Katrina’s eyes flashed when she saw her daughter.
Alexis stood atop a protruding square balcony lined with flowers. The balcony was a true top level, and through the brilliant blue sky Alexis was exposed and vulnerable. Her arm was bleeding heavily from two sources: one at the shoulder, the other, the inner crook of her elbow. And there was also something else wrong with her, something that only Katrina could see. Her daughter was not well.
Katrina had always known instinctively when one of her children was falling ill. She knew even before they knew. It was in the color of their skin, the glint in their eyes, even the smell of their breath. When Christopher had died, the ability to detect illness in Alexis had intensified within Katrina.
Her need to reach Lexi was suddenly the strongest she had ever felt in her life. But then she saw a shadow loom over her daughter.
The Doctor grabbed Alexis again from behind, his arm over her neck, his gun again pressed firmly into her back. She jumped and a shriek escaped her lips.
Beside Katrina, McMullan shouted, “You!” And Katrina realized that he recognized Lexi’s kidnapper. Katrina did not.
McMullan raised his pistol, but then hesitated. As if reading his thoughts, Katrina shouted, “No! You’ll hit her!”
The Doctor had no such concerns. He aimed his pistol toward Katrina and a shot rang out. And backward she fell, crashing to the floor behind the waist-high stucco wall. I’m dead.
The only pain she could feel was in the back of her head where it had hit the concrete floor, but the world was swimming, the carnival of Horton Plaza around her a backdrop for the confusion that threatened to drown away her consciousness. But then slowly, her vision stabilized and she came to realize that it was not the gunshot that had knocked her down. It was the two hundred pound Navy Corpsman on top of her. Tom.
Katrina struggled to speak.
Her ex-husband was faster. “Are you hit?” he demanded, rolling off of Katrina to examine her horizontal body.
Katrina looked over Tom’s shoulder for Sean McMullan. He was gone. In his place, a portly, unfortunate tourist lay on the concrete a few feet away, each puff of his chest spewing a geyser of brilliant red like the blowhole of a whale harpooned through the lung. Mall patrons scattered, screaming.
Tom poked his head up to assess the balcony where Alexis and the Doctor had been standing, and then immediately dropped back down as a second bullet whizzed past and crashed into the glass window of the store behind them.
Tom reached into his waistband and withdrew a pistol—the same pistol over which he and Katrina had fought constantly while they were married. Because Katrina was afraid for the children.
Together, the former couple raced along the walkway, alternately popping up to catch a glimpse of Alexis and then dropping back down to avoid the Doctor’s bullets. But the Doctor held Lexi close, and Tom still had no shot.
Directly across from the balcony on which her daughter was held, Katrina dropped down behind the wall beside a bench.
Tom fell in beside her. “I can’t get a shot,” he said. “I might hit her.”
“I’ll get you one,” Katrina said. “When you get it, take it.”
Before Tom could ask where she was going, Katrina jumped back up and began running across the walkway. This time, she was not ducking under the gunfire. As if on cue, the Doctor fired two shots. Remarkably, neither connected. But he did not let go of Alexis.
Katrina caught her daughter’s eye and stopped running. Defiantly, she stood still in front of the Doctor, no more than twenty feet away as the crow flies, a moat of confusion separating them. “Come on, you bastard!” Katrina held her arms out beside her, surrendering, inviting her own death.
The Doctor pulled Alexis slightly off to one side and slowly took aim on Katrina. And as he did, a thin popping noise came from below. A small chunk at the back of the Doctor’s head burst outward, and a thin, red river began pouring from his right eye.
Alexis screamed and dropped down out of Katrina’s sight. The Doctor’s intact left eye reflected bewilderment. His head tilted sideways like that of a dog trying to pick up a distant, high-pitched sound. Then his body followed, and gravity dragged him down.
The Doctor flipped forward over the balcony, that absurd, quizzical look still on his face. Three floors below, or what might have been four in the numerically devoid architecture of Horton Plaza, he smashed through a classic San Diego gaslamp before coming to a rest on a staircase.
Katrina turned backward to behold Tom, whose eyes moved from her to the man on the stairs. Tom shrugged. In answer to a question she had not yet posed, Tom shouted, “It wasn’t me! I didn’t shoot him!” Tom trotted over to join Katrina. Together, they scanned the crowd alongside and below them. And then they saw Sean McMullan, at ground level, walking slowly toward the Doctor’s body and holstering his pistol.
“Holy shit,” Tom said. He cast his eyes at the impossible angle and distance between McMullan and the balcony, on which the FBI agent had somehow managed to put a bullet into the Doctor’s eye while avoiding his daughter. Tom looked toward Katrina, and the respect on his face was unmistakable.
A frustrating five minutes later, Katrina and Tom finally made it to their daughter.
Alexis was sitting on the concrete of the balcony where the Doctor had lost his eye, her body slumped over, her mother’s maroon suit filthy and torn. Her breathing was shallow and labored, her face pale. Katrina raised a hand to Alexis’ forehead, while Tom examined the wounds on her arm.
“He stuck me with a needle,” Alexis said quietly.
Katrina and Tom exchanged a look.
“When?” Katrina demanded. “How long ago?”
“Maybe an hour?” Lexi guessed.
As they processed the information, McMullan came running toward them, panting. Katrina was amazed that he had found them so quickly.
“Nice shot,” Tom said.
“Hurry,” McMullan panted, leaning forward momentarily to catch a breath. “He’s still alive.”
10:58 A.M. PST
Behind a one-way mirror in a small room at San Quentin, a young inmate sat fidgeting in his chair. He was in way over his head. All this stuff with the cops, the FBI, and a bunch of lawyers babbling legal bullshit at him, and nobody would tell him anything about what was going on. But two things had been promised. If he told the truth, his own sentence would be reduced. And they’d keep him away from the guy he ratted on.
Several months earlier, the young prisoner had been serving kitchen duty. All he had to do was ration out a bunch of dinners for one of the death row wings. Some Mexican had paid him to take over the job for one night. And he wasn’t about to argue about it or ask why. He took the money and went back to his cell.
Now, months later, he was supposed to point out the Mexican. He wasn’t sure if he’d get the right one. It was a long time ago, and he hadn’t been paying much attention. He didn’t know what would happen if he picked the wrong guy. Maybe they already knew who the right guy was, and this was a test. Maybe his sentence would be even longer if he gave the wrong answer.
When eight dark-skinned and heavily tattooed men were lined up in front of him, he sighed with relief. Seven of them were men he had never spoken to before. He was sure.
“Number three,” he said quickly.
“Are you sure?” the guard asked. “Take your time.”
“I’m sure. It’s number three. Can I go now?”
In a temporary holding cell within the same building sat the blind, disfigured twin brother of the man who had just been identified. Chuck Morales was quietly tearing his shirt into thin strips and tying them together.
11:00 A.M. PST
Katrina felt a wave of physical revulsion when she reached her daughter’s would-be killer.
The Doctor looked peaceful as he lay on his back, a halo of shattered white glass surrounding him from the gaslamp he had fallen through. His body rested on the staircase, his head elevated on a higher stair, his legs spil
ling downward and jutting out at sickening angles. It was obvious that the legs had taken the brunt of his fall.
To Katrina’s surprise, his one remaining eye was alert. When she reached him, he even smiled—a freakish smile that only graced half of his face, the other half paralyzed by the bullet that had passed through his brain.
“Who are you?” Katrina demanded.
“That’s Guofu Wong,” McMullan said quietly from beside her. “He’s the scientist who wanted to fund your research from the very beginning. He’s also the head of epidemiology from the CDC.”
Katrina tore her hypnotized stare away from the man on the ground and looked at McMullan. Why? It was incomprehensible.
She stepped over the man on the stairs, straddling him, and leaned in, inches from his face. Her voice was trembling. “Who gave you the Death Row strain of anthrax?” she demanded.
The life in Guofu Wong’s eye was fading, but his grotesque half-smile persisted. With considerable effort, he whispered, “You did, Dr. Stone. It was your activator.” And then the light in his one remaining eye burned out.
11:02 A.M. PST
The four San Quentin guards made quick work of tossing the cell of Oscar Morales—its contents were sparse. For the most part, the cell was devoid of contraband. Oscar’s cellmate was removed for the event, and Oscar himself stood by, handcuffed and shackled.
The guards diligently checked the usual hiding places—under the inner rim of the toilet, within small cracks in the concrete floor, gaps in the walls. But it was a small slit in Oscar’s mattress that revealed what they were looking for. A wad of cash amounting to almost sixteen thousand dollars. The final piece of evidence that would surely suffice in a reasonable court of law. Even without the testimony of his accomplice.
But the police and the FBI hoped to obtain that as well. Roger Gilman was already on his way to San Diego to try.
Money in hand, a lanky, pale guard approached the prisoner and waved the wad toward him. His accent was pure back-country Mississippi. “This worth it for ya, spic?” he asked. “Sixteen grand an’ a woman who looks like first kin to a yak?”
“I can turn sixteen grand into six million, bitch,” Oscar retorted.
The guard laughed. “Not now, ya can’t. You’re gettin’ the needle, boy.”
In the private holding cell where he had been detained for the last two hours, Chuck Morales finished his handiwork. Guided only by feel, he stood on his chair to grope along the ceiling, periodically stepping down to reposition his chair around the room, until he found an exposed rafter. He tested its strength with a half pull-up. Satisfied, he groped around again until he relocated the table on which he had laid the long, thin, knotted strand that had previously been his own shirt.
Quickly, Chuck tied one end of the make-shift rope to the rafter and the other to his own neck, and kicked the chair out from under himself. The shirt ripped in two from the weight of the thick man, but not before snapping his neck. And the remainder of Chuck Morales’ miserable life was unceremoniously extinguished.
11:04 A.M. PST
When Katrina finally looked up from the dead man before her, she slowly realized that she was no longer alone with McMullan and the remnants of a family she had known in a former life. Until now, she had failed to notice the entourage of news anchors and cameramen gradually encircling them like a school of sharks. She looked helplessly toward McMullan.
“Don’t say a word,” he said. And then, to the press, “We have nothing to say at this time. Step aside or you’re interfering with an official FBI investigation.” McMullan flashed his badge and took Katrina’s hand to lead her toward a nearby exit sign. Numb, Katrina remained quiet, grateful that he had taken control.
“This way,” Tom corrected, and motioned toward another exit sign. “I’m driving.”
Only then did Katrina realize that their mode of transportation—McMullan’s sedan—was still parked at the convention center. She fell into step behind Tom. Alexis was still in Tom’s arms. The reporters followed like stalking predators.
Tom laid his daughter gingerly into the passenger seat of his Jeep, tipping the seat back to grant as much comfort for his daughter as he could. The teenager was looking increasingly ill.
Katrina and McMullan leaped into the Jeep behind Tom and Alexis.
“Hang on,” Tom said as he started the Jeep’s engine. Without further warning, he tore rapidly out of the parking space and began the downward spiral to exit the parking structure of Horton Plaza. The reporters who had escorted them to the Jeep were now meeting up with their respective vans, which waited like vultures at the 4th Avenue entrance to the structure. Tom did not seem concerned.
Pulling out of the parking structure, Tom surprised all of them by making a left onto 4th Avenue—the wrong way up a busy one-way street. Horns blaring, two oncoming cars parted to avoid crashing into the speeding Jeep, and Tom hit the gas hard to pass between them, then jerked the Jeep to the left to avoid a third car.
Several news vans were left behind, but two remained glued in caravan to his rear bumper, apparently trusting that if an accident occurred the Jeep would take the brunt of it. An even juicier scoop.
McMullan looked over to Katrina with one eyebrow raised. Looking surprisingly calm, she shrugged. “We used to fight about his driving all the time.”
Tom jerked the Jeep to the right and narrowly missed one more car before crashing through a small barrier—the barrier designed to prevent traffic from entering C Street off of 4th Avenue. That stretch of C Street was closed off to automobiles—it was trafficked only by the Trolley, San Diego’s public transit rail.
As Tom’s Jeep straddled the set of Trolley tracks on the right side of the street, the driver of the news van immediately on his tail evidently lost his nerve. The van swerved away and came to a halt, still facing the wrong direction on 4th Avenue. As Tom sped down the Trolley tracks, Katrina turned around to see the defeated news van making a three-point turn in an effort to find the correct flow of traffic. But the other van surged forward and assumed the alpha position behind the Jeep.
“Watch out!” McMullan yelled.
Immediately in front of them, an Orange Line Trolley was halted at the stop on the corner of 5th Avenue and C Street. Several cars long, the Trolley blocked the rail on the right side of the street, but it was the pedestrians who were in danger. Dozens of men, women, and children on both sides of the Trolley were crossing over the tracks to enter the waiting train. None of them seemed aware of the speeding Jeep bearing down on them.
Tom laid on his horn and swerved to the left to head down the opposing set of tracks. Startled pedestrians scurried out of the way. And as the Jeep cleared the rear car of the parked Trolley, the characteristic triangle of lights of another oncoming train came into view.
“Jesus Christ!” Tom yelled. “These things only come every fifteen minutes!” But as he said it, his foot was already pressed to the floor, a deft right hand slamming the Jeep into a lower gear for a burst of speed.
The screech of metal upon metal was hair-raising as the Trolley driver attempted to stop the train from ramming the Jeep speeding directly head-on toward it. A man on the northwest corner of 5th Avenue and C Street dove to the side as the Jeep cut over the sidewalk to turn left, heading northbound on 5th Avenue. A loud clank marked the collision of the train with the overhanging rear bumper of the Jeep, and the bumper was pulled clean off.
The Trolley came to a stop just inches from a halted news van, wide-eyed reporters staring up at the driver of the train. Tom’s Jeep jetted up 5th Avenue, finally in accord with the flow of traffic, and finally clear of the press.
Tom weaved in and out of traffic to pass the cars heading northbound on Fifth Avenue, his three passengers silent. Finally, Katrina spoke. “Where are you going?”
“Where do you think? The hospital,” he said grimly. “We’ve gotta get Lexi checked out, now.”
“No,” Katrina said and both Tom and McMullan swiveled in their s
eats to look at her. “Not the hospital.” Katrina looked toward Tom. “Trust me. We have to get her to my lab first.”
Tom visibly flinched, but made the necessary changes in direction to get to San Diego State University.
“How do you feel, Lexi?” Katrina asked then. Her voice was clinical but concerned.
“Like ass,” the girl answered quietly. A moment later, Alexis added, “I saw him before.”
“Who?” McMullan asked.
“The guy who kidnapped me. He was getting a drink of water.”
McMullan and Katrina looked at each other and Katrina slapped a hand over her mouth in shock. McMullan began fidgeting with the pockets of his pants.
“Where?” Katrina demanded. “Inside the convention? How did you even get in? You would have needed a badge.”
Alexis shook her head. “It wasn’t inside the convention where I saw him. It was outside.”
McMullan spoke up. “I don’t know what you mean. I was inside the convention and I saw all the water they had for it. I actually collected some bottles”—this part was directed at Katrina—“but I guess I’ve dropped them. They’re gone now.” He paused, an expression of concern clouding his face. “Anyway, I thought all the water for the scientists was inside.”
“Not for the scientists,” Lexi said quietly. Her breathing was shallow and labored. “We had a bunch of carboys set up. The water was for the protestors. The only people who drank it were protestors… except for a few scientists who stopped by to ask us about our cause.”
From his seat in the auditorium, recent Nobel laureate Jeffrey Wilson stood up in the middle of watching a presentation. The speaker droned on, but Jeff had lost interest, the growing sensations of fever and nausea distracting him. As quickly and quietly as possible, Jeff gathered his belongings and exited the lecture.
The Death Row Complex (The Katrina Stone Novels Book 2) Page 25
