We All Fall Down mk-4

by Michael Harvey

  “I know who you are. And I know you’re trespassing on a private laboratory facility.”

  “Piss off, Jon.”

  Stoddard stood up and motioned to Molly. “Security.”

  Molly flashed me a final, pleading look and reached for a phone on the wall. I knocked it out of her hand. Stoddard surprised me by taking a swing. I put him down easy with a right. Molly was moving. I let her make it to the door before I showed her the gun.

  “It’s locked, Molly. And I’ve taken care of security. Now, why don’t we all sit down? And maybe you can come out of this in one piece.”

  She sat. They both did.

  “Peter Gilmore was greedy,” I said. “That was your first mistake. He was running a hospital supply scam you knew nothing about. When he realized what you had planned for the West Side, he decided to make a quick buck. Ordered up a few thousand body bags to sell on the black market. That left a trail for me to follow.”

  “Are you suggesting this lab was somehow involved in the pathogen release?” Stoddard’s voice was strained through a handkerchief, pressed against his mouth and wet with blood.

  “I’m suggesting this lab orchestrated the entire event.”

  “That’s insane,” Stoddard said and ran his tongue across a swelling lip. “Anyone who did that would risk a global pandemic.”

  “You engineered the bug with a kill switch, Jon.” Stoddard’s eye jerked in its socket, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. “Ellen Brazile told me every lab has its own signature. Including yours. She dug out the switch, recognized the genetic string for what it was, and thought she knew where the architecture came from. That’s why she disappeared from your lab. She was scared.”

  Molly jumped back in. “Michael, if you killed Gilmore, those are circumstances that can be explained. And we’re certainly in a position to help.”

  I ignored her. “The bug was a knockoff of Minor Roar. You tweaked its virulence and designed it to be active for three to five days. After that, the thing shut itself down. The release was always controlled. It’s just that no one realized it. No one except the people in this room.” I turned back to Molly. “You should have killed Gilmore before I did. That was your second mistake.”

  I took a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and pushed them over.

  “I don’t smoke, Michael.”

  “And there’s no smoking allowed anywhere in this building,” Stoddard said.

  “The cigarette I gave you. The one you extracted Gilmore’s DNA from.”

  “What about it?” Molly said.

  “I pulled it from this pack and smoked it myself. Gilmore never touched it.”

  Molly’s face shone with a pale intensity that seemed to suck the rest of the light from the room. Stoddard’s voice, when it came, rattled like a tin roof in the wind.

  “I think we’re done here, Mr. Kelly.”

  “You never ran any tests,” I said. “Instead, you saw an opportunity to set me up. So you fed me Gilmore’s name. Fed me information that positioned him as a buddy of Danielson. Then you fed me the address. And Gilmore was waiting to kill me. What you didn’t count on was this.”

  I tossed the shirt Ellen had given me onto the table. Stoddard picked it up.

  “For what it’s worth, the thing worked pretty well. I was grazed in the shoulder, but the big one, the chest shot, never got through. I got the drop on Gilmore. And then I had his computer.”

  I pulled out the laptop and slipped it onto the counter. They both ignored it.

  “I ran the DNA on your cigarette,” Molly said. “The data is in our files.”

  “You phonied it up.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “After you were hit by a sniper on the train, I wondered if you might not be legit. The truth is, Gilmore was trying to kill me. He just blew the shot. Even with the vest on, it took some guts to sit there and set me up. I’ll give you that. But the more I dug, the more I was convinced. The bug came from CDA. From you or Ellen. The only ones with the know-how and opportunity. The problem, of course, was which one.”

  “So you gave me the cigarette?”

  “Think of it as a line in the water.”

  “And I bit.”

  “Yeah, you did.” I pointed to the laptop no one wanted to take a look at. “Gilmore documented his end of things. Insurance, in case things went sour with his client.”

  Molly idly touched a couple of keys on a keyboard. “And who’s gonna believe anything Mr. Gilmore has to say? Or the man who killed him?”

  I gestured with the gun. “Good point.”

  “We definitely want a lawyer,” Stoddard said, appealing to whoever wasn’t in the room.

  I looked over. “You won’t need one.”

  Then I pulled out an NBC mask and tugged it on.

  CHAPTER 63

  I slipped a small cylinder from my pocket and held it up.

  “What’s that?” Stoddard said, eyes shining like two headlights staring down a midnight stretch of the Dan Ryan.

  “It’s one of your products, Jon. I press the button, and it disperses whatever’s inside in an aerosol form. This one’s loaded with a chemical agent. I know it works pretty fast. And I know it leaves you pretty well dead.”

  “It’s murder. You won’t do it.”

  “Actually, I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  “They won’t let you.”

  I looked around the room. “ ‘They’?”

  Stoddard began to blink his eyes quickly. His face was flushed and sweating.

  “It will take a few minutes,” I said. “You’ll start to cough. Feel like your throat is closing up.”

  Stoddard’s hand went to his throat. Molly walked over to a small cot set up in the corner of the lab. She sat down, then lay on her side.

  “Not interested, Molly?”

  “I’m okay with dying if that’s what you mean.” She rolled over and faced the wall. I pushed the button on the aerosol device. Stoddard collapsed into himself and began to murmur softly.

  “What’s that, Jon?”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  I took a syringe out of my pocket. “You got about twenty minutes before it shuts down your lungs. Then it’s all too late.”

  Molly coughed from the corner.

  “Give me the shot,” Stoddard said.

  “I want to hear it first.”

  Stoddard pointed a finger at the cot. “It was all her idea. From the beginning.”

  “Molly?”

  “She hired Gilmore. Paid him to release the pathogen once the Canary triggered. Thought it would be a classic profile for a terrorist attack.”

  “What about the bug itself?”

  “She started working on the modifications to Roar over a year ago. It was designed to go active for two to three days. A controlled kill, just as you described. Enough to scare the government. Then show what CDA could do to defuse the crisis. Secure our company’s future. Secure our country’s future.”

  “And the five hundred dead?”

  “A price worth paying. Now give me the shot.”

  “You’re leaving out some of the best parts.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The gangs, Stoddard. I want to hear about the gangs.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You grew up in K Town.”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  I threw down the documents I’d gotten from Northwestern. “You taught a night class at Kellogg in the fall of 2007. Ray Sampson was one of your students. Then you became his adviser.”

  I wasn’t sure if Stoddard was still with me, so I pushed the paperwork closer. I slipped Ray Ray’s picture on top. “This guy ran the Fours until he was killed last week.”

  “So?”

  “I think he was working with you. I think you told him about the release. And gave him a stash of masks. I want to know why.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
r />   I checked my watch. “Can you feel your throat closing yet?”

  “Please.”

  “I can wait all day.”

  Stoddard rolled his eyes around the room. All he saw were closed blinds on the windows and Molly’s back on the cot.

  “They were part of it,” Stoddard said.

  “The Fours?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Seed money. The seed money I used to start CDA came from the Fours.”

  “So they were your partners?”

  “I needed twenty million to get CDA going. Back then, it wasn’t going to happen with the banks and the few small investors I had. So, yes, they provided me with most of the venture capital.”

  “And you cleaned their drug cash in the process.”

  “Of course.”

  “Keep going.”

  “CDA was getting too big. I couldn’t have the taint of gang money in the company. Ray understood that and was willing to keep a low profile. But I knew it wouldn’t work. Not in the big picture.”

  “Why pay a return to your investors when you can just kill them off?”

  “The subway release was just the first, and smallest, of several Gilmore made. The rest were targeted hits on K Town, focusing especially on the Fours and their leadership. We figured nature would take its course after that.”

  I thought about Ray Sampson, sprawled on the stone cobbles outside a church.

  “One way or the other,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind. What about the masks?”

  “No filters in them. Useless. Actually made the poor bastards more vulnerable than ever.” Stoddard coughed into his hands and spit on the floor.

  “Not much more time, Jon. What else?”

  “We had nothing to do with the fires in K Town. That was the government’s thing.”

  “A happy coincidence?”

  “They saw a chance to control the infection. And get rid of some undesirables at the same time. Who was I to argue?”

  I shoved over a pad and paper. “Write it down.”

  He scribbled away for a few minutes. His throat had started to swell, and his eyes were closing.

  “That’s something to do with the mucous membranes,” I said as I read what he’d written. “In some people they start to swell about three minutes before the lights go out. But you probably know all that.”

  “Please.” Stoddard scratched at my arm.

  “Keep writing.”

  Stoddard bent over the pad again. Molly shifted on the cot. I looked up to see the compact silver-and-black gun in her hand.

  “No.” I ran at her. She fired just as Jon Stoddard turned. The gun was loud for its size. The small-caliber slug caught Stoddard just under the eyebrow. America’s leading biowarrior was dead before he hit the floor.

  “I was sick of listening to him.” Molly coughed and dropped her pistol. I kicked it to a corner and pulled mine off my hip again.

  “How many different ways are you going to kill me, Michael?”

  “You’re not going to die, Molly. Not yet, anyway.”

  I took off my mask and held it down by my side. James Doll came through the door.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I was about to tell Molly the stuff I sprayed in here will irritate the lining of her lungs and give her a headache. Nothing more.” I nodded toward her piece. “She shot Stoddard. Guess you can add it to her tab.”

  Molly sat down again on the cot. “It needed to be done, Michael. All of it.”

  “Keep talking and I won’t half mind shooting you myself.”

  “I don’t think so.” Molly’s eyes reached over my shoulder. I heard Rodriguez’s warning in my head and knew what was coming next.

  “Lay it down.”

  I turned. James Doll had his service weapon out and pointed my way. “I can let you scare them. But I can’t let you kill them. At least not both of them.”

  “Why?”

  “The gun.”

  I slid my piece across the floor. Doll put it in his pocket along with Molly’s.

  “You ever heard of something called the Dweller, Kelly?”

  “Does it have anything to do with Robert Crane?”

  Doll pointed to a chair. “Sit.”

  I did. Doll took a chair across from me.

  “I didn’t understand why they sent Crane after you either. Then they told me about the Dweller.” Doll nodded toward the cot. “You want to explain the rest?”

  Molly took her time getting up. I could hear the wheeze in her breathing as she walked over to a workstation and typed in a command. One of the monitors came to life with an annotated map of northern California. A second filled up with colored strings of DNA code. The word DWELLER was displayed at the top of the screen.

  “Jon and I realized our company might need additional protection someday. Maybe not this soon, but someday. So four months ago, we infected almost a quarter million people in the Bay Area with a biological weapon. We call it the Dweller.”

  I glanced at Doll, whose gun stared a hole right through me. Molly’s voice staggered on.

  “It’s a stealth virus. No one gets sick unless and until it’s activated. Then the host dies within two days.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “We’ve given Washington a piece of the Dweller’s genetic code. They’ve examined it, and they believe. They can’t afford not to.”

  I turned to Doll. “So she’s blackmailing you?”

  “Stoddard approached my boss when you started getting close. Told him CDA was responsible for the Chicago outbreak and why. Then he told my boss about the Dweller. And insisted you be taken care of.”

  Molly hit a few more keys, and the two screens went blank. “I love my country, Michael.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means I could sell my toys to the highest bidder. And there’d be plenty. But I don’t.”

  “You’re a real patriot.” I took a step.

  “That’s enough.” Doll moved to the middle of the room, where he could cover both of us with his gun.“We need to get you out of here, Ms. Carrolton.” He began to herd Molly toward the door.

  “You won’t get her back,” I said.

  Molly stopped. “Won’t get who back?”

  “Ellen’s gonna know the truth about her sister.”

  Molly’s features froze. For a moment, I thought they might crack and crumble right off her face. Then she turned to Doll. “What happens to him?”

  “That’s not your concern, ma’am.” Doll nodded toward the door. “We need to get you out of here. Now.”

  Molly looked like she might fight it. Then she erupted in a fit of coughing. Doll led her out, the door locking behind them. Five minutes later, the man from Homeland returned. He still had his gun out.

  “Now what the fuck am I going to do with you?”

  CHAPTER 64

  I stood at the back of Holy Name Cathedral and watched the great people sort themselves out for the morning service. Pecking order was everything. No one knew that better than Mayor John Julius Wilson. If the president had shown up, Wilson would have given up pole position in the first pew. As it was, Wilson parked himself on the aisle, the vice president directly to his left. Cameras were lined up just to the right of the altar. Far enough back so they didn’t ruin the networks’ wide shot but close enough to catch the mayor beating his breast, fingering his rosary, and squeezing out another tear.

  I pulled the Trib from under my arm. If sorrow was its morning coat, the city’s feet remained firmly planted in the muck and mire of rumor and suspicion. Some recent headlines:

  ANOTHER ATTACK IMMINENT: MUTANT FORM OF PATHOGEN SEEN IN CITY’S HOSPITALS COOK COUNTY PUTS IN EMERGENCY ORDER FOR 100,000 NBC SUITS REPUBLICANS BEHIND RELEASE; SEEK TO ELECT A NEW PRESIDENT

  And then there was today’s missive-a page one article on stealth viruses. How they worked. What they could do. Why we
should be concerned. I didn’t know how many people knew about Molly Carrolton. Or her threats. But it only took one to light the fuse.

  “How many lives you think you got?”

  I turned. Vince Rodriguez stood just inside Holy Name’s main doors, fresh sunlight spilling around his shoulders.

  “Me? Enemies?”

  Rodriguez pulled close and tapped me on the chest. “I told you not to trust that prick.”

  The detective was right. James Doll had been adamant that I needed to join Jon Stoddard, stretched and cold on the floor of CDA Labs. Then I showed him the cell phone pictures I’d taken inside the quarantine zone. Red paint, nailed-up windows, and dead bodies. Doll wasn’t impressed, so I took out the flash drive Ellen Brazile had given me. The one with a covert recording of the meeting where Doll and his pals in Washington had laid out various alternatives for controlling an infected population-including four different ways to burn down K Town. Doll might have been able to explain away my pictures, but there was no escaping his own words, played back in stereo. A few phone calls later, I was deemed an “acceptable risk.” At least for now.

  “How did it go with Theresa’s family?” I said.

  Theresa Jackson’s remains had been cremated along with the rest.

  “All she had was a sister,” Rodriguez said. “Didn’t seem much interested.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll keep her ashes.”

  My friend’s eyes smoldered for a moment, then dulled. Above us, an organ swelled with music and a choir began to sing. When they were finished, the cardinal took the pulpit and started blessing things. Rodriguez nudged me. We walked through the massive bronze doors and into a blast of morning sunshine.

  “Where’s Rita?” I said.

  “Where’s Rita? Pissed off is where Rita is. She knows everything and can report none of it.”

  “At least she’s alive.”

  “I’ll make sure to pass that along.” Rodriguez slipped on a pair of shades and took a seat on the cathedral steps. I joined him.

  “I’ll make it up to her,” I said.

  “How you gonna make it up to me?”

  There had never been any ballistics match from Rodriguez. Rita Alvarez had never uncovered a “money angle” worth pursuing. I’d put them through their paces in my office to make Molly Carrolton feel like she was on the inside-part of the investigation. Once she offered up a DNA match to Gilmore, there’d been only one lead to follow. Everything and everyone else became a smoke screen. A means to an end.