Ashes, Ashes

by Charles Atkins

  Houssman struggled to get his breathing under control, the smell of the three unknown bodies that had been baking in the hot van was overpowering. Houssman’s thoughts tumbled: Who were these people? How long had they been there? And most importantly, who had killed them? If not Richard, who was out there doing these things for him? What suddenly became clear was why he was doing this. Glash was about to fake all of their deaths.

  Glash returned. Reeking of gasoline, his lips were moving silently as he retrieved Clarence Albert’s metal box from the back and removed a glass bottle filled with a murky, yeast-colored liquid.

  He reached under his seat and removed a small white first aid kit, and an empty glass bottle identical to the other two. He took out a HEPA mask and hunching down he walked into the back. He knelt next to George and fitted the mask over his face. ‘Do not take this off without being told to do so.’

  Glash looked at Cosway. He stared at his chest and put a finger to his neck. ‘Good,’ he said and then turned to George. ‘Watch this.’ He put on a HEPA mask and snapped on a pair of tan vinyl gloves. Carrying one of the two full bottles and the matching empty one he leaned over Cosway. He looked back to make certain George was paying attention. ‘Watch me.’

  ‘Don’t do this, Richard.’

  ‘You’re not my father.’ He cracked open the lid of the full bottle.

  Horrified, Houssman heard a hiss as the seal broke and Glash propped up Cosway’s head and proceeded to inoculate him with the deadly fluid. It was precise and clinical as Glash dipped a cotton swab into the bottle and wiped it on the mucous membranes of Cosway’s nostrils and mouth. He recapped the bottle, and placing the contaminated swab in the palm of his left glove he removed the gloves and dropped them into a sealable plastic bag. He lowered Cosway back to the floor. ‘I’ll be right back … Dad.’

  Houssman frantically kicked at the rear doors – they were locked and secure. He looked toward the front of the van, and attempted to wedge his body through the opening between the two captain’s chairs. He heard the sound of glass breaking not forty feet away, and made a desperate attempt to grab for the driver’s side handle with his restrained hands.

  Glash returned, and caught him as the door clicked open.

  He said nothing as he shoved Houssman back. George landed with a thump. Winded, he coughed on the thick fumes of gas coming from the Passat. He looked up and tried to stand, he could see Glash opening the door of the small gold car. He heard an engine start, and for the briefest instant hope surged. Had someone spotted them? His head whipped to the left as the Passat shot through the underbrush. There were long seconds of silence as it flew over the edge of the gorge. Then came the jagged crash of metal on rock, a popping sound and an explosion that shook the van.

  ‘Time to go home,’ Glash said. He turned over the engine and popped open the glove compartment. He retrieved a cell phone and dialed. ‘This is Richard Glash. I’m at the Ashokan dam; it’s started.’ And then he sang. ‘Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posy. Ashes, ashes, we’ll all fall down. You couldn’t catch me, and now I’m dead … then again, so are you.’ He tossed the phone on to the ground where the Passat had been. He threw the van into drive, and glancing back at Houssman said, ‘Time to go home.’

  Twenty-Two

  Barrett struggled to focus as Hobbs floored the damaged Crown Vic, with its dangling front bumper and crumpled hood. Carla was in the back on Hobbs’s cell leaving desperate messages on her ex-husband’s answering machine, as the radio and scanner kept up a steady stream of speculation, fear and urgency. Albomar was just twenty minutes from the Ashokan Reservoir, and at any other point in her life she might have appreciated the vibrant green foliage and quaint, twisty roads of the Catskills. Now as they raced through small towns with too many antiques shops, stop signs, artist collectives and deliberately homey diners with names like ‘Dottie’s Place’ and the ‘Come on Inn’, she longed for a multi-lane highway.

  ‘How could they lose him?’ she muttered, staring out the window, wondering at the grinding clash of metal that came from the front right tire. She thought of George and the rage that Glash held for him. Was he still alive?

  Hobbs turned down the radio and upped the scanner. He switched frequencies. A weird, high-pitched noise blasted through the speaker. ‘They’ve scrambled it.’

  Before she could ask for details he’d jammed on the brakes and taken a hard left. The car shuddered as bare metal hit rock and he turned down the gravel road toward the Ashokan Reservoir.

  ‘Shit,’ said Carla from the back, as they were surrounded on all sides by the sounds of sirens and a cavalcade of emergency response vehicles – cops, feds, large white trailers emblazoned with the Homeland Security crest, one with Mobile Decontamination emblazoned on the side.

  ‘Come on.’ Hobbs pounded the dash as the wheel on the Crown Vic nearly lurched from his hands, sending them off into a ditch. The rear tires skidded back to the right.

  Barrett held her breath as he steadied the car and made a beeline for a black Taurus in the dirt parking lot. It was a scene of pandemonium, the sirens – everywhere and every type – emergency personnel unloading equipment and suiting up in white, blue or orange hazmat suits, all set against the breathtaking beauty of the clear blue waters and sloping mountains that surrounded the man-made reservoir’s two massive basins.

  Hobbs brought the Vic to a lurching halt. He looked at Barrett. He was unshaven and covered with dust; she noticed the blood and bruises on his knuckles. ‘Any chance you two would stay in the car?’ he asked.

  ‘Nice try,’ Barrett said, her hand already on the handle.

  The three got out. Even in the shade it was over ninety, sweat popped on her back and between her breasts as she stuck close to Hobbs. They headed toward Corbin Zane, who was in the process of suiting up in a powder-blue hazmat suit while simultaneously attempting to speak into a voice-activated field phone strapped to his ear. Next to him was his driver, Pete Griffin – an eager ex-cop with less than a year in the agency – who was trying to steady him.

  Zane shouted into the receiver and seemed to be having problems with the suit as he hopped unsteadily on one foot.

  ‘Here,’ Barrett said, placing a hand on the stocky man’s other shoulder. She could hear another man’s directives through the headset. ‘Answers, Zane, we need answers and solutions. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Zane shot back as Carla joined in, squatting down to help Zane get his left foot secure in the suit.

  ‘Don’t think of cost,’ his superior instructed.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Barrett felt a twinge of sympathy for this sweaty man who had the desperate look of somebody in way over his head, and then she caught the smell – like burning meat, rubber and gasoline. Her head whipped around to find the source: a billowing plume of dark-gray smoke rose over a dense stand of pines.

  ‘Thanks,’ Zane said, as he looked at the hood and rebreather apparatus. ‘I hate those things,’ he said.

  ‘What have they found?’ Hobbs asked, as several large, covered military personnel carriers appeared in the parking lot. Armed National Guardsmen in white hazmat suits sprang from the trucks and proceeded to jog off in all directions.

  In the distance Barrett caught a similar scene at the narrow aqueduct that divided the two basins. Families and hikers were being rounded up as more sirens, more trucks continued to fill the lot.

  ‘Oh, crap,’ Zane said, and watched a news vehicle from Channel Eight turn the camera in their direction. ‘Get them suits,’ he barked to his driver. ‘The last thing I need is reporters.’ And then under his breath, ‘Course, they were the first to get here.’

  ‘What did they find?’ Hobbs repeated.

  Zane looked at Hobbs as though seeing him for the first time, and then at Barrett and Carla. ‘Get on suits and I’ll show you.’ Griffin ran back carrying four orange suits, just as a well-known Asian-American reporter began walking quickly in their direction, a cameraman a
t her side.

  Barrett, having taken part in multiple disaster drills, braced against the Taurus and yanked up her suit. She zipped the front, popped on the hood and tested her rebreather.

  Zane looked at the rapidly approaching reporter. ‘Time to shit or get off the pot,’ he muttered inside his sweltering suit, and then told Griffin, ‘Get that bitch out of here.’

  The news lady had picked up her pace and was running in high heels. ‘Dr Conyors, can you comment on Richard Glash’s motive?’

  ‘How do you want me to do it, boss?’ the newly deputized young man asked.

  ‘Get a bunch of Guardsmen and quarantine them. Be polite, because they’re going to raise bloody hell, just get them out of my face.’

  ‘Dr Conyors,’ the reporter continued, less than thirty feet away, ‘what does Richard Glash intend to do?’

  Barrett said nothing as the reporter thrust a microphone in her direction. She looked through her face shield as armed Guardsmen surrounded them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the reporter shouted, as they closed around her and her cameraman.

  ‘You’ll need to be quarantined,’ Zane said. ‘It’s for your own protection. Turn off the camera … do it now.’

  ‘You can’t do this!’ she shrieked.

  A windowless National Guard van approached. ‘Excuse me,’ one of the Guardsmen said politely, as he forcibly took custody of the camera.

  Zane smiled as she was directed, at gunpoint, to enter the van along with her colleague. The smile then vanished. ‘Come on,’ he said, leaving Griffin to oversee the handling of the news team. ‘I need to show you something.’

  As the four of them strode rapidly across the parking lot, his voice-activated field phone rang. Zane answered. ‘Good … yes. Really, detergent? I’ll make certain that it happens immediately.’ He said, ‘Griffin!’ into the phone, and then waited for him to pick up. ‘Pete, you’re to deploy a Guard squadron immediately. There’s a shipment of laundry detergent on its way. It’s to be dumped into the reservoir at thirty-foot intervals around the perimeter. Then put some on boats and dump it everywhere. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Report back when it’s completed.’

  ‘You’re going to sterilize the reservoir,’ Barrett commented.

  ‘Yes,’ Zane said, not completely understanding the reason for the orders he’d just received and passed on.

  ‘Sterilize how?’ Hobbs asked.

  Zane continued to lead them toward the reservoir’s edge, but slowed to hear her answer.

  ‘The cell walls of bacteria,’ Barrett explained, ‘are composed of fat and protein. Detergent dissolves the fat and breaks the cell apart. That’s why the best way to prevent the spread of disease in hospitals, is through hand-washing with soap and water. It’s a simple solution; if in fact the bacteria were hardy enough to survive the temperature of the reservoir, the detergent, in high enough concentration, should destroy them.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Zane said, as he pulled out his cell. He called Griffin. ‘Pete, however much detergent they send, have them come back with ten times more.’

  ‘It can’t hurt,’ Barrett commented.

  ‘Right,’ Zane said. ‘Better safe …’ And he brought them into a clearing by the water’s edge. ‘This is what I wanted you to see.’

  Barrett’s heart pounded and the tears came. ‘George,’ she mouthed as she stared down the ravine at the incinerated remains of Glash’s last getaway car. The smoke billowed thick and black, but it was the smell … the unmistakable stench of cooking human flesh. Her mask fogged up as she tried to suppress the sobs. She felt a gloved hand on her back … it was Hobbs. She pictured George – Zane told her that Glash and the two hostages had all perished.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Carla whispered, standing to her right. ‘I’m so sorry, Barrett.’

  ‘I wanted you to see this,’ Zane shouted. He was a good forty feet from the spot where the car had zoomed over the gorge. He was on the dam wall looking back at them. ‘Dr Conyors … Ms Phelps, I need you to see this.’

  Barrett felt numb and horribly alone, despite Hobbs’s closeness and obvious concern. She walked over to Zane and looked down at a flat boulder strewn with broken glass. She recognized the bottle caps and the general shape of the bottlenecks. Without hesitation, she said, ‘It looks staged.’

  Hobbs nodded.

  ‘What do you mean? Why would you say that?’ Zane asked, clearly not happy with her answer.

  ‘It looks like the bottles he showed us.’ She turned to Carla.

  ‘Yes,’ Carla said, as her eyes darted around the perimeter of the reservoir, taking into account the white-suited Guardsman holding rifles at thirty-foot intervals.

  ‘You said there were two bottles of plague,’ Zane pressed. ‘There are two broken bottles here. What I need to know is, are these them? Do I have confirmation?’

  Barrett studied the glass shards and the screw tops. ‘They might be,’ she said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Hobbs asked. ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  Barrett found it hard to think straight – too much grief, too tired – but something wasn’t right. She kept seeing George’s face, his concern, his love in the background.

  Zane snorted. ‘I think that’s the understatement of the day. Are these the bottles or not?’

  ‘Here,’ she said, looking around. ‘Glash is … was … not stupid. He wasn’t working alone, and I can’t imagine this is what Albert would have instructed him to do.’

  ‘What?’ Zane said. ‘What are you talking about? Clarence Albert is locked away. Are you saying the two were in contact, and that Albert was feeding Glash information? That seems far-fetched.’

  ‘No … not exactly. He has somebody on the outside helping him. But just this piece … dumping all of the bacteria into the reservoir … something’s not right here …’ Barrett looked around, her eyes drawn back down the ravine. A crime team dressed in clumsy white suits was awkwardly working its way down the side of the gorge, using ropes and hooks, as the fire burned itself out. It would be hours before they’d be able to pull the three blackened bodies from the wreckage. Even from the distance, Barrett could just make out traces of the collar on George’s overcoat. She thought of his daughters and his beloved granddaughter, Faye, who he made no pretence about spoiling with lavish outings to FAO Schwartz, and a totally out-of-character trip to Disney. What would she tell them? She strained to see Glash, his body slumped over the wheel of the burning wreck. He seemed so much smaller in death; his powerful physique somehow diminished by death and the fire.

  ‘Dr Conyors?’ Zane asked. ‘Do you have something concrete, or is this all speculation? I don’t mean to be rude, and I know you’ve been through a great deal … but if these are the bottles then …’

  ‘When I was with him,’ Barrett said, not taking her eyes off the burning car, ‘he was completely focused on being the most famous killer of all time. Everywhere he took us, he wanted me to watch and to record what he was doing, then he’d dial a television station and leave his cell phone as a kind of homing device.’

  ‘Yes,’ Zane said, ‘in two of the crime scenes – three if you include this one – the media was there ahead of the authorities. What has that got to do with the bottles? You said they’re the ones he showed you.’

  ‘They do look like them,’ Carla said, her eyes on Barrett.

  ‘They’re standard glass milk bottles,’ Barrett commented, a voice screaming in her head that this was all wrong. ‘How hard would it be to have more than two … what if his showing them to us was deliberate? What if he knew that we’d be here now, saying, “Yes, you’ve got it all”? The truth is, you have three bodies at the bottom of a ravine. It looks like Glash’ – her voice caught – ‘George Houssman and I don’t know who the third is … but what if it’s not them?’ As the words came, a wave of hope washed through her. ‘What if that’s not them, but just three more dead people? Richard Glash has no concern for human
life and—’

  ‘Dr Conyors,’ Zane said, cutting her off, ‘we have half a dozen witnesses who say they saw the car go over the edge. It’s pretty clear that Richard Glash and his hostages are dead. He even called the media to let them know.’

  ‘No,’ Barrett said, abruptly. ‘You don’t get it. Richard Glash always has two possible options. This doesn’t fit. There’s no plan B. This is just a diversion. What if that’s not him?’ And to herself she let the wish take shape: What if that’s not George? What if he’s still alive? ‘Richard Glash wanted to – wants to – do something very big.’

  Zane was clearly pissed. ‘You don’t think this is big?’

  ‘It’s too easy,’ Barrett said. ‘I don’t think he’s done.’ She stared at the bodies, and looked around for how she might be able to get down to them. ‘He knew that he might die … but not like this. He said there was a chance that he’d survive. How do you survive this? There’s no chance.’ She turned to Zane. ‘You’ve got to go after him.’

  ‘Richard Glash is dead,’ Zane repeated.

  ‘Have you gotten a positive ID?’ Hobbs asked. He stared at the painfully slow descent of the crime-scene team. ‘You haven’t even had a chance to examine the bodies.’

  ‘We have eye witnesses,’ Zane said.

  ‘Of a car going over a cliff,’ Carla added.

  ‘This could have been staged,’ Hobbs said. ‘You don’t have a positive ID?’

  ‘There is no doubt,’ Zane said, almost shouting. ‘Richard Glash and his two hostages are dead. I’m sorry if this is unpleasant news to you; but it’s a fact. I appreciate your assistance, but unless you have anything concrete to add, I have quite a lot on my plate right now.’

  ‘That’s not Glash,’ Barrett said, squinting through her mask. ‘His upper body was more muscular. You can’t stop looking for him.’