The girl had fought well, Pascal decided. Though hardly his equal, she had made things interesting.
Now he would make things interesting for her.
Her swoon would last only fifteen or twenty seconds unless artificially prolonged. Briskly he removed one of the amber bottles from his duffel and gave her a good long whiff of halothane. It was a powerful inhalational anesthetic, and it would keep her under for ten minutes or so.
He was careful not to give her too much. An overdose might stop her heart. That would be a shame. They had much to talk about.
For the same reason he had not wanted to use his gun on her. He could have vanquished her with a silenced shot—it would have taken only a moment to remove the suppressor tube from his pocket and screw it into place—but he did not want her dead. Had he not lost the use of his knife, he could have incapacitated her with a nonlethal wound. As it was, he had rendered her immobile by other means.
The struggle had made some noise, but there were no neighbors on either side of his room, no one to hear or call for help. He was not sure the habitués of this establishment would be too quick to contact the authorities in any event. Brawls must be common here.
On the floor was the girl’s phone, which she had used to track his vehicle, a predictable gambit. It had been easy to find the throwaway mobile phone secured to the SUV’s bumper. He had discarded it in the vicinity of the bar, then doubled back, taking her by surprise.
He picked up the phone. The screen had cracked when it fell, but the phone was still on, not yet having timed out. The index fingers and thumbs of his gloves were threaded with carbon fibers, allowing him to operate the touchscreen. He checked the settings and found that the phone was set up with a four-digit passcode that would lock him out the next time the device shut off. He could not disable the code, but he knew a simple workaround. He navigated to Google Accounts, established a new account for himself, and logged in. Now he could bypass the screen lock whenever he wished.
Later he would take a look at the call log. For now he left the phone on the bed and set to work securing the girl. With duct tape from his duffel, he lashed her wrists behind her back, then ripped open a pillow, tore off a hunk of foam rubber, and wedged it in her mouth, taping it in place.
Lifting her in his arms, he carried her to the bathroom. On the way he nearly tripped over her absurd hat, lost in the struggle. Irritated, he kicked it under the bed.
He deposited her fully clothed in the tub, amid the improvised vinyl lining. The shock of movement roused her briefly to blinking half consciousness, but the sedative overpowered her and she stayed under. She lay on her back, her head against the tiled wall, facing the spout. He had to bend her knees to make her fit; the tub was short. Earlier he taped down the drain-control lever so that her kicking feet would not unstop the bath. Her footwear, he noticed, had rubber soles. That was good.
He ran the bath, dialing the temperature warm.
In his luggage he found his stun gun, fully charged. The unit was small but powerful, delivering five milliamps. There was no automatic cutoff mechanism. He could keep the current flowing as long as the battery lasted, and it would last a long time.
He pried his knife free of the nightstand, then used the blade to cut the power cords of the bedside lamp and the TV set, stripping the insulation on both ends. He carried the wires and the stun gun into the bathroom, where he checked on her, lifting one of her eyelids. The pupil—deep blue, he observed—was still dilated. She would be out for a little longer. The bath was more than half full.
With duct tape he attached the wires to the vinyl lining on both sides of the tub, letting the frayed ends dangle in the water, the girl’s hips between them. He tied the other ends of the wires to the stun gun’s dual prongs, equivalent to the positive and negative posts of a battery. When the trigger was depressed, current would flow from the positive post, taking the path of least resistance—through the first wire, into the tub, then into the ground wire on the opposite side. To reach the ground wire it would pass through the water and the girl’s body. Her skin resistance would be dramatically lower when wet, making her a better conductor than the bathwater. She would take the bulk of the charge.
The tub was full now. He turned off the water and returned to the main room. Her handbag lay on the floor. He rummaged through it.
Her name was Bonnie Elizabeth Parker. She was a licensed private investigator with an office in Brighton Cove. She carried a Walther nine, a reliable weapon, well maintained. The serial number had been filed off. Interesting.
What else? An unusual amount of cash in her wallet, though he did not trouble to count it. Breath mints, cigarettes, and a lighter. The mints and the cigarettes seemed to be at cross purposes, but the logic of the female mind had always eluded him.
He examined the phone. It was possible, though unlikely, that the girl had been tailing him. If so, she might have taken photos. He found the photo gallery and frowned, feeling his first twinge of genuine curiosity.
There was indeed a photo of him, seated in a cafe by a window, but surely this girl had not taken it. He knew the time and place, though he had had no suspicion of being photographed.
Someone had sent it to her. She must know about New York, then. He wondered how much else she knew.
He put her phone into the purse, and stashed the purse in the nightstand. Later he would go over the phone in more detail before disposing of it, along with her ID and other belongings. The gun, however, he would keep. An untraceable firearm was always useful. He was something of a scavenger, anyway. He had no compunctions about picking Bonnie Parker’s bones.
He heard the slap of water on the tiles of the bathroom floor. She was awake, struggling, trying to escape.
She wanted to live now. But by the time he finished with her, she would be more than ready to die.