Kill Switch

by Gordon Bonnet

  Contents

  Front Matter

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Exclusive Excerpt of Sephirot

  Gears

  Lock & Key

  Also from Oghma Creative Media

  Copyright © 2015 by Gordon Bonnet

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  The characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-63373-058-8

  E-Book Formatting by Casey W. Cowan

  Editing by George “Clay” Mitchell

  Fleet Press

  Oghma Creative Media

  Bentonville, Arkansas

  www.oghmacreative.com

  Acknowledgements

  I am deeply grateful to Casey Cowan and George Clay Mitchell of Oghma Creative Media, Inc. for making this book possible, and for the invaluable assistance they provided in editing and preparing the manuscript for publication. Their insight and expertise, not to mention their dedication to seeing Kill Switch in print, have been incomparable.

  Thank you also to Staci Troilo for her wonderful assistance in marketing and promotion.

  I would also like to make three other acknowledgements of a more personal nature. My writing partner, Cly Boehs, has followed this story from its very beginnings, and her advice and creative input have never failed to help me. The online group Writers Without Borders has been a wellspring of encouragement and support through this entire process, and I’d like to give a shout-out to my friends the Bordies. And to my lovely wife, Carol Bloomgarden, a heartfelt thanks for her continual encouragement of my rather quixotic personality.

  To my dear friend K. D. McCrite,

  without whom Chris’s story would never have been told.

  Chapter 1

  Chris Franzia expected to have only a few items on his to-do list after closing up his classroom on the last day of school. A nap in the hammock, a cold bottle of celebratory beer, some time playing with his dog, maybe a movie in the evening. He hadn’t thought much beyond that. Summer still stretched before him, an endless expanse of leisure, sunshine, and few responsibilities.

  This happy, far-from-September mental fog is why he didn’t notice the white four-door sedan parked in his driveway until he had nearly rear-ended it.

  Chris shut off his car, heart pounding, and got out. Two men, dressed in tailored suits, exited the sedan. As they approached Chris, they reached for their wallets, flipping out badges and ID cards.

  His heart rate accelerated.

  Police? This couldn’t be good news. Had someone in his family died? Would they send plainclothes detectives for something like that?

  “Christopher Franzia?” The one who had gotten out of the driver’s side was an older man, silver at the temples, with dark eyes and an angular, weather-beaten face. He carried an elegant dark leather briefcase.

  Chris nodded, trying not to let the alarm show in his face. “That’s me.”

  “I’m Special Agent Jim Hargis,” he said. “This is my partner, Special Agent Mark Drolezki. We’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Can we have a few moments of your time?”

  Chris, his mouth open a little, nodded again. He swallowed. “Let’s go inside. I… um, I just have to get my chinchilla out of the car.”

  He went around the back of his car, opened the hatch, and pulled out a spacious cage that contained the biology classroom pet, an irritable chinchilla named Jabberwock. Jim followed Chris, watching from a few feet away.

  Making sure he wasn’t getting out a weapon.

  Even Chris’s mental voice sounded incredulous. He set the cage down briefly to close the hatch, then headed off toward the house.

  FBI? What could the FBI want with him?

  At least they didn’t look like they were ready to accuse him of something and arrest him on the spot.

  “Those little guys are so damn cute. My niece has one,” said Drolezki, tall and blond with a linebacker’s build and an incongruous little boy’s face. The two agents followed Chris up the sidewalk toward his house.

  “He lives in my classroom, usually.” Chris used one hand to balance the cage against his leg and turned the doorknob with the other. “I take him home on vacations.”

  “You don’t lock your door?” Hargis said.

  “Around here?” Chris asked. His face relaxed into a smile. “No need. Besides…” As he opened the door, a large, furry form pushed its way out, giving Chris no heed at all, and barreled right into Hargis, nearly knocking him to the ground. Then the dog ran into the yard, barking merrily, turned, and cannoned into Drolezki. Strafing complete, he trotted over and peed on a bush before returning to Chris, tongue hanging out, tail wagging furiously.

  “… I have a dog. C’mon, Baxter, get in here.” He pushed the door open, and the dog went inside, followed by Chris and the two FBI men. Hargis brushed the dog hair off his immaculately-pressed trouser leg.

  Chris set Jabberwock’s cage on the top of a bookshelf, and gestured for the two men to sit down on his disreputable-looking sofa. Chris sat in a rocking chair on the other side of a coffee table strewn with magazines, papers, and three unwashed coffee cups. Baxter, now that the excitement was over, decided that his master didn’t need to be defended from the two strangers, loped over to his dog bed and flopped down with a heavy sigh.

  “We have a few questions for you,” Hargis said. “It should not take much of your time.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Chris said. “But I don’t see why you could want me…” He trailed off.

  “We’re not here to accuse you of anything,” Hargis said, as if he’d read Chris’s thoughts. “Like I said, just a few questions.”

  “Okay.” Chris took a deep breath. “Shoot.”

  “Do you know two men named Glen Cederstrom and Gavin McCormick?”

  Now that was a blast from the past.

  “Yes, years ago.” Chris leaned back in his chair. “I knew them in college.”

  “At the University of Washington,” Hargis said.

  Chris nodded.

  “Have you had any contact with either of them recently?”

  “No. None. I haven’t seen or heard from them since college.”

  Hargis opened his briefcase, pulled out a folder, and extracted one sheet from it. He handed Chris the sheet. “Would you happen to know what this is about?”

  Chris took the reading glasses from his shirt pocket, and put them on. The page was a printout of an email, dated May 28, 2013.

  Glen:

  I know we haven’t seen each other in years, and I wonder if you even remember me. We were in a Field Biology class together back in the mid-80s at UW, and maybe a couple of other classes, too. Cellular, I think? Not sure about that. Anyway, it’s been a while, and I’m hoping that you’ll remember me well enough to take what I’m about to say seriously.

  Your life is in danger. So is mine, but I knew about it ahead of time, and I’m taking precautions. I know this will seem to make no sense, but it
has to do with that field work we did up in the Cascades. I’m not sure I completely understand it myself, yet, but I’m figuring out more and more. Most of it I wouldn’t put in an email, or in print at all, because you never know who’s reading. I found you through a Google search, and if I can, anyone can.

  You’re the only one I’ve contacted yet, mostly because I remember you as being the most level-headed of all of our circle of friends. I’m going to try to find the others—Mary, Deirdre, Chris, Elisa, and Lewis—and I’d like your help. Reply to me and we can discuss it more. I’m in Vancouver, Washington, so we’re only an hour or so’s drive apart. At least a couple of the others, I think, scattered further afield. But we need to let everyone know, soon, about the danger.

  Please take this seriously. It’s important.

  Your old friend,

  Gavin McCormick

  Chris finished reading and looked up. The two FBI agents regarded him questioningly.

  “Well?” Hargis said. “Do you have any idea what this is about?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea. What possible reason could there be that we’re in danger? We were in class together almost thirty years ago, and as far as I know, haven’t seen each other since.”

  “We were hoping you’d tell us. You see, Mr. Cederstrom never responded to this email, because he was already dead.”

  He gaped.

  “He was struck by a car while riding his bicycle on May 26. Killed instantly,” Drolezki said. “The driver was never caught.”

  “It was assumed to be a simple hit-and-run,” Hargis said. “It would have been a matter for local police if Cederstrom’s wife hadn’t found this email when she was taking care of his personal things after he died. She informed the police, who tracked down Gavin McCormick, who worked as a pharmacist in Vancouver, Washington.”

  A light sweat broke out on his forehead. “Worked? As in past tense?”

  Hargis nodded. “McCormick didn’t show up at work on the morning of June 2. His assistant was concerned, and called his house, and received no answer. That afternoon, the assistant and another store employee, who were personal friends of McCormick’s, went over to his house, and found him dead.”

  “Murdered?” Chris said, his voice thin in his own ears.

  Hargis shook his head. “No. Apparent heart failure. An autopsy showed nothing that allowed the authorities to claim foul play. He seems to have simply died quietly in his sleep.”

  “Good lord.”

  “At that point, we were called in, and started to try to track down the others mentioned in the email. We got access to UW records for the Field Biology class that Cederstrom and McCormick had taken in 1983, and looked for the first names he mentioned. They seemed to correspond to Lewis Corelli, Mary Michaels, Deirdre Ross, Elisa Howard, and you.”

  Chris nodded. “Yes. They were in the class.”

  “Three of them, Corelli, Michaels, and Ross, were still in the Pacific Northwest, and were fairly easy to track down. We were worried about the women, because of names changing at marriage, but Ross never married and Michaels kept her maiden name.”

  “Well... are they all right?”

  For the first time, Hargis looked ill at ease; everything else he had said had been delivered with a clinical lack of emotion. “Corelli was an EPA lawyer, working in Seattle. He had a stroke on June 11 while walking to work and was dead before the ambulance arrived. Michaels was a jazz pianist in Eugene, Oregon. She fell from a bridge on the fourteenth. She apparently had a history of mental health problems, and her death was ruled a suicide, until our investigation tied her to the rest of you. Deirdre Ross went missing on a hiking trip in the Olympics, probably on either the fifteenth or sixteenth. Another hiker found her clothes on the morning of June 17, dry and neatly folded, on a rock near the shore of Lake Quinault, as if she had gone in for a swim and never returned. She is still missing and presumed drowned.”

  Chris stared at the two men. “All within a month’s time?”

  “Less. Cederstrom was the first, on May 26. Ross disappeared before the seventeenth of June.”

  Chris swallowed and looked down, staring at the magazine he’d been reading the previous night. It had already happened. He just hadn’t know about it. He’d just been sitting there reading, and all five of them were already dead.

  Finally, he looked up. Hargis, sat patiently staring at him, as if he had all the time in the world. “What about Elisa?” Chris asked.

  “We haven’t been able to find her. We know from university records that she lived in Spokane for a while, where she worked as an artist. But she left Spokane in the early nineties and we haven’t been able to trace her further. We think she may have changed her name.” Hargis looked down at the folder he was holding. “In any case, we haven’t found her yet.”

  “And that leaves you,” Drolezki said.

  “I can’t believe they’re all gone.” Chris was unable to keep the horror out of his voice.

  Hargis’s tone was calm, but insistent. “They were not the only ones in the Field Biology class that semester, were they?”

  He leaned back in his chair, the faces of his long-ago classmates running through his head. He brought himself back to the present with an effort. “No. I’d guess that there were about twenty-five people in the class. Give or take.”

  “Twenty-three,” Drolezki said.

  “Do you have any idea why the seven of you were mentioned, and none of the others in the class?” Hargis asked.

  “No. None at all.”

  “And those seven…” Hargis shifted slightly in his seat. “Do you know anything about their deaths, Mr. Franzia?”

  “Me?” It came out in a squeak.

  It was like one of those murder mysteries—wait until the victims die one by one, and the survivor must be the murderer.

  He got control of his voice, and said, as calmly as he could manage, “No. None at all. I haven’t had any contact with any of them since graduate school. I got my master’s degree in… let’s see, it was 1984 or 1985…”

  “1985,” Drolezki said.

  Chris turned and looked at him in astonishment, but the agent’s boyish face showed no emotion other than mild interest. He realized there might well be more going on behind those guileless blue eyes than had appeared at first.

  “Right. 1985. Well, I lived in Seattle for another eight months or so, applying for jobs in the northwest. But the market for teaching jobs was pretty bad at that point. So I started looking further afield. I came out here at the end of summer of 1987 for a job at Guildford High School, and have been here ever since.”

  “What made you choose Guildford?” Hargis asked. “Do you have family from this area?”

  Chris looked over at him, trying to keep the suspicion from his own face.

  They knew when he got my master’s degree. They should know the answer to this, too. “No. I came out here knowing no one.”

  “Really?” Hargis said.

  The anger rose in Chris’s chest. “I don’t understand what my background has to do…”

  Hargis raised a hand. “No need to get angry, Mr. Franzia. But we would appreciate it if you would answer the question.”

  He took a deep breath. “Look, why do I have the feeling that you already know the answers to all of these questions? If you know the answers, why are you asking them?”

  The agent gave a chilly little smile. “We want to hear what your answers are. You must understand, Mr. Franzia, it isn’t always the facts that are important, but the connections between them. And the connections come from talking to people, not from researching the records in a university registrar’s office.”

  Chris looked him directly in the eyes. But those eyes didn’t give anything up. They were receivers of information, not transmitters, trained through years not to allow anyone to see what was going on in the brain behind them.

  “Fine,” he said, in a level voice. If he wasn’t going to give up anything more than the bare minimum, h
e wouldn’t give him any more, either. Two could play that game.

  “I came out here knowing no one. I grew up in a rural area. Seattle was a great place to go to school, but I never had any intention of staying there. Upstate New York appealed to me because it was rural.”

  “And far away from Seattle,” Drolezki observed.

  “Look, I wasn’t running away from anything.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly sorry, but he didn’t really care, either. “I apologize if I seem testy. But I come home on the last day of school, and I find a couple of FBI agents on my doorstep, it’s kind of off-putting.”

  “I understand,” Hargis said. “But you have to understand we have some deaths to try to explain. Clearly Cederstrom was a homicide; with Michaels we can’t rule out suicide, but given her connection to the rest of you, you can see that we’re considering that less and less likely. The others—well, with McCormick and Corelli, there was a ruling of natural causes, but you probably know that there are poisons that can mimic the effects of stroke and heart attack. And with Ross there’s been no body found, but she left for her backpacking trip almost two weeks ago and hasn’t been seen since. She was a doctor in Seattle, with a thriving practice she was apparently devoted to. She was gone for what was supposed to be a week’s vacation. Her friends and coworkers describe her as a workaholic who had to be bullied into taking the vacation in the first place, and think it extraordinarily unlikely that she would simply not come home. So do we.”

  “Yes, that’s Deirdre,” Chris said. “Sounds like she didn’t change much.”

  “Has anything unusual happened lately?” Drolezki asked. “Have you seen any strangers around? Any odd phone calls? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”

  He shook his head. “Look, this is the quintessential small town. I know everyone, and everyone knows me. If anyone strange was hanging around, someone would notice, even if for some reason I didn’t. There hasn’t been anything at all.” Chris looked from one of them to the other. “I’d tell you if there had been anything.”