Level 26

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  “Hey, this isn’t the way to the mounted stables,” she said. “Sir? I think you’re going the wrong way. Sir? Hey, buddy!”

  “I never said anything about the stables,” Ken Martin replied quietly.

  “Isn’t that where we’re going?”

  “No,” he said. “Dr. Haut will explain everything.”

  This made no sense to Debra or the other three widows. There was nothing down here but the underside of the East River Drive. Why would Dr. Haut want them there?

  Dark turned to Jim Franks, who had buried his face in his palms. “Mr. Franks, unless you want the deaths of four more women on your conscience, you’re going to pull yourself the fuck together and help me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Franks. “I know I’m trained for this, but…”

  That was a macho lie right there, Dark knew. You might be trained to deal with the pain and suffering of others, and trained to perform certain functions that may save the lives of strangers. But no one—absolutely no one—is trained to deal with the sight of their own loved one dangling from a joist in a dank basement, shit running down her legs and a suicide note nearby.

  But Dark needed him to pretend for now, and to believe his own lie. It seemed to be working. The sniffing stopped, and Franks took a cleansing breath.

  “If we act fast, we might be able to catch the guy who did this to your wife,” Dark told him.

  “What do you need?”

  “Do you have a car?”

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  Debra watched the driver’s eyes in the rearview. He caught her looking at him, then quickly turned his eyes back to the road.

  The van was winding down a ramp now, headed toward the waterfront. At first Debra thought Dr. Haut might be trying to take them to Ground Zero—something she told him she would not be doing, his whole face it and place it bullshit or not. She wasn’t ready to go there. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be.

  Debra stared at the phone in her hand. Since the morning of September 11, she had never been without it. It had been her last link to Jeffrey, who tried to soothe her best he could, saying he was headed into the towers to pull out whomever he could, not to worry, the worst was over, he’d call her as soon as he could, but he had to go, baby.

  Baby was the last word she’d ever heard him speak.

  Debra had clung to her phone as the towers fell, praying to God that Jeffrey had made it out before they collapsed and was scrambling for a phone now to tell her he was okay, not to worry, and that he’d saved a bunch of people, too. She had waited for his call…and continued waiting in the days and weeks that followed. She knew it was stupid now, but she swore to never be without her cell phone again.

  And she was glad now, because something was totally wrong with this driver and where he was driving them. She saw the Brooklyn Bridge loom high above them. It was a beautiful shot that appeared in many movies, but now it just filled her with terror. Dr. Haut wouldn’t bring them down here for nothing. Something was very wrong.

  Had that guy on the phone a few minutes ago said he was from the FBI?

  It didn’t matter.

  Debra pressed the REDIAL button on her phone. Heard it connect. Heard a tinny voice ask:

  “Mrs. Scott?”

  Debra cleared her throat and said aloud, “Why would Dr. Haut have us meet under the Brooklyn Bridge? Does this make sense to anybody else?”

  The driver, however, paid her no mind. His right hand went to the air-conditioning controls, while his other hand seemed to bring something to his face. What was he doing?

  “It’s stuffy in here,” the driver said, his voice muffled. “Let’s cool things off a bit while we wait for Dr. Haut.”

  The cool mist blasted from the multiple vents that ran through the entire ceiling of the van. The air was redolent of sweet almonds.

  “Mrs. Scott, are you there?”

  A lot of thoughts went through Mrs. Scott’s mind—the strangeness of this sudden field trip, the guy on the phone saying he was from the FBI, Jeffrey, baby, the almonds. But she forgot all about it because the air was syrupy thick, and suddenly she felt very, very sleepy.

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  It didn’t take much knockout gas, really. Just enough to give Sqweegel time to park the van, remove the widows’ unconscious bodies, arrange them on the ground, strip them, hog-tie them, prepare the blowtorch, and wait for them to wake up again.

  Sqweegel took a perverse delight in using the bare minimum of materials. In this case, just a small vial of knockout gas, which he had fitted directly to the intake tube of the car’s coolant system. He’d tested it on multiple vans over the years until he found just the right cubic-volume-per-body-weight balance. It had taken a lot of time to perfect, but it had ultimately cost pennies.

  The rope and the blowtorch came to about twenty dollars.

  You didn’t need reinforced rope. You just needed to know how to tie knots that would tighten the more the victim struggled.

  And now they were waking up and struggling. Cursing at themselves. Cursing at him.

  They couldn’t see much…yet.

  Sqweegel twisted the top of the blowtorch, then took the metal starter from his belt and clicked the flame to life.

  Now they could see where they were. A small concrete patio directly beneath the bridge, down a steep grade from street level. A tiny piece of Manhattan that was completely forgotten, except by the rats and pigeons. Their white droppings covered the floor. Sqweegel wondered whether the ladies could feel the grime and shit beneath their naked tits and bellies.

  “Where the fuck are we?” one of the widows cried. “What did you do to us?”

  Sqweegel weaved around them as he spoke.

  “Your husbands fought fires for a living. Swept you off your feet, worked their fingers to the bone to build a lifestyle for you. But the second their bodies were destroyed in those towers”—he kicked at the knees of the closest widow, opening her legs a little more—“you spread your legs to strangers. Cashed those nice fat insurance checks. Tore husbands away from their families. Now it’s time to feel the same thing your husbands felt. Without a single shred of hope, and the knowledge that the flames of hell are about to rain down upon you.”

  Sqweegel moved down the line, whipping the bright blue blowtorch flame over the tops of their heads. It whooshed and flared momentarily. The dank air was now full of the bitter perfume of singed hair.

  Then he used a boot to flip one of the widows over on her back—the one who had answered her cell phone. Of course, she couldn’t lie on her back, with her ankles and wrists bound together. She came to a stop on her right arm and leg, and she tried to squirm out of the way, her limbs straining against their binds. He could see her milky white skin flush as she struggled.

  Sqweegel stopped her with a gloved hand on her left elbow. When limbs were tied right, it took very little force to render someone completely immobile.

  Then he used the lit torch like a flashlight to illuminate her body. She jolted as if she could already feel the intense heat.

  “Fuck you,” Debra snapped. Her voice echoed from the concrete and metal.

  “The world shouldn’t have to look at that,” Sqweegel continued, pointing down between her legs. “So let the flames of justice burn away thy offending parts.”

  She screamed, but he pretended not to hear. He lowered the torch so that its bright blue flame rested in the space between her knees—then slowly he lifted it toward her body. He could feel her buck and writhe, completely unable to move away…

  In the near distance, a cell phone rang.

  It was coming from inside the van, which was parked next to the patio.

  “Oh,” Sqweegel said. “You left your phone on? You’re going to get it the worst. Who could that be, calling for you?”

  “Why don’t you answer it and find out,” Debra said.

  Sqweegel’s curiosity was too great. The burn could wait a few seconds. He had to see who was calling. Quickly he made his way to the va
n. Found the cell phone on the floor as it rang a fourth time.

  He lifted the phone to his face. This might actually be fun. “Yes?”

  “Sqweegel,” the voice said. “This is an old friend. Can you see me?”

  Confusion washed over Sqweegel’s face. His hunter? Where?

  “No,” he whispered. He couldn’t help it.

  “Good.”

  Then the naked widows screamed as the blast of a gunshot echoed beneath the bridge.

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  The bullet spun Sqweegel around. The cell phone and blowtorch fell out of his hands. The torch rolled across concrete. His back slammed into the side of the van. The widows screamed for help.

  Up on the horizon, at street level, Sqweegel saw Dark clearing the top of the ridge, gun in hand. Now running down the grade, firing at him.

  Sqweegel flipped himself to the right as two bullets smacked into the van. There was a loud metallic clang, and then a spray of glass.

  He dropped down and shuffled forward, feeling the agony in his left shoulder.

  Ignore the pain. It is nothing but a warning signal from a set of wires that run through the body. Focus on the body. The body will help you escape, not the pain. The pain will only distract you.

  Sqweegel speed-crawled toward the bridge. He had a space picked out in advance, in case of an emergency like this. He always planned ahead. There hadn’t been a need for his emergency spot in well over a decade. How had Dark found him so fast?

  The phone. The bitch had left the phone on.

  As Sqweegel cleared the side of the bridge—out of view—more shots rang out, slicing through the air around him.

  He took a moment to implement a part of his contingency plan, one that should throw the hunter off track for a precious moment—perhaps enough for him to make good his escape. Or perhaps not.

  Then—even though his shoulder was throbbing with red-hot pain—Sqweegel thrust his fingers around the rusted metal lip of the door, then pulled hard. The movement sent fresh agony coursing through his nervous system—

  Nothing but a warning signal from a set of wires…

  And he pulled again—

  The body will help you escape, not the pain…

  And pulled until he’d opened the way to his little hidey-hole.

  Dark rounded the corner of the bridge in time to see the expanding impact circles on the surface of the East River.

  He shuffled to a stop in the rocks and dirt, aimed, and fired four times at an imaginary clock on the water: nine, eleven, one, three.

  Nothing.

  Eyes trained on the water, Dark walked down the incline, reloading as he went. He knew at least one bullet had hit the bastard. Where the fuck was he? Didn’t he need to surface for a gulp of air? But the blank surface of the East River revealed nothing. Dark scanned the water until he caught himself.

  He was being the rational investigator again.

  He wasn’t thinking like the monster.

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  Dark turned around and saw the masonry foundation of the bridge—a thick slab that supported thousands of cars and pedestrians moving back and forth from Manhattan to Brooklyn every day. It would look like a dead end to anybody else. Anybody else running from the law would run the fuck away from the bridge.

  Not the monster.

  Not, Dark realized, when the monster saw the faded yellow and black fallout-shelter sign bolted to the brick next to a door that was acned with rust.

  Dark reloaded, then pulled open the door and moved inside. The nauseating odor of mold filled his nostrils, and it was as if a hood had been dropped over his head. Complete and utter blackness. He felt glass crunch under his boots as he moved forward, gun out.

  He tried not to worry about the pitch black. He tried to imagine that he was in the gloomy Mater Dolorosa in Rome again. It hadn’t been his vision that brought him close to Sqweegel that time; it had been another sense altogether.

  He would rely on that now.

  Sqweegel could barely contain the joy pulsing through his veins, even as the blood continued to spurt from his shoulder. He moved deeper into the vault, around the heavy-duty cardboard boxes and rust-flecked metal drums. This was an old fallout shelter, more or less forgotten by the city of New York after the cold war ended. Sqweegel, an avid reader of history, hadn’t forgotten. He never did his holy work without a strong sense of his surroundings, and the base of the bridge presented him with a perfect hiding place.

  He never imagined that Dark would be here at the scene so quickly—or even follow him into this dank vault.

  Dark was truly starting to listen to the messages.

  Dark was stretching beyond his human limitations, toward his full potential.

  Dark was beginning to be fun again.

  Dark was tempted to reach for his cell phone; there was a setting on the phone that doubled as a makeshift flashlight. But the monster was in here. The monster didn’t have a light. The monster knew where to go instinctually.

  Moving forward a few steps, Dark felt something sharp rip across his shirt, right near his belly.

  No, not a knife. He reached out and felt the rounded lip of a metal container. And over to the left, the ridge of a box. He was in some kind of storage room.

  Dark crouched down, his back to the row of cardboard boxes. He guided himself along them, resisting the urge to think about his surroundings in a rational way and instead thinking about the whores tied up outside.

  The filthy bitches who had taken the money and come, Dark thought, while the rest of the city still breathed in the atomized ash of their dead husbands. They must pay for their sins….

  There was sudden movement to the right of Dark. A twitch. A faint stretching of latex.

  “How is she?” a voice asked.

  Dark snapped to the right, gun up, but resisted the urge to fire. A room this big would be full of strange acoustics; the voice could be coming from anywhere, and the blast of gunfire would give his position away. The utter blackness was working to his advantage for the moment, and he didn’t want to lose it.

  “How’s my little baby?”

  Dark was close now. Sqweegel was impressed with how far he’d come.

  But his mission wasn’t meant to play out here, in this vault of moldy crackers, out-of-date medical supplies, and canned water. No, this was just a way station on the road to their final destination.

  Sqweegel silently climbed a stack of five boxes and felt the corners of the masonry wall with his gloved fingers. Ah, here it was. A small vent that led up into the innards of the bridge base itself. The bridge designers had probably thought it too small to be accessible by any human being. But the designers had not considered the divine.

  Despite the pain, Sqweegel reached up with both hands, and his fingers found purchase in the vent. It would be difficult climbing with the strength of only three limbs, but far from impossible.

  Sqweegel was about to insert his head into the vent when the room was flooded with light.

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  Dark held up his cell phone and saw the monster’s lower half right away—two spindly white legs perched on top of a box marked CIVIL DEFENSE ALL-PURPOSE SURVIVAL CRACKERS. The limbs were clad in Sqweegel’s holy vestments—the white latex that covered every inch of his flesh.

  Dark aimed and squeezed the trigger.

  The legs pulled up toward the ceiling and disappeared. Bullets snicked off the wall, spraying tiny chunks of concrete everywhere. Dark could taste the centuries-old stone dust as it settled into his nose and mouth.

  Dark raced through the room, avoiding the drums and boxes and blankets and wooden planks like he was running a football play. He was running so hard that he slammed into the opposite wall and scraped the back of his right hand lifting the gun until it pointed straight up into the vent where Sqweegel had disappeared. Dark squeezed the trigger again and again and again, hearing the hollow clang and seeing the sparks as the bullets ricocheted up inside the bridge.

&nb
sp; He looked for the tiniest flicker of white.

  He hoped for the splash of liquid red.

  He prayed for the telltale scream and the echoing thud of a body falling back down to earth.

  But nothing.

  The monster had scurried away again, like a white spider retreating into a sliver of a crevice the naked eye couldn’t even see.

  Back outside the bridge, Dark saw that Jim Franks had temporarily forgotten about his own problems and his firefighting training had kicked back in. The women were already free from their binds and draped in the torn remnants of their clothes, along with some old blankets Franks had pulled from the trunk of his car. The widows, in turn, comforted one another, as they had since the dark days of September 2001. They cried. They talked in low voices to one another, reassuring one another, crying to one another, reminding one another that they were alive, and that was all that mattered. Dark looked at them, and a line from Sqweegel’s poem echoed in his brain:

  Four a day will sigh.

  Sqweegel was high, impossibly high, above the vault room now, where Dark’s bullets couldn’t reach him. Fortunate that the crevice had widened, giving Sqweegel room to maneuver. If it had been an ordinary vent, rather than an architectural quirk of the bridge, his holy mission would have indeed ended down in that vault.

  But there was no time to reflect on close calls. Dark was ascending, and Sqweegel had to leave the bridge immediately if he was going to prepare for their final meeting.

  He had a plane to catch, a bullet wound to sew. There was an important appointment Sqweegel had to keep, and first he needed to pick up his special instruments.

  To enter the mind of a madman, log into LEVEL26.com and enter the code: practice

  chapter 75