Dead Man Running

by Steve Hamilton

  The video ended.

  I got back on the road, kept driving around the city, more hours until I was in the flat red dirt lands that told me I was getting close to Texas.

  It’s been eight hours, I told myself. Eight hours taped up like that. No human being could endure it.

  But I kept going. Fighting through my own exhaustion, the road starting to go double in my eyes as I crossed the Texas border. It was just after noon now, the low February sun making my head hurt. I felt the phone vibrate in my pocket again, almost drove off the road trying to get to it. I pulled over and opened up the next email.

  The woman’s eyes were open, but she didn’t move. I wasn’t even sure if she was still breathing, but then she blinked.

  “I hope you’re not too late, Alex.” Livermore’s voice. I had a sudden vision of my hands around his throat, of me choking the life out of him so that nobody would ever have to hear that voice again.

  “Here is the address,” Livermore said. He said a number, a street, and an apartment number. I grabbed a pen from my bag and wrote it down on the back of my rental receipt. Then I plugged the address into my phone. I was still twenty miles away.

  I left the expressway and made my way through town, second-guessing myself the whole way. Maybe I should have called somebody, even though I didn’t have an address until just now. But the police could have been out searching for her. Or now that I do have the address . . . I should call them now.

  I kept up the argument with myself until I was close enough to the address to put it aside. Time to think, I said to myself. Time to be sharp.

  You’re here.

  I parked next to the building, took the gun out of the glove compartment, and went inside. It was three stories high, maybe seven or eight apartments per floor. There was no way to look through a window. I went up the stairs and found apartment 301, stood outside the door for a moment.

  Now what?

  I pictured him on the other side of the door, waiting for me. If I open it, I’m walking right into a trap.

  No, it’s your only chance to surprise him.

  I tried to put myself in his place, imagine what I’d do . . .

  I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it slowly. It was unlocked.

  No, you can’t do it this way.

  I took my hand away from the door, waited another few seconds. Listening. Then I knocked.

  “Livermore!” I said. “I’m here!”

  I moved back to the stairwell, put my back against the wall, and watched the door.

  Nothing happened.

  I moved back slowly, careful not to make any noise. This time I put my ear against the door. I heard a sound on the other side. It was faint. Muffled.

  She’s still alive.

  Her face flashed through my mind, the face of that woman, taped down to the table. Open the door, I thought. But then step back, wait for him to move, or shoot, or whatever the hell he’s going to do.

  I took a breath, lined myself up, and then kicked the door, just above the knob. It was cheap wood, both the frame and the door itself, so it flew open as I fell backward. I came back up with the gun drawn, just long enough to smell the gasoline. No, not gasoline, something else. There was a loud whoosh, and then a great wave of heat blew me back to the floor. From one second to the next, the doorway had turned into an inferno, the black smoke already billowing out into the hallway. I tried to wave it away, tried to take a step into the apartment, but I felt the flames on my shoes and on my pants and in another instant it felt like I was on fire myself. Then a strong pair of hands was grabbing me from behind and pulling me away from the door, just as I heard the scream coming from inside. It lasted for only a second, but it was a scream I’d hear for the rest of my life, as the hands pulled me back down the hallway with the fire trailing after me, as if chasing me.

  I pushed the man away and tried to go back, but another blast of heat hit me square in the face, singeing my hair as the flames kept burning on the floor below me.

  “Alex,” a voice said. “You’re on fire!”

  I turned and saw Agent Larkin’s face, didn’t even have time to think about what he was doing here as he tackled me and put his jacket over my legs. The jacket caught on fire and he threw it away, then he grabbed me by the shoulders again and dragged me to the stairwell.

  “It’s too late!” he said, just as the sprinklers came on above us and the fire alarm started to ring. Other doors opened, up and down the hallway, as Larkin half dragged, half threw me down the stairs.

  I knew he was right. I knew it was too late. And I knew something else, something that would stay with me forever. One terrible fact that I’d never be able to erase or explain away.

  Whoever that woman was, Livermore had just made me burn her alive.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AS LIVERMORE watched Alex go into the building, he felt something that no drug could ever give him. Something like the way tying a perfect knot against white skin would feel, or drawing a perfect kanji on white parchment. The perfect execution of a perfect idea. He could see the compound symbol for kanpeki in his mind, meaning something so much more profound than any English word could capture. The symbol for complete above the symbol for jade.

  A perfect jewel.

  That’s what this moment was.

  He pictured Alex going up the stairs. Going to the door marked 301. The hesitation he must have felt at that moment, wondering what to do next. Livermore wished he could see it. Alex weighing his options, not even knowing that no matter what he did, it would be wrong.

  He had taken five gallon jars of the napalm he’d made in his laboratory. Styrofoam dissolved into gasoline, stirred with great patience until it turned into jelly. When lit, napalm is virtually inextinguishable. It is liquid fire, clinging to whatever it touches. Spread across the floor of that woman’s apartment, with a simple electronic igniter wired to the door. A Christmas tree bulb with the tip removed, a small amount of the napalm put inside, to come in contact with the filament. Two nine-volt batteries. Such a simple device, not nearly as complicated as his explosives in the canyon. But safe, stable, foolproof. There was no danger of the napalm igniting until the exact moment when the door was pushed open.

  Now as he waited for the second half of the show, Livermore got out of his vehicle and took a red metal canister with him to the side of the building. Straight gasoline this time. He found a good spot on the grass and carefully drew his design. The grass was already brown in the Texas winter, but he knew there’d be no misreading the char pattern. When he was done, he struck a match and watched the flames come to life.

  He set down the gasoline container and went back to his vehicle. He didn’t bother wiping down the fingerprints. He was past that now.

  There was nothing to hide anymore. They would all know that Martin T. Livermore had been here.

  A black sedan pulled up to the building, just as Livermore was about to turn the corner. He stayed on the other side of the building and watched the man get out and run inside. It was the young agent he had seen in Phoenix.

  I told you to come alone, Alex. I set up everything so carefully, created my little sleight-of-hand diversion just to make sure everyone else was looking in another direction . . .

  Just to keep this between us, Alex. Like the great samurai Musashi’s duel with Sasaki on the island of Funajima, how Musashi waited until everything had turned in his favor—the tides, the angle of the sun, even the rising impatience of Sasaki and how that drained his energy—until the moment came for Musashi to face him.

  That moment is coming, Alex.

  It is coming.

  Livermore waited another beat, then he went around the building to McKnight’s car and slipped the magnetic case containing the GPS tracker above the right rear wheel well. He didn’t even have to stop, just a quick movement of the hand as he walked by, feeli
ng the magnet come in contact with the metal, even as the first person came running out of the building, then the second, then a great tidal wave as every resident streamed out of every door. Nobody noticed the stranger walking back to his vehicle.

  He watched the first fire truck arrive. The first police car. Then finally Alex McKnight himself, being pulled from the building by the young agent. Livermore took out his Nikon binoculars from the black case and focused in on Alex. The young agent was holding him by both arms, talking to him. As Alex broke away from him, the look of anguish on his face was another moment of kanpeki.

  Livermore tilted the binoculars down to see the burnt material on Alex’s pant legs, where the napalm had stuck to him. His shoes were still smoking.

  The agent approached him again as Alex stood half bent over, like he was about to throw up. Larkin put a hand on his back, and Alex straightened and then walked away. That was how he ended up at the other side of the building.

  One of the apartment windows blew out, and the smoke billowed out into the sky, as black as death. Firemen dragged one hose into the building while another hose was trained at the window from outside.

  But Livermore saw none of it. He kept his eyes on Alex McKnight, even as he put his vehicle in gear and started to drive away. One last moment of kanpeki as he watched Alex standing over the message he had left for him, just for him, burned into the dead grass.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHATEVER MADNESS had driven Livermore to coat that apartment, to coat the woman herself, with napalm . . . it was the same madness that had driven him to create this line in the grass, ten feet long, with two shorter lines joining it at the point.

  An arrow.

  Drawn with great care, the lines smooth and even and straight. Lines drawn by an engineer.

  Lines drawn for me.

  I could still feel the heat on my legs, where the napalm had stuck to my pants and to my shoes. I could still hear that woman’s scream in my head as I played it back, over and over, trying to make it come out differently. If I had known somehow, if I had been more careful, or quicker, or slower, or God knows what. In the background, there were windows blowing out, firemen yelling at one another and running hoses inside and out of the building. But I didn’t hear any of it.

  I heard only that one last scream.

  As I looked back down at the arrow, I followed its line across the street that ran behind the apartment building, directly to an office building. Even now the building was being cleared out by the FBI, working with Amarillo PD and the Texas DPS, and they were searching it from top to bottom.

  My gut told me they would find nothing. This arrow was pointing at something else, beyond the building.

  But what?

  Maybe he was pointing it at himself somehow, wherever he would be next, and that was the only thought I could hold on to at that moment.

  Tell me exactly where to go, you sick fuck. Bring me right to you. I don’t care if you kill me. As long as you go down with me.

  “You all right?”

  I turned to see Agent Larkin standing behind me.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “You shouldn’t have come here alone, Alex.”

  “What do you want?”

  He looked down at the plastic evidence bag he was holding. “You need to see this.”

  He came closer and showed it to me. It was an eight-by-ten photograph.

  Of me.

  “There was a fireproof safe in the apartment,” he said. “This was inside. Looks like it was taken yesterday. That’s the roof of my car.”

  I looked at the tired face in the photograph. The condos behind me, just as I was about to get back into the car with Larkin. He was right, it was from yesterday, when we were out retracing Livermore’s crime scenes.

  It didn’t surprise me that he would have followed us, that he would have taken this photograph. That he would bring it with him and leave it here next to the woman.

  I was beyond surprise by now.

  I turned it over and looked at the back. Livermore had drawn an elaborate Japanese symbol, like the symbols I had seen in that storage shed.

  “What does this mean?” I said.

  “We don’t know yet. I’m taking it to the Amarillo FBI unit.”

  I nodded and handed it back to him. This young agent who must have stayed up all night, keeping watch at the hotel in Phoenix, then driving all day to follow me here. To a burning doorway. Where he had probably saved my life.

  “I’m taking you, too.”

  * * *

  —

  I SPENT ANOTHER two hours sitting in another interview room. This one was a lot smaller, with no windows. I felt the walls closing in on me as yet another FBI special agent in another dark suit asked me the same questions and I gave him the same answers.

  I have no connection to this woman.

  I have no connection to Martin T. Livermore.

  I have no idea where he’ll go next.

  “They’ve got the state police on every road leading out of town,” Larkin said to me when the interview was over. “They’re knocking on every door in the neighborhood, looking for a witness. If we can get a description of his vehicle, at least . . .”

  “Let me see a map,” I said.

  He showed me a map of northern Texas. There were six major roads leading out of Amarillo, the land crisscrossed with two dozen smaller roads, heading in all directions.

  “You guys still think he’s on his way to San Francisco?” I said.

  “We can’t rule it out, Alex. Maybe that’s still the real plan and this is the diversion.”

  I looked at him. “You don’t believe that.”

  He didn’t answer me. So I just got up and left the room. Larkin caught up to me in the parking lot. The sun was down, the air turning cold again.

  “Where are you going?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve been told to bring you back tomorrow. It’s the only reason you’re not in custody right now.”

  “You said you were going to help me.”

  “I’m trying to, Alex. But you’re putting me in a tough spot.”

  “I need a drink.”

  We went into the first bar we found. We sat at the rail, and he watched me down one shot of Wild Turkey while he nursed a beer. I knew a second shot would lead to a third and a fourth. It was tempting, because I wanted to be numb. But I knew I needed to stay sharp, so I turned my glass over.

  When Larkin’s cell phone rang, he took it out of his pocket and looked at me while he talked to whoever was on the other end. Probably Agent Madison.

  “I’m with him right now,” he said. “Yes, we will. Tomorrow morning.”

  Someone turned on the jukebox, and he had to cover his other ear.

  “It means what?”

  He got up and went outside to finish the call. While he was gone, I sat there thinking about Livermore, wondering if he was still here in town. Maybe even taking more photographs.

  Come find me, I said to him. You want me so bad, I’m right here.

  Larkin came back inside and sat down next to me.

  “The symbol on the back of the photograph,” he said after a few long seconds of hesitation. “It’s Japanese. It means failure.”

  I nodded, staring down at my overturned shot glass.

  “He’s just trying to fuck with your head,” Larkin said. “You know that.”

  I picked up the glass, weighing it in my hand.

  “Look,” Larkin said, leaning in close to my right ear. “You were a cop before I was even born, so what the fuck am I even going to say to you? That you’re not responsible for that woman’s death? You already know that, too.”

  I didn’t try to answer.

  “You come back with me, Alex, and we all work tog
ether. We catch him. End of story.”

  I turned and looked at him, and that was all it took for him to shut his mouth for a while. There were two seconds of silence, then the jukebox cranked out another bad country song, even louder than the first. Someone came up behind me and leaned over the bar to order a drink.

  “I know that smell,” he said with a heavy Texas accent, saturated in alcohol. “You’re a nozzle jockey.”

  I ignored him.

  “Y’all must’a just rolled,” he said. “Smells like the Old Testament in here.”

  “If you don’t mind, sir,” Larkin said to him. “We’re not firemen.”

  He looked back and forth between us, and then down at my burnt shoes and pant legs. He swayed back and forth for a moment, then caught his balance by grabbing me by the shoulder.

  “Hank,” the bartender said to him, with an accent just as heavy, if less soaked with cheap whiskey. “Leave ’em be.”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” he said, his hand still on my shoulder. “One of ’em’s half burned up, and they say they’re not firemen. So what the hell were you guys doing?”

  “None of your business,” I said without looking at him. “And take your hand off my shoulder.”

  “Alex,” Larkin said, “take it easy.”

  “It’s okay.” The man lifted his hand off my shoulder and then gave it a quick flick of his fingers like he was brushing away the dirt from home plate. “You boys ain’t from around here, are ya . . .”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Hank,” the bartender said again. “Go sit down, all right?”

  “I got no problem,” he said, putting a hand on the bar to steady himself now. “We’re a friendly bunch around here. We like everybody. Even people who got no business being here.”

  I closed my eyes and waited for him to say something. Just one more sentence.

  “I just wanna know why I wasn’t invited to the barbecue.”

  I came off the barstool and grabbed him with both hands, driving him backward toward the jukebox, still playing that same bad song too loud, until I put his back against the glass and the whole thing rocked for a moment and then went silent.