Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  “If he sets the house on fire, we’llhave to go out!”

  “He won’t do it.” The gunpowder keeps rising. “He won’t take a chance on hurting you.”

  “Where are we going to be when this bomb of yours blows up?”

  “Right here.”

  “Right here? In this room?”

  “In the closet.”

  “What? Waiting for him to come in here with us and set it off?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “You said we’d die if we wound up in the same room with him!”

  The toner reservoir is full. I stuff the plug back into the hole, then dig through the bottom drawer of my desk for wire cutters and electrical tape. I need wire too, but there’s none in the drawer.

  “Stop for one second!” Drewe shouts, squeezing my arm so hard I have to yank it away.

  “Damn it!” I yell, trying desperately to think of some place in the office where there might be wire. “We’ll be buried under clothes and everything else in the closet.”

  “How big will the explosion be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Like a pipe bomb. We might get hurt, okay? Buthe’ll be cut to pieces.”

  Drewe freezes, her mouth open. “Did you hear that?”

  My eyes lock onto a Gibson ES-335 guitar hanging from its brace above my bed. “What?” I ask, jumping onto the bed with the wire cutters.

  “My God! Do you smell that?”

  The first snip pops the Gibson’s high E-string with a twang like a cartoon ricochet. The second gives me the length of wire I need.

  “Gasoline!” Drewe gasps. “That’sgas!”

  She’s right. The sharp tang of high-octane gasoline is seeping into the room. Maybe through the air-conditioning ducts.

  “He’s bluffing,” I tell her, cutting the guitar string into two three-inch lengths. I pull off my watch and hand it to her. “We’ve got forty seconds. Tell me when our time’s up.”

  With Drewe staring wildly at me, I reach into the open cartridge with the screw starter and feel for the corona wire. This ultra-thin filament electrically charges the magnetic drum that puts the “ink” in the right places on the page to form text. Holding up the wire with the tip of the screw starter, I stick two small pieces of tape to it, one on either side of the tool point. Then I snip the corona wire in half.

  “Twenty-five seconds,” Drewe says in a tight voice.

  I toss her the wire cutters. “Cut the mouse off the Gateway!”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it! Throw it in the closet!”

  Using the tape scraps to guide me, I attach a short length of guitar string to each loose end of the corona wire. Then I carefully feed the two wires through the holes I punched in the toner reservoir and fix them in position with tape.

  “Time’s up!”

  “Get some towels!” I shout, snapping the cartridge cover back into place. “Wet them in the bathtub!”

  “You said he wouldn’t do it!” Drewe wails.

  “Get the towels!”

  Fumbling like a teenager with a condom, I pop in two plugs to anchor the cover, then run to the open printer and shove the cartridge home.

  The moment I close the printer’s lid, I have a lethal bomb. But Edward Berkmann is the detonator, and for him to function properly, I have to make a nonfatal choice impossible. My hands fly across the keyboard, closing out possibilities for failure-

  “Harper, stop it!” Drewe pleads, standing beside me with two soaking wet towels.

  “Get in the closet!”

  “I won’t do it!”

  “You want to die?”

  “We will die if we do this!”

  Berkmann’s digital voice paralyzes us both.“Five minutes have fallen into eternity. Where are you, Drewe?”

  She watches me like a kid with her finger plugged in a leaking ocean dike. “Let me talk to him!” she begs.

  “He doesn’t want to talk! Get in the closet!”

  Her arms fall slack at her sides, letting the wet towels plop onto the floor. “I can’t,” she says in a broken voice. “I’m sorry.”

  I’ll drag her into the closet if I have to, but first I have to arm the bomb. I stare at the printer, my stomach near spasm.

  “Get back, Drewe.”

  “Do you smell the gas, Harper?” Berkmann asks.“Are you ready to burn?”

  “Fuck you!” I yell. With the knowledge that it could be my last, I take a deep breath. Then I lay myself over the printer in case it blows prematurely, and hit the ON switch.

  Nothing happens. The yellow and green status lights on the face of the printer glow, blink off, then come back on, indicating the unit is warmed up, on-line, and ready to print. And I am still alive.

  “Can you hear me, Edward?”

  I whirl, my heart pounding. Drewe is seated at the EROS computer with the headset on.

  “Yes. Come out, Drewe.”

  “Harper won’t let me! He thinks if I come out, you’ll burn the house with him in it. Or shoot him if he tries to come out.”

  “We all have to take chances in life. Come out now.”

  “I want to. I’m going to try something, okay? You’re using a cell phone, aren’t you?”

  “Stop playing games, Drewe. My patience is gone.”

  “I’m going to hook a telephone to this modem line. Then I can come to the window. You’ll be able to see me then. We can work this out.”

  Berkmann doesn’t reply.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I hiss.

  Drewe motions frantically for me to bring her a phone. I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but every minute that ticks past is a mile and a half closer for Wes Killen and Sheriff Buckner. I toss her the cordless and run for the answering machine that is its base.

  “What’s the number of the data line?” Drewe asks, her finger pressed to the space bar.

  “Six-oh-one, four-two-seven, three-one-one-four.”

  She repeats the number into the headset, then says, “Do you have that on your screen, Edward?”

  Berkmann says nothing.

  “Call me in thirty seconds. I’m attaching the phone now.”

  I scrabble behind a bookshelf with my left hand, trying to disconnect the answering machine’s electrical plug while holding the.38 ready in my right in case Berkmann breaks down the door.

  “Hurry!” Drewe pleads.

  I have it. Dropping the base into Drewe’s lap, I shove the electrical plug into the back of the power supply that feeds clean electricity to the EROS computer. “What the hell are you trying to do?” I ask again.

  “I’m going to get you a shot at him.”

  “What? How?” I ask, clicking the RJ-11 jack into the back of the modem.

  “Just be ready.”

  “I don’t think he’s listening to you anymore.”

  The ringing phone makes a liar of me.

  Drewe reaches for it, but I grab her wrist. “Let the machine get it, then pick up.”

  After the machine answers, Drewe picks up and says, “Just a second!” over my outgoing message. When it finishes its run, I press MEMO, which will not only record Berkmann’s words but also allow me to hear everything he says through the answering machine.

  “Are you there, Edward?” Drewe asks.

  “Yes.”

  Even transmitted by the tinny speaker of the answering machine, that single word-spoken without the digital midwife of Miles’s voice-synthesis program-communicates more subtlety and danger than the whole of Berkmann’s words so far.

  “I like that better,” Drewe says. “Much better.”

  The little speaker hisses and crackles in her lap.

  “I’m coming to the window, Edward.” She rises from the chair.

  “No. Come to the back door.”

  Drewe freezes, her eyes asking me what mine are asking her. Is Berkmann really at the back door? There’s no way to know.

  “Harper wo
n’t let me. But I’m coming to the window.”

  Despite my fraying nerves, I force myself to let her cross the room to the right front window. She seals the transmitter of the phone with her palm and whispers, “You’re mad as hell. You’re losing it. You’ll kill me before you let me go out there.”

  “What?”

  She gives me a frantic look like, Come on, stupid! “When I slap the windowpane, that means he’s exposed. That’s your shot. Not until then, okay?”

  Before I can argue, Drewe grips the blind cord in her right hand and takes three steps backward, pulling the blind to its highest position and exposing six vertical feet of glass.

  “Can you see me, Edward?” she says into the phone.

  Berkmann doesn’t answer. He’s not about to reveal his position by admitting he can see her. What is he thinking at this moment? The only light in the office comes from the halogen desk lamp, but it falls across Drewe from the side, illuminating her white robe and still-damp hair with a diffuse yellow glow. Berkmann would probably like to smash the window and snatch her out through it, but our house is built off the ground, which would make that very tough to do. He also knows I’m armed.

  “Edward?” Drewe says again, her voice plaintive.

  Still nothing.

  The smell of gasoline is strong by the wall, but Berkmann hasn’t lighted it yet. My first instinct is to move to the other window, ten feet down the wall from where Drewe stands. That would give me the best field of fire. But if Berkmann is out front, he knows that too.

  “Where is Harper?” he asks suddenly.

  I whirl toward the EROS computer, my finger on the trigger. I’d forgotten that the only way I’ll hear his voice now is through the answering machine across the room.

  Drewe has put a hand on the window frame to steady herself. She’s been acting with so much assurance that I assumed she was as confident as she looked. But she’s far from it. In fact, now that Berkmann has answered, she seems too flustered to respond.

  As I watch her floundering, the scenario she sketched out comes back to me. Pressing my chest flat against the wall between the windows, I extend my right arm, edge along the wall, and press the barrel of my.38 against her left temple.

  “You see him now?” she asks, her voice full of genuine shock.

  “You’re going to die for that, Harper.”

  Berkmann is definitely in front of the house.

  “That’s not a good way to start this negotiation, Edward,” Drewe says.

  “I’m not negotiating.”

  “This talk, then. That synthesized voice was so sterile. Not like this. Your real voice is much more intriguing.”

  “Shut up, damn you!” I yell, supplying what seems like my appropriate line.

  “I’m going to burn you alive,” Berkmann says coldly.

  “FUCK YOU!” I close my eyes and try to picture the scene outside. Drewe’s Acura is parked broadside to the house, about twenty yards from the window. The Explorer is ten yards closer to the house, but farther to the left than the Acura.

  “Harper won’t hurt me, Edward,” Drewe says. “He doesn’t have the guts. Just like he didn’t have the guts to tell me about Erin.”

  “Why don’t you try walking out then!” I scream.

  “I don’t have to,” she says in a strange voice. “Edward’s going to get me out.” She turns into the barrel of the.38 and gives me a look that could freeze mercury. “Would you really shoot me, Harper? Let’s see if you will.”

  She looks back into the darkening yard and says, “You know what would kill him, Edward?”

  “What?”

  “If I told him the truth about sex with him.”

  “Tell him.”

  “Shut up, goddamn it!”

  “I’ve never had an orgasm with Harper inside me. Not in three years of marriage and a year of sex before that. Of course hethinks I have. Sad, isn’t it?”

  “That will soon change.”

  Berkmann’s voice sounds different somehow. More strained.

  “I honestly can’t believe Erin enjoyed sex with him,” Drewe goes on. “Because she knew about sex, I can tell you. You wouldn’t believe some things she did.”

  Berkmann says nothing.

  My gun arm is tingling the way it did twenty years ago, when I reached into the fort to pull Miles out. I sense Berkmann aiming at my hand the way I sensed that rattlesnake. It would be a risky shot for him, firing through glass so near to Drewe’s head. But he might try it with a tranquilizer dart. I take a quick step backward, pulling the.38 behind the frame of the window.

  “What kinds of things?” Berkmann asks suddenly.

  Drewe glances at me. “I saw her get out of a DUI ticket by making a highway patrolman… you know, in his pants. I mean it. She didn’t even take off her clothes. His either. It was sort of like a slow dance on the side of the road. Erin didn’t care. To her sex was like breathing.”

  “And to you?”

  “I know how I want it to be. I want it to be… transcendent. Am I wrong to want that?”

  “No.”

  “The few times I’ve ever managed to get… aroused enough, Harper’s already finished. Do you know how to touch, Edward? Where to touch?”

  “I know places you don’t know you have.”

  “You slut!” I scream. “Hang up!”

  “Tell him what you’ll do if I hang up, Edward.”

  “I’ll light that gasoline, Harper. And when you come running out, I’ll shoot you in the pelvis. I have the deputy’s gun, and I’m an excellent shot. I have Officer Mayeux’s gun too, in case you’re wondering.”

  I grit my teeth and close my eyes. I can’t see Mayeux giving up his gun while alive. This isn’t working. Drewe thinks she’s stalling, but Berkmann isn’t sitting still. Darting to my desk, I scrawl a message on a legal pad with black magic marker. Then I return to the wall and hold it up where Drewe can see it by looking slightly to the left.

  HE’S PLAYING YOU! TRICKING US!

  YOU’VE GOT TO TURN IT AROUND!

  GET ME A SHOT!

  In the crackling silence, Drewe stares at me like a little girl who has walked out onto a high-diving board and lost the nerve even to walk back to the ladder. As I watch, she seems to waver on her feet. Yet the moment I move toward her, she snaps erect and holds up a hand to stop me.

  “I’ve thought a lot about your transplant work,” she says. “I’m the one who first figured out what you were doing. I never thought it was really possible, though.” She waits in vain for an answer. “It’s not possible, is it? That’s why you gave up?”

  Silence. Then,“It’s not only possible, it’s simple. The problem is the illegality, the inconvenience of obtaining donors and recipients for testing.”

  I nod encouragement to Drewe. She’s found the right button to push.

  “You can really keep someone youthful past the normal aging curve?”

  “Of course.”

  “You could keep me young?”

  “I’m going to, Drewe. When the women you went to school with are fighting menopause and osteoporosis, you’ll be skiing in Saint Moritz, making love as long and as often as a thirty-year-old.”

  “But why me?”

  “I’ve seen my mistake, Drewe. What’s the point of immortality without someone to share it with? The only real immortality is genetic anyway, at least for now. You shall bear my children. I could say I’ve chosen you, but this was all written long ago, by fate. When I realized how Harper had tricked me with Erin, and that you were the one I wanted, I thought of harvesting Erin’s pineal for you. There was a twenty percent chance that she would be a perfect tissue match, and at least it would have given her death some meaning. But I didn’t. I knew you probably hadn’t reached the stage where you could see the rightness of it.”

  “You’re right. Thank you for not doing that.”

  “There are always other sources. But first the children. Then more research. In forty years, who knows what might be possib
le? All that I have is yours, Drewe. My wealth and my talents.”Berkmann pauses briefly, but when he speaks again there is new urgency in his voice.“I want you to walk outside now, Drewe. Harper will not shoot. You must believe me.”

  “I don’t know what he’ll do. He hates you for telling his secret. He said you wouldn’t light the gasoline, and he was right. What am I supposed to do?”

  “You must come now, Drewe, or I’ll be forced to… to take risks.”

  “Wait! Don’t do anything! Harper’s already scared to death!”

  Berkmann says nothing.

  “Edward?”

  Silence.

  She glances at me, her face pale. She’s lost him again, and she knows it. I glance down at my wrist, then remember I gave my watch to Drewe. It seems as though she’s been at the window forever, but help is still five to ten minutes away. I am about to yank Drewe out of the window when she reaches down and tugs at the belt of her robe, loosening it. With her left hand, she pulls aside the terry cloth, exposing her left breast.

  “Can you see me, Edward?” she asks, her voice like taut wire.

  Berkmann doesn’t respond. But he’s looking. I know it. Drewe knows it too. She cups the breast in her free hand, leans forward, and presses the nipple to the glass. “Edward?”

  Nothing.

  “No child has ever suckled at this breast.”

  Silence.

  “Do you want to do that, Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  She starts at the sudden reply. It’s almost as if Berkmann vanished before our eyes, then reappeared. “Would you brush my hair if I asked you to?” she asks, recovering quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “It needs brushing. I work so hard, I never have time to take care of it. Would you take care of it?”

  “Yes.”

  Berkmann’s voice sounds strangely constricted. Drewe waits, then says, “You lost your mother too young, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you never had a sister?”

  “No.”

  “Look at me, Edward.” Drewe lets the robe fall open, then flattens her hand like a starfish on the windowpane.

  “Time,”he says in a strangled voice.“No time. You’ve got to come out now. Please. HE WON’T SHOOT.”

  “I’ll come, Edward. But I don’t want Harper to die. However he may have betrayed me, he’s the father of my sister’s child. I would spare him for that alone.”