Ashes, Ashes

by Charles Atkins

  ‘You asked about the aide,’ Hobbs said, knowing that Albert was holding back. ‘What about Saunders? Don’t you want to know how he died?’ And to himself, You fucking piece of scum!

  Albert smiled. ‘I’m assuming he was killed the way his wife killed the kids.’

  ‘How could you know that?’ Hobbs shot back.

  Albert shook his head and turned to Houssman, his tone contemptuous. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that. It doesn’t take a detective or a shrink to know what makes Richard tick.’

  ‘Correct,’ Houssman said. ‘It’s clear he kills with purpose and deliberation. He killed John J. Saunders for Jane. That’s why we’re here. What murder will Richard Glash attempt for you?’

  Albert took a deep, wheezing breath. ‘Such a good question. There are so many people I wouldn’t mind seeing dead. If looks could kill, you’d both be flat on the floor. If looks could kill,’ he said again, staring up at the corner of his room, ‘would anyone be left alive? I don’t think so.’

  Hobbs felt his frustration mount; every second that passed kept Barrett in terrible danger. He wanted to throttle Albert, to pin his head against the wall and make him hurt. ‘If he killed Saunders for Jane, then it seems likely he’ll start mailing anthrax with hugs and kisses from you.’

  Houssman eyed Hobbs and watched Albert for his reaction. The PhD microbiologist never took his eyes off the corner of the room. His lips pursed and he smacked them open and closed several times. ‘You are shooting in the dark, aren’t you, Detective? Now the question you need to answer for me before we go further is this: if I know something – and that’s a big if – and if I tell – another big if – what’s in it for me? Because if you’re right, and if I talk, seems likely I’ll be getting some anthrax of my own in the mail. Richard holds grudges.’

  ‘You want to go to Croton?’ Houssman asked.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I can make it happen. I can let the governor’s office know, in no uncertain terms, that it is the appropriate place for you.’

  ‘Well, Dr Houssman, I’m not so certain I still want to go there.’

  ‘What’s changed?’ George asked.

  ‘It’s not bad here …’ Albert said. ‘Lovely nurses and medication. It seems quite safe.’

  ‘Safe from what?’ George persisted.

  Albert smiled. ‘You are worried, aren’t you?’ He hesitated, seemingly undecided whether or not to say more. ‘You should be, but I’ll give you this much: Richard won’t be using anthrax.’

  ‘Why not?’ Hobbs asked.

  ‘It takes too long,’ Albert replied. ‘He’d need the equipment to aerosolize it, and quite frankly other than the fear factor; it wasn’t that effective, was it? Ten percent of those I’d intended to kill are still stinking up the face of this planet.’

  ‘As I recall,’ Houssman said, ‘anthrax was just your opus. Wasn’t that how you put it when you were arrested?’

  ‘Yes,’ Albert smiled, ‘you remembered.’

  ‘You had something else in store, but never told anyone.’

  Albert kept quiet. The grin had returned.

  ‘You find this funny?’ Hobbs asked.

  ‘Yes, very amusing. You don’t have a clue, either one of you – they’re all out there, like breadcrumbs. You just need to follow them before all the birds swoop down and carry them away.’

  ‘You told Glash what you’d planned after the anthrax,’ Houssman stated.

  ‘We played chess. He’d show me his drawings.’

  With a sickening realization Hobbs understood the sketches they’d seen. They were of Barrett, and others, dying from some horrible disease. His stomach knotted and his jaw clenched. He had to let Houssman handle this, because he was a heartbeat away from pummeling Albert.

  Houssman switched tactics. ‘He’ll steal your thunder. It will be his name, not yours, attached to whatever happens. The fame will be his.’

  ‘So be it,’ Albert said. ‘That’s one place where Richard and I differ: he wants to be famous; I just want certain people dead – that we share.’

  ‘What is he going to do?’ Houssman asked point-blank. ‘What is the murder he’ll commit for you?’

  ‘It’s not a murder,’ Albert said. ‘Think bigger. Think biblical.’

  ‘If you help us, we’ll see your transfer goes through,’ Houssman urged.

  ‘I don’t think I want it. Because if Richard succeeds,’ Albert mused, ‘I think I’ll be safer here.’

  ‘You’re telling us there’s nothing you want?’ Houssman asked, desperate.

  ‘Oh, there’s things I want … but you’re not the ones who’ll be giving them to me.’

  ‘This is bullshit!’ Hobbs shoved his face inches from Albert’s. ‘I think what we should do is put you back in the general population and spread the word that before you did the anthrax thing, you were arrested for diddling little boys. I think the gang on cell block C will give you quite the welcome.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Albert said, his eyes wide. ‘I wouldn’t last a day.’

  ‘Not my problem, and it would be easy for me to do,’ Hobbs bluffed. ‘After all, Glash took your attorney hostage.’

  ‘Carla Phelps?’ Albert asked, his eyes bugging out through his glasses. ‘Why would he do that? She wasn’t part of—’

  ‘Part of what, Clarence?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘But you did,’ Hobbs pushed, ‘and if you don’t spill it fast, I’ll get you into general pop. by the end of the day. Just think of the things they’re going to do to you. They won’t even care that you’re old and scrawny. Are you picturing it, Clarence? You know what they do to old men who play with little boys?’

  The gangly microbiologist put a finger to his glasses and stared back at Hobbs; his breath was fast; he wheezed. ‘You can’t do this to me. Please, don’t.’

  ‘Just answer the fucking questions,’ Hobbs said. ‘That’s all you have to do.’

  ‘I have rights,’ Albert stuttered, his resolve faltering. ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘You have no fucking rights!’ Hobbs shot back, in his face, his spittle landing on Albert’s glasses. ‘And they sure as hell won’t care about your rights as they’re shoving a dick down your throat and another up your ass. Unless they just decide to cut you up first. But in my experience, Clarence, they’ll do both.’

  ‘Stop it! Leave me alone!’ he said, his hands holding the sides of his head.

  ‘Give it up, Clarence!’ Hobbs spat back. ‘One call and you’re off this ward. I’ll make sure you get the cell mate you deserve.’

  ‘OK …’ Albert’s eyes darted around the cell, from Hobbs to Houssman to the corner. ‘Before I was arrested I ran a piece in The Times, it was dismissed as the “rantings of a madman”; everything’s in there.’

  ‘No riddles,’ Hobbs ordered, not caring that he was breaking every rule of interrogation. All he could focus on was Barrett.

  ‘I swear,’ Albert said, ‘it’s all in there.’

  ‘Of course,’ Houssman said, ‘it’s coded.’

  Albert nodded rapidly. He hazarded a look at Hobbs. ‘People are so stupid. It’s been there all the time just waiting for someone to come and dig it up.’

  ‘Dig what up?’ Hobbs demanded.

  Albert blinked and looked confused. He stared at Hobbs, who was still less than a hand’s width from his nose. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘You can’t do this! Guard! Guard!’

  Hobbs didn’t move as the burly nurse entered the room.

  ‘Make them leave,’ Albert pleaded. ‘Make them go away!’

  ‘Stay back,’ Hobbs warned the nurse. ‘Where should we dig?’ he persisted. ‘What is it you’ve buried?’

  Albert shrank back on the bed; he turned his head to the wall. ‘Make them leave. I don’t care what you do to me. You can’t threaten me. I have rights!’

  Hobbs was seconds from leaping on Albert. Houssman tapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll get nothi
ng else. Let’s take what we have.’

  ‘He’s not telling us everything,’ Hobbs snarled. ‘You’re going into general pop., Clarence. There’s no deal unless you tell us everything.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Albert shouted into the wall. ‘I don’t care. Do what you want! None of it matters.’ He sounded scared and uncertain, but then like a switch turned in his head he started to sing, ‘Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posy. Ashes, ashes, we’ll all fall down.’

  Hobbs was freaking as he and George retraced their steps through security and then back to the Crown Vic. His thoughts were racing and they kept flying back to Barrett and the huge question: Was she OK? He slammed the door and picked up the scanner. He looked at Houssman. ‘It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?’

  Houssman nodded as Hobbs tracked down his superior – Captain Felix Schmitt. He shared their interrogation of Albert as Schmitt kept up a running stream of invective. ‘Fuck, Hobbs. If that’s even half right we’ve got to call in the pricks at Homeland Security, ’cause now you’re talking goddamn weapons of mass destruction. Shoot me now. WMDs! Fuck! You think he’s serious?’

  ‘Hell yeah,’ Hobbs said, as a muscle spasmed under the scar tissue of his jaw. ‘But there’s more. Before Albert got arrested The Times ran his manifesto.’

  ‘I remember,’ Schmitt said. ‘They didn’t want to, but we thought it would draw him out, make him take risks.’

  ‘It kind of worked; problem is there was more to it than met the eye. He could have been just running off at the mouth, but I think he slipped up a bit. That manifesto is coded. Any chance you could get Geri Atwell to take a look at it?’ he said, referring to the department’s top cryptologist.

  ‘You got it. Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah, although it feels like way too many people got their hands in the soup. Who’s heading up the FBI?’

  ‘Tom Anderson,’ Schmitt said.

  ‘At least that’s decent.’

  ‘You want me to call him for you?’ Schmitt asked.

  ‘Naah, give me his number. I want to see what he has. You can make the call to Homeland Security.’

  ‘I figured … Hobbs?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘This Albert, you think he told Glash how to do the anthrax thing?’

  ‘I think something worse. He said Glash needs to dig something up. We might have some time. I just hope we get to him before …’

  ‘God,’ Schmitt said, ‘this is the last thing this city needs.’

  ‘What makes you think he’ll head for Manhattan?’ Hobbs asked, suddenly picturing his two little girls and his ex-wife out in Queens.

  ‘It’s his MO, right? He holds grudges; there’s a lot of people on his list living here.’

  ‘Right, let me know if you hear anything. I’ve got the scanner on, but it sounds like Glash is playing things for the press.’

  ‘Big time,’ Schmitt agreed. ‘He somehow got his hand on a stack of prepaid cell phones and is leaving them like homing beacons with his bodies.’

  ‘What about the getaway vehicle? They said it was left in Saunders’ garage?’

  ‘Yeah, it gets better. The VIN number was filed off. We’ll get an ID on it; it’s just going to take longer.’

  ‘He’s not working alone,’ Hobbs said.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Schmitt agreed. ‘Trouble is, like with your Albert, it could be anyone. Glash has been in four maximum-security facilities over the last twenty-plus years. He’s shared cells and cell blocks with thousands of inmates.’

  ‘What about visitors?’

  ‘We’ve pulled the logs.’

  ‘Letters?’

  ‘Seems most of those he threw away before his transfer – like he was cleaning house.’

  Hobbs then asked the question he’d been dreading. ‘How much blood was in the getaway vehicle?’

  ‘Not a lot. At this point we’re cautiously optimistic that he’s not killed the two remaining hostages … one of them – that doctor – is a friend of yours, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hobbs said.

  ‘That really sucks.’

  ‘You’ve no idea.’ Hobbs finished the call and hung up.

  Houssman looked at Hobbs. ‘At least they think she’s OK,’ he said.

  ‘For now.’ Hobbs stared out of the windshield at the tower-ringed prison. ‘Why does Barrett do shit like this?’

  ‘Which part of it?’ Houssman asked. ‘She’s complicated and I think what she’s been through in the past few months has hurt her very badly. She lost her husband, she very nearly saw her sister get killed. She was …’

  ‘Raped,’ Hobbs said. ‘You know she’s pregnant with that monster’s baby.’

  ‘I do. I was wondering about that. I knew she was scheduled to have it terminated yesterday.’

  ‘Didn’t happen,’ Hobbs said angrily. ‘Justine and I had her in the cab and at the clinic when all this started to happen. There was no talking to her.’ He stared ahead as tears tracked down his face. ‘She had to go to Croton, no delay, no let them figure things out without me. And now …’ Hobbs choked on the words.

  ‘You think of her as more than just a friend,’ Houssman stated.

  Hobbs nodded, hating to appear weak, but knowing that if he tried to speak his voice would crack and he’d start bawling.

  Houssman, sensing the struggle, filled the silence. ‘I think a lot of this has to do with me … on a number of levels. Barrett knows my two girls – I shouldn’t call them that anymore; they’re both married professionals with children. I’ll be a great-grandfather in two months.’

  ‘I don’t understand what that has to do with this,’ Hobbs said, trying to regain his composure, trying not to dwell on all of the horrible things that had happened to Barrett. He felt whipped and scared; he wanted to protect her, to love her, and he wasn’t able to do either.

  ‘I told you that my girls were adopted; their mother was a drug-addicted prostitute who had tried to get her life together and had ended up killing her husband and sometime pimp. When Delia and I took them in it was something of an experiment. I know that sounds terrible when talking about children, but there it is.’

  Hobbs took a deep breath. ‘What does this have to do with Barrett?’

  ‘I’m breaking her confidence by telling you this. But you should know. The reason she hadn’t terminated the pregnancy already is that a big part of her desperately wants a child. She’s getting older. She has no husband. Apparently she and Ralph had difficulty conceiving.’

  ‘She never told me that,’ Hobbs said, feeling jealous that she’d share this with Houssman and not with him. ‘I just assumed she was waiting.’

  ‘The fact that she’s now pregnant is not something she takes lightly. She thinks this might be her only chance. She looks at my girls – you’d never know that both of their biologic parents were convicted felons. Alice is a pediatrician and Stephanie is a top Manhattan designer. She knows that Jimmy Martin is dangerously disturbed, as was his sister. But they were also severely tortured by their sadist of a father. So is Jimmy’s craziness genetic, or is he just the twisted product of years worth of systematic beatings and rapes?’

  ‘She told you this?’ Hobbs asked.

  ‘Yes. She’s been tormented over what to do: everyone around her telling her one thing, knowing it’s probably the right thing to do but … what if the child she’s carrying is her only chance?’

  ‘She can’t be serious,’ Hobbs blurted. ‘If she has Jimmy Martin’s baby, he’ll eventually find out. Even though he’s locked away for the rest of his godforsaken life, there’s still a lot of money in the family. Any baby of his would be the natural heir.’

  ‘She knows that,’ Houssman said softly.

  ‘She thinks she could keep it secret? Is she insane?’ Hobbs couldn’t believe what he was hearing, that Barrett was seriously contemplating giving birth to that monster’s child.

  ‘Ed,’ Houssman said, ‘there’s a lot of insanity running around right now
… not just in her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘You and Barrett have been through a series of terrible experiences – you nearly died in that fire. The body and the mind both take time to heal; it’s part of a natural process.’

  Hobbs cracked a smile. ‘You’re saying I’m nuts.’

  ‘I am, and I think your feelings for Barrett extend well beyond whether or not she terminates her pregnancy.’

  Hobbs looked away.

  ‘You’re in love with her.’

  ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think she feels the same. Plus, now that I look like a sideshow freak … If anything happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do.’ He turned and bit the inside of his mouth to try and stem the tears. It didn’t work and they came again, silent and heavy.

  ‘Let’s not think about that,’ Houssman said.

  ‘Yeah, right. My brain isn’t fucking working,’ Hobbs said, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. ‘So Glash is going to go after whatever Albert buried. I know his property upstate was searched pretty thoroughly, that’s my first guess. You want me to drop you off somewhere?’

  ‘No. I think I’ll ride along.’

  ‘You are a tough old bird, aren’t you?’ Hobbs said, taking a deep breath and turning the key in the ignition.

  ‘Don’t let the years fool you. They’re just a number. And Ed …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got something in common. Someone we both love is in terrible danger, and I don’t think I could stand not doing everything possible to save her.’

  Ed said nothing as he turned on the flashers and stepped on the gas.

  Eleven

  Two hours after leaving Albert’s cabin in the Adirondacks, Glash pulls Saunders’ silver Town & Country minivan into a thicket that affords him a panoramic moonlit view of the sprawling gingerbread-trimmed and turreted late-nineteenth-century Bella Vista Resort in the Catskills. He stares in the rear-view at his two hostages; they are either asleep or feigning sleep. It doesn’t matter; he gets out, checks their restraints, again binding the psychiatrist’s legs with duct tape. ‘Don’t try anything,’ he whispers, ‘or I’ll kill you both.’ He feels certain they’ll not escape in the estimated twenty-seven minutes he needs to achieve his objective. He unlocks the passenger door, opens the glove compartment and removes one of the three remaining prepaid cell phones.