The Iron Ring

by Matty Dalrymple

  He filled the syringe, then rolled up the arm of his T-shirt. He wished Louise was there to give him the injection. It had never hurt when she did it.

  “None of them are armed,” said Theo. “The security detail made sure of that.”

  Mitchell pulled on his shirt and coat. “I thought you said they were dangerous,” he muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing,” said Mitchell, louder than was necessary. He opened the door and stepped through it, his quick exhale pluming in the air. “Okay, I’m outside,” he said.

  “You don’t need to tell me—I’m getting video from the drone,” replied Theo. “Just go down there and pretend you want to talk with them, and when you feel the crush coming on, don’t hold back.”

  Mitchell started down the road toward the gate. The protesters pulled together, the one Mitchell thought was a woman toward the middle. A couple of the men held up their signs: Our People Our Water Our Future and Respect Mother Earth.

  His heart was thudding, and he felt as if his blood were turning to lava in his veins. There might have been half the amount of liquid in the vial, but it felt like ten times the strength. What assignment would Theo Viklund have for him next—an entire chamber of congressmen? A stadium full of sports fans?—and how much of the drug would Mitchell be given to discharge that assignment?

  But there was a tiny portion of his brain that was watching the scene play out, like a movie that Mitchell dreaded the ending of—a movie made up of what he had seen when he raised the curtain on the privacy of others’ thoughts.

  He thought of Louise’s housekeeper Juana, going through the motions of cooking and cleaning and caring for him and Louise, while mourning the death of her favorite, Gerard Bonnay.

  He thought of his aunt, who, although she showed no apparent concern about her own appearance, had starched and ironed his dress shirts with never a sign of psychic irritation or resentment.

  He thought of Philip Castillo, and that pure strain of love he had for the old man who had helped him survive prison, and whose death he was willing to risk a return to that prison to avenge.

  Castillo. If Mitchell had killed him when he had the chance in Sedona, none of this would have happened.

  He felt the drug-induced fury carrying him along now, only dimly aware of the shock and fear registering on the faces of the men—and, yes, one woman—on the other side of the fence. They shouldn’t be here—Theo had explained it to him. They were interfering. They were obstructing. They were … were …

  He was at the fence now, and he staggered forward, his clawed hands grasping at the chain link, the protesters less than a dozen feet away.

  They were normal people trying to live normal lives. Trying, in fact, to lead good lives.

  He had wanted to live a good life at one time—he was sure of it.

  Louise Mortensen and Theo Viklund had torn that possibility away from him.

  That boiling river of mental acid turned, like a boomerang, like the ricochet of an ill-aimed—or perhaps well-aimed—bullet, and Mitchell Pieda dropped to the ground.

  For a moment, no one in the group moved, then one of the men took a few tentative steps toward the fence, on the other side of which the young man had fallen.

  “Be careful, Bod,” said the woman.

  Bod bent toward the inert form on the other side of the fence, then squatted down. The others stepped up behind him.

  “Did he faint?” asked the woman.

  “I don’t think so,” said Bod. “I can’t see that he’s breathing.”

  The woman looked toward the building. “Where is everyone?” she asked, her voice taut with anxiety. “He needs help.”

  “I think he’s beyond help,” said Bod. “Look at him.”

  The group stepped closer.

  The young man’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly into the cloudless blue sky.

  The whites of both eyes were blood red.

  47

  Louise stood next to Theo in the lab, watching with bile rising in her throat as the remote camera zoomed in on the inert body lying next to the fence, the protesters grouped on the other side. Then the view swung back toward the building, from which two men—one of them Brad Fortin—had emerged. They clambered into a pickup and drove the fifty yards to where Mitchell lay. They climbed out and approached the still form with some apparent trepidation, then Fortin lifted his shoulders and the other man lifted his legs and carried him to the back of the pickup. Louise was illogically grateful that they lowered him with some care onto the bed of the truck.

  Louise could hear the approaching chop of the helicopter over the audio feed, and the drone backed off from the scene and dropped behind the building.

  “We’ve lost video,” said Theo toward the mobile phone that lay on the table in front of the monitor on which the scene was playing out.

  “We’re switching to the security cameras,” came a voice from the phone’s speaker, and in a moment the scene showed a grainier view of the dirt yard, dust already kicking up from the rotors, then the helicopter descended into the frame.

  The two men waited for the skids to settle, then lifted Mitchell out of the back of the pickup and carried him quickly to the ’copter. They disappeared inside for a moment, then the one who was not Fortin emerged and jogged back to the building.

  A voice came from the phone. “Mr. Viklund, Brad Fortin here.”

  Theo picked up the phone, switched off the speaker, and put it to his ear. “Yes?” His face remained impassive. “How about the men at the gate? … All right, men and woman. … Are you sure? … No, of course not. … Yes. Thank you.” He ended the connection and dropped the phone into his pocket.

  They saw Fortin jump out of the helicopter and follow his colleague into the building. The helicopter ascended out of the frame, then appeared at a distance a few moments later, moving fast, until it disappeared behind a hill.

  Theo continued to stare at the monitors, his arms crossed, his eyebrows drawn together.

  “Is he dead?” asked Louise coldly.

  “It appears that way.”

  “How much did you give him?”

  “Half a cc.”

  “That’s less than we gave him for the congressman.”

  “It was more concentrated.”

  “How much more concentrated?”

  “Ten times.”

  Louise’s head snapped around. “Are you insane? That’s five times the dosage I recommended.”

  “We had five times as many targets as in Washington,” retorted Theo.

  “You sent him on a suicide mission!”

  “I knew it might kill him—I didn’t think he’d be the only victim.”

  Louise gaped at him.

  Theo ran his fingers through his hair. “This is going to be difficult to explain to my colleague.”

  “You intentionally gave him a dose you knew would kill him?”

  “He was useless—you must have known that, or you wouldn’t have left him to burn in Pocopson. He was completely uncontrolled in his application of the crush—”

  “I told you that!” yelled Louise.

  “He was disposable,” Theo yelled back. “We couldn’t keep him here. I thought I’d at least be able to use his elimination of the protesters as a bargaining chip with my associate.”

  On the monitor, they saw the protestors resume their line at the gate. The driver who had been observing the proceedings from the running board of his truck threw up his hands and climbed back into the cab.

  “You don’t seem to have made much headway on that front,” said Louise bitterly.

  “Why didn’t he kill them?”

  “I have no idea. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as uncontrolled in his application of the crush as either of us thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I doubt he went into that situation knowing you intended for him to die. In fact,” she continued, her voice mocking, “he evidently went into that situation thinking that his
reward was going to be a vacation in Switzerland. But maybe he decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe he killed himself. If he did, then I should have shown him a great deal more respect than I did, and you would have done well to show him that respect as well.”

  Theo wheeled on her. “I brought him here to help me advance my agenda,” he said, his voice hoarse with anger. “I brought you here to help me advance my agenda. When I provide protection to a person, I expect them to throw their full support behind me. I would not like to have you come to grief the way Edmund Rinnert did, but if it comes to that—”

  Louise slapped her hand onto the table, her fingers spread. “Go ahead, Theo,” she hissed. “If you think amputating my thumb is going to solve the colossal mess you’ve gotten yourself into, go ahead. If you think that venting your frustrations by mutilating my hand is going to somehow be worth losing the tiny bit of gratitude I have left toward you for hiding me from the authorities, go ahead. If you’re willing to eliminate any possibility that I will ever—ever—do any meaningful scientific research for you, or share any discoveries I make with you … Go. Ahead.”

  Air whispered through the ducts above the dropped ceiling of the lab and a piece of equipment ticked off a regular rhythm.

  Finally, Theo Viklund turned on his heel and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Louise Mortensen sank onto the stool next to the table, dropped her face into her hands, and cried.

  48

  Lizzy arrived in Williams under a gray March mid-afternoon sky. She was exhausted, and if she had had any money, she would have been tempted to splurge on a motel room, take a long, hot bath, climb into a real bed, and sleep for a day. With most of her money gone, she could have been tempted to find somewhere to park the van, take what her mother used to call a bird bath using the water from the refilled gallon containers, climb into her sleeping bag, and sleep for a day.

  But more than any of that, she wanted to have what she had come to Williams to do behind her.

  Before she had left Philly, she had filled out an Arizona Department of Corrections visitor application online and had also reviewed the visitor rules. She found the dress code for visitors to the prison both funny and alarming. With the length of her hair, there would be no question about her violating the rule against hair extensions. And complying with the code for clothing—no tube tops, no mesh, no cleavage, no spandex—would be no problem. Even before her confrontation with Gerard Bonnay, she had never gone in for clothes that would be considered revealing. After that confrontation, she always wore long-sleeved, back-covering tops to hide the scars from the bullet wounds. But what did the need for this code say about the place she was about to visit?

  The prison was a few miles outside of Williams, single-story, desert-tan buildings looking more like warehouses than human habitations. She followed the signs to the visitor parking lot and locked up the van, taking only her license and the van key with her. Then she joined three other visitors in a bus stop-like shelter. According to the information on the prison’s website, the bus arrived on the hour to ferry visitors to the prison.

  A few minutes before the designated time, a bus appeared from between two of the prison buildings, stopped at the entrance as the gate rumbled open, then pulled up at the shelter. A guard stepped out.

  “IDs, please.”

  Lizzy stepped forward and handed the Tracy Coates driver’s license to the guard. She hoped that Philip’s friend hadn’t exaggerated his claim that he was giving her a premium product.

  The guard looked between her and the license once. Then a second time.

  Lizzy’s heart pounded.

  “Got a trim, I see,” said the guard.

  “What?”

  He nodded toward her brutally short hair.

  “Oh,” said Lizzy, her hand going to her head. “Yeah. Dyed too.”

  “So I see,” he said, vaguely amused. He held the license up to a paper on a clipboard, then glanced back up at her, his expression now stern and disapproving.

  “Tobe Hanrick?”

  Lizzy nodded.

  He shook his head and handed the license back to her. “Go ahead,” he said, reaching for the ID of the next visitor in line.

  When they had all boarded, the bus trundled back down the road and pulled up at the visitor entrance. She stepped off the bus and into a grim institutional room lit with buzzing fluorescent lights. Flyers and schedules pinned to gouged cork boards fluttered in the breeze from the door. The other visitors, obviously familiar with the routine, began placing purses and bags on a table next to which a guard stood.

  The guard who had accompanied them on the bus waved Lizzy forward, toward a metal detector. “If you don’t have any bags, you can go ahead.”

  The guard at the metal detector held out a plastic basket. “Everything out of your pockets,” he said. Lizzy put the license and the van key into the basket.

  “That’s it?” asked the guard.

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  The guard took the license out of the basket and compared it to some information on a monitor behind the table. “You’re here to visit Hanrick?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at the other guard, then handed the license back to her. “Step through the detector.”

  She passed through the metal detector. Then, although there was no indication of the detector having tripped, a female guard on the other side gave her a brief pat-down.

  When the other visitors had passed through the detector, a guard led them down a narrow hall to a metal door with a mesh-reinforced window. He keyed in a code, opened the door, and stepped aside to let them pass through.

  They entered a large room, most of which was occupied by cafeteria-style tables and chairs. A plastic dollhouse stood in one corner next to a laundry basket holding a selection of battered toys. The three other visitors immediately went to a bank of vending machines along one wall and began feeding coins into them and retrieving snacks and sodas.

  Lizzy started uncertainly toward one of the tables.

  “Miss,” said the guard.

  She turned back to him.

  “Hanrick?”

  “Yes.”

  He gestured toward the side of the room opposite the vending machines, to a row of seats facing scratched and smudged Plexiglas.

  “Number three.”

  She crossed to the chairs and sat in the one labeled 3. Her hands were clammy, and the metal arms of the chair were cold in her grip. On the other side of the glass was a small enclosed room with a single chair, at the back of which was a metal door with a mesh-reinforced window.

  She sat for a minute, her stomach rolling, thinking she might need to ask to use the restroom, when the door in the back of the room opened and Tobe Hanrick stepped through.

  This was the Tobe Hanrick of the photo from the news article—the one where some buddy had had an arm draped over his shoulders. His face was tanned. His arms, where they extended from the short-sleeved orange shirt, were corded with muscle. His expression was open and curious. If she had had to guess his occupation just from his appearance, she might have guessed farmer—maybe at some fancy organic farm—or, more fancifully, cowboy. She could understand how he could have lured Sarah Pearson into his van.

  He broke into a grin at the sight of her. He sat down and, despite the fact that the chair appeared to be bolted to the floor, managed to slouch back comfortably in it. He examined her for a moment, then sat forward and picked up the phone handset. She stared at him, hands still gripping the arms of the chair. With an amused smile, he gestured to the handset on her side of the glass. It clattered against its cradle as she picked it up.

  “Well, who have we here?” he said.

  “I’m Tracy.”

  “Tracy, I can’t imagine we’ve had the pleasure of meeting already—I’m sure I would remember you.”

  “We haven’t met before.”

  She tried to summon the emotions she had felt when she had squeezed Lu
cia Hazlitt—anger—and Anton Rossi and Gerard Bonnay—panic and fear—but she could hardly be panicked and fearful with a sheet of Plexiglas between her and Hanrick, and she was having trouble summoning anger in the face of his charm offensive.

  “And what brings you to Williams this fine day?” he asked. When she didn’t respond, he leaned forward. “Read about me, did you? Curious about old Tobe Hanrick?”

  “No. I mean yes.” She should have thought this through before she was sitting across from him. She tried to rearrange her features into a semblance of interest—even infatuation. “I wanted to meet you.”

  She let him talk, trying to make sense of what was happening, trying to marshal her emotions. He at first tried to engage her in the conversation, but when that wasn’t successful, he chatted unconcernedly about a movie he had seen and a band he thought a teenager would like.

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Eighteen.”

  He grinned. “Glad to hear it. Going to college?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Kicking around on your own a bit first? Smart move. That way when you go to college, you know the ropes. Know who to look for. And who to look out for.”

  She thought back to the three days he had had Sarah Pearson in the remote cabin, and tried not to think of what he had done to her, but images flashed through her mind nonetheless.

  Tobe continued to gaze at her, seemingly unconcerned—and certainly unsqueezed. If the thoughts of the cabin and Sarah Pearson didn’t enable her to summon the squeeze, nothing would.

  She stood up abruptly, her chair skittering back. “I better be going.”

  He looked up at her. “Am I going to be seeing you again, sweetheart?”

  Lizzy swallowed. “Yes, you’ll see me again.”

  “Don’t make it too long.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  He grinned, and she had to look away from those eyes. “Yeah, tomorrow would be perfect.”