Deep as the Marrow

by F. Paul Wilson

  “And remember,” she said through the door. “Have that blindfold on when I let you out. Got it?”

  On the far side of the door she heard the kid start to cry again. “I want my daddy!”

  “Don’t worry, Katie. You’ll get your daddy. You just have to be patient.” Shit, this was a rotten thing to do to a kid.

  And how come she never asked for her mommy?

  25

  Snake situated himself in front of a Dataphone 2000 in the lobby of the Hyatt this time. He had the instructions for getting the package’s medicine all typed out and ready to upload from his Thinkpad. But when he logged onto Eric Garter’s IDT account he was startled to find e-mail waiting. Only one person that could be from.

  He didn’t like this. The way it was supposed to run was Snake telling Vanduyne what the situation was and Vanduyne acknowledging it; then Snake telling Vanduyne what to do, and Vanduyne agreeing, and so forth: Snake, Vanduyne… Snake, Vanduyne—none of this ad lib bullshit with Vanduyne dropping him a line whenever he felt like it.

  Who does this guy think he is? He speaks when he’s spoken to and that’s that.

  Snake glanced around. Checking the new e-mail was going to increase his time of exposure here, and that meant more chances of something going wrong. But no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. Quickly he downloaded the message. He angled his Thinkpad’s screen away from the lobby and called up the file.

  Sure enough, Vanduyne had sent another message, now forwarded by the remailer. And it was an ultimatum! A fucking ultimatum! Where did this guy get his balls?

  Snake reined in his fury. Hell, the guy was just doing what anybody would do: making sure Snake really had the goods he said he was holding.

  I’ve got the goods, pal; And try to imagine how little I care if she likes Lucky Charms or whatever. I’m in charge. Get used to that. And get used to something else real quick: There’s no way in hell you’re going to talk to her.

  What’s this guy thinking? I’m going to drag a blindfolded kid out to a safe pay phone for a little chat with her daddy? Right.

  He popped his own message onto the screen and added a couple of lines to the end; then he uploaded it to e-mail and sent it off into the Internet.

  He disconnected and hurried for the exit. He was getting a bad feeling about this gig. First the epilepsy foul up, and now the snatch wasn’t a day old and already this Vanduyne was becoming a royal pain in the ass.

  Any more trouble and Snake would have to send the doc a persuader.

  26

  Finally!

  John had been sneaking in and out of the study all day, avoiding Nana, checking his e-mail, riding a roller coaster from hell as he downloaded one message after another, only to find each one was routine HHS business.

  Why wasn’t Snake answering? He had to get Katie her Tegretol—before tonight.

  But now his heart began pounding as he saw anon.nonet.uk in the heading… the anonymous remailer. All the moisture left his mouth and collected in his palms as he began reading.

  Phone in a prescription for a couple weeks’ supply of your kid’s pills to the CVS on 17th and K downtown in the District and it will be picked up. This pickup is a good faith gesture on our part. Don’t try to fuck us up. Any sign that the store is being watched, there will be no pickup and your kid will suffer. Anyone follows me or stops me, she dies in minutes. As said before, we’ve got nothing against you or the kid, but we’re not playing games. Cooperate and you’ll have her back good as new.

  As for speaking to her, no can do. Too inconvenient. Don’t push us on this, Doc. We’re not big in the patience department.

  Trust us and this will all work out fine.

  Snake

  Suddenly weak, John sat and stared at the screen, reading it over and over. The phrases your kid will suffer and she dies in minutes kept popping out at him.

  He felt his stomach heave. Fearing he was going to be sick, he lurched out of his chair and rushed across the hall to the bathroom. He hung over the toilet, gasping, but nothing came up.

  Finally the nausea passed. As he was bending over the sink, splashing water on his face, John heard a high pitched cry. He straightened and heard it again. A wail this time… from across the hall.

  Oh, no. “Ma!” He rushed back into his study and found her standing before his computer, her thin hands locked in a white knuckled grip on the back of his chair as she stared at the monitor. She swiveled her head toward him, her expression stricken, her eyes wide, her skin ashen.

  “Johnny…” Her voice cracked and fell away. “Johnny, tell me this is a cruel joke!”

  His first impulse was to lie, but what good was that? When Katie didn’t come home from school later… He stepped to her side and put an arm around her, gently guiding her toward the couch.

  “Here… sit down.”

  “Oh, dear Lord, it’s true, then! Someone’s kidnapped Katie! Why? Oh, Lord, why?”

  “I don’t know, Ma.” John explained all that had happened, and why he was afraid to call in the FBI.

  His mother seemed to get a grip on herself as the story unfolded. She’d never been one for hysterics. She asked all the questions he’d been asking himself over and over: Why Katie? And what “service” did they want from him?

  “But they are arranging to get Katie her medicine,” she said. “I am thinking this is a good sign, yes? It means she’s alive and they want to keep her so.”

  Or they just want me to think she’s alive, John thought, but he didn’t say it. They could pick up the pills and simply dump them in the garbage.

  “I want—I need—more than a sign,” he said. “I’ve got to know, Ma.”

  She clutched his arm. “Don’t make them angry, John. They may take it out on Katie.”

  Yeah, they might—if she’s still alive. He nodded. “I’ll be careful. I’ll be polite. I’ll kiss their butts, but I’ve got to know.”

  “John…” his mother said slowly. “You don’t think this could be… Mamie’s doing?”

  He stared at her. “Mamie?”

  “Well, she is crazy, you know.”

  “She’s very crazy.” John was intimately familiar with his ex-wife’s history of bizarre behavior, but this was too wild even for her, and far beyond her scope. And besides, Mamie was confined to Georgia, in deep therapy. “But I guarantee you Mamie’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  “First, call in that prescription.” He called information, got the number of the CVS at K and 17th, and told them to have fifty Tegretol 1oo mg. chewables ready for Katie Vanduyne ASAP. Since they’d never heard of him, he had to supply his office address and phone number, plus his DEA number.

  “Now I’m going to get back to Snake.”

  “Please be careful.”

  “I’m just going to tell him that the prescription is ready and waiting. But I’m also going to ask for the answer to a question only Katie can give. And I’ll tell them that as long as I know Katie’s alive, I’ll do anything to keep her that way. I’ll perform any ‘service’ they want.”

  “I am hoping you can do this.”

  “I’m hoping, too, Ma.” But then what do I do? Sit around and wait? Call the pharmacy every five minutes to see if the prescription’s been picked up? He realized he was starting to fall apart. He’d be a gibbering basket case soon if he didn’t do something.

  27

  Paulie parked the panel truck in a lot on Desales Street and walked over to the Mayflower Hotel. He stood in the entrance to the bar and searched the late-afternoon crowd for Mac. Some crowd—only half full and mostly suits. They called this a bar? Cushioned seats and a polished floor and hardly anybody smoking. This wasn’t a bar—it was a goddamn cocktail party.

  Mac had called saying he had an errand for Paulie. That got Paulie nervous. Usually they never left the package once they started babysitting. Maybe Mac was making an exception because it was a kid. Still, Mac had sounded a littl
e weird. He’d wanted Paulie to ask the kid if she knew how to swallow pills, and who was her favorite character on TV. Poppy had got the answers out of her, no problem. But what was going on?

  Paulie saw someone waving from a corner and went over. He noticed the suits gawking his leathers. He stuck out here. Usually he didn’t mind that, but considering the circumstances, he’d have preferred to be somewhere else.

  Mac sat with his back to the room. He was wearing a white shirt and a blue blazer with a Spiderman pin in the left lapel. He was drinking something clear on the rocks.

  “How come we always meet in hotels?” Paulie whispered as he took a seat opposite him. “There’s gotta be less public places.”

  “Where would you prefer?” Mac said, a sneer playing about his thin lips. “Some low-life dive that’s being watched by the fuzz twenty-four hours a day, where we’d stick out among the regulars?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Look, Paulie. I meet you in places where an unfamiliar face is the rule rather than the exception. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then you’ve got a real big problem.”

  “All right,” Paulie said grudgingly. Mac was right as usual. He ordered a Heineken when the waiter came by.

  Mac said, “You get the answers I wanted?” Paulie nodded. “Yeah. She says she swallows pills real good. Does it all the time. And she likes Maggie Simpson the best of all. So what’s this errand you need?”

  “The package needs medicine.”

  “Oh, fuck!” Bad enough a kid. Now a sick kid. That explained about swallowing pills.

  “Relax. Just a pill she’s got to take twice a day. No biggee.”

  “Easy for you to say. Where’s this medicine?”

  “In a drugstore a few blocks from here.”

  “And you want me to pick it up.”

  “You got it.”

  Paulie said nothing as the waiter delivered his beer. He was pissed—and worried—but tried to show just the pissed part.

  “What do I get for sticking my ass out like this?”

  “Nothing,” Mac said. “It’s part of the job.”

  “No it ain’t.”

  “Look, Paulie,” Mac said, eyes blazing as he leaned forward and lowered his voice even further, “I don’t like this anymore than you do. I learned about this after the pickup, so it’s news to me too. I’m not getting extra because the package is sick, and so neither are you.”

  Paulie didn’t feel like backing down this time.

  “And what if I don’t pick up the pills?”

  “Then she starts flopping around on the floor like a break dancer OD’d on ice, and pretty soon she dies, and you and Poppy’ll have to find a way to dump the body. Plus you’ll have a murder rap hanging over you. But not for long.”

  “Why not?” The look in Mac’s stone eyes told him the answer.

  Paulie drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t like this, man.”

  “Just do it and get it over with. You’ve still got your beard. You put on those shades, dump the leather, get yourself a hooded sweatshirt—bam—you’re in and out and it’s a done deal. I’ll have you covered.”

  “Oh, well, then,” Paulie said, letting the acid flow, “I don’t have a goddamn thing to worry about, do I?”

  28

  Seemed like an eon since John had slipped into the CVS.

  He’d examined every Easter card at least twice, checked out all the chocolate eggs and baskets, and read the ingredients on all the over-the-counter medications.

  He could have hung out at the magazine rack but that was too far toward the front. He needed to stay within earshot of the pharmacy counter.

  All the reading was eye exercise and nothing more. None of the information penetrated. And if it had, he wouldn’t have been able to make sense of it. He was too keyed up to concentrate on anything except the names people gave at the prescription counter.

  This is insane, he kept telling himself. Why am I doing this? I’m endangering Katie’s life just by being here.

  Why was he here? He was never impulsive. His style was to take the long view. Get the facts, act if necessary, but otherwise stand ready and see how things played out—traits that made for a lousy surgeon but an excellent internist.

  But what kind of father had that made him? Katie would have been spared so much if he’d acted sooner as he saw Mamie decompensating. But he’d loved Mamie. And he’d thought he could keep an eye on her. Wrong. He’d never dreamed she’d do what she did.

  Maybe that was why he was lurking about this pharmacy. Maybe he’d learned that watchful waiting didn’t always cut it. Especially where Katie was involved.

  No “maybe” that he wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. The waiting had reduced him to a trembling mass of raw nerves. He— And then a devastating thought struck him.

  Snake knows what I look like. He has to. He’s been watching us, waiting for his chance to snatch Katie.

  What if Snake had already spotted him and ducked back out, saying to hell with Vanduyne’s brat.

  He nearly dropped the Easter egg coloring kit he was holding as a dull roar grew in his ears. Oh, Christ, what have I done? He had to get out of here. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  And then through the roar he heard the counter girl’s voice.

  “Vanduyne? I’ll check.”

  John grabbed the shelf to steady himself. It was him!

  Snake was here! He was picking up the pills.

  He fought the urge to peek over the display to get a look at him… but his need overwhelmed him. Just one look. He had to know what this bastard looked like.

  He turned his head just enough to frame the prescription counter between a pair of Easter baskets atop the display. Two people stood there—an elderly, blue-haired woman, and a stocky guy in a hooded jogging suit. John doubted Snake was an old lady.

  As he watched, the girl at the counter handed a white paper bag to the jogger. John noticed he was wearing gloves.

  Snake… that was him. He could have been Elvis for all that was visible between the beard, the sunglasses, and the hood. But that was Snake. Had to be.

  John felt his weakness of a moment ago fade as hammer blows of rage began to pound through him. The son of a bitch who’d kidnapped Katie was twenty feet away. If he could get his hands on him, even if only for a few minutes, he knew he could make him talk. Oh, yes, a couple of minutes with John and Mr. Snake would tell him everything… everything…

  A small part of him was appalled at the savagery surging through him, but mostly he reveled in the fantasy. Which was all it was. Snake wouldn’t be working alone. Couldn’t be. He’d have at least one accomplice, maybe more. If John harmed so much as a hair on this guy’s head, the consequences to Katie could be horrific.

  So was this all he could do? Stand here and watch this monster waltz out the door onto K Street and vanish into the afternoon? Christ, he ached for someone to turn to, someone who’d know what to do.

  He wanted to call Bob Decker and ask him—kidnapping wasn’t Secret Service business, but Decker had to know a helluva lot more than John.

  He watched the jogger take his change and head for the door. Before John could think it over, he found himself following him.

  What am I doing? a voice screamed inside his head. Good question.

  No heroics, he told himself. No chase. No cat and mouse. Just want to see where he’s going. I’ll stay way back, out of sight. He’ll never know I’m behind him. If he gets in a car and drives off, I want to see the color, make, and model, want to memorize the license plate. But that’s it. I’m not going to hop into my own car and trail him.

  But if he walks, I will follow him. This particular drugstore was his choice. Why? Because he’s holding Katie nearby? If that’s the case, I want to know. I’ve got to know.

  He followed the jogger out to the. sidewalk and watched him stroll toward 17th Street. The rage was still roiling within, the savage just under the skin struggling to break free, but John
was keeping himself under control.

  He gave the jogger thirty yards, then followed.

  29

  What the hell?

  Snake stood across the street from the CVS and gaped at the guy who came out after Paulie.

  He’d watched the drugstore for a while before Paulie arrived and saw no signs of surveillance. No signs of activity after Paulie went in. That would be the giveaway— if the place was wired for a trap, things would start happening when Paulie asked for the Vanduyne prescription.

  But nothing. Paulie came out and took off on a prearranged route while Snake hung back and watched to see if anyone tailed him.

  And goddamn, somebody did.

  Vanduyne.

  “Shit!” The word hissed through his clenched teeth. Was the guy stupid? What did he think he was doing?

  And then Snake relaxed. If nothing else, Vanduyne’s presence proved that he hadn’t called in the Feds. No way they’d let him near that drugstore if they were involved. So… he was out here on his own. What a fucking cowboy. What was he going to do, follow Paulie home and rescue his little darling?

  Fat chance.

  Snake knew Paulie’s route would take him around Farragut Square, and then to the Farragut North Metro station.

  He hurried to a bus stop at the top of the square and hung there until Paulie came by. He saw Paulie’s eyes flick his way but he gave no sign that he recognized Snake.

  Fifteen seconds later, Vanduyne came by. His eyes were fixed straight ahead on Paulie’s back like he was the only other person on the street.

  Snake got a good look at those eyes and didn’t like what he saw. He was going to have to do something about the doc. Now.

  But what?

  His mind racing furiously, he gave Vanduyne a few yards, then fell into step behind him. As planned, Paulie entered the Metro station. Vanduyne followed, and Snake brought up the rear. The rush hour hadn’t hit yet, so it was still fairly empty. As Vanduyne hung back, hugging a wall, watching Paulie buy a ticket. Snake came up close behind him.