Deadly Visions (30 page)

Where had the scream come from?

Below. Somewhere below.

Joe drew his gun and bolted down the stairway. He peered through the glass doors of the cigar lounge. Empty.

Crew quarters. Galley. Bathrooms. All deserted.

He turned down a narrow hallway and almost stumbled over something. A body.

Joe knelt over him. Christ. Edward Talman dead, his chest oozing blood.

Footsteps pounded on the deck above.

Joe stood and ran for the stairs. He pulled himself up, listening as the roaring flames grew louder.

The earsplitting fire alarm kicked in. About damned time. Half the boat's gone, and
now
the alarm sounds?

The footsteps again, coming toward him. Of course. The other way could only lead into the fire. He held up his gun.

Joe stepped from the stairway and a gunshot whistled past his head. He ducked behind a wood-paneled arch and stared into the decorative mirrors over the bar. There, reflected hundreds of times in the myriad designs, he saw the server's station on the other side of the archway. A man stood there, holding a handgun.

“Only one way out,”Joe shouted.”It's over, Roth.”

Barry Roth flattened himself in the server's station. He stared at Joe in the same mirrors. “It's getting warm, isn't it, Mr. Bailey?”

“You want to step outside and cool off?”

“You first.”

“You didn't come here to kill yourself, Roth. Even if that's what the real Rakkan did.”

“You've made the connection. I'm impressed.”

“Kind of hard to miss after you carved the name into my dining room table.”

“There's no evidence that I did that.”

“Or of rigging Monica Gaines's robe to ignite?”

“Again, no proof.”

“Then how did you know what was in the sketches in her closet?”

“What are you talking about?”

Joe steadied himself as the
Carlotta
listed.”On the
television show, you gave us Monica's impressions of Ernest Franklin's murder scene. You said there was a full moon, but there wasn't. The only full moon was in Monica's preliminary sketch. She didn't show it to anybody, but you saw it, didn't you? You saw it in her closet when you were rigging her robe.”

“That means nothing.”

“Not by itself, but what if I looked in that file of your so-called triumphs? How many of those murders would fit the pattern of Rakkan's killings? I'd imagine it would be very easy to help the police on murders that you committed yourself. The only trick would be in not giving away too much information, right?”

“The fire's spreading belowdecks, Detective.”

“You thought you'd be long gone by now, didn't you? But you saw us climbing aboard and you decided to set off the charges early and blow us to pieces. You figured you could still finish off Talman and make your escape before the boat burned itself out, am I right?”

Roth didn't reply.

“Forget it,” Joe said. “My partner has already called for backup. The lake will be surrounded.”

“It's a big lake.”

Joe looked down. Smoke snaked up between the floorboards.”Time's running out. Let's get the hell out of here.” Joe strained to see through the smoke. “You failed, Roth. You didn't have the guts to finish it right.”

“Shut up!”

He'd hit a nerve. Good. “Face it, if you had the courage to destroy yourself the way Rakkan did, you would have already succeeded. Instead, you tried to
frame someone else and let him die for it. You planted the panther sculpture and those origami figures.”

“
I didn
'
t fail.
”

Joe raised his gun. Roth was still protective of his grand tapestry. “You knew I'd unravel your pathetic little scheme. You knew I'd expose you for the fraud that you are. You wanted to scare me off and thought you could use the memory of my wife to do it. It didn't work. You're an amateur, Roth.”

“Fuck you!” Roth fired twice at the wall between them. The wood panel splintered, but the bullets didn't penetrate.

Joe grabbed a railing to steady himself as the decks whined and groaned. He could keep pushing Roth's buttons, but it wouldn't do him any good if the boat went down with them inside. Black smoke poured from the vents. The alarms were almost deafening.

“Throw down your gun and let's get out of here!”

The aft deck collapsed. Burning cinders flew, and the entire boat shook.

Joe glimpsed the fireworks show through the bar's rear windows.”The fuel tank is next, Roth.”

The windows blew out, and bottles of alcohol lining the bar exploded.

Three shots rang out, shattering the mirrors across from them. Joe ducked as another bullet whizzed past him.

Footsteps. Roth was making his break.

Joe raised his gun and bolted around the corner.

Roth hurtled though the lounge, dodging the flaming rivers of alcohol. His jacket caught fire. He tore it off as he hurtled toward the doorway.

Joe took aim.”Roth!”

Roth spun around, gun in hand. His lips curled into a twisted smile. He raised his gun.

Joe's finger tightened on the trigger, and …

The burning floor opened up and swallowed Roth.

Joe stared in shock at the spot where Roth had disappeared. Half the lounge was gone.

Screams from the burning deck below. Roth. Horrible, frantic screams from a man who knew he was already dead.

Joe ran to the edge of the floor and stared down. Nothing but fire and Roth's screams.

After a few seconds, only fire.

The boat shuddered and listed even harder. Joe pulled himself toward the glass door and pushed.

It wouldn't open.

He grabbed a chair and hurled it toward the door. The glass cracked.

He struck it again. And again. Finally the door shattered and he threw himself onto the deck outside. He turned. Something rumbled deep within the
Carlotta
as flames shot high into the night sky.

He jumped into the water.

Boom.

Another explosion, more intense than the last. The shock waves rammed through the water, pummeling him.

He broke the surface, dodging chunks of burning, floating debris. His lungs hurt. He couldn't breathe.

Relax, he told himself. The blast had only knocked the wind out of him. He threw back his head until the pressure on his chest eased. He inhaled deeply.

He turned toward the boat. He swore he could still
hear Roth's tortured screams inside, echoing in the burning hull. Impossible, he thought. It had to be the twisting, groaning bulkheads.

At least that's what he hoped it was.

The burning hulk of the
Carlotta
dipped lower into the water, crackling and rumbling as it slid beneath the waves.

J
oe stood in the city hall media relations room, where he'd seen the mayor and other city officials conduct numerous press conferences over the years. He never thought
he
'
d
hold one there.

It had been three days since Roth's death and the fiery destruction of the
Carlotta,
and Joe had worked feverishly to tie up the case's loose ends and come up with some answers for the department's higher-ups and the media. Wrap it up, Henderson urged. Put an end to it.

Joe checked his notes one last time. Howe was giving a brief recap of Roth's deadly homage to the Rakkan legend. Howe had been discharged from the hospital the day before and would soon be his old self. He was concerned, however, about the likelihood of his eyebrows growing back.

Howe finished his presentation and left the podium. He whispered to Joe on the way back to his

seat,”I warmed 'em up for you, Bailey. You can thank me later.”

Joe smiled and stepped forward. “Good morning. There have been a lot of questions about things that have happened recently, and I have some answers.” Joe hit the button on his remote, displaying slides taken from the victims. “A lot has been made of the bizarre markings on the victims'skin, a mark that later appeared on my chest. This corresponds to the brand that Rakkan burned into his final set of victims. The appearance of the brand isn't specified in many versions of the story, and we assume that Roth designed his own pattern. He was very meticulous in laying the groundwork for each set of killings. This was his grand finale, and he laid clues that would enable us to finally make the Rakkan connection. This symbol was one of the clues.”

“How did he do it?” a reporter called out.

“Well, we figured out that the marks were an irritant contact dermatitis, but we didn't know how it was done.” Joe pointed to a rack of shirts left of the podium. “Those are mine. We ran some tests and discovered that almost all of my dress shirts were treated with a lye solution, colorless and almost odorless. It won't even appear on standard toxicology tests, and it was in such a diluted form that it took several days of contact before it would cause a reaction. Roth entered my apartment and drew the pattern on my shirts, which then triggered the reaction on my skin. Of course, the symbol would fall slightly differently depending on how the various shirts fit. That explains why the mark was never sharply defined on the skin. We're testing the clothes of the
murder victims, and so far the results have been positive.”

Tess Wayland, standing in front with her camera crew, called out,”That doesn't explain the voices, Detective.”

Joe walked into the crowd and handed her a cordless microphone. “Care to say that again?”

She gave him a puzzled look, then spoke into the microphone.”What about the voices?”

The sound seemed to emanate throughout the room, booming and distorted. The reporters glanced around, looking for the source.

Tess smiled and spoke again. “Is this really me?” Again, her voice boomed through the room.

Joe took back the microphone. “If you're looking for speakers, they're all around you.”

“Where?”Tess asked.

Joe pointed to the tall windows lining the walls. “There.”

“I still don't see them.”

“The windows.”

She stared at him. “The
windows
are the speakers?”

“Yes. I was looking at photos of places where these voices were heard, and I noticed that the one common element was the presence of large glass surfaces. Olympia Technologies recently patented a speaker technology based on a material called Terfenol-D. It was originally developed by the U.S. military for sonar applications. Metal strips of this material can conduct vibrations through any flat, glossy surface, creating specific sound waves. Roth used the same technology, applying small metal conductors
along the edge of glass surfaces such as window-panes and mirrors.”

Diana Schroeder, a reporter from
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
appeared skeptical. “There's no way you could get the same sound from a room window as you could from a precision-engineered glass speaker.”

“You're right. There are too many variables—the size and thickness of the window, the build quality of the frame, and how tightly it's mounted. But remember, Roth wasn't trying to re-create the sound of a symphony orchestra. He only needed to produce the sound of one creepy-sounding voice, which is probably the best you'll get no matter how much you fine-tuned this setup.”

The reporter nodded. “Creepy like your wife's voice?”

“No,” Howe said coldly. “Creepy like you suddenly finding yourself outside, facedown on the sidewalk.”

Joe glanced reassuringly at Howe. “It's okay.” He turned back to the journalists. “Like many in his profession, Roth made a career out of deceiving the public. He was a talented illusionist even if he didn't call himself one. He may have been trying to throw me off my game by conjuring up the visits from my deceased wife and branding me with his mark, but I think there was more to it than that.”Joe stared at the slide taken of his own chest. “I've made it my career to expose paranormal scams like his, and I think he saw me as a special challenge. What better way to finish his masterpiece than to bring me down at the same time?”

Joe changed the slide to a police photo of his
altered apartment.”He used this technology to reproduce my wife's voice, but he still needed to get the background information. After my apartment was rearranged, I tried to figure out how anyone could have known how things looked when my wife was alive. My first thought was photographs, but I've never had many of those. Then, later, I remembered that I used to shoot video, especially around the time that my daughter was born. I pulled the tapes out and saw that he could have gotten everything he needed from those. It would have been simple to borrow them when he was tampering with my shirts, copy the tapes, then replace them. I've been rewatching the videos and confirmed that Angela said every single thing that I heard in my apartment. She told me to be careful when I was filming her from the edge of a balcony, and there are several other phrases that Roth sampled and transmitted. Our wedding video was there, so he even knew our song. We found a hacked transmitter in his rental car that he used to transmit that song and Angela's voice to me on my radio station's frequency.”

Joe hesitated. God, it felt strange to discuss Angela so coolly, so analytically, as if she were just another piece of evidence. “Anyway, these metal strips, attached to a tiny radio receiver and power source no larger than a hearing aid mechanism, could be easily placed along the edges of a mirror or windowpane, then quickly removed. They could even be placed on the outside of a window as I suspect they were at my apartment. If there were two or more windows rigged, it would be possible to create imaging effects to make it seem like the voice was coming from
somewhere in the middle. That's what I've done in here.”