Her heart was pounding. She was having a ball. She knelt down and put her hand on Malavida's forehead.
"I'm awake," he grimaced. "That was the worst ride I ever took, even worse than the shore break at Huntington."
"Sorry." She smiled. "We're a little shorthanded this morning." He looked up at her and saw her grinning. "What the hell's so funny, Karen?"
"Nothing. Sorry, I get off on strange stuff"
In twenty minutes, she had Malavida back at The Swallow Inn and propped up in bed. The room seemed suddenly small, as both of them communicated silently… each remembering another motel room where they had clung to each other in ecstasy and then awkwardness. Karen moved quickly across the room and turned on the TV. She finally found an all-news station. She set the volume and went back out to unload some hospital supplies she'd filched. Ten minutes later there was an update on a story in Washington, D. C. Neither of them was paying much attention until they heard Lockwood's name.
Karen quickly turned up the volume.
6 4… at D. C. General Hospital. Agent Lockwood is in a coma," the gray-haired news anchor said.
"What…?" Karen almost shouted at the screen.
"As we reported earlier, the Director of All Operations of U. S. Customs, Laurence Heath, died in the mishap when halon gas accidentally escaped in the locked file room in the basement of the Department of Justice. Heath was the second-highest-ranking officer in the service. Along with him, and also dead on arrival, were Agent Victor Kulack and two attorneys: Carter Van Lendt, with the Justice Department, and Alex Hixon, who was representing Agent Lockwood at his Internal Affairs hearing. Government engineers are still studying the mishap to determine why the elevators in the building locked and the halon system malfunctioned. That report is due shortly. In the meantime the lone survivor, Agent John Lockwood, barely hangs on to rife at D. C. General."
They called the hospital, but there was a stop on Lockwood's phone; Karen's call was transferred to a man who sounded like a cop. She quickly realized that he was not going to give out any additional information. She hung up and cursed under her breath. Karen looked at Malavida, who was now propped up in the bed.
"Did that news guy say 'mishap'?" Malavida finally asked, his voice still whispery.
"That's what he said." She was consumed with fear for Lockwood. "Bullshit. The Rat set that system off," he said.
Karen's emotions were rolling. She had come to rely on John Lockwood. He had been their leader. She was devastated by the news. She could not believe the depth of her feelings. She had always seen herself as a rational and deductive person, despite her love of death-defying risks. Yet here she was, between two men, both of whom she had strong feelings for. Was it just another game of chicken? Had she fallen into bed with Malavida to preclude a relationship with Lockwood, because she wasn't able to commit to anybody fully? As these thoughts tumbled in her mind, she looked at Malavida. They held each other's gaze. They both knew they were thinking the same thing…
The Rat had cut them down, one at a time. Only Karen remained standing.
"I'm going to get this motherfucker," she finally said.
Malavida had never heard a woman sound so dangerous.
Chapter 32
SAND
In the dream, he was at the bottom of a sand dune, struggling to climb to the top… but the harder he tried, the more sand came down on him. It carried him back to the bottom of the pit, where again he would claw his way up toward the top… only to have it happen again. It was a struggle he knew he must win. If he could climb to the top, he would wake; if not, he would be doomed. Over and over he would almost get to the lip of the sand dune… barely seeing the light before slipping back down again.
Finally, at about nine on Saturday night, he made it. Victorious, he opened his eyes and looked at the white acoustic tiles of the hospital ceiling. He had been unconscious for thirty-five hours. A nurse who had been taking his blood pressure ran to get a doctor. Lockwood tried to move. Something was wrong. His coordination was off. He couldn't control his muscles. Then a doctor came into his line of sight.
"Welcome back," he said.
Lockwood tried to nod. He didn't think he could speak. He tried to clear his throat.
"You've had a severe loss of oxygen and you were unconscious for about a day and a half," the doctor said, "and that is going to affect you for a while. Do you remember your name?"
Lockwood lay in the bed. His name… his name… He knew his name. He struggled for it. It was there, just out of reach, just on the edge of his memory. His name was… it was…?
"It's okay. It's gonna come," the doctor said. "Time for a Paul Revere. Hold tight, I'm gonna run tell a few people you're back."
Lockwood watched as the doctor moved out of his sight.
"Paul Revere," he said softly. His voice was strange in his ears. The name was familiar but he didn't think he was Paul Revere.
As time passed, things came further back into focus. He was still unable to move freely. His arms and legs didn't seem to obey his mental commands. His thoughts were jumbled and confused. When he finally came up with his name, he told a nurse that he was Lockwood, John W., Sergeant, 3769007656-his name, Marine rank, and serial number. They took him carefully from the bed and gave him an MRI scan. They explained to him what had happened in the Justice Department file room, but he had trouble remembering any of it. His short-term memory was a mess. He remembered parts of what had happened in Florida. He remembered chasing a huge, bald man and firing two shots from an old.45 at a fleeing air-boat. It was like a five-second movie loop in his head. He could replay it but not see around either side of it.
"In a while we're going to take you down for some physical therapy," the doctor said. "What has happened is that when you were unconscious, your brain was deprived of oxygen and parts of it died. Unfortunately, brain matter doesn't regenerate. Your vital signs are fine but you're going to have trouble with some things for a while, until other parts of your brain can take over those functions. We might as well get started and find out how much stuff got shorted out. You get what I'm telling you?"
"Yes. Do I sure," he said, realizing that it didn't sound quite right. "Sure do I," he corrected himself. Still wrong. Fuck it, he thought.
"Trust us, John, we'll get your engine up and running again."
They helped him out of bed. He had almost no control of his body. He wobbled horribly the first time he tried to walk. He fell after one step. They were there to catch him before he hit the ground.
"Bitch of a…" he said angrily as they helped him back up.
He looked at the door, which seemed to be miles away. There was something wrong with his depth perception. It was as if he were looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Everything seemed remote, as if he were watching it through a strange lens and was not a part of it. "Can't see right," he said, rubbing his eyes.
"The part of your brain that controls your sight and speech was affected. Another few minutes and you'd have been a vegetable. Fortunately, John, this is a partial paralysis. It should all come back, but you've gotta keep working. I won't BS you, it could take months, even years."
They helped him walk down the corridor of the hospital, one attendant holding each arm. He could see where he wanted to go, even though his depth perception was altered, but as he tried to get there he would veer and stumble. Often his legs buckled under him without warning.
They got him down to therapy in a wheelchair. A very strong, thirty-five-year-old, muscular blond woman, with a friendly smile and a face like a torn softball, helped him up out of the wheelchair. She almost lifted his 190-pound frame singlehandedly. She joked with him as she pushed and punished him for an hour without much result.
He was back in bed when Bob Tilly from Laurence Heath's office came in to see him. "You don't have to talk, John," he said.
"S'okay," he slurred. "Heath, sorry Larry." He paused. "Larry Heath I'm sorry about," he said, getting closer.
&nbs
p; "Not your fault."
Lockwood was struggling to recover something. It had to do with the large bald man in the air-boat. "Leonard Land," he finally said. "Leonard Land did something," Lockwood said. "This did he with…" His mind reeled, looking for the answer.
Tilly couldn't make out what Lockwood was saying, so he went on. "It was some kind of computer fuck-up, John. The whole building went goofy. The system that runs things just went psycho… sent an earthquake message to the elevators, which locked them and set of the halon extinguishers."
Lockwood was struggling with it. He was very, very close. He had to tell them something… warn them. "I know it what is. I happening is…" He stopped. "Fuck!" he shouted in a burst of anger. "I know what happened," he finally said. "Reprogrammed computer… from Florida."
"Who?"
"Land Leonard."
Bob Tilly looked at him for a long beat. "The serial killer you were working on in Miami reprogrammed the computer? Made all this shit happen?" he said.
"Yes. Leonard Heath killed Larry Land," he said, and then he lay back, exhausted. "Fuck… You know what I mean, Bob."
Bob Tilly looked down at Lockwood. He was sure that his old friend was still delirious. How on earth could some guy in Tampa, Florida, lock the elevators in a Washington building, close down the ventilation, then set of the halon fire extinguishers? It had to be a computer malfunction. Lockwood just wasn't making any sense at all.
Chapter 33
THE KILL ZONE
At five P. M. on Saturday, Karen went to the store to get food and medical supplies for Malavida. After she loaded her purchases into the van, she stood outside the run-down, graffiti-damaged market in a litter-strewn parking lot and made a second call to Trisha Rains on her cell-phone. She had been told when she called earlier that the TV reporter was in the field doing a remote and wouldn't be back till five. Karen had timed her trip to the market to coincide with Trisha's planned return to the news room.
"Trisha Rains," the TV reporter said as she finally came on the line.
"This is Karen Dawson. I saw you out at Leonard Land's house."
"The mystery woman the cops wouldn't let me talk to. Nice to finally hear from you." Her voice was aggressively friendly and Karen winced slightly. "Do you have any idea where Carlos Chacone is hiding?" Trisha asked without any warm-up or chitchat.
"Before we get into that, I need to know a few things. I'm taking a lotta chances right now. I'm legally and physically at risk. I need to know if you and I can have the right kind of relationship."
"I'm not going to commit a crime to do my job, Doctor."
"You know I'm a doctor?"
"I have your whole resume right here. 'Awesome Dawson,' the `Michigan Miracle.' Since the cops wouldn't let me interview you, I ran a background check. A Ph. D. in psychology before you were twenty. I'm glad you weren't busting the curve in any of my college courses."
Karen let that one go and pushed on. "I don't want you to break any laws, Trisha, but I need to know that you and I are going to have a First Amendment relationship… that you're going to protect me as a confidential source and not divulge anything until I give you permission."
"That goes without saying."
"Yeah, but let's hear you say it anyway."
"As long as you don't bullshit me, girlfriend, I'll protect you as a source."
"I think I might know how to lure Leonard Land out into the open, but I need your help."
Trisha Rains was skeptical at first, but when she heard Karen's plan, she warmed up.
They agreed that they would talk again before six that evening.
After she hung up, Karen returned to The Swallow Inn with food, soft drinks, fresh bandages, and a thermometer. Fifteen minutes later, she had Shirley Land's newspaper picture in her purse and her car keys in her hand and was ready to leave.
Malavida had given up trying to argue with her. She refused to listen to his logic. She brought some Gerber baby food and bottled water to the bed, where he was glaring at her, and put them on the bedside table.
"Till your intestines heal, this is what the nurse told me you were gonna get in the hospital. I hope you like creamed corn."
"I hate creamed corn and I want you to slow down and listen to me."
"I should be back by midnight. If not, I'll call and check in with you," she said. Then she picked up the thermometer, shook it down, and paused, waiting for him to open his mouth.
"Karen, you can't mind-fuck this guy. You heard Lockwood, there's a big difference between doing a paper profile and a field encounter, or whatever he called it."
"Who says I'm mind-fucking him?"
"I sorta got the hang of how you think. You're about six-tenths kamikaze."
"Look, Mal, I'm not going to do anything stupid or dangerous. I know how twisted Leonard Land is. Give me some credit, I'm smart enough not to wave a red cape at a psychopath,."
They locked gazes. She was still holding the thermometer. "Open, please. I have to find out if you have a fever before I leave."
"What if I don't cooperate?" he said.
"There's more than one place I can stick this, buddy," she said, waving it ominously, a smile on her lips, and he finally opened his mouth. His temperature was normal.
Her mind kept turning back to John Lockwood. Uneasiness about his condition hung in her thoughts like a dark mist. At least she knew he was alive. That gave reason to hope, but she had to keep moving. She was the last knight on the battlefield, the only person left who had a clear picture of what they were facing.
Ever since she had been a child, Karen Dawson would risk everything to win. Her playmates and siblings had learned early not to challenge her unless they were willing to deal with the consequences. She was now working all alone, and she had accepted that. She also knew that to make her plan work, she would need the cooperation of the police. She figured that by now, they probably suspected she was an accomplice in Malavida's disappearance. She had to find a way to overcome that.
Her plan hinged on her now-extensive criminal profile of Leonard Land, as well as her research into his mother's past. She thought she knew enough about his bizarre upbringing to manipulate him. The biggest influence in Leonard's life was Shirley Land. Shirley was responsible for what he had become. Karen had looked long and hard at the woman's picture in the old newspaper obit. Shirley was unremarkable, with a short, uncomplicated hairstyle and a narrow face. It was hard to think that this woman, long dead, was a torturer who had killed one foster son and turned the other into a monster. Karen studied Shirley's plain face… The picture was black and white, but from the photo, she looked strawberry-blond. Karen thought she could pull off the physical part, but she knew the important thing would be what she said.
"Be good," she said to Mal, who glared at her from his bed as she set down the thermometer.
"Karen…"
"Yeah?"
"When I first laid eyes on you in the attorneys' room at Lompoc, I had you down as bait. I thought you were a patsy I could play for a sucker. I didn't care what happened to you or Lockwood. As a matter of fact, I was out to wreck Lockwood."
She was listening. Her remarkable brown eyes showed her brilliance.
"But that's changed," he went on. "I don't know how it happened so fast. Maybe it's like a wartime romance… I don't know, but I've become attached to you. I don't want to see you get hurt." She looked down at him and said nothing.
"It's. Lockwood, isn't it?" Malavida said, hurt flooding his eyes.
"Lockwood doesn't know I'm alive, he's so tortured by Claire's death. That's all he's dealing with," she said, and reached down to take his hand. "Let's put all this behind us, then see what happens."
"You can't go after The Rat. He'll kill you. In a week, I'll be up… I know it. We can keep going then. You need somebody watchin' your back."
"It's Saturday, Mal. We're in his killing zone. We wait a week, somebody else is going to get hacked up. We have to keep the pressure on. If I'm not back, or
don't call by midnight, you're on your own," she said and kissed him lightly on the lips, then left the room.
Malavida could hear the van starting; he listened as it pulled away, the tires crunching on the shell drive outside. Then he leaned over and got the phone. His computer was still on the coffee table and his external 14.4 modem was on the dresser. He knew he was going to have to find a way to get his jukebox hooked back together. He was like The Rat: His best weapon was his computer. He struggled in pain to move his broken body to the edge of the bed. He tried to sit. His stomach muscles had been cut and resewn during the surgery, so he had to use his arms to get upright. He reached for the headboard and pulled himself to a sitting position. A searing bolt of pain shot through his intestines. "Shit," he groaned, hoping he hadn't ripped the whole stitched-up mess loose. Then he struggled to his feet.
"I wanna know where the hell Carlos Chacone is!" Fred T. Fred growled, the minute he heard her voice on the line.
"How would I know?" Karen lied. She was in a phone booth that faced a Cuban market. Heat lightning flashed on the horizon.
"Hey, listen, lady, that Mexican had more plumbing hangin' off him than I got in my entire bathroom. He didn't get up outta bed and walk away, draggin' all them tubes and plasma bottles. You helped him."
"I sure hope you can prove that, Captain," she said. There was a long, ugly silence on the line, as the rumbling sound of thunder finally reached her.
"I don't need to prove it to arrest you. And if I arrest you, I can also hold you for forty-eight hours, just to be pissy."
"I'm more worried about where Leonard Land is, which is one hell of a lot bigger problem. We know he's a weekend killer; it's Saturday, and unless we divert him, I think there's a good chance a woman could die tonight."
Final Victim Page 27
