Level 26

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  Finally, he saw what had shattered the window: a rock the size of a baseball. Shards of glass surrounded it on the hardwood floor.

  Dark stepped over the glass, careful not to disturb a single fragment of it, and looked up and down the shoreline. Nothing.

  He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and texted Riggins.

  Dark’s text was simple: his address, followed by “GET HERE NOW.”

  If this were Sqweegel related, there was no better person to have on their side now than Riggins.

  Text sent, Dark looked out of his broken patio window again. Across the way there was a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department cruiser, cherries flashing. Two officers were talking to his neighbor.

  The man was reportedly a self-made millionaire, originally from the Bronx. A breakthrough in plastics had transformed his life, brought him out to the most scenic stretch of the West Coast for retirement, and he never stopped complaining about it. He openly flirted with Sibby, even when she became obviously pregnant. Sibby thought he was sweet.

  “I want those little pricks killed on the spot,” the neighbor was saying. “Can you do that? Can you bring them out here so I can watch them be executed?”

  “Is everything okay?” Dark asked.

  The neighbor held up a rock in his hand—very similar to the size and shape of the one Dark had found in his home. He shook it angrily at Dark.

  “They get you, too?” he asked.

  Dark shook his head.

  “Oh, wonderful—just me, then.” The neighbor turned his attention back to the sheriff’s deputies. “Can you do something with this? You know, stick it in some kind of machine and let the DNA pop up like they do on CSI?”

  Dark wished them luck catching the culprits and walked back toward his house. Sibby was already out on the front balcony, looking for him. She had a What the hell? expression on her face. Dark shook his head.

  “Just kids,” Dark told her, once he’d stepped back into the house. “Throwing rocks through people’s windows.”

  “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “We can live in a million-dollar home, in a great neighborhood, and we still have to deal with this kind of thing. What if the baby were here, playing under that window?”

  “I know,” Dark said quietly.

  Sibby stormed off to the kitchen closet and pulled out a broom.

  “I’ll clean it up,” Dark said.

  “No, I’ll do it. I need something to do, or otherwise I’ll go out looking for those little brats myself. They haven’t seen fury until they’ve seen a pregnant woman with raging hormones.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  Riggins.

  “Hey,” he said. “I got here as fast as I could. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” Dark said. “We’re okay.”

  Riggins meanwhile was pacing the room, scanning the floor, the walls, the things on the walls, the ceiling, before finally settling back on the broken patio window.

  “So what’s the deal with that?”

  “Just some kids with rocks.”

  “They let kids up here in Malibu?”

  “Apparently.” Dark looked behind Riggins. “Where are your dates?”

  “My men in black? Outside. I still have them thinking that I’m on the verge of convincing you to take the case. I figure they owe me until the very last minute.”

  Sibby appeared behind Dark. “Hi. You must be Tom.” She extended a hand. “Dark talks about you…”

  “Never, I know. Good to finally meet you, Sibby.”

  Dark had mentioned Sibby only once to Riggins last night—when the news about the pregnancy had slipped out. If nothing else, Riggins knew how to be polite.

  It was a strange moment for Dark—two very different worlds colliding. Riggins was the past, a character actor from a long-canceled series. Sibby was the present, the focus, his reason for everything. They shouldn’t be shaking hands. They shouldn’t even be in the same room. The universe could explode.

  Sibby broke the tension. “I’ll put some coffee on. Tom?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Nothing for me,” Dark said. “I’ll clean this glass up off the floor.”

  Riggins looked at the shattered glass strewn across the floor, then locked eyes with Dark.

  He whispered, “Any chance it’s him?”

  chapter 31

  “I don’t know,” Dark said. “This kind of juvenile behavior isn’t part of his profile—is it?”

  “No,” Riggins said. “Not in any of the cases we’ve studied.”

  “Even if it was him,” Dark continued, “why break my neighbor’s window? It’s not like Sqweegel to get an address wrong.”

  “Well, sure.”

  “And Sqweegel doesn’t announce. He’ll just pounce.”

  “Of course.”

  Riggins clasped his hands together and pursed his lips like he was about to whistle. But he made no sound. Part of him was having fun listening to Dark go on. He was being downright chatty.

  Finally, Dark asked, “Okay, what?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Riggins said. “Just that none of this feels right.”

  “We’ve been up all night, and you’re a few hours from the end. Of course nothing feels right.”

  Riggins didn’t even need to look at his watch now. High noon, and that would be it.

  “Touché,” he said instead. “But look at it from where I’m standing. I pop back into your life, and a few hours later, you’ve got a shattered patio window. Tell me—how many acts of vandalism does the city of Malibu suffer each week? You and Sibby ducking rocks all the time?”

  Dark ignored him and broomed the shards into a rubber dustpan, then began to carry the pieces over to the plastic kitchen trash can. But something in the jagged mess caught his eye. He stopped and carefully picked out a single shard, held it up to the light.

  “What is it?” Riggins asked.

  Slowly turning the shard in the bright sunlight, Dark examined the piece like it had Sanskrit on it.

  “Well? Christ, don’t leave me hanging here, Dark. I might be dead by the time you get around to telling me.”

  “This edge. It’s perfectly cut. Look.”

  Riggins saw that he was right. The edge of the shard resembled a perfect half-moon crescent, and that was something that didn’t naturally occur when you tossed a rock through a plate of glass.

  “Is Banner still over in trace?” Dark asked.

  Riggins nodded. “What else is a guy like that going to do? So what, you want to use the LAPD’s top crime lab to track down a bunch of punk Malibu kids?”

  Dark told Sibby that Riggins would be having his coffee to go and he’d be back in a few hours.

  Outside Dark’s house, and a professional distance away, Nellis sat in the passenger seat of the van, listening to the secretary’s voice bark into his ear again. “What’s the status?”

  “Riggins and Dark are meeting now. There’s been an act of vandalism at Dark’s house, as well as his neighbor’s.”

  “Vandalism? In fucking Malibu?”

  “Rocks through windows.”

  The secretary paused to consider this. “Probably fucking Riggins. Stalling for time.”

  “No, sir,” Nellis said. “We’ve been on him the entire time.”

  “Okay,” Wycoff said. “Fuck this. I’m en route to you now. If Riggins can’t do his job, maybe I’ll have to do it for him.”

  Dark rapped his knuckles on his neighbor’s door. Riggins stood behind him, a few feet away. This should be interesting—Dark interacting with other human beings. In all of their years together at Special Circs, Riggins had known Dark to avoid most other people. He worked his cases like a scientist, preferring evidence already prepped, dyed, and pressed between two pieces of glass. Not alive.

  “What now?” the man asked; then he saw who it was. “Oh. You again.”

  “Didn’t mean to bother you,” Dark said, “but I was wondering if I might have some of the broken glass from
your window.”

  “Huh? Why on earth would you want that?”

  “My friend here,” Dark said, pointing his thumb at Riggins, “works for the LAPD. Seems there are some skater punks who have been vandalizing the area for a few weeks now. If he can take some of your glass, the guys in his crime lab can analyze it.”

  “For what?” the neighbor asked. “A fingerprint? They threw a goddamned rock at the glass, not their fists. You should give your friend the rock. Let them do their DNA thing on it.”

  “But the glass would be very helpful, too.”

  The old man looked at Riggins, then back at Dark. “I don’t get it. Why the glass? I watch those shows. I know what crime labs can do and what they can’t do. What the hell would they do with a bunch of broken glass?”

  Dark said, “Sir, it would help us a lot.”

  “You—what’s your name?” The neighbor was now pointing a thick fingernail at Riggins. “You work for the city; is that right? Tell you what: You can have my broken glass if the city buys me a new sliding door.”

  Riggins said, “Okay, sure thing, bud.” He pulled out his wallet, thumbed out five hundred dollars, and held it out to the old man.

  “What’s this?”

  “Five hundred bucks.”

  “You’re going to pay me five hundred dollars for a bunch of broken glass?”

  “We’re serious about crime in Malibu, sir.”

  “No wonder the city’s going broke,” he mumbled, then gestured them inside the house. “All right, c’mon. I’ll give you your glass. I’ll even throw in the rock for free.”

  Riggins saw Dark watching him as he brushed past him and into the house. Riggins smiled to himself. As good as Dark was at understanding people, sometimes he didn’t have the first clue when it came to interacting with them.

  chapter 32

  Downtown Los Angeles

  11:19 A.M.

  When you die a violent and mysterious death in Los Angeles, your body goes to the morgue. Your possessions are divided among your loved ones. Perhaps even your soul goes to another plane of existence.

  Everything else ends up in Josh Banner’s trace analysis lab.

  If your death involves a police investigation, tiny fragments of whatever surrounded you at the time of your demise would eventually find their way to Banner.

  There was a lot of death in Los Angeles. Which was probably why it was a good thing that Banner was a bit of a pack rat.

  Riggins hated coming to Banner’s office. Every little fragment seemed to have this eau de death about it.

  Dark, however, had always loved coming here. Banner was one of the few kindred spirits Dark seemed to have in local law enforcement; they were like two thirteen-year-olds geeking out over the same comic book.

  “I thought you retired,” Banner said.

  “I did,” Dark said. “But I could use a favor.”

  “Sure, sure. You got it.”

  Riggins could do nothing but hand over the two boxes full of broken glass and watch the boys go to work. He checked his watch and hoped Banner would put these windows back together before too much longer. Because his forty-eight hours were going to be up fairly soon. He knew that much.

  Two boxes of broken glass. This was going to take a long time.

  And that was fine with Josh Banner.

  He was happiest when it was just him and the evidence. People were mercurial, moody, annoying. Evidence didn’t change. Didn’t flake out on you. Didn’t throw a temper tantrum. Didn’t play mind games with you.

  Evidence just sat there and waited for you to figure it out. Silently. Patiently.

  Banner pulled on his plastic gloves, donned his lab safety glasses, then plucked a pair of tweezers from the side pocket of his white lab coat. He set to work, patiently reassembling the glass pieces on a giant light table that cast a soft blue haze over the clear fragments. This, at least, gave Banner the illusion that he was working on a giant jigsaw puzzle, and all of the pieces he needed were on the table in front of him. And like a jigsaw puzzle, it would tell a story when it was complete.

  He worked peacefully, swiftly. Hours later, he noticed he was about halfway done; another hour, and three-quarters of the shattered windows were reassembled. The closer you came to completing a puzzle, the faster the work became. He was just assembling the final pieces and beginning to understand the story they told, when Riggins and Dark walked into the room.

  “You’re just in time,” Banner said, smiling nervously.

  Riggins shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled toward the light table.

  To enter the crime lab, log into LEVEL26.com and enter the code: shards

  chapter 33

  11:55 A.M.

  Banner was finishing his explanation just as Wycoff entered the room flanked by two Secret Service agents.

  “Riggins, it’s time.”

  Dark could barely focus on what was happening. His mind was still reeling from Banner’s revelation.

  “Goddammit,” he said. “I checked every room. Every closet. I pulled up the fucking carpet…”

  Riggins pressed his fingertips down on the light table like he was intending to crush it with the sheer force of his hands. He glanced at Wycoff, and then back at Dark. “This is not what I wanted to happen. You have to believe me.”

  But Dark wasn’t listening. He was already calling Sibby.

  “Everything’s okay, honey,” she said. “The cops are still here, fielding lawsuit threats from our lovely neighbor. But what about you?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Dark said.

  “Don’t lie to me. What’s wrong? I can hear it in your voice.”

  Banner’s trace analysis had shown that, yes, rocks had struck both windows. But shards from only Dark’s window showed a circular pattern—proof that a glass cutter had been used on it first. There were traces of a suction cup used to pop out a small disc of glass.

  Which was how he’d gotten in.

  “I swear, honey,” Dark said, “I’m fine. I’ll call back in a little while. But let me know the minute the police leave.”

  Dark ended the call and turned to deal with the situation at hand.

  Time was nearly up; Nellis and McGuire were waiting in the hallway, and they were prepared. Prepared. Hoods were shoved in their pockets. Wrist bindings and syringes were ready. The safe house and dumping grounds were standing by.

  Their orders had changed slightly a few minutes before when Wycoff had arrived. Once the secretary gave his final ultimatum, the decision would be in Dark’s hands.

  A yes meant their mission was over; Nellis and McGuire would be reassigned after a brief furlough. Nellis wondered, idly, whether it would be in the Los Angeles area again. He didn’t relish the idea of sleeping on the plane.

  But a no from Dark would mean the mission would double. Wycoff had made it clear: Grab Dark and Riggins; subdue them both; transport them to the safe house. Riggins wouldn’t be brought back, and Dark’s forty-eight hours would begin.

  Maybe it would be only twenty-four hours. Or twelve. Wycoff was becoming very impatient.

  Maybe they would have to grab Dark’s wife as well, a thought Nellis didn’t relish either. But that was part of the job. He’d known agents who said no women, no kids, but they just weren’t willing to go the distance. Frankly, they were pussies.

  “Riggins,” Wycoff said again, pointing to his watch. Riggins looked balefully in Dark’s direction and sighed.

  Dark noticed that the watch was an MTM—favored by Navy SEALs and no doubt part of Wycoff’s constant efforts to appear as hard as possible. Dark knew a little of Wycoff’s background; he knew the man had never set foot in a combat zone.

  So the threat was real, coming straight from the top, and Wycoff was here to deal with Riggins, and then throw a little hissy fit and try to convince Dark personally.

  Dark hated these fuckers. All of them.

  He glanced over at Riggins.

  Riggins realized that, sadly, once agai
n, he was right.

  Even after they killed him, they wouldn’t leave Dark alone. Not with Wycoff here personally. All the secretary had to do was change his mind and apply the same pressure to Dark. Why wouldn’t he? The man was a spoiled brat in an expensive suit who was used to getting what he wanted. All of the fucking time.

  Wycoff looked down at his watch and saw the second hand sweeping toward the twelve. Fuck Riggins—he’d had his shot. Wycoff realized he should have applied the full-court press to Dark right from the start.

  He refused to walk out of this police station without the answer he wanted.

  Needed.

  Nellis watched from the hallway and quickly ran through the options in his mind.

  If they ran for it, Riggins would make the first move, probably taking something from the top of the lab counter and winging it at them. Dark would tune in a second later and try a flanking move, or perhaps even grab the secretary as a hostage. It would be awkward for a few moments but easily resolved. Maybe it wouldn’t be time for syringes; maybe it would be time for guns. He didn’t care one way or the other, as long as something happened soon. He was dying of boredom.

  They were in the middle of a police station, so lethal action would be difficult to cover up, but then again, Riggins and Dark would have tried to assassinate the secretary of defense. The LAPD would shut the fuck up and like it.

  Nellis felt the excitement and adrenaline creep into his bloodstream. This could be good. This could be real good.

  00:03…

  00:02…

  00:01…

  Dark looked at Wycoff.

  There was only one thing he could do.

  “Mr. Secretary,” Dark said, “Riggins told me about the escalation. I want you to know that you’ll have my full cooperation with the case. I’m in…”

  Riggins and Dark locked eyes. The weight of the world seemed to roll off Riggins’s shoulders. An unspoken test of loyalty, one neither man would be able to explain, had finally been passed.