He passed a Winnebago with difficulty and went over to the outside lane. The pickup’s engine had been giving him trouble for months. Chances were it would never get him to Washington, D.C., and then what would he do? Sit on the grass and weep, probably.
That had been the starting point of his disagreement with his wife. Melissa had come in tired from the yard and found him at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. She’d immediately told him how pathetic that was. Why couldn’t he be a man and get on with his work? Lord knows there was enough of it to do now there were only the two of them. Richard hadn’t replied. Then she’d said that he should stop moping over the twins’ decision to leave home. Randy and Gwen were twenty-one years old. They were grown-ups, entitled to make their own decisions about their future.
“Yeah,” he’d said, finally raising his head. “But we’re entitled to know where they’ve gone, Mel. It’s nearly three months now. How can you be sure they’re okay? I mean, I come down at six in the morning and find them already gone, no note, no explanation-then a phone call in the evening, saying there’s something they gotta do and not to expect them back soon. Since then, nothing. For God’s sake, they could have been kidnapped.”
“And the kidnappers held guns to their heads when they made the call? The state police told you what they thought about that idea. Anyway, where’s the ransom note?” She gave a bitter laugh. “Not that we’re gonna be able to pay. Get over it, Richard. They’re not kids anymore. You have to let them go.” His wife stomped into the utility room and started emptying the drier. “And, Richard?” she shouted. “If you don’t fix the lights in the cattle shed today, I’m gonna get Ned to do it.”
Melissa knew exactly how to get to him. She’d been screwing Ned Bartlett from the neighboring place on and off for ten years. He’d never had the balls to confront her about it, even though she hadn’t been subtle. Well, to hell with her. If she was more worried about the livestock than her own children, she couldn’t expect him to share his plan with her. He’d already put a bag full of clothes in the pickup. That was all he needed.
Fifty miles from home, Richard was still fixed in his resolve. The thing was, Melissa was right. Their beautiful kids were legally old enough to take charge of their own lives. That was why the cops couldn’t give a shit about their disappearance. Oh, sure, they’d added their names to some list, passed it to the FBI, but according to Sergeant Onions, thousands of new names showed up every week across the country. It was up to Randy and Gwen to get in touch and that was all there was to it. Unless Richard had any evidence to suggest a crime had been committed?
Well, no, he hadn’t-nothing that a policeman would understand, nothing concrete. But he knew something wasn’t right. The twins had been weird ever since they’d won that newspaper competition last winter. They were both at college-Randy doing agricultural engineering and Gwen learning how to do accounts-when they’d gotten the news. They’d entered some competition in one of the supermarket tabloids and they’d won third prize. Third prize had been a weekend at a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., with all expenses paid and a thousand dollars spending money to boot.
Richard tried to coax the pickup past an eighteen-wheeler and got honked at by an asshole in a Porsche. He went back into the slow lane and played it safe. So the kids flew off to the capital and had a great time, they said. Went to the White House, took in a concert, saw the Redskins get stomped all over. They were even spotted by a talent scout from some photo agency-apparently there was always demand for twins. But ever since then, they’d been different. They didn’t come home from college at the weekends like most of the local kids, but they wouldn’t say what kept them in town. They didn’t come home during vacations for more than a few days. Richard had gone down to surprise them once and found them both away. Their roommates didn’t know where they were, and Randy and Gwen wouldn’t say where they’d been when they eventually came home. At least they still seemed to be close; if anything, they were even more involved with each other’s thoughts and emotions. Neither of them seemed to have close friends.
Richard saw that he was low on gas. He didn’t have much cash and his credit cards were almost maxed out. The trip to D.C. would leave him with zero funds. He saw a sign for a service station and took the exit.
After filling up the tank, he went to pay. There was an array of newspapers on the way into the store. He immediately picked out the Star Reporter. Even surrounded by the other tabloids, it looked cheap and nasty, the paper off-white and the print faintly smudged. Today the front page had a photo of a shrouded body on a gurney. The headline screamed Satanic Singer’s Ears Skewered! He picked it up, not because he was interested in the story but because the Star Reporter was the paper that had paid for the twins’ trip to D.C. and provided an escort. He was going to find out exactly what had gone on during that long weekend last winter, even if he had to camp out on the editor’s doorstep.
Richard looked toward the pay phone. He told himself that he would hang up the moment Melissa started shouting, but he knew he wouldn’t be strong enough to keep that resolution. If only Randy and Gwen hadn’t gone. He used to be able to stand up to his wife when the twins were around. He turned away and went back to the pickup.
Six
I stepped into the control room, grabbed the two men by the ears and smashed their heads together. Then I pulled open the heavy door and went into the studio. The naked woman with the knife turned slowly towards me and I instantly saw that I was too late-the man was slumped in his bonds, a slick of blood over his chest. I shoved one of the camera stands aside and charged the killer, incensed by what she’d done and giving no thought to her gender. She raised her knife, but I pulled back my upper body and aimed a kick at her knee. She dropped with a scream. I stepped on the blade and got hold of her chin, forcing her head up.
“What is this place?” I demanded.
“Fuck you,” she gasped.
I gave another kick, keeping her head up. “Who are the assholes in uniform?”
She was panting, her eyes bulging. “Like…like I’m…gonna tell you.” She obviously knew I was a runaway. Her lips twisted into a mocking smile. “You’ve got…no chance.”
“Why did you kill him?” Up close, I could see that she’d slashed his throat.
“Ever…ever heard…of snuff movies?”
I lashed out at her with my boot, catching her on the other knee.
“Who’s in charge?”
She stared up at me sullenly, her lips tightly closed.
I knew I shouldn’t waste any more time. The temptation to turn the killer’s own knife on her was huge. I managed to get a grip and satisfied myself with tying her to the dead man and gagging her with a rag from the floor. As I reached the door, it struck me that I should have taken the knife, but I wasn’t keen on using the weapon that had deprived the defenseless man of his life. Then, as I heaved open the door, a loud and repetitive alarm began to sound.
The men in the control room were still comatose. They were wearing white T-shirts rather than uniform jackets. I looked around and saw a coat stand. Their jackets didn’t interest me, but their sidearms did. I slipped a semiautomatic pistol into my pocket and then put one of the berets on. Now, I hoped, I looked like the real thing.
I went back upstairs. Perfect. There were uniformed people running in both directions. I stood in the alcove, then took a deep breath and joined the crowd. No one seemed to notice. Heading down the corridor away from the ward I’d been in, I saw a stairway ahead that led upwards. I took it, hoping that I’d find some sign of an exit. So far, I hadn’t seen any directions I could understand.
I was in luck, at least to start with. I made it to the next level and realized I was in an entrance hall. The downside was that two assholes in gray were stationed at the heavy steel door marked Exit, and they were carrying assault rifles. It was only a matter of time before I was spotted. Without hesitating, I walked towards the door as confidently as I could. The alarm must ha
ve entailed some kind of lockdown because one of the guards took a step forward and leveled his weapon at me. If that was the way it had to be…
I smiled, then grabbed the rifle with both hands and rammed the butt into the guard’s abdomen. He crashed to his knees. I had control of the weapon now. Taking another step, I drove the butt into the other gorilla’s face. The back of his head thumped against the door and he fell down, unconscious. I looked for keys on their belts but found none. Then I saw a touch pad beyond the door frame. Jamming the muzzle of the rifle into the face of the first guard, who was now gasping for breath, I demanded the code.
“No fuckin’ way.”
So discipline was pretty strong in the gray ranks. I moved the rifle a few inches and fired a shot past his ear.
“Screw you, pal,” the man said.
I heard a clatter of boots on the stairway behind. I had a few seconds, at most. I pointed the rifle at the touch pad, then thought again and loosed off some rounds at the lock mechanism. One of the doors remained where it was, but the other swung back a few inches. I put my shoulder to it and was out. I heard shouts and then a rattle of shots hit the door that I’d just pushed shut again. The glass was obviously bulletproof. The ricochets would have peppered the guards I’d taken out; it seemed that the escape of patient L24 was being treated more seriously than the health of the people who staffed the place.
Breathing in cold air, I rapidly took in the scenery. A high razor-wire fence rose about thirty yards in front of me. Beyond it, tall pine trees covered a gentle slope beneath low, iron-gray clouds. I heard orders being yelled out somewhere to my right, so I headed left. Visibility wasn’t great, but that could be to my advantage. Getting over the fence wasn’t going to be easy, though. I looked back at the building. It was long and low, with very few windows. At one end there was a raised area-that may have been the room I awoke in.
Suddenly lights came on, lights set in the ground at regular intervals along the inside of the fence. So much for my advantage. A pair of rifle-toting men in the standard uniform came round the end of the block. One knelt down and sent a volley of shots in my direction. I hit the ground and heard bullets cut through the air above me.
“Over here!”
I looked to my right and saw a black man standing behind one of the fence posts. It wasn’t exactly giving him much cover, especially since he was a big guy. He was unshaven and wearing what looked like blue-and-white striped pajamas. When I crawled closer, I realized the flesh on his face was slack and he was much thinner than the loose clothes initially suggested.
“You ain’t one of them,” he said, squatting next to me.
“How can you tell?” I said, glancing at the uniform I was wearing.
“You’d already have shot my ass.” He handed me a lump of bread, then put his hands together. “Now get the hell outta here.”
I put one foot on his joined palms.
“I’m gonna give you as much of a lift as I can,” the man said. “There’s enough electricity in these wires to fry an elephant.”
“Oh, great,” I said, my heart pounding. Then another volley of shots flew past us. “Here, take this.” I held out the rifle to him.
“What am I gonna do with that, boy? Throw it over there.”
I did what he said.
“Ready?” he asked when both my hands were resting on the top of his head.
“When you are. And thanks.”
I felt my legs move down slightly, then I was arcing over the fence, my belly missing the vicious barbs by a whisker. I bent my knees and landed and rolled toward the rifle.
“Run!” the inmate yelled.
I did what I was told. The tree line must have been seventy yards away. My lungs were heaving and my legs burning as I made cover.
I stopped and looked back. The guards had caught up with the black man before he got back inside. One of them hit him in the face. Then the other took out his pistol and without hesitation shot him through the throat.
I gasped and saw red. I raised the rifle and loosed off several rounds. The guards both dropped, but I wasn’t sure if I’d hit them. The murdering pieces of shit. I almost ran back into the open to give myself a better shot. Then there was the roar of an engine and a gray pickup emerged with at least five men in the back, all of them carrying rifles. I had to go.
There was very little light under the dense branches of the pines. Although the forest floor was relatively clear of undergrowth, I couldn’t make out any paths. Voices rang out behind me, so I pressed on as fast as I could. At first my throat became clogged with phlegm, but as I got into a rhythm with my running, it loosened up. The muscles in my legs weren’t fully stretched yet, but I felt they could cope. I must have been a fit bastard in my previous life.
I didn’t stop to look round, not that the trees would have allowed much of a view, but I reckoned I was increasing the gap between me and my pursuers. That should have made me feel good, but it didn’t. The farther I went, the stronger became the feeling that I was leaving something important behind. No, more than that, something essential. I ran on autopilot as I racked my memory for what that could be. Nothing. I had no idea. I had very little memory. I could remember everything that had happened since I’d woken up in the comfortable bed, but things before that were locked securely away. All I was thinking about was the savagery I’d seen-the man tied to the post and slaughtered like an animal; the emaciated man summarily executed for helping me. What could have inspired such brutality?
Then I considered what I’d done. I’d knocked out the nurse, clubbed the doctor, smashed two men’s heads together, beaten the hell out of the naked man’s killer and laid into the two guards at the exit. And I’d shot at the black man’s killers, perhaps killing them. I wasn’t much better than the gray-uniformed scumbags. And now I was abandoning something vital back in that prison. What was it? And how had I come to be at the heavily guarded location? What had happened to me there?
All the time I was struggling to find answers to those questions, I was moving across ground that was gradually becoming steeper. The space between the tree trunks began to grow. Looking up, I saw that night was falling. That would make things much harder for the men who were after me. I’d run at several different angles, so I may already have lost them. But, as I came out of the forest and into tall grass, I realized I was the most lost of all. I didn’t even know which country I was in, never mind where the nearest town was. I stopped and listened for any encouraging sounds-no cars, no music, no people, hostile or not. I turned a full circle. There were no lights anywhere. I felt completely alone. For some reason, that didn’t frighten me, though I felt disoriented by the scale of the trees and the vast number of them all around. Either I had no imagination or I’d done this kind of thing before.
After checking behind me, I moved off again. I’d only been going for a few minutes when the moon, three-quarters full, appeared ahead of me. A jagged line of rock was caught in the white light, slopes without tree cover leading up to it. I was in the middle of a wide meadow. To my right were more trees and I headed for them. When I made the cover, a wave of relief washed over me. The pines weren’t as tall as the previous ones, but they were closer together. I had to push my way past the lower branches but kept going. My throat was parched and my stomach was rumbling, but I didn’t feel tired. I would get farther away from my pursuers and then settle down to eat the bread I’d been given by the doomed man.
Then I heard a sound that worried me. Despite the state of my memory, I had no difficulty in identifying the howl of a hunting dog. It wasn’t as far off as I’d have liked. Had that been why I’d lost the men behind me? Had they stopped to wait for the hound to join them?
It looked like it was going to be a long, hard night.
Seven
After twenty years in Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police, twelve on the homicide team, Detective Gerard Pinker had gotten used to corpses. That didn’t mean he found attending autopsies easy. His partner C
lement Simmons never complained. In fact, Pinker reckoned Clem even breathed through his nostrils during the procedures-too dedicated for his own good.
“I suppose you’ll be looking forward to this,” Pinker said in the elevator on the way down to the morgue. He straightened his tie and shot his cuffs. “What with being into voodoo and all that shit.”
The tall, heavily built black man beside him shook his head slowly. “I’m not into voodoo.” He ran an eye over his partner’s diminutive figure. “At least not in the way you’re into rich men’s suits, Versace.”
Pinker grinned and slotted a piece of gum between his thin lips. “Right, Clem. So I was just imagining the goat’s head and the little dolls you got in your den.”
“Not the doll with your name on it,” Simmons said as the doors opened. “Shit, man, you know my grandmother was from Haiti. I’m interested in my family’s culture, that’s all.”
Pinker stepped into the morgue and was immediately swamped by the smell of chemicals cut with flesh and blood. “Well, I’m glad my family hasn’t got that kind of culture.”
The big man followed him down the corridor. “Your family hasn’t got any culture, man. You’re nothing but West Virginia white trash.”
Pinker met the grin with a raised middle finger. They went through the swing doors and found the medical examiner looking at a clipboard. She was above medium height and he liked the way she was built-slim, but stacked in the right places.
“Gentlemen,” she said, raising her eyes briefly.
The detectives’ demeanor was suddenly much more formal.
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