Puppets

by Daniel Hecht

  Fine, he thought. So be it. Let's boogie. Adapt. Hit Ford here, at the old dump. It made tactical sense to eliminate the unpredictable variable of having such a capable opponent at the bowling alley, so he'd task Three to Ford while he went on to the Star Bowl alone. If Three lived through the encounter, he could take the other car and join the party later. But if he didn't live, if Mo was the one who walked out, that was okay, too. Either outcome would work. Having Ford there for the finale would provide an opportunity to personally inflict some comeuppance on the arrogant bastard.

  All in all, he told himself, it's a win-win situation.

  He was still unwilling to trust Three with a firearm, but he gave him a switchblade. They had spent some weeks working with the weapon in the first phase of Three's conditioning, he was pretty good with it. Hopefully, despite his hyped-up mood, Three's likable face and social engineering skills would allow him to get close enough to use it.

  He told Three about the switch to plan B, worked him up into a frenzy of hate and fear. It wasn't hard to do. Mr. Smith himself was good and sick of Mo and his bulldog style, his relentless pressure, his attitude. Really, he was controlling them, forcing Mr. Smith's hand, always tightening the noose. Put that together with his sickeningly sweet feelings and tendernesses, all the romantic crap with Rebecca, his undeserved good luck, and it was easy to hate the son of a bitch.

  Mr. Smith torqued Three up to a high pitch, then brought him to the back door. Clipped off his nylon handcuffs and shoved him outside.

  "Sic 'em," he said drily.

  Three went loping off across the backyard with big springy strides, down the hill and into the woods. In his colorful nylon windbreaker, he looked like a jogger, out for an afternoon run.

  Mr. Smith locked up the house, got into the van. Forty-minute leisurely drive to the bowling alley. Bowl a game or two until Rebecca and her daughter arrived, he thought, then let the real fun begin.

  But it didn't really feel fun. It felt bitter and sad. He was bloated with bile and envy and misery. Plus he was exhausted, he was running on fumes here. He'd made the right choice in deciding to go for the finale. When he'd first started, it pained him to think of the victims—the collateral damage. But over the last two years, he'd had to acknowledge there was a dire pleasure in it for him: the game, the power, the pain. That pleasure marked his final and complete transformation into a monster, the culmination of his abuse at the hands of the program.

  As he thought about it, Mr. Smith's teeth creaked with pressure, the vein coiled in his neck. Here was his last chance to make someone pay, and to show it all to the world, and he was by God going to make a good job of it.

  50

  THEY STOOD ON THE culvert and looked at the maps, which showed the old dump spread on both sides of the creek starting about another half mile upstream. From the culvert, they could see the forest close over the marsh about a quarter-mile away. The newer maps showed a residential area beginning on the right slope about half a mile up, the big houses Mo had glimpsed through the trees the other night. To the left, the forest and former dump stretched to the interstate corridor, which was bordered along this stretch by a high wooden noise barrier. Without going over the berm or through someone's yard, this was the best route in.

  It was a lot of ground to cover, an area a mile or so square, most of it densely grown over, so they decided to divide it up. They'd each walk a loose grid pattern, St. Pierre taking the left side of the stream all the way to the highway berm, Mo the right side up to the backs of the yards and estates. They'd make contact by cell phone if either found anything interesting. Otherwise, they'd give it until seven, rendezvous back here at the culvert, quit before the light got bad.

  "Got a question for you," St. Pierre said. "Don't take this the wrong way. But what're we really looking for here? Given there's no one to show photos to."

  "Indications of human activity you wouldn't expect in a lousy place like this, like disturbances in the soil or vegetation. Um, abandoned puppeteer paraphernalia. Something of Carolyn Rappa-port's? Maybe we'll be lucky and find indications that someone has been tied up or suspended." Mo was thinking, And maybe dogs, something with dogs, what was Parker's thing with dogs?

  Mike was grinning as he caught Mo's eye. "Sounds thin to me."

  "It is."

  "Sounds like there's something else percolating here. Personally, I think it's that ol' black magic. The famous Mo Ford intuition."

  Mo just looked at him. There was a lot he'd have liked to tell him, St. Pierre deserved the truth. But more, he deserved to be protected from it. After it was all over, maybe.

  Mike held up his hands. "Hey, it's all right. I like seeing it in action, that's all. It's impressive, what do they call it—fuzzy logic. Definitely not something we learn at the academy!" He sobered and squinted upstream at the flat of muck and scrub. "We're not thinking we'll run into Radcliff himself?"

  "No." Actually, Mo had given that some thought. It might be that Geppetto's lab was nearby, but he thought it unlikely that the puppeteer would risk using the dump after the Rappaport murder. And there was no way Geppetto could know they were coming—the only other person who knew where they were was Rebecca.

  They squelched upstream together. The water level had dropped since last time, exposing areas of the marsh floor and covering the muck with a layer of drying skin. The bugs had come out now, and blackflies dive-bombed their eyes.

  "You saw Marsden, huh?" St. Pierre called conversationally. "How's he doing?"

  "He's okay."

  "Think he'll be back?"

  "My guess is no. I think he needs a less stressful line of work."

  "Any chance you'll take over as senior?" Mike was drifting away, moving to the left, eyes scanning the ground. A tall, young, affable guy, looking in his rubber boots more like a Maine clam-digger than a specialist in major crimes. "Nah," he answered himself. "Not with the bullshit they're trying to hang on you. Which is too bad. You'd

  be the best, Mo." He looked up with an admiring, open-faced grin, thirty feet away now, and Mo felt an irrational stab of concern.

  Something about St. Pierre framed against the backdrop of sumac trees, the artificial-seeming milky light of the overcast. A cameo look.

  "Hey, Mike," Mo called. "Keep your eyes open in there, huh?"

  St. Pierre nodded, waved. After a few more minutes they were a hundred yards apart, and then Mo lost sight of him among the trees.

  After passing the wringer-washer, Mo moved on another quarter mile to the point where the houses began to be visible through the foliage off to the right. Five o'clock and the light was still good, but the leaves were thicker and cast more shadow now, the kudzu vines cut forward visibility. He left the stream bank, glad to move onto drier ground. More and more indications of the dump were cropping up around him: a rusting barrel, an old tire, mysterious machine parts, all half-buried in leafy soil. From the map he figured he should be just approaching the perimeter of the old junkyard, and he began walking a long zigzag pattern.

  There was a curiously lifeless quality to the place despite the early-summer vegetation. The narrow, wandering avenues between trees and junk and humped boulders seemed unnaturally uninhabited. The interstate made a quiet white noise that smothered the landscape, tricked the ears into mishearing the occasional distant noises of human activity. Among the moist forest smells were foreign odors, stale and somewhat chemical, faintly overlaid with exhaust from the highway. No signs of activity disturbed the blanket of last year's dead leaves, which seemed smoothed as if pressed flat by the bright milky overcast.

  The dead land, the in-between land.

  After a while, Mo folded the map and stuffed it into his pocket. Judging by the amount of debris, there was no question he was in the old dump now. Still there was no sign of activity, animal or human, not even birds or bird calls. No wind. Just the odd, lifeless maze, motionless beneath the low sky as if waiting for something. He peered into the interiors of several rotting, round-bac
ked cars, examined closely some rusted farm equipment, pushed over the remains of a fifty-gallon drum. Nothing of interest. He called St. Pierre on the cell phone, felt a flash of relief when the chipper voice answered and reported nada at his end, too. They agreed that this was a hellhole and probably another dead end.

  An hour later, beginning to feel tired and frustrated, Mo moved up the slope to get a closer look at the residential end of things. The lots varied from two or three acres to much bigger estates, and from semiwild woods to groomed, parklike lawns and gardens. From what he could see of the houses, a few were older, smaller, weathered-in, but most were more recent, massive, gigantically ostentatious. Every goddamned house in Westchester is the size of St. Peter's, he thought. Where the hell does anybody get this kind of money? Then he decided the harrying flies and mosquitoes were making him cranky. All he needed was to catch West Nile virus on top of everything else. He headed back downslope into the denser jungle.

  Another hour. By a quarter to seven, he'd had about enough and began to wend his way back toward the culvert. It was darker beneath the trees now, the dull sun almost gone over the far ridge. The cooling air began to move, full of moist scents. He had gotten about to the center of the old dump when he caught a whiff of something familiar that made his stomach tighten. Something dead nearby.

  He followed his nose downhill until the odor surrounded him. He turned in a circle as he looked for what had to be a fairly sizable dead . . . something. But aside from humps of leaf-mounded junk, nothing was visible. Suddenly he was struck by its similarity to that roadkill carrion dump he and Carla had stumbled into. Maybe this was the place she had seen in her vision. The shadowed, vine-choked trees, the apertures of evening light in the gaps between. Something dead in the soil.

  He circled for a few minutes longer, finding nothing. This was definitely the epicenter of the odor, but the ground here was undisturbed. He pushed over another rusted barrel, found only a mesh of flattened white roots, some bugs that quickly burrowed out of view. It wasn't until he pulled aside a heavy, rotted car door that he was rewarded with a gush of stench. The soil beneath was looser, not root-matted, and seemed to swarm or scintillate with white things. In the bad light, it took him a moment to see they were maggots.

  He found a branch and probed at the pulsating layer, digging down and lifting. A clot fell away to reveal the dirty skull of an animal, only partially decomposed. Long muzzle, sharp teeth. Dog.

  Mo reared back, sickened. A shock wave of anxiety hit him, and he pulled out the cell phone, called St. Pierre. Five rings, then the robotic voice of the relay service: "The person you are calling is not responding or is out of the service area . . ." Or his batteries were dead. Or he'd dropped it in a puddle and shorted it out. Or—The dead dog didn't necessarily mean anything, Mo told himself, Ronald Parker's ramblings or no. This was probably nothing. And Mike was no doubt waiting at the culvert by now. Suddenly pouring sweat, he left the skull exposed and began to run back through the jungle.

  He came out into the broader marshy area, saw the culvert side-on, squelched toward it. As he came along the curve of the stream, his angle changed and he was relieved to see Mike, sitting in the box end, waiting. He was leaning into the corner of two concrete walls, long legs out in front of him, hands relaxed in his lap, head tipped back and a little to one side as if taking a moment to savor the evening air.

  Closer, Mo called, "Hey, Mike." No answer, no movement, and Mo felt the bottom drop out, the well of heartbreak. Four steps away now and he could see that Mike's eyes were open.

  Mo's hands found the Glock and he was bringing it out of the holster when Dennis Radcliff leapt around the culvert wall. Big, wearing a red-and-white nylon Windbreaker, lunging forward as Mo brought the gun up. The muscular forearms drove up under Mo's chin, knocking him off his feet. Radcliff followed him over, landed on top of him, crushed him into the curdling mud.

  Mo twisted to the side, trying to avoid Radcliffs full weight. He hadn't lost the gun, but he couldn't bring it around. Radcliff was trying to pin his gun hand. With his free hand, Mo slugged him in the Adam's apple, heard a cough choked off in his throat. Then Radcliff swung back and hit the broken jaw. A big shadow rose inside Mo's head as the pain detonated. He went blind for an instant, then swam back. Radcliff had felt his muscles slacken and had dived onto the gun hand with both his hands.

  Mo bent his left leg, brought it under him to try to roll Radcliff over, but he was too big, too heavy, the mud was too slippery.

  Radcliff had one hand on Mo's right wrist, the other working to pry the gun out of Mo's grip. Mo flailed uselessly with his free hand, then reached down along his own muck-coated thigh. To the Ruger in its ankle holster. Too far, couldn't bring the leg up enough. Radcliff was prying his fingers off the Glock.

  Mo's right forefinger snapped suddenly backward off the gun and still Radcliff levered it agonizingly.

  "Let go of Daddy's hand!" Mo screamed. "Do what Daddy tells you!"

  Mo felt Radcliffs hesitation, just an instant as his body processed its conditioned-in reaction. Mo arched with all his strength. It didn't shake off Radcliff, but gave Mo's left leg another couple of inches of movement. His hand found the Ruger. For another moment the gun seemed tangled in the holster, in his cuff, in the mud, and then suddenly it was free. He brought it up under Radcliffs armpit just as he felt the Glock wrenched out of his grip. Then he fired up into the big body.

  The shot was muffled, surprisingly small. Radcliff didn't show any response, just turned the Glock in his own fist, and Mo thought he'd missed. He fired again and this time a tremor shook the big torso. Another two quick shots, pam-pam, and the bastard dropped like a side of beef falling off a butcher truck's tailgate. The full weight hit Mo, crushing the breath out of him. Lay inert.

  Mo stared at the gray sky for a moment, then rolled the body off and hoisted himself up. He made sure Radcliff was dead, then leapt to Mike St. Pierre and felt the side of his neck. No carotid pulse. Up close, he could see the stain in Mike's shirt, just below and to the left of the breastbone. Three narrow stab wounds, not much blood at the sites. More pooled in the waistband of his pants, but Mike had died fast, his good heart pierced and quitting before it could pump out much.

  Mo felt weak and fell next to Mike on the slab, hating this. Hating death. Hating Geppetto. The abyss of wrongs and pains that had swallowed Mike was dark and bottomless, and Mo felt himself tumbling into it. He remembered the special light that had seemed to surround St. Pierre as they'd headed intovthe marsh, only a couple of hours ago, the sense of warning. The sense of it being a last sight, that's what it had been. The guilt choked him.

  One thing he knew: Dennis Radcliff hadn't been hanging out in the dump for the last nine days, waiting on the off chance that Mo and St. Pierre would show up to be killed. He had come for them, he'd hunted them.

  Somehow Geppetto had known they'd be in this spot, at this time, and had sent Radcliff to intercept them. Mo had only decided to come here three hours ago. He'd made exactly two phone calls, one to St. Pierre, one to Rebecca. Which meant that Geppetto was monitoring them somehow. Which meant that Geppetto knew everything.

  Mo lurched back to Radcliff, lying on his side in the mud, one arm beneath his body. He felt in the bloody windbreaker pockets, found a folded switchblade. In the right rear pocket of his pants, he found a wallet that he opened desperately, thinking, Geppetto, something to lead me to Geppetto. Which house? What next? But it was just an ordinary brown leather wallet. Some credit cards, driver's license, maybe eighty bucks in cash. He dug into the right front pants pocket: car keys. Rolled the body and dug through the mud to the left pocket, found a folded piece of paper. Opened it, held it to the sky to see it better.

  The penciled note read, Star Bowl, 8511 Commercial Way, Fort Lee.

  51

  HE GAVE HIMSELF TWO minutes to decide what to do as he ran back toward the car. Geppetto would be at the Star Bowl. Geppetto knew Rebecca and Rachel would be there. No doubt
Geppetto had put the note there not just to make sure Radcliff knew where to go after he'd completed his task, but so that if Mo lived, he'd know, too. An invitation. A challenge.

  Decision time. Who to trust? Who could handle somebody as sophisticated as Geppetto? He could vaguely see the lines of probability heading forward from this moment, but the pain in his jaw throbbed like a drum and he couldn't think, couldn't take the time to follow them out. Mo vaulted the bridge railing, got out his cell phone, tried to catch his breath as he dialed Biedermann's number. Nothing. The phone was soaked in muddy water and defunct. He tossed it away, unlocked the car, flung himself inside, and tried Biedermann again using the car unit.

  "Yeah." First ring.

  "This is Ford. I've got Radcliff, he's dead. I know what he is, I know you're after the puppet-maker. He's going after Rebecca and her daughter. Right now."

  "Where are you?"

  "The Rappaport murder scene—the swamp. Radcliff found us. He killed Mike St. Pierre. Geppetto's got a place, a lab, near here. He's going to this bowling alley, called the Star Bowl, in Fort Lee, just south of the GW Bridge. Probably there already. Got something complicated planned." He could hardly talk. He caught a flash of his own face in the mirror, covered with muck and blood.

  " 'Geppetto,' huh? Okay, Mo you've done great work. Fort Lee—we can be there in ten minutes." Biedermann was suddenly absolutely focused, on full alert, competent-sounding. Something of a relief there.

  "You want me to call the New Jersey State Police?"

  "No. It'll have to be my team that goes after him. The States aren't going to know shit about this, way over their heads. Bunch of sirens and flashing lights and this'll turn south in a hurry." Mo was thinking, Yeah, and people will know about it—even now, keeping this under wraps was a high priority for SAC Biedermann. "But we'll definitely need some backup, logistical support, crowd control," Biedermann went on. "Let me call them, I'll need to establish our tactical command and give them instructions. You just worry about getting your ass down there. If he's there, Rebecca's going to need you."