GHOST_4_Kindle_V2 (41 page)

I’d just barely had enough time to hit the custom safety on The Edge before the FBI agents cuffed me and took the weapon from me. As they shoved me unceremoniously into the back of a black SUV, I thought maybe I should have left the safety off. Serve them right to cut off a few fingers.

The truck roared away, and I jounced around the back seat. “Whatever happened to Serve and Protect?” I groused.
 

“That’s police,” came the driver’s rough voice. “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity, that’s us. Now shut it!” The agent in the passenger seat as well as the two in the second seat got a hearty chuckle out of that.
 

I nodded.
Right, right.
Rez had told me that already. It was the lack of integrity she’d shown in turning me in that threw me off. “You mind telling me the charges?”

“Felony interference with a Federal case, for starters,” the agent closest to me said. He had coppery hair cut high and tight and wore sunglasses. It was past midnight, and he was wearing sunglasses.

“Maybe accessory to murder too,” the passenger agent said. He had dark hair in a tight tail and a smirk that never seemed to disappear.
 

“I get the interference,” I said. “But accessory to murder? That’s a stretch.”

“Not if the evidence at the butterfly place pans out,” Pony Boy replied. “Agent Rezvani said the evidence would put you at the scene. Footprints in the blood.”

Ouch.
That stung even more.
   

“What about the suspects?” I asked.

“What suspects?” Sunglass Man asked.

“He means the doc and his arm candy,” Pony Boy said. “Rezvani was all uppity that we take them into custody.”

“Did you?” I asked, probably sounding too eager, too desperate.

“Playing your part till the end, eh?” Pony Boy asked. “Whatever. Nah, they shook our tail. We lost’em. But we got you.”

For fifteen minutes, I fumed there in the backseat. The Smiling Jack killers knew me. They knew I knew them. Whatever they had planned, whatever their timeline, it had just been shoved into overdrive. And it was my fault. Maybe they’d immediately kill any captives they had left, or maybe, they’d just disappear and start over. I considered my options. There weren’t many.

I could ride with the FBI, let them book me, and then attempt an escape. Or, I could completely blow my cover, escape now, and be the subject of paranormal news media for a decade. Or, I could wait and see: let them book me and see if the FBI could manage not to screw up the takedown of the Smiling Jack killers. I shook my head and released a steamy, exasperated laugh. Any of the options could jeopardize my mission. For all I knew, it could already be too late.
 

“Here we are!” the driver announced cheerily. “Your new home for awhile awaits.”

I looked out the window at a multiple story, gray stone building that looked like an architect’s attempt at modern art—that failed—actually resembling a child’s attempt to stack blocks. I read the low spot lit sign in the front lawn: Pensacola Police Department. “Police?” I asked. “What’s the matter, no room at the FBI inn?”

“Funny guy,” said Sunglass Man as he stepped out into the blazing glare of starlight. “If there’s no local FBI field office, we often make use of the local police department. Their accommodations might be a little less comfy, but I suppose you don’t mind.”

I didn’t mind at all. Escaping a police jail was bound to be easier than breaking out of an FBI holding tank.
   

Processing went quickly, I thought. Mostly, the agents just flashed badges and moved me through the building. Just a skeleton crew was on duty at the Pensacola P.D. I counted nine officers from the help desk all the way to the cell blocks. One of the nine, the staff sergeant on duty, an officer named Barker, led us through the building.
 

“You have a special place in the jail for Mr. Spector here?” Sunglass Man asked.
 

“We prefer to call them incarceration facilities,” Barker said, feigning an English accent. “We are rather full tonight, but yes, we shall find him a spot.”

Somehow, everyone but me seemed to discover humor in my capture and confinement. We ascended a flight of black stairs, our shoes creating a strange staccato echo that followed us into a wide hall. Two guards were posted at the cellblock gate. One of them buzzed us in.

“12 A,” Barker said as we passed through.

Dim recessed lights made an eerie trail of light and shadow between the cells that lined both sides of the hall. Just my luck. All the inmates seemed to be very interested in the new arrival. A woman with stringy hair and a pinched face struck a pose behind the bars. “Hey, baby,” she cooed.
 

I looked away and found myself staring into the bloodshot eyes of a massive African-American man in the adjacent cell to my right. When I say massive, I mean he was four hundred pounds if he was an ounce. He looked at me like I was a snack.
 

The next cell contained what I took to be a sleeping vagrant. A Hispanic man wearing a very well tailored, expensive gray suit paced in the opposite cell. In the span of moments it took me to pass by his cell, he glanced at his wristwatch six times. Maybe he was due to be bailed out soon. Maybe it was just a nervous habit.

The third cell on the left held a wispy young woman with strawberry blond hair. She looked up from her weeping just long enough to meet my eyes. Inexplicably, I read her. Why her? I don’t know. I never know. But I said the first thing that came to my mind: “He hears you.” She wept even louder then.

“What’d that mean?” Barker asked.
 

“Stick around my cell for a bit,” I said. “Happy to explain.”

Barker shrugged, and we continued down the long hall.
 

I didn’t know at the time why all the inmates on that floor left such an impression on me. They just did. All eleven of them.
 

There was the angry young man with all the tattoos who cursed at me; the African-American woman who stood in the corner of her cell and mumbled; black-leather-chapped biker who could have been stunt double for ZZ-Top; the guy with huge, bulging eyes who stared at me from the shadows of his cot; the Dominican bodybuilder whose cell could scarcely contain him, much less his white undershirt tank; and finally, there was the nervous man. He looked to be in his middle forties. He spent half the time shaking his head; the other half running his hands through his thinning hair. He looked like a family man, maybe a guy who had one too many at the company party and tried to drive home anyway.
 

“Here we are,” Barker said. “Your penthouse awaits. We call it 12 A.”

I stepped into the cell, and I must have been smiling because Pony Boy said, “Get that smug look off your face.”

Sunglass Man added, “Think you know something we don’t?”

“Doesn’t much matter,” Barker said. “You’re gonna be here a while.”

I said nothing. The truth was, I did know something they didn’t know. I knew those cell bars wouldn’t hold me, and I knew exactly what it would take for me to free myself.
 

The cell door slammed home. I heard the lock mechanism trigger. Barker and the Feds left me. I saw the family man across from me staring. As soon as our eyes met, he looked away, started rocking on his feet, and ran his hands through his hair again. I felt bad for the man. I felt bad for every person I’d seen. While I’d never discount a person’s personal responsibility for his actions, I also knew that many people had rougher starts than some others. And many a rough start led to a rough path and a rough end.

I waited my best estimate of five minutes after the cell block gate closed. I stood up and inspected the bars of my cell. It was 16 or 18 gauge stainless steel. I wrapped my fingers around the bars and felt the tension. Definitely steel.
 

“Thinking of breaking out?” the family man asked.
 

I just looked at him and smiled. But my smile vanished instantly. The steel bars began to vibrate.

* * *
   
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* * *

“Judge Deacon came through!” Culbert shouted as he emerged from the FBI’s temporary offices. “We got the warrant for search and seizure.”

“It’s about time!” Barnes thundered. He nodded to the task force commander, a sniper named Kelly Phippen.

“Phipps,” as they called her, made a propeller motion over her head, and her squad of sixteen poured into the waiting vans and SUVs.
     

Agent Rezvani watched with fascination as the hornets’ nest of activity raced around her. But, as the group thinned, it seemed that each agent had a designated task. Rez had waited patiently, assuming she’d be riding shotgun with the Deputy Director. But when he hopped into the lead SUV and hadn’t even glanced in Rez’s direction, she knew something was wrong.

“Not again,” she hissed. She ran up to the SUV just in time for the door to shut in her face. She rapped hard on the window.

Barnes rolled down the window. “What are you doin’, Rezvani?”

She stammered, “Well, I…you…I thought—”

“Get in!” Barnes growled.
 

Rezvani blinked. “Oh,” she said. Without another moment’s hesitation, she jumped into the second seat and slammed the door.
 

* * *
   
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* * *
   
* * *

It was a faint vibration at first, passing from the stainless steel bars into the flesh of my palm. I flung my hands back from the bars.

“Shocked you, did they?” the family man said, wringing his hands together. “I know those guys don’t screw around, but electrifying the bars? That’s just wrong, man.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t them.”

“Huh?” The guy blinked at me. “Whaddaya…whaddaya mean?”
 

“Sir, I don’t know what you’ve done—”

“DUI,” he said.

I raised a hand to shush him. “Sir, there’s about to be a serious problem here,” I said. “Your life depends on you hiding now. Get under your cot and make yourself as small as possible.”

This man was nobody’s fool, save perhaps when he’d been drinking. I didn’t have to tell him twice. Almost before I finished my sentence, he dove beneath his cot. His hand shot out and grabbed the corner of a jacket so that it draped over the end of the cot. Unless you went into the cell and looked around, I didn’t think you’d see him.

“Stay down,” I said. “Don’t make a sound.” I cringed. The itching, electrical aura penetrated the soles of my shoes and clambered up my shins.

The overhead lights began to flicker. “Blood and brimstone!” I muttered in disbelief. I didn’t understand this thing that was happening. A small rational part of my mind identified the threat, but I couldn’t rationalize that something out of ancient legend could be real. I’d seen what I’d seen outside the Butterfly Conservatory. I’d felt it then as I did now. But this time, I was completely trapped.
 

But I knew my priorities. I’d save as many of them as I could. Frantically, I searched my cell. There wasn’t much to work with. I did the only thing I could think of to do: I tossed the top sheet and the meager mattress onto the floor and tore the cot’s metal frame from its old anchor points on the wall. Then, I raised a spectacular ruckus.
 

Again and again, I slammed the cot’s frame across the bars. The sound was a combination of grating metallic shrieks and trembling clangs. In between, I heard the other inmates stirring.
 

“Listen to me!” I cried out. “Shut up, right now, and LISTEN!” I’d allowed my voice to alter on the last word to a decibel just above thunder. The cellblock became silent.

“I don’t have time to explain!” I yelled. “Something’s coming in here, and if you don’t hide, you are going to die!”

“Guards!” an inmate roared. “What’s this lunatic on?”
 

“Yo, Parker, get yo—”

Then came the gunshots.

And the screams.
 

* * *
   
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* * *
   
* * *

Rez was glad to be out of the evening gown and into tactical gear. That slime Klingler had tried to cop a look from the rear view mirror as she changed, but Barnes had cuffed his ear. Hard too, and the memory gave her a bit of sadistic joy.
 

She took the little Glock from her purse and tucked it into the waistline of the black utility pants at the small of her back. She missed her Sig Sauer, but was familiar enough to be effective with the Beretta 9 mm. Barnes had provided her.
 

“This is it,” the Deputy Director called from the front seat. “Phipps goes in first. We follow.”

The SUV ground to a halt. Four doors opened, and all four passengers rushed out into the teeming night. A single streetlight burned overhead…for a moment.
 

Phipps took it out with one shot from a silenced handgun. She made numerous signals with her hands, and her team fled like spirits toward the home of Dr. Garrison Lacy and his partner in life, Jacqueline Gainer.
 

Watching the tactical team work, Rez wondered if she hadn’t sold herself short by taking the investigative career path. Phipps had her team moving with mechanical precision. No, it was better than that. It was the organic precision of a human body, the deliberate inhaling and exhaling, the fueling of blood cells with oxygen, and the fluid motion of those life-enriched cells coursing to their destinations. In moments, the tactical team covered every possible exit from the house.

Rez knelt by the SUV’s back bumper and took a deep breath. This was it: the moment for which she had worked and waited all those years. She’d tied herself in knots over the Smiling Jack killings. First, with the agony of the young women being slaughtered; then, with the dueling barbs of inadequacy and frustration at the paucity of evidence; and finally with the exasperation of having it all declared a hoax—Rez had dwelt in a living hell. Sure, there had been dozens of other assignments, but the Smiling Jack case was always there in the back of her mind, lingering like a black spider in a dusty corner.