Death Match (37 page)

“God
damn
. I knew it!”

At that moment, Tara pushed him through a doorway.

Lash glanced around. “Is this a
ladies’
room?”

“With my bracelet covered, I can’t unlock any doors. Here at least we can talk undisturbed. So talk.”

“All right.” Lash hesitated a second, wondering just what to say. It hadn’t been easy, even in the coffee shop; here, with his limbs trembling from the long climb and his heart hammering in his chest, it would be even harder.

“You realize I can’t prove anything,” he said. “The most important piece is still missing. But the rest of the pieces fit perfectly.”

She nodded.

“You remember what I started to tell you? How only somebody in Eden’s top echelons could have done this? Known every aspect of Lindsay Thorpe’s background, tampered with her medical orders, modified her prescription, faked the paper trail. Just as only somebody with all Eden at their fingertips could have doctored
my
records, morphed me into a psychopathic desperado. Somebody who’d been with the company back when it was a PharmGen subsidiary. Somebody highly placed enough to know about the early tests on scolipane. Somebody who’d been a part of Eden Incorporated since the
very first
client walked through the doors.”

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“You know what I’m saying. The person who did all this—the person who’s targeting the supercouples—
is
avatar zero.”

“But who . . .” The question died in her throat.

Lash nodded grimly. “That’s right. Richard Silver is avatar zero.”

“Impossible.”

But Lash watched Tara’s eyes as she said this; watched her travel the same path of discovery he’d already taken. Who else but Silver would have such a number? Who else could have been in the system all this time? Perhaps on some level, she had already guessed. Perhaps that’s why she’d come prepared with the lead foil; why she’d come at all.

Tara just shook her head. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. Yet. We’re taught if you can determine motive, you can determine everything else: personality, behavior, opportunity. I don’t fully understand the motive. Fact is, only Silver can tell us for sure.”

There was a distant flurry of conversation, the opening and closing of doors. They waited, barely breathing. More chatter, closer this time; a distorted voice on a radio. Then more talk, farther away. And then, silence.

Lash exhaled slowly. “The idea came to me in your office this morning, when avatar zero kept coming to the top of the search list. The only avatar without a name. But it wasn’t until I met with an old classmate in Cold Spring—when I saw the connections to PharmGen and scolipane, and its awful reaction with Substance P—that it came together. And Silver, watching everything from his ivory tower, must have realized how close I was. Thus the twenty-first-century smear job.”

“What about Karen Wilner?”

“I’ve barely had time to trace what happened to Lindsay Thorpe. I’m certain Substance P is at the heart of it. As for the delivery system, I can’t yet say.”

Tara looked at him. “Even with everything you’ve told me, it’s hard to believe. Silver might be a recluse, but he’s the last guy to strike me as a killer.”

“Reclusiveness is a red flag. Still, he doesn’t fit the obvious profile. But like I said, the profile’s contradictory to begin with. The murders are too
similar
, somehow. Artless, in a way. As if a child was committing them.” He paused. “Do I strike you as a killer?”

“No.”

“But you turned me in anyway.”

“And I might again. No one else believes you.”

“No one else has heard my story. Just you.”

“The jury’s still out until I hear what Silver has to say.”

Lash nodded slowly. “In that case, we’ve got only one option left.”

“What do you mean?” But from Tara’s eyes, Lash could see that she already knew.

FIFTY-ONE

E
dwin Mauchly stood in the hush of Tara Stapleton’s empty office, scanning the room slowly. To an observer, the scan might have appeared desultory. Yet he missed nothing: the posters, potted plants, spotless desk with three monitors arrayed behind it, battered surfboard leaning against the wall.

Though he had personally championed her rise through the ranks—though he had implicit trust in her talents—Tara remained a cipher to him. She always dressed professionally, rarely joked, even more rarely smiled. She was not given to small talk or gossip. All business, all the time.

His eye returned to the surfboard. Though he’d arranged for its presence here, it had always puzzled him. It didn’t jibe with her almost fanatic desire for privacy, with the wall she’d erected around her private life. Clearly, she wasn’t just showing off: if she wanted to do that, she would have brought in the championship trophies he knew from background checks that she’d won. No—the surfboard was there, one way or another, for her own benefit.

His eye fell to the carpeting, to the droplets of blood that were visible near the doorway. Elsewhere, Lash had left little or no trail. Not here. Why? Had he been gesturing? Threatening?

That led back to the main question. Why had Lash come here at all? Why had he taken the risk?

There were too many questions. Mauchly plucked the radio from his pocket, pressed the transmit button.

“Reading you, sir,” came the voice from the command center.

“Who is this? Gilmore?”

“Yes, Mr. Mauchly.”

“Go over with me again Ms. Stapleton’s movements after Lash left her office.”

“One moment, sir.” The clack of keystrokes sounded over the radio. “The advance team came through at 18:06. At 18:12 she left her office and was tracked to the radiology lab, down the hall. She was there for three minutes. At 18:15 she left the lab and proceeded to the elevator bank. She took elevator 104 up four stories, to the thirty-ninth floor. Sensors tracked her to the Proving Chamber.”

“The Tank.”

“Yes, sir. She opened the doors with her identity bracelet at 18:21.”

“Go on.”

“Passive sensors in the Tank confirm her presence there for the next nine minutes. After that, nothing.”

“Nothing? What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“Just that, sir. It’s like she vanished.”

“And the team we dispatched to the Tank?”

“Arrived there just now. The place is deserted.”

“Can you check the terminal logs, see if she accessed any systems?”

“We’re checking that now.”

“What about Lash? Any updates?”

“There was a sensor hit on the thirty-seventh floor ten minutes ago. Then several on the thirty-ninth floor a few minutes later.”

“Thirty-ninth,” Mauchly repeated. “In the vicinity of the Tank?”

“The last one was, sir.”

“And when was that?”

“Eighteen thirty-one.”

Mauchly lowered the radio. One minute after they lost contact with Tara. And on the same floor, the same spot.

Mauchly glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes without a sensor hit on either Lash or Tara. That made no sense—no sense at all.

He considered the situation. Except for the checkpoints and the elevators, there were no video cameras installed in the inner tower. There had seemed no need: under Eden’s draconian security policy, the inner tower was riddled with so many movement sensors that any person wearing an identity bracelet could be traced to a twenty-foot area. And the limited number of entrances, the rigidly patrolled checkpoints, ensured only authorized personnel went inside the Wall. The infrastructure was designed to guard against corporate espionage: there were no contingency plans for chasing an escaped murderer.

Still, the security protocols should have worked. There was only one way to defeat the identity bracelets, and that was a highly sensitive secret Lash could not be aware of . . .

Could he?

He raised the radio again. “Gilmore, I want you to divert the roving patrols. Send them all to thirty-eight and above. I want spotters in the stairwells and major intersections. If anything moves that isn’t a security guard, I want to know about it.”

“Very well, sir.”

Mauchly returned the radio to his pocket. Then he exited the office and walked thoughtfully down the hall.

The radiology lab was almost sepulchral in its emptiness. He gazed around at the idle equipment, the gleaming stainless-steel instruments.

Why had Tara come here?

Christopher Lash, psychopathic murderer, had just burst into her office. Had she then been seized by a sudden craving for extracurricular research? Again, it all made no sense.

Was it possible she was aiding Lash? Hardly likely. She’d seen the evidence; she knew how dangerous he was, not only to the supercouples, but to Eden itself. She’d alerted Mauchly to the meeting in the coffee shop. She’d turned Lash in.

Could he be threatening her in some other way? That seemed equally unlikely. Tara was eminently capable of defending herself. And Lash was unarmed: Mauchly had made sure of that himself.

He tried to put himself in her shoes, tried to follow her train of thought. But one could only make assumptions about a person one understood. And Mauchly was not convinced he really understood Tara. He’d been surprised, almost shocked, when she’d barged into his office two months before, asked him to use his clout to get her in the pilot program for employee matching. And he’d been just as surprised when she reappeared in his office
after
her match was found, asking to be removed from the program. It was Monday, he recalled; the day Christopher Lash first came inside the Wall.

Lash
. This was all his doing. He was insane, a mad dog. He’d done great harm to the corporation. It was imperative he be stopped before he did any more harm—something truly irreversible.

Mauchly reached into his pocket, drew out a Glock 9mm. The weapon glinted faintly in the dim, off-hours light of the lab. He turned it in his hands, made sure there was a round in the chamber, returned it to his pocket.

This was one mad dog that had no place to run. And Mauchly would treat Lash just as one should a mad dog. Corner it, then kill it.

His radio squawked.

“Mauchly here.”

“Mr. Mauchly, it’s Gilmore. You asked me to report in if we spotted any movement in the tower.”

“Very true, Mr. Gilmore. Go ahead.”

“Sir, the penthouse elevator’s been activated. It’s moving as we speak.”

“What?” Mauchly felt mild annoyance. “I’ll have to speak to Richard Silver. He can’t leave the penthouse now, not while Lash is on the loose. It isn’t safe.”

“You don’t understand, sir. The elevator isn’t descending. It’s rising.”

FIFTY-TWO

A
s they emerged from the stairwell, Lash recognized the sky lobby of the thirtieth floor. He’d been here once. Like the rest of the inner tower, this space was dark, deserted. In one corner sat a lone mop, leaning against the marble wall, abandoned in the general evacuation. Banks of elevators stood on both sides. Halfway down the right wall, one spilled yellow light into the lobby. The sign above it read E
XPRESS TO
C
HECKPOINT
II.

Tara looked around guardedly, then motioned Lash to follow.

“Why are we here?” he muttered. It made no sense: they’d just made their stealthy way
down
nine stories: nine stories that he’d struggled so hard to climb. Blood was drying on his scratched hands and face, and his limbs ached.

“Because this is the only way.” Tara led him to one elevator, set apart from the others. There was a keypad beside it, and she punched in a code.

All at once, Lash understood. He’d been inside this elevator, too; been in it more than once.

He waited, expecting to see a brace of guards burst into the lobby, brandishing guns. The elevator announced its arrival with a loud
ding
; the doors opened; and they quickly stepped inside.

Tara turned to the panel that held three unmarked buttons. There was a scanner beneath it.

She glanced back at Lash. “You realize that, no matter what happens, I’m going to have some pretty fast talking to do at the end of the day.”

Lash nodded, waiting for her to press the button. But Tara remained motionless. He suddenly feared she was changing her mind; that she would punch the bottom button, hand him over again to Mauchly and his thugs. But then she sighed, cursed, pulled the lead foil from her bracelet, held her wrist beneath the scanner. And pressed the top button.

As the elevator began to rise, Tara began to replace the foil. Then she crumpled it into a ball, and let it drop to the floor. “What’s the point? I’m made.” She looked back at Lash. “There’s something you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’re wrong about this, Mauchly’s the least of your worries. I’ll kill you myself.”

Lash nodded. “Fair enough.”

They fell silent as the elevator climbed. “You’d better grab hold of something,” Tara said at last.

“Why?”

“As a security chief, I’ve got access to the penthouse elevator. Just as a precaution against emergency: fire, earthquake, terrorist attack.”

“You mean, what Mauchly was saying about the tower’s operational modes. Alpha, Beta, and so on.”

“The thing is, we’re not in emergency mode, just an elevated alert. That limits my access.”

“What are you getting at?”

“What I’m getting at is the doors won’t open. The elevator will stop at the penthouse level and sit there.”

As if in response, the elevator slowed, then stopped. There was no chime, no whisper of opening doors: the car simply hung, motionless, at the top of its shaft.

Lash looked at Tara. “What happens now?”

“We sit here for a minute, maybe two, until the request system recycles. Then the elevator will return
there
.” She pointed to the lowest button. “The private garage in the sub-basement.”

“Where a welcoming committee will be waiting, no doubt,” Lash said bitterly. “If the door won’t open, why did we bother taking this ride in the first place?”

She pointed to a small hatch beneath the control panel. “Stop asking questions and grab hold of something like I told you.” As she pulled open the hatch, Lash saw a telephone, flashlight, long-handled screwdriver. Tara slipped the screwdriver into the waistband of her pants, then straightened, planting her fingers along the seam of the elevator doors. Lash gripped the railing.