Chimera by David Wellington Page B

and—”
    â€œHey—that’s my house,” Julia said, rapping on the
Plexiglas partition between them and the cab’s driver. “Slow down. You can let
me off at the corner.”
    â€œHold on, Angel,” Chapel said. Julia was reaching
into her purse, but he put out a hand to stop her. “This is on me,” he told
her.
    â€œFine.” She closed her purse and reached for the
door handle.
    â€œI still have some more questions,” Chapel said,
before she could get out of the cab. “If you’ll just give me a little more of
your time—”
    â€œI don’t think so,” she told him. “You’re
definitely not coming inside, and I have to start planning my mother’s funeral.”
Her face fell. Maybe she had been able to put aside her grief while she was
talking to him, but he could see it had only been delayed. “It’s bad enough
she’s dead. I didn’t need any of this. I really didn’t—”
    She stopped in midsentence. She was staring through
the window of the cab, looking up at her house—a modest two-story building not
unlike the one where her mother had lived.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” he asked. “Beyond the obvious?”
    â€œCaptain Chapel,” she said. “I didn’t leave the
lights on when I left this morning.”
    He leaned across her to look up at the house. There
were definitely lights on in the second-floor windows. As he watched, someone
walked past the window, someone big and definitely male.
    BROOKLYN, NEW
YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:59
    â€œDr. Taggart,” Chapel said, “give me your
house keys, and stay in this cab no matter what happens.”
    Her eyes searched his face. She wasn’t stupid. She
knew this couldn’t be a coincidence. Still, she clearly had her doubts.
    â€œI am not kidding,” he told her.
    She nodded once and reached in her purse to fish
out her keys. She slapped them into his outstretched right hand.
    He tapped on the partition between them and the
cabbie. “Wait here. Keep the meter running—it’ll be worth your while.”
    The bearded cabdriver just shrugged.
    Chapel stepped out onto the sidewalk. With his
artificial left hand he brushed the front of his jacket, just to remind himself
his sidearm was still there.
    Approaching the house he saw right away that he
wouldn’t need the keys after all. The front door had been forced open. It was a
heavy steel-core door with a Medeco lock, a lock that was supposed to be
impossible to pick. Whoever had opened the door hadn’t bothered to try. He’d
simply smashed the lock mechanism, maybe with a sledgehammer. Chapel looked up
and down the street but saw nobody watching him. Breaking that door must have
made a lot of noise but nobody had come to investigate.
    He shook his head and pushed past the swaying door.
There was a second door inside, a security door with an electric buzzer. That
door, too, had been smashed open and the buzzer was whining a plaintive cry.
    â€œUp the stairs. It’s the apartment on the left,”
Angel told him.
    The building had been a single house once, from the
look of it, but had been subdivided at some later point to make four apartments.
Chapel headed up the stairs and found himself in a narrow corridor between two
identical doors. These were simple wooden doors, child’s play to kick in. It
looked like both of them had been bashed open by force. Maybe the intruder
didn’t have an Angel to tell him which door he wanted.
    Chapel drew his weapon. He reached for a safety
switch before remembering there wasn’t one on the P228. The handgun had an
internal safety—the first pull on the trigger was a double action, cocking the
hammer a moment before the handgun fired. That meant his first shot would be
slightly slower than expected.
    It had been a long time since he’d fired a pistol
at anything but a paper target. Chapel set his jaw and