“I want to know how he got hold of that drug.” It had probably been in the drink the anonymous person had bought him. She only hoped Daniels had found and thanked the guy face-to-face. “Let’s see if Daniels spotted the person who bought him that drink. Thirty minutes.”
Sykes looked over his shoulder, his mouth pulled tight. “That’s a lot.”
“I’ll be fine. From the sound of it, he was sitting in a bar for much of that time.”
Doing what? Nursing a few beers and talking with some buddies? Thinking about the case? Unwinding after a long day?
Or had he been feeling rejected by his partner, who seemed to have moved on to someone else, professionally and personally?
She killed those thoughts, knowing she—and Daniels—couldn’t afford them right now.
Taking in a deep breath, then slowly releasing it, she turned on the projection system. Picking up the remote controller, Ronnie rose from her chair and walked over to one of those innocuous-looking white floor mats and stepped onto it.
“Ready?” Sykes asked.
“Yeah.”
“Remember…I’m right here.”
She nodded, then, before she could change her mind, hit the button to start the projector, setting it to pause on the first image until she was ready to proceed.
The lights fell. Beneath her feet, laser lights began to rise, filling in the space all around her. One second, she was standing inside a small, windowless computer lab. The next, she was sitting at a bar, looking at a rough-looking guy with wiry grey hair who held a shaker in one hand and a shot glass in another. The guy’s mouth was half-open, his eyes half-closed, Daniels O.E.P. device catching him mid-blink.
She resisted the urge to reach out and grab the bar, her equilibrium doing crazy things as the world changed so drastically around her. This wasn’t like looking at a life sized picture, the room had depth and texture. She turned her head to one side, then to the other, moving very slowly. The picture didn’t move with her—that blinking bartender didn’t travel around her entire field of vision. Instead, what she saw changed by tiny inches and degrees. She was seeing a full panorama of the room, knowing she was moving out of Daniels’s current perspective—facing the bartender—and into the world the computer had built around her. It was utilizing all the rest of the images captured in his device prior to this one, particular moment.
It was breathtaking. Shocking. A little terrifying.
Sliding her feet a bit further apart, she braced herself like a captain on a rolling ship. Taking slow, even breaths, she reminded herself that this was just like a movie, not real life, although it felt every bit as realistic as the room she’d just left behind.
As ready as she would ever be, she pressed the play button to begin the slideshow. She’d set it at faster than one image per second, wanting to speed through the minutes and lose herself in them the way Daniels would have.
The bartender finished blinking, closed his mouth, shook the shaker, filled the shot glass, called to someone over his shoulder, all in a flash.
There were no sound effects, obviously, but at first Ronnie would swear she could hear the tinkle of glassware, the raucous laughter of a drunken woman whose reflection she could see in the mirror behind the bar. With every deep inhalation, she could almost catch the odor of yeasty beer, pungent liquor and sweaty bodies. Those bodies seemed to fill the room, it was a crowded Friday night. They were all around her, far too many of them to fit on a three-by-three mat. The depth perception of this thing was absolutely remarkable.
She—Daniels—sits the end of the bar. Beside him is a weary-looking old man who keeps tapping his fingers on his glass—tap, tap, tap. The sound catches Daniels’s attention; he looks over a few times. The man looks up. Their eyes meet. He mutters something—an apology?—and stops tapping.
Daniels doesn’t have a drink in front of him. Nor even an empty glass.
He looks down, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sheathe of papers. Unfolding it, he places them on the bar.
Printouts. Articles. Stories about the two suicide cases he’d told her about earlier in the day.
He’s not wallowing, he’s working. Oh, thank God.
Ronnie read along with him, making a mental note to get copies of them for further perusal later. Someone must have said something, because Mark looks up, turns his head. A young man—cute, a little glassy-eyed and tipsy—is smiling from a few seats away. He says something, lifts his glass. Daniels nods. Then he reaches down and folds up the papers again, putting them away.
Were you the stranger who bought him the drink?
The guy looked innocent enough, and she’d certainly never seen him before, but she wasn’t about to rule anybody out.
After another couple of minutes of sitting there watching the people around him get more drunk, Daniels glances at his watch. 1:25 a.m. She knows he will be leaving in about five minutes.
He rises from his stool. Her perspective shifts a little, goes higher, and then they’re moving. It is the strangest sensation to be moving forward through a crowded room while still having her feet planted firmly beneath her. One thing she notices—he doesn’t seem unsteady. His vision is clear, his steps certain. He doesn’t seem at all intoxicated and certainly isn’t stoned.
Daniels walks toward the back of the bar—smiling faces offer greetings or hand-waves; he is known here. Liked.
He’s heading for the men’s room. She doesn’t speed through the scene, or close her eyes. Things like privacy or embarrassment have no place in this exercise. This is her partner and every move he makes, every person he sees, could be important.
When he goes back to the bar, there is a full beer sitting on it, right in front of where he’d been sitting. Ronnie sucks in a breath. Somewhere, in another universe, Sykes whispers, “Bingo,” but she ignores him.
Don’t drink it. Please don’t.
He speaks to the bartender, who shrugs in disinterest. Daniels looks around the place, doesn’t make eye contact with anyone. Then he breaks the rule every teenage girl learns before going to her first party: Don’t trust an unattended drink.
He picks up the mug. Sips. Gulps, really. But not the entire glass. He downs perhaps a third of it, then lowers it back to the bar. He has another brief conversation with the bartender. Then he looks down as he reaches into his pocket. Ronnie sees a corner of something plastic—a small package? An evidence baggie perhaps? But he shoves it back down and pulls out some cash instead. He drops it on the bar and walks out.
When he hits the street, she begins to notice the change in his vision. Everything is the slightest bit blurry around the edges. The outdoor scene looks a little off-kilter, like he’s got his head tilted. And he wobbles a bit, reaching out a hand to touch the exterior wall of the building as he begins to walk away from the bar.
The drug is kicking in. She couldn’t even imagine how much Pure V must have been in that glass for a third of it to have hit him so hard. Whoever the attacker was, he’d probably gotten lucky that Daniels had not consumed more, and that he’d left when he did. If he’d downed that whole glass, he would have ended up passed out on the floor.
That interested her and she made another mental note. This killer obviously wasn’t very good about gauging dosage. So maybe this drugging attempt was his first time. She didn’t wonder why he’d done it—Daniels was no petite woman like Leanne Carr, or a skinny, young father like Brian Underwood, or a tired, middle-aged accountant like Girardo. Taking him head-on would have been stupid and the perp obviously knew that.
When she realized Mark had stopped walking and was turning to look at a ramshackle, abandoned building, she shook her head, reminding herself to focus. Something had drawn his attention. A noise? A cry for help? She remembered the trick her attacker had played on her, that sound in the darkness that had drawn her into his trap. Had her partner succumbed to the same kind of lure…did this mean he was, indeed, attacked by the same person?
Daniels goes in. The ro
om is even darker—filthy, shadowed, desolate. It is like being in another world, the lights and people of the bar a distant memory.
Ronnie’s pulse pounded and her tension rose. She knew what was coming. Knew it was about to happen.
It does. Daniels trips and she sees with him that someone is behind him. Before his gaze even travels up, Ronnie recognizes the scuffed, black shoes.
They were worn by the same man who’d killed Leanne Carr.
“Oh, God,” she breathes, hardly even aware she’d spoken.
Daniels comes up fighting and swings around. In a normal state of mind, he would be more than match for the coward dressed all in black, but he’s been weakened.
She wants to cheer when he kicks the stun gun out of the killer’s hand, but begins to shiver when Daniels bends over as if he’s about to fall.
He’s reaching for his ankle. His backup piece. Do it! Go for it!
She feels like she is watching an action flick, and the hero is about to turn things around and win the day in the final reel. But she knows how this movie ends and tears form as the two men face each other, weapons drawn, and exchange shots.
Daniels misses his; the O.E.P. device captured the tiniest splintering of wood as the bullet exploded through a flimsy window covering just over the killer’s right shoulder.
His opponent doesn’t miss.
Ronnie is suddenly flying through the air, backward, landing hard on her back and looking up at the ceiling. She feels no differently, and yet pain explodes deep within her as she imagines what her partner is feeling.
Oh, God, oh, God, please let it be over.
But it can’t be over yet. She can’t stop now, even though she knows there is worse to come. Not now when she’s so close.
Her dear friend rolls onto his side. He’s…he’s bringing his left hand up, staring at it intently. So steadily. She doesn’t think he’s incoherent, as his movements seem deliberate. She becomes more sure of it when his fingers begin to move, jerkily, but intentionally.
It takes her a second to process, but when she does, when the truth hits her, she almost staggers off the mat.
“Oh, Jesus,” she whispers. Tears fill her eyes as she watches Mark form the letters R-O-N with his fingers.
A message. He sent her a final message. In what might have been his last coherent minute on this earth, her partner was reaching out to her one last time.
She blinked away her tears, desperate to understand what he was trying to tell her.
His hands spasm, his fingers jerk. While she knew he wasn’t there, that this wasn’t happening right now, she couldn’t help but lift her own hand. She reached out to him, wanting to clasp those fingers and tell him he didn’t have to try anymore, that he’d be all right and she would take it from here.
He forms a fist, clenches it, and his pinky pops straight up.
“Is that…”
“Sign language,” she snapped at Sykes. “Write down the letters. The first three were RON. That’s an I.”
The hand shakes, the pinky drops. The fist unclenches.
His fingers straighten. Then the thumb drops. He shifts his hand to reveal a perfect L.
Ronnie barked out the letter, focused only on catching each nuance of the message, not on trying to put them together yet.
He holds that for a few beats.
“Come on, you can do it,” she whispered.
The fingers fall. His hand is flat on the floor now, as if he doesn’t have the strength to keep it up. Then, with a sudden surge of motion, he lifts his arm again, makes a fist, and deliberately jabs his middle and index finger straight out.
“A V!” she called.
Daniels stares at his hand. And stares.
Suddenly there’s a flash of light on something reflective. The very next image is splattered red. Blood, spurting, gushing, exploding from his open wrist.
“Oh, Jesus, Mark!” she cried, knowing exactly what had happened.
He beholds his brutalized arm, sees his hand is gone, then everything goes black.
Chapter 18
Jeremy stopped watching before the screen even went black.
Seeing what had happened to Mark Daniels on a twenty-inch monitor was one thing. He couldn’t imagine being an actual part of the visual memories. Drs. Tate and Cavanaugh might have thought they were inventing something magnificent for humanity, but as far as he was concerned, their little magic box was a torture chamber. Seeing through the misty shadows of the projection when Ronnie’s hand went up, as if she could clasp her partner’s, he’d wanted to smash the damn projector so it couldn’t wound her any more.
Instead, he’d pushed back from his workstation and gone to her side, knowing it was almost over, knowing she would need him when it ended.
The very second the images went black, he grabbed her and pulled her off the mat, holding her in his arms as she groaned and flailed in his arms.
“It’s okay, Ronnie. It’s me, it’s Sykes. You’re fine, you’re back.”
She stopped struggling and sagged against him. He felt the heaves in her chest as she gasped for breath and tried to bring herself back under control. He could do nothing but offer her silent support, stroking her back, whispering words of comfort into her hair. He knew nothing would ever erase the mental images she’d just willingly experienced, but he wanted to at least make sure she knew she wasn’t alone.
After a long minute, she began to pull away. He let her go, taking a small step back, but keeping one hand on her arm, wanting to maintain human contact whether she wanted it or not.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“I don’t see how you could be.”
She fell silent again, not trying to pretend all was well. Another minute ticked by. At last she said, “Okay. Not fine. But I’m better.”
That was as much as he could hope for right now.
“Did you take notes?”
Yeah, he’d taken notes. He’d written down every letter. But oh, God, did he not want to tell her what they were or what he suspected they meant. “Yes.”
She snagged her bottom lip between her teeth and raised her damp, anguished eyes. “He was talking to me at the end. Sending me a message.”
Oh, he most definitely had been.
“I know,” he told her. He didn’t elaborate, hoping she would change the subject, talk about the people in the bar, the papers Daniels had studied, the drink he’d so rashly consumed. Anything except the meaning of those last, desperate words.
She pulled away from him, walking over to his work station, grabbing the pad of paper he’d been scribbling on. Hell.
“Ron,” she said, reading the first line. “I got that much. Jesus, how did he have the presence of mind to do that, to spell out my name, knowing I’d see this?”
“I guess he had something pretty important to say,” he replied, his tone subdued, sad.
“So what was it?” she said, a puzzled frown on her weary face. “I, L, and V, those were the letters I called out?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
“It looked like there were some others he was trying to make in there, but I honestly couldn’t tell what they were. Sometimes his hand just seemed to be clenched in a fist, others his fingers just sagged.”
He kept his response low, gentle, waiting for her to stumble about the realization he had already reached. “I noticed.”
She raked a hand through her short hair, sending it up into wild spikes. “I don’t understand,” she snapped, studying the page. “I can’t think of a single word that has the letters ‘LV’ right in a row.”
She was getting it now.
Jeremy stepped over, putting a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.
“What?” she asked, wary, a little defensive. “What aren’t you saying?”
“Think about it, Veronica.”
Her eyes narrowed as she thought, but no light bulb of realization changed her expression.
“Start from the beginning. ‘Ron, I…”
>
“L something v?”
Her mouth fell open in shock, her eyes growing saucer-sized as the possibility struck her.
“No. No way.”
“You know how he felt—feels about you.”
She spun away from him. “That’s bullshit.”
“He’s in love with you, it’s written all over his face every time he looks at you.”
“Shut up, Sykes,” she snarled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know him like I do. There is no way in hell you’re ever going to convince me that Mark Daniels spent the last, precious seconds of his life doing something as sappy as telling me he loves me.”
He knew she didn’t want to believe it. If he were in her position, he wouldn’t want to believe it either. The guilt was already pressing down on her, adding that burden might crush her completely. But he didn’t see any other explanations.
“I have to get out of here,” she whispered. She crossed her arms around her middle. “I want to go back to the hospital.”
“Okay. I’ll take you.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue—obviously, she didn’t even want to be in a car with him right now, feeling furious and betrayed by what he’d said, but she had no other choice.
“I’m taking his backups,” she said, challenging him to argue.
“That’s a good idea,” he murmured. “I’m sure there are moments from earlier in the day that could be important.”
She went to her work station and began backing up the files. “Yes, of course there are.”
Their ride back to the hospital was silent and icy cold. Sykes would be hard pressed to admit that he and Ronnie had spent the previous night together; right now, she looked like she wanted to slap him across the face.
Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) Page 29
