Red Tide

by G. M. Ford

  “These young men are graduate students,” the man said indignantly. “Engineering students at the university. I assure you…they have no time for any such foolish—”

  With a grace and speed belied by her advanced age and general obesity, Patricia Mitchell burst through the doorframe and into the room. She pointed at the couch. “There it is,” she shouted. “There’s my paper right there.”

  She got halfway across the room before the one with the bad eye rose to his feet and stepped into her path. “I think you better…” he began, but it was too late then, as she already had an arm through the opening between Scar and Bad Eye and wasn’t about to be stopped by anything short of a Mack truck.

  From the doorway, Jeffrey Unger heard himself call her name, but the sound of his voice was lost in space as the old woman snatched the folded newspaper from the couch and waved it around the room like a trophy. “Here’s my damn paper,” she announced triumphantly. “Just like I said.”

  Except that Jeffrey’s eyes weren’t on the purloined paper. They were still glued to the couch where the shiny automatic pistol lay on its side, with its barrel pointing directly his way.

  For a moment, the room seemed to fall into a state of suspended animation. Nobody moved. Silence hung like icicles from the walls, in the seconds before the guy with the scar picked up the gun and backhanded Patricia Mitchell across the face with all his might, sending her shattered glasses flying off into space, as she twirled nearly a complete circle before pinwheeling to the floor in a pile of tangled limbs and bloody spittle.

  Without willing it so, Jeffrey Unger found himself rushing forward, his arms extended to break her fall, his mouth agape to cry in protest. A powerful hand tore at his shoulder, trying to halt his advance. He shrugged it off and kept moving her way. All around him, the room was set in motion. The one with the bad eye was bringing his fist up from the floor. Somebody tackled him from behind, forcing him to his knees, speeding him closer to the rising fist and the flash of jagged silver he noticed for the first time on his way down and then the icy sense of deflation in his abdomen, as if somebody let the air out of his balloon, right before the weight on his back drove him facedown onto the carpet, where his instincts took over in some survival reaction to the pain in his gut, sending him bucking like a rodeo horse, sending whoever was on top of him flying, allowing him to roll once to the right and drag himself to his feet.

  Against all odds, Patricia Mitchell had also regained her footing. Half blind, broken-toothed and bloody, one hideous purple jellyfish of an eye winking and blinking as she flailed blindly at the surrounding air, she emitted a low keening sound from somewhere deep in her chest as she sought to damage her attackers.

  For a fleeting moment, Jeffery Unger thought he might have peed his pants in fear. His shame and consternation were replaced by genuine terror when he looked down at himself and realized the warm liquid rolling down the front of his legs was not urine but thick red arterial blood. That he’d been stabbed. And then a powerful hand grabbed the front of his hair and pulled his head back…back until he dropped to his knees again, until he was staring straight up at the ceiling like a supplicant at mass and the prick of steel twitched his throat in the instant before the ripping sound began, and the dam broke all over him and he threw his eyes upward in time to see the one with the scar step behind Miss Mitchell, raise his arm and then drive something into her back.

  Then again. And again, until the old woman’s great will to live sent her staggering across the room, dragging a pair of them with her as she sought salvation in the light, only to collapse in the corner behind the front door with three of them piled on top of her. The knife rising and falling as she groaned and writhed on the dirty brown linoleum.

  The doorbell rang. The knife paused in midair. Everyone froze…except Patricia Mitchell, whose movements had been reduced to a series of spasms and ticks that rocked her out-of-control body like seismic tremors.

  Holmes held up a hand. A hand that held a serrated commando knife. A hand red with blood sticking out of a shirtsleeve covered with blood, inside a suit jacket covered with blood. The doorbell rang again. Three insistent rings. Then another three.

  Using his clean hand, Holmes pulled open the front door. Just a crack. No more than six inches before he stopped it with his toe and then leaned his face into the opening.

  Two men. A Hispanic and a tall white man. The Hispanic was waving a gold badge in his face. Detective. Seattle Police Department. Reuben Santiago Gutierrez.

  Fortunately for Holmes he didn’t have to speak. The cop did it for him.

  “We were hoping you could help us,” the cop said. A pair of gold front teeth glittered in the afternoon sun.

  Holmes managed a smile and a nod. Over his left shoulder, Patricia Mitchell’s death throes had become more violent. Only the combined weight of a trio of men kept her from flopping about like a fish on a riverbank. Worse yet and far more immediate, one or more of her stab wounds had severed an artery somewhere inside her, sending a river of red running across the linoleum floor toward the front door, toward Holmes’s foot in the doorjamb and the policeman standing no more than a yard away.

  Holmes held his breath as the cop slipped a pair of photographs from a manila envelope. The river of blood had reached his shoe. The only thing preventing the dark syrupy line from running under the door and into the cops’ view was the black rubber heel of his cordovan wingtip. The cop held the first photograph in front of his face.

  Martin. Years before. When he was Brian Bohannon. His hair was black and he was thinner. Holmes felt a wave of regret. Not for killing him, but for having chosen him at all. For not going along with his instincts. For valuing insider information above character. A gray van? He shook his head, inwardly thanking himself for ditching the gray van and stealing another. The cop asked about the picture. No, he’d never seen that face before. The blood had found the gap beneath his instep and was worming its way beneath his foot. He pressed down harder on the foot, trying to flatten his arch. The floor emitted a long low groan. Sounded a lot like a fart. The cop looked up at him disgustedly.

  Holmes smiled. The second picture was more recent. They’d cropped out the knife wound across the throat but there wasn’t any doubt about it. Martin was dead of unnatural causes. And recently too.

  Holmes shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Wished he could have helped. Sorry. The cop thanked him and returned the photos to the envelope. Holmes watched the pair until they were back on the sidewalk, turned right and disappeared behind the overgrown shrubbery. Only then did he close the door and turn back to the room.

  32

  “Guy never even blinked,” Corso said.

  “Who’s that?” Gutierrez asked.

  “Coupla houses back. The East Indian guy. When you showed him the autopsy photo, he never even blinked. Looked at it like it was a laundry list. Most everybody else winced or turned away or something…you know.”

  “Strong stomach, I guess.”

  “Sure didn’t sound that way,” Corso commented.

  Gutierrez burst out laughing. “Can you believe that guy? Rips one with me standing right there in front of him.” Shaking his head.

  They picked their way carefully up the sidewalk. The ancient roots of the maples and elms lining Fifteenth Avenue had turned the chunks of sidewalk into a jumble, tilted this way and that, cracked and broken, lifted upward as if some giant hand had cast the pieces of concrete like dominos.

  They stayed at it. Four more houses. All the way to the end of the block. Across the street, Dougherty and Charly Hart had finished their side and were headed back to the car. The strands of afternoon sunlight had withered to gray, leaving only the smell of leaves and saltwater in the air.

  “I’m starting to think this guy Bohannon was just driving around aimlessly,” Gutierrez said. He waved an arm. “With all that’s going on, I’d hate to think we were wasting our time on a wild-goose chase.”

  They angled across t
he street to Hart and Dougherty.

  “Anything?” Gutierrez asked.

  Charly Hart shook his head. “Had a bunch of people say they noticed a gray van parked in the neighborhood for the past week or so. I called it in. They’re gonna send a couple of squad cars to sweep the area. Maybe we’ll pick it up that way. You?”

  “Bunch of scared people take one look at my badge and want to know what’s going on downtown and whether they ought to get out of the city.”

  Hart looked at Dougherty. “Where to?”

  “From here he went to Broadway, but we already did that, so I guess it’s the waterfront next.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I need to use the loo,” Dougherty said.

  “We’ll stop at the pizza joint,” Charly Hart said.

  The sight of the tall woman told Holmes what he needed to know. They were retracing Martin’s route of the previous night. Investigating the dead man on her floor. Had to be. The tall white guy was probably her attorney. He expelled a huge breath. Whatever they thought they might know…it was too late now. But how close…how close to everything coming apart…to everything he’d lived for…to everything…he felt the rage welling in his chest…could hear the pounding of blood in his temples and feel himself beginning to sweat.

  He kept the dusty curtain pulled aside until he saw them ease into traffic and disappear from sight. When he turned back to the room, the look on his face was enough to freeze-frame the five men who lay scattered about the floor like discarded toys.

  He marched straight across the room to Wesley. “Give me the gun,” he said.

  Again, everyone stiffened. In the weeks before they’d left for Canada, it was all Wesley talked about. How when he got to America he could get a gun of his own.

  “It’s mine,” Wesley said.

  Holmes held out his hand. “Give me the damn gun.” In a quieter voice this time.

  Wesley shook his head, began to speak, and, in the amount of time it took Wesley’s lips to twitch, Holmes snatched the gun from his hand and straight-armed him in the chest, sending him staggering backward, tripping over Jeffrey Unger’s lifeless form, down on the seat of his pants with his hands spread out behind him.

  Holmes stepped over the body and shook the automatic in Wesley’s face. “Where did you get this?”

  Wesley’s eyes rolled in his head. He scurried backward like a crab until he reached the wall.

  “Martin got it for him,” Paul said. “First day we got here.”

  “All he does is play with it,” added Samuel.

  Wesley was on his feet now. “It’s mine,” he said again. “Give it to me.”

  Holmes ignored him. “All of you. Get your things.” They were moving now. “Your canisters are in the cars. We’re going to the hotel now instead of later tonight. You each have your room keys. The rooms are paid for. Do not contact one another once you get there. Hurry.” Wesley did not move. His scar seemed almost to glow. When Holmes stepped his way, Wesley steeled himself but did not break and run.

  “It’s mine,” he insisted.

  “Listen to me, Madhu,” Holmes said, using his old name. “This thing is bigger than either of us. It’s about our mothers and fathers and wives and daughters. It’s about what happened to all of us and how they saw us as dogs.”

  “Give…”

  Holmes showed the palm of his hand. “You remember your mother, Madhu?”

  He watched as Madhu Verma processed the question. “I do,” Madhu said. He pointed at his own head. “I remember the white streak in her hair.”

  “These are the people,” Holmes whispered. “Perhaps they were not the people in charge. Perhaps they only read about it in the newspaper, or saw it on the television, but they are the ones who pushed it from their memory. They said, ‘Ho…there are millions and millions of them. They really don’t care that much about these things.’”

  Wesley made eye contact with Holmes for the first time. “My mother was very beautiful,” he said, daring Holmes to dispute the fact. “She was…I remember the food she cooked. The…” He stopped himself. Only lately had he allowed himself the luxury of thinking about his family and, even then, only in the vaguest of terms. Nothing that could bring a taste to his mouth or a picture to his eye. Before that…before that, staying alive had taken every bit of his energy. The present had completely swallowed the past.

  Holmes put a hand on his shoulder. Wesley looked down at the hand as if he were going to bite it.

  “Clean yourself up. Get your things,” Holmes said. “We must go now.”

  Wesley hesitated…the muscles along the sides of his jaw rippled like snakes. He ducked out from beneath the hand and headed for the stairs.

  Holmes watched as Wesley shouldered his way past the others, who by now were on their way down the stairs, each carrying a small black suitcase.

  Holmes pointed at Samuel and Paul. “You have everything?” They said they did. He tossed Samuel the car keys. “Go,” he said.

  Paul cast his eyes at the bleeding bodies on the floor.

  “Leave them,” Holmes said. “It is over for them now.”

  Wesley came down the stairs at a lope and stood next to Nathan. Holmes tossed Nathan the keys to the van. “Get going,” he said. “The van is a deep red color. It’s in the supermarket parking lot.”

  Holmes listened to the sounds of their retreating feet as he looked around the room. The old woman lay in a crumpled heap, her skirt halfway up her thick thighs, her life’s blood spread out across the cheap linoleum like a fan. The man’s white shirt was, by now, nearly red. His lower left leg had come to rest at a horribly unnatural angle. Holmes winced, turned his eyes away and headed for the door with Bobby Darling trailing along in his wake. They turned right at the sidewalk and strode the block and a half to the black Mercedes parked under the overhanging trees along the curb.

  Albert Lehane stood with his hands on his hips, watching the mayor’s press conference on the huge plasma TV in the newsroom. His face was still tingling from the news. A hundred sixteen dead. Genetically engineered Eboli virus that killed immediately and then died immediately. Dean had introduced the assemblage of dignitaries onstage, given out the basic information and then allowed the Stafford woman to handle the scientific end of the briefing. Twenty minutes later, having assured the multitude that everything possible was being done, that names could not be released pending notification of next of kin, he’d begun fielding questions from the media. Predictably, he’d started with the national media, Wolf Blitzer from CNN, Dan Rather in a brown tweed jacket, and then worked his way down to the local affiliates, where Kitty and the number one team had gotten her question in first. Good girl.

  And then…while a question was being asked and the camera was trained on the audience, somebody began elbowing their way through the crowd. Brows furrowed and heads turned but the jostling continued until the pair had pushed their way to the front of the crowd. Gary Dean looked down at the commotion and recognized Jim Sexton.

  Albert Lehane leaned forward and squinted at the screen. “What the hell is he doing there?” he demanded. He looked up at Robert Tilden. “Did you send…” he began.

  Tilden shook his head vigorously. “No sir…you sent him over to Harborview.”

  “I’ll be goddamned. What in hell does he think he’s doing?”

  And then Jim was shouting at the mayor, who leaned over to listen and then straightened up with a quizzical look on his face.

  “I’ll have his ass for this,” Lehane announced.

  Gary Dean got back behind the mic. “The question…”—he cocked a boyish eyebrow—“so strenuously tendered…was as to whether we have had any additional deaths other than those in the bus tunnel.” He looked down at Jim with a mixture of annoyance and pity and then back out at the crowd.

  “As of this time we have no—”

  Something stopped his recitation. “Excuse me,” he said into the mic and then turned and spoke to someone behind him. When t
he camera angle shifted, Seattle Police Chief Harry Dobson could be seen whispering in the mayor’s ear. Gary Dean was doing his best to keep his face placid, but a slight tremor in his cheek suggested otherwise.

  He’d lost some of his color by the time he got back to the mic. “I am given to understand…and this is completely new information to me…I am given to understand that we have indeed had at least two more deaths.” The room broke into a roar. “A county pathologist and her assistant…” But by then the crowd had begun to drown him out. The camera panned to Jim Sexton, smiling…Channel Five microphone clutched in his hand.

  Albert Lehane pointed at the image and looked up at Robert Tilden.

  “That’s my boy,” he announced.

  33

  The mayor was livid. “How could you hang me out to dry like that?”

  Harry Dobson kept his face bored and his voice neutral. “The information was and is part of an ongoing homicide investigation. It’s not the kind of thing we release.”

  “The information could be germane to finding these damn people who are threatening to destroy—”

  Harry interrupted. “The feds sure as hell don’t think so. The only information I know of that could possibly be of use to a terrorist investigation is the route that Mr. Bohannon took while driving around the city last night. I’ve got a pair of competent men checking that angle right now.” He threw a hand at the collection of agency heads huddled on the far side of the room. “You think these ham-handed feds here could do a better job than my men…you’re just plain crazy.”

  “Makes us look like small-time operators out for ourselves.”

  Harry shook his head. “I respectfully disagree, Your Honor. What it makes us look like is a competent law enforcement agency, following standard investigative procedures to the letter.”