Tunnel of Night (22 page)

I SAT IN THE VAN, WATCHING AS THE YOUNG
woman walked briskly across the parking lot to her apartment building. She was small, another miniature person for me to lift with one hand and break with the other.

The fenceless complex was a collection of rectangular atrocities in brick fronted by fake, white colonial columns. Dozens of these places dotted the landscape like bird droppings around the Beltway.

She wore tailored chinos, a white turtleneck, and a blue blazer. She always returned home for lunch at the same time. There was direction in her steps, determination. This woman had authority. She wielded power, made decisions that cut into others’ lives—that had sliced into
my
life. With her keys in her hand, she was fully prepared for the next, and maybe the final chore in her mundane life.

When I was in her apartment earlier, I noted the sparse decor—in black and white—and the few magazines and books, her collection of new age Muzak. Her
stride was like her abode, reflecting efficiency and an absolute lack of grace. She epitomized this nation of transient clerks, and like all the rest of them, she was vapid, empty, commenting on events and people that she knew absolutely nothing about. Her one attempt at taste and color in her home was a six-by-eight, imitation Persian rug, the pattern probably stained in place by illegal aliens using Magic Markers.

After taking a brief inventory of her possessions, I relaxed on her white sofa, sliding my hand across its rough fabric, thinking about all that I had accomplished since leaving Swanton. In Boston, I had obtained an additional ID, and visited two banks. I bought a suitcase, a duffel bag, and clothing at Jordan Marsh. Then I made my visit to City Hospital.

Alan Chadwick had looked up from his coffee and newspaper.

“Yes?” he said.

I sat opposite him, sliding the Magnum onto the desk between us, gazing around at his dingy office— barely more that a closet in shades of gray, off-white, black. Chadwick’s only concession to color was the red of a corpse’s blood on his lab coat.

“What do you want?” he asked, staring down at the gun. “Who are you?”

I stared at the pathologist’s gnarled hands—the twisted, grotesque fingers that I had created for him with a baseball bat so many years ago. Chadwick had been enamored of a young woman in Cambridge. I doubt that she had even noticed him. She had made a pass at me in a bar, a place that I had used several times to select human projects. She and I had walked the cold streets. I showed her the birds that flew up among
the city’s office buildings. I think I had even started to tell her that sometimes the birds collide and fall, broken, dead.

Later, I helped her to fly like the swallows she had so admired. I launched her from the roof of her dorm. Chadwick had correctly doubted the medical examiner’s ruling of suicide. He followed me. His mangled hands were the reward for his tenacity.

I stared at the doctor, watching as his blood drained from his face. He could easily have blended with his pallid walls.

“Oh, my God. You’re dead.”

“You should have let it go, Alan. I told you a long time ago that your adventures in vigilante law were over. When you thought that the police had me on the ropes last year, you assisted them. You conspired to cause my death, and you caused me a great deal of inconvenience.”

I stood, and leveled the Magnum at him.

He stumbled on the stairs, begged, prayed. He fell in a heap on the roof’s gravel, covering his head with his arms as if he expected me to hit him. I watched a traffic helicopter in the distance, took a deep breath of Boston’s sulfurous air, then reached down and assisted the doctor to his feet. In seconds, Alan Chadwick flew out into space over Columbus Avenue, his white lab coat flapping crazily behind him.

He never screamed; he was almost graceful.

Two hours later, I was on an L-1011 out of Logan Airport, bound for Fort Lauderdale. I opened a book—
The Alienist,
by Caleb Carr—and relaxed for the three-hour flight.

Carr had done his research well—but, of course, he was describing antiquity. Killers like me have adapted to their times, become more sophisticated in the practice
of their art. The criminologists and mental health people who seek to understand what they call “the criminal mind” fumble about like modern versions of Laszlo Kreizler—relying on nineteenth-century thought to survive in the twentieth century There is no “criminal mentality” unless you include the work of the drones who carve up the population with chain saws and meat cleavers.

Against the true artist—the trickster without peer— the world doesn’t have a chance.

Now, after the young woman had disappeared through the front door of her building, I continued to sit in the van. I waited another five minutes to be certain that no one was following her, then walked across the lot and entered the building.

My coveralls bore a name tag that said “Nick,” and a business logo for Valley Carpet. I carried white, yellow, and pink copies of a work order. I doubted that Nick would miss any of these props.

I stood in the vestibule, between the outside door and the door to the building’s lobby—studying the names on the dozens of mailboxes. A young man walked in behind me. “Too many damned boxes,” I muttered.

He opened the door. “Who you looking for?”

“Work order says Bristol,” I said. “Doc tells me I need glasses, I can’t read the little print on the boxes.”

He held the door for me. He was so fucking gullible that I had to suppress a laugh.

“They’re on the top floor, I think,” he said. “Let me see your paperwork.”

I handed it to him. “Maybe I should just get some of those cheap reading glasses they sell at Kmart.”

“Yeah. Bristol. Four-eleven,” he said.

I thanked him and walked in. We shared the elevator.
He exited on the second floor. I rode up to four, then walked down to three, found her door, and knocked. She opened it as far as the chain would allow.

“Ms. Bristol?” I inquired.

“No,” she said. “I think they’re
four
-eleven.”

“Nobody there. I thought maybe I had the floor number wrong,” I said, scratching the back of my head below my Washington Redskins cap. “Well, they’ll have to bring in the carpet themselves.”

“Is their phone number on that order?” she asked, extending her right arm through the narrow gap.

I grabbed it, yanking her forward so that her head hit the side of the door, then I forced the door open with my shoulder—ripping the chain out of the woodwork.

The initial physical contact—her jacket’s fabric, the skin on her forearm—and the fragrance of her hair, snapped something inside me. I wanted only to tear into her.

“You’re going to sleep,” I growled.

She went down, but I kept a firm grip on her right wrist, kicking the door closed behind me. I flipped her onto her stomach and removed the oversized gun from its holster at her back. Her mouth was open but, like Chadwick, she was silent. I’d seen it so many times before—that dazed, paralyzed moment of shock.

Just as she seemed to be emerging from it, I stabbed her in the ass with a syringe of Librium. “Nap time,” I muttered.

I held her by the neck, twisting her wrist high on her back until her squirming subsided and she lost consciousness.

She weighed about ninety-five pounds. Rolling her up in the carpet and tying it off with heavy twine posed no problem. I tested the bundle on my shoulder—
perhaps 150 pounds—then walked out of the building the way I came in.

As I drove out of the complex, the black man I had seen in front of the Willard drove his government car in.

The feds are always late.

I CARRIED THE BUNDLE INTO MY BUILDING AND
walked to the ancient freight elevator. It cranked its way to my floor. As I stepped into the hall and around the corner, I saw a D.C cop standing at my door.

I had been preoccupied, anticipating the entertainment that my large package was going to provide me. I had not expected to encounter the police. It was time to quickly shift gears, not allow the cop to put me on the defensive.

“Excuse me, Officer,” I said, slipping the key into the lock.

“You live here?”

“You kiddin’? I wouldn’t live in a dump like this.”

“What’s the occupant’s name?”

He helped me balance the load on my shoulder while I fished out another work order. “What’s that say? Something Dexter, isn’t it?”

“Wilbur Dexter,” the cop read. “When did you see him last?”

“Never saw him. He left the key with my boss. My boss says make the delivery. That’s what I’m trying to do here.”

I turned the key and kicked open the door. “You comin’ in, or what?”

“No,” the cop said, glancing in at the apartment. “I got a different name here anyway.”

He pulled a notebook from his pocket and opened it. “Wilbur Dexter, you say?”

I nodded as I deposited the carpet on the floor. “What name you got?”

“Alan Chadwick.”

“Beats the shit out of me.”

He was still writing Wilbur Dexter’s name in his notebook as I closed the door and locked it.

The cop would be back, but not soon. In a city like this, he had to have more pressing complaints. I had successfully drawn attention to the apartment, probably thanks to my wandering the halls in my underwear with a Magnum in my hand. Now there would be a record of it. Wilbur Dexter and Alan Chadwick.

I wouldn’t bother with such details if I didn’t know that Lucas Frank would be an appreciative audience. I wanted that bastard reacting to every bit of information that came his way. I wanted him worrying over symbols and their complicated meanings—birds and resurrections and pages from books. He would tie himself in knots with that shit, while I made my few, simple preparations for the end.

The light is faint, but it is there.

Emerging.

I HAD LOST TRACK OF TIME
.

It seemed as if Jackson had just left, but that had been hours before. I was still immersed in Wolf’s journals and sifting through the information I had gathered when Lane arrived at the door.

“We need to talk,” she said. “A lot’s been happening. As soon as we got the package of composites from Swartz, Detective Williams made copies. We faxed them around to area departments, distributed them to cab companies, car rental agencies, hotels and motels— you name it. I didn’t know whether you wanted the feds to have them, but I faxed a set to Jackson’s office.”

“Good.”

“We’ve had three hits so far.”

Lane handed me a copy of a police report. “I’ll summarize,” she said. “Aggravated assault case. The victim’s a guy, a hippie type who sells trinkets at neighborhood fairs. A white, middle-aged male, well dressed, put a knife through the victim’s hand, pinned it to the ground. The whole time, the assailant is talking crazy—something
about justice. Get this, Pop. The victims name is Oliver Wendblat.”

Lane had my full attention. The name, Oliver, had been stuck to the bottom of the brass phoenix delivered to my door.

“Go on,” I said.

“Same location, same date, same basic description. Guy put a knife to seventeen-year-old Susan Parker’s throat. Didn’t cut her. Traded her a carved, wooden bird for a brass one that she had bought from Oliver Wendblat. Then he tossed her off a foot bridge. She’s in D.C. General with multiple injuries.”

“He didn’t kill either one,” I muttered, thinking that Wolf was making sure that messages continued to come.

“This one’s a homicide,” she said, handing me another police report. “Victim is Nicholas Wesley, black male, forty years old. Somebody cut his throat last night in an alley off Pennsylvania Avenue. A white guy sat with him in a bar, then followed him out. Witnesses saw the man drive off in Wesley’s van. He also took Wesley’s coveralls. Left him in his underwear and work shoes in the parking lot. Made no effort at concealment. We’ve got three positives that it was Wolf.”

He had maimed two, murdered one. “What the hell is going on?”

“This one’s the kicker, Pop. We don’t have the paperwork on it yet, but a uniformed officer saw the homicide sheet on Wesley. The cop had responded to a complaint in Northeast D.C., a report of a guy walking the halls in his underwear, carrying a gun. When the officer got to the apartment where this man was supposed to live, he walked into a guy delivering a carpet.
Had a key to the apartment, and even invited the cop in. White guy, could fit the composite, but the uniform isn’t certain. Wesley worked for an outfit called Valley Carpet. The apartment address is scribbled at the top of that report. The officer is tracking down his notes to see if there are any details that he missed. He thinks the coveralls might have had a Valley Carpet logo on them. The rest of those sheets are your copies of the composites, and the flight information and passenger lists that you wanted. Detroit to D.C”

“Has anyone been to this address?” I asked, tapping the report’s cover sheet.

“Not yet. This is all breaking right now. They’re waiting to see what the uniform comes up with. He was just out there a couple of hours ago.”

Even as Lane paced the room, telling me how Detective Williams was nearly convinced that they were chasing Wolf, and speculating about how the FBI’s involvement in the case would probably change, I was moving away.