Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  “Wes Killen.”

  “This is Harper Cole! I need you! Berkmann’s alive!”

  “I just got off the phone with Baxter,” Killen says. “I’m running to my car right now. You know Mike Mayeux? New Orleans cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s out there. At your place. Right now.”

  “What?”

  “He never thought Berkmann died in the crash. He took a couple of days off to watch your place. He didn’t want you to know. Wanted you to act natural.”

  “Thank God! Look, there are two guys headed out to Erin’s grave. Family. Don’t get panicky if you see lights.”

  “I see lights now. Are you armed, Cole?”

  “I’ve got a thirty-eight revolver and a twenty-five auto.” Through the phone I hear Killen’s car engine firing up.

  “Get into a bedroom,” he says. “Cut off the lights, put your wife under the bed, and get low in a corner with the thirty-eight. Make sure your hall light’s on. If Berkmann opens the door, you’ll have him in silhouette. Easiest shot in the world. Blow him down.”

  “Just hurry!”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Drewe is speaking too rapidly now, her voice like a fraying cable. With the news about Mayeux pumping through me like amphetamines, I dial Sheriff Buckner’s office. As the phone rings, I peer out at the parked cruiser.

  “Sheriff’s department.”

  “This is Harper Cole. Give me Sheriff Buckner right now. It’s life or death.”

  “Who is this again, please?”

  “I SAID NOW GODDAMN IT!”

  A match flares in the deputy’s car. It glows steadily, flickers, then disappears. The tiny orange ember of a cigarette takes its place. I touch the grip of the.38 at my belt, wondering whether I should fire through the window. One shot would bring both the deputy and Mayeux running, but Berkmann could be anywhere. He might be in a position to ambush both men without even breathing hard.

  “This is Sheriff Buckner. Who the hell’s this?”

  “Harper Cole! You’ve got to get somebody out here!”

  “Cole? I’ve already got somebody out there.”

  “The killer’s here, damn it! Maybe outside my house!”

  “What?”

  “Radio the deputy you have here! But he’s got to be careful. Berkmann could be-”

  There is no sound so dead as a dead telephone. Very slowly, not wanting to believe it, I put down the cordless.

  Drewe is still speaking into the headset. I watch her trail off, then wait for Berkmann’s response.

  There is none.

  Drawing the.38 from my holster, I walk over and say softly in her ear: “Berkmann’s outside. He just cut the phone lines.”

  She closes her eyes like someone who’s just been read a death sentence. I gently pull the headset off her and drop it beside the keyboard. Strangely, the modem still shows a live connection. Maybe Berkmann left the phone line to the EROS computer open. Hitting the space bar just in case, I ask Drewe where her gun is.

  “In my purse,” she replies.

  “Where’s your purse?”

  “In the bedroom.”

  “Did you reload it?”

  “Yes.” She grips my forearm hard enough to cause pain and looks up with terror in her eyes. “Harper, let’s run! Get your keys and we’ll run for the Explorer.”

  “He’s expecting that.” I lay an open hand against her cheek. “We wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “Drewe? Speak to me.”

  At the sound of Berkmann’s voice, Drewe’s eyes go blank as a stroke victim’s. “He left the data line connected,” I tell her, squeezing her shoulders. “There are two cops outside. Answer him. If you can keep him occupied, we’ll be okay.”

  Moving like a zombie, she dons the headset again. “I’m thinking,” she says in a cracked voice.

  “What about?”

  “Everything you’ve said.”

  “You’re not being truthful, Drewe.”

  She hits the space bar again. “For God’s sake, Harper! We’ve got to run!”

  “We can’t. He could be anywhere. We’re safer in here. You’ve got to keep talking. Give Mayeux a chance.”

  She shakes her head. “We’re sitting ducks in here! I feel it.” Wild hope flashes in her eyes. “You said he didn’t actually kill the EROS women! And we both have guns!”

  “Listen to me, Drewe. I know he has a tranquilizer pistol. He’d probably shoot me with a dart to get me out of the way, then take you with him.”

  Her mouth drops open as the enormity of the danger sinks in. “But… but what if we risk that? If he takes me, I could pretend to go along, then shoot him when I got a chance.”

  “What if he shoots me with a forty-four Magnum instead of a dart? We don’t know what he’s got out there, Drewe.”

  “We can’t just sit here and wait for him!”

  I squeeze her shoulders again, trying to reassure her. “We’ve got no choice.”

  She jumps up from the chair and pulls away from me. “God, why did you bring him here? How could you be so stupid?”

  “Why isn’t he talking?” I ask, turning to the EROS screen.

  At that instant the muffled crack of a gunshot bounces off the front of the house.

  Drewe screams. Snatching her arm, I run for the door, praying that shot came from Mike Mayeux’s gun.

  “Could the deputy have shot him?” she asks.

  As my hand touches the doorknob, Berkmann’s digital voice says:“I suppose we all know where we stand now.”

  I tear open the door and pull Drewe after me, up the dark hall and into the kitchen. We stare dumbfounded at the two-by-six planks I nailed across the pantry door yesterday. I start to break for the back door, then stop. The gunshot came from the front of the house, but I can’t be sure who fired it. It’s fifty feet from our back door to the edge of the cotton field. Fifty feet without cover. Handing Drewe the.38, I try to tear one of the planks down from the pantry door, but it doesn’t budge. I plant my right foot against the door frame and yank again, but Drewe stops me.

  “What is it?” I shout.

  “He knows about the tunnel! Remember he talked about you hoarding your gold like Midas? He could be in there right now!”

  I hesitate. “If he is, the gunshot doesn’t make sense. I think that crack was just a figure of speech.”

  “You want to bet our lives on that?” she asks, trying to pull me away from the door. “Harper, listen to me! I’m sorry I lost it back there. You were right. We’ve got to stay. If we run, we might get away, buthe will too. Then what happens? A week or a month or a year from now he snatches me out of some parking lot? Or cuts your throat while you’re sleeping?”

  Drewe has gone from blind panic to rigid control in less than a minute. “What do you want to do?” I ask.

  “You called for help, right? Even if he killed the cops outside, somebody’s got to get here in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “He could kill us twenty times in twenty minutes!”

  “But does hewant to? Listen! He’s still talking to me.”

  She’s right. Berkmann’s digital voice is still droning up the hall. Somewhere outside our house, he is crouched over a notebook computer and cellular phone, too afraid or unsure to make his move.

  “He doesn’t want to kill me,” Drewe says, clutching my upper arm. “He wants to take me with him. That’s why he hasn’t broken into the house! I can control him, Harper.I’ve got the power right now. I can keep him on a string for twenty minutes. You just be ready to shoot him if he tries to break in.”

  Suddenly I see a great irony. By declaring his desire to possess my wife-and by believing he has destroyed me in her eyes-Berkmann has given me the upper hand. He has made Drewemy hostage.

  “We can do it!” she insists, handing the.38 back to me. “Twenty minutes.”

  An image of Michael Mayeux comes into my mind. That hardheaded Cajun could be stalking Berkmann right no
w.

  “Okay,” I tell her. “Move! Get back to the computer!”

  Drewe races into the hall and toward the office. I veer into the bedroom for her Charter Arms.25, then follow. When I reach the office door, I remember Wes Killen’s advice and switch on the hall light. Then I lock the office door behind me.

  Drewe is already speaking into the EROS headset.

  “What was that gunshot?” she asks.

  “Time is running out,”Berkmann replies.“We must act quickly.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you.”

  “But… how? What do you want me to do?”

  “Walk outside with your car keys. I have a plane nearby. We can be airborne in three minutes.”

  My chest constricts with panic. Drewe whirls to face me, stunned. I can scarcely speak. “The strip Miles used,” I whisper. “He must have stolen a plane.”

  “I thought your plane crashed,” Drewe stammers.

  “Of course you did. But I never meant to leave without you, Drewe. I knew that as soon as I saw your picture. Fate used Harper’s sins to bring me to you. And to stay near you, I had to appear to die. I would have come to you sooner, but you moved into your father’s house. There were guards. I had no way to contact you safely.”

  Drewe is shaking her head. “Were you at my sister’s burial?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you leave sunglasses in her grave?”

  “I dropped them. I couldn’t risk retrieving them.”

  “But… where have you been staying for the last two days?”

  “In a cotton gin. I had electricity and water… all the necessities except food.”

  “My God.”

  “Time is short, Drewe. You were going to leave Harper anyway. Now you know how right that instinct was. Now you have a place to go. I am taking you to a future you cannot even imagine.”

  “But….”

  “I know Harper is there. You must convince him that to obstruct us means death.”

  “It’s not that simple. He has a gun, and it’s pointed at me. He’s not about to let me go anywhere.”

  Silence.

  “Then I shall kill him.”

  “Let me talk to him, Edward,” Drewe implores. “I’ll make him understand how it is.”

  This time Berkmann does not respond. Drewe reaches out and grips my left hand in hers. I clench the.38 in my right, looking back over my shoulder at the window blinds.

  “Five minutes,”Berkmann says finally.“In five minutes you walk out the front door alone, or I set the house on fire.”

  CHAPTER 49

  “He’s bluffing,” I say, trying to believe it myself.

  Drewe throws down the headset and hits the space bar. “We’ve got to run! We’ve got to use the tunnel now!”

  I lay the.25 in her lap and shake my head. “We can’t run. We lost our chance. We don’t know where he is now.”

  “He’s going to set the house on fire!”

  “He won’t do it with you inside.”

  “He might!”

  Something is working at the edge of my consciousness, like a comet too distant to see but hurtling toward me at great speed.

  “Harper!”

  “We can’t run. And he knows it. We already made our choice.”

  “What if we tell him I’m coming out, then just sit here in the dark? He’d have to come in for me. Then we could shoot him. It’s two against one.”

  “Berkmann knows about killing, Drewe. It’s our house, but he’s been here before. If we end up in the same room with him, we’re going to die.”

  She is near to hyperventilating, and she knows it. She clutches the.25 to her chest and shakes her head as if to shake off her terror. “What about-?”

  “Pleasebe quiet, Drewe.”

  She groans and closes her eyes.

  I turn away and gaze around the office. Somehow, I have to kill Edward Berkmann. But the gun in my hand is not the answer. Facing him down like John Wayne would be suicide. As I turn slowly, I am suddenly and keenly aware of Miles as he was on the morning he completed his Trojan Horse program while Buckner’s men hammered on my front door. Desperate for time and needing to run, he looked around this room and realized that everything he needed to fool the police was right in front of him, if only he could see it in the proper light.

  A minute has passed, but for me time is dilating with possibility. The seconds pass like cars on a distant train. Berkmann is smart. That is his talent. But talents are double-edged swords. I learned that the hard way. Maybe Berkmann is too smart for his own good. As the air conditioner kicks on, something trips in my brain-an echo of my own voice just minutes ago.Remember Dallas ….

  Dallas. A jerky video image of an apartment. Men in black. A harmless-looking white computer on a floor, suddenly blooming into black nothingness….

  My nerve endings thrumming, I turn faster, drinking in the contents of the room. The coat sculpture. My surviving guitars. The computers. The rack for my great grandfather’s sword, which now lies in some evidence room in Yazoo City-

  Smaller,says a voice in my head. I tighten my focus from macro to micro. Floppy disk case, stapler, VCR. Halogen desk lamp, flashlight, canned air for cleaning electronic gear. Air freshener Drewe left in here weeks ago, toner bottle for refilling printer cartridges-

  “Harper, for God’s sake!”

  I hold up my hand, looking from the sleek black EROS computer to the boxy white Gateway 2000, then at the printers attached to each, and finally the keyboards.

  “Drewe.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to type Berkmann a note. On the Gateway.”

  “What?”

  “Please just do it.”

  “What do I type?” she asks, sitting down at the computer.

  “Go into WordPerfect. Double-space the note. Write it as if you’re me. Tell Berkmann you hate his guts, that you’re taking your wife out of the house, that he’ll never have her. Tell him to wait right where he is, because you’re coming back to kill him as soon as your wife is safe.”

  “But it’s the wrong computer!” Drewe protests. “I can’t send the message to him!”

  “Just do it! But whatever you type, make the note longer than a single screen. You understand? You’vegot to go a few lines past the first screen.”

  “Okay,” she says, tapping slowly at the keys.

  I flip on the halogen lamp near the Gateway, then move to the door with the.38 and switch off the overhead light.

  “Where are you going?” Drewe calls, her voice high and thin.

  “I’ll be right back. Finish the note!”

  I close my left hand around the doorknob and slowly turn it. Berkmann could already be inside the house, but I don’t think so. And I’m going to be very quick.

  One pull and I’m sailing up the hallway with the office door shut behind me. Hard left, into the unused bedroom that holds the gun safe. Shifting the.38 to my left hand, I kneel before the safe, spin the combination lock back and forth to the numbers of my father’s birthday, and yank the handle. My right hand parts the thicket of antique muskets, grabs a black-and-yellow can, and gives it a shake. Three-quarters full. Then I’m running again, the.38 held out in front like a ram.

  “Thank God!” Drewe cries from the pool of light at the center of the room.

  I shut and lock the office door. “Did you finish the note?”

  “Four lines past the bottom of the screen. Harper, what are you trying to do?”

  A moment of doubt as I reach into the bottom drawer of the desk. Nothing gets lost faster than tools. But this one I used less than a week ago.

  “What are you looking for!”

  My heart leaps as my hand closes around the screw starter. “I’m going to blow him to hell and gone.”

  “What?”

  I hold the can from the gun safe under the light.

  “Black powder?” she asks.

  “You got it.” I flip open the top
of the Hewlett-Packard printer and pull out the black wedge-shaped toner cartridge. Drewe stays on my heels as I carry the cartridge into the bathroom.

  “Tell me what you’re doing!” she demands. “Are you making some kind of bomb?”

  “Yes.” With the screw starter, I pop out the two pins in the left end of the cartridge, then flip it around and start on the right.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  The fourth plug gives with a pop. “Kill Berkmann,” I tell her, dropping the plug into my pocket. “I need you to clear out a space on the floor of the closet. Move all the shoes and things to one side.Hurry.”

  “Okay.”

  After pulling off the cartridge cover, I turn the cartridge on end, exposing the inch-wide plug in the toner reservoir. It pulls out easily. I start to invert the cartridge over the toilet bowl, then realize how stupid that would be. The “ink” used by laser printers is a superfine black powder of plastic and metal that looks like coal dust and spreads like an eruption of volcanic ash. If I try to flush it down the toilet, the bathroom will look like a blind man tried to paint it with India ink. Instead, I flip open the cabinet that holds my dirty clothes hamper, stick the cartridge through, turn it on end, and shake it until the weight tells me it’s empty. Then I pull it out, wipe my hand on a towel, and drop the towel into the hamper.

  “I heard something!” Drewe shouts. “Outside!”

  Looking out of the bathroom, I see her pointing the.25 at one of the front windows. “Just keep to the shadows,” I tell her, running back to my desk.

  With the empty toner cartridge braced against the floor, I press the sharp end of the screw starter against the plastic and bear down like a blacksmith, punching a hole clean through the wall of the toner reservoir. Then I punch another hole about a quarter inch from the first.

  “Hurry, Harper!”

  Covering the holes with my thumb, I begin filling the toner reservoir with black gunpowder.

  “Why did I have to write that message?” Drewe asks.

  “That’s part of the detonator.” Through the plug hole, I watch the level of the gunpowder rising.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When you don’t go outside, Berkmann will have no choice but to come in. Just like you said.” I glance at my watch. Nearly three and a half minutes have passed.