Remote (20 page)

Somehow, he didn’t think that approach would work on Remote.

The first thing he did was grab a box of shotgun shells and a toolbox he’d found in Remote’s supply closet, and take them downstairs.  He unbolted the shotgun from its mounting on the robot and reloaded both barrels—he wanted to be ready in case Remote’s drone came back.

After that, he unplugged Remote’s fridge and began the long, arduous process of shoving it down the hall to block the front entryway.  It wouldn’t necessarily stop a determined intruder, but it would slow them down and make a lot of noise.

He thought as he worked, trying to analyze the situation at the same time he was trying to muscle the fridge through the doorway.  It was an old technique of his, one he used when he was trying to conceptualize an art piece and couldn’t quite make it come together; he used to call it workout zen.  The mind had a way of solving problems while the body was busy, maybe because it freed up the unconscious, maybe because the exertion got more oxygen pumping to the brain—whatever the reason, it usually worked.

But that was when he was trying to create.  What he was doing now was pretty much the opposite.

The most powerful weapon Jack had as an interrogator was fear.  Fear of pain was more powerful than the pain itself.  But Remote wasn’t afraid; if anything, he was exhilarated.  He’d already taken the very worst things Jack could do to him and robbed them of much of their power by quantifying them, taking them out of the realm of nightmare and into that of facts.  Harsh, brutal facts, yes—but even the harsh and brutal could be overcome if you were willing to face them and fight.

Remote was definitely a fighter.

Jack paused when he’d gotten the fridge halfway down the hall, out of breath, muscles sore and aching.  He didn’t feel any nearer to a solution than when he’d started, just closer to exhaustion.  He’d done terrible things since he transformed himself into the Closer, but he didn’t know if he was up to the kind of systematic mutilation that seemed to be his only recourse.  Worse yet, what if it didn’t work?  What if Remote was truly crazy enough to sacrifice everything on that list just to spite him?

No.  Not to spite him—to
beat
him.

The problem was twofold.  First, it was all-or-nothing—Jack had neither the skill nor the tools to do anything but destroy the body parts on that list; he couldn’t remove a finger and promise to re-attach it if Remote talked.  And when the list ended, so did Jack’s options.

Second, he didn’t think it would work.  Jack recognized the kind of personality type Remote was; he lived in his head, not in his body.  He’d learned to take care of his physical self out of sheer necessity, but it wasn’t where he was at home.  His body was just a vehicle for getting him around, something that needed to be fueled and maintained.  Jack had known guys like him—programmers, most of them—and they just weren’t that interested in food or sex or drugs or booze.  They loved a mental challenge, they loved things that tickled their imagination or their sense of humor, but the joys of indulging their muscles, hormones or liver were alien to them.  Remote, with his inability to feel pain, was an extreme example—he’d feel even less connected to his physical self.  About the only thing Remote would truly dread losing would be his eyes, and that gave Jack exactly one thing to threaten him with.  It wasn’t enough. 

Jack glanced to the side, at the display case inset into the wall of the hallway.  It was next to the one with the line of dancing girls, and held a turbaned, dark-skinned doll sitting cross-legged on a brocaded pillow and clutching the mouthpiece of a hookah in one hand.

Jack noticed for the first time that all the displays were mounted on identical, low wooden platforms.  The platforms themselves looked to be much newer than the toys, and every one had a small hole drilled in the front of it, close to the ground.  There was a corresponding hole of the same diameter in the Plexiglas of the display case, at the same height. 

Jack resumed forcing the stainless steel bulk of the fridge down the hall.  He’d tipped it over on its side, and it slid fairly easily on the thick shag. When he got it to the end of the hall, he cleared a path in the foyer through the bomb debris and pushed it the last few feet to block the door.

Then he went back upstairs, past his captive, and into the storeroom.  There was a short-handled crank hanging on the wall—he thought he knew what it was for, now.

One end of the crank was hexagonal, like an Allen wrench.  He tried it on the Plexiglas case in the foyer, the one with the siege tableau; it had an opening identical to the ones in the hall, and the end of the crank fit neatly through it and then into the hole in the wooden platform’s base.  Jack jiggled it until he felt the end snug into place, then gave the crank an experimental turn.  He felt gears move and click, but nothing else did.  He turned the crank several times, winding what must be a mainspring, then pulled the crank out when it would turn no further.  Nothing happened.

He put the crank back in and tried turning it in the other direction.  He heard a click.

 The mechanism came to life, miniature arrows traveling down almost invisible wires to plant themselves in soldier’s chests; a group of men with a battering ram trundled up to the gates of the castle and tried to break it down.  The entire thing ran for about a minute before it wound down, the siege frozen in time once more. 

Jack nodded to himself.  Then he went back upstairs, taking the crank with him, and removed the gag from his prisoner’s mouth.

“I commend your thoroughness,” Remote said.  “I see you’ve been playing with my toys.  Fun, aren’t they?”

Jack walked over to the rolling chair, sat down in front of the desk.  He opened the COLLECTION folder and scrolled through the files.  “Wind-up toys don’t do much for me.  I can see how they’d hold an appeal for you, though.”

“Everyone needs a hobby, Mr. Closer.  A little downtime and relaxation between my real work.”

“What
is
your real work, Mr. Remote?  Whatever it is, it must pay well.  This house, your equipment, it all looks expensive—and the collection of gadgets you have on display are more than just toys, they’re antiques.  According to these files, some of them cost you upward of twenty thousand dollars apiece.”

“I write software, Mr. Closer.  Primarily for game companies.  I’m very good at what I do, and I insist on a cut of the profits from any game that uses my code.  I’m quite well off.”

Jack stared into the man’s calm, dark eyes for a moment before speaking.  “How long before your drone comes back?”

“Oh, he won’t.  But that doesn’t mean he won’t be busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Everything I’m telling him to.  I may appear to be helpless, but that’s an illusion.  In reality, a series of prearranged instructions are being fed via the Internet to my drone at very precise intervals.  In fact, I’ve written a clever little program that will actually give him different instructions based on his replies to questions the program asks him.  He can lie, of course, but he won’t. For one thing, he doesn’t know he’s just dealing with a program—but more importantly, I’ve programmed
him
to give me accurate data.”

 “So you’ve got another kill planned.”

“
Kills
, Mr. Closer.  If I could actually pilot the drone, I could fine-tune as I went along—but I can’t do that as a prisoner, can I?  I’ll have to rely on preset instructions, and I’m afraid those are less forgiving than I am.  Innocent lives will most likely be lost--I think ahead, but even I can’t plan for all eventualities.  And it’s my plans you’re interested in, correct?  You’re more interested in what I’m going to do than in what I’ve done.”

“I told you I was going to stop you.”

“It must be quite a change for you.  You’re more coroner than cop—you analyze what’s been done, collect as much information as possible on your victim’s crimes.  You gaze into your victim’s history, and then write its ending.  But now—for the first time, I imagine—you have the chance to look into the future you’re trying to change.  You’ve certainly saved lives by killing killers, but
whose
?  You’ll never know.  But if you could learn my plans and put a halt to them before they proceed . . . well, you might actually be able to point to a specific person and say,
you
.  I saved
you
.”

Remote smiled, but there was a colder edge to it this time.  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Mr. Closer?  Wouldn’t that make everything you’ve gone through
worthwhile
?”

Jack stared back, his face expressionless.  “I don’t care about your victims.  Not unless you’ve drastically altered who you’re targeting.”

“Oh, that hasn’t changed, Mr. Closer.  But I’m afraid my current project may have a higher level of collateral damage than you’d find acceptable.”

Collateral damage.  Jack felt his fingers clench into fists around the metal crank.  What Remote was talking about was innocent people dying, innocent people whose existence Remote barely acknowledged.  Jack knew why, too: a sociopath’s lack of empathy meant he didn’t perceive other people as completely real.  Remote lacked not only the capacity to feel other people’s pain, he lacked the capacity to feel his own.  To him, it was all a game . . . and Jack was the first person Remote had ever had to really play
against
.

“I don’t think you understand what it is I do,” Jack said.  “I don’t enjoy creating—
inflicting
pain.  I do what I do out of necessity, not sadism.  And ultimately, I use it to
alleviate
pain; to give some answers, some closure, to the families of murder victims—“

“—
necessity
,” Remote interrupted.  “Yes, I understand that, you torture because it’s the only way to get accurate information under the circumstances.  But these are very different circumstances, aren’t they?  And I’m going to make them even worse.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“By giving up.  You win, Mr. Closer.  I’ll give you unrestricted access to all the files on my past projects.  I’m something of a stickler for documentation, so you’ll be able to do plenty of verification.  That you get for free . . . but the next part will require some
quid pro quo
.”

He leaned forward as far as the restraints would let him.  “I’ll only give you the details of my
current
project, the one that’s already underway . . if you agree to
my
conditions.”

“And those would be?”

“Very simple, Mr. Closer.  You let me join you.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

“Parkins,” said Nikki, “we gotta talk.”

Parkins sat on the edge of one bed, yawning sleepily, scratching the wrist Nikki had just released from its cuff.  Goliath was still passed out in the bathroom. 

Nikki sat cross-legged on the other bed, dressed in an oversize t-shirt and sweats, her feet bare.  She cradled the handgun in her lap.

“What’s—what’s happening?”  he asked.  “Is something wrong?”

“I think we’ve taken this about as far as it can go.”  She stared at him without blinking.  The frown on her face made him uneasy.

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean this is it.  End of the road—for you, anyway.”

Parkins swallowed.  She looked deadly serious.  “Are you going to—kill me?”

“Should I?”

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking about this long and hard, Parkins.  Time for me to make some hard choices.  My partner’s usually the one that has to deal with that end of it, but now it’s down to me.  That’s fine—I’m no blushing virgin, you know?  I have to put a bullet in you, I will.”

Her voice hardened.  “Thing is, I don’t know whether or not I
should
.”

“I—I thought we had that all worked out.  I don’t have any reason to talk to the cops, not if I don’t want my reputation dragged through the mud and my family to suffer—“

“Yeah, we worked it all out, and I don’t think you’ll run to the cops.  That’s not what this is about.”  She held the gun loosely in one hand, Parkins noticed, but one finger rested on the trigger.

“See, I think it’s time to let you go.  My partner’s gotta be set up by now, and you popping out of the woodwork shouldn’t make any difference.  Plus, if we want your story to have any credence at all, you can’t be gone for too long.  And I’m going to have my hands full dealing with Gargantua in there—two prisoners is just a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

“So, then what’s—“

She cut him off with a wave of her hand.  “The problem, as I see it, is that life tends to be an unforgiving motherfucker with a
bitch
of a sense of humor.  That’s what kept me from getting to sleep last night, that’s what gave me bad dreams when I finally did, that was the first thing on my mind was when I woke up this morning.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned to do, it’s trust my gut—what I can’t figure out is whether it’s actually trying to tell me something or if I’m just being paranoid.”

“Do I get a vote?  ‘Cause I’d really, really like to officially endorse paranoia.”

Her frown deepened into a scowl.  “You’re a real charmer, you know that?  Funny, self-deprecating, with puppy-dog eyes.  But that doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“Uh, thanks.  I think.”

“So here’s what I came up with.  I’m going to give you a little bit of the truth, about me and my partner and what we do—not who we do it for or who we report to, just a few facts you need to know.”

“I’m not sure I want—“

“Shut up.  I talk, you listen.”

He shut his mouth, his eyes wide. 

“We were actually hunting a very particular criminal when we grabbed you, one who kills red-headed prostitutes working the Sacramento area.  You know who I’m talking about?”

He nodded.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I read about it.”

“You did, huh?  Because I wouldn’t think a family man would go out looking for a BJ from a professional when he knew the police would be watching the johns.”

“I—it was stupid, I know.  I told you why I did it.”