Blood Ties td-69

by Warren Murphy

  He concentrated, trying to remember the man's face. There was something familiar about him, something around the eyes. Where had he seen those eyes before, dark, deep-set, and deadly?

  And he remembered. He saw those eyes every time he looked into a mirror. They were his own eyes.

  Remo was doing ninety on the Edsel Ford Parkway. Screw Chiun. Screw Smith. There was something going on and Remo was going to find out how it concerned him.

  The newspapers had gotten one fact wrong. All three had written that the gunman had sprayed shots at both Revell and Millis, but Remo had been there. He had seen the man take his stance, had seen the angle of the shot, and he knew that James Revell had been the intended target. The gunman had shot Lyle Lavallette and killed Drake Mangan and tried to kill James Revell. Only Hubert Millis was left on the list. Remo wanted to see that gunman again. All he had to do, he was sure, was attach himself to Hubert Millis and wait.

  He hoped it wouldn't be a long wait.

  At Folcroft Sanitarium, Smith saw by his watch that the flight on which Remo was booked had left Detroit City Airport ten minutes before. He called a New York service and arranged for a private limousine to meet the passenger who traveled under the name of Remo Cochran and bring him directly to Rye, New York.

  That done, he drew a paper cup of spring water from his office cooler and settled down to call up the news-digest file from his computer. It was a constantly running data collector that keyed off the wire services and network media computers. Smith had programmed it to collect only those reports that contained certain buzzwords that indicated CURE might be interested. Stories about corrupt politicians would automatically be downloaded into the CURE files by the word "corruption." An arson story would wind up in the same file, keyed by the word "arson."

  The constantly expanding file kept Smith up-to-date on slow-breaking events that might one day mushroom into a priority situations for CURE. And when they got into priority situations and all other possible solutions had failed, Remo Williams-the Destroyer-was called on. The Ravine Rapist had been just such a case. There was no question of the man's guilt, but apprehending him and trying him and convicting him was so long and so unsure a process that many other innocent people might have been killed along the way. Remo prevented such a waste.

  Smith speed-read his way through the file. He took no notes, although lately he had noticed his memory was not so sharp as it once was and notes would have helped. But notes were dangerous so he forced his memory to respond.

  When Smith came to the string of reports concerning the shootings in Detroit, he reached for the button that would skip over that section, but he was stopped by a sidebar cross-reference:

  SEE FILE # 00334 Key: REMO WILLIAMS

  Smith sipped his spring water, wondering what possible cross-reference would contain Remo's name.

  When he saw what it was, his spring water went down the wrong pipe and it was a full minute before the coughing spasm subsided enough for him to read the wireservice story.

  It was datelined Newark, New Jersey, four days earlier. The report read:

  Police are still investigating the fatal shooting of an unidentified women whose body was found last night in Wildwood Cemetery.

  The woman, whom authorities estimate was in her mid-fifties, was found sprawled over a grave. An autopsy showed she had been shot at close range by a .22-caliber pistol. Three bullets were recovered from her body.

  Authorities are puzzled by the absence of identification, although the woman appeared to be well-dressed and the autopsy showed that she had been in good health prior to her death. A floral display was found beside the body and police suspect that the woman was placing flowers at a grave when her killer attacked. A preliminary investigation showed that the nearest grave belonged to Remo Williams, a former Newark police officer who was executed for the murder of a minor drug pusher more than ten years ago.

  Efforts to trace the woman's identity through friends or relatives of the deceased Remo Williams have proved unavailing. According to police sources, Williams had no family.

  Police speculate that robbery may have been a motive in the woman's killing.

  Smith shut down the computer. It was impossible. First there was the killer in Detroit who was using Remo's name. And now, after all these years, someone had visited Remo's gravesite. In all the years since the casket had been laid in that grave, no one had ever stopped to pay respects to the memory of the dead policeman. Smith knew this because a cemetery worker, who thought he was working for a sociological-research center, filed a monthly written report listing the patterns of visitation to selected graves in Wildwood Cemetery. There was no such sociological-research center and the report went directly to CURE. And every month it noted that no one had visited Remo Williams' grave. And now this.

  Who could the woman have been? An old girlfriend, carrying a torch after all those years? Not likely, Smith thought. She was too old. Old enough to be Remo's mother, in fact.

  "Remo's mother," Smith whispered hoarsely in the silence of his shabby office. "Oh, my God. It's all unraveling. "

  * * *

  The black car pulled into the deserted construction site like something propelled by air. Only the soft crush of its tires in the bulldozer-gouged earth warned of its approach. It was early evening and the construction crew had gone home for the day. A crane stood off to one side of the framework building, like a mutant monster insect.

  The black car with its tinted windows circled the crane before drawing grille to grille with the car already parked there. The dark-eyed gunman with the scar down his right jawline was leaning against the parked car. He flicked a cigarette away.

  "Williams." The testy voice emerged from the black car, disguised by the sealed windows. Williams walked up to the vehicle. Because of today's demonstration by Lavallette, he now recognized it as a Dynacar. So his employer had not been boasting when he said he had stolen one of the Dynacar models.

  "What do you want?" the gunman asked.

  "What did you think you were doing today?" the voice from inside the Dynacar demanded.

  "Trying to fulfill my contract," the gunman said. "I don't like it. You could have ruined everything."

  "What ruins everything," the gunman said, "is when you don't level with me and tell me what I'm up against."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Today, I would have had Revell except that old Chinaman got him out of the way. It was the same Chinaman who showed up at Mangan's apartment last night. Who the hell is he?"

  "I don't know," answered the voice from inside the Dynacar. There was a pause, and then the voice again: "What I do know is that I didn't tell you to hit anybody today and you've got to do it my way, on my schedule. Anything else is unprofessional."

  "I don't like being called unprofessional," the gunman said softly.

  "These are the rules. You take them one at a time. Don't hurry. No head shots."

  "Just tell me who you want done first," the gunman said.

  "Try getting Millis," the voice from inside the car said. "Revell is probably spooked by now and we've already put the fear of God into Lavallette. I think Millis."

  "Okay," the gunman with the scar said as the Dynacar abruptly slid into reverse, turned, and drove from the construction site.

  The gunman had not realized that the car was still running. No matter what the press thought about the Dynacar, it was one spooky machine.

  He got behind the wheel of his own vehicle and while he waited, lit a cigarette. It tasted stale. He had kicked the habit years ago, but this job was getting to him. Everything had been getting to him, ever since Maria had died. Half the time, it was painful to think of her and the other half of the time, he could not get her face out of his mind. Once she had been so beautiful and so loving.

  Something else was also bothering him. His early hunch had been that his employer was a business rival of Lavallette's and now he was sure of it. There was only one reason why he would have been upset
about the shooting spree at the Dynacar demonstration. He was one of the executives attending it.

  The man had told him to go take out Hubert Millis of American Automobiles. The gunman thought that could mean only one thing: he was a contract killer for James Revell and today he had almost killed the man who hired him.

  No wonder the man in the Dynacar had been upset. Served him right though for not leveling with the gunman from the start.

  Who was that damned old Chinaman anyway? Who was he working for?

  And the gunman had gotten the feeling today that there was somebody else with the old man. But he hadn't seen his face.

  It didn't matter. If either of them showed, or got in his way again, he was taking them down and he didn't care if it took head shots to do it.

  Chapter 13

  The sun was slowly setting over the Great Lakes region and there was a cooling breeze off Lake Erie. The leaves were thinking of turning color. Children, only a few weeks back to school, had fallen out of the habit of play. Rush hour was over; life was settling down and in their homes, people were eating dinner or preparing to feed their minds with a diet of prime-time pap. The peace of the fall season had settled over every part of the town of Inkster, just outside Detroit.

  Except for the American Automobile plant, which looked like a combat-ready military base.

  Brand-new American Vistas, Stormers, and Spindrift Coupes ringed the electrified fence surrounding the headquarters of one of the Big Three automakers, like wagons pulled into a circle. One ring of cars was outside the twenty-foot-high fence, and another inside.

  Six separate roadblocks, only thirty yards apart, controlled the single access road leading to the main gate and American Auto security guards, attired in green uniforms and toting semiautomatic weapons, prowled the grounds.

  It was an impressive sight as Hubert Millis stared down from his office atop the American Auto corporate building, smack in the center of the headquarters complex. He filled with pride, watching the American Auto vehicles arrayed to protect him.

  The head of the company's security said proudly, "Nothing will get through that, Mr. Millis." He was a young man in a neat brown suit who possessed a genius for security-systems analysis. He would have been prime FBI material, but American Autos paid him more than he could ever hope to earn working in Washington.

  Millis nodded absently and turned his attention to the television set in the room. The station had concluded its 120-second summary of international news, national news, sports, and weather and was now starting its twenty-eight minutes of coverage of the auto industry. Millis, a sturdy man with a nervous habit of wringing his hands, turned up the sound as he saw the picture on the screen of Lyle Lavallette.

  The announcer said, "Industry sources are predicting that Lyle Lavallette may be asked to head National Automobiles. This after the tragic death last night of Drake Mangan, shot and killed in the penthouse apartment of a Ms. Agatha Ballard, who was not believed to be acquainted with Mr. Mangan."

  "Right, a total stranger," Millis hooted. "He'd been humping her for three years." He remembered his security guard was in the room and mumbled, "Well, at least that's what I heard. Something like that."

  The announcer went on about industry sources. "They" said that Lavallette's new Dynacar might be the biggest thing to hit Detroit since Henry Ford. "They" said that National Autos was thinking of asking Lavallette to run the company so that it could control the development of the Dynacar. "They" said that Genera! Autos and American Automobiles might even follow suit, especially if this environmental killer kept up his attacks on auto-industry officials.

  "They" said a lot more but Millis did not hear it because he turned the television set off.

  "Bullshit," he said. "Every one of us fired that goddamn Lavallette because he's a goofball. It's going to take more than one damned gunman to make me turn over the company to that loser." He went to the window and looked out over the cars massed in the parking lot. "You sure nobody can get through?" he asked his security chief. "I don't think a bumblebee could get in here."

  "I believe you're correct, Lemmings," Millis said. "You know, though, I think it might have been more artistic if you had used different models from our car fleet out there. Sound advertising, you know."

  Lemmings looked confused. "I did, sir."

  "You did?"

  Millis looked through the triple-thickness window again. From this vantage point, every one of the encircled cars looked alike. He paid design engineers six-figure salaries so that American Automobiles' cars were distinctive and original and stood out from the competition and this is what he got?

  "They all look alike," Millis said.

  "Isn't that the idea?" asked Lemmings. "Mass production and all that?"

  "But they all look exactly alike. Funny I never noticed that before. Does everybody else's cars look exactly alike?"

  "Yes, sir," said Lemmings. "Much more so than ours do."

  "Good," Millis said. "Then we're still the industry leader. That's what I like around here. Hey! What's that?"

  "Sir?"

  "Something's happening at the gate. See what it is." Lemmings picked up the phone and got the gate. "What's going on down there, people?" he said.

  "Someone trying to get past the gate, Mr. Lemmings."

  "What's his business?"

  "He says he has to see Mr. Millis. And he won't take no for an answer," the security guard said.

  "So what's the problem? Just run him off."

  "Impossible, sir. He's taken our guns."

  Lemmings looked out the window and saw an assault rifle fly over the Cyclone fence, followed by a shotgun. They were, in turn, followed by assorted handguns and a truncheon. Then a telephone handset sailed after the weapons and the line in Lemmings' hand went dead.

  "I think we have serious trouble at the gate, Mr. Millis."

  "I can see that," Millis said. "Must be a hit team. God, do you think that gunman belongs to some terrorist gang?"

  Then another object appeared in the air over the fence. One man, and at that long distance, he didn't look impressive, but he floated up the Cyclone fence as if he were being pulled by a magnet.

  "No hit team," Lemmings said. "Just that skinny guy in the black T-shirt."

  "How's he getting over that fence? Is he climbing or jumping?" Millis asked.

  "I can't say, sir, but it doesn't matter. When he touches the electrified wire on top, he's gone."

  But the skinny guy was not gone. He kept going and landed on both feet, perfectly balanced on the electric wire that ran along the top of the fence.

  "Shouldn't he be dead now?" Millis asked.

  "No, sir. He knows what he's doing. He timed that jump perfectly to land on the wire with both feet. The charge is fatal only if the person touching the wire is grounded. "

  "I don't understand that 'grounded' business. That's what the electrical department's for," Millis said. "I thought when you touched a hot wire, you died."

  "If you ever saw a pigeon land on the third rail of a subway, you'd understand, Mr. Millis."

  "I don't ride subways. I own six cars and they all look alike. "

  "That man won't be hurt by the current as long as he doesn't touch another object while he's on the wire."

  "He can't stay there forever, can he? Unless these terrorists belong to a circus. Maybe they're all acrobats and wire walkers and like that," Millis said.

  "There's only this one, so far," Lemmings said, and as he spoke, the man on the electrified fence jumped and seemed to float to the ground, just as he had seemed to float up to the wire in the first place.

  "I'll have him stopped in his tracks," Lemmings said and dialed the main security outpost on the office phone. Hubert Millis watched the man in the black T-shirt run across the grassy ground that separated his office building from the first defense perimeter. A tiny puff of dust kicked up near his feet. Then another. But still the man kept coming.

  "What's wrong with those guards of
yours? Can't they hit just one running man?"

  "They're trying," said Lemmings.

  "What's the matter with you people?" he yelled into the telephone. "Can't you hit just one running man?"

  "Wait," Millis said. "He's turning. I think he's running away."

  Lemmings rushed to the window. The thin man in black had doubled back. The dust-puff marks of high-powered rifle bullets still pursued him, still missed, but now the man was running in the opposite direction.

  He vaulted toward the Cyclone fence in a high-arcing leap. This time he did not land on the electric wire, but cleared the whole fence and landed on his feet, running, on the other side.

  He kept on going. "We scared him off," Lemmings said happily. "My people did it."

  "Maybe," said Millis. "And maybe not. I saw him before he turned back. He was looking at that building on the other side of the highway. It looked like something caught his eye and made him change his mind."

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but that doesn't make sense. Obviously, he's after you. He wouldn't turn back after coming this far."

  "Yeah? Then why's he running toward that building?" asked Hubert Millis.

  Remo Williams had gotten past the American Auto guards without a problem. Like all fighters who relied on weapons instead of the powers locked inside their own bodies, they were helpless once their weapons were taken away.

  The fence too had been easy. The hair on the backs of Remo's arms had registered the electrical current even before he had consciously become aware of it. The few seconds he had spent balanced on the wire had given him time to scan the complex layout, and once on the ground, the ragged fire of the inner security forces-anxious not to shoot their own men-had been easy to evade.

  Millis would be found, he knew, on the top floor of the tallest building in the complex but as he cleared the space toward that structure, he had caught the glint of something out of the corner of one eye.

  On the roof of a building outside the complex, the dying red sunlight was reflected from something glass. Remo's eyes spotted the source of the light.

  A man was crouched on the roof. He was sighting down the scope of a long-barreled weapon and even at the distance of five hundred yards, Remo had recognized the man as the scar-faced gunman he had encountered earlier in the day.