No Time to Die (21 page)

A
week later, the escape of the fugitives in Ohio was gnawing at Les with the sickening omnipresence of a parasite. Still no trace of them had been found. As if that weren't shameful enough, now he faced the task of recounting the incident before twenty scornful faces—the entire Bioethics Committee. The stunning escape, combined with a new postcard from Galileo claiming responsibility for the death of Natalie Roy's prison guard, had prompted the committee to demand an emergency meeting. Now here they were: all twenty members convened around a lacquered wood conference table to join forces on the single case that trumped every other. The case that Les apparently couldn't handle alone.

Ever the professional, he stood and recited the facts about the escape without emotion, hiding his own exasperation as if to balance out theirs. The black Honda Civic abandoned in a junkyard off I-70. The Ohio state trooper knocked out cold, his vehicle stolen and later found empty in the Columbus suburb of Worthington. The search that proved futile despite the helicopter patrols, despite the police blockade, despite the sheer avalanche of manpower that had descended on the neighborhood.

He passed around the latest postcard that “Galileo” had apparently mailed to the headquarters a few days earlier, with the standard message and signature. It looked authentic, if he did say so himself. At home, before sending it, he'd practiced on eighteen other postcards to get the slant of the loops exactly right. Then he burned all except the best one in his fireplace, drinking a merlot as he watched them blacken and crumple in the flames.

His colleagues examined what they didn't realize was his handiwork. They passed the postcard from one to the next around the table with the solemnity of doctors studying a deadly bacteria. Les noticed that Benjamin Barrow spent a minute longer than everyone else scrutinizing it, but at last he gave up and passed it along.

“I don't get it. Why would he target a prison guard this time?” asked the man next to Barrow. “All the others were science related.”

“That's a good question.” Les paused for good measure, though his answer was prepared. “Maybe the guard found out something about whoever posted Natalie Roy's bail—or maybe he learned something from her—and Galileo had to eliminate him before he spilled the beans.”

“That would make sense,” said a woman halfway down the table. “I mean, the poor guy was found dead right after Natalie Roy got out.”

Les nodded at her for reasons she would never know. “What's become quite clear,” he said, “is that we're dealing with an organized criminal gang that has never existed before in the history of bio-crimes. They're clever, prepared, and vicious, and they stop at nothing to get what they want.”

He glanced around the table, hoping that his aggrandized statement would soften their judgment of him. It was true, anyway. The Network was too shadowy and too vast for one man to take on. But deep down, he didn't believe that excuse. If one man was strong enough to run it, one man was strong enough to destroy it.

Seated to his left, Barrow wagged a slender index finger and addressed the room. “I believe our chief has left out an important part of the story.”

Les shot him a look. “Excuse me?”

Barrow's cold blue eyes were mocking. “Before this postcard. Back when the fugitives got away.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, just the part where they stopped at a pharmacy and you were notified.” His attention shifted to the whole group. “Our chief could have closed in right then and there, but no. Instead he decided to let them get away.”

The committee expressed their collective disapproval with a hurl of knife-gazes.

“Is this true, Les?” asked a dour woman who was known to act cliquey with Barrow and the other most senior members. She peered at him through brown tortoiseshell bifocals.

Assholes
, he thought, glaring at Barrow. “At least I was here working.”

Barrow pushed his white hair back with the infuriating sigh of a victim. “Apparently not well.”

“So now we've got nothing?” asked a man with a goatee, exchanging a dismayed look with Barrow.

“Not
nothing
,” Les said through clenched teeth. “I was getting to that. First of all, let me clarify that I didn't just ‘let them get away.' I ordered an undercover car to track them so we could get more intelligence. It was not my intention for that car to lose them.”

“Oh no?” the man muttered.

Les ignored him. “During our investigation of the neighborhood, I came across some fresh footprints in the backyard of an old immigrant named Julian Hernandez. These have now been analyzed. One sole, smaller than the others, had a unique pattern with interlocking squares. It's been identified as a size five Converse sneaker. We've contacted Zoe Kincaid's parents and confirmed that she happens to own this very shoe. And that it's missing from her closet.”

His colleagues stared at him, unimpressed. On the lacquered wood walls, their individual framed headshots—each one the grave epitome of authority—appeared to double the severity of their judgment. Les felt a prickle of sweat under his armpits.

A blond-haired woman with a pointy nose voiced their frustration. “But we still don't know where they went.”

“Without anything else to go on,” he said, “I agree this would be unhelpful. But get this. After the search of the neighborhood and the woods, I personally went back to Hernandez's house and scoured every inch of the floor, upstairs and downstairs. And I spotted a print in the thick carpet of his bedroom that seemed to me just like that one. Forensics confirmed today that it was a size five Converse sneaker.”

Now he had their rapt attention. Even Barrow perked up, watching, waiting.

“Hernandez denies having anything to with it,” Les went on. “He says they could have entered through the back door when he was in the living room watching TV. But I don't know. For one thing, his sliding glass door creaks pretty loudly. Of course he says he's hard of hearing. We can't indict him because his involvement is impossible to prove. But we
can
still question him, as long as he agrees to cooperate. I'm flying back to Columbus today to see if I can trap him into spilling something.”

“Have you looked into his history?” Barrow asked, twirling a rubber band the way he often did when he got excited.

“Of course.” Les ticked the facts off his fingertips. “He was an elevator repairman for thirty years. Emigrated from Mexico in 1972, became legal in '78. Owns his house. But most interesting, I think, is that he has a daughter named Nina born in 1980. The mother died in childbirth.”

“Let's talk to her, too,” Barrow said. “What does she do now?”

“That's the thing.” Les paused. “She's a scientist. With a doctorate in immunobiology from the University of Arizona. And as far as we can tell, she hasn't been seen or heard from in two years.”

Les relished the surprise that registered on their faces, and the subsequent realization.

“Two years ago,” said a man in a tweed jacket. “Wasn't that when the Network allegedly formed?”

“That's right.”

Barrow tapped his fingers across his mouth, eyeing Les with something akin to respect. “You might be onto something. But when you go to question this guy, you can't come on too strong. If he shuts down, you're out.”

Les gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I'll handle it.”

A red-haired woman spoke from the far end of the table. “Who thinks someone else should go, too? Do good cop, bad cop?”

Inwardly Les moaned. All he wanted was to be left alone to confront Hernandez, not worrying about a colleague who might deviate from the script. But to his chagrin, everyone around the table was nodding.

Barrow flashed him a guileless smile. “I'll go.”

Les closed his eyes.
Of course you will.

 

 

Six hours later, after hammering out their approach on the flight from Reagan to Columbus, they pulled up to Julian Hernandez's two-story home. It was 8:30
P.M.
, still early enough to call, and Les was feeling pretty good. Barrow, in spite of his haughtiness, had proved to be a supportive partner, praising his aggressiveness and suggesting new ways to harness it for maximum effectiveness. While Les hated to admit it—and never would aloud—he found himself the tiniest bit grateful to have Barrow at his side, shouldering some responsibility for the task ahead.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend,
he thought as they knocked on the door, federal badges in hand.

“We got this,” Barrow said. “Remember the line about the cult.”

His ribs expanded with anticipation. The old man had no idea what was coming. While they waited for him to answer, Les was distracted by an unnerving thought. Hernandez was an elderly, decrepit seventy—and only fourteen years his senior. Les had never thought of that stage in life as a reality. It had always been a vague theoretical proposition, made more distant by his physical robustness and mental energy. But suddenly it struck him that he
was
going to be old one day.

And one day, he was going to die, most likely of aging.

His mind went blank. The words he had recited so many times in lectures filled him, at once soothing and blistering.
Death is a necessary and desirable end. An important part of the cycle of nature with which we should never interfere.

The door opened, wrenching him back to the present. Julian's coffee-colored face thrust through the gap. Beholding Les with a flicker of recognition, he pressed his lips together and glanced at Barrow. Disbelief and fear crept into his eyes, but his accented voice came out steady.

“Señor, I tell you before, I don't know nothing.”

“Mr. Hernandez,” Les said, “this is my colleague Benjamin Barrow on the Bioethics Committee. We need to ask you a few more questions.”

“Can we come in?” Barrow asked, one black boot already through the doorway.

Julian hesitated as if trying to remember his rights. Les took advantage of his uncertainty by elbowing the door open a little more.

“This will be fast,” he promised. “We appreciate your cooperation.”

Julian stepped aside, leaning on his cane. Barrow and Les followed him to the living room, taking seats on the faded beige sofa. The house no longer smelled of taco spices, Les noted. Now it reeked of lime cleaning spray. The layer of dust he remembered—on the coffee table, the mantle, the wood floor—was gone. He felt a beat of pity for the old man. If Julian were innocent, as he claimed, the ordeal must have been traumatizing. Fugitives breaking in and taking cover in your house. Trampling over your floor, touching your things. No wonder the place was scrubbed clean.

Or cleaned of evidence.

Les traded a quick look with his partner.
Ready?

Barrow gave a slight nod. Les looked Julian in the eye, remembering the lines they had rehearsed all afternoon. “Mr. Hernandez, we want to remind you that these people who found cover in your house kidnapped a young girl. As long as she's in their grip, her life is in serious danger.”

“Her parents are beside themselves,” Barrow added, his tone grave. “She has a severe medical condition and could die without the proper medication.”

“It may already be too late.” Les allowed a meaningful pause. “We have no other leads except her footprint. In your house.”

Julian sat stonily, his mouth shut.

Les propped his arm up on the couch, his tone switching from ominous to matter-of-fact. “This is simple. You tell us what you know so she isn't dead by the time we find her.”

“But I no have information,” Julian said, turning his palms up.

Barrow crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned forward. “Mr. Hernandez, you seem like a nice man. You've worked hard your whole life. You're proud to be an American, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, Americans tell the truth. We stand by our country in times of need. Your service to us, here, now, would be the greatest way you could repay this country that has given you everything.”

Les leaned in. “Not just you, but your daughter, too.”

Julian started. “You know about Nina?”

Barrow stared at Les for a long moment. His eyes burned with provocation, the tacit challenge hovering in the air between them. This was the part in the script they had debated the most—whether to take a risk, improvising more than they really knew, or to play it safe and truthful.

Les turned to Julian as the lie escaped his mouth. “Mr. Hernandez, we know all about your daughter.”

“You do?”

Barrow chipped in, careful to conceal any hint of accusation. “We know she's working for Galileo's Network in secret.”

Julian shook his head, looking back and forth between them. “How you know that?”

Dead giveaway,
Les thought, biting his lip to kill his smile. Very few people in the public knew about the Network's existence, so the reaction of an innocent man should have been bewilderment.

“Whatever you know about the Network is wrong,” Les declared, ignoring Julian's question. “They dupe good people into following them, claiming all kinds of impossible-to-promise rewards.”

“It's understandable why a bright girl like your daughter would get sucked in,” Barrow said. “But no matter what she might have told you, it's a lie. The people who run it are the worst thugs on Earth. Tricking brilliant scientists like her into running horrible experiments.”

“Once you get in,” Les said, “it's almost impossible to get out. Mr. Hernandez, this cult has sunk its fangs into your daughter. She needs you now more than ever. Please, help us help her. We're the good guys. Tell us what you know.”

Julian looked down, wringing his hands.