The Devil's Teardrop

by Jeffery Deaver

  Parker smelled it too. Something sweet and chemical. Cheap paint on hot radiators, he guessed.

  The young agent gripped the computer's electric cord and wound it around his left hand. He explained, "It might have a format bomb inside--if you don't log on just right it runs a program and wipes the hard drive. All you can do then is unplug and try to override it later in the lab. Okay, let's see . . ."

  He clicked on the power switch.

  The unit buzzed softly. Geller was ready to yank the cord from the socket but then he smiled. "Past the first hurdle," he said, dropping the cord. "But now we need the password."

  Lukas muttered, "Won't it take forever to figure out?"

  "No. It'll take . . ." Geller pulled the housing off the computer, reached inside and took out a small computer chip. Suddenly the screen reported, Loading Windows 95. Geller said, "About that much time."

  "That's all you have to do to beat a password?"

  "Uh-huh." Geller opened his attache case and pulled out a dark blue Zip drive unit. He plugged this into a port on the computer and installed it. "I'm going to download his hard drive onto these." He tossed a half-dozen Zip disks onto the desk.

  Lukas's cell phone rang. She answered. Listened. Then she said, "Thanks." She hung up, not pleased. "Pen registers from the phone line here. All he's called is the connection for the on-line service. Nothing else coming in or going out."

  Damn. The man had been smart, Parker reflected. A puzzle master in his own right.

  Three hawks have been killing a farmer's chickens. . . .

  "Found something in the bedroom," a voice called. An agent wearing latex gloves walked into the living room. He was holding a yellow pad with writing and markings on it. Parker's heart sped up a few beats when he saw this.

  He opened his attache case and pulled on his own latex gloves. He took the pad and set it on the table next to Geller, bent the desk lamp over it. With his hand glass he studied the first page and noticed immediately that it had been written by the unsub--he'd stared at the extortion note so much that he knew the handwriting as well as his own and the Whos'.

  The devil's teardrop over a lowercase i . . .

  Parker scanned the sheet. Much of it was doodlings. As a document examiner, Parker Kincaid believed in the psychological connection between our minds and our hands: personality revealed not by how we form letters (that graphoanalysis nonsense that Lukas seemed so fond of) but through the substance of what we write and draw when we're not really thinking about it. How we take notes, what little pictures we make in the margins when our minds are occupied elsewhere.

  Parker had seen thousands of renderings on the documents he'd examined--knives, guns, hanged men, stabbed women, severed genitals, demons, bared teeth, stick figures, airplanes, eyes. But he'd never seen what their unsub had drawn here: mazes.

  So he was a puzzle master.

  Parker tried one or two. Most of them were very complicated. There were other notations on the page but he kept getting distracted by the mazes, his eye drawn to them. He felt the compulsion to solve them. This was Parker's nature; he couldn't control it.

  He sensed someone nearby. It was Margaret Lukas. She was staring at the pad.

  "They're intricate," she said.

  Parker looked up at her, felt her leg brush against him. The muscles in her thigh were very strong. She'd be a runner, he guessed. Pictured her on Sunday mornings in her workout spandex, sweaty and flushed, walking through the front door after her three miles . . .

  He turned back to the maze.

  "Must've taken him a long time to make it," she said, nodding at the maze.

  "No," Parker said. "Mazes are hard to solve but they're the easiest puzzles to make. You draw the solution path first and then once that's finished you just keep adding layer and layer of false routes."

  Puzzles are always easy when you know the answer. . . .

  She glanced at him once more then walked away, helped a crime scene tech cut open the mattress, searching for more evidence.

  Just like life, right?

  Parker's eyes returned to the yellow pad. He lifted the top sheet and on the next page he found a dense page of notes, hundreds of words in the unsub's writing. Toward the bottom of the page he saw a column. The first two entries were:

  Dupont Circle Metro, top of the escalator, 9 A.M.

  George Mason Theater, box No. 58, 4 P.M.

  My God, he thought, this's got the real targets on it. It's not a decoy! He looked up and called to Cage, "Over here!"

  Just as Lukas stepped into the doorway and shouted, "I smell gas! Gasoline. Where's it coming from?"

  Gas? Parker glanced at Tobe, who was frowning. He realized that, yes, that was the smell they'd detected earlier.

  "Oh, Jesus." Parker looked at the bottles of apple juice.

  It was a trap--in case the agents got into the safe house.

  "Cage! Tobe! Everybody out!" Parker leapt to his feet. "The bottles!"

  But Geller glanced at them and said, "It's okay . . . Look: there's no detonator. You can--"

  And then the stream of bullets exploded through the window, tearing the table into shreds of blond wood, shattering the bottles and spraying rosy gasoline over the walls and floor.

  19

  A thousand invisible bullets, a million.

  More bullets than Parker'd ever seen or heard in all his weeks on the range at Quantico.

  Glass, wood, splinters of metal shot through the living room.

  Parker huddled on the floor, the precious yellow pad still on the desk. He tried to grab it but a cluster of slugs pummeled the floor in front of him and he leapt back against the wall.

  Lukas and Cage crawled out the front door and collapsed into the hallway, weapons drawn, looking for a target out the window. Shouting, calls for backup, cries for help. Tobe Geller pushed back from the desk but the chair legs caught on the uneven floor and he tumbled backward. The computer monitor imploded as a dozen slugs struck it. Parker went for the yellow pad again but dropped to his belly as a line of bullets snapped into the walls, heading straight for him. He dodged the volley and lay flat on the floor.

  Thinking, as he had before tonight, that he was nearly as afraid of being wounded as he was of dying. He couldn't stand the thought of the Whos seeing him hurt, in the hospital. And he, unable to take care of them.

  There was a pause in the fusillade and Parker started for Tobe Geller.

  Then the Digger, somewhere outside, on a rooftop maybe, lowered his aim and fired toward the metal pan that the fruit rested in. It too had been placed there for a purpose. The bullets clanged off it and sparks shot into the gasoline. With a huge roar the pungent liquid ignited.

  Parker was blown out the door into the hallway by the explosion. He lay on his side beside Cage and Lukas.

  "No, Tobe!" Parker cried, trying to get back inside. But a wave of flame filled the doorway and forced him back.

  They crouched in the windowless corridor. Lukas on one phone, Cage on another. ". . . maybe the roof! We don't know . . . Call D.C.F.D. . . . One agent down. Make that two . . . He's still out there. Where the hell is he?"

  And the Digger kept firing.

  "Tobe!" Parker shouted again.

  "Somebody!" Geller called. "Help me."

  Parker caught a glimpse of the young man on the other side of the raging flames. He lay curled on the floor. The apartment was awash with fire but still the Digger kept shooting. Pumping round after round from the terrible gun into the flaming living room. Soon Geller was lost to sight. It seemed that the table where the yellow pad rested was consumed in flames. No, no! The clues to the last sites were burning to ash!

  Voices from somewhere:

  ". . . where is he?"

  ". . . going on? Where? Silencer and flash suppressor. Can't find him . . . No visual, no visual!"

  "Fuck no, he's still shooting! We've got somebody down outside! Jesus . . ."

  "Tobe!" Cage shouted and he too tried to run back into th
e apartment, which was filled with swirling orange flames, mixed with black, black smoke. But the agent was driven back by the astonishing heat--and by yet another terrifying row of black bullet holes snapping into the wall near them.

  More shooting. And still more.

  ". . . that window . . . No, try the other one."

  Cage cried, "Get the fire trucks here! I want 'em here now!"

  Lukas called, "They're on their way!"

  Soon the sound of the transmissions was lost in the roar of the fire.

  Through the noise they could just make out poor Tobe Geller's voice. "Help me! Please! Help me . . ." Growing softer.

  Lukas made one last attempt to get inside but got only a few feet before a ceiling beam came down and nearly crushed her. She gave a scream and fell back. Staggering, choking on smoke, Parker helped her toward the front door as a tornado of flames poured into the corridor and moved relentlessly toward them.

  "Tobe, Tobe . . ." she cried, coughing fiercely. "He's dying. . . ."

  "We've gotta get out," Cage shouted. "Now!"

  Foot by foot they made their way toward the front door.

  In a madness of panic and hypoxia from the burning air Parker kept wishing he were deaf so he couldn't hear the cries from the apartment. Kept wishing he were blind so he couldn't see the loss and sorrow the Digger had brought them, all these good people, people with families, people with children like his.

  But Parker Kincaid was neither deaf nor blind and he was very much here, in the heart of this terror--the small automatic pistol in his right hand and his left arm around Margaret Lukas as he helped her through the smoke-shrouded corridor.

  Look, Kincaid, you've been living life on Sesame Street for the last few years. . . .

  ". . . no location . . . no visible flash . . . Jesus, what is this . . ." Jerry Baker was shouting, or someone was.

  Near the doorway Cage stumbled. Or someone did.

  A moment later Parker and the agents were tumbling down the front stairs into the cold air. Despite their racking coughs and vision blurry with tears Cage and Lukas dropped into defensive positions, like the rest of the agents out here. They wiped their eyes and scanned building tops, searching for targets. Parker, kneeling behind a tree, followed their lead.

  Crouching beside the command post van, C. P. Ardell held an M-16 close to his thick cheek and Len Hardy brandished his small revolver. The detective's head was moving back and forth, fear and confusion in his face.

  Lukas caught Jerry Baker's eye and in a whisper she called, "Where? Where the hell is he?"

  The tactical agent motioned toward an alley behind them and then returned to his walkie-talkie.

  Cage was retching from the smoke he'd swallowed.

  Two minutes passed without a shot.

  Baker was speaking into his Motorola, "New Year's Leader Two . . . Subject was east of us, seemed to be shooting downward at a slight angle. Okay . . . Where? . . . Okay. Just be careful." He said nothing for a long moment, his eyes searching the buildings nearby. Then he cocked his head as somebody came back on the line. Baker listened. He said, "They're dead? Oh, man . . . He's gone?"

  He stood up, holstered his weapon. He walked over to Cage, who was wiping his mouth with a Kleenex. "He got into the building behind us. Killed the couple who lived upstairs. He disappeared down the alley. He's gone. Nobody got a look at him."

  Parker glanced toward the mobile command post, saw John Evans in the window. The doctor was looking at the grim spectacle with a curious expression on his face: the way a child sometimes looks at a dead animal, emotionless, numb. He may have been an expert in the theory of criminal violence but perhaps had never witnessed its practical application firsthand.

  Parker then looked back at the building, which was now engulfed in flames. Nobody could survive the inferno.

  Oh, Tobe . . .

  Sirens cut through the night. He could see flashing lights reflected along both ends of the street as the fire engines sped closer. All the evidence gone too. Hell, it'd been in his hand! The yellow pad with the locations of the next two targets on it. Why the hell hadn't he glanced at it ten seconds earlier? Why had he wasted precious seconds looking at the mazes? Again Parker sensed that the document itself was the enemy and had intentionally distracted him to give the Digger time to attack them.

  Hell. If he--

  "Hey," somebody shouted. "Hey, over here! Need some help!"

  Parker, Lukas and Cage turned toward an agent in an FBI windbreaker. He was running down a narrow alley beside the burning duplex.

  "There's somebody here," the agent called.

  A figure lay on the ground, on his side, surrounded by an aura of blue smoke.

  Parker assumed the man was dead. But suddenly he lifted his head and cried, "Put it out!" in a gruff whisper. "Damnit, put it out!"

  Parker wiped smoke tears from his eyes.

  The man lying on the ground was Tobe Geller.

  "Put it out!" he called again and his voice dissolved into a hacking cough.

  "Tobe!" Lukas ran toward him, Parker beside her.

  The young agent must have jumped through the flames and out the window. He'd been in the Digger's line of fire out here in the alley but maybe the killer hadn't seen him. Or hadn't bothered to shoot a man who was obviously badly wounded.

  A medic sprinted up to him and asked, "Where you hurt? You hit anywhere?"

  But all Geller would offer was his crazed shout. "Put it out, put out the fire!"

  "You bet they will, son. The trucks are here. They'll have it out in no time." The medic crouched down. "But we've got to get--"

  "No, goddamnit!" Geller pushed the medic aside with surprising strength and looked directly at Parker. "The pad of paper! Put the fire out!" He was gesturing toward a small fire near his leg. That's what the young agent had been shouting about, not the building.

  Parker glanced at it. He saw one of the unsub's elaborate mazes go up in flames.

  It was the yellow pad. In a split-second decision Tobe Geller had forgone his computer disks and grabbed the unsub's notes.

  But it was now on fire, the page with the notes on it was curling into black ash. Parker tore his jacket off and carefully laid it over the pad to extinguish the flames.

  "Look out!" somebody called. Parker looked up just as a huge piece of burning siding crashed to the ground three feet from him. A cloud of orange sparks swarmed. Parker ignored them and carefully lifted his jacket off the pad, surveying the damage.

  Flames began spurting through the wall behind them. The whole building seemed to sink and shift.

  The medic said, "We gotta get out of here." He waved to his partner, who ran up with a gurney. They eased Geller onto the stretcher and hurried off with him, dodging falling debris.

  "We gotta pull back!" a man in a black fireman's coat shouted. "We're going to lose the wall! It's gonna come down on top of you!"

  "In a minute," Parker answered. He glanced at Lukas. "Get out of here!"

  "You can't stay here, Parker."

  "The ash is too fragile! I can't move it." Lifting the pad would crumble the ash into powder and they'd lose any chance to reconstruct the sheets. He thought of the attache case inside the apartment, now destroyed, and the bottle of parylene in it, which he could've used to harden the damaged paper and protect it. But all he could do now was cover the ash carefully and hope to reassemble it in the lab. A gutter fell from the roof and stabbed the ground, end first, inches away from him.

  "Now, mister!" the fireman shouted.

  "Parker!" Lukas called again. "Come on!" She retreated a few yards but paused, staring at him.

  Parker had an idea. He ran to the duplex next door, pulled off the storm window and broke the glass with a kick. He picked up four large pieces. He returned to the pad, which lay like a wounded soldier on the ground, and dropped to his knees. He carefully sandwiched the two sheets of scorched paper--the only ones with writing on them--between pieces of glass. This was how document examiners
in the Bureau used to protect the samples sent to them for analysis before the invention of thin plastic sheets.

  Chunks of burning wood fell around him. He felt a stream of water as the firemen trained a hose on the flames above him.

  "Stop it!" he shouted to them, waving his arm. Worried that the water would further damage the precious find.

  Nobody paid him any attention.

  "Parker," Lukas shouted. "Now! The wall's about to come down!"

  More two-by-fours crashed to the ground. But still he remained on his knees, carefully tucking bits of ash into the sandwich of glass.

  Then, as timbers and bricks and fiery siding fell around him, Parker slowly rose and, holding the glass sheets in front of him, he walked away from the flames, perfectly upright and taking gentle steps, like a servant carrying a tray of wine at an elegant cocktail party.

  *

  Another picture.

  Snap.

  Henry Czisman stood in an alleyway across the street from the burning building. Sparks were flying leisurely into the sky like fireworks seen from miles away.

  How important this was. Recording the event.

  Tragedy is so quick, so fleeting. But sorrow isn't. Sorrow is forever.

  Snap.

  He took another picture with his digital camera.

  A policeman lying on the ground. Maybe dead, maybe wounded.

  Maybe playing dead--when the Digger comes to town people do whatever they must to stay alive. They tuck their courage away and huddle until long after it's safe to get up. Henry Czisman had seen this all before.

  Picture: the wall of the duplex falling in a fiery explosion of beautiful embers.

  Picture: a trooper with three fingers of blood cascading down the left side of her face.

  Picture: the illumination from the flames reflected in the chrome of the fire trucks.

  Snap, snap, snap . . . He couldn't take enough shots. He was driven to record every detail of the sorrow.

  He glanced up the street and saw several agents talking to passersby.

  Why bother? he thought. The Digger's come and the Digger's gone.

  He knew he too should go. He definitely couldn't be seen here. So he started to slip his camera into the pocket of his jacket. But then he glanced back at the burning building and saw something.

  Yes, yes. I want that. I need that.