UNSUB

by Meg Gardiner

  Caitlin didn’t see Fletcher.

  “Where is he?” Shanklin said.

  Caitlin turned three-sixty. He wasn’t sitting at the bar or at any of the tables.

  Shanklin charged into the hall and slammed open the door to the men’s room. Caitlin heard stall doors being kicked open.

  She ran after Shanklin. When she shoved through the men’s room door, Shanklin had her phone to her ear. She was talking to the alarm monitoring company.

  “I said, he’s not here.”

  She pulled the lid off the trash can and peered in. “Dammit.”

  Shanklin put on gloves and lifted the ankle monitor from the garbage. The strap was sliced in half.

  Rios came in, followed by Guthrie. Shanklin stared at the monitor.

  “Goddammit,” she said.

  Rios spoke into his shoulder-mounted radio, calling in a BOLO.

  Shanklin visibly gritted her teeth. Then turned to Guthrie, her gaze scorching. “He lives half a mile from here. That’s our best shot.”

  She slid around him and ran for the car.

  * * *

  Fletcher lived in a 1950s vintage apartment building a block off a main road. A scattering of lights shone from apartment windows. The rain descended as they pulled up, blowing cold in their faces. At the corner a bus rumbled past.

  Fletcher’s brown beater was parked along the curb.

  Guthrie knocked on the super’s apartment door. It opened to a square of yellow light. A minute later, Guthrie came back with a key.

  “Third-floor apartment with external stairway access via the balcony walkway. One door. No rear exit, no fire escape. Fletcher lives alone. Super hasn’t seen him today.” He pointed at the third-floor apartment. “Door opens directly into the living room. Kitchen on the left. One bedroom down a hall at the back.”

  A light was on in the apartment behind closed blinds. Rios took his rifle in his hands.

  “Noise discipline unless I signal otherwise,” he said.

  They drew their weapons. He looked at them one by one. Each gave thumbs-up. He pointed, driving his arm forward. Go.

  They ascended the stairs in a single column, TAC leading. Rios’s team moved with a heavy silence, smooth, thrumming with energy. On the third-floor walkway, they stacked up on Fletcher’s door.

  Rios pounded his fist against it. “Police.”

  Nobody answered. Watching Rios, with his assurance and presence, Caitlin had a sense of déjà vu. The rain picked up. Downstairs, the super closed his apartment door. The yellow square of light vanished.

  Rios pounded again. “Police. Open up.”

  No response, no footsteps inside. But, holding poised, they heard music within the apartment. Rios pounded again. Something clattered inside.

  The tension on the walkway tightened. Rios tried the key. The lock wouldn’t turn. He raised his hand in a C. Crisis entry. He signaled the fourth man in the stack.

  Today they’d brought the small battering ram. The fourth man stepped up to the door and swung it. The lock splintered and the door banged open.

  He stepped aside and Rios swept in with the rest of them close behind.

  As Caitlin crossed the threshold a fresh clatter came from the kitchen. A cat scrambled past her out the door and disappeared along the walkway. Rios sighted on it, then swung back to the living room.

  “Right clear,” he said.

  The number two man moved past him. “Left clear.”

  “All clear,” Rios said.

  The living room was empty. Sagging sofa, nicked coffee table. Faded posters on the wall. The Dead at Fillmore East.

  Shanklin, Caitlin, and Guthrie held inside the front door. TAC entered the kitchen.

  “Left clear.”

  “All clear.”

  They turned to the hallway. It was dark. The door at the end was closed.

  Rios told one of his men to return to the walkway and another to remain in the living room. The rest of them closed up again. Rios pointed down the hall. Go.

  They walked quickly. Rios and his second man cleared the bathroom. Then they approached the bedroom.

  Caitlin focused on the door, left hand on Shanklin’s shoulder, right hand on her SIG. Behind her, Guthrie’s left hand on her shoulder was solid. Rios raised a fist. They stopped.

  Rios examined the door and ran a gloved hand around the frame. He held his hand close to the knob, testing for heat. He looked over his shoulder, got nods from everyone, and leveled his rifle on the door. He began a countdown on his fingers. Five. Four.

  For a second, the only sound was the rain outside. Then, in the kitchen, a phone rang.

  They froze. Rios halted the countdown and raised a closed fist. Hold. The phone continued to ring. It was a black house phone that sat in a cradle on the kitchen counter.

  Rios pointed again at the bedroom door and restarted the countdown. Five. Four. Three.

  Voice mail clicked in. On speaker, a voice hissed. “The door’s unlocked. Drop the battering ram and turn the knob.”

  It was the voice Caitlin had heard on calls to victims’ families. The hoarse rasp of the Prophet. Not the cajoling slur of Fletcher in the park, but a darker version. In performance.

  Her heart hit overdrive, thudding against her chest. He was watching.

  From where?

  The TAC officer in the living room peered out into the rain. Rios signaled him to shut the splintered front door. Caitlin scanned the apartment. Saw no cameras, bugs, nothing. From the phone came slow, harsh breathing.

  Rios eyed them. One by one they shook their heads. How the hell was he watching?

  Rios made a decision. He gave the go signal. Caitlin squeezed Shanklin’s shoulder. Shanklin nodded.

  Rios turned the knob and swept into the bedroom. The second man was close behind. From the hallway, the bedroom yawned into view. It was dark. The beam of a streetlight fell through the window. There were bookshelves. A double bed. In the middle of it, waiting, was Bart Fletcher.

  Dead.

  He lay on his back, palms up, penitent, face garishly lit by the streetlight. Even six feet outside the door, Caitlin could see horrific bruising on his throat. Strangulation.

  “Right clear,” Rios said.

  “Left clear.”

  Rios continued to sweep the barrel of his rifle around the room. Shanklin entered. The room was as still as the grave. Every inch of Rios’s posture blared, Red alert. Caitlin thought of wasps, and the wired-up cell phone in a car packed with dead birds. Her heart pounded.

  Shanklin pointed at the bed. “What’s that?”

  They all turned. Shanklin stepped to the wall and flipped the light switch. Even as Rios turned sharply toward her, harsh overhead light blanched the room.

  Shanklin said, “Damn, something’s taped to his—”

  Click.

  Rios shouted, “Bomb.”

  He grabbed Shanklin and dived for the doorway. Caitlin just had time to turn away and throw her arms over her head.

  The flash bleached the walls white.

  Dead, we’re all dead—

  But there was no explosion. No blast wave, no shrapnel, no fiery light. Gasping like she’d run ten miles, Caitlin lowered her arms. Rios stood near the door, his face a storm, pressing Shanklin to the wall.

  From the bed came hissing. The sound of the click had been a controller tripping a switch. Caitlin’s hair stood on end.

  Taped to Fletcher’s chest was some kind of pyrotechnic pack. The hissing increased.

  The Prophet had strapped him with fireworks.

  The paper wrapping on the fireworks burned away. Inside it was a rusty orange powder, like iron dust, on a bed of aluminum foil. The pyrotechnics fizzed and burned like sparklers. Popping, jumping, orange-red sparks. Stretching to shoots of flame, burning too fast. Brillian
t. Like a volcano erupting on his chest. Black soot falling all around him, shrouding his arms, his neck and face. Then they flared. Tendrils erupted, like charred snakes flailing from a nest. Glowing red, curling, growing, two feet, three feet long, they entwined the body.

  “Shit,” one of the TAC guys said. “Holy mother of—fuck.”

  Eight tentacles. Ten. Curling like horns, cooling to four-foot-long fingers of bone, flailing, rocking, probing. One slid across his face and curled into his gaping mouth. The TAC officer stumbled back, retching. Thick stinking smoke filled the room.

  “It was a radio-controlled switch,” Guthrie said. “Whoever triggered it is close.”

  Coughing, Caitlin ran to the window. On the street below, in the rain, a man in a hooded jacket slipped an object into his pocket. His face was invisible. He had a phone to his ear.

  From the phone in the kitchen, the voice said, “Ten steps behind, Hendrix.”

  Breath gone from the caustic bite of the smoke, she said, “There.”

  The TAC team charged out the door. The hooded man stared at the window a second longer, then began to walk, backward, faceless, headlights backlighting him in the rain. He stuck the phone in his pocket, turned, and melted into street traffic. Caitlin watched until the TAC team appeared on the sidewalk, running, then hacked and doubled over and ran from the bedroom.

  She heard a radio transmission, rushed and staticky. “He headed into the BART station.”

  She lurched out the front door onto the walkway and leaned over the railing, gulping air. Shanklin stumbled out and grabbed the rail next to her. She retched and spat a long string of drool over the side onto the courtyard far below.

  The rain blew in cold gusts against Caitlin’s face. Guthrie came out of the apartment and asked if they were okay. Caitlin nodded. She looked through the splintered door. A slippery sensation crawled across her. Those flailing snakes. Like tentacles. Like the Thing. Alien, erupting from Fletcher’s body.

  “Goddammit,” Guthrie said.

  A full-body shiver ran through her. She stared hard through the door.

  She pulled a pair of latex gloves and a bandanna from her jacket. She tied the bandanna over her nose and mouth, bank-robber style.

  She gave Guthrie a look. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his nose. When she walked back into the apartment, he followed.

  In the bedroom, the smoke had ebbed. Fletcher remained on the bed, hands still penitent. The horrifying snakelike tendrils had cooled from red to gray white and were now frozen in place, a wreath that had writhed and fossilized. They had flailed around Fletcher’s face, across the bed, between his legs, settling near his crotch. The stench of chemicals and burning flesh was overwhelming, even through the bandanna.

  For a second her stomach tried to empty itself. She held still and forced herself not to breathe.

  Then she saw the message scrawled on the wall.

  And there great coils of vipers swarm hideous amid that nest he writhes terrified Yelling Whimpering his confession Endlessly—THIEF. Hell awaits you all.

  35

  Afterward, shuddering against the car outside the apartment complex in the thickening dusk, Caitlin took off her jacket and let the rain pelt her shoulders. A festival of flashing lights spun around her, cop cars and a fire truck and an ambulance. She didn’t care that it was cold and that the wind would draw all the heat from her. She needed to get rid of the smell.

  The hooded man had vanished in the Friday rush at the BART station. Four train lines ran through the station, and despite TAC’s vehement pursuit, he had evaporated.

  She took out her phone, hesitated a second, and called Sean.

  He said, “Hey, what’s—”

  “I’m at a crime scene,” she said. “One eighty-seven.”

  The California Penal Code designation for murder.

  “Oakland’s Fire Investigation unit is on its way. I could use a set of eyes that knows pyrotechnics. Will you look at a photo?” she said.

  “Send it.”

  She ended the call and pulled up a photo she’d snapped of the damage done to Bart Fletcher’s body. The charred snakes were front and center. She cropped it so Fletcher’s face wasn’t visible.

  Guthrie came over as she worked with the photo. “What are you doing?”

  “Sending this to Sean Rawlins. He’s an ATF certified explosives specialist. I’ll tell him to delete it as soon as he gives me his opinion.”

  Guthrie shook his head. She looked up from under her plastered hair.

  “This is a countdown, I know it,” she said. “This won’t be the last victim this weekend. We need every minute we can get and the arson team isn’t here yet.”

  Guthrie pulled up the collar of his coat. “Very well.”

  She sent the photo. Sean phoned back almost immediately. She put it on speaker.

  Sean said, “Those pyrotechnics are called pharaoh’s serpents.”

  Great coils of vipers swarm. A shiver passed through her.

  “They were banned in the U.S. in the forties. Still available overseas, former Eastern Bloc mostly, Russia. It’s a combination of mercury thiocyanate and ammonium dichromate.”

  Caitlin looked at Guthrie. “Mercury. There’s your signature.”

  Guthrie leaned toward the phone. “Agent Rawlins, you’re positive?”

  “One hundred percent,” Sean said. “And even if I didn’t recognize them myself, I’m looking at a photo database of exactly this kind of display.”

  “You said it was banned in the U.S.,” Guthrie said.

  Caitlin nodded. Importing it would be difficult—maybe they could get a line on that.

  Sean said, “Because it’s a poisonous combination. The thing is frickin’ toxic. They used to market it to kids. Nuts.”

  “Thank you,” Guthrie said. “Please delete the photo Detective Hendrix sent.”

  “Done,” Sean said.

  Caitlin said, “Thank you. I gotta go. Talk later.”

  She hung up.

  Guthrie said, “This is insane.”

  “I know.” The rain pelted her face. “But there’s a method to it.”

  “Then we’d better find it.” He turned to go. “Put your damn coat on, Hendrix, and figure it out.”

  36

  It was dark when Caitlin returned to the station. In the locker room she peeled off her wet T-shirt and pulled back on the coffee-stained shirt she’d started out wearing that morning. The station was busy, but the darkness outside, the fluorescents reflecting back from the windows, made the place feel close, isolated, exposed.

  Guthrie tacked two new photos to the wall. The serpents. And the message.

  Everybody felt drained. Even Martinez, who hadn’t been there. Shanklin wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze. Guthrie’s eyes seemed, if possible, even more deeply sunk in his gaunt face.

  In the corner of the room, a television silently played the news. THE PROPHET CLAIMS CREDIT FOR NEW KILLINGS. BAY AREA TERROR. CHURCH SERVICES POSTPONED. WARRIORS CANCEL TONIGHT’S GAME.

  The Prophet had beaten them again. It burned. It burned and stank and felt like it would eat through her, corrosive and erupting with white fire.

  Now, removed from the scene, she saw it again. Fletcher, motionless on the bed as the fireworks ignited, hotter than a furnace, hotter than a forge. He couldn’t feel anything. His eyes didn’t blink as flecks of molten metal hit his face and scalded his corneas.

  Death. Beyond death. The Prophet wanted them to inhale it, to crawl from it, to know he was inflicting it on all of them.

  Guthrie stood in front of Fletcher’s photo. “Why did the Prophet choose this guy?”

  Nobody answered. Guthrie turned.

  “He picked Fletcher for a reason. What was it?”

  Martinez said, “We sure that Fletcher’s the one who set up
the Zodiac Match profile?”

  “Check it out.”

  “The ankle bracelet,” Caitlin said. “How was it removed without triggering a tamper alert?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  He looked at her, but Shanklin stirred. “I’ll check.”

  He nodded. Caitlin said nothing. Shanklin’s hair was falling from her ponytail. She looked like a whipped dog.

  Guthrie’s original question hung in the air. Caitlin said, “I don’t know why he chose Fletcher. But I think he chose Melody James and Richard Sanchez because they were at the Union City Olive Garden the night Fletcher stopped in.”

  It was a horrible thought—that they’d been taken and killed because they could help throw suspicion on the reporter. She rubbed her eyes.

  The Oakland Police Department was in charge of the crime scene. Until they completed their investigation, and wrote their report, and volunteered any information, all the war room could do was wait. And attack on other fronts.

  “Back to work,” Guthrie said.

  Martinez and Shanklin trudged to their desks. Caitlin stared at the wall of photos. Her hair was tangled. Her shirt was crusty with coffee. Her jeans stuck damply to her. And the smell was lodged in her sinuses. Greasy, chemical, stinking of smoke and burned flesh. She wanted to throw her clothes away and stand under a hot shower for an hour. Maybe a shower of cleansing lava. Anything to dispel the sense that Bart Fletcher had been transfigured to smoke that was lodged in her lungs and bloodstream.

  Shanklin dropped into her desk chair and tented her fingers over her eyes. For a second, Caitlin took satisfaction in looking down at the top of her head. A shameful second.

  “Mary. Coffee?” she said.

  Shanklin glanced up. Caitlin dug change from her pocket. Shanklin nodded.

  Caitlin returned with a cup for each of them. Shanklin thanked her. Caitlin walked to the photo wall.

  She stared at the blowup of the message written in spray paint on the wall of the bedroom where Fletcher lay dead.

  And there great coils of vipers swarm hideous amid that nest he writhes terrified Yelling Whimpering his confession Endlessly—THIEF. Hell awaits you all.