Viral

by Robin Cook

  He nodded. “Have you ever seen Charles Kelley?” he asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Jeanne said.

  “He’s got some height,” Brian recalled, the man’s image seared in his memory. “Sandy-colored hair and very tall. He’ll stand out when he appears.”

  “I suppose this is a good car to follow someone without them knowing,” she said.

  “It’s perfect,” Brian agreed. “Completely nondescript.”

  “Do you think they’ll figure out they are being followed?”

  “It depends on the level of professionalism of the driver,” he said. “Kelley’s chauffeur, who is probably doubling as a bodyguard, didn’t impress me, which will lessen his index of suspicion. A true professional has to think that at every minute the worst can happen. I imagine for us, if there is to be a problem, it will be when we get off the main roads, especially if Kelley lives in a particularly isolated area. The key thing is always to have a few cars between you and your mark if possible.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Timing turned out to be near perfect, and they didn’t have long to wait for Kelley to appear. The chauffeur, whom they could see over the roofs of the intervening cars, suddenly stiffened, adjusted his hat—which had been tilted back on his head—and threw away his cigarette. In the next instant they got a very brief view of the tall, sandy-haired Kelley as he emerged from the hospital and in a blink of an eye disappeared from view, presumably ducking down into his limo. Brian responded by starting the car, saying, “Here we go.”

  He pulled out into the traffic but slowed as he neared MMH Midtown, to the chagrin of the yellow cab behind him. In a fit of displeasure and horn blowing, the cab pulled out from behind Brian and passed him, briefly slowing down as he came abreast to give Brian the finger before speeding off. The reason Brian was slowing was to make sure Kelley’s car pulled away from the curb before the Subaru arrived at the hospital entrance.

  “We’ve got to stay close until we’re relatively sure where Kelley is heading,” Brian said.

  “I understand.” Jeanne nodded her head.

  Once the Maybach was clearly traveling north, Brian picked up speed to catch up. After going four or five blocks he added: “I guess we can eliminate South Jersey because they would have gone in the opposite direction toward the Lincoln Tunnel.”

  Jeanne didn’t answer. She was holding on as best she could. To stay close to Kelley’s car, Brian was driving aggressively.

  It wasn’t until they crossed over the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge and connected with the Long Island Expressway that he was reasonably sure where they were going. At each major freeway intersection, Brian had rapidly closed the gap between the Subaru and Kelley’s Maybach to a single car, but then had dropped back again when it was apparent Kelley was not turning.

  “So, we’re heading to Long Island,” Brian announced, ostensibly relaxing and allowing as many as four cars between them. Jeanne eased up on the death grip she had on the passenger handle on the Subaru’s dash.

  Forty minutes later they turned off the Long Island Expressway onto Community Drive. It was an area he was familiar with to an extent, having assisted the Great Neck Police Department on occasion.

  “Now I have a more specific idea of where we are going,” Brian said. “I’d guess Kings Point. It’s certainly appropriately ritzy. Now it gets touchy. We’re going to have to close the gap.”

  Luckily there was still considerable traffic, but it dwindled the farther out on the peninsula they drove. By the time they got to Shore Drive in Kings Point, the Subaru and the Maybach were alone. Since the road was relatively straight, Brian let a considerable distance intervene, and slowed when he saw the Maybach’s brake lights go on before it turned off the road into a gated driveway. By the time Brian and Jeanne arrived, the wrought-iron gate was closing. He slowed to a crawl and stopped briefly. Looking through the gate, they could see a massive, relatively new, faux-Mediterranean home.

  “It looks like an impregnable oasis,” she commented.

  Around the property was a reinforced concrete wall at least eight feet high whose top was embedded with shards of glass. Above the wall were coils of razor wire. “Appropriately enough, it looks more like a prison from out here than a home,” Brian scoffed. “But I doubt it is as impregnable as it looks. The name of the road is encouraging.”

  “How so?” Jeanne asked.

  “I’ll show you in a second,” he said. “Now that we have the address, let’s check it out with Google Maps’ satellite view.”

  After driving ahead for a hundred yards, they pulled over to the side of the road. Most of the homes were hidden behind high walls, fences, or vegetation. Brian got out his phone and used Google Maps to bring up the area on his screen. Jeanne leaned over so she could see as well.

  “As I remembered, Shore Drive is literally a road along the shore, bordering Long Island Sound,” he said while he zoomed in on the image of Kings Point, New York. He then pointed off to the right out of the car window. “All these houses along this side of the road are shorefront.”

  “Got it.”

  Returning his attention to the phone, Brian zoomed in more and used his finger to point. “And here’s Kelley’s house. Do you see it?”

  “In all its glory. Rather large, I’d say.”

  “It is, and quite impressive. It’s also encouraging for our purposes. It’s got a swimming pool, a guest-house-cum-garage, and a tennis court with what appears to be a basketball hoop. Obviously, Mr. Kelley thinks of himself as quite an athlete. And look at the size of the pier with a cabana at the end. Pretty fancy.”

  “But the wall?” Jeanne questioned. “Isn’t that a major problem if we’re thinking of using a sniper rifle?”

  “That might be true if we were looking to shoot from the landside of the property,” Brian said. “But from the waterside you can see it’s a different story, which is why I’m pleased that Kelley’s property is waterfront. See how the wall ends at the water’s edge? It’s typical for security-minded people to spend lots of effort on the landside but nothing from the seaside. They don’t want to block their view, which is entirely understandable. It’s why they paid such a premium for the lot.”

  While they were concentrating on Brian’s phone, they weren’t aware of the car pulling up behind them until the police cruiser’s emergency light penetrated into the Subaru’s interior.

  “Oh, shit,” Brian murmured, glancing in the side mirror.

  She turned to look out the back window at the police car. “What’s the matter?” she asked nervously. “Is this going to be a problem?”

  “Not in the short run,” he reassured her. “But if it gets recorded, it’s got me situated near the MMH CEO’s house.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Not necessarily, I’d just prefer it didn’t happen.” Brian got out the car’s registration, his driver’s license, and his NYPD ID in anticipation of the officer’s arrival.

  A few minutes ticked by. “What do you think he’s doing?” Jeanne asked, continuing to peer out the back window.

  “I’m sure he’s calling his dispatcher,” he said. “The Kings Point PD is a modest organization. I’m sure he’s solo, and you’re supposed to let dispatch know what you’re up to.”

  A few minutes later the uniformed police officer got out of his cruiser, put on his peaked cap, adjusted his gear belt, then walked up to the Subaru. Brian lowered the window as he came closer.

  “Afternoon,” the policeman said. He was an older gentleman with white hair and fleshy jowls. “May I see your license and registration, please?”

  “Of course,” Brian replied pleasantly. He handed them out the window, being sure to keep the NYPD ID on top, which the policeman immediately noticed.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Retired NYPD?”

  “Yup,” Brian affirmed. “Retired from the ESU
not quite ten months ago to start a private security firm.”

  “Interesting,” the policeman said. “Excuse me, but I’ll be right back.”

  “What’s he doing now?” Jeanne fretted as she watched the policeman climb back into his vehicle.

  “Just checking if it all matches up,” Brian said knowingly. “He’s being appropriately careful.”

  A few minutes later the policeman got out of his car and returned to the Subaru. He handed back Brian’s license, registration, and ID. “Sorry to bother you people,” he said. “But the homeowners out here are sensitive about strange cars, particularly strange parked cars. They call us all the time. Are you lost? Do you need any directions?”

  “We’re fine,” Brian reassured him. “Thank you, Officer. Just making our way home.”

  “Okay. Have a nice evening,” the policeman said.

  Brian returned the documents to their proper locations, pocketed his phone, and put the Subaru in gear. “I didn’t see that coming, but it is a good lesson. You have to expect the unexpected in what we are doing. Regardless, I’d say we’ve made significant progress. Next up is finding out where Heather Williams lives. Once we have that, we can get down to business.”

  “How about we do it tomorrow?” she said.

  “I’m with you,” he said. “I need this. It will keep me from the reality of what happened this morning.”

  CHAPTER 37

  September 11

  As there was no place to pull over at the bed-and-breakfast Jeanne had found on Seaman Avenue just down the street from her former apartment, Brian had to double-park. In Inwood, as in the rest of Manhattan, double- and even sometimes triple-parking was a way of life. With his hazard lights on, he used his phone to text her that he was outside waiting.

  It had been just a little more than a week since he and Jeanne had followed Charles Kelley’s Maybach out to his fancy estate in Kings Point, and it had been an enormously busy time for both. They had continued their extensive and meticulous planning with progressive zeal and, in the process, became only more committed to exacting revenge on both Charles Kelley and Heather Williams. From a practical standpoint he attributed their efforts as the chief reason he’d been able to get through the immediate aftermath of Juliette’s death. Had it not been for the considerable concentration that the planning involved, he doubted he would have been able to emotionally weather the wake, the funeral, and the interment. Even so, it hadn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination. During his appearance at the wake, he tried his best not to look at Juliette’s body, which he was mostly successful at doing, and at the burial he kept his eyes closed during the ceremony and spent the time going over in his mind all the contingencies he could imagine for the plan.

  After Brian had left the wake at around two p.m., he’d gotten in his car and picked up Jeanne from her apartment on Seaman Avenue. She had not attended the wake since they had decided it best if they were no longer seen together by his family and Camila, so she’d be less likely to be implicated when all hell broke loose. By three they had been parked by a fire hydrant on Sixth Avenue in view of the building where Peerless Health had its home office. As a reward for their patience, they’d seen Heather Williams emerge at four p.m. sharp with her entourage and climb into a waiting Mercedes.

  As they’d started the following process, mimicking what they’d done with Kelley, they’d made a wager on where they might be going, with Brian favoring Greenwich, Connecticut, because of Heather Williams’s apparent love of horses, and Jeanne favoring the fancy areas of New Jersey for the same reason. Both had turned out to be wrong. When they found themselves again heading out to Long Island, they started to entertain the hope that the two like-minded executives lived in the same very wealthy town, which would make things a lot easier. But that had not turned out to be the case, as they’d sped past both turnoffs from the Long Island Expressway that led out to Kings Point.

  Instead, the Mercedes had left the expressway and then headed north on the way out to the second north-facing Long Island peninsula. It had turned out that Heather Williams lived in Sands Point, essentially across the Manhasset Bay from Charles Kelley’s house, reminding Brian of the fictitious East Egg and West Egg of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. As such, it was just as convenient as if they lived in the same town and maybe more so because Heather Williams’s house was also waterfront property. The difference was that Heather’s mansion was on a significantly larger plot of land that included a stable and a fenced-in paddock, which they had been able to discover by looking at satellite maps. Neither could be seen from the road. Like Kelley’s house, the property had a wireless controlled gate, a surrounding wall, a swimming pool, and a lengthy pier.

  Brian’s phone chimed, indicating he’d gotten a text message. When he checked it, he saw that Jeanne was on her way down. Accordingly, he got out of the car and opened up the back. The rear seats were down to provide more storage space, and a blanket covered what was there. Brian pulled the blanket aside for Jeanne’s things. Already present was his luggage, the rifle bag with the Remington MSR, assault tools he’d borrowed from the ESU Academy, night-vision goggles, a ketamine dart pistol, rope, a window anchor for rapid escape, his P365 Sig Sauer fitted with a different barrel and a suppressor, and a few other sundries he thought he might need. In his luggage was his French passport and as much cash as he could amass without causing undue alarm. For clothes he was wearing his black ESU tactical uniform but stripped of any markings.

  As he waited, Brian called on all his extensive experience as an ESU officer about to initiate a dangerous mission to keep his emotions in check. He knew all too well how important it was to maintain a clear mind so as not to make inadvertent, silly mistakes. Part of it was to control his breathing and even heart rate, but most important was to keep his attention homed in on the details of the plan.

  Jeanne appeared at the heavy glass art nouveau door to the six-story apartment building that housed the bed-and-breakfast she had booked when she moved out of her rented apartment, having given away what furniture and household equipment she had. Seeing she was struggling with a large shoulder bag, a roll-on suitcase, and another sizable valise, he rushed to help. As he had requested, she, too, was dressed in dark clothing.

  “Let me help,” Brian offered after pulling the glass entrance door completely open. He took the valise, which was a good deal heavier than he anticipated. “What’s in this?” he questioned with a quizzical chuckle.

  “Books I can’t live without,” she answered with a laugh of her own, though he could tell by her movements that she was on edge more than he.

  They got Jeanne’s things into the back of the car, and Brian replaced the blanket that served as a tarp. They were planning on leaving the car for a number of hours and didn’t want to invite a break-in. Luckily it would be in a safe, supervised place.

  A few minutes later they were heading north on Broadway en route to City Island, New York, part of the Bronx. Six days earlier they’d rented a black inflatable Zodiac boat with a forty-horsepower outboard motor, a mooring slip, and fishing gear from Butler Marine.

  “I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” Jeanne admitted, trying to get herself to relax now that they were underway. “Is this really happening after all this planning and preparation?”

  “I hope so,” he said, also coming to terms with the fact that his life as he knew it was about to be over.

  “Are you as angry now as you were the day Juliette died?”

  “Even more so,” Brian said. “The more we learned about the lifestyle of these extortionists, the more outraged I’ve become. I’ve lost everything I love and cherish while they wallow around in their swimming pools. And to add insult to injury, MMH is still dragging its feet after all that has happened just to provide Megan Doyle with a full copy of the hospital bill.”

  “I feel the same way,” Jeanne agreed.


  “Of course, things can still go awry despite our planning,” Brian cautioned. “There could be unexpected glitches, but everything is looking good, including the weather. Luckily both Kelley and Williams are such creatures of habit, which makes it possible for everything to fall into place.”

  The first thing that they had done after discovering where the two executives lived was to rent the Zodiac boat on City Island, a mere two miles across the Long Island Sound from both locations. They’d then spent the next four days supposedly fishing in and around Manhasset Bay armed with a pair of powerful binoculars. Since they weren’t using any bait, they didn’t have to deal with actually catching any fish. Instead, they were able to study both mansions, noting, as Brian had suspected, that there were no walls or fences on the waterside of either property. Despite constantly moving from place to place to avoid being at all suspicious, they’d quickly learned that both executives adhered to predictable workday schedules upon their arrivals at home.

  Although Heather Williams lived a bit farther from Manhattan than Charles Kelley, she was the first to arrive home, at five o’clock. When she got there, the first evidence was several dark-suited men who walked the grounds, even checking inside the substantial sailing yacht tied to the long, massive pier. A few minutes after they left the scene, she appeared in a riding outfit along with several beagles. With the dogs frolicking along beside her, she walked across the paddock to her nearby stable, where she was greeted by a stable hand. A half hour or so later she reappeared mounted on a horse. For the next hour, she exercised the horse in the paddock at varying speeds, even doing a few jumps. An hour later she was in the pool, swimming laps. Having watched this program over a few days, they understood it as her daily warm-weather routine while in residence in her Sands Point mansion. Online, Jeanne had learned that she spent July and August at her house in the Hamptons with her horses, often playing polo at the Meadowbrook Polo Club. All in all, from Brian’s perspective, he was encouraged that both the riding and the swimming would offer multiple opportunities for a sniper shot.