Infected (43 page)

The murder was about seven hours old—if Dawsey had fled, he could already be in Indiana, Chicago, Fort Wayne or on the Ohio Turnpike heading for the East Coast, but Dew knew that Dawsey hadn’t gotten far. Let the public think what they want, let them get the man’s description and keep a sharp eye out. Dawsey might surprise them all, you never knew, and if Dawsey
was
heading somewhere, it was better that Joe Public knew enough to steer clear.

Dawsey’s Ford remained safely under the carport’s snow-covered metal awning. No cars had been reported stolen in Ann Arbor for two days—no motorcycles, mopeds or even a freaking ten-speed, for that matter.

So Dawsey probably hadn’t driven anywhere, and on top of that it looked as if something was wrong with his right leg. Brian Vanderpine, the Ann Arbor cop who’d discovered the murder scene, was the first to notice Dawsey’s bloody footprints in the apartment hallway. Despite the fact that blood was splattered all over the hall, Vanderpine only found prints made by a left foot. They hadn’t found any marks that might have been left by a crutch, so Vanderpine ventured the hypothesis that Dawsey was hopping.

So now you had a man—a huge man—without a car or any means of transportation, committing what amounted to a spontaneous murder, leaving in a hurry, probably without the time to plan anything or the forethought to call a cab (they’d checked, and no taxi had picked up a fare anywhere near the area that day), and he was hopping all the way. That was the key—people would remember if they saw someone hopping, and no one had reported any such person despite the ubiquitous news coverage.

All of these elements led Dew to one conclusion: Dawsey probably hadn’t left the apartment complex at all. Most everybody figured he was long gone, but they based their decisions on fabricated info saying Dawsey had terrorist connections that could help him fade into the woodwork.

The army of cops had checked inside every apartment in Building B, so he wasn’t there, but how far could he have gone? There were seventeen buildings in the complex, with twelve apartments in each building, four apartments each on three floors. An army of cops had knocked on every door in the entire complex, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything strange. No one had. But not all the apartments were occupied. Some people were at work, some were just gone. There hadn’t been time for a background check on every apartment owner to find out if each one was supposed to be home or not. No signs of forced entry—Dawsey hadn’t broken in anywhere.

But that didn’t mean Dawsey wasn’t
in
one of those apartments. Maybe with a hostage. Maybe forcing someone to say that everything was fine.

Dew stuck with his instincts. If Dawsey had blood on his feet, he might also have it elsewhere on his person. The obvious bloody footprints had led out to Dawsey’s car, but each print held less and less blood, and at the car the last of it appeared to have worn off his boot. A man wounded, hopping, moving fast…he might fall, and if he did, that hypothetical additional blood might leave a mark in the snow.

So Dew had walked a circle around Building B. He’d found nothing, so he’d walked around again, staring at the ground the whole time. He walked back to Dawsey’s car; disturbed snow in front of the hood indicated that someone, probably Dawsey, had stood there not too long before.

All the footprints in front of the car were from a left foot. You had to look very closely to see that detail, but once he saw it, he couldn’t
un
see it. Dawsey, crippled leg and all, had stood right there. Hell, he’d probably watched Vanderpine enter his apartment building.

Dew squatted in front of the car. His cold knees throbbed at the effort.

The CIA’s lead agent has arthritis,
he mused.
There’s something you don’t see in the movies.

Crouched in front of the beat-up, rust-speckled Ford, Dew looked at the door to Building B. He felt an unexpected surge of adrenaline—Dawsey had been in this same spot. Dawsey
had
watched the two cops enter the building, watched the door shut behind them, and then he…he did what?

Dew looked around his position, trying to see the terrain through the eyes of an infected man. On his left was Washtenaw Avenue, the main road that shuttled traffic between upscale Ann Arbor and low-rent Ypsilanti. It was full of ever-present thirty-five-mile-per-hour traffic. If he’d gone that way,
someone
would have noticed the hopping man.

Dawsey wouldn’t have wanted that. Too much noise, too many people. Dew looked to his right, down the apartment complex’s road. There were more apartments. A shitload more apartments. Almost no traffic, curtains and shades all drawn against the winter cold, nobody looking, nobody walking.
That’s
what Dawsey wanted. It was quiet, it looked full of hiding places—bushes, shrubs. The cop army had searched all of those hiding places and found nothing, not even a footprint or snow knocked off a bush branch.

But it was the dead of winter—why hide in a snow-covered bush when you could hide in a nice warm apartment? That’s what Dawsey had seen. He had just committed a brutal murder, then watched two cops enter his building. Dew reminded himself of the raging paranoia exhibited by all the victims. Dawsey had watched the cops go in, known they were coming for him, known they’d find the body. He’d wanted to find a hiding place and find one fast.

Dew came out from the hiding spot, grunting as he stood, his knees complaining against the unkind treatment. He walked toward Building G. Despite the fact that his pulse raced like a high-octane engine, he moved with deliberate slowness, examining the ground with a renewed focus.

BURN, BURN, YES YA GONNA BURN

The one on his back was going to be the toughest. Perry had explored Fatty Patty’s cabinets and found a cigarette lighter, two bottles of wine, three bottles of Bacardi 151, and half a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. He’d already knocked back a whole bottle of wine; a buzz rolled thickly through his head. It wasn’t a Wild Turkey buzz, but he’d chugged the entire bottle, so the real kick was probably still brewing in his gut.

Three left: his back, his left forearm, and his balls.

For what he was about to try, he wanted to be very, very drunk.

There was no clever way to remove the Triangles, and the risk seemed greater than ever. The Triangle on his forearm might be close to the artery. The one on his back was right over his backbone—its barbed tail could be wrapped around his vertebrae. Pulling that one out might injure or even sever his spinal cord. The one on his nuts, the one he’d managed to not think about for days…well, he’d just have to get a lot drunker first.

He wasn’t certain he could pull any of them out, but he could kill them where they grew. They’d rot, sure, but if his plan worked, he would dial 911 and head straight for an emergency room. Let the doctors figure it out. The Soldiers wanted to whack him and stop the Triangles from hatching; maybe if there were no more Triangles, the Soldiers wouldn’t kill him. Maybe maybe maybe. They might kill him anyway, but they might keep him alive so they could interrogate him. Even if they took him prisoner so they could probe his mind with their secret machines and TVs that could read thoughts, he’d still be
alive.

And, most important of all, he would have
killed
those
motherfucking
Triangles. Then, even if the Soldiers brought him down, no one could ever doubt that he died like a Dawsey.

He wasn’t going out as a human incubator. He wouldn’t let them win. A painful fever seemed to grip his muscles. His joints ached with the dull kick of a bass drum. The rot. The rot from his shoulder, his ass, spreading to other parts. He could fight the Triangles, maybe, but how could he fight black bile rot flowing through his blood?

The gig was up. Time to shit or get off the pot.

The sleeping hatchlings filled the apartment with clicks and pops. A Garth Brooks song filtered faintly through the floor from the apartment below. In his own mind, all was quiet, not a peep from his own Triangles.

Perry stuffed the lighter into his front pocket, grabbed the liquor bottles and his butcher’s block that held his knives
and
his Chicken Scissors. He hopped clumsily for the bathroom.

Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn.

THE FED

Dew knelt, staring at the spot in the snow. He thought he’d imagined it at first, the frenzied creation of a tired mind and tired eyes. As he stooped down to look closer, he knew it was real.

A tiny, dark pink streak on the pavement’s thin snow. It was small, only about a half inch long and less than an eighth of an inch wide. Wisps of fine powder almost covered the mark.

Dawsey had fallen, right here. Dew looked back to Dawsey’s car; if you drew a straight line from the rusty Ford through the blood spot, that line pointed directly to the door of Building G.

Dew stood and moved toward the door, pulse racing, adrenaline pumping. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, looking for another blood spot, just to be sure.

His sleepiness vanished, possibly from the thrill of the hunt, or more likely from a well-honed instinct for self-preservation.

It was party time.

The first real action since Martin Brewbaker, the infected psycho who’d killed his partner. Brewbaker hadn’t been a big man, nor had he been an athlete, but he’d proved something Dew had known since he’d been eighteen—being a killer isn’t about being strong or fast or well trained, it’s about being the first to pull the trigger, it’s about attacking before the other guy is ready, it’s about the willingness to go for the throat right off the bat. The growths had made Martin Brewbaker that kind of man. Dawsey had those same growths, but Dawsey
was
a big man, he
was
an athlete, and he was violent and vicious even before he was ever infected.

Dew felt a flash of déjà vu, the sense that he was again entering Martin Brewbaker’s house, walking down the hall just before the crazy fuck lit the place on fire and buried a hatchet in Malcolm’s guts. The old Sinatra tune rang in his head.

I’ve got you…under my skin.

BACARDI 151

Perry shut the bathroom door behind him and spread his goodies out on the sink counter.

Bottle of Jack Daniel’s: check.

Two bottles of Bacardi 151: check.

Butcher’s block with knives and Chicken Scissors: check.

Lighter: check.

Towels: check.

Fatigue clutched at his body. He started the tub and flipped the lever on the stopper, allowing the basin to fill up with cold water.

He stripped down, taking off everything but his socks and his underwear. He grabbed the longest towel he could find, twisted it into a rope, then poured some Bacardi on it. It soaked into the terry cloth, filling the small bathroom with the strong smell of rum. He flipped the long towel over his back, feeling the cold, wet, rum-soaked spot send chills up his spine. He positioned that cold spot right over the Triangle. One end of the towel went over his left shoulder, the other under his right arm. He tied the ends together, making the towel hang like a bandito’s bullet strap.

Sí, señor. El Scary Perry is a baaad man.

He soaked the end of a smaller hand towel with Bacardi, then laid it on the toilet. With the preparation finished, he took four long, uninterrupted swallows of Jack Daniel’s.

Perry sat on the tub, the cold porcelain sending another wave of chills through his body. He held the knife and the lighter with his left hand. In his right he held the rum-soaked towel.

It was time.

Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn.

Perry flicked the lighter. He watched the tiny orange flame shift and turn.

Yes, ya gonna burn.

CLOSING IN

Dew stood just inside the front door to Building G. He shivered slightly, but not from the winter’s cold. Like every other building in the sprawling complex, Building G had twelve apartments, four each on three floors.

Perry Dawsey, the one-legged killer, was in one of those apartments.

Dew pulled his notebook from a jacket pocket. He quietly flipped through the pages, eyes looking down at the book one second, flicking back to look up the stairs and down the hall the next. He half expected to see the hulking nutcase tearing down the hall or the stairs, hopping madly, ready to do an encore presentation of the Bill Miller Crucifixion.

Dew reviewed the notes he’d collected from the cops. Building G had been checked by a pair of state troopers. There had been no answer at apartments 104 and 202. Dew put the pad back into his coat pocket, hand brushing against the .45 just to make sure it was there. If his hunch was right, he had a chance to kill Dawsey and do it with no press, no interference from the local cops.

Going in alone was dangerous, probably stupid. But Dawsey probably had a hostage right now. If the rapid-response teams closed too quickly and Dawsey saw them, he might drag that hostage out into the open where the cops could intervene. That would complicate things.

Dew pulled out the big cellular and dialed. It rang only once—they were waiting for his call.

“Otto here.”

“Get the squads in position,” Dew whispered. “I’m in Building G. Do not—I repeat,
do not
—approach until I say so. I’ll stay on the line. If the connection is cut off, move in immediately, understand?”