Stone Barrington 06-11

stopped at a traffic light. Marie-Thérèse looked out her window to find a large truck next to them. “Mr. Kaminsky, please get out of the cab,” she said, “and walk away.”
    He looked at her. “In the middle of the street?”
    “Yes, please.”
    Kaminsky opened the left rear door and stepped out of the cab. As he did so, Marie-Thérèse handed the driver a twenty. “Keep your meter running until Thirty-fourth Street, and don’t pick up anybody,” she said. She opened her door as little as possible, fell out of the taxi onto the street, and began rolling her way under the truck. She had just cleared it when the light changed, and the truck drove away. She rolled under a parked car and waited.

    A block behind her cab, a detective radioed the precinct. “Tell Bacchetti the lawyer got out of the cab at Seventy-seventh Street,” he said. “We’re still following.” The light changed, and he drove on down Second Avenue.

    Marie-Thérèse waited for the next change of the traffic light before she rolled from under the parked car, dusted off her clothes, and disappeared into the night.

33
    Stone got Carpenter into a cab.
    “I’m exhausted,” Carpenter said.
    “Let the cops and your people do their work,” Stone said. “You can get some sleep at my house.”
    “That was a humiliating experience,” Carpenter sighed, as they rode downtown.
    “You might have mentioned to Dino earlier the fact that there were no charges against her in Europe.”
    “We didn’t want Interpol or the various police agencies to interfere,” she said.
    “You just wanted to find her and quietly kill her. Is that it?”
    Carpenter didn’t reply.
    “If there were no charges against her, how did you gather all this information about her—the people she’s killed, and her methods?”
    “From people we’ve… interrogated,” Carpenter replied.
    “Can’t the testimony of those people be used to file charges against her, so Dino can make an arrest?”

    “Those people are… no longer available to testify,” Carpenter said.
    Stone took a deep breath. “Oh,” he said.

    The detective following La Biche’s taxi radioed in. “Tell Bacchetti the cab didn’t go to the hotel. It’s continuing downtown.”
    “This is Bacchetti,” Dino said. “Where is the cab now?”
    “At Second and Thirty-fourth, stopped at a light,” the detective replied. “Wait a minute. The cab’s light is on and a guy is getting in.”
    “Stop the cab,” Dino said. “Arrest her for tampering with evidence. She stole the pistol.”
    The detective switched on his flashing light and drove up next to the cab. His partner got out and shone a light into the rear seat, then got back in. “Lieutenant,” he said into the radio, “she’s not in the cab anymore.”
    “What?”
    “She’s not there. We saw the lawyer get out, but not the woman. We thought she was still inside.”
    “Oh, swell,” Dino said. He hung up and called Stone’s house.

    “Hello?” Stone said. Carpenter picked up the other bedside extension.
    “We’ve lost her,” he said.
    “How?” Stone asked.
    “My guys saw Kaminsky get out of the cab at Seventy-seventh Street, but not La Biche. Now she’s not in the cab anymore. What’s more, she stole back the pistol and the ice pick, took them right off the table in the interrogation room when I went to the door. Didn’t any of you behind the mirror see that?”
    “We were talking to each other,” Stone said.
    “It’s not your fault, Dino,” Carpenter said. “It’s ours.”
    “Sorry, babe,” Dino said. “I can put an APB out for her for stealing the pistol, if you like.”
    “Can you prove she stole it?”
    “I can, if I can catch her with it.”
    “And what do you think the chances of that are?”
    Dino was quiet.
    “Good night, Dino.” Carpenter hung up.
    So did Stone. “What now?”
    Carpenter dialed a number. “Mason,” she said.
    Stone picked up the extension.
    “Mason,” a man’s voice said.
    “Tell me you’re still on her,” Carpenter said “We’re not, I’m afraid,” Mason replied. “There was no way we could get to the precinct before she left.”
    “I was afraid of that. The NYPD lost her. They’ve been chasing an empty cab since Seventy-seventh Street.”
    “Good God. Why didn’t they hold her?”
    “That one is our fault, I’m afraid. We never filed any charges against her, and the NYPD had nothing on her. They found a pistol in the ladies’ room at Elaine’s, but