Inside Out (33 page)

79

As a rail-thin six-year-old, Winter Massey had clutched his mother's hand as a guide in khaki shorts led a long line of tourists deep into the earth. Bare bulbs lit the cavern walls. Their guide had explained that the cave was once solid rock and that dripping water had entered the cracks in it and had, over millions of years, cut out the tunnels they were walking through. Winter had been frightened by the stalactites, which looked like pointy teeth with saliva dripping from the tips. At some point during that tour, the guide had extinguished the lights.

Winter came around and found himself in a place that was as dark as the cave in his memory, but the air was thick with dust from a recent explosion. There was a slight ringing in his ears not unlike what happened when he stood too close to a gun being fired without wearing proper ear protection. Beyond that ringing and somewhere close by, water dripped. And by tuning his ears past the water falling, he made out a persistent rumbling sound punctuated by a sharp scraping.

Why is it so dark?

Stay calm.

Am I hurt?

Broken bones?

Torn ligaments?

Broken neck?

Winter fought to push back the worst imaginable thought, but it persisted and filled his entire mind like a noxious gas. He couldn't see! He fought to see something—anything. He was looking out at a totally blank slate—nothing but thoughts.
I can't be blind. Please God, don't let me be trapped in darkness.
A picture of Rush formed in his mind—a before-and-after image. This is what it was like to be blind. Suddenly, he knew that it was just dark. A sudden giddiness swept over him and pushed away the panic. He assumed that the bomb had dumped rubble over him. It was still night. He might be crushed to death if the floor above him didn't hold up, or smother or drown, but if there was light he would be able to see it.

As he lay there, he gathered his thoughts and breathed slowly to calm himself and concentrate on surviving. Although he had obviously lived through it, he didn't remember the explosion, so he must have been unconscious. When he had seen the explosives in the refrigerator, he had bolted, running out into the service hall and jumping into the garbage chute. As he fell, he had slowed his decent by pressing the edges of his running shoe soles against the smooth metal sides like brakes.

Winter had never carried a lighter or matches, because he had never been a smoker. He had grown up resenting the odor his father's cigarettes had left in the Massey home, his nicotine-stained fingers. The sight of that sullen stranger in his underwear at the kitchen table, bleary-eyed, drink in hand, and enveloped in a cloud of smoke was one that continued to haunt him.

“Winter, you son of a bitch, you're alive,” he said, pleased by the sound of his own voice.

He was flat on his back on an uneven surface. He felt pain but couldn't tell what part of his head hurt. He moved his fingers first, raising then lowering them. His wrists were sore but not broken, and his elbows and shoulders seemed fine. He moved his toes, ankles, and knees. He was in the building's basement lying on rolls of carpet padding or soundproofing material, which probably cushioned his landing and saved his life.

Sitting up made his head swim. There was a bump on the back of his head, but it was dry, so he wasn't bleeding. The air was thick with dust, so he pulled the folded bandana from his back pocket, opened it, and held it to his nose as a filter.
It'll make you less sad,
he remembered Rush saying.

Unable to see his watch, he had no idea how long he had been unconscious.
This is what it is like to be blind.
Since he was stuck in absolute darkness, he would have to make do with his remaining four senses.

Since the garbage chute was in the right rear of the building, at the far end from the elevator, he assumed that he was a good eighty feet from a street in some unknown city.

The slight ringing in his ears diminished as he concentrated on the low rumbling and scraping sounds. Standing was impossible in the dark, so he turned over slowly to his hands and knees and prepared to crawl to find the closest wall and follow it toward the sounds. He folded the bandana into a triangle and tied it behind his head to make a dust mask.

The dozens of rolls rested tightly against each other. “Okay, Massey,” he said, “don't run headlong into anything. All you need is a rusty nail in your head.” He crept forward, stretching out his left hand and waving the air like a man painting horizontal and vertical strokes on a wall. He slipped off the rolls and onto the concrete floor beneath them. He moved chunks of brick and wood aside as he went. His fingers found a brick wall and, using both hands, he discovered the mouth of the garbage chute, now choked shut with rubble. With the wall as a guide, he could concentrate on making his way toward where he hoped the rescuers were working.

As he moved carefully, the noise indeed grew louder. He made slow progress, keeping his left shoulder next to the wall to maintain his equilibrium while feeling with his right hand for obstacles. He stopped when he found what felt like a four-inch cast-iron waste pipe before going on.

He had moved a few feet from the pipe, when the rumbling diminished in stages—telling him that more than one piece of heavy machinery was involved in clearing rubble. The machines stopped altogether, leaving only the sound of dripping water.
The emergency workers have stopped! Are they giving up?
They might hear him if he could make enough noise. He had no idea how long the lull would last. He had to make noise. With a sense of urgency growing inside him, he groped his way back to the vertical waste pipe. Now, before the machines started up again, he needed something to beat against the cast iron. Without an alternative, he pulled the antique Walther out of his coat pocket and began hammering the gun against the pipe.
“
S
”
DOT-DOT-DOT /
“
O
”
DASH-DASH-DASH /
“
S
”
DOT-DOT-DOT . . . DOT-DOT-DOT / DASH-DASH-DASH / DOT-DOT-DOT.
He yelled out when he heard answering metallic bangs.

The rumbling began anew and the scraping grew louder. Winter slipped the compact gun back into his jacket pocket. Without being able to see and no way to know what was above him, he sat with his back against the brick wall to wait in the darkness.

The noise of dozer blades clearing the street grew steadily louder until the door to the sidewalk-level service elevator was peeled back. When Winter saw a vertical sliver of light, vague as a neon tube through a thick fog, he wanted to cry out in relief but was afraid that even the slightest sound from his lips would cause the entire structure to cave in. He followed the light bar to its origin—a crack between a pair of steel doors. After locating the lever, he pulled the heavy doors open. Light blasted him and more dust billowed into his basement tomb. Winter stepped into the lift's rubble-coated floor to the shouts of men that were just silhouettes above him. He reached up, hands grabbed his, and he was jerked up out of the lift pit straight into a tortured landscape.

The sun's first rays were illuminating the fronts of the buildings across the street, which stood open and exposed like the backs of dollhouses. Herman's building looked like a candle that had burned down to the third floor. In the way of charges and sudden pressure change, the adjoining buildings had shaped the force upward or outward through the thinner walls at the front and rear.

Soot-faced firemen strapped Winter on a stretcher and, while he protested that he was perfectly all right, they muscled him over the piles of rubble. They handed the litter to a crowd of
EMS
technicians and cops. He knew by the insignia tags on the uniforms that he was in New York City.

After the cot was lifted into an ambulance, a man in a suit climbed in and cuffed Winter's right wrist to the stretcher's rail. “FBI. Just until we straighten out who you are and what you were doing in there.” The agent pulled the Walther out of Winter's jacket pocket, examined it, then dropped it into his own coat pocket.

“You have to call the United States Marshals office and get Chief Marshal Richard Shapiro. I have to talk to him now.”

“Before I call anybody, you've got some questions to answer.”

“It's a matter of life and death. I'm United States Deputy Marshal Winter Massey.”

“Where's your badge?”

“I don't know.” He assumed that it was inside the building, a bauble left by Fifteen to be found by the people clearing the wreckage of a building that had headquartered Russian mercenaries who had been careless with their explosives.

“I didn't realize the Marshals Service was issuing World War Two weapons to deputy marshals,” the FBI agent said.

“If you don't believe I'm who I say, call Supervising Agent, Fred Archer.”

Winter knew the agent would contact Fred Archer long before he did Richard Shapiro.

80

Charlotte, North Carolina

With steady determination, a young man in a wheelchair rolled himself up the sandstone ramp, turning the wheels of the chair with his hands, that rose to the front doors of the Federal Building in Charlotte, North Carolina. Lint spotted the young man's watch cap; the left collar of his windbreaker pointed up. Dark jeans stopped well short of his new tennis shoes on the footrests, their toes pointing toward each other. Barely any of the people coming or going from the building noticed the struggling young man, aside from quick sidelong glances.

Four court security guards wearing navy-blue blazers manned the metal detectors. The closest
COURTSEC
guard guided the wheelchair and its occupant around the side so it wouldn't set off the alarm. Kneeling, she inspected the chair and searched its occupant as he rocked in his seat, pressing his tongue against his jaw and craning his neck trying to watch her.

“Sir, you don't have any weapons on you, do you?” the guard asked, pronouncing each word slowly.

“Nooooo, ma'aaaam,” he said, with great effort. He blinked owlishly, the thick lenses enlarging his eyes grotesquely. He lifted his closed fist from the wheel, and it quivered as he wiped his nose.

“Okay,” the guard said patiently. “Where are you headed?”

“Oooo . . . essss . . . marshooos's . . . offeeese?”

“United States Marshals' office, hon?”

He nodded.

“That's a restricted floor. I'll have to call up and then someone will come down.”

The woman lifted a receiver. “Who do you want to see?” she asked.

“Winnnnnntah Maaaaas-sssey.”

“Winter Massey?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your name?”

“Waaaa . . . Warrrrrrd F . . . F . . . Feeeeel . . . da.” He shifted violently in the chair.

“A Mr. Ward Field is here to see Deputy Massey,” the guard said, keeping her eyes on the visitor as she spoke. “I'll tell him that someone will be down to see him in a minute.” She replaced the receiver, rolled the chair to the elevator door, and went back to the metal detectors.

When the door opened, a man in his fifties with a handlebar mustache stepped out from the cab and took the grips of the chair. “I'm Chief Deputy Hank Trammel, Mr. Field. I'll show you upstairs.”

As soon as the chair cleared the doors, Trammel pushed the button. As the door closed he pulled his pistol and held it against his leg, aimed down. Above the second floor, he pressed the button and stopped the cab. “Okay, pal. Who the hell are you?”

The young man in the wheelchair kept his wrists on the tires, but his twisted fists relaxed and the bent fingers straightened. “My name is Sean Devlin.”

“The hell it is. Sean Devlin is a woman.”

“I'm her.”

He reached over with his free hand and placed it on her right breast, hidden under the loose-fitting jacket. He pulled his hand away like he'd touched a hot stove.

She reached up and removed her thick glasses and the watch cap, altering her appearance dramatically. Her slicked-back hair was black.

“I'm a friend of Winter's. He'll tell you.”

“Put your hands behind your back,” he ordered. “I'm going to cuff you until I can find out if you are who you say you are. There are people looking high and low for Sean Devlin. If you're lying to me, you're going to stay in a holding cell for a very long time.”

Keeping the gun in his right hand, Trammel used the other to take out handcuffs and to cuff Sean's wrists behind her. He put his gun away, replaced the cap on her head, and released the cab, which rose to the third floor. When the elevator door opened, he spun the chair around, pushed it out, and rolled it down a wide hallway.

“Is this really necessary? I
am
Sean Devlin and I came in here under my own steam,” she insisted.

“Disguised and using a false name, Ms. Devlin.”

“I knew Winter would recognize the name Ward Field. The disguise is for my own protection. I'm not a criminal,” Sean said, exasperated.

Trammel stopped at a steel door with a
UNITED STATES MARSHALS SERVICE
sign on it. He punched a code into a keypad, then opened the door and pushed her chair into a wide hallway. Sean caught flashes of curious faces as he whisked her past an open door. She was rolled through the corner of a large, open space, where a young deputy sat at one of the ten desks.

No sign of Winter anywhere.

Trammel pushed Sean through a door and closed it behind them. He maneuvered the chair around a small conference table on the left, past a couch on the right, and parked her in front of his desk. He sat on the edge and, with crossed arms, stared down at her.

“Will you please uncuff me now?”

“It's policy to cuff felons while they're in here. Did you come here to turn yourself in to Deputy Massey?”

“Turn myself in? For what?” Sean hadn't broken any laws, unless escaping a surveillance team was against the law.

“The FBI issued a felony warrant for your arrest for the murder of five people last night at the Hotel Grand in Richmond, Virginia.”

Sean's mind froze with the sudden realization that the authorities were blaming her for the deaths in Richmond. The hired killers chasing her weren't her only problem—at that moment not even her worst problem. It had never occurred to her that the cops would blame her, the intended victim, for any of the deaths.

Realizing that Trammel was still speaking to her, she tuned him back in. “. . . interpret your actions as turning yourself in. Every little bit helps.”

“But I didn't kill anyone,” she protested. She knew she had missed hitting both of the women who had been firing at her.

“Killing two U.S. deputy fugitive recovery marshals is a federal crime, and the state of Virginia will charge you for the murders of the three civilians. There's also interstate flight to avoid prosecution.” Trammel picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and held it out for her to see. There was an identikit sketch of her as she had appeared when she had been staying at the hotel. It said that she was being sought for questioning in five homicides and interstate flight to avoid prosecution, just like he'd said.

“Interstate flight to escape
execution,”
Sean said crisply.
God, where is Winter?
“How can they accuse me of this?”

“This says you are armed and should be considered dangerous. You armed?”

“I was fully searched at the door. Don't you have faith in the abilities of your security guards? If I were you, I wouldn't, because I'm sitting on an empty gun,” she said, lifting her buttock to expose the weapon.

Trammel put the flyer down and, using two fingers to pinch and lift the weapon by the checkered grips, walked around the desk holding the Smith & Wesson out like something poisonous. He opened the chamber and ejected the spent cartridges, then dropped the .38 onto a manila envelope. He sat down behind the desk and studied Sean from across the cluttered surface. “Did you use this gun in Richmond last night?”

“In self-defense. Look, Winter will understand. He'll believe me. Let me talk to him.”

“You didn't think Deputy Massey wouldn't arrest you, did you? Because if he was here, he would have to.”

“I came to see him because people are trying to kill me. That's why I'm here, dressed like this.
They
killed the two marshals and two others—not three.” Her mind fought to make a count of the fatalities. Two deputies and two civilians.

“One of the victims was a female bystander killed by an errant shotgun blast. Since she would be alive if you hadn't been shooting it out with the deputies at the time, it's a legitimate charge.”

“I know now that the deputy marshals were there to protect me, but I didn't know they were marshals until the second deputy said so.” She was dangerously close to tears. “The first deputy was already dead by then.”

“So you shot that first deputy thinking he was after you?”

“I didn't shoot anybody. The two killers shot everybody that was shot—except a deputy shot one of the women, who was not a bystander.”

“A female killer?”

“There
were
two killers. They shot Max and Wire Dog. Max was the hotel manager. Wire Dog—his nickname, I don't know his real name—was a kid who drove a cab. Max did call him Skipper or Skippy—one of them was an older woman who was killed by the marshal with the shotgun—she was shooting at him—he did it on purpose—the other—”

Trammel shook his head skeptically.

“—woman—the younger one who killed the first deputy, killed the second deputy after that—the older of the women shot Max and Wire Dog while we were running to get behind the counter so I don't know—”

“Whoa!” Trammel snapped. “Damn it! Slow down. I feel like I'm riding a bronco. Women killers, cabs, dogs, and who can tell what.”

Sean stared at the frowning chief deputy. She knew she was rattling on like a madwoman.

“Let's do this. Take a deep breath and relax. You just answer my questions, and if I need clarification, I'll let you know.”

“Okay.” Sean had to fight to clear her mind of confusion over the alarming turn of events.

“There were two killers in that hotel who were trying to kill you? And one was a woman. Is that what you're saying?”

“Both of them were women.”

“And the deputies came in when?”

“One deputy came in, and one of the women shot him.”

She replayed the scene in her mind. “I was headed for the door with Wire Dog, leaving town. He had my bag. A deputy, whom I didn't know was a deputy at that point, started in through the door and I thought he was trying to kill me.”

“Why?”

“He drew his gun. Then the younger woman, who was coming toward us, shot him. Wait, the first deputy must have seen her gun and that's why he drew his. I thought he intended to shoot me, but when I looked around, I saw her gun was out and then she shot him. I shot at her after I was behind the counter, but I missed. The older woman shot at Wire Dog and me while we were running. She hit Max and Wire Dog. I fired once at the older one without aiming and missed her.”

“You missed her with this .38?”

She nodded. “Then the second deputy came in and got behind a column and fired a shotgun at the older woman and killed her. I emptied the .38 when I ran to the door and got behind the other column. I picked up the dead deputy's pistol, which was lying on the floor. She killed the second deputy when he came around the column. I ran out and I shot the first deputy's gun at her when she came outside. Then I escaped in the cab, where I left the empty automatic.”

“What did the younger woman look like?”

“Dark skin and long hair in a ponytail. I saw them earlier in the afternoon in the lobby and I assumed they were guests at the hotel.”

“And this dog boy and Max were the only civilians killed?”

“Wire Dog.”

“So these professional female killers killed four people but missed you, their primary target, completely?”

“Not completely. The younger one hit me.”

“Hit you where?”

“In my computer. I had it in my backpack. She was shooting at me while I was running out and the bullet hit my laptop. There's a hole in it.”

“Weren't there any witnesses?”

“The elevator operator might have seen some of it. I know he went up when the shooting started, but he must have seen the woman shoot the first deputy and maybe the older woman shooting at us.”

“Don't you think the elevator operator would have cleared it up with the cops, if he saw it?”

She remembered the operator and her hopes sank. “He's pretty old and the lobby is big and gloomy. I don't know what he actually saw.”

“What kinds of guns did the women killers have?”

“Silenced ones.”

“Automatics or revolvers?”

“Automatics. Why would the FBI assume I was responsible, if there were no witnesses?”

“You ran, and the FBI believes you and your late husband were a team. Those two dead marshals were specialists. The FBI believes you couldn't have killed them unless you were a professional. I would tend to think you killing those men was highly unlikely unless you were a pro.”

“I couldn't kill anybody. Well, not unless it was to stay alive, and I certainly wouldn't shoot at people who were trying to help me.”

“What about the money?” he asked. “Where did you get the fake passport and the five thousand dollars the FBI found with your things?”

She had known the cops would find her duffel, and that this question could come up. She decided to tell him the truth. “It was my mother's idea. She had me put that money and the passport in a safe place in case I ever needed it.” She didn't tell him where she had left it, not wanting to make trouble for her banker friend. Trammel's eyes were unreadable, but they both knew that normal mothers didn't hide money and falsified passports in far-off cities in case their children had reason to flee for their lives.

“Why did you run away from the hotel in Arlington?”

“I was just freaked out after Rook Island. Out of the seven deputies protecting us, they killed all but one. Shapiro said he wouldn't keep watching me, but he lied. I didn't trust that someone inside the Marshals Service wasn't involved. I don't trust
anybody
except Winter.”