In one swipe it had rooted out both of his eyes.
The last thing Dr. Chevalier felt before he passed out was a bone-splintering grip on his ankle, and then the ground was sliding underneath him. His head bumped roughly across a rock. The thing was dragging him back to his house.
“I could smell you…the whole time,” the saw-blade voice said inside of Chevalier’s head.
Chapter Eighteen
The parking lot beside the Hotel Galvez had no shade and was blindingly bright in the afternoon sun. Westfield had backed his beat-up van into a parking spot and now crouched between its rear bumper and the front of a Ford truck in the spot behind him. He was using a screwdriver to take off his stolen Texas license plates and replace them with his Washington plates. The van wasn’t running well and the last thing he wanted was to break down on Interstate 10 and have to explain his stolen plates to a state trooper.
After everyone else left, he’d stayed in Galveston, trying to find another witness. He’d made the rounds of the yacht basin and the fishing piers, talking to anyone he found. But no one had seen a thing.
Now there was the email from Chevalier to think about.
He pulled the van out of the parking space, turned it around, and parked in the same stall, front end first. Then, behind the screen of three parked cars, he changed the front license plate. He put the two Texas plates into a paper bag that he tossed into a trash can on his way back to the hotel. He didn’t have to check out of his room until the next day, but he planned to leave that evening. It would be cooler driving at night. He could make it to Van Horn or even El Paso by sunrise, and would be out of Texas the next day.
In his room, he put his duffel bag on the bed and started packing. The television was tuned to CNN and was showing a fire in an industrial-looking building out in the woods somewhere. A blonde reporter in a yellow rain slicker was standing in front of a backdrop of flames and fire trucks. He had the television muted, but from the look of things, the building was a total loss. Westfield switched off CNN and went into the bathroom to get the stun gun he’d used on Chris. It was plugged into an outlet next to the sink to recharge. He put it in his pocket so he’d remember to return it to the van’s glove compartment.
He was about to turn off the television when there was a knock at the door.
“Just a second.”
He went to the door and looked through the peephole. A man in a plain black suit was standing in the hall with a manila mailing envelope.
“Yeah?” Westfield said. He hadn’t touched the door.
“Front desk. Envelope for Aaron Westfield.”
“Just put it under the door.”
“You gotta sign for it.”
“Hang on.”
Westfield opened the door and the man held out the envelope. As he did so, Westfield saw the pistol in the man’s right hand. It looked like a semi-automatic .22, and would have been very small except for the silencer screwed to the end of the barrel. The man pointed it at Westfield and shot him in the right kneecap. The gun made a sound like a rubber band twipping off the finger of a five-year-old. Westfield’s knee exploded in pain and he fell backwards into the room. He landed on his side and was struggling to get back up. The man stepped in after him, kicked the door shut, and then kicked Westfield in his stomach. Westfield landed on his back and the man stomped on his stomach a second time and then knelt over him, one knee on his chest. He took a washcloth out of the envelope and pressed it over Westfield’s face. It was wet with something and it burned when it touched his nose and lips. He couldn’t breathe from the kicks to his stomach and was struggling underneath the man.
The man’s face was completely calm.
“Normally, I just shoot you in forehead. But I get paid extra to ask questions.”
He pressed harder with the washcloth and Westfield felt the burning liquid go up his nose. He wanted to scream.
“You make sound, I make it worse,” the man said. “You want to scream?”
Westfield tried to shake his head. No, he wasn’t going to scream. He could hold it in.
The man took the washcloth from Westfield’s face and held the gun at his throat.
“Who else knows you’re here?”
Westfield was struggling to take a breath. He couldn’t answer. He shook his head again.
“Who besides Chris Wilcox, Mike Nakamura, and Julissa Clayborn knows why you’re here?”
He shook his head.
The man was using his left arm to pin Westfield’s right arm against the carpet behind his head. Westfield’s left arm was trapped between the man’s right knee and his side. He gently explored with his fingertips and felt the stun gun in his left pocket. He pulled at the lining of his pocket to bring the stun gun closer so he could get a grip on it with his thumb and forefinger.
“You contacted the police, the FBI?”
Westfield shook his head.
“Who talked to Chevalier?”
“I did,” Westfield said.
“When?”
He closed his grip on the stun gun and was able to slowly get it all the way into his hand. He swiveled it to point at the man’s thigh, a few inches below his crotch. He was pretty sure the shock would make the man convulse. If he did, he’d pull the trigger.
“Yesterday.”
“Tell every word you said.”
“You mean besides all the stuff about what a stupid fucking asshole you are?”
As he said this, he jammed the stun gun as hard as he could into the man’s thigh, and jerked his head to the right. The pistol twipped again and Westfield heard the bullet go through the carpet next to his left ear, burying itself in the floor. Concrete chips stuck in his cheek and the side of his head, but that was no big deal. The man toppled off of him and Westfield sat up. The man was dazed but not out and Westfield put the stun gun on his chest and pressed down hard for five seconds. The man jerked violently, then lay still. Westfield took the gun out of the man’s limp hand and pulled out the magazine. By its weight in his palm he could tell there were about eight rounds left. He reloaded the gun and set it behind him.
Westfield didn’t take his eyes off the man as he unfastened his own belt, slipped it off, and fastened it just above his right knee. He pulled it through the buckle and cinched it as tightly as he could. Then he wound the leather strap around his leg and tied it roughly off. He pulled up his pant leg. The bullet had gone in just to the left of his patella. He felt tenderly along the backside of his knee and felt an exit wound.
That was good.
It hadn’t lodged in the bones but had gone clean through.
Both wounds were still bleeding but had slowed after he put on the tourniquet. It must have been a steel-jacketed round and not a hollow point to have done so little damage. The man had probably chosen the small caliber so the silencer would work, and the steel jackets to punch through a man’s skull. It was a good set-up for executing someone, but not so good for inflicting injuries to muscles, and for that Westfield knew he’d been lucky.
Westfield picked up the gun and turned back to the man. He patted him down and went through his pockets. His visitor carried no wallet. In his inner jacket pocket Westfield found a piece of thin spectra cord that was too short to be of use for anything except strangling someone or tying someone’s wrists together. He found a rental car key. Besides the washcloth, the manila envelope had a can of mace and a switchblade knife. He rolled the man onto his stomach and tied his wrists behind his back with the spectra cord. Then he brought the loose ends of the cord through the back of the man’s belt and tied them. Good luck getting your hands in front of you now, he thought. He rolled the man back over.
The man started to stir, but Westfield wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. He might have one good jolt left in the stun gun. He knew a way to find out. He pressed the electrodes under the man’s chin and hit the button. The man stiffened and then went limp again. Westfield flicked open the switchblade and cut the man’s suit jacket and shir
t from the cuffs to the neck and then ripped them both off so that the man was naked from the waist up. He wasn’t wearing an undershirt. There was a blue rose tattooed on the man’s chest and it looked like he had tried unsuccessfully to remove it with acid or lye. The skin over the faded rose was blistered with scars. Westfield rolled him over again and looked at his back. He wasn’t wearing a wire, unless it was down his pants.
When the man came around again, Westfield wadded the ether-soaked washcloth and stuffed it into the man’s mouth. Then he used the silenced pistol and shot him once in each kneecap. The man jerked at each shot but his muscles were weak from the stun gun. The ether-soaked gag stifled whatever he had to say about it.
“Normally I’d just shoot you in the forehead,” Westfield said. “But, well, you know.”
The man looked at him with bulging eyes. Westfield took stock of him. He had blond hair and blue eyes and looked about thirty years old. He was bleeding out of both kneecaps, had taken three shocks at around five hundred thousand volts each, and was gagging on ether. His hands were tied behind his back. Westfield was pretty sure he wasn’t much of a threat, but still—Chris Wilcox had recently taught him a lesson in this regard. There was nothing to gain from carelessness but regret. What the hell. He picked up the can of mace and emptied it into the man’s eyes.
When the man stopped writhing on the carpet, Westfield pulled the washcloth out of his mouth. The man’s eyes were swollen shut and his face was red and wet with tears.
“Who do you work for?”
“You already know.”
“What is he?”
“Nothing you want to mess with.”
“How’d you find me?”
“He gives us your name. We trace your credit card.”
“Where can I find him?”
The man said nothing.
“What’s his name?”
More silence.
“Do you know what he is?”
The man just coughed, leaned his head to the side, and spat phlegm onto the carpet.
“Why would you work for him?”
This time the man spoke. He had a hint of an accent, but Westfield wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe Russian or one of the Baltic states.
“He pays.”
“Where do I find him?”
Silence.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time. Then I’ll to count to three. If I get to three and you haven’t answered, I’m gonna kill you. Where do I find him?”
The man said nothing. Westfield dropped a pillow over the man’s face and pressed the muzzle of the gun into it.
“One.”
The gun was angled so the bullet would go through the pillow and into the man’s forehead, right between his eyes.
“Two.”
The pillow would catch most of the splatter and since it was only a .22, the bullet probably wouldn’t go all the way through the man’s head. It would just bounce around inside.
“Three.”
He didn’t see any other options and he didn’t think he had enough time to sit around with an assassin while trying to think of better solutions. He waited for about two seconds to let the man answer. But the man didn’t say anything. Westfield pulled the trigger. He closed his eyes and thought of Tara on their wedding night.
Chapter Nineteen
It was eleven thirty in the morning in Honolulu. Julissa checked her email twice more, but there were no developments either from Dr. Chevalier or Special Agent Barton. The lack of action was driving her crazy. Plus, when Chris came in from the balcony with his cell phone, he told her Intelligene’s phone line was out of service. That seemed a little extreme to her, taking an entire company’s phone system offline to avoid one potentially disgruntled client.
“You want to get a drink or something?” she asked him.
“Sure.”
“Let’s just get one beer and then go over to your house to meet Mike.”
“Sounds fine. We leave early, we’ll beat traffic.”
They found a windowless and dark sports bar in the basement level of the Hyatt. At ten to noon, they were the only two customers. A girl who looked like she might be a college student greeted them from behind the bar when they came in. They ordered beers and carried them to the farthest corner of the bar, behind two pool tables in the back. They sat opposite each other at a round table.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering about,” Julissa said. “Assume I get into the FBI’s computers and trace the person who’s been erasing data from VICAP.”
“Okay.”
“And assume by tweaking all the geo-location software I can get my hands on, and by reversing everything he’s done to cover his tracks, I track him down.”
Chris nodded and sipped his beer.
“So then what?” Julissa said.
“Then we go and we watch. Like you said, whoever’s doing the hacking is either the killer or someone the killer hired. So we go and figure out who we’re dealing with.”
“Like a stakeout.”
“Yeah.”
“What if we watch him and figure out he’s not the killer. Just someone who works for him?”
Chris looked at her. “What would you want to do with someone like that?”
“Watch him as long as we can and get as much information as we can that way,” Julissa said. She picked at the label on her beer. “And then we go in and grab him. Take him somewhere quiet and have a private conversation with him. Find out everything he knows. Then search his house and his computer when we’re through with him.”
“I’ve been thinking along the same lines.”
“What I’m wondering is what we do with a guy like that after we’re done asking him questions.”
“Maybe we should just figure that out when the time comes. Based on the circumstances,” he said.
“I’m in this all the way. I’m not taking anything off the table and I’m not going to lose any sleep over what we do.”
Chris nodded. They sat in silence for a while and drank their beers. Chris finished his and set the empty bottle on the table.
“I’ll go pay,” he said. “Take your time.”
She watched him walk past the pool tables, across the small dance floor, and up to the empty bar. The college student came and took his credit card. Julissa continued to pick at the label of her beer and finally peeled it off the bottle and stuck it on the tabletop, smoothing it down around its edges. She wasn’t sure why she felt so nervous.
“Julissa!”
She looked up. Chris was waving her to come.
“You need to see this!”
Then Chris was motioning to the girl behind the bar.
“Can you turn off the music and turn that up? Please?” He was pointing at a TV behind the bar. Julissa couldn’t see it yet, but something in Chris’s voice had her moving fast. The bartender found the right remote controls, turning the music down and the TV up. The TV was showing CNN. A blonde reporter stood before a burning building, between two fire trucks. The building was a two-story stone-and-glass structure, half of which was completely lost in flames. The other wing of the building had smoke pouring out of the shattered windows. The firemen in the background were aiming streams of water at the flames and into the broken windows.
The banner headline underneath the image said, Blaze Engulfs Genetics Lab in Massachusetts, 16 Feared Dead.
“Oh shit,” Julissa whispered.
Over the reporter’s shoulder, the camera filmed a crew of firefighters approaching the building with a hose. They were in full protective gear and wore oxygen tanks on their backs. They entered the building through a broken ground-floor window.
Now the reporter was talking.
“…not sure if this is domestic terrorism or some kind of tragic accident. None of Intelligene’s employees are accounted for. Right now the first fire crew is going inside the south wing of the building. We’ve been told this is an unprecedented move at this stage in a fire. They’re risking it b
ecause people may be trapped in the building. Deputy Fire Chief…wait, someone’s talking in my ear piece.”
The reporter put a hand to her ear and listened for a moment. Behind her, the last of the four firemen entered the building. The hose trailed in through the window and black smoke poured out.
“Our mobile news truck has a scanner that can pick up the fire crew’s radio transmissions and we’re going to broadcast them live. We’re switching over to that now,” the reporter said. She stepped to her right and out of the frame of the camera’s shot. A new headline appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Live feed as Fire Crew Enters Burning Lab.
Julissa hadn’t realized it, but she’d taken Chris’s hand. She stood next to him, held tight and watched the screen. She heard the girl behind the bar say something.
“You from there or something?”
“Sort of,” Chris muttered. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
Then the live audio feed started. The firemen’s voices were muffled behind their oxygen masks and barely audible over the roar of hot air that blasted past their open microphones.
“We’re in a conference room. Furniture is…melted. No bodies.”
A different voice, “Can get through here.”
“Watch it.”
There was a long blast of static and then finally a voice emerged from it.
“We’re in the main lab. I see a body behind a collapsed table. Make that two. Wait a minute…hang on…”
For a moment the sound cut out completely. The camera went on filming the burning building and the fire crews on the outside who were losing their fight against the fire on the other half of the lab. The sound clicked back on.
“…oly shit, Chief, there are at least a dozen bodies here. They’re stacked in a pile. No heads. No fucking heads at all. Some are missing arms and legs…just ripped apart…Jesus fucking…”
There was a splintering crash and a roaring boom. A different voice came back.
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