Speaking back as they walked, Zeller said, “Yeah. I had to know what you were up to. And then Ginny was involved, and that other woman-Lang-and I realized we had problems.”
“Alverez?”
“An out-of-towner. A guy hired to break my knees-yours too by now. Convince us to shut up.” He led through some shrubs that tore at Dart’s clothing, and then along the river’s edge again. “I’ve been avoiding him for months. But with you in the picture, I imagine they’ll bring in more help.” He said in a troubled voice, “I heard a rumor a shooter’s been hired.”
“That’s hardly breaking knees.”
“The difference between a spot fire and a range fire is getting an early jump.”
“Hired by whom? Proctor?” Dart asked.
“One thing I’ll say about you, Ivy-you do your homework.”
They walked in silence past the glaring lights of the power plant until they reached Charter Oak Bridge. They climbed the same steps where Dart had seen Zeller standing, and in minutes were up on the bridge.
“My car’s back in the south end,” Dart reminded wistfully.
“He’ll watch it after he realizes we lost him. Stay away. Same with your apartment. Same with Jennings Road. He’ll look for you there. In his eyes you’ve hooked up with me, Ivy. You’re fucked. They have a hell of a lot to protect. They’ve been trying for me for months. Even if you hadn’t stirred the nest by going to Roxin, you’d be on their list now anyway.”
“You know about my visit?” Dart asked, astonished.
“Ivy, I know fucking everything. How quickly we forget.”
“But they need me,” Dart protested. “They need me to bring you in for the murders. They should be helping me.”
“Don’t you get it, Ivy? Are you that fucking ignorant?”
“Maybe I am.”
Zeller stopped and turned around. Dart could barely make out the man’s face in the ambient light. As a car passed and Zeller was caught in the headlights, his eye sockets filled with black shadow. He said, “The Laterin doesn’t work.”
“Laterin?”
“The drug they’re testing,” he said condescendingly. “It doesn’t work.”
Dart ruminated on this. Zeller seemed to be making one last bid for innocence.
“Listen. How do you monitor whether or not a drug aimed at sex offenders works? This isn’t cancer-you don’t take an X ray,” he said condescendingly. “You keep the guy under surveillance-you monitor his every move.” Zeller spoke slowly. “Proctor Security had the contract to keep these creeps under surveillance. I was working for them. And what did I find out? A full half of these assholes repeatedly reoffend. They’re no better than they were.” His jaw seemed to move mechanically, inhumanly. Dart couldn’t catch his breath. “And Martinson, or someone over there, skewed the findings, and I, without meaning to, caught on. I got pissed off at Proctor one day and he made a boo-boo and hinted at something he shouldn’t have. I got a look at some files and turned up altered reports-Proctor was giving them the results they wanted. So what was my next step?” the teacher asked.
“Roxin’s files.”
“Exactly. Harder to break into at the time, but not impossible. Since then they’ve made the place into Fort Knox. I saw the fucking test results, Ivy-the real ones. The shit they’re testing-the Laterin-did nothing.”
“Oh, Christ,” Dart said.
“They caught me at it-nearly caught me, nearly physically had me-and I’ve been on the run ever since. Once I got started … you know … Alverez was brought in. The paperwork that I saw was shredded. Deleted. Whatever. Bet on it. I couldn’t produce a shard of evidence to support what I knew. So only the one choice,” he said, leaving it for Dart to draw his own conclusion. “What fucking choice was there?”
Dart felt in turmoil. He had deciphered the suicides as murders, concluded that the murders were the work of someone attempting to discredit Roxin-Walter Zeller. But what Zeller now told him turned all that on its head. Dart mumbled, thinking aloud. “If I had left them as suicides, if I had connected them to the clinical trial-”
“What the fuck do you think I’ve been trying to tell you with these phone calls-and risking seeing you in person! You were doing too good a job. You were pissing me off. All you had to do was connect the deaths to Roxin’s clinical trial.” He led Dart off Charter Oak, electing to leave a main thoroughfare. “The rest would have fallen into place.”
Zeller said, “She’s running out of money-Martinson. This Laterin thing has consumed her for ten years. She’s moved her resources around, thrown too much money at Laterin. She has probably cooked the books, but eventually that catches up to you. They’ve been in various stages of clinical trials on Laterin for years. She needs this to work. If it doesn’t, she’s shit-out-of-luck. This fails, she’s out of business. Everyone goes home-some of us happy.” Zeller checked over his shoulder. “Don’t look now,” he said.
Dart glanced back and saw a police patrol car approaching at a crawl.
Zeller told him, “The woods behind my old place. Two hours. Be there.” He cut down a side alley, leaving Dart alone, disappearing in a heartbeat. He had perfected the art of vanishing.
The patrol car pulled alongside, rolling at a walker’s speed. Dart, displaying his shield, walked over to the car. “What’s the problem here?”
“Your piece,” the uniformed driver said, adding, “sir,” and making a head motion in Dart’s direction. “Didn’t know who you was.”
Dart’s sweatshirt had ridden up over his holstered weapon, which was now in plain view.
“How about the other guy?”
“He’s with me,” Dart replied. He was, he thought.
“Couple of guys in clothes wet from the knees down, walking these particular streets on a cold night carrying hardware …,” the cop explained.
“I understand,” Dart said.
“You on duty, sir?” the cop asked, trying to impress now. “You want, I could give you a ride back to Jennings Road.”
“I could use a ride,” Dart said. “But not to Jennings Road.”
CHAPTER 41
They met in the dark alongside the droning hum of the electrical substation not far from Zeller’s former home; its mechanics were silhouetted against the sky like a giant schematic. It had snowed an inch, the first of the year, and the temperature had dropped into the twenties. Dart arrived first and was shivering by the time Zeller approached telegraphing the pain he was in without meaning to. Alverez had clearly wounded him back in the sewers.
Dart was for moving out from under the loud hum of the overhead wires. He strained toward the wooded darkness. “This shit makes too much noise,” Dart complained, glancing overhead. Stepping closer to Zeller, he pointed into the dark.
“You’re jumpy. Take it easy.” Zeller’s voice was tight. Dart worried for him.
“Are you all right?”
“Fucking peachy. Thanks.”
“What now?”
Zeller said, “It’s my job to sell you on leaving these as suicides. Let Martinson take the fall she deserves.” He paused. “I’d like to tell you that I’ll turn myself in, but I won’t. I’m not going to be locked up.”
“It’s too late,” Dart explained. “I’ve already convinced Teddy Bragg and Haite that they were staged suicides. The good news is that Haite wants nothing to do with it.”
“Well, there you go,” Zeller said. “Go along with him. Let them stand.”
“It won’t bring down Roxin. Martinson has dropped the names of the suicides from their list of participants-covered her bases.”
It was difficult to see in the dark, but Dart thought that he saw Zeller nod, as if he had expected something like this. His voice colored by pain and discouragement, Zeller said, “She pulls that off, and it’s all been for nothing.” He added, “Bitch.”
“I think you’re wrong about the files-the records of the clinical trials,” Dart said, taking control of where they should head. He couldn’t rememb
er contradicting Zeller so directly. “Being deleted,” he continued. “Shredded. Does that sound like Martinson? You say they’ve been in clinical trial for years. A person like her-a devoted scientist-is not going to destroy test data. Not for any reason.”
“Bullshit. It’s gone.”
“Hidden, maybe, but not gone.” He explained, “She needs that data. She created that data. It’s important to her. She won’t destroy it.”
“I disagree.”
“If I’m her, I destroy all physical evidence of those files, but only after I’ve hidden a copy away for my own use.”
“And what? You’re going to subpoena it?”
“We’ve got Ginny,” Dart reminded him.
“The computer? You think Martinson has it in a computer?” Zeller asked, amused by the absurdity.
“Where else? Password protected. Safe. Easy to get at-but impossible for anyone else to access.”
“Doubtful, Ivy. It’s gone. She shredded it.” He reminded, “I was told that those files were shredded.”
“Shredded, maybe, but not destroyed.”
“You’re not making sense,” Zeller said angrily. “She’s not going to give you those files, Ivy, believe me. You make noise about them and she’ll destroy them, sure as shit.”
“Maybe that’s what we want,” Dart said obliquely. “For her to erase them.”
“Make some fucking sense, would you?” Zeller reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a mashed cigar. He tore open the crinkled cellophane and broke the cigar in half where it was torn, stuffed it into his mouth, and bit a piece off the end, spitting it out. Zeller located a match, cupped it, lit the cigar. “I fucked this up, Ivy. What I’m trying to tell you”-he puffed on the cigar and blew out the flame-” is that it’s over.”
Dart saw a small red dot blink against the fence’s galvanized pipe. It seemed like nothing more than the lingering aftermath of Zeller’s lighting the match, but Dart’s sight remained fixed and the dot moved.
It moved quickly toward Zeller’s head, and Dart identified it for what it was: an electronic sighting device used by marksmen. The red dot touched the fence behind Zeller’s shoulder and then quickly found his neck.
Dart slapped out with his open hand, catching a stunned Zeller on the side of the face and knocking him to the side. Zeller stumbled, dropped the cigar, and fell.
To Dart, the bullet sounded like a thin, fast wind at ear height. Zeller didn’t hear it. He misunderstood, shoving the detective away and prepared to fight. When the red dot found Dart’s cheek, Zeller lurched forward and returned a life-saving shove. Dart went down into the wet snow as the second bullet splintered off a piece of a tree trunk behind them. The two immediately crawled toward the cover of the trees, their attention fixed on the other man, alert for the glowing red dot of the assassin. As the dot found Zeller’s back, Dart hissed, “Right!” and the sergeant rolled to his right. The ground, where he’d been crawling a fraction of a second before, exploded into mud and dirt. “Right,” Dart instructed again, and again the earth erupted under the power of the bullet. Zeller came to his knees and crawled fast, aware that the marksman was locked onto him, that all it required of the killer was to sweep the sight back and forth and await the signal. Dart moved left, intentionally widening the space between them, to give the marksman a larger dead space where the technology would fail to send a signal.
But it was Zeller the red dot hunted, and Dart experienced an increasing sense of dread. “Left … right …” He called out commands, attempting to steer him clear, knowing well that the laser at the end of a weapon was faster, far more agile than its human target.
A piece of Zeller’s leg exploded as a bullet hit from behind. Zeller splashed facedown in the muck.
“Roll!” Dart coughed out, emotion choking him. The dot wandered onto Zeller’s ribs and then froze there.
The sergeant rolled, but not before Dart heard the distinctive sound of another bullet taking a piece of him. Zeller groaned, came to his knees, and scrambled to his right in a zigzag pattern. The ground around him came alive with a series of small explosions. Dart raced ahead toward the trees, feeling helpless, looking on as Zeller’s efforts slowed.
Dart spun around, withdrew his weapon, and stretched into a prone position. He fired blindly into the dark. The shot echoed loudly. The red dot weaved across the open space toward him. Dart searched for the source of that light but saw nothing. He fired again. A wounded Zeller hurried on hands and knees into the woods, like a crippled dog.
Dart’s attention divided between the red dot as it raced across the snow toward him, and the seething darkness that hid the shooter. If he rolled to his left, he would meet the laser. To roll to his right would only disorient him. He held his ground, his heart pounding, his finger begging to squeeze off another round.
Zeller fired two consecutive shots, intentionally drawing the red dot away from Dart and back toward himself.
The shooter was good. He knew that his targets had turned to face him, that his next shot, although silenced, would produce a muzzle flash identifying his location. The flash would give either Dart or Zeller-or both-a target to aim at. By challenging him, Dart and Zeller forced him to reconsider spraying bullets at them. The laser wandered across the snow, the full attention of both cops fixed to it. It moved toward Zeller, stopped, and headed back toward Dart. Zeller scrambled backward, still facing in the direction of the shooter, but moving toward, and finally reaching, the woods. He pulled himself to a position partially blocked by a tree.
Dart lay prone, his weapon aimed in front of him, but his eyes on the lethal red dot sweeping the snow. It edged steadily closer: ten feet … five feet … three feet …
Zeller, also tracking its progress, fired yet another round and then quickly rolled away, attempting to escape having made himself a target with his own muzzle flash.
The dull red dot jerked wildly in Zeller’s direction. The sergeant fired again, buying time for Dart as he scrambled farther back into the woods. He lost sight of the small red dot, causing panic-his world had been reduced to this one small orb of red light; to misplace it could mean death.
Red light flashed in his left eye. Dart jerked his head away as if from a burning match. The tree trunk that he was pressed against exploded, and wooden shrapnel splintered his face, clouding his vision and temporarily blinding him. He knew then that he was a dead man-couldn’t see, couldn’t flee the all-seeing laser. He would be targeted and killed. He pressed himself flat to the ground, reducing his profile while frantically trying to clear his eyes of the debris.
Zeller, his eyesight adjusted to the darkness, saw Dart take a face full of bark and splinters. Zeller knew that the next sound he’d hear would be Dart’s last moment on earth.
No time for him to find a better position. It had to be now.
Like shooting fish in a barrel, using a scope like that. For himself, Zeller realized, it was over: He had tried to bring down Roxin and he had failed. The Davids didn’t always win out over the Goliaths-justice was something strived for, but not always won; as a cop, he had lived this truth for over twenty years. He pushed his back against the tree, pulled his knees into his chest, braced his arm, raised his weapon, and he fired. I will not be locked up, he thought. The report echoed through the woods, and the shot drew the respect of the shooter, who abandoned the electronic search in Dart’s direction, and he turned the laser onto Zeller.
Zeller fired again, thinking, Show me that muzzle flash …
The red dot crept across the snow, up a tree, and found Zeller’s knee. The sergeant braced himself. Give me a target, he mentally challenged.
A yellow-white flash came from within the woods straight ahead.
The woods echoed with a volley of reports as Zeller squeezed off a succession of shots, intentionally creating a wide pattern. His knee blew apart. His shoulder exploded. He managed one final shot. Run like hell Dartelli, he thought to himself. Go with God.
Dart, pressed into t
he snow, cleared his eyes. Zeller had clearly emptied his magazine and had to be in the process of reloading, for the woods were absolutely silent. As his eyes cleared, he could discern the rigid symmetry of the black tree trunks rising from the white snow, and the surreal geometry of the power substation to his left. He lay perfectly still, waiting-expecting the red dot to find him.
He came to his knees and scrambled wildly through the snow, stealing his way more deeply into the trees. He awaited a signal from Zeller but knew that with the shooter still out there, the sergeant too would lie low. He relived the events of the past few minutes once again-the sound of Zeller unloading, the ensuing silence.
Zeller might have hit him, Dart realized.
He crept forward, his eyes better now. He could make out the smooth white bark of the trees, the glowing ceiling of low clouds bouncing back the city light, the unbroken clarity of the snow, as sheer and smooth as a silk scarf.
Minutes passed, and still nothing. Dart wormed through the trees, making his way back toward the small clearing by the substation where he had last seen Zeller. He moved carefully, stopping every few feet, his body protected by a tree, eyes alert for the laser’s searching red dot. He waited and listened, and then he moved on, cautiously. He couldn’t be sure of time, but it seemed that five or ten minutes passed. And still nothing. No human sounds. No movement. Fear gripped him.
The hum of the power station grew louder. Again he paused, assessing the area, ever alert for the sharpshooter’s laser. The closer he came to the clearing, the more of a target he presented. At the start, Zeller had been in this approximate area. He looked for him left, and then right. He scanned the snow for tracks. The silence was frightening. It occurred to him that Zeller, believing he had hit the shooter, might have gone after him to confirm the kill. He realized that his best move might have been to remain relatively close to where he had been injured in case Zeller was himself now seeking out Dart, the two of them going around in circles. He moved forward, stopped, and waited. Nothing. Systematically, he moved forward again.
Chain of Evidence Page 29
