Mortal Fear (76 page)

 A minute has passed, but for me time is dilating with possibility. The seconds pass like cars on a distant train. Berkmann is smart. That is his talent. But talents are double-edged swords. I learned that the hard way. Maybe Berkmann is too smart for his own good. As the air conditioner kicks on, something trips in my brain—an echo of my own voice just minutes ago.
Remember Dallas
. . . .

 Dallas. A jerky video image of an apartment. Men in black. A harmless-looking white computer on a floor, suddenly blooming into black nothingness. . . .

 My nerve endings thrumming, I turn faster, drinking in the contents of the room. The coat sculpture. My surviving guitars. The computers. The rack for my great grandfather’s sword, which now lies in some evidence room in Yazoo City—

 Smaller,
says a voice in my head. I tighten my focus from macro to micro. Floppy disk case, stapler, VCR. Halogen desk lamp, flashlight, canned air for cleaning electronic gear. Air freshener Drewe left in here weeks ago, toner bottle for refilling printer cartridges—

 “Harper, for God’s sake!”

 I hold up my hand, looking from the sleek black EROS computer to the boxy white Gateway 2000, then at the printers attached to each, and finally the keyboards.

 “Drewe.”

 “What?”

 “I want you to type Berkmann a note. On the Gateway.”

 “What?”

 “Please just do it.”

 “What do I type?” she asks, sitting down at the computer.

 “Go into WordPerfect. Double-space the note. Write it as if you’re me. Tell Berkmann you hate his guts, that you’re taking your wife out of the house, that he’ll never have her. Tell him to wait right where he is, because you’re coming back to kill him as soon as your wife is safe.”

 “But it’s the wrong computer!” Drewe protests. “I can’t send the message to him!”

 “Just do it! But whatever you type, make the note longer than a single screen. You understand? You’ve
got
to go a few lines past the first screen.”

 “Okay,” she says, tapping slowly at the keys.

 I flip on the halogen lamp near the Gateway, then move to the door with the .38 and switch off the overhead light.

 “Where are you going?” Drewe calls, her voice high and thin.

 “I’ll be right back. Finish the note!”

 I close my left hand around the doorknob and slowly turn it. Berkmann could already be inside the house, but I don’t think so. And I’m going to be very quick.

 One pull and I’m sailing up the hallway with the office door shut behind me. Hard left, into the unused bedroom that holds the gun safe. Shifting the .38 to my left hand, I kneel before the safe, spin the combination lock back and forth to the numbers of my father’s birthday, and yank the handle. My right hand parts the thicket of antique muskets, grabs a black-and-yellow can, and gives it a shake. Three-quarters full. Then I’m running again, the .38 held out in front like a ram.

 “Thank God!” Drewe cries from the pool of light at the center of the room.

 I shut and lock the office door. “Did you finish the note?”

 “Four lines past the bottom of the screen. Harper, what are you trying to do?”

 A moment of doubt as I reach into the bottom drawer of the desk. Nothing gets lost faster than tools. But this one I used less than a week ago.

 “What are you looking for!”

 My heart leaps as my hand closes around the screw starter. “I’m going to blow him to hell and gone.”

 “What?”

 I hold the can from the gun safe under the light.

 “Black powder?” she asks.

 “You got it.” I flip open the top of the Hewlett-Packard printer and pull out the black wedge-shaped toner cartridge. Drewe stays on my heels as I carry the cartridge into the bathroom.

 “Tell me what you’re doing!” she demands. “Are you making some kind of bomb?”

 “Yes.” With the screw starter, I pop out the two pins in the left end of the cartridge, then flip it around and start on the right.

 “What are you going to do with it?”

 The fourth plug gives with a pop. “Kill Berkmann,” I tell her, dropping the plug into my pocket. “I need you to clear out a space on the floor of the closet. Move all the shoes and things to one side.
Hurry
.”

 “Okay.”

 After pulling off the cartridge cover, I turn the cartridge on end, exposing the inch-wide plug in the toner reservoir. It pulls out easily. I start to invert the cartridge over the toilet bowl, then realize how stupid that would be. The “ink” used by laser printers is a superfine black powder of plastic and metal that looks like coal dust and spreads like an eruption of volcanic ash. If I try to flush it down the toilet, the bathroom will look like a blind man tried to paint it with India ink. Instead, I flip open the cabinet that holds my dirty clothes hamper, stick the cartridge through, turn it on end, and shake it until the weight tells me it’s empty. Then I pull it out, wipe my hand on a towel, and drop the towel into the hamper.

 “I heard something!” Drewe shouts. “Outside!”

 Looking out of the bathroom, I see her pointing the .25 at one of the front windows. “Just keep to the shadows,” I tell her, running back to my desk.

 With the empty toner cartridge braced against the floor, I press the sharp end of the screw starter against the plastic and bear down like a blacksmith, punching a hole clean through the wall of the toner reservoir. Then I punch another hole about a quarter inch from the first.

 “Hurry, Harper!”

 Covering the holes with my thumb, I begin filling the toner reservoir with black gunpowder.

 “Why did I have to write that message?” Drewe asks.

 “That’s part of the detonator.” Through the plug hole, I watch the level of the gunpowder rising.

 “I don’t understand.”

 “When you don’t go outside, Berkmann will have no choice but to come in. Just like you said.” I glance at my watch. Nearly three and a half minutes have passed.

 “If he sets the house on fire, we’ll
have
to go out!”

 “He won’t do it.” The gunpowder keeps rising. “He won’t take a chance on hurting you.”

 “Where are we going to be when this bomb of yours blows up?”

 “Right here.”

 “Right here? In this room?”

 “In the closet.”

 “
What?
Waiting for him to come in here with us and set it off?”

 “It’s the only way.”

 “You said we’d die if we wound up in the same room with him!”

 The toner reservoir is full. I stuff the plug back into the hole, then dig through the bottom drawer of my desk for wire cutters and electrical tape. I need wire too, but there’s none in the drawer.

 “Stop for one second!” Drewe shouts, squeezing my arm so hard I have to yank it away.

 “Damn it!” I yell, trying desperately to think of some place in the office where there might be wire. “We’ll be buried under clothes and everything else in the closet.”

 “How big will the explosion be?”

 “I don’t know.”

 “You don’t
know
?”

 “Like a pipe bomb. We might get hurt, okay? But
he’ll
be cut to pieces.”

 Drewe freezes, her mouth open. “Did you hear that?”

 My eyes lock onto a Gibson ES-335 guitar hanging from its brace above my bed. “What?” I ask, jumping onto the bed with the wire cutters.

 “My God! Do you smell that?”

 The first snip pops the Gibson’s high E-string with a twang like a cartoon ricochet. The second gives me the length of wire I need.

 “Gasoline!” Drewe gasps. “That’s
gas
!”

 She’s right. The sharp tang of high-octane gasoline is seeping into the room. Maybe through the air-conditioning ducts.

 “He’s bluffing,” I tell her, cutting the guitar string into two three-inch lengths. I pull off my watch and hand it to her. “We’ve got forty seconds. Tell me when our time’s up.”

 With Drewe staring wildly at me, I reach into the open cartridge with the screw starter and feel for the corona wire. This ultra-thin filament electrically charges the magnetic drum that puts the “ink” in the right places on the page to form text. Holding up the wire with the tip of the screw starter, I stick two small pieces of tape to it, one on either side of the tool point. Then I snip the corona wire in half.

 “Twenty-five seconds,” Drewe says in a tight voice.

 I toss her the wire cutters. “Cut the mouse off the Gateway!”

 “Why?”

 “Just do it! Throw it in the closet!”

 Using the tape scraps to guide me, I attach a short length of guitar string to each loose end of the corona wire. Then I carefully feed the two wires through the holes I punched in the toner reservoir and fix them in position with tape.

 “Time’s up!”

 “Get some towels!” I shout, snapping the cartridge cover back into place. “Wet them in the bathtub!”

 “You said he wouldn’t do it!” Drewe wails.

 “Get the towels!”

 Fumbling like a teenager with a condom, I pop in two plugs to anchor the cover, then run to the open printer and shove the cartridge home.

 The moment I close the printer’s lid, I have a lethal bomb. But Edward Berkmann is the detonator, and for him to function properly, I have to make a nonfatal choice impossible. My hands fly across the keyboard, closing out possibilities for failure—

 “Harper, stop it!” Drewe pleads, standing beside me with two soaking wet towels.

 “Get in the closet!”

 “I won’t do it!”

 “You want to die?”

 “We
will
die if we do this!”

 Berkmann’s digital voice paralyzes us both.
“Five minutes have fallen into eternity. Where are you, Drewe?”

 She watches me like a kid with her finger plugged in a leaking ocean dike. “Let me talk to him!” she begs.

 “He doesn’t want to talk! Get in the closet!”

 Her arms fall slack at her sides, letting the wet towels plop onto the floor. “I can’t,” she says in a broken voice. “I’m sorry.”

 I’ll drag her into the closet if I have to, but first I have to arm the bomb. I stare at the printer, my stomach near spasm.

 “Get back, Drewe.”

 “Do you smell the gas, Harper?”
Berkmann asks.
“Are you ready to burn?”

 “Fuck you!” I yell. With the knowledge that it could be my last, I take a deep breath. Then I lay myself over the printer in case it blows prematurely, and hit the ON switch.

 Nothing happens. The yellow and green status lights on the face of the printer glow, blink off, then come back on, indicating the unit is warmed up, on-line, and ready to print. And I am still alive.

 “Can you hear me, Edward?”

 I whirl, my heart pounding. Drewe is seated at the EROS computer with the headset on.

 “Yes. Come out, Drewe.”

 “Harper won’t let me! He thinks if I come out, you’ll burn the house with him in it. Or shoot him if he tries to come out.”

 “We all have to take chances in life. Come out now.”

 “I want to. I’m going to try something, okay? You’re using a cell phone, aren’t you?”

 “Stop playing games, Drewe. My patience is gone.”

 “I’m going to hook a telephone to this modem line. Then I can come to the window. You’ll be able to see me then. We can work this out.”

 Berkmann doesn’t reply.

 “What the hell are you doing?” I hiss.

 Drewe motions frantically for me to bring her a phone. I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but every minute that ticks past is a mile and a half closer for Wes Killen and Sheriff Buckner. I toss her the cordless and run for the answering machine that is its base.

 “What’s the number of the data line?” Drewe asks, her finger pressed to the space bar.

 “Six-oh-one, four-two-seven, three-one-one-four.”

 She repeats the number into the headset, then says, “Do you have that on your screen, Edward?”

 Berkmann says nothing.

 “Call me in thirty seconds. I’m attaching the phone now.”

 I scrabble behind a bookshelf with my left hand, trying to disconnect the answering machine’s electrical plug while holding the .38 ready in my right in case Berkmann breaks down the door.

 “Hurry!” Drewe pleads.

 I have it. Dropping the base into Drewe’s lap, I shove the electrical plug into the back of the power supply that feeds clean electricity to the EROS computer. “What the hell are you trying to do?” I ask again.

 “I’m going to get you a shot at him.”

 “What? How?” I ask, clicking the RJ-11 jack into the back of the modem.

 “Just be ready.”

 “I don’t think he’s listening to you anymore.”

 The ringing phone makes a liar of me.

 Drewe reaches for it, but I grab her wrist. “Let the machine get it, then pick up.”

 After the machine answers, Drewe picks up and says, “Just a second!” over my outgoing message. When it finishes its run, I press MEMO, which will not only record Berkmann’s words but also allow me to hear everything he says through the answering machine.

 “Are you there, Edward?” Drewe asks.

 “Yes.”

 Even transmitted by the tinny speaker of the answering machine, that single word—spoken without the digital midwife of Miles’s voice-synthesis program—communicates more subtlety and danger than the whole of Berkmann’s words so far.

 “I like that better,” Drewe says. “
Much
better.”

 The little speaker hisses and crackles in her lap.

 “I’m coming to the window, Edward.” She rises from the chair.

 “No. Come to the back door.”

 Drewe freezes, her eyes asking me what mine are asking her. Is Berkmann really at the back door? There’s no way to know.

 “Harper won’t let me. But I’m coming to the window.”

 Despite my fraying nerves, I force myself to let her cross the room to the right front window. She seals the transmitter of the phone with her palm and whispers, “You’re mad as hell. You’re losing it. You’ll kill me before you let me go out there.”

 “What?”

 She gives me a frantic look like, Come on, stupid! “When I slap the windowpane, that means he’s exposed. That’s your shot. Not until then, okay?”