Measure of Darkness (10 page)

K
idder has to force himself to drive just below the speed limit. What he wants to do is put the pedal to the metal, open the windows and dry the goo out of his hair. He'd attempted to rinse away the gunk with seawater, once he'd managed to get clear of the marina, but it still feels like he's been basted with a sticky white sauce that makes his skin itch. Some kind of foamy stuff jetting from a system of tiny nozzles he'd never even noticed, and certainly hadn't been notified about.

When it happened he'd been madder than a wet hen—more like psychotic rooster pumped for a cockfight—and his heart had been pounding because he knew the sudden discharge of foam would be triggering a remote fire alarm. So he'd been fleeing the scene from the moment the crap drenched him, and a good thing, too. The local fire trucks were at the marina in less than ten minutes, way ahead of the slow-moving fire tugs, and if the freakin' outboard hadn't started on the first try he'd have been nabbed for sure. But it had started—hurray Yamaha!—and he had managed to ease away from the marina and put a half mile or so between himself and
Lady Luck
before the flashing lights and sirens arrived.
Flooded with the adrenaline thrill of a narrow escape, and of having freshly killed, he eventually worked his way down the busy coastline of Quincy Bay, to the place on shore where he'd left his vehicle, and made his getaway.

Luck: you had to have it in this business. No matter what your skill level—and his own was high—you still needed luck, he knew that in his bones, and so far his luck was holding.

Rather than risk heading north through the city, getting stuck in Boston traffic while under possible pursuit, he'd opted to head west onto good old 128, loop all the way around and back up to the north. Cost him an extra hour of discomfort, longing for a hot soapy shower, while forcing himself to leave it on cruise control, keep to the right-hand lane like a good little citizen.

Finally, back to base without further incident. That's how he'd report it. Target terminated. Keep it simple. The gooksicle had been his own idea and it hadn't worked out, but so what? It would definitely add to the confusion, and that was a good thing. Nothing to apologize for, no excuses that needed making.

The man who calls himself Kidder punches in the code, causing the paneled door of the cedar-shingled garage to lift. Once inside, garage door sealed, he slips out of the vehicle, strips off his soggy clothing and pads barefoot to the shower located in the first-floor exercise room. Six, count 'em, six showerheads, steaming and clean. He luxuriates in the stinging warmth, cleansing away the loathsome goo, using plenty of soap and body lotion. The place may be referred to as a guest cottage, but it has all the amenities. An excellent, if rather small, gym furnished with top-flight equipment, a nicely appointed entertainment center—love that Bose!—a superb
kitchen, a casual-at-first-glance-but-really-formal dining room and three upstairs guest suites, each with a distant view of the sea.

Oh yeah, and the basement safe room, disguised for the pleasure of the guests as a “rumpus room,” complete with a top-grade billiard table, every kind of game controller, plus bath, bar, kitchenette—even spare beds concealed in the puffy sofas. Very handy and, indeed, the reason why this particular residence had been selected for the operation. Simple enough to swap around the dead-bolt system, clip the phone and alarm lines and make the safe room into a very well-appointed cage. Whenever Kidder has to leave the premises, whether on a particular assignment or just to stretch his legs, he simply puts New Mommy and the Chinese brat into the basement and locks the impregnable door “for their own protection.”

As he dries himself, puffing his skin to a healthy pink, he thinks about the present situation, anticipating the inevitability of change. So far the female, who can sometimes be troublesome or mouthy, has acquiesced in the name of Shane, whom she appears to worship on some level that Kidder doesn't get. The big guy was about as infallible as your average pope, from what Kidder can gather, but so far invoking his name has worked, kept her in line, as well as deeply in the dark. Eventually she'll rebel, they always do, and when that happens he'll require further instruction.

Kidder has the answer, when it comes to that.

J
ust so you know, Naomi Nantz has a thing about leaving the residence. She's not exactly agoraphobic, so far as I can tell. It's not like she goes all wobbly when she steps out the door, or has a panic attack, nothing like that. But she does so reluctantly, and only for a purpose—a dentist or doctor appointment, for example—and sometimes a few weeks will go by without her leaving these familiar confines at all. If she feels the need for sunshine and fresh air she goes to the solarium and opens a window, or joins me up on the roof deck for a view of the Charles and a little breeze in her face. Rarely does she hit the street while on a case. That's what investigators and operatives are for, to do the legwork, to go out in the world and bring back information she can gnaw on, like a really intelligent bulldog with an interesting bone. A beautiful bulldog with eyes that can bore through the human heart, with all its deviance and deception, seeking the truth.

On the morning after Jonny Bing's murder we're in the breakfast nook, me and Naomi and Jack and Teddy. Naomi in one of her quiet, thinking modes, processing information based on the meager evidence. Most of us—
me, for sure—are more than a little flummoxed by the rapid turn of events. A famous kid finder suspected in the murder of a genius professor with a missing child, a billionaire financier and his bedmate executed, a semi-frozen body left at the scene, what does it all mean? Jack brooding because boss lady is keeping an open mind on the possibility that Shane might be guilty, for reasons yet to be determined. Meanwhile, Mrs. Beasley is fussing over us to relieve the tension. Sensing the gloomy mood, she's trying to tempt us with a rather amazing variation on sourdough French toast, which involves a cast-iron fry pan that she calls a “spider,” and a butane torch. Naomi has nodded her approval—she's reading her newspapers, maintaining silence—and Jack and I are on second helpings, but Teddy Boyle has thus far declined, much to Beasley's consternation.

“But you love my sourdough bread,” she says, shaking her silver-haired head in consternation. “You love maple syrup—you put syrup on Cheerios! So what's the problem?”

Teddy shrugs and smiles his beatific little grin. Today his hair is newly tinged with a disturbing shade of pink, and he's swapped out his nostril ring for a small gold stud.

“It's nothing personal,” he explains to Beasley. “I'm not eating animals today.”

“French toast is not an animal.”

“Eggs and milk,” Teddy points out. “Product of animals, and therefore animal in nature.”

Beasley takes her hands out of her apron pockets, looking stunned. “You've gone vegan?”

“Just for today. Cleansing.”

“You're cleansing.” She considers that, makes some sort of calculation and nods to herself. “Fine. As it so
happens, I know a special variation that will work with French toast. No eggs, no milk. No animal product of any kind. Give me ten minutes.”

“Wow,” Teddy says. “Thanks. I'll have two slices, please.”

Nine minutes later Beasley beams as the rail-thin boy scoffs up her syrup-soaked slices in less time than it takes for Naomi to put down her newspaper and say, “No eggs? No milk? How is that possible?”

The question is purely rhetorical, since Beasley will not discuss her trade secrets while a meal is being consumed, if ever. Also, at precisely that moment a small wall-mounted bulb begins to flash, indicating an incoming call on boss lady's private, ultra-secure landline. The one with the number restricted to a chosen few. She takes the call in an alcove off the kitchen—a pantry, really—and returns to us with a gleam in her eyes, and the trace of a smile on her lips.

“Randall Shane,” she says. “Dropped off at Mass General E.R. within the last fifteen minutes.”

 

And so it is that Naomi Nantz takes leave of the residence, not at a walk but at a full run. On a good day the hospital is a brisk twenty-minute saunter from the residence, but time is of the essence, so we race to Commonwealth Avenue, cross the mall at a run and hail a taxi going east. Basically we hijacked the Haitian driver, who mistakenly thought he was off duty and idling at the curb, sipping a Starbucks. Naomi, accepting no excuses, declares an emergency and directs him up Storrow Drive to Embankment Road, and around the loop to the Fruit Street entrance. Four minutes, door-to-door, and the shaken driver—instructions having been crisply issued directly into his right ear—accepts a hundred-dollar bill
and flees the scene, looking shell-shocked by the experience. The sirens behind us could be from an approaching ambulance, but are more likely the local cops, having been alerted to a yellow taxi briefly hitting ninety in the Back Bay neighborhood.

We're about to enter the E.R. when Jack Delancey screeches to a halt in his big Lincoln, activates his blinking parking lights and joins us.

“Told you I could beat a damn taxicab,” he says, straightening his tie as we step through the sliding door.

“But you didn't.”

“Close enough,” he says. “Who was that on the phone? Who gave you the heads-up?”

“Doesn't matter,” Naomi says, avoiding his gaze as she quickens her pace. “We haven't much time. The police will figure it out soon enough.”

“The Benefactor,” Jack confides to me. “Mr. Big, whoever he is. That's my guess.”

Naomi Nantz in full order-issuing mode is a thing to behold. Just as the taxi driver found himself obeying her commands to dart through city traffic, the duty nurse, a hardened soul who looks like she herself could direct battalions without flinching, is soon escorting us to a curtained cubicle, where an E.R. doc is attempting to assess the condition of the huge slab of a man more or less unconscious on the gurney, eyelids fluttering.

So far as I can tell Shane is wearing the same clothes he had on when they kicked in the windows and took him down. His shirt has been opened for examination, revealing his enormous chest and diaphragm. There are no obvious bruises, but who knows what they've done to him inside? His complexion is a sickening shade of gray and his eyes have sunk so deeply into his skull that he
looks to have aged a decade, at least. Wherever he's been, whatever has been done to him, it's taken a terrible toll.

“Bastards,” Jack growls, his voice catching.

The startled doctor, a blonde, cherub-cheeked female who at first glance appears to be about twelve years old, wants to know what connection we have to the patient.

“Are you the ones who dumped this man at the curb with a note pinned to his shirt?”

Naomi soon sets her straight, without sharing any of the more interesting details. “The patient is our associate. We have reason to believe he was abducted for purposes of interrogation.”

“Interrogation?” the young doc shoots back. “More like tortured, from the look of him.”

“The note pinned to his shirt,” Naomi says. “What did it say?”

At first the young doctor seems determined not to share information but, under Naomi's persuasive gaze, soon changes her mind. “Just three words, one of them nonsense. The first two were ‘Randall Shane,' I'm assuming that's his name. I put him into our database, but he's never been admitted here.”

“The third word?”

The doc shrugs. “‘Gaba,' whatever that means.”

“Gaba,” I say. “Like baby talk?”

“No,” says Naomi, remaining focused on the doctor. “As a matter of fact, ‘gaba' explains it. Gamma-aminobutyric acid. If the word had been ‘GABA analogue' or ‘GABAergic' you'd have understood immediately, as you were intended to.”

The young E.R. doc has turned crimson. “Of course! He's been drugged with some sort of barbiturate, or benzodiazepine.”

“Possibly both,” Naomi suggests. “He was taken down with a very powerful tranquilizer dart, just for starters.”

The doc's jaw drops. “What! What the hell is going on here? Who is this guy?”

Before anyone can form a reply, Shane's head lolls to one side and his sunken eyelids open. Instantly, Jack is there, crouching beside the gurney. “Randall? Can you talk? We don't have much time, old friend. Cops are on the way.”

Shane gives him a loopy grin and says, “Bah-doo.” Working his lips, struggling to form a word.

Jack looks up. “Whatever they drugged him with, it's starting to wear off.”

“Anything you can give him?” Naomi asks the doc. “To bring him around quicker?”

The E.R. doc looks deeply offended by the suggestion. “No way. Not without a full assessment. This man needs to be admitted and monitored.”

“He may know the location of a missing child,” Naomi says, pressing. “A five-year-old boy.”

The doc remains adamant. “I can't treat him until I know what he's been drugged with.”

“We've established that,” Naomi reminds her patiently. “One of the GABAergics.”

The doctor shakes her head, crosses her arms defensively. “Because ‘gaba' was scrawled on a piece of paper? Not good enough. We need to determine the specific drug. Child or no child, I will not put this patient's life at risk because you want to chat.”

“Fine,” says Naomi, turning her attention to the man on the gurney. “Mr. Shane? The clock is ticking. Very soon you'll be taken into custody. Do you know where the boy is? Or who took him?”

Still unable to raise his head, or keep his eyes focused,
the big guy is obviously concentrating, devoting all of his energy to the task of making his mouth and tongue function. “Joey,” he manages to say. “Joey Keener. Five years old.”

“Joey, yes,” says Naomi. “Is he alive?”

Shane manages to nod. “Yes,” he says. “Alive.”

“Where is he? Can you guess? Anything, Shane. Give us something to work with.”

He desperately tries to form another word, and then his eyes lose focus and he lapses back into semiconsciousness, totally spent.

Ten seconds later the cops arrive.