Blood List (31 page)

"I've got an encrypted drive I need cracked, and I need it cracked as quickly as possible, then re-routed to me immediately."

"All right," she said. "Let me take a look at it." It took two minutes for their computers to shake hands, verifying access codes and identities, then another fourteen minutes to upload. They killed time talking about their families, then bad first dates. It never took Jake long to bring it to dating, even though he was, to all appearances, happily married. She was in mid-laugh when the computers finished.

She snapped back to business. "Okay, I've got it. Let me take a look."

She clicked on the icon, and a logo popped up–an exploding star surrounded by a halo of binary zeroes and ones.

"Ouch, Jake. SuPeRnOvA is a hard nut to crack. This could take months."

He replied, "Yeah, I know, but I need you to task a team with appropriate clearances to it immediately. I don't care what you have to pull people from. This could be huge. I'm sending another file with some possible cribs. It goes without saying that this information goes nowhere except back to me. But I'm saying it anyway."

"Yes, sir. I won't even read it myself, sir," she replied with no hint of irony. "We'll get right on it and send it to you as soon as it's done. Still, we're talking two to six weeks, absolute bare minimum."

"Very good," he said. "Do what you can."

"We'll get on it as soon as we get the official order through chain of command."

"Under five minutes. Assemble a team."

"Roger that. Catch you next time, Jake."

"Bye, darling," he said and hung up the phone.

A few minutes later Lieutenant-Colonel Rostan had the order dispatched through official military channels. That done, he picked up the phone and dialed another number.

"Hello?" said the voice on the other end.

"Done. I'll send everything as soon as it's cracked."

"I've wired the first hundred grand to your account. You'll get the rest when I have the data."

"Pleasure doing business with you, Paul."

"Sure thing, Jake. Keep me posted."

Jake Rostan hung up the phone.

February 13th, 12:16 PM EST; St. Angelina's Cemetery; Gregory Falls, New York.

The gravestones were goosebumps of snow on the landscape, white and harsh in the midday sunlight. The priest droned on in the background while the mourners said their goodbyes. Jerri Bates's mother sat stoically in front; her father sobbed in the bitter cold.

Gene and his team stood in the back, separate from the civilians, the small-town crowd that had grown up with Jerri Bates. Her family, friends, and neighbors mourned the loss of one of their own.

"No Marty?" Carl asked.

Gene shook his head without looking up. "Doctor wouldn't clear him to leave. He tried to bust out, against medical advice, but he didn't make it past the nurse's station."

"He's always had more heart than brains, Gene," Doug said.

"Runs in the family," Gene said.

They stood in silence, listening to the priest pray for the living and the dead, and they muttered "Amen." They listened to Jessica Bates ask the Almighty for justice to be done, and they said "Amen." They heard her pray for forgiveness for the man who had taken her sister's life. They said nothing.

Doug turned and walked away, blazing a path through the snow toward the small parking lot. Sam followed in his wake. Carl looked at Gene, then at the retreating forms of Doug Goldman and Sam Greene. With an apologetic, sad smile, he turned and followed his friends, leaving Gene alone with his thoughts and the family of the girl he had killed.

*   *   *

April 10th, 6:00 PM EST; Gene Palomini's Apartment; Washington, D.C.

Two months after Jerri Bates' funeral, Gene unlocked his door with a sigh and stepped into the front hallway. His shoes splattered the wall and door with speckles of mud as he kicked them off.
April showers….
He hung his jacket on the doorknob, walked over to the fridge, pulled out a Heineken, and popped the tab. A quick swallow quenched his thirst as he unbuckled his pistol and put it on the counter. He set his cell phone and COM ear bead next to it.

He shuffled into the living room and collapsed on the couch, reached for the remote, and noticed an envelope on the coffee table. Instantly alert, he sat up. Beer spilled down the front of his shirt. He ignored it. "Don't move," Paul Renner said from the bedroom doorway. Gene froze, then settled back down onto the couch.

"We're going to catch you," Gene said.

Paul sighed. "If the time comes, and you get close, I'll have to kill you, and I'll regret it. In the meantime you haven't turned up shit, and you're not going to, so there's no reason to go there. I'm not toying with the FBI anymore."

Gene patted the envelope. "This from you?"

"Yeah. There's some information there about Emile Frank you might find interesting."

"Ah. Thank you." Gene didn't feel like thanking him. "Is that all?"

"Yes." 

Gene reached forward and opened the envelope. Inside was a single, unlabeled USB memory stick.

"What is it?" 

"The truth. Emile Frank helped engineer the gene-therapy technique. He knew it caused immediate psychosis in about one percent of the chimps. He buried the data and went to Bailey Pharmaceuticals with his 'miracle drug.' The rest you know. Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Over three thousand subjects, Gene, in that clinic alone, between VanEpps and Lefkowitz. But Frank continued his research elsewhere. Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, D.C. One percent went nuts almost instantly, and he killed them with overdoses. The rest are time bombs, waiting to go off."

"That…." Gene hesitated. "Covering that up might be sufficient motive for killing a lot of innocent people."

"Yep. Lefkowitz was doing Frank's dirty work and didn't even know it."

Gene turned around for the first time. Paul Renner leaned against the doorframe, a compact pistol pointed at the floor. Gene knew he had no chance of taking him down from fifteen feet away. Another man, maybe, but Renner was way too fast. His blood pounded in his ears as he stared at the face of the man who had killed Jerri Bates. Somehow, he kept his voice calm.

"Does it include names of patients?" Gene asked.

"Of victims, yeah." 

"How many, Paul?"

"Over ten thousand." Paul's voice held no emotion.

"My God. Are they on the disk?"

Paul shook his head. "Only the dead ones. I'm keeping the rest of the list myself."

"Why?" Gene asked.

Paul didn't respond.

"Why did you come here, Paul?"

"Can it be cured?" Paul asked back. Something in his voice sounded desperate.

"We're not sure. People are looking into it. Why?"

"Not your business, Gene."

"Why not turn the list over to the FBI?" 

"FBI are scum, Gene. What do you think they'd do to those people?"

Taken aback, Gene didn't reply at first. "I'm not sure."

"I am," Paul said.

"Okay, then, what about the CDC?"

Renner gave him a sad smile. "I will at some point. There's something I need to take care of first." He frowned at the floor.

"Who's Kevin Parsons?" 

Paul snarled. "I said it's none of your fucking business."

Gene cleared the couch in a single leap. Paul flinched and pulled the trigger. The bullet blasted a mound of fluff from the armrest. Gene slammed into him. His full-body check carried them both into the doorframe. Paul gasped for breath as Gene slammed his spine into the wooden molding. The pistol fell from his grip.

Gene backed up half a step and body-checked Paul into the doorframe again. Paul head-butted Gene in the nose. Gene felt cartilage crush under the force and stumbled back a step, tears in his eyes.
If he gets any distance, I'm a dead man.
Gene swung with a wild haymaker, forcing Paul to duck and splattering them both with blood from his broken nose. With the killer crouched before him, Gene kneed him in the side of the head. Paul fell backward into the living room, scrambling on all fours to regain his feet. Gene charged after him.

A swift kick to the knee knocked Gene crashing to the floor. Paul rolled out of the way, flipped to his feet and turned toward the door. Gene grabbed his left foot with both hands and twisted, hard. Paul tumbled to the floor and cracked his head on the coffee table. Gene dove on top of him, grabbed him by the throat, and hammered him in the face with his fist.

Gene hit him again, and again. Paul's eyes lolled sideways, his bloody mouth open. His eyes snapped into focus as Gene cocked back for another blow. Gene recoiled as knuckles slammed into his throat. He fell back, sucking in air.

Paul scrambled to his feet and bolted out the door.

Gene grabbed his gun off the counter, and shoved the COM bead into his ear while he ducked out the door.

"Sam!" he gasped. "I'm in pursuit of Paul Renner." He took the stairs two at a time. "Backup. Now!"

"On it," Sam said.

Bullets ricocheted through the entryway as he reached the bottom of the stairwell. He took cover behind the door, counted to three, and looked out. More shots peppered his position, and he ducked back.

Tires screeched. Gene rounded the corner, his pistol leading. A blue sedan peeled away. He unloaded his gun, shattering the back window and punching holes in the trunk. The car took a hard left and disappeared from view.

"Blue sedan headed north on Wisconsin Ave," he said into the COM. He gave the plate number.

They found the car ten minutes later. There was no sign of Renner.

*   *   *

April 18th, 1:22 PM PST; Motel 6; Reno, Nevada.

A week later, Paul sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes half closed. His right hand held the list of names from Emile Frank's computer, his left held a pen. Behind him a perky news anchor droned on about the Methadone Psychosis Syndrome scandal and the continued civic unrest it had been causing, a video-feed of a mob scene behind her. Half-listening, he stared at nothing in particular, lost in thought. He heard her say a name he recognized and looked up at the TV, surprised.

Gene Palomini stood in front of a blue curtain, an American flag on a stand over his left shoulder. He had haggard bags under one eye, a fading yellowish bruise around the other, his nose swollen, and his government-issue dark navy suit rumpled. It would have been hard to make a more striking difference with the perky, cute little anchorwoman. The FBI agent read from a script, staring into the camera. His face was a mask of rage, but his voice was as steady as Paul had ever heard it.

"This message is for the man who calls himself Paul Renner." He cleared his throat. "Paul, please listen. We need to get treatment for those afflicted with MPS. We aren't asking for you to surrender yourself. We aren't…we aren't even asking for you to give us your whereabouts. We just want to help those in need. The government is willing to pay handsomely for this information, both in money and…and the possibility of a presidential pardon. Please call before it's too late. We…I…. Please call." Gene looked down.

The screen switched back to the anchor, who wore her best "grave and serious" face. "Again, that was Special Agent Gene Palomini of the FBI, asking for alleged assassin Paul Renner, the same man who broke the story just a week ago, to surrender the list of those suffering from MPS. More on this story as it breaks." It was the sixth appeal that Paul had seen since he'd sent the information to CNN, but the first from Gene.

Paul turned off the TV and looked down at the list. Quite a few names had been crossed off: people who had died of causes natural or unnatural, from heart attacks to car accidents to simple old age. Many had died over the past couple decades trying to commit homicide of one form or another. For the hundredth time tears sprang to his eyes.

He wiped them away and stood. He put the list into an envelope, then stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He grabbed a semiautomatic pistol from the table and tucked it into the back of his pants.

He dropped the envelope into the mailbox outside the lobby. It was addressed to Special Agent Gene Palomini of the FBI. That done, he walked to the parking lot and got into the silver sedan he'd rented earlier that day.

An hour later, Paul Renner knocked on the door to his Lake Tahoe cabin. "Just a minute!" came the reply. He took a breath, held it, then let it out. His dad opened the door, ever-present cup of coffee in his hand and a worried smile on his face. He wore forest camouflage and a black WWE baseball cap.

"Hey, Steve," he said, and wrapped him in a hug. He pulled back and looked his son in the eyes. "You been watching the news?"

"Yes."

Kevin Parsons clapped Paul on the shoulder. "Well, come on in, the coffee's only about an hour old." He stepped into the house, still talking. "You in town for long? I could sure use the company about now."

"No, I'm not going to be here long. How about that coffee?" As Kevin turned toward the pot, Paul's hand went behind his back, up under his jacket.

Thirty seconds later, Paul Renner left the house, alone.

The End