The Conspiracy Club (34 page)

Another phone call. “No, Doctor, the car’s still here.”

“Nice wheels,” said Jeremy, guessing.

“The Porsche or the Navigator?”

“Both.”
A Navigator.
A big SUV had followed him. Perfect for transport . . .

The young man grinned. “Dr. Graves likes his cars — I’m sorry, is there some message I can leave for him?”

“No, it’s personal.” Jeremy leaned across the counter. “Actually, it’s a surprise, Mr. Burnside.”

“Kelvin. What kind of surprise?”

“Can you be discreet, Kelvin?”

“All part of the job, Doctor.”

“Okay, but please keep this under wraps. At least until it hits the papers. Our department was just informed that Dr. Graves has won a prestigious award. The Dergraav. For biomechanical research. We’re talking big-time — couple notches below the Nobel.”

“Wow, that’s amazing.” Kelvin Burnside had been transformed into an awestruck teenager.

“I was sent to get him and bring him back to the hospital. The cover story I’m going to give him is some sort of emergency back at his lab. Then, when I get him there, there’s a whole surprise party planned.” Jeremy looked at his watch. “We timed it perfectly, everyone’s waiting . . . could you try his apartment, again?”

“No problem.” Kelvin dialed, waited, shook his head.

“Strange,” said Jeremy. “He comes home, doesn’t answer — maybe we should go up and make sure he’s okay.”

“Maybe — you know, there’s somewhere else he might be. Down in the sub-subbasement. There are storage units there, for the tenants — some of our people hoard tons of stuff. The units are big, more like rooms. Some tenants lease them out, but Dr. Graves uses his a lot.”

“For what?”

“I’m not sure, but he’s always going in and out of there. I joked with him about it once — said ‘what’s going on down there, Doc, scientific experiments?’ He thought that was funny. Rolled his eyes, and said something like, ‘You never know.’ I was just kidding, I knew he was a doctor, but I had no idea he was a big-time researcher. Now you’re telling me about this award, and I’m feeling a little stupid for that crack.”

“Don’t worry about it. Augie — Dr. Graves has a great sense of humor. I think I will check out that storage room.”

“I’ll go look for you.”

“No reason for you to leave your post,” said Jeremy. “I really want to surprise him. My boss
ordered
me to surprise him.”

The young man smiled uneasily.

“I’ll be in and out, Kelvin. Dr. Graves will appreciate it — like I said, he’s got a great sense of humor.”

Jeremy fingered his badge, hoping to draw attention to that symbol of authority.

“Sure,” said the young man. “No prob.”

A rear service elevator — an unadorned, clanky steel box with an accordion door took him down to Subbasement C.

Two floors beneath the parking garage. He’d expected a dungeon but stepped out into bright space. Two wings of storage units lined rough stone floors. The walls were stone, as well, and bore the marks of hand-hewing. Each unit was numbered. Black iron numerals screwed into stout oak doors fashioned during a previous century. Overhead bulbs in bronze cages provided the light. Electrical conduits and plumbing pipes striped the arched ceiling.

The arches and the stone reminded Jeremy of something — a card Arthur had sent him. The bazaar in old Damascus. Could Arthur have been that prescient?

That scene implied bustle. Down here, all was silent.

No windows, no outside light.

Cool and damp. Jeremy half expected a bat to whoosh out.

No sign of life, not a rat, not an insect. Not a single cobweb, and when his fingers grazed the stone walls they came back free of dust. Even the floor was clean — swept spotless.

Four-star cave, pride of the demimonde.

Augusto Graves’s unit was at the end of the left-hand wing. Last door to the right.

Jeremy stopped, put his head to the door. Heard nothing.

The heavy iron key for which he’d bribed Kelvin Burnside twenty dollars (“Oh, you don’t have to do that, sir.”) rested in his hand.

He inserted it in the bolt, turned slowly, pushed the door open an inch, waited for a creak.

Silence. He touched the bolt, felt grease. The Tivoli Arms was all about perfection. Or, Dr. Graves had taken special precautions.

He pushed some more. Had to put a little muscle into it — the oak was dense, thick, seasoned hard as rock. Six inches open. A foot. Enough space to slip through.

At first, he’d thought he’d made yet another mistake.

No light inside the unit. No one there.

Then he heard the sounds. Humming. The
snick-snick
of metal on metal. A low buzz, like that of a very large bumblebee.

There was light. A trapezoidal patch of light, to the left, hitting the wall at an acute angle.

He stepped closer and saw why. Deflected. An L-shaped drywall partition had been installed facing the door — creating a tiny vestibule.

He inched past the wall.

Was bathed in light. More light than he’d expected, hot and white and piercing. Three halogen bulbs grafted into an overhead power line. Surgical light.

A cell, ten by ten, walls, floor, and ceiling of that same hewn rock. Down in the core of the city.

Augusto Graves stood at the far end of a table, dressed in surgical greens. His head was capped, but he wore no face mask. Earphones from a Walkman transmitted something into his head.

Music, from the looks of it. Graves swayed in time. A syncopated beat.

A jolly beat. Graves was smiling faintly, mustache tilting upward like the wings of a butterfly.

Memories of Brazil?

A pleasant-looking man. Innocuous. Scholarly — reading glasses pushed low on his nose. He didn’t see Jeremy. Too busy concentrating on the woman stretched out before him on a table.

Not a surgical table, just a wide, slab door resting on three sawhorses. The platform had been draped in white plastic. At Graves’s right hand was a steel tray on a wheeled stand, gleaming with instruments. Next to the tray, a steel box on a similar stand, its contents out of view. An electrical cord trailed over the box’s lid and fed into a ceiling socket. In the corner stood several bottles of distilled water. A family-sized container of bleach. A spray can of room deodorizer. “Fresh Evergreen” scent.

Folded neatly in the opposite corner was a pile of clothing. Something dark and cotton. A white bra and matching panties. A flesh-colored wad — panty hose — rested on top. No shoes.

The floor dipped to the left, slanted toward a floor drain. The shiny, stainless drain cover looked new, and the stone in which it set had been bleached a lighter gray.

The woman was slender, naked. Her dark head to Jeremy — he viewed her upside down. No marks on her, but she wasn’t moving, and her color was too pale — he knew that kind of pale. Graves had positioned himself at her feet. Was staring at her feet. Her long, dark hair streamed over the edge of the table at the side nearest Jeremy. No movement from her chest. So pale. Around her neck, a faint, pinkish ring.

Wavy hair.

Oh God, Angela
—

Graves touched the big toe of her left foot. Put his finger to his mouth and licked it. Reaching into the tray, he extracted a scalpel, and Jeremy got ready to lunge. But after examining the instrument, Graves put it down. Reached into the metal box and extracted what looked like an oversize metal pencil.

Tapered at the point. Electrical cord attached to the butt end.

Graves ran a finger up and down the rod. Pushed a button.

The bumblebee buzz returned.

Graves stood there, still swaying to the music, staring at the laser. He pushed another button, and the rod grew a bright red eye. By the time he turned to aim the laser at the woman, Jeremy was out from behind the partition and on him.

Graves tumbled, landed on his back but didn’t make a sound. Instead he stared up at Jeremy. Soft brown eyes.

His earphones had flown off and the portable CD player attached to them landed on the floor. From the phones came a tinny samba.

Graves stared at Jeremy, expressionless.

The man was somewhere else.

Jeremy went for the laser. Graves waved the instrument, managed to push another button. A thin red beam shot out.

The devil’s scarlet eye weeping.

Graves swung the beam toward Jeremy.

Jeremy kicked at the buzzing wand, failed to make contact. But his attack caused Graves’s hand to waver, and the red beam nicked one of the sawhorses supporting the table.

Sliced clean through it. The table canted, and the naked woman slipped to the floor and landed facedown with a thud.

OhgodAngela
—

Jeremy threw himself at Graves. Graves scooted away. The laser wavered, nicked stone, threw off dust. Steadying his laser hand with the other, Graves gave a quizzical look, took aim again as Jeremy ran for cover.

Jeremy tripped on Angela’s corpse. Icy flesh. He fell on his face and rolled backward.

Graves stood over him.

“You’ve interrupted me,” he said, without rancor. His eyes were lucid, focused, nothing but intent. He had beautiful skin, the mustache glowed like sable.

Soft, sibilant voice. Gentle. Women would find it comforting.

He licked his lips. “This will hurt a bit.” Hefted the laser. A red dot appeared in the center of Graves’s forehead.

Someone else with a laser?

No, this was something quite different. A low-tech situation. Thunder followed half a second later and blood trickled, then gushed out of the black-edged hole in Graves’s brow. Not dead center, a few millimeters to the right. The frontal lobes.

As he bled, Graves stared blankly. Incredulous.
Where has my personality gone?

The blood rush was followed by clots of gray-pink brain tissue, pumping out piecemeal, in oatmeal-like chunks. Like swill from a suddenly unclogged drainage pipe.

Graves shut his eyes, fell to his knees, went down.

The laser, still buzzing, had rolled out from between his fingers and landed on the floor. The ruby beam arced toward the clothes in the corner. Set them on fire. Penetrated the clothes and continued into the stone wall where it sizzled, sputtered, died.

No, not on its own. A big hand had yanked out the cord.

The room went silent.

Jeremy rushed to Angela, turned her over.

Saw the face of a stranger.

Detective Bob Doresh lifted him by the arm. “Doctor, Doctor, I never knew following you was going to be this interesting.”

A
t midnight, as he drove to the police station in an unmarked sedan that smelled of potato chips, Bob Doresh said, “I’m a pretty good shot, huh? Told you military service was useful.”

“Where’s Angela?” said Jeremy.

“Still,” said Doresh, “you never know how you’re going to react when it’s real. Twenty-three years I’ve been on the job, and it’s the first time I had to fire the damn thing. They say killing someone, even when it’s righteous, can be traumatic. I’d have to say I feel pretty good, right now. Think I’ll need help later, Doc?”

“Where’s Angela?”

Doresh had one hand on the wheel. The other rested on the back of the seat. He drove slowly, with skill. During the onslaught of officers, crime-scene techs and coroner’s examiners, he’d kept Jeremy under wraps in the Tivoli Arms rest room. A uniformed cop had stood watch, mute as Renfrew.

No one had talked to him.

“I asked you something, Detective.”

Doresh said, “Okay, here’s the situation with Dr. Rios. First things first: She’s safe, been sitting in her own apartment with my partner Steve Hoker watching over her. Protective custody, if you will.”

“
You
called her off the ward?” said Jeremy.

“That’s the second thing, Doc. My motivation. Steve’s and mine. We pulled her out of the hospital because we wanted to talk to her about you. We thought you were dangerous — okay, we were wrong, but with the way you’ve been acting — especially yesterday, in the chapel.” He shrugged. “Sitting in a motel room by yourself. That’s a little . . . different, wouldn’t you say? I mean I understand now, you were watching that other guy, but see it from my perspective.”

“You told her I was a murderous psychopath.”

Doresh touched his temple, kept his foot light on the accelerator. The night was crisp and bright, and the unmarked car’s heater was surprisingly efficient. “We were looking out for her best interest.”

“Thanks.”

Doresh gave him a sidelong glance. “You being sarcastic?”

“No, I mean it. Thanks. You had her safety in mind. Thanks for protecting her.”

“Okay . . . you’re welcome. And excuse me for wondering about the sarcasm, but let’s face it, you can get pretty sarcastic.”

“I’ve had my moments.”

“You have,” said Doresh. “But no harm, no foul. It was never personal, right? In the end we were both on the same side.”

“True.”

Doresh smiled, and his big chin jutted. “The difference being that I was doing my job and you were . . . improvising.”

“Am I supposed to apologize for that?”

“Here we go again, butting heads. Must be some sort of . . . personality clash. Nah, no apologies necessary. You got a little carried away. In the end it worked out fine. Better than fine — hey, Doc, your hands are shaking pretty bad. When we get there, let me fix you some coffee — mine’s a helluva lot better than yours. My partner Steve Hoker’s driving Dr. Rios over to meet you. I told him the situation. She won’t be scared of you.”

“She was scared, huh?”

“The things I told her, you kidding? She was terrified. And I make no apologies for that. I had the game pretty well mapped out, I just didn’t know the players.”

“Live and learn,” said Jeremy.

“You got it, Doc,” said Doresh. “Stop learning, you might as well curl up and die.”

Visiting Doctor Tagged
As Serial Killer

Exclusive to the Clarion:
Police have identified a Seattle-based surgeon and medical researcher working at City Central Hospital on a one-year fellowship, as a serial murderer believed responsible for the deaths of at least five local women, and a possible suspect in as many as three dozen other unsolved murders around the world.
Augusto Omar Graves, 40, holder of both a medical degree and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and an acknowledged expert on laser technology and surgery, was shot dead by police Thursday evening in the subterranean storage locker of his luxurious Hale Boulevard condominium. Graves, believed to have been born in Syria and raised in Brazil and the United States, was found in the company of his fifth victim’s corpse. According to the coroner, that woman, Kristina Schnurr, a recent immigrant from Poland who’d worked as a housekeeper at the hospital, had been strangled.
Schnurr, 29, and Graves had been seen talking the day of the murder, and it is believed Graves lured Schnurr on a date, strangled her in his car, and hid her body in the condominium’s parking garage. He then drove the car back to the building’s entrance so that a doorman would see him enter alone. Graves managed to transport Schnurr’s corpse two floors down, to the storage locker, a dank, cellarlike space that he had converted into a dissection chamber.
Graves’s other local victims include a nurse from City Central, Jocelyn Lee Banks, 27, murdered six months ago and formerly thought to have been carjacked from a hospital parking lot. Police now believe Graves convinced her to go with him willingly, under false pretenses. In addition, Graves is the prime suspect in the deaths of three recently murdered prostitutes, Tyrene Mazursky, 45, Odelia Tat, 38, and Maisie Donovan, 25. Given the time span between the Banks killing and those of the other victims, as well as Graves’s frequent business trips, there is reason to believe that he will be tied into murders in other cities.
Graves has also been implicated in the mutilation slayings of at least two women murdered in Kent, England, during periods when he was conducting research at a London think tank and writing about science for
The Guardian
newspaper. Investigators from Spain, Italy, France, and Norway are reexamining unsolved murders involving surgical dissection that may have links to Graves’s methodology.
Police Chief Arlo Simmons cited “numerous man-hours and first-rate detective work” as the factors that led to the discovery of Graves’s lair.
“We’ve been interested in this individual for some time,” said Chief Simmons. “I regret that we weren’t able to save Kristina Schnurr. However, the death of this man can be truly said to have brought an end to a reign of terror.”