Opening Moves Read Online Free Page A

talk to him in private.”
    He was eyeing my face where Vincent had punched me.
    “Go on,” I told him.
    “You sure you’re okay?”
    Only then did I become aware of the pain emanating from my jaw and pounding through my head. It was hard to imagine that I hadn’t noticed it a few seconds ago, but adrenaline does that to you. My index finger ached too; it’d gotten wrenched pretty badly when Vincent yanked at my SIG, and now the proximal interphalangeal joint felt thick, swollen, hard to move. “I’m good. Make the call.”
    While Radar stepped away to radio the cruisers, I asked Hayes, “How would he know you did it? Were you supposed to meet him? Call him?”
    “He said he’d be watching.”
    “From where?”
    “I don’t know.”
    I scrutinized the area again. “Tell me what happened. Make it quick.”
    He snatched a breath and quickly recounted the story. “I came home, found blood in the kitchen. He’d taken her. There was a note with a phone number and I called it. He told me I needed to leave a black man in his twenties, naked, cuffed in that alley, that if I got caught or went to the cops, he’d kill Colleen.”
    “Did he tell you that alley on Twenty-fifth, that specific one?”
    “Yes.”
    That was the alley where, back in 1991, Konerak Sinthasomphone had been found. The teenage Laotian had been drugged and was disoriented, but had escaped apartment 213 when his abductor, a serial killer named Jeffrey Dahmer, briefly left him alone.
    When the police arrived, Dahmer convinced the two MPD officers that Konerak was his drunk lover. When the officers returned Konerak, who was still disoriented from the drugs, to Dahmer’s apartment, they caught the scent of a terrible smell that Dahmer told them was his aquarium he’d been putting off cleaning—but it was really the decomposing body of a victim Dahmer had killed earlier that week, Tony Hughes. The officers left Konerak with Dahmer, who, within minutes, overpowered him, killed him, and began to eat his heart.
    The same alley.
    When Konerak was found there, he’d been handcuffed—naked and cuffed, just like the guy tonight. Two months later, when a young African-American man named Tracy Edwards escaped from Dahmer and led the police to Dahmer’s apartment, one of his wrists was cuffed as well. He’d fought back when Dahmer attacked him and barely managed to get away in time. Everyone on the MPD knew the story.
    I processed everything, made a decision, told Radar, “Send out a call that the suspect got away.”
    He glanced at Hayes, then looked at me again quizzically. “That he got away?”
    “If this guy’s telling the truth, as long as he’s free from the police, his wife stays alive.”
    “Got it.” Radar went for his radio again.
    “Okay.” I turned to Vincent. “What’s the phone number you found at your house?”
    “On my portable phone. The last number I called. I don’t remember it.” Obviously he was scared, worried, desperate, but he must have been able to tell that I was trying to help, that I wasn’t discounting his story, and his straight answers were just what I needed.
    I took out his phone and yanked the antenna up. I wished there were a simple way to redial portable numbers, but a quick call to the station, then to the telephone company, got me what I needed.
    I punched in the number and let it ring.
    While I waited for someone to pick up, the two cruisers I’d requested pulled up to the curb and four officers jumped out. Radar helped them hustle Vincent Hayes into one of the cars.
    The phone kept ringing. Still no answer.
    Radar returned and I told him urgently, “Have everyone keep their red-and-blues on. I want it to look like we’re still searching for the suspect.” It wasn’t much, and if Vincent was telling the truth and his wife’s abductor was watching, or maybe if he was monitoring emergency frequencies, it would already be too late. But it was worth a try and—
    The ringing stopped. I waited, but