The Serpent's Kiss

by Mark Terry

  He moved through the living room into a dining room and kitchen. There was an odd vibe in the house, one he didn’t like. It didn’t feel quite empty. He took his Colt out of its holster and held it down by his side, moving more cautiously than before.

  “Hello?” he called out. “Anybody home?”

  He listened. Was there a sound? Something from above? A muffled rattle or thump?

  On the far side of the kitchen was a back door and a landing and a staircase leading to the basement. Instead of searching the basement, he turned back to the front stairs and moved upwards to the second floor, Colt held in both hands pointing upward. He took each step slowly.

  At the top of the stairs, his nose twitched. Whatever was setting off his Bad Vibe Alarm was up here. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom off a short hallway. He quickly entered the bathroom. Nothing.

  The first bedroom he entered was the master bedroom and that’s where he found Rebecca Harrington. Her ankles and wrists had been bound with silver duct tape. And worse, so had her nose and mouth.

  She had suffocated to death.

  23

  12:33 p.m.

  JILL CHURCH WAS PACING in front of the entrance to the Fisher Building when Michael pulled up. All the windows were open in the Honda, which immediately caught her attention. It was not a particularly warm day. It was, in fact, a little chilly. She shoved the thought to the back of her mind for a moment and climbed in.

  “You made good time,” she said. “I’m really sorry about this, but I’m going to need your car.”

  Michael shrugged, the perpetual scowl firmly plastered on his face. “Where’s your car?”

  Jill settled back and buckled her seat belt, rolling up the window. “Can we close the windows?” she said. “Why are your windows open?”

  Michael shrugged again and leaned over and cranked up his window. “Where to?”

  “I’ll drop you back at school. Where’s Ray?”

  Michael pulled forward into traffic on West Grand Boulevard. The gridlock had thinned over the last couple hours. Of course, more people were leaving the city now than going in.

  “I let him out,” Michael said. He sniffed.

  “Getting a cold?” Jill asked.

  “What?”

  “Sniffling?”

  “No. Just ... nothing. Where to?”

  “Like I said, I’ll drop you back at school.”

  “Okay. This about that Serpent thing?”

  He took a turn from the Boulevard onto the northbound Lodge. “Don’t drive so fast,” Jill said.

  “Mom, everybody’s going seventy.”

  “Just go the speed limit. Can you get a ride home from school from somebody?”

  He nodded. “What’s this all about?”

  “I can’t talk about it, Michael.”

  He took his eyes off the road to glare at her. “No shit,” he grumbled. “So what else is new?”

  Jill clenched her fists in her lap and blinked away tears that welled in her eyes. “I don’t need this right now, Michael. I just need your car for the rest of the day.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Michael ... you do understand that my job is important. Right?”

  “Sure.”

  She flinched at the lack of interest in his voice. “It’s not just that it’s what we live on,” she continued. “What I do. It’s important.”

  Michael didn’t say anything. He got off the Lodge onto the Davison.

  “You do understand that, right?”

  “Uh-huh. So what’s wrong with your car? Break down?”

  Jill said, “Um, another agent ... borrowed it.”

  Michael peered at her over his shoulder, then ducked back to watch the road. “What was wrong with his car?”

  Jill kneaded her temples with her fingertips. “Michael, I really don’t want to discuss this right now, okay?”

  “Why should this be any different,” Michael muttered.

  They drove in silence as Michael maneuvered from the Davison to northbound I-75. Jill wrestled with her emotions. It was just policy. Don’t talk about active cases with civilians. And that meant her son. It had cropped up from time to time in the past, but not lately. Lately he hadn’t wanted to talk about anything. It was like sharing a house with a deaf-mute. A deaf-mute with an attitude. All of a sudden, today, he wanted to talk about her work.

  Michael filled the silence by punching on his radio. A loud, belligerent voice filled the car interior: “...don’ mess wit’ J

  He knows what to say

  To the bitches that cum

  On his face.

  Yo babe—”

  Jill jabbed off the radio. “That’s ... that’s...”

  “Mom! I was listening—”

  Jill’s cell phone rang. She held up a silencing hand to her son and put the phone to her ear. “Jill Church here.”

  “Church, it’s Stillwater. I’ve got—”

  ”You are in such serious trouble! Where are you?”

  “Church, would you—”

  ”You know that Matt Gray wants me to arrest you. Look, just tell me where you are. I’ll meet you, take you back to the Federal Building. If you want, I’ll take you to the airport and you can just fly back to—”

  ”Agent Church, shut the fuck up! Rebecca Harrington’s been murdered.”

  It felt like her throat was swelling shut. “What? How—”

  ”I’m leaving, but if you want to take control of the scene, you’d better get over here.”

  “Over where? Control of the ... Stillwater, you have to stay there. This is in Ferndale, right?”

  “Yes. She’s in her bedroom on the second floor of her house. You’re going to have to bring the local cops, the Ferndale PD, into this, but you’ve got to make them understand—”

  ”Are you out of your mind?! You stay there! You stay right there until I get there! Don’t contamin—”

  He hung up on her.

  With a frustrated shout she slammed her fist down on the dashboard of the Honda. “God dammit! God dammit!”

  Michael’s eyes were wide. “Mom?”

  She pressed her hand to her forehead, took a deep breath, let it out. “We’re going to Ferndale. We’re going to a murder scene. Right now.”

  “Cool.”

  “It’s not cool!” she snapped. “This isn’t a game, Michael!”

  “I know.” He turned to look at her, ripping down the left lane of northbound I-75. “My father died as the result of a terrorist attack. Remember? I know it’s not a game.”

  24

  12:35 p.m.

  THE MAN WHO CALLED himself The Serpent stood outside Scott Hall with the rest of the spectators, taking it all in. It gave him a thrill to watch the chaos. It was a particularly exciting feeling, to watch a plan as complicated as this one come to fruition.

  So far events had gone pretty much the way he hoped they would. He was surprised by this, actually. There was a concept called “friction,” that meant, basically, that things did not go according to plan. It was a military term, first coined by Carl von Clausewitz in his “On War,” and referred to physical impediments to a military campaign. Clausewitz’s prime example of friction was the weather.

  The Serpent reflected that maybe he had been lucky. He remembered thinking about the wind just before detonating his gas device in the Boulevard Café. He remembered questioning whether he should have considered the weather in his planning. But his attacks all involved interior sites and the temperatures were all moderate. Sarin reacted faster in warmer environments, but it seemed to be working fast enough for his needs.

  Things had worked out so far, and he knew it was because he had planned carefully, because he was smarter than they were, and because he was keeping several steps ahead while at the same time setting up his master plan. But his plan was moving into its most complicated phase and the risks were going to get very high.

  He smiled, heart beating hard in his chest. You will know who I am, father.
I will be as famous and as revered as you are. And as feared.

  Moving slowly through the crowd, he acted like any other rubber-necking spectator. The Detroit Fire Department had set up an inflatable tent off to one side and used it as a staging area for moving people in and out of the building in their hazardous materials suits. It was here that he was headed, but part of his plan required a slightly different approach.

  Two yellow Detroit fire trucks were parked along with several ambulances, police cars, medical examiner vans and other vehicles. The Serpent walked toward them, everybody’s attention focused on the building and the removal of the bodies. Nobody guarded the vehicles.

  He walked right up to one of the fire trucks, eyes scanning it. He saw what he was looking for—a dark windbreaker with DFD stenciled on the back. Without breaking stride he snatched it up and slipped into it, heading toward the containment tent.

  At the tent, a uniformed Detroit cop stood lackadaisically to one side, his job primarily to keep the media away. With a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, hands stuffed into the pockets of the windbreaker, The Serpent nodded at the cop, and walked into the tent as if he had every right to be there.

  Once inside, he saw that the various agencies had clustered into their own corners, segregating themselves. He found what he was looking for—where the FBI had congregated. Each bag was stenciled with a name. Smithson, J. Corrigan, W. McMillan, F.

  That was the one. Frank McMillan. Kneeling down, The Serpent took out his cellular phone, made certain it was turned on, and dropped it to the bottom of Frank McMillan’s duffel bag beneath his street clothes.

  Mission accomplished.

  The Serpent, job completed, turned and walked out, nodding to the Detroit cop on his way out. This had been the riskiest thing he had done so far and it had gone without a hitch.

  The Serpent smiled, enjoying the nearly sexual flush of adrenaline. Yes, everything was going just fine.

  25

  12:41 p.m.

  DEREK WAS PARKED OUTSIDE William Harrington’s house in Birmingham. Birmingham was a little further north, straight up Woodward Avenue from Ferndale. Birmingham was trendy in a way that Ferndale could only dream of being. Birmingham was where old money lived. Not old money like the Pointes on the southeast side of Detroit. Birmingham had a population just under 20,000 people, but the median income level was slightly over $100,000 with a 3% poverty rate; the average home went for over $360,000. Looking at William Harrington’s house just off Main Street, Derek doubted the numbers he was pulling off the web via his tablet computer. It appeared to be a small cape cod-style house on a tiny lot. It was beautifully maintained, and the yard seemed well-manicured, but it was not a large, elaborate house. None of the houses on this street appeared large, but they all seemed older, well-cared-for, and richly appointed. The house had a one-car garage, which was closed.

  He dialed Harrington’s telephone, but nobody answered. An answering machine picked up with a male voice saying, “You have reached the Bill Harrington residence. I can’t come to the phone right now. Your call is important to me, so leave your name and number and I’ll get back with you as soon as possible.”

  The voice was deep, with careful, formal diction and enunciation.

  Derek needed to take a minute. He felt like he was being spun a bit, that events were controlling him instead of the other way around. He had moved his GO Packs to the front seat and he reached into one of them and took out the special cellular phone the Department of Homeland Security assigned their troubleshooters. They weren’t cellular phones, but hand-held modified Iridium satellite phones with a scrambler function. In theory, he could use it from anywhere on the planet due to a series of geosynchronous satellites scattered around the globe. The scrambler was state-of-the-art as well, having little or no obvious distortion.

  He speed-dialed #1 and held the phone to his ear. “Derek? It’s about time you called with an update,” growled the voice of the Secretary of DHS, General James Johnston.

  “I’ve been a little busy.”

  “I just heard there’s been a second attack.”

  “Yes.”

  “Will there be more?”

  “I haven’t heard any news of a threat, but I doubt this guy will quit until he gets whatever he wants.”

  “What does he want?”

  “According to the first call, he wants money, but I doubt if that’s really what he wants.”

  “Fine. Update me.”

  Derek ran it all past him. Every bit of it.

  There was silence on the phone, then Johnston said, “You punched out the SAC?”

  “Yes sir, I did. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about that yet.”

  “Not yet. Derek, was that necessary? Or are you just trying to get me to pull you off this assignment?”

  “I wouldn’t come off it now if you ordered me to.”

  Johnston sighed. “That doesn’t surprise me much. I’ll call him, see if I can smooth things over.”

  “I need something, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need you to get somebody over to a guy named Bernard Schultz at Stanford. He’s involved in something called SKOLAR MD. That’s spelled S-K-O-L-A-R-M-D. It’s a database. Anyway, Harrington was sending him chem terrorism scenarios that this think-tank was putting out. We never got a chance to track down the people here who were writing these things, but Schultz had at least one of them. Can you handle that?”

  “I’ll get somebody on it.”

  “Good. And e-mail them directly to me once you do.”

  “Will do. Anything else?”

  Derek hesitated. “Yes. Two things. See if you can track down all the names of people involved with the Center for Biological & Chemical Terrorism Research here at Wayne State. Names, contact information, C.V.s if you can get them. It might be tough. The U’s closed down because of the second attack.”

  “Can do. I’ll e-mail that to you, as well. What’s the second thing?”

  “Run a background check on an FBI agent named Jill Church.”

  “The one who’s babysitting you.”

  “Right.”

  “You have doubts about her?”

  “No, not really. But I feel like I’ve met her before and I don’t know why. She spent five weeks at Redmond. That might be it. But my gut tells me it’s something else.”

  “Is this a priority?”

  “No. The other data’s top priority. Especially the information from Schultz if you can get it.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Anything else?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “All right, Derek. Good work so far. But try to be more diplomatic with the authorities.”

  “That never seems to get me anywhere.”

  “That’s because you’ve never tried it. What’s next?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Derek—”

  ”What you don’t know can’t hurt you, General. Goodbye.” He hung up and stared at Harrington’s house. He needed to go inside Harrington’s house. He remembered going into Harrington’s office all too well. He hoped The Serpent hadn’t booby-trapped his house as well.

  26

  12:45 p.m.

  MARY LINZEY WAS STARTING to get nervous. After the last call from The Serpent, she had tracked down the FBI SAC, Matt Gray. During the Detroit terrorism trials post-9/11 she had dealt with Gray and understood him to be a by-the-book kind of FBI agent with some problems distinguishing between civil rights and criminal procedure. Since 9/11, of course, that was hardly unusual. The government had made it possible to call damn near anybody in the War on Terror an enemy combatant, ignore their civil rights, and throw them in a cell for as long as they wanted.

  There had also been hints and rumors about a possible sexual harrassment lawsuit against Gray by one of the female agents, but nothing had come of it. Nothing official, anyway.

  After she explained the second call, Gray had confiscated her phone and turn
ed her over to another agent, who had taken her to an empty room in the WSU Administration Building, asked her to sit down, then disappeared. It occurred to her that being locked in a room anywhere at Wayne State could be deadly, and her unease grew. Who knew she was here? Well, Fred Ball did. He’d been taping the entire exchange. Figures. How would he report it?

  “...representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation detained a local ABC journalist, WXYZ producer Mary Linzey, after she was contacted by the terrorist calling himself The Serpent...”

  She checked the door. It was unlocked. She opened it and peered out. The FBI agent who had delivered her there was in the hallway yammering away on a cell phone. He looked a little young, the prototypical Fed, with dark hair cut short and parted on one side, chiseled features, blank eyes, in a dark suit. He pulled the phone away from his ear. “Yes?”

  “What am I doing here?”

  “Please be patient, ma’am.”

  “Where’s my phone?”

  “Laboratory,” he said.

  “I want it back.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. That’s not possible.”

  “What if The Serpent calls me back?”

  “I sincerely hope he does, ma’am. Now, please return to the room and wait until I can—”

  She started walking down the hallway away from the agent. “Hey!” he shouted at her back. “Where are you going?”

  She broke into a run. Enough of this. She wasn’t under arrest. She wasn’t going to be detained while the biggest story of her career passed her by.

  She ducked into a stairwell and ran down three steps at a time, hearing the door slam above her. She was staying just ahead of him, and she knew this was crazy. Where the hell did she think she was going to go?

  Then she was out on the main floor, sprinting out of the building. She stopped. The crowd was gone. The FBI agent stepped out from behind her and grabbed her arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”