Pyramid Lake (37 page)

Reaching the front of the Seven-Eleven, I paused, put my hands on my knees and bent over. Hanging my head, I sucked in exaggerated breaths, painting the picture of exhaustion. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Peterson ease the squad car to a stop at the curb. I straightened and staggered inside the store, checking the time on my iPhone—6:47 p.m.—as I reached for my wallet.

“Good afternoon, Trevor.” The day clerk, a Bosnian kid who was unfailingly polite, threw me a cheerful wave.

“Hey, Marko.” I pointed to the back of the store and patted my belly. “Bathroom.” He tossed me the key.

I caught it, jogged around the corner, and slid the key under the door to the storage room as I went by. Ignoring the bathroom, I quietly eased open the back door instead, and slipped out into the short alley behind the store.

I sprinted to the end of the alley and scrambled up onto the Dumpster, which was right where I’d seen it on Google Earth. Then I hopped over the fence and into the backyard of the house next door, startling a cat. Cutting diagonally across the small green lawn, I grabbed the top of the rear fence and swung myself over into the next yard.

I hurdled through the next five backyards, slaloming around lawn furniture and leaping rosebushes and sprinklers, taking less than ten seconds to cross each yard. A woman screamed inside one house, but I was over the next fence already.

Running right past a heavy guy reclining in a sleeveless “TAPOUT” shirt, I had to laugh, watching him spill a forty of beer all over his porch as he struggled to extricate his fat ass from his steamer chair. He cursed and threw the bottle at me, but it missed, shattering against the fence instead. Still laughing, I dropped into his neighbor’s yard and sprinted across it while he shouted impotent threats behind me.

The house I was concerned about was coming up soon. It backed onto a high warehouse wall. Google Earth had shown me no way to avoid its yard without exposing myself to the street where the sheriff’s deputies now sat parked, patiently waiting for me to come out of the 7-Eleven.

I could see the problem house’s back fence already. It projected above the intervening yard. An extra two feet of chain-link raised the fence top to eight feet all the way around. On the aerial image, I had seen a peak-roofed structure sitting in the corner of the yard—too small be a storage shed, but large enough to worry me.

It meant the dog was big.

The yard I was crossing had a nice collection of outdoor furniture, including a sizable patio umbrella, now folded. As I ran by, I yanked the umbrella out of its weighted base. Timing my approach, I planted the bottom of the pole in the dirt and used it to vault off the ground. With a rattle of chain-link, I hit the top section of the fence and clung. Without giving myself time to hesitate or rethink what I was doing, I rolled over the top, yanking the nine-foot umbrella after me.

I landed on my feet in a patch of bare dirt.

A guttural growl erupted from the rear of the yard, tightening the back of my neck. A quick glance confirmed the worst-case scenario: a big, muscular brown and white pit bull, streaking toward me with teeth bared.

I knew pit bulls. Growing up in the ’08, I had seen more than once how quickly a pit bull could shred a person—even a fit, fast, aggressive man—and turn him into hamburger you needed a shovel and trash bags to clean up. Once, a long time ago, I had even had to fight a pit bull barehanded. I had managed to kill it before it could kill me, but it had been a very close thing.

It was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

I swiveled the umbrella to point away from the charging dog, and yanked the tie-cord loose. Bracing my feet, I jerked the nine-foot patio umbrella open wide in front of me as the snarling animal leaped for my throat. Its seventy-five pound weight hit the inside of the canvas, driving the umbrella into my chest, but I held my ground and wrapped my arms around it, collapsing the umbrella like a net.

I tightened my arms around the dog, crushing it against my body and immobilizing it in the umbrella. Carrying the wriggling bundle, I ran toward the doghouse.

The enraged animal tried to fight its way free, but before it could, I shoved the umbrella’s pole end and folded ribs through the arched entrance of the doghouse.

From the sound and feel of it, the entangled pit bull was going absolutely mouth-frothing crazy inside the umbrella. It snorted and squealed, ripping at the folds of canvas, but I dropped to one knee in the dirt and pushed the umbrella the rest of the way in.

The dog’s paws skittered against the umbrella’s fabric, unable to gain traction, as I pushed harder, bending the pole and forcing it backward until the ferrule at the tip of the umbrella popped inside the doghouse, too. I shoved it sideways, jamming it against a front corner, then let go, jumped back, and sprinted for the house’s rear deck.

The furious snarls of the trapped dog rose behind me. I planned to be over the opposite fence before it got free again.

The fence on that side was also an eight-footer, but Google Earth had shown four chairs arrayed around a sturdy round table on the nearby deck. Using one of the chairs on top of the table, I could be across the fence in two seconds.

I leaped onto the deck to grab one… and froze. Google’s imagery was out of date. The table sat a few feet away now, alongside the deck. Alone. I couldn’t see a chair anywhere.

A tearing of cloth and a snarl came from behind me. Sprinting for the table, I glanced over my shoulder at the doghouse.

The pit bull had forced its muzzle under the folded edge of the umbrella. It squeezed its head through the gap, its eyelids stretching into narrow, red-rimmed slits as it stared at me. An ear popped free, followed by a shoulder, and then the pit bull had wormed its way out of the doghouse.

Launching itself forward, it rocketed across the distance between us.

Coming in for the kill.

I heaved the round table onto its side, jumped behind it, and dropped to a crouch. Through the translucent pebbled plastic of the table’s top, I watched the blurry shape of the charging dog expand, then thud against other side with a scrabbling of claws. Wrapping my arms around the table’s column base, I lifted it in front of me like a shield, pushing the dog back. The table was heavy and awkward to maneuver, but I rolled its edge along the ground like a cartwheel.

Keeping the tabletop angled between my body and the leaping, snarling dog, I sidestepped, rolling the table toward the fence. I felt my back bump against the wooden lower section.

The dog lunged underneath the round table’s edge, ferocious jaws snapping at my feet. I let it get halfway through, then cranked the table like a giant steering wheel, rolling its rim on top of the dog’s back, trapping it beneath.

Planting a foot on the table’s upper edge, I pressed down to thrust myself upward, hooking an elbow over the top of the fence. The pit bull squealed as my weight crushed the rim of the table into its ribs. I swung my legs up, and the table fell away.

The pit bull leaped after me, snagging the rubber sole of one Nike. I kicked my foot, shaking loose from its teeth, and tumbled over the fence.

I landed flat on my face in a plant bed and bounced to my feet, heart hammering, hyperventilating. An explosion of pain registered in my side. I had landed on something hard—a sprinkler head, maybe—but I didn’t have time to check the damage right now.

On the far side of the fence, the dog lunged and snarled. It leaped up, managing to hook the chain-link at the top with its teeth.

Its dangling weight rattled the section of fence like the springs of a trampoline as it hung from its jaws, bouncing and kicking, shaking its head violently.

Fucking psycho dog—what if I’d been a neighbor’s kid, chasing a Frisbee over the fence? And people thought owning
guns
was dangerous? Later, I’d have to check the address—do something about the person who lived here.

I dashed across the last yard and hopped the last fence. My Nikes slapped onto the sidewalk, and I sprinted down the street. All the energy I had earlier held in reserve, I now put into reaching my destination before the sheriff’s deputies started to wonder why I was taking so long inside the store.

Yanking out my phone as I ran, I checked the time: 6:51 p.m. I’d gone into the store four minutes ago. I had another minute at most before Peterson would walk inside to ask the clerk where I was. Maybe thirty seconds of them knocking and yelling at the locked bathroom door before Peterson realized I wasn’t in there, then twenty more seconds for him to hustle back, start the squad car, and turn the corner. Forty additional seconds to drive the route I was now hauling ass to cover on foot.

Somewhere, I found another ounce of reserve and sprinted faster.

My phone buzzed with an incoming call as I shoved it back into my pocket. I ignored it and pulled out my keys instead. I rounded the corner of my own block and slammed into the side of my Mustang seconds later, winded. I hauled open the door and dived inside. Starting the engine, still panting from my run, I glanced both ways but saw no sign of my buddies from the Sheriff’s Department.

With a grin, I backed into the street and drove away.

I
steered through the outskirts of my neighborhood, picturing Petersen and Zajicek still sitting in their squad car outside the 7-Eleven, eating the muffins I had so graciously provided for them. Dodging them as I had, I was taking a bit of a chance. But the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department’s interest in me wasn’t official yet, and Zajicek and Peterson wouldn’t want to waste everyone’s time with something as trivial as trespassing. It would make them look dumb for losing me, and their unofficial harassment might even jeopardize the murder case they hoped to build against me later on, for McNulty’s death.

Even after they figured out how I had ducked them, they wouldn’t be too worried at first. There were only two roads out of Flanigan: Highway 445, which ran back toward the lake, and County Road 32, a dirt road that went the other way, eventually crossing the border into California. Both roads ran for at least fifteen miles before reaching an intersection that didn’t lead to a dead end.

Realizing this, Zajicek would grin and get on the radio. He would call the Pyramid Lake Tribal Police to cover 445, and the Sheriff’s Department in neighboring Lassen County to cover 32. He would ask both to stop my Mustang on sight, giving them some bullshit pretext for delaying me until he arrived. Then he and Peterson would take one road, and their two buddies in the other squad car would take the other, and soon enough, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department would be cramping my style all over again.

I didn’t plan on giving them that chance. Instead of going east toward 445 or west toward 32, I headed north.

The streets and neighborhoods of Flanigan petered out around me, and soon I was driving through the newest part of town, where most lots sat empty or held half-framed houses still under construction.

At the northernmost edge of town, I turned into a cul-de-sac. Bumping the wheels up over the curb, I squeezed the Mustang between two unfinished houses and drove out onto the dry, chalky mudflat of the playa beyond. The cracks of the ancient lakebed rumbled beneath my tires as I eased the Mustang up to 130 miles per hour, cutting straight across the featureless expanse of white alkali mudflat—an extension of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to the northeast.

Blake was on my mind as I rocketed across the Flanigan dry lake. Big, stoop-backed, dopey Blake: a guy whom private industry would consider unemployable. His age and his overspecialization in too narrow a field of research would also make it tough for him to find another government job.

Blake had not shown up at work since McNulty’s death. But Garmin’s key-card records showed that he had entered the DARPA building the night of
Bennett’s
murder. Overpowering Bennett and dragging him to the geothermal plant wouldn’t have taken Blake very long—I could have done it in under five minutes myself.

Beneath Blake’s placid surface, a lot of anger sat simmering. Reprogramming his robot to dance had been a harmless, friendly joke on my part. In return, he had spent days and even pulled all-nighters with a scary single-minded obsessiveness, just to set a trap for me. A trap so nasty that even now the thought of PETMAN made the back of my neck tighten.

Someone who could work up that much spite over a stupid prank might well be capable of murdering McNulty—a person he had considered a friend—when he learned that McNulty planned to destroy his career.

But I couldn’t figure Blake’s motive for killing Bennett. Or why he would try to sabotage Frankenstein. Did he blame Homeland Security and the MADRID project also? Did he blame
me
?

Was
that
why he had left my keys clutched in Bennett’s hand?

I scanned the distance up ahead. A darker line marked the edge of the playa, where the terrain rose and roughened. The cracked mudflat was starting to give way to gravelly dirt. I spotted the break in the line I was looking for: a lighter patch that marked a long-dry creek bed.

Steering toward it, I slowed down.

My keys had disappeared the night of McNulty’s death—probably lifted right off the table next to my head as I lay passed out from exhaustion, facedown on a keyboard in my lab, with Cassie curled up asleep in the beanbag. I couldn’t picture a lumbering, heavy-breathing guy like Blake reaching over my sleeping form without disturbing me.

Something
had
awakened me, though. I remembered chasing a pair of OctoRotors down the darkened hallway toward Kate’s lab.

OctoRotors moved silently, and with their little manipulator arms, they could easily pick up and carry a set of keys. Still, if Kate had taken my keys and killed Bennett, then why was Blake hiding out during the day? Why was he sneaking inside our building on the night Bennett died?

But speculating about it now was pointless. In less than an hour, I would be asking Blake himself those questions.

Small patches of sagebrush started to appear amid the cracks in the playa. I slowed, braking to fifteen miles an hour. The surface roughened, and loose rocks crunched under the wheels. As I guided the Mustang along the dry creek, its sloping walls rose on either side. The creek bed stayed relatively flat, as Google Earth had indicated, which let me avoid the uneven terrain that surrounded it.