Pope kept hobbling along, planning his next move. On either side of him, along the edge of the rails, was a narrow ledge of about eighteen inches. Caked with grime and rat droppings, it was designed as a catwalk for CTA maintenance people. Every few feet, it widened to accommodate an electrical junction box. If necessary, the doctor could climb up on that ledge to avoid getting clobbered. But what about Frank Janus? The detective was less than twenty-five yards away now, and he might fire at any moment.
His mind churning with options, the noise rising all around him, Pope flashed back on the brainwashing—
(—the detective lying in deep hypnotic trance, listening with his subconscious.
The doctor’s voice piercing his mind: “Frank, who is this other you?”
“It is the part of me that’s guilty.”
“Guilty of what?”
“Killing those women.”
“That’s right, Frank, and do you remember the words and phrases from your past that I programmed into you?”
“Yes.”
“What will happen when you hear these words?”
“I will be afraid.”
“Why?”
“Because these words scare me.”
“And what happens when you hear them?”
“The words take me back to those bad times when I was a kid, and I’ll be back in those times.”
“What happens then?”
“I lose control.”
“That’s good, Frank.”
“Yes, that’s good.”
“What about the other you? Will he be afraid?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Will the other you be afraid?”
A long pause. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s a killer—”)
—a supernova of noise and light erupted suddenly in the subway tunnel.
Pope scrambled up the side of the ledge just as the train arrived.
The train sped by Pope in a cacophony of rancid wind and flickering light. Pope was stricken for a moment, his back pressed against the wall, his heart racing, his eyes tearing. The noise was monumental. It was like being swallowed by a jet engine.
The car passed so quickly it was impossible to see any of the passengers. Pope tried to cry out but his voice was nonexistent in the crushing wave of sound. The light inside the car strobed and flashed like an old-fashioned peep show for a moment, the faces in the windows burning themselves into the backs of Pope’s retinas.
Then they were gone.
And the last car hurled into the darkness, sucking all the noise and wind with it. Debris and pieces of litter swirled after it.
“Hey, Doc!”
Pope glanced up and saw the apparition perched on the ledge across the tunnel. The detective was breathing hard, having run a great distance, and was either grimacing or smirking, it was hard to tell in that horrorstricken instant before the attack. His gun was holstered. Pope tried to say something, but he couldn’t get the words out in time.
The detective leapt across the gap—
—and it was as though a battering ram had slammed into the doctor, driving him against the stone.
The two men bounced off the rock, then careened over the ledge and onto the rails.
Pope landed with a thud on the small of his back, a bolt of agony shooting up his spine. The detective landed on top of the doctor, an audible grunt puffing out of the younger man. Pope tried to shove the detective off, but the detective was already going for Pope’s throat.
Pope managed to call out another trigger-word: “NUMB!”
The detective shuddered suddenly, his hands going soft and flaccid on the doctor’s throat.
Pope took advantage of the momentary lapse and wriggled out of the detective’s grasp, struggling across the cinders and filth, gasping for air in the dank darkness. The doctor labored himself up to his feet, then managed to back away a few paces from the detective, who was now on his knees, straining to clench his hands into fists.
For a brief instant, Pope watched the detective, teeth clenching, veins popping in his neck, willing his numbed extremities to move, to make fists, to rip through the neurological bondage. The doctor had never seen a man override post hypnotic programming through sheer brute force. This was a new phenomenon.
And that was when the realization struck Pope like an icicle through his forebrain: This was no longer Frank Janus, the mild-mannered, traumatized detective with tons of emotional baggage and crippling insomnia. Nor was it the Other Frank Janus, the wicked, scheming, amoral serial killer. This was a third personality. A wholly separate, discreet personality born out of a cauldron of terror and rage.
This was the new Frank Janus, a relentless, pig-iron-stubborn manhunter.
The doctor turned and fled.
But it was too late.
Frank lunged across the third rail, boiling with adrenaline, his arms cold and prickling. He managed to get a handful of the doctor’s pajama top, then yanked the old man backward.
The doctor tripped on his feet and fell into a stagnant, oily puddle.
Frank stood there for a moment, catching his breath, gazing down at the old man. Fever burned in Frank’s head, his eyesight tunneled. There was an engine inside him, revving. Maybe it was a third personality. Maybe it was some repressed well of anger that had always been there. But whatever it was, it needed to strike out.
It needed to hurt the psychiatrist.
“Look at me,” Frank said to the old man, his breathless invocation echoing in dead-silence.
Pope gazed upward, out of breath, fixing his milky gaze on Frank. “What are you gonna do, Frank? Kill me?”
“Nope,” Frank said, reaching down and clutching the doctor by the collar. He yanked the old man to his feet. “I’m going to arrest you for the murder of Kyle Janus.”
Frank’s fist came up hard under the doctor’s jaw.
The blow made a snapping noise, like old cordwood breaking, and Pope’s head snapped back. A string of saliva looped off the old man and across the darkness, as he staggered backward for a moment.
Frank threw a second punch into Pope’s stomach just as Pope yelped, “SHOCK!”
High-voltage current surged suddenly in Frank’s hands, sending him staggering. The electricity jolted up the tendons of Frank’s arms, and he slammed backward against the ledge, letting out a startled grunt, his body stiffening, starbursts dotting his vision.
Pope got his legs back under him and lurched across the rails at Frank, driving a blow into Frank’s solar plexus.
Frank doubled over for a moment, gasping for air, and Pope tried to drive a bony knee up into Frank’s face, but Frank got a hold of the older man’s legs and threw Pope off his feet. The psychiatrist landed on the outer rail with a hrrrrmph, and his feet nearly brushed the live center rail. The ground was starting to tremble again.
In the distance, the knife-sharpening sounds were returning, as Pope levered himself off the ground.
Frank pounced.
The two men collided on the outer rail and tumbled several feet, grappling wildly, Pope gasping for air. The rage was working inside Frank like a nuclear reactor, and he was no longer a cop, and he was no longer a fugitive from justice. He was a predator now, and he was unleashing his wrath in a barrage of jabs to the older man’s midsection, culminating in a massive blow to Pope’s kidney.
Pope exclaimed in agony, flopping backward on the rail, clutching at his back.
The metallic shrieking noise had risen to unbearable levels now, and the glare of xenon light tore a hole in the darkness, but Frank was far beyond caring. He climbed on top of the big-boned old man and grasped Pope’s turkey neck and squeezed and squeezed, and as the light grew, Pope’s ashen face became luminous, his blood-veined eyes growing wider and wider, gleaming like big cat’s-eye marbles, and Frank strangled him with every last shred of strength— squeezing so hard his stitches were popping beneath his sleeves.
Another train was
coming, roaring metallic dragon-breath in the dark tunnel, the metal wheels shrieking. Pope managed to hiss a choked scream over the noise: “SHARP!”
Fiery pain sliced up the undersides of Frank’s arms, invisible razors gouging his flesh, but he refused to let go, refused to give in to the neurological tricks. The train was bearing down on them, maybe sixty, maybe fifty yards away. The ground was shaking.
Pope uttered another strangled cry: “BURN!”
Frank’s skin rippled with liquid agony, second- and third-degree burns sweeping over him like a brush fire, but he kept squeezing, he kept strangling, as Pope’s face turned livid in the rising noise and light from the approaching train. The rails were singing.
The train was twenty-five yards away.
“DIE!” Pope croaked through his contracting windpipe over the incredible noise.
Frank glanced over his shoulder just as several things happened at once: His heart stuttered inside him, stealing his breath away; the train appeared in their faces in a nebula of pure-white light and sound; Pope managed to slither out of Frank’s grasp, rolling out of the train’s path, choking and gasping all the way; and somehow, through some self-preservative instinct, at the very last possible moment, Frank managed to dive toward the opposite side of the tunnel himself; and it all happened in one sudden paroxysm of violent movement.
Frank landed on the opposite ledge just as the train thundered past him.
The rotten wind engulfed him for a moment, the furious clacking noises drowning out everything else, shoving him against the stone. More lighted windows strobed and flickered maniacally in Frank’s face, and Frank clutched at his chest, gasping for breath. A band of numbness was tightening around his left arm, and his vision blurred. He felt as though he were having a heart attack.
Was it the trigger word DIE?
Frank gazed through the veil of glaring white light, and saw in his mind’s eye the windows of the train rushing past him, transforming into the sad, wan faces of mourners looking down at Frank’s casket. Was he dying? Was it possible to just keel over from a posthypnotic suggestion? Frank could hear the voice of his little brother from many years ago—
(—you die in your sleep, Frankie, you die for real in real life—)
Frank opened his mouth and howled into the tidal wave of noise: “NO!”
The tail-car suddenly clamored past him, leaving behind a tiny whirlwind of red light and litter in its wake.
Frank doubled over for a moment, stunned by the sudden, dark calm.
He looked up.
Twenty feet away, a few paces down the ledge, Pope’s gangly legs were visible dangling out the bottom of a service hatch, scuttling up an emergency ladder. He had evidently discovered the emergency porthole only a moment ago, and now he was getting away. God damn it, he was getting away!
Frank vaulted over the center rail, then hurtled toward the ladder.
Pope was already at the top of the steps, pushing the leprous emergency hatch open.
A column of washed-out daylight slashed down through the darkness.
Frank followed the psychiatrist into the light.
And one last deadly dance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The sky had darkened significantly over the last few hours, as though the relentless rainstorms of the last couple of days had wounded it somehow, bruised it beyond recognition. And now the air was laden and musty, and the streets were slimy, and Frank had no idea what time it was as he emerged from the manhole and saw the dead city rising around him, all the tired, old high-rises like phantoms in the gray, featureless mist.
Frank could see Pope in the distance, about a half a block away, limping hastily toward a vacant lot at the corner of Canal and Fulton. It was a run-down industrial neighborhood, and the few passersby were stepping away from the commotion, huddling in doorways, watching with weary unease. Over by the bus benches, a homeless man was crouching behind a grocery cart full of cast-offs, watching the world as though he were a refugee in some war-torn city.
Frank started after the doctor.
It wasn’t easy. Frank’s side was bound up in pain, and his lungs were sore, and his nerve endings were fried. How long had he been operating on negligible sleep? His body was starting to shut down.
Ahead of him, the psychiatrist was struggling over a low cyclone fence, then lumbering across a weedy, litter-strewn vacant lot. It looked as though the old man was in worse shape than Frank. He was limping furiously over the scabrous ground, holding his side, already so winded he could barely hold his gray head up. Frank had done some damage in the subway, but the old man was still kicking, and as long as he was functional enough to call out trigger-words, he was still dangerous.
Frank reached the chain-link fence, vaulted over it, then raced across the lot.
Up ahead, Pope vanished around a corner. He was heading south now, down a side street, and Frank found himself wondering if the doctor had any idea where he was going. It was clear the older man could not keep evading Frank forever, no matter how fatigued and bleary-minded Frank happened to be at the moment. But what if Pope had a destination in mind? What if Pope were leading Frank into another trap?
Frank approached the corner of the lot and careened around the end of a broken hurricane fence.
He spotted the doctor instantly, hobbling furiously along a row of boarded storefronts in a burned-out neighborhood. The sky seemed lower now, as though the tar-stained clouds were pressing down on the skyline. Dusk was coming. Frank could smell it on the wet winds as he raced after Pope.
“Hey!”
The voice pierced Frank’s awareness. It came from behind him, off to his left, and it sent a jolt of electricity down Frank’s spine. Without breaking stride, he shot a glance over his shoulder.
A plump black woman in a blue uniform—probably a meter maid—had stepped out from behind an abandoned pickup truck parked against the curb, and now she was watching the chase. “You okay?!” she hollered.
Frank gave her hasty wave, trying to find his voice. “Got it covered!” he yelled back in a hoarse growl.
The meter maid called back, “You want me to call it in?!”
“No—that’s okay—I got it!”
“You sure you don’t need no backup?!”
“Nope, no thanks!”
Frank turned back to the chase.
The psychiatrist had vanished around another corner, and Frank followed close behind.
It was becoming more and more obvious that Pope was leading Frank somewhere, and in that single instant of doubt, Frank wondered if he truly was making a fatal error in pursuing the doctor. But the thing inside Frank didn’t care. The thing that had awakened inside Detective Frank Janus would not stop until Henry Pope was destroyed.
Forty yards ahead of Frank, an abandoned building loomed. Wooden construction fencing wrapped the foundation, and yellow CONDEMNED placards were posted every few feet. Inside the fence, a gothic monstrosity rose up against the brooding, late afternoon sky. The midsection was a decaying pile of stone and broken arched windows, the single belfry tower still vaulting upward into the clouds, the rusted cross rising off the uppermost finial like a stubborn avatar.
Frank didn’t recognize the church. In his frenzied approach, his pulse quickening, he saw the building as merely one more casualty of a dying inner city, a failing infrastructure that left the dinosaurs of old mosques, temples, and churches to rot like fossilized carcasses. In fact, at the moment, the only thing about this church that concerned Frank Janus was the locked gate hidden behind a forgotten dumpster at the southeast corner. The psychiatrist was fiddling with the lock.
A moment later, Pope had slipped through the gate and inside the lot.
Frank reached the gate a split second later and slammed his boot into the door. The rusted hinges jettisoned, and the door broke free, sliding across the muddy turf inside the opening. Frank lurched through the doorway.
The church grounds were a wasted battlefield of litter, disca
rded building materials and bare earth. The once splendorous gardens had been reduced to cracked concrete troughs and crumbling ruins of featureless marble. The once grand front steps were whiskered with weeds and crabgrass.
A noise drew Frank’s attention to the entrance—the musty crack of a rotten plank.
Pope!
The doctor was squeezing through a gap in the planking, then vanishing inside the church.
Frank hurried across the muck, his boots making suction noises, his heart slamming in his chest. He felt the size and the weight of the church pressing down on him as he approached, like the petrified remains of a mythic god. He found the loose plank through which Pope had slipped. He paused, taking in a few shallow, nerve-wracked breaths.
What are you waiting for, Frank? You got the son of bitch cold!
Frank slipped inside the church.
The shadows mocked him.
He pulled the .38 out of its holster, thumbing back the hammer as a stream of sensory information poured into him: This was bad, this was a bad place, from the rancid odors of ancient wax, and sweat, and moldering wood, to the frenzied sounds of footsteps receding down some inner sacristy, to the sickly light filtering down through broken stained-glass mullions rising over the deserted foyer, he felt the overwhelming feeling that he should not be here.
Pull yourself together, Frank, and close this fucking case!
At last, he willed himself to move, across the vestibule of rotting tile and empty coatrooms and into the church.
The main cathedral was a haunted place drowning in a sea of shadows. Great pillars rose up at every corner, chipped and cracked from neglect. Cobwebs and filth choked the ceiling beams and gallery windows, and milky shafts of light crisscrossed the upper decks. Some of the pews were gone, like limbs amputated from a corpse.
Frank hurried toward the altar, toward the broken-down circular staircase to the left of the choir loft.
Footsteps were vibrating up there somewhere on the iron steps as the doctor ascended, sending echoes reverberating down through the darkness. Frank rushed toward the staircase with his gun raised and cocked and ready, and his heart racing wildly, his mind swimming with contrary emotions.
The Sleep Police Page 22
