"Des, what about this morning?" she asked. "Did you meet with Kev? Did you show him the archives? Did you guys find anything?"
Des's eyes slid away. "That's part of what we have to talk about."
"So? Talk, then!"
Des opened the door to the library. "There's someone you need to meet," he said.
A thin, graying woman in a severe navy blue suit sat at the table, scribbling on a legal pad. She stood up when they entered.
"Edie, meet Detective Monica Houghtaling, of the PPD. Detective, Edie Parrish."
Edie shook the detective's hand, accepted her murmured condolences, and stared at the chair that Des pulled out for her, as if sitting down in it would give them some obscure power over her.
"Des." Her voice felt high, thin. A cord about to snap. "What happened this morning? With the archives?"
"Nothing happened. With Larsen, anyway. He didn't show."
"Didn't show? What do you mean, he didn't show? He told us that he'd arrived. He said--"
"I waited at the meeting place for him for an hour. Then I had to leave, because I had an appointment, at ten-fifteen. With Charles."
"This morning? You were...there?" Her voice choked off.
Des passed his hand over his face. "Yes." His voice was gravely and thick. "I was there, Edie. When it happened. I saw it all. Me, and my colleague, Dr. Cheung. She's still in shock."
"But that's...but--"
"We'd just finished presenting a new project to him. Discussing funding possibilities. And then he lights up a cigar, and walks over to the window as he's talking to us...and..." He stopped, swallowed. Looked away. "I can't...talk about it."
The room was silent, but for Marta's hitching sniffle behind them.
"Edie, we have to talk about some hard things now," Des began.
"Don't start," Edie held up her hand. "Don't even start."
"We have to," Des said, heavily. "We don't have the luxury of denying reality. Detective, can I show her the film footage?"
Houghtaling pulled a slim silver laptop toward herself, and typed into it, her narrow mouth tight and grim. "This is security footage from outside the Parrish Foundation building this morning, at nine-nineteen A.M.," she said. She spun the laptop so that Edie could see it.
The image was stationary, just tree branches waving gently outside the door of the new Parrish Foundation building. For a few moments, nothing happened. Then, a tall, familiar form strolled into view. Kev. Edie stopped breathing.
Kev stopped, turned slowly in a circle, eyes narrowed as he studied his surroundings. Then he went on into the building.
"There's an eight minute gap," Des said. "May I?" he asked the detective. She nodded. Des fast-forwarded, and set it to play again.
Kev walked out of the building again, brisk and purposeful.
"There's a three minute gap." Des leaned to fast forward again. "Now, watch carefully here."
Kev appeared again, this time carrying two large, metal-sided suitcases. He shoved the door open with his shoulder, turning to sidle the cases inside. She saw his scarred face very clearly.
"Your father was killed one hour later," Des said. "From an unfinished suite on the eighth floor, one that faced your father's office suite across the grounds. This was the time it took for him to set up his gun, and wait for his moment."
Edie shook her head. "No. You've got this all wrong," she protested. "How could he have possibly known where Dad would be?"
"He knew, because I told him," Des said heavily. "I told Larsen he had to be on time, so I could make my meeting with Charles. At his office, at the Helix complex, at ten-fifteen. He knew exactly where Charles would be. And when." Des passed his hand over his face. "I told him," he repeated. "I am going to have to live with that for the rest of my life." He dropped his face into his hands.
Marta made a choking sound, laid her hand on Des's shoulder.
Edie felt horribly cool, cut out of the sob fest.
Des lifted his head, grabbed her hand. She was too numb to shake it off. "Edie. I know this is terrible for you." His voice broke. "But I have to ask. Can you think of any place the police might be able to find him? Anyone they could question? Who was the man who brought you to the house, for instance? Was he one of Larsen's associates?"
She shook her head. "Just a friend."
She was doodling again. Without knowing it, she'd pulled the pen from her pocket, laid out the e-mail, and was scribbling frantically, as if the contact of pen to paper was a lifeline to her sanity. "I can't think of anything," she said, as she felt the eye open up. Her pen moved faster.
"Edie! Stop that!" Marta snapped. "You're acting like a child! Drawing your little comic book pictures at a time like this?"
Edie stopped, feeling vulnerable and exposed as she looked into the closed faces, the staring eyes of the people in the room.
Des reached out to hold her pen hand still. "Edie. Stop drawing, and concentrate. Consider this. If he's innocent, he has nothing to worry about. By helping the police find him, you clear his name that much faster. Fingerprints can't lie, Edie. And if he's guilty, then who are you protecting, Edie? And why?"
"Stop repeating my name," she said.
He blinked. "Huh? Excuse me?"
"I know they probably taught you in some people management seminar, that people like to hear the sound of their own name, but I just find the repetition incredibly annoying," she said.
Des's face hardened. "Edie, that's not very..." He stopped himself. "So. You can't help, then? You can't think of anything?"
She shook her head.
"I can't believe the staff just let the guy who brought her here go without questioning him," Des grumbled.
"We have his name and plate number," Houghtaling said.
"He has nothing to do with any of this!" Edie protested.
"I hope that you're right," Houghtaling said. "And that you won't end up charged with aiding and abetting. Accessory to murder. Think about that, please, while you see if you can remember anything else."
"Please, Detective, don't put it in those terms," Des pleaded. "She's fragile, and she's been through a harrowing experience."
That annoyed the piss out of her. Kev hadn't harrowed her. These days with Kev had been the best days of her entire life, bar none, until three hours ago, with that cell phone call on the bluff. "I am not fragile," she snapped, staring at the freeze frame of Kev's thoughtful frown, looking up. Her heart cramped with love for him. "Des," she said. "What do you mean he never showed up for the appointment?"
Des looked confused. "I mean what I said. He never showed."
"But here he is," Edie said. "Right here. On the video."
Des hesitated, blinking rapidly. "Oh! The Foundation building wasn't our appointment location. We were supposed to meet in a warehouse over at the Graystone Business Park, where the boxes are being stored. There didn't seem to be much sense in moving them, so I was waiting for him there."
"That's not what he told me," Edie said. "He told me he was meeting you at the Parrish Foundation. He texted us about the pile of boxes." She turned to the detective. "Did you see the library? "
"Edie," Des's voice was longsuffering. "Of course he told you that. Think about it. He knew you would see that video sooner or later."
"Did you see the library?" She repeated the question to Detective Houghtaling, her voice wobbly and high.
Houghtaling's lips pursed. "We did not have any reason to look on the fifth floor. The sniper's perch was on the eighth floor. I was under the impression that those floors weren't even finished."
"They're not, but I just gave you a reason to look there," Edie said. "Kev sent us a text. He saw the library. He saw the pile of boxes."
Des dropped his head into his hands. "Edie. Don't make this harder than it is. There were no boxes of files. There never have been."
"Send someone." Edie directed the plea at Houghtaling, ignoring him. "Please. Send someone to check. Right now."
"I'll put someon
e on it, as soon as possible," Houghtaling said.
Edie got to her feet. "Thank you," she said.
"One moment." The detective dug in her pocket, and handed her a card. "Just in case anything else comes back to you."
Edie stuck it in her pocket, and stumbled through the house like a sleepwalker. Ronnie was no longer in the solarium. She went up the curving staircase, down the corridor to Ronnie's suite.
Her sister lay on the antique four-poster bed. Edie sat down on the bed, stroking her sister's tangled hair.
Edie kicked off her shoes, and climbed onto her sister's bed. Uncomfortably aware of the weight of the Ruger around her ankle, the mud spattered jeans leaving brownish smears over Ronnie's pure-white eyelet lace coverlet. She breathed in the scent of Ronnie's hair, taking comfort from the closeness. Reminding her heart of its own truths.
She'd drawn Kev. She'd seen inside him. She'd been inside him. There was no faking that frequency, that vibration. No possibility of lies.
But how many levels to Kev might there be? She had no idea what was hidden behind that barrier in his mind. He might not know, either. There might be a good part of him, utterly sincere and honest, and at the same time...there might be something else. Something different.
She shivered. No. She had to trust herself. And him. If she let them shake her faith in Kev, she was finished.
She nuzzled Ronnie's hair, tried to make her mind blank.
She failed, of course, but the effort kept her busy.
CHAPTER 29
Kev was buried under a ton of crushing rock, but someone was worrying his feet. Kicking, scratching. Driving him mad.
Fuck this. If he was going to be buried in rock, let him die in peace, at least. Maybe he'd died, and this was hell. Nudge. Scratch. Shake. Like rats, at his ankles. A whimpering, muffled, squeaking sound. Desperate. He clawed his way closer to consciousness. Tried to open his eyes. Failed, the first hundred times.
Brutal flourescent lights blazed. The world was tilted wildly askew. Nudge, nudge. What the fuck...?
He tried to see who was tormenting him. Ava Cheung was sprawled on top of him, body rigid, face a frozen grimace. Eyes blazing with unabated malice, inches from his own. Paralyzed, but conscious. Her face was striped with dark, dried rivulets of blood from her nose.
It was like waking to find a scorpion on his chest. He tried to move. His most violent efforts yielded feeble twitches.
After an interminable interval, the twitches were forceful enough to shove Ava's body off of his own. He rolled her onto her back. She gazed up, eyes glittering. The syringe still poked out of her leg.
Her finally saw who'd been worrying his feet. The girl in the wheelchair. The Latvian girl. He cudgeled his brain for her name. Yuliyah. She'd stuck one foot out just far enough from its ratcheted plastic cuff to kick at his feet. Her ankle was bloody and raw from her efforts. He wondered how long she'd been at it.
Their eyes met, and she writhed, mewled against her gag. Hurry up, you goddamn slug being the clear nonverbal message.
Right. Yeah. Good thing she'd wakened him. Ava had only taken one dose of the X-Cog. She'd given him two. He was roughly double her weight, but she could easily have come back to life before he had. And he and Yuliyah would have both been meat.
Not that they were out of the woods yet. By no means.
He rolled over, tried to get to his hands and knees, but he wobbled like a newborn foal. He stayed down, crawled to retrieve the clippers. Dragged himself over to the wheelchair. It took for-fucking-ever to remind the muscles in his hand how to contract again, they were each so busy trembling individually.
He went at Yuliyah's bonds. The bloodied leg, then the other one. Then her arms. He peeled the gag out. She spit out a rubber ball, coughed, and launched herself out of the chair. She yanked the clippers out of Kev's numb hand and flung herself on Ava with a shriek of rage.
His reaction time was so damn slow, the blades of the clipper were already flashing down toward the woman's carotid artery by the time he caught her wrist. "No," he said.
Yuliyah looked betrayed. He didn't understand the stream of words, but her eyes asked the question clearly. Why the fuck not?
Damn good question. He didn't really have an answer. Just a vague sense of it being wrong, to execute a drugged, helpless woman, no matter how much she deserved it. Plus, he was in a shitload of trouble, and Ava's death would not necessarily help him out of it.
On the contrary. They'd already fingered him for Parrish's murder. Watch them accuse him of slaughtering a beautiful young female neuroscientist, too. He'd spend his life on death row.
Besides, a quick death was too good for her. But he couldn't explain that to Yuliyah. He pried the clippers from her hand. Yuliyah burst into tears, spit in Ava's face, and slugged her.
He grabbed Yuliyah's fist before it could land again, picked up a plasticuff, mimed putting it on Ava. "We'll tie her up."
An impassioned explosion of words burst out of Yuliyah. He shook his head, grabbed more plasticuffs, fastened Ava's ankles. Then he rolled her onto her belly, fastened her hands behind her. He cinched the loop together with a third cuff so that she was arched backward like a bow. Uncomfortable as hell, but hey, so was being a mind-raped zombie slave for the rest of his miserable life. And she'd threatened Edie.
That steeled him to retrieve the rubber ball that had been in Yuliyah's mouth. Ava's eyes bugged with horror as he tied on the gag.
He stared down at his handiwork, at a loss. Great. And now?
He peered out the door, into a larger laboratory room. Still and quiet. She hadn't been kidding when she said she'd arranged not to be disturbed. Another burst of words from Yuliyah. She mimed turning a key in a lock, then pointed to Ava. She got onto her knees, scrabbling in Ava's pants pocket. Pulled out a wad of keys. The girl was sharp.
He grabbed Ava by the armpits, and dragged her trussed body out into the other room. No windows. Various other doors. He opened them at random. One was a closet full of supplies. He dropped Ava on the floor, and went in to the back, yanking boxes away from the wall until he'd created a hole. He wedged her into it and replaced the boxes.
She might asphyxiate. She might squeak and thump for days without getting anyone's attention. So her fortune was bound to his. If he got out of here alive, he'd alert the authorities to her whereabouts.
If they killed him, they would find her when she started to smell.
It was a better death than the one she'd planned for him, or for Yuliyah. He could live with that. Or die with it, as the case may be.
Now they had to find a way out. He went back to trying the doors. Many of them were locked. He held out his hand for the keys Yuliyah had taken. Finally, one of them opened. He peered inside, and found a sealed door that looked like a huge refrigrator. A string of colored lights blinked along the top. His flesh began to creep. He turned to Yuliyah.
"Stay back," he told her. "I'll take a look in here."
The girl shook her head, and clung to his arm. He didn't have the strength to argue with her. He shoved the door open.
A blast of icy air and a foul odor floated out. They shrank back, gagging. Yuliyah moaned. He pushed her back toward the outer door again. She dug her nails into his arm til they broke his skin. The two of them stepped inside together.
The room was full of metal tables, the tables covered with bodies shrouded in black zippered plastic bags.
Holy shit. He stared around, his mind wiped blank with horror.
He counted. Twelve bags. He looked at the body bag closest to him, and lowered the zipper just a few inches.
A young woman. Blood-soaked blond curls. Her face was frozen in a grimace, lips pulled back from teeth, eyes staring, spotted with burst capillaries. Blackened blood from her nose streaked her face.
Yuliyah began to scream. Kev spun around, clapped his hand over her mouth. "No!" he growled.
She choked it off, shaking with sobs. Shivering in the frigid icebox, which highlighted ano
ther problem. Yuliyah was almost naked. Even if they did get out of this place in one piece, he couldn't take a girl in her underwear out into the November air. Ava's clothes would have fit her, but he'd already stowed Ava, and the thought of peeling the clothing off that horrible thing turned his stomach. It would be about as attractive as looking in those body bags. Nobody home, just the living dead. A piece of meat, animated by rage and hate alone.
He dragged Yuliyah, still sobbing, out of the charnel house, where she promptly vomited all over the floor. Kev jerked away from the splatter. Clothing. He kept searching through the lab, yanking open doors, cabinets. Finally he hit the jackpot; lab coats, clean and pressed. For when Ava wanted to dress up and play scientist.
He wrapped Yuliyah in one of them, and pulled her behind him out into the corridor. This lab had to be underground, considering the nature of the work. Windowless, airless. The hallway was painted cinderblocks, a snarl of insulation-wrapped pipes on the ceiling. A subbasement. No points of reference. A featureless maze.
He locked the knob lock of the laboratory, used all the keys til he found the one for the deadbolt. Listened again, letting all his senses reach out, open up. Nothing to orient him. He grabbed Yuliyah's arm, put his finger to his lips, and pulled her behind himself through the long corridor. Every time they reached a corner, he would stop, listen, feel the stillness of the air, the quality of the silence, before they dared to creep around the turn.
They finally reached a stairwell. They started to climb, and reached a floor that appeared to have natural light. He leaned on the push bar from the stairwell. Poked his head into the corridor.
It was a big, empty warehouse. Yuliyah grabbed his arm and started babbling. He shushed her desperately. "We have to go," he whispered. "Shhh! We have to go! Now!"
Yuliyah pointed at herself, held up one finger. Then she held up five more fingers. "Oksana, Margaritka, Olga, Katyushka, Marya!"
Oh, excellent. As if saving one terrified, traumatized foreign girl in her underwear wasn't enough of a challenge. Why not six of them? If he weren't so desperate, it would almost be funny.
Fade to Midnight Page 41
