Remote (9 page)

That didn’t happen.  He chuckled, then looked around for any possible witnesses.  It was the middle of the day, but there was nobody nearby.

He pulled the door open, just enough to see inside.

Just as promised, there was a man inside.  Naked, mid-thirties, shaved head.  Shackled to eyebolts in the floor at wrists and ankles, with a blindfold over his eyes and his mouth sealed with duct tape.  He jerked and made frantic noises against his gag when he heard the door open. 

Tanner climbed into the van, never taking his eyes off the man.  He shut the door behind him, then inspected his prisoner at great length.

Shackles were solid.  The key that opened them was supposedly right next to the van’s ignition key on the ring he’d retrieved.   Nothing hidden nearby—no weapons, no keys, no signaling devices.  That was only a start, though; he dug into the bag he’d brought with him for more sophisticated assistance. 

He used a Spy Hawk Pro bug detector to scan the entire vehicle for tracking or recording devices; it could pick up anything broadcasting between 1MHz to 8 GHz, from a wireless bug or concealed video camera to a GPS transmitter.  When they found nothing, he switched to a SpyFinder optical camera detector; it used ultra-bright LEDs in a ring around a viewing port to enhance reflected light off the lens of any concealed camera—no matter how well hidden, the lens of a camera always had to be exposed for it to function.

The vehicle was clean.  Satisfied, Tanner turned his attention to his prisoner.

He had been systematically tortured.  His forearms were covered with chemical burns in a precise grid.  His earlobes had been removed.  It looked as if a taser had been used repeatedly on the inside of one thigh, while the other had a large third-degree burn.  His chest was striped with thin, perfectly straight cuts, his belly crusted with dried blood.  Tanner suspected more work might have been done on his mouth, but he didn’t want to remove the gag until he’d relocated to a more secluded spot.

He climbed out of the back and got in the front, the van starting smoothly on the first try.  He’d left his own vehicle back at the motel, but there was plenty of room in the SUV for his new acquisition.  The transfer from one to the other might be a little tricky, but Tanner was confident he could pull it off.   After that, he’d just park the van on a side street and abandon it. 

The man moaned.  Tanner hoped he wouldn’t crap himself; a smelly mess in the back of his vehicle was the last thing he needed.

He thought about it for a moment, then shut the van off and got back out.  He walked over to the supermarket and came back with a box of adult diapers.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he said as he climbed back in.  “You’re in good hands, now.”

The drive back to the motel was uneventful, and he parked in a secluded corner for maximum privacy.  Before transferring him between vehicles, Tanner gave his captive an injection of flunitrazepam, a hypnotic with a half-life of up to twenty-six hours.  He hesitated, then gave him another half-dose; the original amount would have kept him unconscious for the trip to the cabin, but his itinerary had abruptly changed.

He wasn’t going to the cabin any more.  He was going to the coast.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

It took Tanner twelve hours to get from the pines of Mount Shasta National Forest to the private marina on the shores of Burrows Bay, on Anacortes Island in Washington state.  Parkins was still out, and it smelled like he’d pissed himself, too. 

The transfer from SUV to boat went smoothly, too.  Tanner had worried a little about the possibility of asphyxiation; flunitrazepam—more commonly known as Rohypnol—could cause respiratory distress with higher doses.  Parkins seemed fine, though, breathing deeply and evenly through his nose.

It was almost 3 AM, the air heavy and cold.  Snow had been drifting down in thick white flakes for the last hour, piling up like frosting on the half a dozen blue-tarped boats tied up at the single dock.  Tanner secured his cargo below, then went up on deck and stared out at the icy black water and the way the snowflakes vanished as they hit it.  Like a hungry black void, swallowing up little bits of light. 

He fired up the cabin cruiser’s engine, reversed out of the berth, then headed northwest toward the San Juan Islands. 

***

SACRAMENTO—The family and friends of Dennison Parkins are growing increasingly concerned over his disappearance.  “It just doesn’t make any sense,” his wife Arianna says.  “He goes out for long drives sometimes, but he always comes home.  We’re really worried about him.”

Parkins, 37, has two young daughters and another child on the way.  A successful real-estate agent, he’s also active in community service and sits on the local Parks board.  He was last seen driving a red Honda Civic Coupe on November 18
^th
.  Anyone with information should contact their local police station.

Nikki sighed and tossed the newspaper down on the kitchen table.  “Sure hope you know what you’re doing, Jack. . .”

Jack didn’t answer her.  She got up to get herself another cup of coffee, shaking her head.

It was going to be a long day.

***

The San Juan Islands were part of the San Juan Archipelago, a jumble of rocky outcroppings off the Pacific Coast of Washington State and British Columbia.  Only some were US territory; the northerly ones belonged to Canada and were known as the Gulf Islands.   There were more than four hundred and fifty in total, ranging in size from little more than boulders jutting out of the water to hundreds of square miles supporting thousands of people.  Fewer than a sixth of them had permanent inhabitants. 

The one Tanner was headed for was on the northern edge of the American side, a twenty-five acre rock called Barrows Island.  It had exactly one residence.

Tanner brought the cabin cruiser in to the single dock, parking it beside the lone motorboat already tied up there.  Parkins hadn’t done so much as twitch for hours, but Tanner gave him another shot of the Rohypnol just the same.  The last thing he wanted was for his captive to suddenly wake up and start struggling while being moved between a boat and a dock.

That didn’t happen, though; Parkins stayed limp and unresponsive as he was hauled from the boat to a wheelchair waiting on the dock.  Tanner secured him to the chair with straps, then rolled him to the end of the dock and onto a cement walkway that lead through a stand of trees and to the base of the house. 

The first floor of the house was set into the bedrock of the island itself, two craggy boulders flanking the entrance like embryonic gargoyles.  The door was large, oak veneer over a steel core, and unlocked.  Tanner pulled it open by the brass handle, and wheeled Parkins in to a small, windowless foyer with another door beyond it.  Tanner left his prisoner there, going back the way he came and closing the door behind him.  The lock engaged a moment later with a loud
click
.

The inner door unlocked and swung open. 

***

Nikki stared across the table.  She was in an argumentative mood.

“Feeling lucky?” she asked.  “You should.  Congratulations, you got away with it.   I mean, we’ve been in this situation before, and it always—
always
--gets messy.  But not this time, huh?”

She laughed.  “Oh, come on, cheer the fuck up.  I’m sorry you didn’t get to indulge in your little hobby, but there’ll be other chances.  Everything’s just peachy.  You’re still breathing, we don’t have to dump a body in the middle of the night, and the cops have no clue.  If this keeps going the way it’s supposed to, we’re all home free.”

No answer.  Nikki hadn’t really expected one.

“So just relax.  Everything’s going to plan.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see if our new guest has woken up yet.”  She got up and walked away.

Dennison Parkins, gagged and bound, watched her go with wide, terrified eyes.

***

It was the adult diaper that decided Jack.

It meant a long trip, and that was one of the things he wasn’t prepared for.  He knew Remote wouldn’t choose a place too close to his own home, but he didn’t think he’d pick one too far away, either—transporting a prisoner a long distance had a high risk factor, and it would have to be done twice.  Jack had only a moment to reach a decision before his captor pulled out a hypodermic.

Jack pushed the tiny foil ball out from beneath his tongue and over his lips, jamming it into a small space between the duct tape sealing his mouth and his skin.  He hoped it would stay there; if it got back into his mouth he could asphyxiate on it.  Remote hadn’t bothered removing the many layers of duct tape to check inside Jack’s mouth, though he had run a bug detector over it. 

Inside the foil was a drug called Ro 15-1788.  Jack’s discussions with Remote had led him to believe the drug Remote was most likely to use would be from a particular class of sedative/hypnotics called benzodiazepines; Ro 15-1788 was a powerful chemical antagonist, able to neutral many benzodiazepines almost instantly—it was so effective that it could turn an addict’s overdose into withdrawal symptoms within minutes. 

But being a wide-awake captive did him little good.  As well, Ro 15-1788 had a short half-life, much shorter than the benzo, disappearing from the brain within the hour—it would only give Jack at most sixty minutes of consciousness when Remote would think he was sedated, and that would be Jack’s chance.  If he failed to find a way to escape through that window of opportunity, the sedative would take effect again and he’d be at Remote’s mercy.

And from what Jack could tell, the man didn’t have any.

When the needle had penetrated his skin and the sedative had flooded into his system, Jack had time to wonder if this was going to be the last waking experience of his life—naked, bound, the world receding into a gray, dizzy, blur. . .

But it hadn’t been.  He’d come to, still in the van, wearing a soaking wet diaper.  The burns and cuts on his body pulsed with pain.  The first thing he’d done was to feel for the foil ball stuck below his lip; it was still there. 

That had been just before Remote had given him the second shot.  Jack had swallowed the foil as soon as he felt the prick of the needle—he didn’t know how much time had passed, but he knew he couldn’t risk another long period of drugged helplessness.  He’d have to gamble that the journey was nearing its end, and his chance would come during a transfer from vehicle to building. 

He’d grayed out again as the injection hit his bloodstream.  The Ro 15-1788 wouldn’t begin to work nearly as fast; first, the hydrochloric acid in his stomach had to dissolve the aluminum foil, then the chemical had to be digested.

Jack had come to as he was being rolled up the walk.  He knew he had sixty minutes, maybe less, before he’d be comatose once more. 

And now, the inner door of the foyer was opening. 

***

Nikki hadn’t been that surprised at Jack’s plan.  Down beneath the layers of emotional armor and focused will, Jack had the soul of a martyr.  Nikki didn’t know if it was survivor’s guilt over the death of his family or a sublimated urge toward self-destruction, but Jack had never shied away from suffering for his cause—he had, in fact, welcomed it more than once.

So when Jack proposed that he torture himself in order to transform himself into a credible victim, it hadn’t been much of a shock.  What was harder for Nikki to believe was that she’d agreed to help.

“Most of it I can do myself,” he’d said.  “But not all.  If Remote’s as sharp as I think he is, there can’t be any doubt.  There have to be wounds that couldn’t possibly be self-inflicted.”

“This is seriously fucked up.”

“It’s necessary.”

“Christ, Jack—used to be you wouldn’t even let me watch, now you want me to do it to
you
?”

“I’ve obtained some lidocaine to use as a local anesthetic.  I won’t be in any pain.”

“Not at first, no.  But
after
—“

Jack had given her one of his long, evaluating looks.  “Afterward, I’ll deal with it.”

“So we’re just going to pass you off as some random killer we caught?”

“No.  It has to be convincing.  The killer operating in Sacramento right now that we’ve been researching—we’ll use him.”

“What, you mean actually go down there and catch him, first?  That could take months.”

“I’m not willing to wait months.  But we don’t have to catch the killer—just grab someone likely off the street and hold him.  Local news will report him missing.  We just need someone of the same general build and description.”  He paused.  “Shaved head and glasses would be good.  That’s a pretty easy look to duplicate.”

So they’d gone hunting, and come up with Dennison Parkins.  Now Nikki was stuck baby-sitting him while Jack played hostage—and she had absolutely no way of knowing where he was. 

“Remote’s too good with technology,” he’d said.  “We can’t use a tracking device, and he’d spot someone tailing him.  We do the transfer clean, and I wait for my chance.”

She’d driven the van to Mount Shasta, Jack following her in a beat-up truck they’d picked up second-hand. After swapping vehicles, she’d picked up the trailer containing Gordon Mason, and the very first thing she’d done had been to go over it with a detector that Jack had assured her could tell if there were any kind of bug or tracking device present. She hadn’t found anything.   It was a three-and-a-half hour drive back to Sacramento, and she’d been on the road for nine hours by the time she returned to the rundown little bungalow where they’d stashed Parkins.

***

Malcolm Tanner returned to the boat and left the island.

He wondered what his next assignment would be.  Now that Goliath was no longer under his care, he wasn’t tethered to the cabin.   His employer had sent him all over the US on previous missions; maybe he’d luck out and be sent to Miami or Key West.