On Borrowed Time (26 page)

“Ready,” I said. “No matter what happens, even if we have to shoot him, we’re going to search that place top to bottom. Today is the day we find out what the hell is going on.”

“I hope you didn’t bring your gun,” he said.

I tapped my pocket gently. “I did.”

He put the binoculars down and said, “Richard, listen to me. You—”

“Let’s get going, Craig, okay?”

He stopped, then nodded.

“Okay. Here’s how I think we should do this—” Before he could finish the thought, his cell phone rang, and he answered it. “Langel.”

He listened for a while, and then said, “Shit.” About ten seconds later, he asked, “Cause of death?” and then ten seconds after that said, “Yeah. I understand.” All in all, it was not a particularly upbeat phone call, at least from his end.

He clicked off the call and turned to me. “You need to hear this,” he said.

“Uh-oh.”

“I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but they fished a body out of the Hudson River this morning. It was Nancy Beaumont, or Allison Tynes, or whatever the hell her name was.”

The news hit me right between the eyes, and I sagged back into the seat. I hadn’t verbalized it, even to myself, but my reaction made me realize that I still had been positive that Allie was one of the good guys, and that she was okay.

And that we’d come out intact … and together.

I had no idea how I would deal with the loss; it seemed that I had finally reached my limit. Maybe I would figure it out, maybe I wouldn’t, but it would have to wait. Now it was time for revenge.

“Sorry, man,” Craig said. “Maybe she was okay; maybe they were just using her.”

“Yeah.” I was feeling an anger greater than any I had ever felt. “It gives us something to talk to Lassiter about.”

“One of us should go in the front door and confront him; the other should go around the back. No need for him to know there are two of us.”

I nodded. “I’ll take the front.”

Something about the tone of my voice made him concerned; I could see it in his face. “Don’t do anything stupid, Richard. This is not your comfort zone.”

“It’s getting there.”

He looked like he was going to caution me again, but thought better of it. “Give me five minutes to get in position in the back, then you take center stage.”

I nodded my agreement, and he got out and walked toward the house. A few hundred yards away, he ducked in toward the back of the house and out of my line of sight. I checked my watch, waited the requisite five minutes, and got out of the car myself.

I was maybe a hundred yards away when I heard it. It was either a gunshot or a car backfiring, and I sure didn’t see any cars around. My resolve immediately turned to near-panic; the shot seemed to come from behind the house, where Craig had just gone.

I wished Craig and I had thought to retain some means to communicate, but my cell phone was back in the car. I debated whether to go up to the front door as planned, but that seemed crazy now. I would go to the back of the house and see if something had happened back there. If not, and everything was okay, then I could go back around to the front, and all we would have lost would be a few meaningless minutes.

I took a quick look at the front of the house, to make sure I didn’t see Lassiter and, more importantly, that he didn’t see me. He wasn’t there, so I ran around to the back of the house. It was a rich person’s backyard, beautifully sculpted grounds, swimming pool, and a tennis court in the rear. The son of a bitch lived well.

At first I didn’t see anything unusual, and then I heard a noise about seventy feet from the house. Craig was on the ground, lying on his back, with his head raised and looking at me. There was a red area on his shoulder, and it was widening. He had been shot.

Craig didn’t say anything, just seemed to nod to the back of the house, and in a moment I saw why. Sean Lassiter was on the porch, with what looked like a gun in his hand. He was looking toward Craig, so he had his back to me, a situation that wouldn’t last for long.

I didn’t do anything for a few moments, and Craig seemed to start to panic, since he was lying out there unprotected. Finally, he screamed, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

“Hold it right there, Lassiter!” I yelled, pointing the gun at his back. “Drop the gun and turn around!”

To my surprise and relief, he did exactly what he was told. I continued to point the gun, and said to Craig, “We’ve got to get an ambulance out here for you.”

“I called 911 on my cell,” Craig said. “They’re on their way.”

“What the hell is going on back here?” Lassiter snarled, apparently undaunted by the fact that I was the only one holding a gun.

“You want to know what’s going on? You shot my friend, and I’m going to put a bullet in your head unless you start talking now.” I raised the gun; I wasn’t going to shoot, I couldn’t, but I would have gotten some serious pleasure out of it.

“I didn’t shoot anyone. I heard a shot, and I came out here to protect myself. I’ve been getting death threats.”

“Well, then here’s another one. You got thirty seconds to tell me everything, or you are a dead man.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Somebody has been playing you, using you to attack me. I hadn’t thought about you for ten years.”

“You have been systematically trying to destroy my life,” I said, but something was gnawing at the back of my mind, something that wasn’t implanted in there.

“Really? Why? How? You’re trying to tie me in to things I had no power to do, and no reason to do so even if I had the power. You think your life is ruined? Join the club.”

I was experiencing a bizarre sensation, even by my standards. I was holding a gun on someone, someone I’d blamed and hated since this whole thing started, but I was focused elsewhere. Something was just out of my mind’s range; it felt like I kept trying to grab it, to make sense of it, but I couldn’t.

“Why are you going to Moscow?” I asked.

He laughed. “Moscow? You know something, Kilmer? You really are out of your mind.”

And that statement, maybe not the statement but the attitude behind it, pushed me over the edge into clarity. And in that moment I knew the truth. I let my gun drift down to my side and I turned, stunned, and that truth was staring me in the face.

“Put the gun down, Richard. Now.”

Craig Langel was standing there, unhurt, gun pointed at my face. “You just figured it out, didn’t you? I could see the wheels turning.”

“I figured it out,” I said, and when he seemed to be squeezing the trigger, I dropped the gun.

“What gave it away?”

“It’s all coming together now. They emptied out the lab that night because you told them we were coming. And you knew what route we were taking to Ardmore that day, because I told you we were going to the pancake house. You told your partner we were going to be driving past there, and then you shot him and removed the body.”

He smiled as he picked up my gun, using a handkerchief to avoid getting his prints on it. “Not bad.”

“You’ve been the source of so much of this, and you’ve been lying every step of the way.” As I said this, I realized that Craig had been the one to tell me about Allie really being Nancy Beaumont, and about her body being fished from the river. It gave me hope that she was alive, and made me positive she really was who she said she was.

“Well, we can reminisce forever, but time is running out,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Well, we’re all going to die in the next few minutes. With the exception of myself, of course.”

Marie Galasso had debated whether to show up at all.

It was billed as a get-together to say good-bye and toast their collective accomplishments. Attendance was declared to be mandatory, though the fact that bonus checks were to be given out made that edict mostly unnecessary. Money can be an even greater motivating force than camaraderie.

But Marie had a bad feeling about it, and would have preferred that they mail her the check. Two of her coworkers had coaxed her into going, although the annex building where it was to be held was a place she never needed or wanted to go to again.

She arrived promptly at two; it was contrary to her nature to be late for anything, and she hoped to be first in line for the bonuses so that she could leave early.

The place was set up as a party room, complete with punch bowls and a buffet of hot food. Everybody seemed to be in a good mood, probably pleased with the completion of their job well done and happy it was over.

Marie liked her coworkers and, after a couple of drinks of the spiked punch, was sharing in the restrained revelry. She would miss some of these people, and perhaps would work with them again in the future.

Just not here.

By two-thirty, Dr. Gates had not arrived, so it was obvious to Marie that this was going to go on for a while. He would no doubt give a talk, that was his style, and he might encourage other leaders to do the same. Then the bonuses would be given out. All of it, Marie knew, would take time.

By the time Gates got there it was past three, and most of the attendees were feeling at least a buzz from the punch. That made them slightly less clearheaded, but that was not important.

None of them would have noticed the huge amount of plastic explosives anyway. The explosives were well concealed, placed in the walls and deep in the closets. The timer was actually outside, set against the annex, concealed by a Dumpster.

Gates himself thought he was there to give a talk, praise a job well done, and hand out bonuses. He was actually looking forward to it.

He had no idea that he and everyone else in that building would soon be incinerated.

Lassiter and I went into the house with Craig behind us, pointing the gun.

He had us walk through the house toward the front door. When we got to the foyer, he said, “Okay, this should do pretty well. We can set up shop here.” He was looking at the room as if trying to judge the position of certain things in it.

“You don’t need to do this,” Lassiter said. “Whatever they’re paying you, I can give you more.”

“No, you can’t. Believe me, you can’t.”

“Craig, he’s right,” I said. “There are better ways to end this.”

“Shut up, both of you. I need to figure this out. This has to be done just right … sort of choreographed.”

“Then why did you want me to shoot him?”

He smiled. “There were bonus points in it for me. But that’s okay, it won’t be a problem. I’ll make it look like you did.”

“Craig, I’m telling you—”

Suddenly he got angry. “Shut up! You really think that now, after all that’s happened, you can talk me out of it? Are you that stupid?” Then he softened. “Besides, you’re just a small part of it. Everything is connected.”

“What else is there?” I asked. It was a pathetic strategy, but I figured if I could keep him talking, it would delay the point when he would start shooting. In the meantime, I was inching slightly closer to a statue that was sitting on a tall pedestal. If given the opportunity, I would grab it and throw it at Craig. Among the many problems with this strategy was that it looked as if the statue could be attached to the pedestal, making it quite impossible to lift, much less throw.

He smiled. “Rich, so many people are going to die today that you two will barely be noticed. You’ll be on page twelve. The headline will probably be, ‘Psycho with Missing Girlfriend Dies in Murder-Suicide.’ ”

“What are you talking about? Who else is going to die?”

“Everybody who worked on the project.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, it’s twenty minutes to kaboom.”

“What about Allie?”

He laughed. “Her too, except she’ll probably be the last to go.”

“Where is she?” I asked, but I thought I already knew. I could only hope I lived long enough to tell someone else.

Craig ignored the question. “Here’s the way we do it.” He directed his next comments to Lassiter. “You get shot up close, as if you were trying to get his gun. Then Richard shoots himself in the head.”

He turned to me and held up my gun. “Thanks for bringing this.”

He started walking toward Lassiter, who looked petrified. In the process, Craig’s back was turned at an angle away from me. If I was going to make my move for the statue, this was the time. But I couldn’t seem to direct my arm and body to do it.

Craig was within five feet of Lassiter. As soon as he closed that gap he would shoot, and then he would focus all his attention on me. But still I didn’t move.

Lassiter had more guts than I did. As Craig moved forward, he rushed forward himself, closing the gap and grabbing for the gun. Craig was momentarily stunned by the move, and he staggered back a few feet, seemingly attached to Lassiter.

Suddenly a gunshot rang out, and Lassiter fell backward. But I was already moving, finally grabbing the statue and discovering to my immense relief that it wasn’t attached to the pedestal.

Craig’s taking those steps backward meant I no longer had to throw it at him, I could swing it instead. It was heavy, and it was very hard, much harder than the skull it crashed into.

I hit him as he turned toward me, and he went down instantly, hitting the ground and not moving. I didn’t know whether he was alive or not, but every instinct in my body wanted to smash his head again, just to make sure.

But he had wanted me to be a murderer; he said it would somehow provide him bonus points. I didn’t want to give him that; I was going to be bigger and better than that.

So I kicked him in the balls.

Lassiter was dead; I had no doubt about that.

I wasn’t sure about Craig, but I didn’t bother checking, because I didn’t care much either way. If he moved, I was going to smash him over the head with the statue again.

Because of their respective conditions, there was no urgency for me to call 911 and get an ambulance there. Instead I called Kentris, and when they tried to put me on hold, I screamed that people were going to die. That turned out to be fairly motivating, and within ten seconds he picked up.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.