Fever Dream

by Dennis Palumbo

  Which finally roused him to speak.

  “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  “To foster sympathy for your candidate. Better than that, it allowed him to appear brave in the face of that failed attempt. Unwilling to be intimidated. It reinforced the image of him as a tough law-and-order man, willing to risk standing up to criminals.”

  “If you say so. By the way, when this little party is over, I’m pressing charges. Assault. Kidnapping.”

  “Knock yourself out. But, hell, I have to hand it to you: your plan worked. Sinclair’s poll numbers have been rising, especially among those blue-collar voters you’ve been so worried about. Though I think planting that backpack today at the library might have been overkill. I guess we’ll have to see when the latest polls come in.”

  “I guess we will.” A trace of pride in his handiwork slipping into his voice. I knew then I was right.

  Fletcher let his shoulders go slack then, as he collected himself. Tried to regain some composure.

  I moved on. “Once I realized that you’d staged the attempt on Sinclair’s life, everything else kinda fell into place. It was you all along. Had to be. That’s why Wheeler Roarke didn’t know who I was talking about when I mentioned Evan McCloskey. Roarke didn’t work for McCloskey. Never even heard of him. He worked for you.”

  “Who’s this Evan McCloskey?”

  “The money man. Maybe you work for him, maybe you’re partners. I don’t know. But he bankrolls everything. He wanted to have a Governor Leland Sinclair in his pocket. A nice perk he could provide for one of his big corporate clients. Though we’ll probably never know which one.”

  I took a breath. Watched the sweat beading Fletcher’s forehead as the small, airless elevator car grew even closer from our body heat. Felt the drops of my own sweat stinging my eyes. My grip on him slipped.

  “Bobby Marks was your inside man at First Allegheny, using the bank’s resources to launder the PAC money. So when McCloskey learned there was a mole in his firm and told you about the potential danger of exposure, you hired Roarke to kill Marks. Using a bank robbery as a cover.

  “Then, when Roarke escaped from the hospital and went to the construction site, it was you he called. Not his partner. It was you who met him there and helped him elude the police. It was you who sent him to kill Henry Stubbs. McCloskey had told you who the mole was working for, and where he was. He knew Stubbs from years before. Knew where to find him.”

  Fletcher managed a wry smile then, and glanced at his Rolex watch. “You know, Doc, as interesting as all this is, we’re missing the debate. In fact, I bet Lee and the others are starting to wonder where we are.”

  “Then let ’em come find us. I’m going to turn you in to the cops now and let them sort it all out.”

  “You do that. ’Cause no one’s gonna believe you.”

  “Maybe not at first. But once the cops start digging into your background, your financials…once they connect you to Wheeler Roarke or Bobby Marks…I mean, you found these people. Paid them. Money leaves a trail. Sooner or later, somebody always finds it. And then you go down.”

  He tilted his chin up, as though about to say something. But then a sharp hiss slit the thick silence.

  Fletcher and I both turned, caught off guard.

  The elevator door rumbled open.

  Treva Williams, lips trembling, stood in the doorway.

  “Dr. Rinaldi?”

  I took a step toward her.

  “Treva! No—”

  “I saw you both go in the service door. But then I got worried, so I followed you in and—”

  Suddenly, Fletcher reached past me and grabbed Treva’s arm. Dragged her roughly inside the elevator car.

  I whirled to face him.

  And found myself staring at the barrel of a small, ugly revolver he’d slipped from his jacket. A revolver he held at her head.

  “Don’t move, Rinaldi. Not a goddam muscle.”

  I froze. “Security let you keep a gun on you?”

  “It’s licensed. For personal protection. And like you pointed out, they work for me. If I vouch for a guy—like I did with Jimmy Gordon—he gets a pass. No questions asked.”

  Then he shifted his body, moving Treva with him, and punched one of the elevator buttons with his elbow. With a metallic shudder, the car began to descend.

  Treva, eyes white with terror, stared at his grim, determined face. “Where are we going?”

  Only then did he smile.

  “To hell.”

  Chapter Sixty

  If it wasn’t hell, it was close enough.

  When the service elevator doors slid open, Brian Fletcher waved his gun, motioning Treva and me to step out in front of him.

  Into the windowless, concrete-enclosed underground maintenance bay, one level beneath the bottom floor parking garage. A sprawling, low-ceilinged expanse barely lit by flickering fluorescents hanging by chains above our heads.

  “Oh, my God…” Treva’s voice. Faint, all breath.

  Fletcher grunted. “Nice ambiance, eh? I scoped this place out with the security detail before the fundraiser. Made kind of an impression on me.”

  He pressed the gun in the small of my back.

  “Now move. Both of you.”

  We did. Slowly, haltingly. Within seconds, Treva was gasping, hands to her throat. The air was acrid, superheated. Thick as cotton wool.

  I felt it, too. Oppressive waves of heat, moving like something slithering and alive from the huge, shuttered vents on either side us. Tendrils of steam, rising.

  We walked through a cavernous chamber cloaked in semi-darkness, whose other-worldliness was intensified by the incessant, low-decibel throb of massive equipment. Huge AC units, multifunneled furnaces. Glass-enclosed rows of digital displays. The humming mechanical heart of the glittering hotel above us.

  Fletcher stayed right behind me, footsteps echoing mine. I could almost feel his breath.

  “I can’t let you fuck things up for me, Rinaldi. Not after all the work I’ve put into Lee Sinclair. All the shit I’ve taken from that pompous, arrogant prick.”

  “I get it, Brian. McCloskey wants influence, you want power. And Sinclair, oblivious, was the horse you were both riding on. You hope to ride him all the way to the White House someday, don’t you?”

  I heard his sharp laugh at my ear. “It’s the one real secret of politics, man. If you’re gonna dream, dream big.”

  “Meanwhile, with Sinclair as governor and you as his trusted chief of staff, you’d be in a position to steer state policies McCloskey’s way. Though I’m not sure you’ll get Sinclair to play along. He can be a real hard-ass.”

  “So can I. I just have to threaten to go public about his affairs. Usually with women at work. Lee could never take the scandal. Trust me, he’ll do what I tell him.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Treva’s feet dragging. Her gait listless, unsteady.

  With an angry growl, Fletcher gave Treva a push with the flat of his free hand, sending her stumbling on the rough concrete. With an effort, she righted herself.

  “Keep moving.” His voice a sharp hiss that sliced through the constant mechanical hum.

  Treva quickened her pace so that we were side by side as we moved through the shadowed maw. Past huge banks of pressure valves, voltage meters, panels arrayed with winking lights. Under and around long, twisting aluminum tubes, coiled like giant anacondas. The veins and arteries leading out from the pulsing, ever-pumping heart of the building. Carrying heat and refrigerated air and steam and water, the life-giving nutrients of the gilded rooms above.

  Treva grabbed my hand then. Squeezed it with the same desperate strength I remembered from that day in the hospital. I turned, met her wide, tear-blurred gaze.

  Remembered too that promise she drew from me. The raw, aching fear behind it. My solemn promise to protect her, no matter what happened.

  Fletcher was tapping my shoulder with the gun muzzle.

  “Turn down here.
Now.”

  Still grasping her hand, I steered Treva in the direction he’d indicated. A smaller, concave tunnel, lit along its cracked, flaking ceiling by huge magnesium bulbs encased in wire mesh.

  I glanced at a temperature gauge bolted into the near wall: 112 degrees. As we walked still deeper into the gloom, past carelessly discarded machine parts, scattered piles of cinder blocks. Further down the length of that nightmarish tunnel…

  My mind racing, I tried to stall for time. To keep Fletcher talking. Until I could think of…something.

  “So what’s the plan, Brian?” Keeping my own voice strong, measured. Or at least trying to. “You figure you’ll just shoot us and leave us down here?”

  Fletcher laughed again. Something in the timbre of that sound, it’s easy assurance, made my heart pound harder.

  “Actually, I am gonna shoot you, Rinaldi. Then I’m gonna wrap Treva’s hand around this gun and put it up against her head and pull the trigger again.”

  I stopped in my tracks, turned to face him. Treva let go of my hand, back-stepped awkwardly on the uneven floor.

  Fletcher ignored her, his gun now pointed at my gut.

  “See, I gotta assume people saw you and me leave the conference hall through the service door. Probably to have a private conversation. Then those same people saw Treva follow us. Problem is, her recent ordeal has sent the poor girl around the bend.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Hell, no. Check it out: Unhinged girl is obsessed with her therapist. Wants a personal relationship with her big hero. When he rebuffs her, she manages to slip my gun out of my jacket pocket. Before I can react, she shoots the unlucky bastard. Then turns the gun on herself. A real tragedy. Stunned, I stagger back upstairs to get help.”

  “No one is gonna buy that, Fletcher.”

  A serene, knowing smile. “You’d be surprised what people will buy.”

  Again, Treva’s stricken face tilted up to mine. Skin flushed, burning. I felt my own perspiration pour in rivulets down my neck, into my shirt collar.

  But it was the panic in her eyes that riveted me. The glaze of white, nameless fear.

  Suddenly, a pressure gauge near Fletcher’s shoulder beeped loudly. Startled him. Drew his glance away—

  All I needed. I grabbed for the gun in his hand with both of mine. Pushed it up and to the side.

  But, with a surprising strength, he held fast to the gun. We both did. Struggling. Gulping thick, stinging air. Banging against the machinery on either side of us.

  Finally, I found my footing and drove his gun hand against the side of a barrel-wide aluminum tube. Hard.

  Too hard.

  With a deafening roar, the gun went off, puncturing the tube. Releasing a white-hot geyser of steam. Rushing, screeching. Exploding into the narrow tunnel.

  From somewhere behind me, I heard Treva scream.

  And then another, more horrifying scream rent the air. Dwarfed hers.

  The force of the escaping steam pushed me back against the opposite wall. Knocking the wind from my lungs. I stumbled, choking, gasping for breath.

  As I struggled to keep my balance, I saw Brian Fletcher step like a wraith out of the billowing, expanding clouds of steam filling the tunnel.

  He was still screaming, a long, agonizing wail that seemed to come from his very core. As he staggered toward me, I caught sight of his face in the harsh lights.

  What was left of it. The white-hot steam had seared half away, leaving only shards of skin and exposed bone, muscle. What skin remained was a scalded mass of pulped, blistered tissue.

  I rolled away as he lurched toward me, hands twitching spasmodically. As hissing steam poured out of the aluminum tubing, filling the tunnel, crowding out the air.

  Within seconds, the entire area was suffused with billowing clouds of stinging, translucent white. Obscuring everything. Every shape, every form.

  I crawled quickly across the floor, eyes burning, calling out for Treva. Suffocating. My bearings lost. As though snow-blind, in a blizzard of scalding white heat.

  Panic rose in my chest. I crawled faster, staying low to the ground. My hands baking on the scorched concrete floor. Feeling around me desperately for Fletcher’s gun. I thought I’d heard it skitter away on the concrete after going off…

  Finally, reaching out my hands in sweeping arcs of motion, I did feel something. The curved edge of the tunnel wall. Hot to the touch, beaded with moisture.

  Moisture…which meant the steam was cooling. And, soon, rising.

  I crouched against the wall, trying to breathe. To gather myself. Vision still blurred, hazy.

  But I was right. The steam was lifting, dissipating.

  Maybe a safety valve in the machinery had been triggered. Or else the full force of the pressure venting the steam had begun to diminish.

  I leaned my head back against the wet stone wall. Gulped air that tasted like hot embers into my lungs. Coughed. Called out for Treva again. And again.

  And then I saw, under the rising billow of steam, a figure advancing on me. Its shape coming more into focus with every second. Emerging out of the swirling, milk-white eddies encircling him.

  It was Brian Fletcher, his one good eye livid. Burning with hatred. A mindless fury.

  He held something in both hands. Something heavy. Held high, over his head. A thick cinder block. Dust from its sides drifting down on his scarred, heat-ravaged face.

  I saw him weaving under the block’s weight. Looming over me. I was still crouched in the corner. Trapped.

  “You…” A rasp, threaded with pain. “You…”

  He raised the cinder block a few inches higher, ready to bring it down on me with all his strength.

  I closed my eyes. Hands involuntarily up, as though I could ward off what was coming. Stop it. Live.

  Suddenly, a gunshot echoed. Loud, high-pitched. More like a shriek in the confines of the narrow tunnel.

  I peered up, in time to see the astonished look on Fletcher’s ruined face. As the strength went out from him, and the cinder block fell from his grasp, and the bullet hole in his chest welled black and bloody…

  And then he collapsed, like a sail in dead calm, and fell to the floor in front of me.

  I hunched forward, felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing.

  Fletcher was dead.

  Another set of footsteps. Slow, tentative.

  As the last remaining spirals of steam evaporated, I saw her. Treva Williams. Her small, slim body quivering. Holding Brian Fletcher’s revolver.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Treva took another careful step forward. Stared down at Fletcher’s body on the concrete. The blood beginning to pool beneath him.

  “He…He was going to…I had to…”

  “I know.”

  By now, the tunnel had almost entirely cleared of steam. Though rivulets of moisture streaked the walls, the metallic skins of the still-throbbing machinery.

  An incessant hum whose echo would stay in my memory, I knew even then, for a long, long time…

  Finally, as though just now aware of it, she glanced at the smoking revolver in her grasp. Let her hands drop slowly, deliberately, still molded around the gun.

  Bracing against the wall, I pulled myself to my feet. Legs stiff and wobbly beneath me.

  Glassy-eyed, she looked at me.

  “It’s funny, how things turned out. How I ended up protecting you…”

  “Yes, you did. And I’m grateful.”

  But my words sounded hollow, even to me. False.

  I sighed heavily, let myself lean against the wall. Feeling its wetness stain the back of my shirt.

  “But you were also protecting yourself, Treva. I know that now.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “With Brian Fletcher dead, no one can connect him to you. No one will ever know that you were working for him. With him. From the very beginning.”

  Her mouth opened, but it took her a long moment to speak. “But I hardly knew B
rian Fletcher, and—”

  “Jesus, you’re good, Treva. You’re very good. You fooled me…”

  “But I don’t—”

  I rubbed my eyes. Suddenly weary. Spent.

  “Though it wasn’t all a lie. I realize that now, too. You did love Bobby Marks, and after seeing Roarke kill him in the bank, you really were traumatized. Believe it or not, I can imagine how you felt. I’ve felt it myself.”

  By now, her face had grown tight. Harder, somehow. But tears dotted the edges of her eyes.

  “No, you can’t. I loved Bobby with all my heart. And I didn’t—I had no idea what Roarke was going to do…”

  “I believe you. But that’s all I believe. Because everything else was a lie. You and Bobby both worked for Fletcher. Maybe Bobby recruited you, maybe it was the other way around. I don’t care. But you helped him at the bank. Helped funnel those PAC funds through dummy corporations.”

  Treva said nothing. Merely stared at me.

  I went on quietly. “There was no second robber at the bank. No partner. Wheeler Roarke came in alone, then shot out the video cameras. Then he killed Bobby. Right in front of you.”

  She nodded again. Slowly.

  “He…Roarke said…”

  “I can guess what happened next. He threatened you. Said the same thing would happen to you if you didn’t cooperate. So when SWAT started assembling outside the bank, Roarke sent you out. As a released hostage. He told you what story to tell. That there were two robbers. That Bobby had been shot for apparently disobeying their orders not to move. That his death was just a terrible result of panicked, trigger-happy gunmen.”

  It was only then that Treva glanced down at the gun still gripped in her two small hands. The gun she was slowly bringing up again. To point at me.

  “Don’t you understand?” She sniffed. “I saw what Roarke did to Bobby. If I didn’t do what he said, the same thing would happen to me. I…I was terrified.”

  “I know. I saw that fear when I was tied up next to you at Pittsburgh Memorial. When he made Dr. Holloway tend to his wound. You must have been horrified when Roarke showed up in your room at the ICU. When he forced you and the doctor downstairs to the OR.”