Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney #2)(88)

And then there was nothing.

WHEN JEAN RIZZO WAS trying to track down Tracy Whitney, back in L.A. after the Brookstein job, he’d physically gone from hotel to hotel. There was no time for that now. Instead, the moment Jean recognized the man in the museum’s photographs as Daniel Cooper, he began e-mailing and faxing Cooper’s disguised image all over Seville.

There were over a hundred hotels in the city and countless guesthouses and B&Bs. Jean knew from Elizabeth Kennedy that Cooper was both practical and cheap. That meant he’d probably chosen to stay somewhere close to the museum, but nowhere too expensive or flashy. The Alfonso was out, as were the real dives on the outskirts of the city. Using Google and the tourist map of the city center that his own hotel had provided, Jean narrowed his “hit list” to ten establishments.


I’ll try them first. Then I’ll move farther out, street by street, mile by mile.

I’ll find him.

I have to.

Not even Jean expected to hit the jackpot so soon, however. On only his third follow-up call, to a small hotel in the Jewish quarter, the girl at the desk answered obligingly, “Oh, yes! Of course I recognize him. That’s Se?or Hernández. He’s been with us for almost a month now.”

A month!

“Is he still checked in?”

“I believe so. Let me check the computer.”

The wait was agonizing. Jean Rizzo could hardly stand the tension.

At last the girl came back on the line. “Yes, he’s still here. Would you like me to check his room, see if he’s in the hotel at the moment?”

“NO!” Jean almost shouted. “I mean no, thank you, there’s no need for that.”

The Casas de la Judería was only a short walk away, back across the park.

“It’s rather a delicate matter. I’ll come over myself. I can be there in five minutes.”

WALKING BRISKLY THROUGH THE underground passage that led to room 66, Jean Rizzo felt an eerie sense of calm. The comforting solidity of his gun pressing against his rib cage beneath his blue windbreaker was certainly a factor. As was the fact that, win or lose, live or die, this saga was about to be over.

Thirteen women.

Eleven cities.

Nine years.

And it ended here, tonight.

The occupant of room 66—Juan Hernández, aka Detective Luís Colomar, aka Daniel Cooper—had nowhere to run. In a few short moments, he would either be captured or killed. Rizzo had called Comisario Dmitri as he arrived at the Casas de la Judería, announcing his imminent strike on Cooper and then hanging up. If Cooper somehow managed to shoot Jean and escape, Dmitri and his men would be waiting. It would be irritating to have to let the obnoxious Spanish policeman take the credit for apprehending the Bible Killer, Jean thought as he drew nearer to room 66, traversing a courtyard enclosed by high stone walls. On the plus side, though, for that scenario to happen Jean would have to be dead, and ergo oblivious. Every cloud had a silver lining.

At the far side of the courtyard four stone steps led to another passageway that stopped almost as soon as it had begun. Jean found himself at a dead end, the wooden door of room 66 directly in front of him.

Drawing his gun, he knocked twice, hard.

“Se?or Hernández?”

No answer.

“Se?or Hernández, are you in there? I have an important message for you.”

Nothing.

Taking out the key that the girl at the reception desk had given him, Jean started to push it into the lock. The door creaked open by itself. Jean stormed into the room, gun drawn.

“Daniel Cooper, this is Interpol. You’re under arrest!”

Damn it.

The bed was made. There were no suitcases. Everything was spotless, clean and sparkling to within an inch of its life. By the side of the bed, a Bible lay open to John, chapter 19, verse 1.

The highlighted quote read, “They took Jesus, therefore, to the place of the skull. And there they crucified him.”

Jean Rizzo felt his stomach lurch. So he’d been right! Daniel Cooper was the Bible Killer. There could be no doubt now. Room 66 was like all the other crime scenes, with one crucial exception.

There was no body.

Yet.

Only then did Jean Rizzo notice the envelope, crisp and white like the one Se?ora Prieto had found at the foot of the Shroud. It was propped up against the pillows, and addressed in a clear, cursive hand:

To Tracy Whitney, c/o Inspector Jean Rizzo.

Ripping it open, Jean started to read . . .





CHAPTER 23



JEFF WAS IN THE house in Eaton Square. He was naked in bed, with Tracy lying next to him. Only, when he leaned over to kiss her, it wasn’t Tracy. It was another woman, a stranger.

Tracy was standing in the doorway shouting at him.

“How could you?”

Jeff felt sick. He ran to the door, but when he got there Tracy had gone. Now it was Jeff’s mother, Linda, who was talking. She used the same words Tracy had: How could you? But she was in another house, in another time, and she was shouting at Jeff’s father. Linda Stevens had caught her husband out in another affair.

All her inheritance money was gone, squandered on Dave Stevens’s latest get-rich-quick scheme.

“Get off me, you bitch!”

Cowering outside their bedroom, Jeff heard the crack of bone on bone as his father’s fist smashed into his mother’s cheek.