Accelerated (16 page)

“Two!” she said, her voice louder than before.

I backed up, moving past the boots and down the steps. Lois followed, and her barrel lowered to keep me lined up as I stepped onto the sidewalk.

“I’m out of your house,” I told her.

“You get off my property now,” she said, and there was a glimmer of tears in her eyes.

“Has anyone threatened you, Ms. Cage?”

“It’s Mrs. Cage,” she said. “And no one’s been stupid enough to threaten me. You want to try it?”

“No. I want to know what happened that night.”

“I’m done counting, and I’m done talking to you.”

“Polarity Magnetics experimented on my friend. They changed her and I think it caused her death.”

“Mister, you can shove whatever you said up your—”

“I’ll pay you,” I said.

“Pay me for
what
?”

“If you answer several questions, I’ll give you one hundred bucks apiece.”

She squinted at me. “Make it two hundred.”

I nodded.

“Ask,” she said.

“What happened to your hand?”

“When she was lying in the ambulance, your friend squeezed it, is what happened. I barely got my hand away from her. It was like a vise. I’m surprised no bones were broken. Now let’s see if you got the cash before I answer anything more.”

I pulled out my wallet and took out two one hundred dollar bills.

“Go ahead, mister, put all your money on the steps.” She grinned at me. “Otherwise, I’m going to blow your head off and say you were trying to rape me.”

I put two bills on a cement step before asking, “Did she say anything during the ride to the hospital?”

She glared at me. “You got a lot of balls, you know that?”

I waited.

“Okay,” Mrs. Lois Cage said. “Your friend talked about a guy named Dave. She talked like he was her husband. She loved him, said she was sorry. She said it was up to…to somebody I can’t remember to fix things.”

“Someone named Harris, Cheng or Kiel?” I asked.

“I said I can’t remember. And that’s another four hundred, by the way.”

I put two hundred more down.

“I just answered two more questions,” she said. “That makes it six hundred bucks total and I only see four hundred.”

“How badly was she bruised?” I asked.

Mrs. Cage’s eyes narrowed. “Okay. I’ll give you a free one. The laundry trunk broke some bones, but I don’t think it killed her. Her throat was half-crushed as if someone had choked her. We both saw fingermarks there.”

By both I assumed she meant the other paramedic. I wasn’t going to ask to find out. I did say, “That wasn’t in the police report.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I showed the officer, though.”

“What was his name?” I asked.

“You got enough money for me to answer that?”

I showed her I did.

“Officer Blount; he was a young fool still thinking he could change the world. He can’t. None of us can. It’s all gone to pot. I’m surprised he didn’t write that in his report. Not about the world, but the woman’s throat.”

“So am I,” I said, as I put the remaining bills on the steps.

“Those are real?” she asked.

“Were your answers?”

“Mister, I’m not a lair.”

“And I’m not a counterfeiter,” I said.

“Good. Now take off. I’m done talking to you.”

I put an empty wallet in my back pocket. I was going to need more money. Without another word, I headed for the front and my rental. Kay had been stronger than an ordinary human, and someone likely stronger than she was had crushed her throat before pushing her in front of Dan Lee’s laundry truck. That someone also probably owned an armored limousine.

-17-

I was in my Ford, driving back to the marina when I remembered to turn on my cell. It rang at our prearranged time. It was Blake.

I glanced around, but couldn’t spot any police cars. “Blake,” I said.

“I have information.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

“Meet me at Dairy Queen, the one on East 7th Street.”

“You have a number for that?” I asked.

“Five thousand seven hundred and eight,” he said.

“I’m on my way.”

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot. As I turned off the ignition, Blake stepped outside. He glanced both ways and then hurried near as I stepped outside.

“What happened?” I asked.

He had a worried look. “As I was on the freeway, heading home, I kept thinking about the Shop assassin, how he said ‘bang’ to me. He was trying to frighten me, and he did, and I ran, or I was running home. I didn’t like that.”

“This isn’t a game,” I said.

“I know,” Blake said. “I’m as nervous as can be standing out here in the open. I keep looking over my shoulder, thinking I’m going to see him. If I do—” He scowled. “I need to start carrying a gun.”

“No. I think you should head back to San Francisco.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “The man is a professional and I’m just a regular guy.”

“You’re hardly
regular
.”

“You know what I mean.”

I nodded.

“Anyway,” Blake said, “that doesn’t matter right this instant. I found out where Kay’s corpse is. That’s why I called you here.”

“Where is it?” I asked. “And how do you know?”

“I went back to the source: the hospital. I asked around and found out who had transported the body. I went there—the company office—and asked for Lawrence McDougal. He was the driver, the transporter. I asked if he could help me, as I couldn’t locate my fiancé’s body.”

“Where is it?”

“Are you ready for this?” Blake asked.

“Start talking,” I said.

“McDougal never took it to the airport. His orders read to take the corpse to Polarity Magnetics.”

“What?” I asked. “You’re absolutely sure about this?”

“That’s what I asked him. He shrugged, took me to his hearse and showed me the order form. It was Polarity Magnetics. Stone signed the receipt. That means Doctor Cheng has Kay’s corpse, not the Shop. Of course, just because it’s there, doesn’t mean they killed her. Maybe they’re hunting for the killer just like us and are searching for clues.”

“Either that,” I said, “or they’re hiding what they did to her.”

“There’s that, too,” Blake said.

Polarity Magnetics had her body…this complicated things again. The way the Shop had gone after Harris, and by sending her body to Geneva—I had to rethink things.

“Somebody must have put the wrong destination on the hospital’s computers,” I said. “It’s reasonable to believe that it was done on purpose.”

“Do you think this someone was trying to cover their tracks?”

“Or trying to lay a false trail,” I said.

“Were they worried about you?”

“I don’t know. There are too many unknowns.” I studied Blake. “I spoke to the paramedic.”

“What did she say?”

I told him how Kay had nearly broken the medic’s hand during the trip to the hospital. I also told him about Kay’s injures and how the police officer had left that out of his report.

“Do you think the police officer is dirty or that someone altered
his
report?” Blake asked.

“Someone altered the hospital records. It could be that the same someone altered the police report. Then again, according to you, Jagiello spoke to the police captain.”

“Are the Shop and Polarity Magnetics working together?” Blake asked.

“That would be bad,” I said. “Yes. It’s a possibility, one we can’t discount, but I consider it unlikely.”

“I could go back to the police department and hunt around,” Blake said.

I saw the fear in his eyes. A Shop assassin had directly threatened him. That was enough to worry anyone. Now Blake had found he didn’t like being pushed around.

“You don’t need to go yet,” I said. “We know the report was altered in some fashion.” I drummed my fingers on the hood of the Ford. “I want to tap new sources of information, not rake over old ground. I’m going to check Kay’s apartment.”

“Won’t the others already have gone over it?”

“You have to keep collecting the evidence,” I said. “You have to find the mistake someone overlooked.”

“Altering the police officer’s report or causing him to lie would be one of those mistakes, wouldn’t it?”

Blake was right, but I didn’t want him going back there. I would do that. Let the assassin threaten me.

“I’ll check her apartment,” I said. “Then I’m going to wait for twilight and see if the razor wire around Polarity Magnetics can keep me out.”

“Their security will have more than that,” Blake said. “Likely, they’ll be waiting for you.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I want to see what they’ve done to Dave, and I want a look at Kay’s corpse. Then I’ll poke around until I find something to show me what the cube is.”

“I’m going back to the
Alamo
,” Blake said. “I forgot my suitcase.”

I wanted to tell him to go home. Instead, we spoke a few moments longer, and then we parted company, each going our separate way.

***

Kay had lived in a richer area of Long Beach, with gated communities and several large apartment complexes of higher quality. Hers was a fancy glass place, built in the late Nineties along Donald Trump lines.

I stepped out of the car near a park with swings, shouting children and a man throwing a Frisbee to his Collie. Then I made my way to the apartment building.

It had a statue in front, a tall thing of wires that perhaps the artist had meant to resemble a man or a woman. It told me what most modern art did: that something critical was missing.

I kept alert, noticed a plainclothes security woman brushing her shoe. Soon, I took an elevator to the third floor. The halls were varnished wood and spic and span.

I came to Kay’s door, took out a small device picked off a Shop operative several years ago and let it run through its sequence. I heard a pop as the electronic skeleton key did its trick.

I eased the door open and was surprised to see an empty apartment. Was this the right one? Had the newspaper gotten it wrong or had Blake?

No. Someone has decided on the heavy-handed approach
.

Shutting the door behind me, I stepped into the living room. It was barren except for empty shelves and several nails in the wall. I moved slowly, making wooden floorboards creak. If there had been rugs, somebody had pulled those out too. There was a faint perfume odor. I recognized it as Kay’s and knew then this was the right apartment. I spied bare cupboards in the kitchen. Someone had left several open. There was a fridge, a microwave and a stove.

On impulse, I opened the freezer part of the fridge. It had already been defrosted. Whoever had done this had been thorough—too thorough.

I took out a miniature bug detector, a flat device. I tapped it on and reentered the living room. The detector made a soft tone near one of the nails in the wall. I pulled out the nail and discovered a tiny implant embedded there in the wall.

I left it there and kept checking. There was another implant in a bedroom, hidden in the landline phone jack.

Thoughtfully, I tapped off the detector. Someone was listening. The question was, who? It seemed likely that whoever had cleaned out the apartment had planted the devices.

Why do that if they had already cleaned out the apartment? The answer, it seemed, is that the cleaners expected someone to come here and check as I was doing. Did that mean there was something here to find?

I walked through the rooms, listening to the echoes of my footfalls. It was like Kay’s corpse now: empty of soul.

Standing in the middle of the living room, I turned slowly, very aware that someone might be listening intently through the implant behind the nail. They had cleaned out the apartment, taking everything. No. They had left the fridge, stove and microwave, although they had defrosted the fridge. Should I tear them apart? What would I be looking for?

I glanced at the lights then, the clear light bulbs. Walking to the switch, I flipped on the lights. They worked.

I went into the kitchen and glanced at those light bulbs. They also worked. I shrugged. Why would that matter?

Then it struck me, an old memory. It had been during one of our outings: Dave, Kay and me. We’d been driving a tiny European car up and down winding Swiss roads. Dave had been talking, giving us a lecture on the perfect hiding spots in a house. He said if a thing was small enough, hide it in a light bulb. No one would ever think to look there.

Sometimes our subconscious knows a thing before our conscious, logical mind would never dream of realizing it.

In the bedroom, the light bulb was cloudy instead of clear. I flipped the switch. The light came on. I used my ability then, dimming the light, dimming…when I saw a speck in the bulb.

I turned off the light and wondered how I was going to reach high enough to unscrew it. There was nothing to stand on. Ah. I went back into the kitchen and unplugged the microwave. I brought it back here, set it down, stood on it and unscrewed the light bulb. In the kitchen, I took out my gun and tapped the glass until it shattered. A silvery thing, a chip of some kind about the size of my thumbnail and with as much thickness, appeared among the glass shards.

I examined it on the counter. I took out the bug detector, tapped it on and ran it over the chip. Neither did anything.

I tapped off the detector, pocketing it. Then I picked up the chip, and I shoved it into my front pants pocket.

Kay must have hidden this, and I had no idea what it was. I was sure that whoever listened to me wanted this chip.

Should I leave now?

First, I’d check the bathroom. Maybe Kay had hidden more than one object. I hurried there, noticing the bathroom had a small open window. I heard a pigeon cooing outside. Nice, but why leave the window open?

All the light bulbs were clear, so nothing was hidden in them. I lifted the toilet seat, checked the tank and opened the medicine cabinet—stopping in shock. All her pills, tweezers, toothpaste, fungus creams and other accessories were here. Whoever had swept everything had forgotten to open the medicine cabinet. No. That didn’t make sense. If they had defrosted the freezer, they would have taken these items. If they planted bugs, they would have—

This is a setup
.

To confirm my suspicion, I leaned closer and looked under the glass shelves. There were tiny wires under each thing, with miniature pressure pads. That would imply—

IED!

I thought I heard something then: a click. It came from behind the medicine cabinet. Even as I heard the noise and before my mind processed what it meant, I was throwing myself backward. Old habits from Afghanistan were still hardwired into me, and it saved my life, or at least saved me from serious injury. The medicine cabinet exploded—or more accurately stated, an improvised explosive device in the wall exploded. I struck my head on the bathtub, and that would have knocked me out if I’d been normal. Instead, the back of my head cracked the tub. The hot blast blew over me, as the sink deflected much of the blast and glass shrapnel, and thus saved my eyes, if nothing else.

I groaned in pain and the back of my head throbbed. The bathroom had smoking holes in the walls. The open window had helped, as much of the blast had escaped through it. I noticed the window glass had shattered out of the frame. Was the pigeon dead? I didn’t hear any cooing now.

It was hard to think and my head throbbed. My ears rang and a fire alarm shrieked loudly. I had to get out of here.

I staggered through the apartment to the outside corridor. Several frightened people stood at their doors, staring at me. I didn’t have time to explain and didn’t want them to stare at me too long so they could identify me later. So I took out my Browning and chambered a round. The doors slammed and bolts were thrown.

I hurried down the hall, gaining speed. There was a siren in the distance, then I heard two of them. I thought about Juan Ortega and his calls to 9-1-1. Had I been knocked out for a few seconds or for even a little longer?

Another door opened and Mike Stone stood there. He wore a flak-vest and gripped his .44 Magnum, holding it down by his leg. He looked as surprised as I felt.

“What the—?” he said.

I’d already been raising my Browning as the door opened, and I beat him on the draw. In rapid succession, I pulled the trigger five times. The booms were loud, and they made me mentally wince each time. Each bullet struck his Kevlar vest and propelled him back into his room. As the fifth bullet struck, he fired his .44. The boom was terrific, and the slug smashed a hole in the floor. Then he was flat on his back, and I had no doubt he would have painful bruises tomorrow.