by Greg Iles
“The errors didn’t matter! He just stopped communicating with me for the time it took him to fly down here. Just that stupid e-mail message about getting the JPEG picture of Erin! God, I should have tried to talk to him right then. Then I’d have known he was moving!”
Miles seems to be shaking, but I can’t tell from the grainy picture whether it’s him or the link. “Oh, God,” he croaks. “I killed her. Christ….”
“ We killed her,” I correct him. “You talked me into it, but I’m the one who lured him here. And now I’m scrubbing Erin’s blood off the walls.”
He wipes his eyes again.
I am numb. The magnitude of our culpability in Erin’s death is impossible to face for long. “Tell me about the Trojan Horse, Miles.”
He nods distractedly and raises a sheaf of paper toward his camera lens.
“What’s that?”
“The contents of Brahma’s hard drive. The one he downloaded the Trojan Horse onto.”
A remnant of cold reason revives somewhere in my brain. “Does it tell you who he is?”
“No name. No ‘I’m Ted Bundy’ or anything like that.” In a curiously childlike gesture, Miles wipes his nose on his sleeve. “I got his EROS software serial number, but it’s registered under David Strobekker.”
“Damn.”
“But there are definite leads. He’s got to be working out of New York. He started out killing homeless women here. The first three victims were infected with HIV, so he stopped. That must be when he hit on the EROS idea. He killed Strobekker in Minneapolis for his EROS account-”
“Where are you getting all this?”
“I think he used this computer primarily as an interface for EROS. It’s mostly Windows-based applications. He must have his main stuff on a UNIX workstation somewhere. Jesus, I can’t believe this. God — ”
“What else do you have?” I ask, forcing my voice under control.
“The explosive stuff is the WordPerfect files. He actually kept a record of most of the murders. They’re like descriptive letters. ‘Dear Father, We landed in New Orleans yesterday evening. A humid city, blah, blah.’ ” He shuffles pages. “ ‘Dear Father, We landed in Michigan in the afternoon.’ ‘Dear Father, We landed in Virginia Beach-’ ”
“Brahma told me his father died in India.”
Miles shrugs. “So he writes to his dead father. It’s like Psycho maybe. The problem is that the only names mentioned in the letters are those of the victims, or this woman Kali. According to the letters, she did the actual killings. Although Brahma helped with the staging. The mutilations and stuff. Kali must be that girl he picked up in India. The Thuggee girl.”
“She’s dead too.”
“She is? How do you know?”
“Erin killed her. Right here in my office. Ran her through the stomach with the sword off my wall.”
Miles is thunderstruck.
“Come on, there must be something in the letters we can use.”
“Drewe was right about the pineal transplant thing,” he says. “Brahma definitely kidnapped Peter Levy, the man the FBI got off the DonorNet list. Know why?”
“Come on, Miles.”
“Levy was a perfect tissue match with Brahma.”
“Jesus. You mean… you think he could already have found a way to have this transplant done to himself?”
“No. I think Levy’s on permanent standby. For when the procedure’s perfected. I’ll bet when Brahma turned up an exact match for himself, he decided he wasn’t going to take any chances that the guy would get run over by a truck. I guarantee you Levy is being held prisoner somewhere right now.”
“Good God.”
“The DonorNet woman’s dead, though. The navy chick from Virginia Beach. She died on the operating table. Rosalind May did too. Heart attack. For some reason Brahma was going to open her chest-don’t ask me why-and he actually told her about it. The letter said he was trying to make it easier on her. She died of plain terror. It’s pretty sick stuff. But there’s one thing that doesn’t add up in it all.”
“What?”
“Why Brahma was fooling with Erin. I mean with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think he saw you as a potential donor. So why was he wasting time with you?”
“I’m listening.”
“Everything was going fine for him until Karin Wheat’s death. She was meant to be the first live recipient. I think he thought she might voluntarily allow him to perform the transplant. Of course, when he and Kali showed up at her mansion, she freaked, and they had to kill her. After that he went to his backup plan, which was straight kidnapping. Rosalind May. And he got the navy girl easily enough, the donor. But just before the big operation, his help got greedy on him. He was using unlicensed Indian doctors as assistants, probably recruited by Kali. They tried to extort more money, and Kali killed one of them.”
“That’s a lead right there! The FBI can start checking Indian physicians who’ve been turned down for U.S. medical licenses. They can concentrate on New York.”
“Listen to me, Harper. That same night, May died on the operating table. The next day the FBI breached his perimeter in Dallas. Notice a pattern here?”
“Brahma’s having big problems.”
“Exactly. But does he lie low and regroup? No. He decides to teach the FBI a lesson. He plays Lenz’s little game, then kills Lenz’s wife. Meanwhile, he’s playing kissy-kissy with you too.”
“Maybe I was meant to be the next donor.”
“For who? Who would the recipient have been?”
“Kali, maybe?”
This stops Miles. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I don’t think so. Too early. She’d want to know the procedure worked before she risked it.”
“So why was he talking to me?”
“Brahma wants immortality, Harper. Physical immortality. Listen to this: ‘Soon I shall stand alone at the pinnacle of the species, the only man with the courage to reach into the fountain. Soon I shall spit in the face of God.’ ”
“The fountain of youth?”
“Hell yes. He even talks about Ponce de Leon. Brahma’s fountain is the pineal transplant. Except just as he gets close, fate starts working against him. And the worse it gets, the more he tells you about himself. He gives you his whole life story, something we know he’s never done before. Why?”
“Do you know?”
“There’s another kind of immortality, Harper.”
“Just tell me, damn it!”
“Kids.”
The word detonates in my subconscious like a bomb. Even with the jerky video image, I can see the excitement on Miles’s face.
“In the transcripts you faxed, Brahma says he sterilized Kali, remember?”
“Yes. He said he couldn’t have children by her, so she allowed him to sterilize her.”
“If he couldn’t have children by her, he wouldn’t need to sterilize her. I think he wouldn’t have children by her.”
“Because she was Indian,” I say distantly. “Because she had dark skin.”
“Exactly! All those early questions about skin color! All his life, Brahma’s been looking for someone like his mother for a mate.”
“But my ‘Erin’ wasn’t that much like Catherine.”
“Not so much physically, maybe. Although you did change her in that direction a little. Good instinct.”
“Yeah, obviously.”
“No, listen, Harper. The answer lies in the story you were telling him. That’s where ‘Erin’ was like his mother, and that’s what attracted him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You blacked out most of what you told Brahma,” Miles says, looking straight into the camera, “but now isn’t the time to be shy. It was all stuff about you and Erin, right? The real Erin.”
I hesitate only a moment. “Yes.”
“The big thing in Brahma’s past is incest. He’s a child of incest; he always longed for the sister he never had; Kali
was a poor substitute. Right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I started thinking about Erin. And you. Your separate pasts, when things might have happened between you. And I realized that your marriage dates were pretty close together.”
“Miles-”
“So I called the Methodist Church down in Rain and found out exactly when Erin and Patrick were married. Then I checked the Social Security computer and got a birth date on Holly Graham-”
“You son of a bitch!”
“I’m sorry, Harper. I had to know. And that’s the answer. Brahma became obsessed with ‘Erin’ because she had this semi-incestuous angle to her past. And because you played her so convincingly. Erin had a child by her sister’s husband. She ignored the rules for the sake of love, just like Catherine. She’s a combination of Brahma’s mother and the sister he never had. Or at least that’s what Brahma started to think under the stress of his other problems.”
“We’re done talking, Miles.”
“Wait! Can’t you see I’m only doing this to stop this motherfucker?”
“I don’t think anybody can stop him.”
“I can. The question is, what will Brahma do now? When he got to your place and found he’d been fooled, he must have flipped out. But why kill Erin? She was the girl in the JPEG, after all. Why not kidnap her? Did he take her pineal gland?”
“No. But he took something. Probably her ovaries.”
Miles’s mouth falls open.
“She had a surgical incision down there.”
“Christ. You see? With his pineal work going down the tubes, Brahma fixated on extending his gene line through children. It’s that simple. Wait… Erin killed Kali, you said. That means Erin fought like a banshee, right?”
I close my eyes, remembering Kali’s mutilated corpse.
“Brahma had to kill Erin,” Miles concludes. “She left him no choice. Just like Karin Wheat. So he tried to salvage what he could. He probably carries some special transport container for the pineals. He just loaded up her ovaries instead.”
“Stop, Miles! I don’t even want to hear that shit. There’s got to be something else on that hard drive to give you an idea who or where he might be.”
He looks at me in silence for several moments. Then he says, “Two things. There’s a WordPerfect file called ‘Clarus.’ It’s not set up like the murder letters. It’s more of a memo-to-myself kind of thing, like something he typed out while talking on the phone. It looks like specs for some type of new medical instrument. Clarus is the name of the company that makes it.”
“What kind of instrument?”
“The kind Drewe thought didn’t exist. And until recently, it didn’t. It’s called a neuroendoscope. It’s a long, thin, flexible tube called a cannula that you can pass instruments through. It’s made to operate on the brain. There’s a fiber-optic camera attached, and a bright light source. You can visualize the interior of the patient’s brain by running the scope’s camera signal to a TV or a video camera with a built-in screen. Harper, the cannula is only four-point-five millimeters wide.”
“My God. Are there any names in the file? People from the company that Brahma might have talked to?”
“No.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“I’ve got a serial number off a Microsoft program that might be traceable. It’s a beta version. Microsoft handed them out like popcorn in ninety-two, but I’ve got some friends in Redmond who might be able to track it down.”
“Good. Do it. And fax everything you have to Baxter at Quantico. Right now.”
“Harper-”
“Do it, goddamn it!”
He nods assent. “Don’t you think Baxter is probably on his way to you by now?”
This hasn’t occurred to me. “I don’t know. It looks like Brahma’s already clear. He used a private plane. They found fresh tire tracks on the same strip you used.”
“Harper, I am so sorry about Erin. How’s Drewe holding up?”
“I sedated her.”
“Oh.”
“You just fax that stuff to Baxter.”
“I will.” He pauses. “Maybe you should split for a while, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Brahma, for one thing. He knows where you live. And if Erin killed Kali… do I have to draw you a picture?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Dr. Anderson isn’t exactly Mr. Understanding either, as I recall. If he thinks it’s your fault his daughter is dead-”
“It is my fault.”
“Only to the extent that you trusted me.”
“Look at it this way, Miles. Next time Lenz asks us what the worst thing we’ve ever done is, we won’t have to think very hard to find the answer.”
Before he can respond, I click the mouse on TERMINATE VIDEO LINK and sink lower into the chair.
After a minute, Nefertiti reappears, turning slowly. The muscles in my neck are knotted from scrubbing, and my backbone feels like it could splinter through the skin. I should get up and check on Drewe, but I can’t summon the energy. Miles’s warning about Drewe’s father replays endlessly in my head. Bob must be home by now. He could show up here any time.
I need caffeine. I force myself up out of the chair and walk to the minifridge, but it’s empty. As I head for the kitchen, my eyes follow the floorboards, checking for bloodstains I might have missed. I see none.
There are no Tabs in the kitchen refrigerator, but there is a six-pack of Diet Coke. I pop the top on one and lean back against the counter, swallowing the burning fluid and letting the cold from the open refrigerator wash over me. When that drink is empty, I open another and let the door swing closed. The kitchen is so narrow here, it looks like a monk’s sleeping quarters.
You’re punch drunk, I tell myself. You can make it to the bedroom.
Glancing through the laundry room to the back door, I realize that the last cop through it probably didn’t think about locking up. I set down the Diet Coke and walk past the closed pantry door to the laundry room to shoot the bolt and-
Freeze.
At least twenty cops have trooped through this house in the past two hours, but I’m positive that not one of them knew of, much less searched, the bomb shelter. Leaving the bolt unshot and the Diet Coke on the stove, I back through the kitchen into the hallway, my heart hammering, my fear for Drewe overcoming all else.
Should I try to get her out of the house? No. We’d be totally vulnerable as I carried her to the truck. My.38 is out there too. I’ve got to have a gun. I dart into an offshoot of our main hall, toward the neglected bedroom we use for storage.
The door creaks as I push it open, but I follow through and leave it ajar behind me. In the far corner of the bedroom, standing like an upended deep freeze amid the sentimental flotsam of five generations of Coles, is my father’s gun safe. Inside it is a motley collection of antique pistols and flintlock muskets, many dating back to the War between the States, some even to the Revolution. The combination lock is easy to open, the numbers those of my father’s birthday: 10-6-32.
The hard tang of gun oil and good steel hits me in a reassuring wave. Shoving apart the muskets to reach the back shelf, I set aside a can of Elephant brand black powder and grab the suede zip case containing the single modern weapon in the safe, my father’s Smith and Wesson.357 Magnum. There’s a box of shells on a thin metal shelf in back. I quickly unzip the case and load the pistol, putting the remainder of the rounds in my pocket. The cartridges are old, but with luck they will still cook off if I actually have to fire the thing. The big checked wooden grip feels unfamiliar in my hand. Sighting once down the six-inch barrel, I move back into the hallway and hurry into the bedroom.
Drewe hasn’t moved. Facing the closed door, I back around the bed to the telephone and dial Sheriff Buckner’s office with my left hand. I keep my right on the Magnum, taking my eyes off the door only long enough to see the numbers.
“Sheriff’s Department.” A wom
an’s voice, more a question than a statement.
“I need to talk to the sheriff. Now.”
“Who is this?”
“Harper Cole. Get him!”
“He’s not here.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Just a second.”
The next voice is male, young. “Deputy Jones. What can I do for you?”
I answer in language calculated to scare the living hell out of Deputy Jones, telling him about the tunnel and making it plain that people might die if Buckner and some deputies don’t get back to my house ASAP. Then I hang up and sit down between Drewe and the door, the.357 pointed at its upper panel. The gun has a sobering weight. My arms are soon shaking with fatigue, but I’m afraid to sneak a look at my watch. It’s been over a year since I opened the gun safe, the last time I felt sentimental about my father and found myself cleaning his guns to remember him. No, squeeze the trigger, son. Be careful now, Harp, this thing’ll put a bullet through a car door-
A bump from somewhere inside the house steels my flagging arms. No way could Buckner’s men be here yet. Not from Yazoo City. I listen in a way I have not since my grandfather took me on my first and last deer hunt. Shooting Bambi seemed cruel and unnecessary to me then. Now blowing off a man’s head seems entirely justifiable.
There is definitely someone in the house. I don’t know how I know, but I do. And that someone is moving.
“Harper Cole!”
My finger pulls against the Magnum’s trigger, stopping at the last pound of pressure. Does Brahma know my name? Of course he does.
“Where you at, man? It’s Billy Jackson!”
I’m on my feet instantly, pulling open the door and motioning the heavyset deputy into the room. His forehead and cheeks are beaded with sweat, his eyes alight with excitement.
“Who’s with you, Billy?”
“Jimmy Hayes, on the porch,” he says breathlessly, thumbing the hammer of the nine-millimeter automatic in his hand. “We were watching the house, like that New Orleans cop said to.”
“Just you two?”
“Sheriff’s on his way, but it could be twenty or twenty-five minutes. Your wife okay?”
“She’s sleeping.”
