Omega Dog (5 page)

‘Up to you, Joe.’ He shrugged. ‘Call me the moment you locate Lomax. Don’t wait. I’ll see to it that you and he are brought back safely from wherever you are.’

Venn stepped out into the night.

––––––––

A
quick survey of his apartment confirmed to Venn that the cops hadn’t searched it.

He made himself a pot of coffee in the kitchen and took it through to the living room, where just a couple of hours earlier he’d been dozing in front of the TV.

How things could change in a short space of time.

Propping his feet up on a low table – and catching sight of the band around his right ankle – Venn tore open the packet Corcoran had given him and pulled out the contents. There was a lengthy bio of Professor Lomax, and several pages of references to the scientific papers he’d published. Most of the titles alone sent Venn’s head into a spin.

The man lived alone in a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Skimming his bio, Venn got the impression he was someone who was so caught up in his work, he’d never found time for romantic relationships in his life, or even any need for them. There wasn’t any mention of friends, just work colleagues and associates. No family, either. He was an only child and his parents had long since died.

The trouble was, Venn had no leads. None whatsoever. Lomax’s work colleagues had phoned him in as a missing-person case after twenty-four hours. Corcoran had said his people, whoever exactly
they
were, had taken immediate charge of the investigation since it concerned national security, and the local cops had given it up. And Corcoran’s
investigation
, such as it was, had so far involved dragging in Venn against his better judgement.

So there were no leads. No interviews with the fabled “last person to see Professor Lomax”, because it wasn’t clear who that was.

Venn was going in cold.

And though he was seriously pissed off with the situation he was in, with  Corcoran and the way he’d trapped Venn – though he could think of around ten thousand things he’d rather be doing right now than sitting with an electronic bracelet round his ankle and a murder rap hanging over his head – Venn had to admit to himself that a part of him was
pleased
.

Pleased to be on a case again. Pleased to have a chance to flex his investigator’s muscles once more.

And pleased to be facing odds that some would consider insane.

As he sipped his second cup of black coffee, Venn decided he’d start with the professor’s apartment. There might be some clue there, some indication of what had happened to Lomax. Corcoran had said the local cops weren’t involved, so the apartment wouldn’t be staked out. He didn’t have the keys, but that didn’t pose any kind of a problem.

And there was no time like the present.

Venn pulled his boots and jacket back on, his nerves sharpened by the caffeine. After a moment’s hesitation he went to his safe, spun the mechanism, and took out the Beretta. He kept it clean and oiled, but he stripped it and cleaned it anyway. Then he strapped on a shoulder holster and fitted the gun into it.

Beretta under the armpit, Glock in the pocket.

When it came to hardware, overkill was sometimes the way to go.

Venn took a cab uptown and crosstown to Second Avenue. He told the driver to let him out a couple of blocks from Lomax’s address and walked the remainder. If the driver ever got questioned, there’d be no direct link. In the street, the evening cool was only now beginning to set in. The city stirred and murmured around Venn. Just another Tuesday night.

He reached the row of townhouses and looked up at them. Modern, he thought, maybe nineteen sixties. Featureless, compared to the Art Deco buildings flanking them. Venn climbed the steps and peered at the front door. Not an especially complicated-looking locking mechanism. The alarm system would be the problem, if there was one.

He fished a set of picks out of his jacket pocket, a set he’d once taken off a master burglar he’d busted in his detective days and which he’d always thought might come in useful at some point. The locks gave, and as Venn pushed the door open he paused, holding his breath, waiting for the blare of the alarm, or the sixth sense that might –
might
– tell him he’d triggered some silent mechanism.

There came none.

That meant either that Lomax’s kidnappers had snatched him from his house and had quite reasonably neglected to set the alarm on their way out, or that Lomax himself had forgotten to do so when he’d left the house. It told Venn nothing, in effect.

He stepped into a darkened hallway, and made his way stealthily toward the living room. There, he slipped a flashlight from another pocket and looked about.

The room had been tossed. Expertly, systematically, with no consideration to the damage that might be done.

Drawers had been pulled out and their contents dumped on the floor. Vases and pot plants lay spilled and shattered on the carpet. Art prints had been torn from the walls. The place was –
had
been – tastefully decorated, and held a lot of antique furniture which Venn didn’t care for. The furniture’s upholstery had been ripped with savage slashes, as though somebody had been searching for something hidden in the material. Books, which Venn
did
like as a rule, would have lined almost every wall, if they hadn’t been yanked out of their bookcases and hurled all over the floor.

Venn prowled through the rest of the house. It had likewise been ransacked. Every room, every corridor, was strewn with
bric a brac
and papers. He half-expected to find a lab somewhere, with the guy being a neurochemistry professor, but there was none. The basement was the only place not littered with debris, and held a washing machine and dryer, some sacks of cement, and a couple of mice that scurried away from his torch beam.

In the one bedroom that seemed to be in use, Venn found the bed overturned, its mattress and blankets dumped on the floor. The closet doors stood open and the carpet was covered with carelessly tossed day-to-day academic’s clothes: plain shirts, jackets with those damned elbow patches these guys seemed to love, and penny loafers. The en suite bathroom had a used towel in it, but the sink and shower were dry, suggesting they hadn’t been used for a day at least.

Which fit in with the timing of Lomax’s disappearance.

Venn found what had to be the man’s study. The mess was greater than in all the rest of the rooms put together. A big cherrywood desk with a grand-looking chair stood at the window. Books, scientific journals and newspapers carpeted every surface like a New England forest floor in October.

This looked like the room where Professor Lomax spent the bulk of his time at home.

Venn took a risk and flipped on the anglepoise lamp standing on the desk, bathing the surface in a soft yellow light. He roved around the study, peering at the shelves for clues. Then he tried the drawers in the desk. They were all unlocked, and crammed with papers, some of which were half-sticking out. It looked like whoever searched the place had had a cursory rummage through the drawers but found not much of interest.

There was no computer on the desk. No PC, no laptop. Venn presumed whoever had been here had taken them. In fact, he hadn’t seen any kind of IT equipment anywhere in the house. There was, however, an antique-looking telephone with a wheel-dial perched on the desk.

Inside one of the drawers he found an old-fashioned Filofax. At least, Venn thought they were old-fashioned now. Didn’t everybody keep their important contacts on their cell phones or tablet computers these days? Venn didn’t have a whole lot of people he kept in contact with, so he didn’t know.

He opened the Filofax and flipped through it. Names, addresses, numbers, none of which meant anything to him.

Venn glanced around the chaotic room, wondering where to start, wondering what the hell he was even looking for.

Then the phone on the desk began to ring.

––––––––

B
eth swam up through foggy layers of sleep and blinked blearily at the digital clock on the nightstand.

11:15.

Panicking, she sat up, her heart leaping into her chest.
She’d overslept, she was late for her shift, she’d get fired...

Then she realized two things. She wasn’t on duty for another three days, having just pulled a long shift.

And the clock said 11:15 PM, not AM.

She stared around her. She was on the bed in her apartment, fully clothed, having cast off only her coat. The room was in semi-darkness, only the sulfur of the streetlamp outside filtering through.

Then she remembered.

She’d staggered up the stairs to her apartment, determined even in her exhausted state not to give in and take the elevator – Beth was a fitness fanatic, and had long ago decided that urban living wasn’t going to render her lazy – and had stumbled in through the door. Her mind was still churning over recent events. The news of Luisa’s death, and following on from that the discovery that somebody else she’d known, Lawrence B. Siddon, had also died.

But as soon as Beth saw her bed through the open bedroom door, all other thoughts evaporated. She flopped down on the quilt, just for a minute, just to rest her feet. Afterward, she’d fix some supper, take a shower...

And of course, she’d crashed out, and now it was five hours later.

Damn.

Like most doctors, Beth had the ability to snatch sleep wherever and whenever the opportunity presented itself. But like most human beings, she needed some regularity to her sleep pattern every once in a while, to avoid going crazy. Her intention had been to keep herself awake until at least nine PM, after which she could have a full, unbroken night’s slumber.

Now, even if she did go back to sleep, she’d probably wake in the early hours, and be all out of synch again.

After a few minutes with her head on the pillow, Beth decided it was useless, and that she might as well stay up now till she started feeling sleepy again. Grumpily, she got up, stretched, working some of the stiffness out of her neck and limbs, and made her way to the kitchenette. Caffeine was the last thing she needed right now, so she made herself a cup of herbal tea and sat at the counter, sipping, letting her thoughts drift.

And then she remembered why she’d woken up. Remembered the thought that had been nagging at her, not quite in her dreams, but from some deep part of her mind even while she slept.

Luisa’s parents were coming to town tomorrow, and she’d need to be there with them in their time of grief.

But she’d already promised the Prof she’d meet him to go over the preliminary data from the study they were working on together.

The data could wait. They could work on it any time, maybe even the day after, if the Prof was available. But Luisa’s mom and dad would need her tomorrow.

Beth would have to tell the Prof she needed to take a raincheck.

She looked at the clock on the wall. It was eleven thirty. At a late hour like this, most people would send a text message if they needed to cancel a meeting the following day. But although the Prof had a cell phone, he didn’t use it much. Didn’t even have it switched on, most of the time.

Besides, at this hour he’d still be up working. No question about it. Beth didn’t think he normally got to bed before 2 AM, most nights.

Beth took out her cell phone and dialed the Prof’s home number. At the other end, the phone started to ring.

As she waited, Beth glanced around the kitchenette. It was a comfortable enough apartment, if a little too old-fashioned in its décor for Beth’s tastes. But she’d gotten a great deal on the rental, and until she made chief resident and eventually attending, and could afford to buy her own property in Manhattan, it was as good as she was likely to find. At least, as long as she was living on her own. And
that
situation didn’t look likely to change in the near future.

The phone rang twice. Three times. Four.

The Prof had several phones in his house, Beth knew, so the reason he was taking so long to answer was either that he was in the bathroom, or that he was fast asleep, against expectations.

Or, that he wasn’t home at all.

He didn’t use an answering machine so there was no way Beth could leave a message. She was about to hang up and try his cell phone on the off chance that he was carrying it, when abruptly the ringing stopped as the receiver was lifted.

There was silence on the line.

But Beth could sense the presence at the other end.

‘Hello?’ she said, her voice an unexpected croak. She cleared her throat discreetly and went on: ‘Prof?’

Silence. But was that the deep, muffled sound of a breath being taken?

‘Prof, is that you?’

The voice that came back down the line startled her, sounding as close as though its owner was standing at her side.

‘Who is this?’

It was a man’s voice. The Prof’s? He sounded odd, like he had a cold. His tone was lower, rougher than normal.

‘Prof, it’s Beth. Beth Colby. Are you okay?’

‘Fine, Beth,’ said the voice. ‘What can I do for you?’

He still didn’t sound the same. Maybe she’d woken him after all, and he was grouchy? But that wasn’t like Prof Lomax at all. He was a teddy bear of a man.

She said, trying to keep the sudden unease she felt out of her voice, ‘Sorry to trouble you. I just wanted to ask if we could postpone our meeting tomorrow. The data analysis? It’s just that a friend of mine has died unexpectedly, and I need to meet with her family in the morning.’

Another silence. This time she knew something was definitely wrong. By now, the Prof she knew would have interrupted with a flurry of sympathetic noises and a reassurance that yes, of course they must postpone their meeting, that this was a far more pressing issue.

Whoever Beth was speaking to, it wasn’t Professor Leonard Lomax.

She opened her mouth to speak again – she wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but anything was better than this awful, creepy silence – when she heard a click.