Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (24 page)

Art looked toward the house. It was barely visible from the street, the abundance of well-tended foliage acting as a natural privacy shield. He switched his attention to the gate, particularly its locking mechanism, which operated on a simple hook-and-post principle. Press a button, the post drops, and the hook is released, letting the gate open with the aid of a hydraulic pusher. Of course one could ram the gate, but there were less dramatic ways of gaining entry. “Do you have a key to the house?”

“Yes.” The nurse held out a ring with four keys on it, which Art took. “This one here is for the doors.”

“Let the police know, partner,” Art directed. As Frankie went to the car, he turned his attention back to the anxious nurse. “Are you concerned about the Royces?”

“Very much so. I’ve been trying to get Mr. Royce on the phone for twenty minutes.” She glanced through the gate. “I hope nothing is wrong.”

I hope the bastard hasn’t skipped out on us
, Art thought alternately. “We’re going to go in and check. The police will be here in a few minutes.”

“I hope everything is all right.”

“So do we,” Art agreed, though his definition of “all right” was vastly different from that of the nurse. He looked at the wall on either side of the gate, deciding quickly that an eight-footer was a little too much. But at the north corner of the property there was the shorter fence belonging to the neighbors. Frankie came back up as Art gestured to the barrier. “Let’s do some climbing.”

They went to that wall—a six-footer—and used it as a step to clear the adjoining barrier. Once over they crossed the lawn and walked up the driveway, following its sweep to the front entrance. They pounded on the front door and yelled the familiar “FBI!”, but there was no response. A check of several windows along the front yielded nothing, as the shades were fully drawn, so they skirted the perimeter to the north, passing the closed garage doors, and headed toward the back of the...

“Hold it,” Art said, a hand coming up. A single finger pointed down.

The muddy footprints on the cement walkway were fresh. A second later their weapons were out. Art drew closer, noticing more details now. The prints, a single set, came from the direction of the backyard and ended at a side door. Fainter prints belonging to the same shoe—a boot of some kind—appeared to follow the same path on a reciprocal, and a different set of prints tracked over the first.
One went in, two came out
. They approached the spot carefully and listened. Art gently pushed on the door with his elbow. It didn’t budge, and he decided not to try the lock. There might be better access around back. They continued on, avoiding stepping on the tracked prints, and eased cautiously around the corner. Art checked what lay before them. A damp cement path led along the back wall of the garage, then opened to a lattice-covered patio that large box windows looked out upon. They crept toward those, ears peeled for sounds of danger, weapons held firmly and pointed at the ground. Once at the windows Art rose up on the balls of his feet and looked in. It was the kitchen, and was empty...except for—

Blood. A pool of it covering a good portion of the tiled floor, part of its area blocked by a cooktop island. Art moved further along the window until—

Shit
. “Body,” Art said quietly. It was about the right size and dressed professionally.
Monte Royce.
The blood about the head and the distance prevented a positive identification, but that would change quickly. Art led the way back around to the front of the house to the main entrance. “We’ve got to kick it.”

Frankie holstered her weapon and surveyed the door. It was solid, and would obviously take more force than she could muster alone to breach. But to either side were cement planters, about a foot and a half in height. She picked one up, dumping its contents, and grasped it in an approximation of a battering ram, swinging it back and forward in one smooth motion. Its flat, round base connected with the door near the lock, and elicited a sharp snap from the member. A second swing pushed the door in completely.

Art went through first. Frankie dropped the planter and redrew her weapon, joining him. “FBI! FBI!” they yelled together, Art covering the staircase to the front, Frankie the opening to the kitchen to the right. On the stairs’ carpeted surface they noticed very faint prints similar to those outside. But to the right was where their attention was mainly focused. Listening for any signs of movement, they moved through the house, entering the kitchen after just a moment. They now saw the body from the opposite direction as before. It was almost certainly Royce. There was absolutely no doubt, however, that whoever it was was very dead.

“Dammit,” Frankie said softly.

Art pointed to the same muddy footprints in the tiled floor. “Upstairs,” he said.

They left the kitchen and went to the stairs. Each step was taken slowly to avoid the obvious tread marks. The agents stopped on the upper-floor landing. There were several doors along the corridor that stretched to either side. Only one of them, the second to the right, was open. The prints led to and from it. Art paralleled the tracks to the door as his partner hung back, but did not enter, using his eyes to examine the room—a bedroom—from the hall.

No
. Even from fifteen feet it was clear that the scene in the kitchen had been repeated upstairs, though the stark contrast between what remained of the frilly white bedding and the explosion of crimson near the headboard took this to a higher level of grotesque.

This was not random, Art knew. It was not a run-of-the-mill burglary gone wrong. Nothing was missing that could be seen. No obvious disturbance. This was a hit. Plain and simple. And he had a good idea who was responsible for it.

“Another one,” Art said. “Looks like the mother.” He looked back to Frankie. “Come on.”

They moved quickly back down the stairs and outside, holstering their weapons as they ran to the front of the property and grabbed on to a decorative tree to help rescale the wall. A black-and-white was rolling up just as the agents hit the sidewalk.

“Is everything all right?” the nurse inquired worriedly.

“I’m afraid not,” Frankie answered.

Art trotted to the police car, making his shield obvious to the two officers. “There’s two dead inside.” The passenger immediately took the mic in hand. “It looks fresh.”

“What are you doing here?” the driver inquired.

“We were hoping to question one of the victims.” Someone had seen to it that that was not going to happen, Art thought. “Look, I’ve got to make a call.” Art stepped away, reaching for his cell when it began ringing. “Jefferson here.”

“Art, it’s Hal. We’ve got a mess here.”

A mess?
He felt his eyes widen.
Oh no
. “Mankowitz?”

“He’s dead. Someone did him good. Blew the hell out of him with automatics.”

“Royce is dead, too. And his mother.”

“What?!”

“Hal, get up to Barrish’s house now. Fast!”

“All right.”

Art knew that no more explaining was needed. What was supposed was quite obvious. Someone was cutting his ties to a place, and to a time. And if that someone wasn’t stopped fast he might just disappear...if he hadn’t already.

*  *  *

Darian set the bag with the guns in it on the floor of the backseat. “Where’d you get it?”

Roger smiled. “From some guy’s ad in the paper. Two grand. It runs perfect.”

Perfect it didn’t have to be, Darian knew. Just good enough to get them across country. “Then let’s get out of here.”

Roger got behind the wheel of the Olds Cutlass, Mustafa taking the seat next to him. Darian and Moises climbed in the back.

“Brother Moises here do good?” Mustafa asked, looking back over the front bench seat.

Darian looked to the newest of their number and smiled. “He did good.”

Moises looked to the floor, a combination of embarrassment and a sudden nervous stomach hitting him. The adrenaline had worn off now, allowing the reality of the situation he’d walked willingly into to flash crystal clear in his mind. The reality, and a discovery he’d never considered. “It was easy,” he said, the revelation coming not from the soul but from the heart. He wasn’t sure he had the former any longer.

“Righteous things are,” Mustafa said, sharing some wisdom with the boy.

Roger started the car and got them moving. He headed immediately for the Santa Monica Freeway, entering eastbound at La Cienega.

“No turning back now, Brothers,” Darian said.

Mustafa agreed with a rare smile. “Power, brother.”

Darian started to answer, but was cut off.

“Power, brother,” Moises said, his hand extending forward.

It was a good beginning, Darian saw. And there was so much still to come.

*  *  *

“Ray!” Assistant Building Engineer Carl Tomei yelled as he entered the roar that filled 74. He let the door close behind and looked left, then right. Where the hell was he? “Ray!”

Nothing. Even in the steady, constant drone Ray should hear the call, Tomei knew. The hearing protectors required on this level were “tuned” to muffle the machinery noise while allowing sharper, more defined sounds, such as voices, to be heard.

But he had to be here. That camera crew he’d brought up to snoop around had already left, unless the receptionist was mistaken. Not likely, he thought. Then where was he? Tomei walked along the main feed duct, looking over its top on the off chance that Ray was checking something in an out-of-the-way place. He leaned on the duct every few yards, then continued on, giving up once there was no more area to check. “Dammit, Ray, where the hell—Oh, shit!”

Tomei saw the legs first, then his supervisor’s entire body, lying face-up on the floor. A circle of red the size of a salad plate covered his chest. “Ray!” He dropped down to the man’s side and touched his face, which was whiter than he’d ever seen. “My God!” Tomei stood tentatively, then ran through both doors and down the stairs to 73, stopping at the nearest phone. Once there his actions were automatic.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Seventy-fourth floor! First Interstate World Center! My boss! My boss!”

“Calm down, sir.”

“He’s bleeding and he’s unconscious! I think he’s dead!”

“Calm down. You have to—”

“Just get here! I’ve got to get back to him!”

Tomei tossed the handset back toward its cradle, missing badly, but not giving a damn either. He raced back up to 74 and to Ray’s side, checking for a pulse this time.

“No, Ray. No.”
CPR
. He had to try. Tomei scooted toward his boss’s head and put a hand under his neck, lifting gently as the other hand pinched the man’s nose. “Let me do this right, God,” he begged, then brought his mouth down to cover Ray’s.

A few feet away, however, a small microchip timer counted through the last digit of value and set in motion an action that would make Carl Tomei’s lifesaving efforts fruitless; but then he would not live to know the folly of his actions.

FOURTEEN

Witch’s Brew

Zero.

A small cam rotated toward a magnet suddenly energized, freeing a piston that had held the deadly contents of the cylinder in check for several weeks. Instantly, pushed by the several atmospheres of inert gas with which Nikolai Kostin had pressurized the cylinder, the VZ began to spray freely into the ventilation system. This misty liquid was instantly picked up by the forceful flow of air from the SunSnow blowers and pushed through the diving turn of the ductwork and into the treelike divider network that snaked through the bowels of the building.

The fine droplets of VZ did their first damage on 71.

The secretary looked to the A/C vent, her nose twitching at the unpleasant smell now invading her office. The noxious sulfur odor, a product of the binary method of combination, caused her to recoil, her face a grimace.

“What is
that
?” Annoyed and wanting to give Building Services a piece of her mind, she took the phone in hand and reached to the keypad, but her hand tensed before any numbers could be pressed. The appendage clenched, then shook as she looked at it, then both hands began vibrating.

What?

She looked upward, not at anything, as her neck muscles spasmed. Her head shook now, and suddenly both legs flexed like bent twigs and released, propelling her backward off the chair. On the floor her mouth went wide, as did her eyes.

No! Air! Please, God!

Her mind, beginning to feel the effects of the nerve agent, tried to comprehend what was happening, tried to give what was afflicting her a name. Heart attack? Stroke? Seizure? It was part of those things, and much more. In her muscle cells, the chlorinesterase enzyme, whose function was to act as a transmission conduit for “release,” or “off’ signals, was being short-circuited. Normally, when the muscles received electrical impulse signals from the brain to contract—an “on” signal— whether involuntarily, as in the heart, or voluntarily, as in the legs when walking, the chlorinesterase enzyme acted as the messenger that told the muscle cells to relax again. But the VZ, being carried to those cells by the circulatory system, was interrupting that process, preventing the muscles from relaxing after contracting. The brain, excited by the terror of the moment, was firing off signals that were being interpreted only as “on,” causing virtually every muscle to spasm uncontrollably.

The woman’s legs and arms were pulled into a near fetal position as her body—she no longer had control of it—jerked violently, portions slamming into furniture to add superficial physical injury to the invisible trauma going on inside her person. There was pain, but it seemed to come from everywhere at once as a blanket of ache, broken every few seconds by sharp barbs of fire, mostly from her mouth. And there was sound, a sharp cracking that seemed to come from within her head. Both estimations were correct. Her teeth, literally, were breaking as uppers and lowers slammed against each other with tremendous force, the jagged shards that remained digging into the pulpy, bleeding flesh that used to be her gums.