SPYWARE BOOK (18 page)

“It’s not like that, Ray,” she said.

“The hell it’s not,” he said, turning back to her after he had clicked in another search. “Look, Brenda, are you my friend?Are you in this with me or not?”

Brenda was silent for a moment. She looked at him, then back toward the lab doors. “I suppose I’m with you, Ray,” she said quietly.

“It’s just that the virus is so advanced, and it came from here, and you really know about viruses, Ray,” she said to her hands.

“Yeah, I know it looks bad.”

“They say you’re on record for having released a virus before, Ray.”

“It was a stupid prank.”

“They found files at your house, Ray,” she told him.

He glanced at her, opened his mouth, then shut it again. He nodded to himself. “That’s it,” he said. “That must be why they took him. Justin must have seen them planting that stuff.”

“Ray?”

“What?”

“They say other things, too. Terrible things, Ray. About what you might have done with Justin. About why you are running and searching for him so frantically.”

Ray looked at her. She looked small and scared and it all made him feel sick. He didn’t say anything because he couldn’t.

Brenda stood up. “You won’t give yourself up, will you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I’ve got to go to the restroom again, Ray,” she said.

Four thousand search results. Still way too many. Ray nodded his head to her and started another search. While the search engine was working on it, he quickly dialed Mrs. Trumble’s number. He glanced back at the lab doors, but Brenda was still gone. When a sleepy Mrs. Trumble answered, he told her to write down Santa, Snowflake and the word ‘handles’ on a note for his wife. She began to tell him about her day, but he quickly begged off. When he hung up on her, she was still talking about something. He felt a bit bad about it, but he couldn’t chance anymore time on the line. After he hung up, he dialed 4 - 1 - 1 and immediately hung up again. That way, if someone tried the redial later, they would get nothing useful. He knew he was being paranoid, but figured that it couldn’t hurt.

Sometime later the lab doors opened again. Ray heard a different set of footsteps approaching. His stomach dropped away into a vast void that had opened up at his feet. Brenda had betrayed him. He should have expected it, but he hadn’t, not from her. He turned, fully expecting to see Agents Vasquez and Johansen, guns drawn.

Instead, he saw Dr. Ingles. He had his cigarette in his left hand and his right was stuck in the pocket of his jacket, where doubtlessly it tightly clutched his lighter.

“Ingles?”

“Hello, Ray,” said the other. He approached and seemed completely at ease in the presence of a federal fugitive.

“What do you want?”

“Ray, I’m here to help Brenda talk you into giving yourself up,” said Ingles. He fondled his cigarette thoughtfully, and for once Brenda didn’t seem to care. Her eyes were careworn and they were focused solely on him.

Ray cocked his head and sat back from the terminal suddenly. Ingles jumped, just a bit. Seeing that there was no threat in the move, he covered by putting his elbow on the high counter at the lab aide’s station.

“Did you call my colleague for help, Brenda?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “He was here tonight. Before you even came. He seemed to know you were coming here tonight.”

Ray nodded. “You make a habit of knowing my habits, Ingles.”

“It’s part of my personal philosophy to try and predict the behavior of others, Ray. Of course, I’m wrong as often as right, but it always seems to be the cases when I guess correctly that people recall most vividly.”

“Yes, you do seem to have a knack for it,” said Ray. On a hunch, Ray typed a new search command into the system. He hit the enter key and a thousand packets of electronic data flashed all around the country and the world. Some of them went all the way to England and came back, all in the space of thirty seconds or so.

While the machine was still working, Ray turned back to the two of them. They had stepped closer now. Ingles had pulled the lighter out of his pocket, except that it wasn’t a lighter after all.

It was a pistol with a slim black barrel. He held it nonchalantly, the way he usually held a cigarette. It wasn’t aimed directly at Ray, but it wasn’t aimed away from him, either.

Ray nodded coolly. “I see.”

“Yes, well, I thought I should make a citizen’s arrest for the good of society, don’t you know?” said Ingles.

“I understand,” said Ray. He glanced back at the computer screen and nodded again at the results. “You knew I would be here tonight.”

Ingles shrugged. “It was only a hunch.”

“Yes, like the hunch that the FBI would think I released the virus. What did you say? ‘Don’t leave anything out that would look bad later?’ Good advice, as it turned out, but not good enough to clear me. Not by a long shot.”

“I only wish I could have done more,” said Ingles. He smiled, and Ray noted that his teeth were indeed stained yellow by tobacco.

“I’m calling the police,” said Brenda.

Ingles waved her away from the phone with an unlit cigarette. “There’s time enough for that,” he said. “I want to hear what Ray is getting at.”

“‘Remember that ugliness, like beauty, is also in the eyes of the beholder.’” quoted Ray.

Ingles smiled. For the first time, Ray thought to see a glint of the wolf in his intelligent eyes.

“That’s Frost, I believe,” said Ingles.

“Frost?”

“Robert Frost.”

“Ah yes, of course. And what’s your handle, Ingles? I mean on the local campus net?”

“Frosty, they call me,” he said. As he spoke he tapped at his cigarette and lit it. Blue smoke wafted into the lab. Brenda seemed too overwrought to argue about it.

“Because you like Frost?”

“I’ve been known to quote him, from time to time,” replied Ingles evenly. “But there’s nothing unusual about that, after all, I am an English Professor.”

“Of course,” said Ray. “Come over here and look at this you two.”

“I think you’ve had enough chatting, Ray.”

Ray waved them forward to look at the screen. Brenda glanced at him, then Ingles, then the gun. She stepped forward and looked at the screen. Ray had pulled up the quote, which was indeed by Robert Frost.

“Don’t you see, Brenda?” he asked her. “He’s Santa, he’s Frosty, he’s Snowflake and whatever else takes his fancy. When the cops come and haul me away, you must tell them about this, get the investigation turned in the right direction.”

“Okay, Ray, time to get up and step out to the parking lot.”

“Listen to him, Ray,” Brenda said urgently.

Ray was saddened that he couldn’t even convince Brenda.

“Yes, listen to me,” said Ingles, making circles with the barrel of his gun. Ray stood up, but made no move toward the parking lot. He focused on the gun. He looked from Ingles’ hands to his eyes, and then back to the gun barrel. Nothing else mattered.

“You can give yourself up,” urged Brenda. “You don’t have to let him get any glory. Sure, he’s an asshole, Ray. But don’t give up your life for this.”

“Santa,” said Ray. “What a poor choice of names for you, Ingles.”

Ingles shook his head, as if saddened by Ray’s delusions. He clucked his tongue. “Santa, eh? Interesting handle, Ray. But no one really believes in Santa anymore. No one but you. I doubt if even your kid believes in Santa anymore.”

Ingles gave Ray a look and chuckled. Ray stiffened at the mention of his son and met Ingle’s eyes for a full second. He knew, right then, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this bastard knew what had happened to his son. Perhaps he had even had a hand in it. Quite possibly, he had enjoyed himself.

His mind went into a small box then. It was a very tight fit, but he could squeeze it all in. It felt good inside this mental box, where thought and speech were unnecessary.

He quickly found that there were peepholes drilled in the walls of his box. They afforded a limited view of the real world. All he saw through those peepholes was Ingles’ eyes, and the gun. The moment Ingles moved his eyes to one side to tap out his cigarette ashes onto Ray’s desk, Ray sprang out of the box and attacked him.

In two steps, he collided with the man. With an insensate howl, he smashed his head and body into him, wanting to hurt him, wanting to do anything he could to him. He felt the man’s nose against his lowered forehead. It crunched, then splattered wetly. The gun popped once, but Ray didn’t feel anything. The bullet may have gotten him, or it may not have. It didn’t matter.

They were on the floor then, scattering computer printouts and rolling, swiveling chairs everywhere. It was an animal fight. They hammered fists, rammed in knees, gouged with stiff fingers. Ray’s ears rang and it felt as if some of his fingers were either missing or simply didn’t work anymore. Then there was an explosion in his ribs and he couldn’t breathe. But he kept on hammering and jabbing with no thought to defending himself. He just wanted to hurt Ingles, the man who had hurt his son.

Brenda screamed at them both. He saw a flash of her as he rolled to the top. He had a sense that he was winning the struggle. Then she brought the paper-cutter down on top of his skull.

The old, green-painted metal instrument had been made in the 60’s. Back then, they had built such things to last, and had used real metal in them. Lots of it. His consciousness imploded. He slid to the floor atop Ingles and it seemed to him that he could feel his mind running out of his ears and onto the dusty lab tiles.

“Thank you, Brenda,” he heard Ingles’ distant voice say. Then the gun popped three times. At least, he thought it was three times. Afterwards, he was never sure.

Then his mind climbed back into that very small box and closed the door behind him. The world vanished entirely.

. . . 36 Hours and Counting . . .

Ray’s head felt like a cracked egg. Sticky stuff ran out of his nose, mouth and hair. He couldn’t open his left eye. His right eye opened, but only half-way. The brilliant scene of the lab glared into his brain. He closed his eye again. Just breathing was difficult. He laid there for a time, touching his head, feeling for the wound. A patch of hair and scalp had been removed from the back of his skull.

Gradually, he became aware that he was lying across something hard and painful. Feeling it with the groping fingers of his left hand, he vaguely recognized the paper-cutter that had dropped him earlier. Groaning, he rolled away from it and struggled to his elbows. He forced himself to open both eyes, then he closed them again, squinching them tightly against the brilliance. How could the lab fluorescents be so damnably bright? They had always been a flickering, bluish glow that failed to completely illuminate the place. Many of his students called this lab The Cave.

This light seemed different, it was more like... His eyes snapped open, and despite the glare, he looked to the high row of windows that ran the length of the lab’s north wall. Daylight flooded in and drove a fist into his skull, but he struggled not to close his eyes again. It was morning, of that he was sure. Straining, he turned to look at the big clock on the wall. It was nearly seven. It was Saturday, so only a few people would be coming in, but it didn’t matter. There were people on the campus by now, and it was daylight outside and he needed to get out of here.

It was when he climbed to his knees that he noticed the gun in his right hand. He paused to look at it stupidly. Ingles’ pistol, it had to be. He gripped it in his bloody hands. He looked around the lab now, and finally saw Brenda.

She lay face down beside him with her hand draped over the paper-cutter. He dropped the gun and reached out to her, and made an odd, gurgling sound in his throat. Moving stiffly, he rolled her over onto her back. Three holes punctured her blouse. There was dried blood soaked in circles around the wounds, but not much of it. The bullets must have stopped her heart quickly. Ray felt her carotid for a pulse, but he had little hope. She was dead.

Breathing through his mouth, he looked at the gun in his hand, then at Brenda’s body. He nodded his head. Ingles’ hadn’t needed to make a citizen’s arrest. Instead, he had set them up and done away with both of them. Ray could see the logic clearly, despite his aching head. Shooting them both would have resulted in proof of a third party. Instead, Ingles had removed Brenda directly and hung yet another crime around Ray’s neck.

He looked at Brenda again, at the shocked, blank look on her face. He closed her eyes with his clumsy fingers, sure that he was making a mistake, but not caring at that moment. He wondered if tears would come, but they didn’t. He was too stunned even to grieve for her. That would have to wait until later. He and his son were still among the living, so they came first.

Then there came a rattling at the lab doors. Ray’s eyes flicked to the clock again. It was seven now, straight up. It had to be the janitor, Charley Tai. Lab aides and grad students didn’t get up this early.

Ray heaved himself up and went into Brenda’s office. He stumbled into the desk, closed the door behind him and locked it. Inside, he flicked off the lights. Like many of the faculty and staff offices, Brenda’s office door had a tall glass window in it. Ray watched from the darkened interior of the office. The main lab doors swung open. Charley walked in, kicked down the doorstop and began emptying trashcans. Ray looked around and noticed the door at the back of Brenda’s office. She rarely used it and always kept it locked for security reasons. He fumbled in his pocket and felt the master key that had helped get him into all of this in the first place. He found his baseball cap, part of his disguise—how absurd that all seemed now—and pulled it down over his head wound. The pain he felt from just brushing the bloody gash made him wince.