Pendulum

by Adam Hamdy

  ‘He OK?’ Ash asked.

  ‘He’s breathing,’ the man replied.

  She knelt down beside Wallace and pressed her fingers against his neck to find a regular pulse. ‘I’m Special Agent Ash,’ she said, as she produced her identification. ‘You Lenny?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘You hear the sirens earlier?’

  ‘Sure,’ Lenny replied. ‘He got something to do with it?’

  ‘Someone shot up a Federal safe house. Tried to kill him.’

  Lenny checked the street, suddenly on edge.

  ‘You need to help me get him to my car. And you can never tell anyone he was here,’ Ash commanded. ‘You understand?’

  Lenny gave an emphatic nod.

  ‘Grab his other arm,’ Ash instructed.

  She and Lenny half-lifted, half-dragged Wallace out of the diner. His feet left deep furrows in the snow as they pulled him across the sidewalk. Ash opened the front passenger door and they hoisted Wallace on to the seat.

  ‘Thanks.’ She shook Lenny’s hand.

  ‘No problem,’ the bewildered man replied, as Ash jogged round the car.

  She jumped in, slipped the Taurus in drive, and cruised away. She looked in the rear-view and saw Lenny watching her receding tail lights. After a few moments he glanced around nervously and then headed back inside the diner.

  Most people had heeded the storm warning and the streets were quiet. Snow ploughs were out clearing the major thruways. Ash saw one on Tillary Street and another on the Brooklyn Bridge as she crossed the East River back to Manhattan. By the time they reached the island, Wallace was stirring. In the grip of delirium, his head rolled erratically and he muttered incomprehensibly.

  ‘John? Can you hear me, John?’ Ash tried, but her questions were lost on her rambling passenger.

  They’d reached Chambers Street and were outside the Tweed Courthouse when Wallace woke. He lashed out, catching Ash on the cheek with a glancing blow that dazed her. The car veered across the deserted street and crashed into the large stone terracing that flanked the steps up to the Courthouse. The airbags exploded and for a moment Ash was lost in a confused cushion of soft plastic and abrasive powder. As her airbag deflated, she looked to her right and saw that the passenger door was open. Wallace was pulling himself out of the car.

  ‘John!’ she cried.

  Wallace looked round, but there was no recognition in his eyes; only fear. Ash opened her door, hoisted herself from the car, slid over the steaming hood, and ran after Wallace. He was exhausted, injured and moving at a slow shuffle, so the chase was brought to a swift end when Ash tackled him, pushing him down on to deep, soft snow. She lay across his torso and pinned his arms to the sidewalk.

  ‘John! It’s me,’ she yelled. ‘It’s Special Agent Ash.’

  Wallace struggled weakly against her hold.

  ‘It’s Christine,’ Ash tried, softening her tone.

  ‘I don’t care!’ Wallace exclaimed. ‘They’re dead. Those men. He killed them. Nobody’s safe.’

  ‘I know,’ Ash said. ‘I’m sorry, John.’

  ‘I’ve got to get away.’ Wallace renewed his struggle.

  ‘You’ve been hurt, John,’ Ash explained. ‘You need help. I’m taking you somewhere safe. I promise.’

  Wallace wavered.

  ‘I don’t know how he found out where you were, but nobody knows you’re with me, and I’m not going to tell anyone. It’s the only way to be sure you’ll be safe,’ Ash continued. ‘You need to trust me.’

  ‘Why?’ The question perplexed Ash and Wallace pressed home his point. ‘Why should I trust you? I don’t know you.’

  ‘I’m taking you to my place,’ Ash replied. ‘You’ll be safe there.’

  ‘No.’ Wallace shook his head wildly. ‘No. No. No. I won’t be safe. He’ll find me.’

  ‘Somewhere else then,’ Ash countered. ‘We’ll go wherever you want.’

  ‘Let me go!’ Wallace yelled in Ash’s face, his hysteria building. ‘You can’t help me. You can’t protect me. Get off me! Get the fuck away from me!’

  He struggled with renewed fervour, surprising Ash with his strength. He threw her off, rolled to his knees, and was about to get to his feet when Ash lunged at him, lashing out with a punch that connected with the side of his head and knocked him flat on his belly. She grabbed Wallace and rolled him on to his back.

  ‘Seven months ago I shot and killed an unarmed man called Marcel Washington,’ Ash bellowed. ‘As he lay bleeding to death I planted a weapon on him.’

  The confession had the desired effect; it cut through Wallace’s hysteria and strangled every sinew of attention.

  ‘If anyone ever found out, I’d spend the rest of my life in jail,’ she added quietly. ‘That’s why you should trust me.’

  Wallace stared at Ash, who crouched over him, holding the scruff of his collar.

  ‘I want to catch the man who did this, John,’ she reassured him. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’

  Wallace nodded. ‘We can’t stay at your place,’ he cautioned.

  ‘OK, I’ll just grab some stuff,’ Ash agreed, helping Wallace to his feet.

  The two of them returned to the steaming Taurus, and Ash climbed in and tried the ignition. The engine screeched and squealed, but it rattled to life on the third attempt. Wallace fell into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed.

  ‘Sorry about the car,’ he said sheepishly. ‘And your face.’

  ‘My bad,’ Ash replied, rubbing her cheek. ‘I should’ve put you in the trunk.’

  Wallace smiled uncertainly, but Ash was deadpan as she reversed the car on to the road. There was a dull clatter and a strange rattling as the car headed west on Chambers Street. Ash prayed the battered Ford would hold together long enough to get them home.

  39

  Wallace studied Ash as they pulled into an underground parking garage off Washington Square. She seemed genuine, but Wallace’s faith in his ability to read people had been rattled by his experiences. Even if she was telling the truth, everyone Wallace trusted had been hurt or killed, and Ash looked too fragile to survive. Her delicate features flickered between light and shade as she drove beneath the strip lights illuminating the garage, and she must have sensed Wallace watching her because she glanced at him as she pulled the battered car into a resident’s spot and brought it to a shuddering halt.

  ‘Come on,’ she instructed.

  Wallace slowly followed her into the elevator. His bones were aching and his muscles throbbed with exhaustion. He caught sight of his reflection in the large mirror that lined the rear wall; he looked terrible. He turned his back on the sunken-eyed, emaciated fellow he’d become and leaned against the mirror, taking some of the load off his weary legs.

  ‘The man you killed,’ he asked as they rode up to the fifth floor, ‘why d’you do it?’

  Ash looked down uncomfortably. ‘He led a group. It was a cross between a cult and a gang. Rape, murder, kidnapping; you name it, they did it. I knew he’d work the system, probably get a couple of years and then be out and back in business. Didn’t seem right.’

  Wallace nodded slowly. ‘You ever kill anyone before?’

  Ash stared at him, her face betraying no emotion until the elevator doors opened. ‘We need to be quick,’ she advised as she stepped into the corridor.

  Wallace followed, almost certain that Marcel Washington wasn’t her first kill. She led him into her apartment, which was on the top floor of a red-brick block that overlooked the park opposite.

  ‘I’ll be a minute,’ she said as she turned on a light, and disappeared down a hallway that ran off the living room.

  Wallace shuffled over to the window. The blinds were up, fully exposing the interior of the apartment to the snowbound city beyond. He looked down, surveying the street and park, and although he didn’t see anyone, he still felt more comfortable when he pulled the cord and lowered the blinds over the window. Ash’s apartment looked like a soulless hotel room. A plush
leather couch dominated the space. Alongside it was a matching recliner and footstool. Both were pointed towards a small flat-screen television. A tall bookshelf lined one wall and a large photo of a sunny beach flanked the archway that led to the kitchen. Wallace walked over to the bookshelf, his eye drawn by a photograph that showed a young girl and a woman standing at the summit of a mountain that overlooked a sprawling, smog-covered Los Angeles.

  ‘I’m good,’ Ash said, entering the room with a black holdall slung over her shoulder.

  ‘Is this you?’ Wallace asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ash replied.

  Wallace sensed discomfort in her voice. ‘That your mum?’

  ‘We should go,’ Ash counselled. ‘Like you said; this place isn’t safe.’

  Wallace nodded and followed her out of the apartment.

  ‘Gonna be an extra hundred-fifty,’ the girl behind the desk said. Her name-tag identified her as Bethany Fong. ‘Storage costs,’ she added by way of explanation.

  ‘For a backpack?’ Wallace asked. The bull-necked man in the back office looked away from his television programme and fixed Wallace with a cold stare. It wasn’t worth an argument. ‘OK. We’ll take a twin for a week.’

  ‘Passport?’ Bethany asked.

  ‘In the bag,’ Wallace answered.

  Bethany shouted something in Cantonese and the bull-necked man shuffled into the recesses of the office and returned moments later with Wallace’s backpack, which had been found when he’d failed to return following his arrest. The bull-necked man opened the bulletproof screen and passed the bag over the counter with a belligerent grunt. Wallace checked inside and found the William Porter passport in the front pouch. He showed it to Bethany, who gave it a cursory glance.

  ‘OK, total’s twelve hundred,’ she said.

  Wallace counted out some of the money Ash had given him and topped it up with notes from his belt. He put it all in the metal cash container that ran beneath the bulletproof screen, and Bethany rewarded him with a key.

  ‘Two-seventeen, on the second floor,’ she advised.

  Wallace took the key and turned towards Ash, who was leaning against the wall a few feet away.

  ‘Welcome to the Fresh City Hotel,’ he said.

  Ash gave a wry smile as she picked up her bag and followed him past the broken elevator.

  A nagging voice questioned the wisdom of what she was doing, but Ash silenced it as she followed Wallace. He trudged up the stairs, each slow step showing the painful legacy of his ordeal. The Marcel Washington shooting had made her cautious and it didn’t suit her. She’d risen quickly because of her unique approach to life and her willingness to take risks. The nagging voice was that of a bureaucrat, a fearful, timid creature who only felt safe working within boundaries. Ash knew that boundaries were an illusion; life was wild and dangerous. Wallace presented the perfect opportunity to rediscover herself and show the Bureau exactly why she was so special.

  ‘This place is a real shithole,’ Wallace said as he stepped over a puddle of unidentified liquid that pooled in the stairwell doorway. ‘But it’s safe.’

  Ash followed him into a squalid corridor. He struggled to get the key into a battered old lock, but, after a few good shoves, managed to open the door. The tiny room contained two small single beds, a rickety closet and an ancient television. Every surface looked soiled. A tap was dripping in the adjoining shower room, and a cooling unit hummed in the yard beneath the sealed window.

  ‘The penthouse suite,’ Wallace observed dryly, as he sat on the bed nearest the window and dropped his pack by his feet. He fell back on to the filthy comforter that topped the thin mattress, and within seconds the exhausted man had succumbed to sleep.

  40

  An unfamiliar rhythmic pulse roused Wallace from his nightmares. He realised it was a phone and opened his eyes to see Ash emerge from the bathroom wearing a tight blue pullover and a pair of jeans. She leaned over her bed and grabbed her phone from the tiny shelf beside it.

  ‘Ash,’ she said.

  Wallace could hear indistinct dialogue.

  ‘He’s with me,’ Ash replied. ‘He’s safe.’

  Wallace sat up, his heart starting to race at the prospect of betrayal.

  ‘No, we’re not coming in,’ Ash said, as if answering Wallace’s concern. ‘Not until you’ve figured out how the safe house was compromised.’

  More garbled words from the caller.

  ‘If you want to make it a direct order, go ahead,’ Ash advised. ‘You can write me up for insubordination at the same time. Have you read the deposition?’

  A sharp response came down the line.

  ‘Then you know what he’s been through. And you know how resourceful the killer is,’ Ash replied. ‘We’re staying off the grid until his safety is guaranteed.’

  Wallace heard the caller’s tone soften as he launched into a prolonged speech.

  ‘Thanks. I’m going to ditch this phone and get some burners. I’ll check in every twelve hours,’ Ash promised before hanging up. ‘You OK?’

  Wallace nodded. ‘I’ve felt worse.’

  ‘That was my boss. Ballistics report that Hill and Perez were killed by five-mill slugs fired from an M27. That’s a military grade machine gun.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘We’ve been ordered to sit tight until it’s safe to bring you in,’ Ash explained.

  Wallace sensed there was more to come. ‘But?’ he inquired.

  ‘Well, I’ve never been great at following orders,’ she replied honestly. ‘Where would you have gone next? If you hadn’t been caught?’

  ‘The brother, I guess,’ Wallace replied. ‘See if he remembers anything unusual about his sister’s death.’

  The drive out to Cromwell took a little over three hours. When the cab stopped for fuel on the edge of town, Ash ran across the street and purchased three pre-pay phones from a Best Buy. They drove on through Cromwell, which was a picturesque little town with a mix of New England timber and grand red-brick buildings, and, in complete contrast to the build ’em high, stack ’em deep sprawl of Manhattan, Cromwell offered space to breathe. Most of the buildings were detached, with enough land between them to plant two or three skyscrapers. According to the cab driver, Connecticut had missed the worst of the storm, so the landscape was covered with long-fallen snow that had turned to ice, with the occasional enthusiastic tuft of grass poking through, fighting for spring. They drove north, past a red-brick church fronted by six tall Doric columns supporting a huge pediment. The bold clash of architectural styles somehow worked to give the church a formidable sense of presence. They rolled up the hill, and about a mile past the church, turned right on to Nooks Hill Road, which was lined with large houses set in sprawling, wooded plots of land. As the cab drove east, Wallace caught glimpses of the expansive homes between the trees. After a couple of minutes, he saw a gated driveway, and a sign beside it that read ‘Cromwell Psychiatric Center’.

  It was a little after three when the cab driver stopped beside the intercom and pressed the button.

  ‘Hello?’ came a woman’s voice.

  Ash leaned over Wallace and out of his window. ‘Special Agent Christine Ash. I need to see one of your patients.’

  ‘Identification?’ the disembodied voice asked.

  Ash held her credentials up to the intercom’s recessed lens.

  ‘Follow the road up to the hospital,’ the voice advised.

  After a brief delay, the heavy brushed-steel gates opened and the cab drove through. The smooth driveway wound into a mature wood, where their progress was flanked by grand old trees.

  ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Wallace cautioned.

  ‘The trail led you to Erin Byrne,’ Ash explained. ‘You’ve spoken to the mother and the father. You said yourself this is the next logical step. Maybe the brother can give us a new lead.’

  After half a mile the wood thinned and gave way to a large parking lot that stretched around a four-storey red-brick building. The Cro
mwell Center reminded Wallace of the Maybury Hospital, and maybe it was the similarity that was making him so uneasy.

  A grand building set in carefully landscaped grounds, the Cromwell Center revealed little clues to the truth everywhere: heavy security doors, bars across windows, and spikes along the top of the perimeter wall all signalled that, like the Maybury, this was a prison for broken minds. Wallace shuddered as he remembered the South London hospital where he’d watched so many people die. If he hadn’t fought back, if he’d just lain down after the first attack, they’d all be alive. Connie. Connie would still be alive.

  ‘Three hundred and forty-four bucks,’ the cab driver announced as they pulled up in front of the main entrance.

  ‘Keep the change,’ Ash said as she handed over four one-hundred-dollar bills. ‘There’s another fifty if you wait.’

  ‘No problem,’ the driver responded happily.

  Wallace followed Ash up the stone steps to the entrance, where they found a slim woman in her mid-thirties waiting for them.

  ‘Welcome to the Cromwell Center, Special Agent Ash. My name is Grace Kavanagh,’ she said. Grace wore a light grey jacket, a matching skirt, and colour-coordinated three-inch heels. She exuded warm professionalism and smiled as she looked at Wallace, expecting an introduction. Her smile wavered when none came. ‘I’m the chief administrator.’

  ‘We need to talk to Max Byrne.’ Ash’s response bordered on brusque.

  ‘Really?’ Grace asked. ‘Are you from the New Haven office?’

  ‘New York.’

  ‘Your New Haven colleagues said he wouldn’t be troubled again,’ Grace observed. ‘They were here yesterday to talk to him about his sister’s death.’

  ‘We just need to clarify a couple of things.’

  ‘He won’t be able to help you,’ Grace warned.

  ‘We need to see him,’ Ash insisted.

  If she was put out, Grace didn’t show it. Her smile grew broader. ‘As you wish. Max is in our secure unit. Follow me.’