The Tower

by Gregg Hurwitz

  The frenzy at Maingate was nothing compared to the activity on top of the Tower. Divers were geared up in wet suits and tanks, dangling their flippers in the water that filled the Hole. An FBI team had been there since shortly after Allander’s break was discovered.

  Won’t do much good, Jade thought. Already know who, what, and when. There was nothing new they’d discover about the scene of the crime—they’d created it. Won’t tell them anything about what Allander’s doing now.

  A short, burly man charged around barking orders. A cigar was wedged in the side of his mouth almost parallel with the line of his molars. Sweat and moisture from the sea air dotted his bald head.

  Jade walked over to him, noticing that his soggy cigar had long since gone out. Still, between barking out commands, the man chewed it with vigor.

  “Walker Banks,” Jade said.

  “Marlow. Jesus fuck, what took you?”

  “I just got the job seven hours ago.”

  “What took them?”

  “The FBI, Warden. Moving at the speed of bureaucracy.”

  “No shit. I got a stack of papers on my desk could sink the Titanic.”

  “The Titanic is sunk.”

  “My point, Marlow. My point.”

  One of the divers surfaced, his arms looped underneath those of a corpse.

  Walker pulled the cigar out of his mouth and stabbed it at the body. “Mills Benedick. Smells like a Tijuana whore.”

  Jade grimaced.

  “On one of his good days, I mean,” Walker said.

  Another diver pulled Mills from the Hole by his hairy arms and flopped him on his stomach. Mills’s hair stood out against his pale blue flesh. His naked back was humped like a buffalo’s.

  “Must be fun getting the cells unlocked underwater,” Jade said. “Then pulling the bodies up.”

  “You shoulda seen the first ones, Marlow.” Walker circled his head and shoulders with his damp cigar. “Head trauma from the force of the water.” He shook his head.

  “Look, Warden, I know you’re tired—”

  “Marlow, the past forty-three hours have been a bigger pain in the ass than hemorrhoids. I got two guards dead. I got sixteen prisoners drowned, one in lockdown, and one on the loose. Not to mention the fact that I’m gonna lose my standing at the Warden Hall of Fame. So yes, I’m fuckin’ tired.”

  He looked over at the divers, who were resting at the side of the Hole. “Move your asses. We got eight more bodies that need to be up before we roll the pumps. I’d like to get home while my wife still recognizes me.”

  He walked away, speaking to Jade over his shoulder. “We had to bring in outside pumps—the internal ones can’t get out from under that much water.”

  Jade stepped in front of him. “All right, Walker. Give me a quick tour and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “My hair?” Walker rammed the cigar back in his mouth and placed a thick hand on Jade’s shoulder. “Come on, hotshot. Let’s peek at the sunken treasures.”

  He took Jade around the top of the Tower, his voice gruff as he explained guard procedures, equipment use, and prisoner containment mechanisms. In about twenty minutes he had given Jade a full summary of the Tower’s operating procedures.

  The other workers and guards glanced over at Jade from time to time. Even though he was quietly listening to Walker, Jade had a very loud presence. His eyes were penetrating; they seemed to pick apart the disaster site, noting and filing clues invisible to everyone else.

  Walker finally wound up his procedural review and his account of what had happened during Allander’s break.

  “The survivor. What’s his story?”

  “Claude Rivers. Typical Boy Scout—mass murderer, postmortem fornication with his mother’s headless corpse. We pulled him out safely. He’s in lockdown at Maingate, but we’re gonna get him back in here as soon as possible.”

  “Even during evacuation?”

  “Peter Briggs’s direct orders,” Walker said. “Called up in typical fashion, ranting and raving, saying his prison wasn’t gonna be shut down by some psychopath, even if it meant keeping the Tower up and running for one prisoner. Don’t matter anyways. I’d prefer to have Rivers here. Tower prisoners are a different breed. You might think this place was built for them, but it wasn’t. They were built for it.” He gazed at Claude’s submerged cell. “Won’t eat up much manpower, having Rivers back here. One guard could handle it.”

  “He talk? Rivers?”

  “No. Literally. Not a peep since we stuck him in here in ’96.” Walker groaned, putting his hands on his sides and arching to stretch his back. “There’s one thing that’s just not sitting right with this, Marlow. How the hell did Allander get Hackett? I came up with Hackett. He could eat scrap metal and shit bullets.”

  “Must’ve got him from behind. Swept his legs or took out a knee.”

  “No, no,” Walker replied. “Knee was fine.” Using his tongue, he brought his cigar to his front teeth, straining his mouth to breathe around it. “How the hell’d he fool Hackett to get behind him?” he asked himself, looking down at the moist stone.

  “Maybe we’ll find out from the TV movie,” Jade said.

  Walker shook his head, then went to the shed to call for a speedboat. Jade followed, waiting as a man rolled another drum of diesel fuel over to the enormous water pump.

  A diver came over and met them at the door. He pointed at the levers that controlled the vents. “Warden, I just wanted to let you know that these levers move automatically when the vents open. They could have … I mean, something could have pushed the vents open from the outside. Like they could’ve just given way or something. Are you sure Atlasia did it?”

  Walker turned around, rolling his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. He looked at the diver, then at Jade, then back at the diver. “Did Rose Kennedy have a black dress? The odds of a spontaneous implosion with such impeccable timing are fairly low, I would have to say. Yes, we’re sure. Would you not agree, Marlow?”

  Jade bit his lip to keep from smiling. “Yes, I would.”

  The diver blushed, retreating to the Hole.

  Walker chomped on his cigar. “You see the shit I’ve been wading through here? I’m getting screwed six ways from Sunday, Marlow.” He sighed deeply. “Problems. We’ve got problems.”

  Jade glanced at the flashing red lights above the vent switches. “Well, consider this,” he said. “Allander had been locked up for fifteen years. Fifteen. And he took the extra time to come back to the shed just to kill everyone else. He could’ve been caught, but he risked it. He risked it all. Killed people he didn’t even know, just to send a message. You think we’ve got problems now, Warden? This is just the beginning.”

  Walker met his stare. A look of recognition passed between the two men.

  “How’d he get Greener, Marlow? We got the body parts, we got why he was down there, even how he got cut in half. But how’d the kid get his hands on him?”

  Jade ran his thumb across his bottom lip and squinted as he thought. “I bet you’ll find one of those metal arms for the food down there,” he said. “I’ll say Greener’s concentration wandered and he hung it too close to Alland—Atlasia’s unit.”

  Walker nodded sharply. “Good man. He’s a good man here,” he said over his cigar to no one in particular.

  A guard called over from across the Hole. “Hey! Docker on the line!”

  “Your ride, Marlow. It’s here. I’ll walk you over.”

  “I appreciate your time, Warden.”

  “I appreciate yours. Call me if you need anything else.”

  Jade swung his leg over the parapet and rested it on the ladder’s top rung. “Hey, Banks!” he yelled.

  The warden stopped and turned around.

  “I’d check for prints underneath the platform. You might be surprised what’ll turn up.”

  Walker snapped his fingers. He stood shifting his cigar around his mouth long after Jade was out of view.

  22
>
  THE children finally dozed off, their palms stuck together by their sweat and the duct tape. Since comfort was nowhere to be found, they retreated to the anesthetic of dream. The boy shivered occasionally as his eyelids flickered. His cheeks were a shade of red that normally would have been described as cheerful.

  Allander watched the two children sleeping side by side on the bed, tape still covering their eyes. They had found a way to escape their physical bondage, and Allander was proud of them.

  Leaning forward in his chair, Allander shook their knees gently and the children jerked from his touch as if they’d been burned. Robbie immediately began sobbing, and Allander moved next to him and placed the boy’s head on his chest.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you. Only to serve as an informant into the little world of your mind, the world that lies beneath your thoughts. The world of your wishes.”

  His voice was soothing, and the heaving of Robbie’s chest lessened. Allander sat the children up on the edge of the bed and returned to his chair opposite them.

  “Why can’t you take this off our eyes? Why can’t you let us see?” Leah asked. Now that Robbie had calmed down, she was stronger, more defiant.

  “I will let you see. That’s precisely the purpose I serve. I came to your house in need of only the barest essentials.” He started to say something else, then stopped as a new thought grabbed him. “Your parents would have stood in the way. Parents create, but can’t see the barriers they erect. They pretend to serve and protect but, in reality, they do neither. They can’t see, and it’s better.” Allander’s voice trailed off. “If they could, they wouldn’t be able to endure the vision.”

  “What’d you do to them?” Leah asked timidly, not really wanting an answer.

  “I spared them the pain of visual catharsis.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Leah said.

  “That’s all right,” Allander said. “Neither do they.”

  He leaned over and picked a tray up off the floor, sliding it onto his lap.

  “Now, I cut up some fruit for you, to replenish you in this”—his hand circled as if trying to pluck the right phrase from the air—“time of exhaustion.”

  At first, the children resisted being fed, but Allander waved the ripe fruit beneath their noses, and the smell became too enticing. Their small mouths opened and he patiently lowered the tidbits in, one at a time, occasionally feeling the brush of their soft pink tongues against the sides of his fingers.

  This was his time, he thought. His perverted communion.

  “Now revitalize again, little ones,” he said, then giggled uproariously as he pushed them gently on their backs. “You must sleep. You have a learning experience before you.”

  Noise from the bustling workers outside carried into the building and echoed up and down the hallways. The administration building was adjacent to the cell blocks within the Maingate grounds. It attempted to be more inviting than the prison that surrounded it, but there was something unpleasant about it, an odor that couldn’t be scrubbed away, even from the shiny floors. The smell of discomfort.

  Jade hooked a quarter into the pay phone and punched in a number, followed by a seven-digit code. “McGuire.”

  “Goddamnit, Marlow, we told you to check in every—”

  “Why don’t we just drop that misconception right now. I’ll check in for information when I need it. I don’t have time to fuck around calling in like a sixteen-year-old girl on a first date.”

  “You will stay in correspondence with us.”

  “I will check in for updates when I need them, McGuire. If you have a problem with that, take it up with your superiors and get back to me. Until then, I’m calling the shots.”

  Such an aggressive attitude was a slight gamble, but Jade figured that someone pretty high up was pushing for his involvement. For the first time, it occurred to Jade how fortunate it was that he had not met his high-ranking FBI proponent. Given his track record with bureaucrats, Jade probably wouldn’t like him very much. And he was fairly certain that the feeling would be mutual.

  “All right, Marlow.”

  “Now what’d you get me for a reporter?”

  “Alissa Anvers. Channel 5. Had a relative on the force.”

  “Father?”

  “Mother, actually. She can get you on the news tonight. Piece together some old clips and run a special story—whatever they call that shit. She was actually glad to get an edge on the report. Press blackout so far. They’re only being allowed within helicopter range.”

  “Well, information is our only weapon right now. Let’s be careful with how and when we give it out.”

  “We’ll consult you. Where are you right now?”

  “At Maingate. Took a look at the Tower already. I’m waiting for a printout. They’re getting Atlasia’s library list together for me.”

  “They keep track of all the books he read there?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right, Marlow, I want to … I’d like to hear from you within the hour if that’s at all possible.”

  Jade dropped the phone back onto the hook.

  An attractive secretary walked over to him with a messy sheaf of papers.

  “Sorry that took so long to print out. He was quite a reader, I guess,” she said.

  Jade took the pile and started leafing through it. The woman continued to stand beside him, waiting for him to look up. She tapped a pencil against her full bottom lip as she waited.

  “There’s a psych institute near here. A college, I think. Where they analyze the prisoners’ drawings,” Jade said, his eyes still glued to the papers.

  “Yes, the Ressler Institute.”

  “How do I get there?” he asked flatly.

  She glanced at her watch. “Well, they’d be closed by now. You’ll probably have to try tomorrow.”

  Jade continued to page through the book list. “What’s the name of it?”

  “The Ressler Institute,” she repeated.

  He nodded without looking up.

  She watched him tentatively. “Got it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Jade said slowly, his finger tracing down a page. He walked up the long corridor mumbling something to himself.

  “Uum. Sir. Sir. SIR!”

  Jade snapped his head around, visible annoyed. “What?!”

  The woman’s forehead wrinkled as she frowned. “The door’s that way,” she said, pointing to the other end of the hallway.

  23

  Sesame Street. Hill Street Blues. A commercial with a balding man resisting the enticements of a healthy cereal. Allander watched the latter until the balding man was won over by the cereal’s “crunchy naturalness”; then he continued his journey through the seemingly endless channels.

  A shot of the Tower flashed on the screen, filmed from a circling helicopter. A team of men in orange suits could be seen frantically working an enormous pump to empty the Tower of water, while a woman’s throaty voice provided commentary.

  “—everyone died in the flooding except for two prisoners.”

  “Two?” Allander bolted upright in the chair. He cursed when they flashed the front and profile mug shots of Claude Rivers. “That corpulent wretch. Level Eleven. I should have known.”

  “—finally announced in the face of media pressure that Allander Atlasia has escaped from the Tower. Atlasia is a convicted murderer and sex offender who authorities say may have made it to shore. The FBI and local police have launched a massive manhunt. They’ve put out an all-points bulletin and placed roadblocks on every street leading out of the coastal area.”

  She paused, clearly readying herself for a dramatic conclusion. “After remaining an iron-clad detainment center for years, Maingate’s much-touted security has been breached. Reportedly, the prison is now being emptied while new safeguards are installed. This is Jessica Allende, for Channel 5 Eyewitness News.”

  The TV cut back to the anchorman, a gentleman with graying hair and sincere eye
s. “We’ll keep you updated on this fast-breaking story.” He straightened the papers on his desk, then looked up. “Law-enforcement officials report that they are doing everything they can at this point to apprehend the escaped prisoner, who is considered extremely dangerous. For a look at the man who may bring Atlasia to justice, here’s Alissa Anvers.”

  A brunette with big, dark eyes stood in front of a quiet, single-story house. She wore a yellow jacket, and the wind was blowing her long hair across her face.

  “Thank you, Andy.” She raised a hand to indicate the house behind her. “This may look like just another sleepy San Jose home here on Blake Street, but the man who lives behind this door is anything but typical. Who is he? Jade Marlow, former FBI agent and America’s self-proclaimed top ‘tracker and destroyer.’”

  Allander leaned forward in his chair, his eyes focused intently on the TV.

  “Marlow has been called in by the FBI to locate Allander Atlasia,” Alissa continued. “He came to fame tracking the Black Ribbon Strangler, and has since been involved in over half a dozen high-profile cases.”

  A tape of Jade at an awards banquet appeared. He was seen attempting to smile as an older agent pinned a medal to his chest. Action footage of Jade leaving the federal building and pushing his way through a sea of reporters followed.

  “No comment. No comment. NO COMMENT!” he shouted to them. The reporters cleared as he got into his bullet-riddled black car.

  Alissa’s face appeared onscreen again, and she smiled into the camera. “FBI Chief of Homicide Brad McGuire had this to say.”

  Standing behind a podium, McGuire straightened his tie. As he spoke, his face was illuminated by dozens of flashes. “Jade Marlow is the nation’s best criminal tracker, bar none. We are extremely confident that he’ll locate Atlasia and bring him in.”