The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller

by Drew Chapman

  “What is going on?” Marsh said to himself, his heart now beginning to pound. Before he had time to investigate, a female voice, edged with hysteria, crackled over the store’s PA system.

  “Manager to dairy! Manager to dairy!”

  That was probably Rosario at the front. If there was a true emergency—a fire or a bomb threat—they had codes, red and blue, to yell over the PA, and Marsh had drummed those codes into the employees for years. Just saying Manager to dairy didn’t mean much, but the tone of her voice, the cracking of her vocal cords, made Marsh jump from his seat and scramble back into the store.

  He jogged past the produce section, breaking into a run by the time he passed the potatoes, and noticed that they were short on bananas and berries. He wanted to stop to check the rest of the produce, but a crowd of people had gathered around the apples and the peaches, blocking his path back into the area. The aisles at the D’Agostino were narrow, and the store, like all Manhattan groceries, was cramped. Why were there crowds in produce? Were they short on everything?

  “Manager to dairy!” Rosario’s voice rang out again, and Marsh forgot produce and ran, full tilt, for the dairy section. He skidded around the shelves stocked with tortillas—also low, he noticed—to find half a dozen customers and three D’Agostino employees gathered in a scrum around the milk section. A middle-aged woman in jeans and a sweatshirt was clutching four half gallons of milk in her arms, and a second shopper—a young woman in shorts and a tank top—was trying to pry them loose. An older man and a teenaged boy were on either side of the wrestling women, reaching into the center of the battle and either trying to dislodge the milk or break up the fight—Marsh couldn’t tell which. Two other shoppers, both women, were being restrained by two of Marsh’s employees, Jerome from the deli section and Suzie, a part-time bagger. The third D’Ag employee, Alicia from the back office, was dancing around the scrum, desperately trying to push people apart, but having little luck with that.

  They were all talking over each other, not loudly—Marsh guessed because they were putting their energies into grappling with each other—but fast enough that Marsh couldn’t make out what they were arguing about. He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed the woman in a tank top by the shoulder and started to haul her backward.

  “Hey! Hey! People! Come on, let go. Let go.” Marsh pulled hard at the woman in the tank top, but she had a lock grip on the milk-carrying woman’s forearm, and she wasn’t about to release her.

  “She’s taking all the milk,” the woman in the tank top grunted. She turned toward Marsh and snapped her teeth at his hand, barely missing him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Marsh yelled, pulling his hand away. “There’s no reason to fight over the milk. We’ll have more milk brought in this afternoon.”

  “No, you won’t,” the woman clutching the half gallons said. “No one’s got any milk left in the whole city. I’ve got three kids!”

  “I’ve got kids too,” the tank-top woman shrieked back. “You fucking bitch! Give us some of that goddamned milk!”

  “Hey, there’s no need for that.” Marsh stood slightly back from the scrum now and clutched at the hand that had almost been bitten. The whole thing reminded him of separating fighting dogs, which he’d tried once, when a German shepherd and a pit bull were scrapping in a dog run in Riverside Park, and he’d almost lost a finger. “There’s no need to use that language.”

  “Fuck you!” the woman in the tank top said, much louder now, so that people in other aisles could hear her. Marsh noticed that shoppers were gathering at both ends of the dairy section, craning their heads to watch the scuffle.

  “We’re good,” Marsh said to the knots of shoppers. “We’re fine. Please clear the area.”

  But nobody moved. A pair of teenaged boys got closer, and an older man grabbed an armful of cottage-cheese containers. “There’s no food anywhere on Third Avenue,” the old man said. “I’ve been to three stores. The whole city is out of food.”

  “That’s not true,” Marsh said. “The Gristedes is open. And I’m sure the Whole Foods has plenty of milk.”

  But the old man’s words seemed to energize the crowd, and before Marsh could turn around, a dozen more shoppers were charging into the dairy section. Men and women of all ages grabbed at containers of whatever they could reach: cream cheese, Greek yogurt, tubs of margarine, and plastic bags of shredded mozzarella. The first thing that came to Marsh’s mind was that none of these shoppers would be able to pay for the food they were grabbing. What they were doing was as good as looting.

  “Stop it! Everybody, calm down!” Marsh yelled. He shoved at a man in a Mets jersey, but the man hissed at him, yelling, “Don’t touch me, douche bag,” then threw a punch at Marsh’s face.

  Marsh’s head snapped back, and the room tilted on its axis. Marsh actually saw stars—flashes of gold and white in front of his eyes—but only for a moment; then he grabbed at Jerome’s shoulder to steady himself. He felt that he was about to collapse.

  “I got you, boss,” Jerome said, holding Marsh under his arm and trying to pull him away from the fight.

  “Gotta stop them,” Marsh said, but the room was still spinning, and the side of his head was beginning to ache.

  “We can’t,” Jerome said. “They’ve gone crazy.”

  Marsh threw his arm around Jerome’s neck. Jerome was a teenager, not more than seventeen, tall and scrawny, and Marsh pulled him close, half because he wanted to make Jerome understand, and half because he didn’t seem to be completely in control of his own arms and legs. “Jerome. We have to call the police. Call them right away.”

  “Already did,” Jerome yelled. He tugged Marsh farther down the aisle, away from the fight, but more and more shoppers were pouring into the dairy section, clogging the escape route.

  “When are they coming?”

  “Ain’t coming,” Jerome said.

  “Why not?” Marsh shoved away from Jerome, his balance returning. But he knew immediately why the police weren’t coming: if this was happening in his D’Agostino, it was probably happening in supermarkets all across the city. As if to confirm that thought, a large woman pushing an empty shopping cart bore down on him, not seeming to care that he was directly in her path, and he screamed in fright as she crashed into his knees, sending him sprawling to the floor.

  Then, the customers that he had loved so much began to run right over him, kicking at his arms and midsection, and Marsh thought to himself, Why are you doing this to me? But he knew the answer to this question as well.

  His customers were scared. And they were hungry.

  LOWER MANHATTAN, JUNE 24, 8:30 A.M.

  Agent Chaudry let Garrett Reilly sit in a holding cell on the twenty-third floor of the Federal Building all night long. She had taken away his belt as a precaution—even though the risk of his committing suicide seemed small—and confiscated his wallet and three cell phones as well. She had an agent bring him a plastic bottle of water and a pair of coconut-almond KIND bars, then let him sit there, by himself, without contact with the outside world, until morning.

  She wanted him to worry. She wanted him to sweat.

  But she wasn’t sure she got that result. She had watched through a two-way mirror as Reilly drank the water, ate one of the two KIND bars, then laid his head against a concrete wall and fell asleep. He woke a few times, paced the cell briefly, then slept some more.

  At eight thirty in the morning, she’d had enough. She had Agent Murray roust Reilly and bring him to an interrogation room. Murray sat Reilly behind a desk, in the crosshairs of two separate hidden cameras, handcuffed him to a metal loop on the table, then joined Chaudry in an observation room next door.

  “Ready as he’ll ever be, I guess,” Murray said.

  Chaudry wasn’t so sure, but time was not her friend—the director of the Bureau would be rolling into the Hoover Building in an hour. His first call wou
ld be to the New York field office. To her. She called DC and linked them into the video feed; then she went to the bathroom, splashed water on her face, reapplied a bit of lipstick, and walked into the interrogation room.

  “Good morning, Agent Chaudry,” Reilly said with a smile as she took a seat opposite him. He looked around the small, windowless room. “At least I’m assuming it’s morning. You look tired. No sleep?”

  Chaudry arranged a yellow legal pad and a file folder on the desk in front of her and picked up her pen. “Why did you choose the building in Newark?”

  Reilly seemed surprised by the question. He tapped the desk a few times. “I knew it from the J-and-A real estate portfolio. Newark is kind of broken-down, but on the upswing. A bunch of geeks wouldn’t stand out.”

  “But why that building?”

  “Unfinished and in bankruptcy, so there wouldn’t be a lot of guards or security. And I knew we’d leased some offices to a few tech start-ups, so I could use their Internet.”

  “You knew that how?”

  “I’d seen the J-and-A reports a few months ago. It said who leased space.”

  “And you remembered that specific building, with those specific tenants? Even though you were on the run?”

  “I remember everything. For instance, your quote in your high school yearbook. ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ Martin Luther King Jr. It’s nice. Maybe a little clichéd. But you were in high school, so you get a pass.”

  Chaudry took a deep breath. She knew that at least half a dozen FBI agents were watching the interrogation in the New York offices, and probably half a dozen more were watching the feed in DC. She would go slowly and not let Reilly throw her.

  “Where were you when the Newark PD raided the office?”

  “I ran down the back stairs.”

  “Where’d you go after that? Did you have a plan?”

  He narrowed his eyes and smiled. “Are you trying to figure out how I make decisions? What patterns I might follow?”

  “How about I ask the questions.”

  “Okay, sure. But shouldn’t we banter? So I’m relaxed and comfortable?”

  “I’m interested in how you see the world. We plug things like that into our database of perps. The information comes in handy in future cases.”

  “I like how you drop the word perp in there. Am I a perp? Perp. Perp. Perp. Weird word. But I like the way it sounds.”

  “You’re in handcuffs; therefore, you’re a possible perp.”

  Garrett tugged at his chain. “I keep forgetting.”

  “Does being handcuffed bother you?”

  “It would be better if I were naked, with a girl. But it’s okay. For now.”

  Chaudry noted that on her pad. “Where did you end up? After you ran.”

  “I overdid it with some alcohol. Maybe some Percodan as well. I passed out.”

  “You do that often? Drink too much? Take prescription medication?”

  Reilly shrugged. “I used to really like pot. That was my mood-altering substance of choice. I gave that up for prescription meds—as you know, from when you searched my apartment.”

  “How did you know that? You were watching?”

  “I was sent video alerts when you broke into my house. I thought you were cute, wandering around, trying to figure out who I was. Although at a certain point I did want to kill you for digging through my stuff. That was a violation of my privacy. People still have rights in this country. Or maybe they don’t. It gets confusing.”

  “Do you often want to kill people?”

  “That’s a little on the nose, isn’t it? I mean, if you want to trip me up, get me to confess, you could be a little more subtle.”

  “Confess to what, Garrett?”

  He smiled broadly. “That’s much better.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “I think you have a beautiful smile.”

  Chaudry exhaled. “Let’s talk about Steinkamp.”

  Garrett leaned forward in his chair. “Maybe you’ll find this offensive, but would your parents be pissed if you married, you know, outside the faith? You’re Hindu, right? If you brought home a half-Mexican guy like me? Would that be trouble?”

  “My father holds no prejudices. He’d be fine if I brought you home. Except that you’re a little young. And you’re a criminal.”

  Garrett laughed. “My dad, he was raised Catholic, but I’m guessing he wouldn’t have cared if I married outside the Church. My mom said he hated the whole thing—the pope, Rome, priests. Said they were a bunch of sexless creeps. She worried a lot, after he died, that he was in hell, you know, an apostate, because of his beliefs. Of course that didn’t stop her from totally screwing up her own life. I’m not sure where she thinks she’ll be headed.” Garrett looked at Chaudry again. “I never met my dad. Died when I was a baby. But my mom’s still around. You probably know that as well. Is it in my file? I have a file, don’t I? I hope I do.”

  Chaudry watched him carefully. She had prepared for Reilly to be combative or possibly mute, but not like this—so at ease. She had figured that he would be cagey with her—that he would skirt subjects, try to deflect attention. But this was different. This felt—she struggled to find the word—casual.

  “Garrett, you surrendered to me. You must have had a reason for that. You wanted to talk about what you’d done. . . .”

  “I was tired of being on the run.”

  “Not because you committed a crime?”

  “Because a man named Ilya Markov wants me hunted, and your pursuit of me was eating up my bandwidth. I figured it was more productive for me to turn myself in and start fresh.”

  “People turn themselves in because they are guilty of crimes.”

  “Look, if you want me to confess, I will; all you have to do is ask.”

  That caught Chaudry short.

  He smiled at her, a wide, disarming smile, the corners of his eyes creasing as he did. “Just ask, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

  Chaudry made a quick mental calculation. If she asked him to admit his guilt, was that coercion in the eyes of the law? Was that his plan? Perhaps it was a legal ploy for later, for the trial, or for some smart lawyer to twist into a wrongful-arrest suit. She racked her brain for an answer, but none came. She could feel all the eyes on her, all those older, white male FBI agents in both New York and Washington, second-guessing her, wanting her to fail.

  “Okay, Garrett Reilly, how about you confess to the murder of Phillip Steinkamp?”

  “Sure.” He looked up at the camera hidden behind a mirror in a corner of the room. “I killed Phillip Steinkamp.”

  She noted the time on her sheet of paper: 8:52 a.m. “How did you orchestrate it?”

  “I don’t really know, but I can make something up if you’d like.”

  Chaudry looked up, frustration leaking from the downturned corners of her mouth. “Then you’re not really confessing, are you?”

  “I’m trying to move the process along, Agent Chaudry. I’ve been here a while, and you’re wasting my time. If I tell you I did it, then you can investigate that, see that it’s not true, and we can move on.”

  “You realize your confession will hold up in a court of law.”

  “You’ll never bring me to a court of law because you’ll figure out—eventually—who the real killer is, and you’ll release me, and I’m actually hoping that you’ll apologize to me when you do, because this whole thing has been a giant pain in my ass. And when you do release me, it will allow me to finish the more important job at hand.”

  Chaudry stopped leaning on the table, sat up straight, and folded her arms. “And what important job is that?”

  “Tracking down Ilya Markov and stopping him from destroying the American economy.”

  “Tell me about this Mark
ov.”

  Reilly did. Speaking quickly and precisely, he described the man and his exploits, as well as his own attempts to track Markov down and predict what he would do next. Chaudry studied Reilly’s face and eyes as he wove the story, more than she listened to the actual words. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn that Reilly believed every word of it, down to the last detail of the Lufthansa flight he claimed Markov had taken and the seat he sat in.

  About five minutes into his story, the door to the interrogation room opened, and Murray poked his head in. Chaudry tried to hide the annoyance on her face, and Murray winced. He looked scared.

  “Can we talk?” he whispered.

  • • •

  Garrett was surprised to admit it, but he found that he enjoyed spending time with Agent Chaudry. More than that, he just plain liked her. He tried to reason out why that was.

  She was pretty, and that always helped, as far as Garrett and his relationship to females was concerned. He knew that was immature and simpleminded, but he liked looking at her thick black hair, and the way her red lips were set against her brown skin. He’d been teasing her when he asked whether her parents would disapprove of her dating a half-Mexican like himself, but he was interested in the answer nonetheless; junior year of college he’d tried hard to sleep with a Hindu poli-sci major from Artesia, but she’d turned him down flat every time. She’d pulled the “My daddy would disapprove” card, but he suspected it was her disapproval, not her father’s, that had kept them out of the sack.

  However, Chaudry’s looks were only part of the story for Garrett. She’d been tracking him, nonstop, for ten days now. He liked her single-mindedness. It reminded him of his own tunnel vision. She was ambitious too—he could tell by the way she held herself: tall, erect, chin up, eyes sizing you up the moment she entered the room. She was always looking for an advantage.

  All in all, that was a good package for Garrett. But there was something else about Chaudry that he couldn’t quite pin down, something that made her doubly attractive to him. He replayed their conversation in his mind, thought about the way that she had steered it, and the stern demeanor she presented in her look. And then he realized the answer: she was presenting a demeanor. That wasn’t who she was; Agent Chaudry was faking it. She had another side, and she was keeping it hidden from Garrett.