Alpha Kill - 03 (6 page)

Seven
, thought Drake. It could have been a lot worse, from the prison’s point of view. The response had clearly been quick and effective.

Just not quite quick and effective enough to hold
him
.

Rosenbloom had hacked the police radio channels and Drake listened for awhile, but the cops seemed to be running around like headless chickens, without any clear notion of where to look for Drake. He switched off, knowing that Skeet and Rosenbloom would be monitoring the channels in the other car and would alert him to any danger.

The arms cache was in an abandoned farmhouse outside Joliet, in the east of the state. The convoy lumbered down the rutted dirt track, the headlights dimmed. Overhead, the clouds had cleared a little, though the moon was a mere sliver and the starlight permitted only limited visibility.

Skeet produced flashlights from the SUV and they picked their way over to a half-collapsed barn. The cache was one Skeet and the rest of Drake’s people had added to over the years, whenever they’d procured extra weapons during some job or other. They’d built it up in preparation for the day that Drake got out.

Normally Drake would have helped, but he was in his new suit and didn’t want to get it dirty. Instead he stood back while Skeet and Walusz and Herman cleared the rubble from the floor of the barn until the outline of a trapdoor was visible. They heaved it open. Beneath it was a compartment, six feet deep, holding crates and boxes of varying sizes.

They hauled out the contents and began to take an inventory.

Eight semiautomatic pistols of assorted makes. Drake inspected a couple, testing their mechanisms, and chose for himself a Kel-Tec P11. He picked up another gun with his fingertips and peered at it in the dim light. “What the hell’s this?”

Skeet screwed up his face, thinking. “That’s, ah... oh yeah. I took it off some dead gangbanger  when I went in to scavenge, after there’d been a shootout between two crews. Weird-lookin’ little bastard, isn’t it?”

“It’s a goddamn Saturday night special,” Drake snarled, throwing the gun down into the hole. “Jesus. You might as well use a flintlock. I said build up a cache. Not an antiques collection.”

Next came two Remington shotguns. Drake took those. They’d be for general use, to share.

Then the real prize. An Armalite M16 assault rifle. Skeet had mentioned they’d gotten hold of one, but Drake hadn’t quite believed him until now. He caressed the smooth, cold steel.

“That was my doing,” murmured Gudrun, who was squatting beside them, holding the flashlights. In the shadows her eyes glinted with excitement.

“Well,
and
mine,” chimed in Herman beside her.

It turned out Gudrun had charmed the pants off a soldier at a military installation over the border in Indiana. Herman had procured the rifle while the soldier was distracted. Drake wondered what that soldier was doing now. Whatever it was, he sure wasn’t wearing a uniform, unless it was prison garb.

Also in the stash were three grenades which Drake thought at first were fragmentation devices, but which turned out on closer inspection to hold CS gas. They could be useful. He ordered them stowed on board.

Herman, Skeet and Walusz the Pole helped themselves to a handgun each. Rosenbloom was keeping watch out by the vehicles. In any case, he didn’t use guns. He was opposed to them, had told Drake once that he supported gun-control laws. Which was ironic, considering the company he kept.

Gudrun smiled sweetly when Drake tipped his head at the stash. “No thanks, Gene,” she said. “You know me.”

He’d never seen her use a gun, or even hold one. She seemed just too...
elegant
, too much of a lady, to sully her hands with something as crude and primal as a handgun.

Her methods of killing were altogether more refined.

Drake stood, brushing the dust off his knees. “Okay. Load up and let’s go.”

The three vehicles rode back up the dirt trail, many pounds heavier. Once more, Drake considered that this was overkill. All this firepower, pistols and shotguns and a rifle, just to take down one man.

But, like before, Drake reckoned a little excess was no bad thing. He didn’t know New York, had never been there before. It was unfamiliar territory, and although he didn’t anticipate any real problem locating his target - he had all of the addresses he needed - he wasn’t going to blunder in like some rube and get himself busted before he had a chance to achieve his goal.

To exact his revenge.

Revenge on the man who’d taken six years of his life.

On the man who’d put him away.

––––––––

T
he waitress in the coffee shop was hovering at Beth’s shoulder once more, looking antsy. At first Beth wondered whether the shop was about to close, but she saw it was nine-forty. The place stayed open until midnight, even on a Sunday.

Then she realized: they’d been nursing empty coffee cups for the last fifteen minutes.

Beth ordered the same again for both of them - hers a latte, Venn’s a black filter coffee, no sweetener, no frills - and waited till the girl had retreated before turning back to Venn. She leaned across the table.

“Venn, I’m at a loss here.”

He said, “I’ll look into it.”

Beth had known he was going to say yes. But a small voice inside her, a contrary, mistrusting, hateful aspect of her psyche, had been nagging at her all the while.
He’s changed. Your attitude has poisoned him. He’ll tell you to get lost.

He hadn’t changed. Nobody ever, fundamentally, changed. It was something Beth was starting to learn, and while she didn’t particularly like the realization, because it went against everything she’d accepted as gospel in her optimistic, naive twenties, she was beginning to come to terms with it.

Venn, damn it,
Beth thought, watching his eyes, and hoping her thoughts weren’t showing in her expression.
Why does it have to be so difficult between us?

He was a good-looking guy, she thought for the thousandth time. Not conventionally, not with a movie star’s pretty-boy looks. But he had the face of a man in his late thirties who’d lived life, on his own terms and without compromise. Who’d been willing to risk making mistakes rather than shy away from the world and from his own opinions. For the past couple of years he’d kept his hair either buzzed a half-inch from his scalp, as now, or completely shaved. His goatee was sparse to the point of being almost non-existent. Years ago, as a Marine, he’d had his nose busted, and while the repair job had been a good one, there was a slight crookedness there. He’d been hitting the gym since they’d separated, she noticed: his shoulders were a fraction broader, his chest tauter beneath his shirt.

Her favorite photo of Venn was somewhere at the bottom of one of the suitcases she’d yet to unpack fully in the apartment she was now renting. She’d taken it on her phone when he was walking toward her on the street, meeting her for dinner one summer evening last year, with Radio City Music Hall in the background. Beth wasn’t much of a photographer, but this particular picture had been a lucky one. She’d caught him in mid-stride, his head lowered, his gaze toward her, and it looked like a poster from an action movie, one in which you’d normally see an explosion behind the nonchalant hero.

She’d insisted on framing that photo and keeping it on the bookcase beside the fireplace in their house. In fact, she’d noticed the picture even as she’d been staring around at the wreckage of their living room, trying to comprehend the fact that they’d been burglarized -

The muzzle of the gun rammed into her temple and Beth recoiled, crying out.

She was flung sideways, toppling, as the hot breath rasped in her ear, something in Spanish.

Something smashed, and there were gasps, screams, some of them recognizable as her own.

Men’s legs moved into her field of vision.
A home invasion
, her mind shrieked at her.
You’re going to get raped. Killed.

Rough hands were on her arms, her shoulders, and she twisted away.

“No... leave me...”

She felt the cold of a draft from somewhere over to one side and tried to scramble toward it, intuiting that there was an escape there.

But it was no use. The hands hauled at her, lifting her to her knees, and she stared into one of the attackers’ faces.

Venn’s.

Wait. That didn’t make sense...

Someone was shouting her name. She heard it as though through several fathoms of ocean.

Before her, shockingly close, Venn’s mouth was open, moving in slow motion.

Forming a single syllable.

Beth.

With sudden clarity, like a kaleidoscope clicking into focus, Beth came back. She gazed around her. Saw the people on the periphery, half-worried, half-fascinated. The tables, the chairs. The fragments of crockery scattered around the floor.

Venn was kneeling in front of her, his hands gripping her shoulders.

“Beth, talk to me.”

With a sigh, as if it were the last breath she could ever hope to exhale, Beth sagged against him.

*

T
hey stepped out into the cold air. Venn had tried to support her around the shoulders but she’d gently disengaged his arm, to show him she could stay upright all by herself. And maybe for another reason, too.

She allowed his hand to rest lightly on her arm, though.

“My God, Beth,” he murmured. “What the hell?”

She shook her head, embarrassed. “A panic attack. I get them, sometimes. They just come on.”

“Since when?”

Briefly, she considered lying. Saying she’d been prone to them all her life, that it was an inherited thing. But they’d lived together for a year and a half, without anything like this happening. He wouldn’t buy it.

He was, after all, a cop.

“Since Salazar,” Beth said.

Venn stopped, drew her aside, turned her to face him.

“Panic attacks?” he said quietly.

She nodded.

“Flashbacks?” he went on. “Hyperarousal?”

She said nothing.

In his eyes there was appalled understanding. “Beth, I know about this stuff. I saw guys with PTSD back in the Marines. On the force. It corrodes you if you leave it long enough. You’ve got to get help.”

She faced him squarely. “I am getting help. I’m a physician, Venn. I recognized the symptoms.”

“Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t mean to...” He looked awkward, and Beth felt a stab of regret at the way she’d spoken. “That’s good. I mean, it’s good that you’re getting help.”

Beth turned and they continued walking away from the coffee shop. This time Venn didn’t touch her arm.

“It’s not disabling,” she said after a moment. “I can function at work. I sleep at night, most of the time. But yeah, it’s a problem.”

He gave it a beat, then said: “You should have told me.”

“It’s not the kind of thing you feel like talking about.”

They walked in silence for a minute, somewhere in the direction of the river. Beth thought she could hear Venn’s mind ticking over. She imagined he was making connections. Realizing that he was one of the triggers for her attacks.

“Anyhow,” Beth said. “About this other thing. The weird statistics at the hospital.”

Venn seemed to come back from a faraway place. He blinked.

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything you can do?”

“There’s not enough for me to get a warrant to seize any hardware,” he said. “There’s no evidence even of a crime. But I can nose around. Find out a little more about Bruce Collins and his involvement with the hospital.” He glanced at Beth. “Can you find out any more about the patients who were shipped out? You know, the ones Dr Collins transferred to other facilities?”

Beth grimaced. “There’s a problem there. Every time a member of staff accesses the records database, it leaves a notification on the system. Normally that’s of no consequence. It’s just a way of keeping tabs, making sure that unauthorized users aren’t gaining entry to confidential medical information. But now that Bill Soper knows I’ve been snooping around in the database, he’ll check to see if I’m still doing it. If he finds I am, I’ll have broken my promise to him to back off. Who knows what he’d do then.”

“Does the hospital keep paper records on patients?”

“Not any more. We went completely paperless a year ago. Sure, we scribble notes all the time, but the data gets scanned and digitalized immediately and the original paper destroyed.”

“Huh.” Venn lapsed into silence. Then he said, “Do you have any data on any of the patients Dr Collins treated? I mean, do you remember any names, or anything like that?”

“Yes.” Beth brightened. “I took screenshots of some of the lists of patients and their dates of discharge, death or transfer. I don’t know why, it just seemed like an idea at the time. Eventually I stopped doing it because I wasn’t detecting any patterns. I have those screenshots on my laptop.”

“You got it with you?”

“It’s in my apartment.”

A question hung between them. Before Venn could ask it, Beth said, “I’ll email the screenshots to you.”

He nodded. Was there relief in his expression? Relief that he hadn’t had to ask:
Can I come up to your apartment and get the data
?

Beth said, “Is there any special reason why you want the details of Collins’s patients?”

Venn tipped his head. “Nothing in particular. There might be a clue there. Maybe not.”

Ahead of them, a group of rowdy young men spilled out of a bar. One of them dropped a bottle on the sidewalk and cursed loudly, to bellows of laughter from his friends.

Beth’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She considered ignoring it, but her doctor’s instinct made her fish it out.

“Excuse me.”

She looked at the display.

Paul.

Venn was looking at her. She realized her face was betraying her, and knew she couldn’t let the call go to voicemail.

Beth thumbed the ‘receive’ key. “Hello.”

“Hey. Where are you? Can you talk?”

“Heading home.” She was aware of Venn out of the corner of her eye, didn’t glance at him. She added, “Just by the hospital.”