.
“Where’s Jeff? Where is he!”
Cooper groaned. A hideous gurgling sound started somewhere in his throat.
“Tell me where he is!” Tracy demanded. She was becoming hysterical. “What did you do to him?”
Cooper was slipping in and out of consciousness. It was clear he didn’t have much time left. That it was now or never.
Tracy forced herself to calm down. She tried a different tack.
“You’re dying, Daniel. You need to confess. Make your last act of contrition before the Lord. Do you want the Lord’s mercy, Daniel?”
Cooper grunted. His lips were moving, but no sound came out.
“Jeff Stevens . . . ,” Tracy prompted, bending low so her ear was right next to his mouth.
“Golgotha.” Cooper’s voice was a whisper. “The lamb. Sacrificed, like the others.”
“What others? Do you mean the women you killed? The prostitutes.”
A smile played around the corners of Daniel Cooper’s lips. “I killed them for you, Tracy.” The gurgling started again. “You were my salvation. My reward . . .”
Tracy couldn’t allow the horror of what Cooper was saying to sink in. Those women were dead. There was a chance Jeff might still be alive. She had to save him, had to try.
“Where is Golgotha, Daniel? Where is Jeff?”
“Place of the skull . . . death on the cross . . .”
“Is it here? In Plovdiv?”
“Plovdiv . . . on the hill.”
This was hopeless. Cooper was rambling. His voice grew fainter. He began calling for his mother, and moaning. He kept talking about blood. Before long Tracy had lost him again.
She ran back into the tunnel. Her cell phone was on the ground close by the entrance, where Cooper had first attacked her. The screen was cracked but the phone still worked. Switching it on, she punched out the familiar number.
Jean Rizzo sounded frantic. “Tracy? Tracy, is that you? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I disappeared on you. I’m in Bulgaria.”
“I know. In Plovdiv.”
This brought Tracy up short.
“I’m here too.”
“You are? Thank God! Have you found Jeff?” For the first time, her voice started to crack.
“No. Not yet. Where are you, Tracy?”
“At the amphitheater.”
The amphitheater! “The stage of history.” Of course.
“Are you alone?”
“I am now.”
“But Daniel Cooper was there?”
“Yes. He was. He tried to . . .” Despite herself, Tracy started to cry. “I fought him off. I think he’s dead, Jean.”
“Christ. Okay, stay where you are, Tracy. I’m on my way.”
“NO!” The vehemence in her voice took Jean by surprise. “Forget me! I’m fine. We have to find Jeff. There may not be much time.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down.”
“No, Jean. You don’t understand. Cooper’s done something to him. Hurt him. I tried to get him to tell me where he was, but I . . . I couldn’t. Jeff’s out there somewhere, alone, maybe dying. We have to find him.”
Jean Rizzo took a breath. “What did Cooper say? Exactly?”
“Nothing that meant anything. It was just . . . religious rambling. He was semiconscious.”
“But he said something?”
“He said Golgotha. Golgotha, Golgotha . . . Place of the skull . . .” Tracy closed her eyes, trying desperately to remember. “It was all about the crucifixion. He said Jeff was being sacrificed for my sins, just like the women he killed. He said he killed them all for me. That it was my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Tracy.”
“Death on the cross, death on the hill . . . something about a lamb . . .”
“Wait.” Jean Rizzo interrupted her. “I remembered something. There was an incident today. A farming hamlet, up in the hills outside the city. Someone reported hearing screams. The local police checked it out but said there was nothing but sheep up there.”
Tracy’s mind whirred into life.
Sheep.
Lambs.
The hill.
“What’s the name of the hamlet, Jean?”
“I can’t remember. Oreshak or Oreshenk or something like that. I’ll find it. You just stay there, Tracy, okay? I’m sending someone to get you. An ambulance.”
“Are you out of your mind? I’m not staying here! And I don’t need an ambulance. How far is the place, Jean? Jean?”
But Jean Rizzo had already hung up.
CHAPTER 27
JEFF STEVENS LOOKED AROUND him. The tiny chapel was beautiful. Its walls were covered with frescoes and the sun streamed in through the stained glass windows, throwing rainbows onto the altar like confetti.
Jeff thought, How appropriate. Confetti for my wedding day.
Tracy walked in then, the sunlight blazing behind her like a halo. She’d outwitted Pierpont and she was about to become his wife. Her chestnut hair fell to her shoulders in loose waves and her green eyes danced with happiness as she glided up the aisle toward him. Jeff felt a wave of happiness wash over him.
I love you, Tracy. I love you so much.
THE VIDEO WAS PLAYING. Tracy was leaving the hotel after her assignation with Dr. Alan McBride. McBride had white-blond hair and was always smiling. He made Tracy smile too.
Jeff hated him.
The hatred settled in his chest, making his heart feel tight. The pain grew acute, then unbearable. Jeff’s hatred was killing him. It was if someone were tearing him in two right down the middle, like a piece of paper, ripping effortlessly through his organs.
Jeff screamed.
He heard a woman laughing. Elizabeth Kennedy? Or perhaps it was his first wife, Louise? It was all so confusing. But it didn’t matter now because soon the pain would end and he would be dead.