Killer Weekend

by Ridley Pearson

  A moment later, the exterior door leading to the hotel offices, locked on a Sunday morning, sprang open. Fiona’s eyes sparkled. “What a zoo!”

  The door closed, eliminating much of the shouting from the protesters.

  “I know who it is,” Walt announced. “He’s here in the hotel.”

  Three

  T revalian stood in line in the inn’s lobby awaiting his turn at the security checkpoint, just past which were the men’s and women’s bathrooms-a piece of the logistical planning that was already drawing complaint. At the end of the hall: the doors to the banquet hall.

  “That’s a beautiful dog you have there,” said a woman behind him.

  He thanked her, wondering if she or anyone else had spotted that, to a large degree, he was directing the dog, not the other way around. The line moved steadily forward, everyone accustomed to, and comfortable with, the routine: Women removed their heavy jewelry, the men dumped their phones into plastic bins. Only one woman he saw was also wanded after passing through the metal detector. Trevalian’s turn came next.

  “Hello, Mr. Nagler,” said the young, wide-shouldered man feeding the X-ray belt. “I’ll take the dog through first.”

  Trevalian turned his head in that direction, but also aimed his face toward the ceiling. He passed the handle of the guide harness in that general direction, making sure not to appear overly anxious or to put the harness squarely into this man’s hands-reminding himself to play the blind man.

  The dog was held in check as Trevalian searched his pockets. He came up with a cell phone, some coins, and, in his coat’s side pocket, a device about the size of a garage door opener. He made a good act of feeling for the plastic dish and catching its edge, deposited his belongings.

  “What’s this?” the guard asked curiously.

  Trevalian could see the man was holding the other device. “My cell phone?”

  “A garage opener?” the man asked.

  The dog was led through a metal detector and sounded an alarm.

  “Don’t push it, please!” Trevalian said a little too sharply. He reached out and found the man’s hand and returned the device to the plastic tray. “Shock collar. She’s still in training.”

  “We’ll have to X-ray that collar. The harness, too.”

  “No problem. Of course,” Trevalian said. “Just don’t lose her, please.”

  The guards removed both and ran them through the X-ray. Trevalian waited anxiously as the collar and harness were imaged by a third guard behind a TV monitor. Finally, he was waved through the metal detector and passed without incident.

  The bulky collar was reattached to the dog, as was the harness. Once through he returned his belongings to his pockets, grabbed hold of the guide handle, and moved forward.

  He was inside.

  Four

  T he crowd had thinned, the gawkers following Liz Shaler’s procession toward a private reception held in her honor, prior to her talk. Walt spotted Chuck Webb, the hotel’s house detective.

  “Sheriff?”

  “Chuck, I need a room number from you. And I need you to put any of your guys you have left over on radios by all the exits. I needed this to happen about five minutes ago.”

  Webb didn’t question any of this. The urgency in Walt’s voice had convinced him. He reached for a handheld radio. “Guest’s name?”

  “Nagler.” He racked his memory. “Strange first name I can’t remember.”

  “The blind guy. I know who you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  Chuck spoke into the radio, “Christopher Robin,” he announced.

  “It’s Nagler,” Walt repeated.

  “That’s our internal code to block all doors. Kids missing. That sort of thing. My guys’ll lock them down.”

  Walt spotted one of O’Brien’s men approaching fast. Cutter intended to throw him out, which wasn’t going to happen-but it would delay him.

  “The room number,” Walt hissed at Webb. “And your passkey. I need both right now!”

  Webb fumbled for a small hub clipped to his belt from which hung a retractable string attached to a plain white plastic card. He stuffed it into Walt’s hand. He saw O’Brien’s man as well, and knew trouble when he saw it.

  His radio chirped and Webb put it to his ear. “Three-twenty-seven,” he said.

  Walt didn’t want to initiate a chase with O’Brien’s guy. But it seemed either that, or confrontation. That was when someone stepped between them and raised a camera. A pulse of white light exploded in the face of O’Brien’s soldier. Fiona.

  Walt took off for the stairs.

  The security man cleared his eyes and looked around quickly. “Where’d he go?” he asked Webb.

  “Who?” answered Webb.

  The guard spun around. The sheriff was gone. And so was the photographer.

  Five

  D anny Cutter was on borrowed time. The police were after him for Ailia Holms’s murder-and his brother was acting strange. His fears, along with the financial repercussions of her death, had kept him up all night. He knew he looked beleaguered and beaten down. That wouldn’t help him any.

  The reception for Elizabeth Shaler was held in a private dining room. Danny looked around for Stuart Holms but knew he wouldn’t find him.

  Conversation quieted in the direction of Liz Shaler. Patrick escorted her through the room, making introductions. Danny tagged along and listened in. Those in this room had already made campaign contributions. The brush with fame was payback.

  He heard someone in the group ahead address the attorney general. “We’d love to give more, if only we could, Your Honor, but as much as we’d like to see you in office, we’re not willing to go to jail for it.” His bellowing laugh followed.

  Patrick piped up, saying, “You might consider her as a speaker for a company event.”

  Liz looked noticeably uncomfortable.

  At that moment, Danny understood his brother’s determination to make sure Liz gave her talk. He was overpaying her, setting a market value for others to match. Never mind the tax implications, money was money, and candidates were allowed to spend their personal wealth on the campaign trail. Patrick had found a way around the rules, and by doing so had made himself invaluable to Liz Shaler.

  Dick O’Brien appeared out of nowhere. He caught Patrick’s eye. As O’Brien shook his head side to side, a ghostly pallor swept across Patrick’s face. Danny knew intuitively this had something to do with Walt Fleming and the fact that Doug Aanestad had spent the early morning in private with Patrick.

  Something was horribly wrong.

  Six

  W alt, out of breath, stopped in front of 327, Fiona right behind him. “You can’t be here,” he told her.

  “Yeah? Well, guess what? I am.”

  A plan formed in his head. “Okay…There’s a hotel phone back by the elevator. Call room three-twenty-seven. A man’s going to answer. Say you’re housekeeping or something. But keep him holding that phone.”

  “Yes, of course. Now?”

  “Now.”

  She ran down the hall. Walt followed her with his eyes.

  He waited. And waited.

  The phone started ringing on the other side of the door. Walt waited for the ringing to stop, Webb’s passkey hovering over the card slot. But it kept ringing.

  Walt slipped in the card. The electronic lock’s LED showed red, not green. Webb’s card should have been the equivalent of a master key. He tried it again: red. The only explanation he could come up with was that the privacy dead bolt was thrown from the inside. He tried the next door over: 325.

  Webb’s card opened it. The room was pitch-black, the blackout curtains pulled. He called out, “Hello? Minibar.” His weapon was drawn and aimed at the carpet in front of him. Switched on the lights. The room was empty. There was a connecting door, locked from this side. He worked through the pulled curtains, headed out onto the balcony, and crossed to 327. Locked, and the blackout curtains drawn there also.

&nbs
p; He debated breaking the room’s plate glass window, but its tempered glass would explode, and that would bring the cavalry. That, in turn, would mean a confrontation with Dryer or his men, and his father’s warning remained forefront in his thought.

  He returned to 325. Fiona stood in the doorway.

  “You cannot be here,” he hissed.

  “We’ve been over that.”

  “Shut the door. Lock it, and stay right there.”

  She did so.

  He unlocked the dead bolt to the connecting door. Connecting doors were paired-each lockable from its respective room-and he’d prepared himself to have to break down the second of the two doors.

  But it hung open a crack-unlocked.

  He raised his weapon. His chest was tight; his mouth dry. He eased open the door, but his eyes weren’t adjusted and he couldn’t see a thing in the dark room. He reached down for the Maglite at his belt, and the first thing he saw as the light flooded the room was a dog kennel, its door open.

  Empty.

  Seven

  T revalian was led by a volunteer to his assigned seat at a table that still had empty chairs. He introduced himself and awkwardly shook hands with the four already there, making a point of Nagler’s insecurity and timidity. One of the women stared. It took a thumping from her husband to break her trance. There was an attempt at small talk, but Trevalian put a quick end to that. The dog lay on the carpet to the right and slightly behind his chair. From behind his dark sunglasses he stole a look at the program laid out on his plate. It opened with:

  JUICE, COFFEE, TEA, PASTRIESI

  MELON

  THE HONORABLE ELIZABETH SHALER

  ATTORNEY GENERAL NEW YORK STATE

  THREE EGG OMELET, CAVIAR, AND CRÈME FRAÎCHE

  or

  MANGO AND STRAWBERRY BELGIAN WAFFLE

  AND YOUR CHOICE OF

  NORTH SEA SMOKED SALMON, IRISH BACON, BLOOD SAUSAGE

  ROASTED TOMATOES, QUICK-FRIED KELP, CARAMELIZED APPLES

  He was amused by Shaler’s listing as part of the menu. She appeared to be the second or third course.

  This was not the program he’d been told to expect. Originally, her talk had been scheduled to follow the main course, not precede it. This accelerated schedule affected his planning. He had to arm the explosive now, well ahead of his original plan. He reached down and reassuringly touched the bulge in his coat pocket: the shock collar’s remote control.

  “Oh my God,” the woman two seats away gasped. She moved her chair back. “It’s bleeding!”

  Trevalian looked. There was indeed blood beneath the dog. His plan unraveling, right before his own blind eyes, he steadied his voice. “She was just spayed. I’ll go check on her.”

  “Let me be your eyes,” the woman offered. “I love dogs.”

  “I can handle it!” Trevalian said sharply. He excused himself. The dog stood, unbothered by her problem, and Trevalian headed out of the banquet room.

  Moving against the crush of incoming guests cost him precious minutes. He worried that the woman was going to spring up behind him. Finally he was in the hall and headed for the men’s room.

  As he made it inside, two men were just washing up at the sink. Both caught Trevalian’s reflection in the mirror and both made a point of saying, “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” Trevalian returned, leading the dog into the tight stall and closing the door with some difficulty.

  He sat down on the toilet, pulled Callie to face him, her tail swishing back and forth outside the stall door, and he waited to hear the two men leave. Another man entered and urinated, but Trevalian had no time to wait. He removed his sunglasses and, holding the dog’s collar tightly, reached into his outside coat pocket and withdrew a pair of tweezers. With no more metal content than a ballpoint pen, the tweezers had passed through security undetected, and he used them now, lowering himself awkwardly to one knee in the cramped space to where he had a good view of Callie’s chest. He spread the dog’s hair until the pink incision appeared-a string of fine-looking hook-and-knot stitches running in a straight line ten inches up her abdomen. Blood seeped from the middle, but he dabbed it with tissue and it seemed to stop.

  He carefully guided the tweezers between the second and third stitches, whispering, “Good girl,” into the dog’s ear. She tensed with a quick spark of pain. But it was over quickly as the tweezers bit down onto a length of wire and extracted it from her chest. Eighteen inches in all, extremely thin, aluminum, picture-frame wire. He wiped it clean with a piece of toilet paper. Running it up between her front legs, he opened the shock collar’s battery pack and twisted this wire to a second wire inside the shock collar. With this connection made, the remote device in his coat pocket was now live. Callie was a four-legged bomb.

  He pulled her to standing. The wire was all but invisible. He dabbed her slight bleeding one more time. It would have to do.

  He heard a tremendous burst of applause from out in the hall. Elizabeth Shaler was being introduced.

  He reached into the small of his back, pulled out the bag hidden there, and opened it. He slipped the jogging bra out and held it closely to the dog’s nose.

  “Remember this game?” he said, a wan smile forming on his lips.

  As he stood off the toilet, the bomb went off. He barked out a gasp of surprise, heat flooding through him. Then he realized it was only the toilet’s automatic flush. And he began laughing. A dry, morbid laugh that resonated and rang out in the small marble stall.

  Eight

  F iona came into the room behind Walt as he threw the curtains back.

  “I told you to wait,” he said.

  “And I didn’t listen.”

  He inspected the closet. Clear.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the dog,” he said. “Not now,” when he realized he couldn’t explain.

  He tried the bathroom door. It was locked. He knocked and peered beneath the crack with his flashlight. There was no one standing on the bathroom floor. He stood, reared back, and kicked it open. The door bounced off the stop and came back at him. He blocked its return.

  Empty. But there was a bloody towel on the floor next to the toilet, and a mess on the counter: a syringe, meds, suture, a bloody razor blade.

  “Walt…” She was scared.

  “I see it.” He caught sight of the trail of blood leading to the tub. He pulled back the shower curtain, revealing a blond woman, her eyes fixed, her limbs twisted and contorted unnaturally. She was covered in blood.

  Fiona tried to speak, but stepped back and threw up on the carpet. She apologized immediately, the vomit still coming from her.

  On the floor by the trash can he spotted several bloodied bandages and a pair of bloodied latex gloves. He saw the corner of a cardboard box beneath a bloody towel. The box read: ESS FENCE. Another piece of trash caught his attention: EverTyed Surgical Suture 3.0.

  “You all right?”

  “Yes, I think.”

  “Call downstairs for Chuck Webb. Tell him what we found. Then tell him I’m on my way over to the inn. There’s a shooter at the brunch. A blind guy. He may or may not have a dog. I need backup. His backup. Not the feds. Have you got that? Hey! Fiona!”

  “Got it,” she whispered.

  “Keep your cell phone free. I may call back here. I may want details.”

  “Details…,” she mumbled.

  “Hey!” he shouted, to break the trance. “Do you have your cell phone?”

  She looked up at him and nodded.

  “Okay?” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Walt hurried down the long hallway to a set of fire stairs. A minute later he was outside and running.

  Light and sounds blurred. The art fair. Kids playing. People shopping. Another day in paradise. He heard nothing but his own quickened pulse.

  People turned to watch the red-faced sheriff at an all-out run.

  He was passing through the outdoor mall when his cell phone rang. “Fleming,
” he said.

  “Walt.” Fiona’s voice. “It’s not her blood. She’s not cut anywhere I can see. Can you hear me? It’s not her blood.”

  “Three-point-oh,” Walt said. “Large-animal suture.”

  “The dog? He hurt the dog?”

  He pushed himself faster. A teenage kid went by on Rollerblades.

  Bursting through the doors, he alarmed the inn’s desk clerk. He turned the corner and ran smack into the security station.

  “Sheriff,” he spit out breathlessly.

  He walked briskly through the metal detector, tripping the alarm. A meaty hand grabbed him by the upper arm, spinning him around. Walt wrestled to break the grip.

  “No weapons inside,” the man said.

  “No time,” Walt said, out of breath. “The shooter’s in there. Where’s Dryer?”

  “No weapons.” The two men faced each other. Walt knew where this was going. His father had warned him. He removed his gun, held it out, and broke the man’s grip. The gun fell. He took off, an agent close behind him.

  Nine

  P atrick Cutter watched from behind Elizabeth Shaler, savoring the moment. He saw a room of captivated faces and the unblinking eyes of the five television network news cameras given permission to record.

  Liz Shaler spoke with authority and passion, animating her talk with her beautiful hands. “There is a growing abyss in this country, a divide between haves and have-nots that must finally be addressed. Those of us here today are fortunate to be in the former category, but that also puts us in a position of responsibility to have a critical impact on this country’s future. An obligation for improvement. I see a need for moral certitude, yes, but administered with a compassion promised by the present administration but never delivered. It is time we stand up and say, ‘If not me, who? If not now, when?’”