Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  He did not want to test this theory tonight. He would not drop Coco’s corpse on Zach’s spirit and see if it shattered.

  He heaved himself up, absently wiping his palm against his slacks. Feeling about a hundred pounds heavier than he had when he stepped outside, he trudged back in. His mind fixed on two pressing needs: to scrub his hands and to get out of Dodge fast.

  FROM INSIDE his van parked at the curb two blocks away, Olaf watched the two police officers leave the Moore house. He let out an audible sigh and heard rustling noises behind him—the dogs lifting their heads off clumps of trash to aim curious stares at their master. No amount of adjusting the binoculars’ focus wheel could bring the cops or their cruiser or even the house into precise definition. The trouble lay not with his equipment, but with his eyes; the chemical fumes his target had used to hinder the attack had taken their toll. The cops stepped off the porch, and the front door closed. Olaf lowered the binoculars. He rubbed his sleeves over his eyes. He’d have to pick up a bottle of eye drops . . . lozenges too; his throat felt raw and abused.

  More rustling, then Freya’s snout nudged against his hip. He scratched her head, rubbed her ears.

  “What do you think, girl?” he said. “Pretty smart the way he kept you at bay, huh?” He smiled. “Really smart.”

  He raised the binoculars again. The house appeared calm. That was odd. He’d expected an onslaught of law enforcement personnel. He wondered if it were a trap, if scores of armed men had sneaked in the back while he was watching the front; now in there waiting for his return.

  The gods had spared Brady Moore and his son—at least for now. But the death warrant had not been rescinded, so he must strike at them again. He must honor the warrant. Discerning between Odin’s will and his own mistakes was not always easy. The god of gods always worked things out, set things straight, but Olaf had some serious thinking to do: What had he done wrong? Why had his mission failed? Obviously, he had been too loud approaching the residence. It had given the targets time to set up a defense. He would have to work on his stealth skills. What else? Judgment. He felt now that he had retreated too soon. The prey—they were in sight, but the sirens had driven him away. Thirty seconds longer. He should have stayed thirty seconds longer.

  He squeezed his eyes closed. Tears soaked his lashes and soothed the fire that flitted on his corneas. He reached down and pulled the lever that dropped the seat back into a reclining position.

  What would you do, Odin? he thought. When would you make your move?

  He pictured himself prone before the halls of Valhalla. He was nothing in this high place, a flea to be squashed. But he sought guidance, so he humbled himself further: dirt on Odin’s sandal, not even alive, that’s what he was. Lower still . . . he brought himself down . . . lower . . .

  Then he felt it: a breeze on his face, a rumbling in the air that vibrated his bones. The door had opened. Odin was favoring him with his presence. His mind dimmed toward utter blackness as Odin pulled him into the Sacred Hall.

  Now incapable of physical speech, he issued deafening words where his mind soared. Feverishly, he began to pray.

  44

  Alicia’s cheek and forehead hit the edge of the door, slamming it shut. She was dazed. Her attacker slipped his arm around her neck, still intent on strangling her. He had feigned an escape only to ambush her again when she started to pursue. She felt the arm tighten like a noose. Instantly she needed to cough and couldn’t. The choke hold was cutting off all breath, all sound from her throat. She screamed into the auditorium of her mind. In there, it was shrill and loud. She clawed at the arm, then gripped the wrist in both her hands. She pulled and pulled; no amount of exertion relieved the pressure on her neck.

  The arm tightened further. She imagined her larynx crushing under the pressure. If that happened, even if she could free herself, she’d strangle from a pinched windpipe—Look, Ma, no hands!

  Trusting that her attacker had braced himself for a struggle, she forced her feet up and began walking up the door. Often, the best moves in hand-to-hand combat were counterintuitive: when an attacker or a captive struck out or twisted one of his victim’s body parts, most people fought the action by stiffening up or applying force in the opposite direction. That gave the movement striking or twisting power. Most times the better response was to go with the movement, giving it nothing to act upon. “Like trying to push a rope,” her close-quarters combat instructor at the academy had explained.

  If her attacker had known this, he would have backed up at the moment her bare feet began ascending the door. She would have lost her leverage, and her feet would have dropped to the floor again. Instead, he acted like most dense bullies do: he became determined not to let her move him. Her bare feet rose over her head and she pushed off the door, flipping over the attacker. The power of the flip and the strength of her neck and upper body wrenched her free of his choke hold. He fell backward as she swung her legs down. Her feet hit the carpet just as his head did—precisely between her feet. She knew she should heave herself up and bring a knee down on his chest, but she just didn’t have the energy. Her lungs cried for air. Her tortured throat protested, then relented. Shards of glass seemed to scrape down her throat.

  The attacker reached up to grab her, puncturing her thigh with sharp nails. She dropped straight down, twisting to land her knee directly on his neck. He saw it coming and rolled to one side. Her knee caught his shoulder, slipped off, hit the carpeted floor hard. She sprang up, turning toward the bedroom.

  Where was her gun? Had he hidden it or taken it? No time to look, but there were other things in the bedroom she could use to defend herself.

  As she took a step, he grabbed her ankle. She went down. Her hand snagged her blazer, which she had tossed on the end of the bed. She hit the floor; the blazer settled over her head. She felt, more than heard, a thump: the object she had earlier unclipped from her belt and dropped onto the jacket. Flipping the blazer away, she spotted a leather pouch within reach. She grabbed it and unsnapped it with her thumb.

  The attacker began crawling up her legs, gripping her with one hand, then the other.

  From the pouch she pulled a metal cylinder, similar in size to the spool that holds a roll of toilet paper, but much heavier. She twisted around and slammed the cylinder on the hand—the talon—that had seized her right side. The hand opened. The attacker hissed in pain, exposing twin rows of fangs and a black maw beyond. His other hand was gripping her left thigh. She smashed the metal into that hand as well.

  The hiss became a howl. She kicked at his face and shoulder, sliding backward to get out from under him. They rose at the same time, opponents squaring off for another round.

  He eyed the cylinder in her hand and laughed. “Go ahead,” he said in a voice at once high-pitched and grating.

  Alicia thought of a hyena. Yes, this thing before her reminded her of a hyena.

  “Pepper spray does not bother me.”

  She said, “Then I’m glad I didn’t bring any to the party.” She flicked her wrist. With the suddenness of magic and the sound of a blade coming out of its scabbard, the metal dowel telescoped into a three-foot black metal police baton. If it had turned into a pigeon, her attacker could not have registered more surprise. Without pulling her arm back for more power, a move that would have also projected her intentions, Alicia snapped her hand forward. The baton cracked into the side of her attacker’s head. He did not so much fall as fly down to the bed. His body bounced up and crumpled into a ball on the floor.

  The impact sent a new bolt of fire up her forearm, reminding her that it had been sliced to the bone by the garrote. The baton spun out of her weakened hand. It hit the floor, and before it stopped moving, she snatched it up. She pulled it back behind her head, ready for another swing. He did not spring up as she expected, so she waited.

  She stepped back with her left leg and shifted her hips back over it, freeing her forward leg to kick out or lead her body in a defensive turn. It was the s
tandard Tae Kwon Do stance called fugal sogi. She realized several of the evasive moves she’d made since the attack started had been from her martial arts training, but she had not consciously evoked them. Instructors at the academy harped ad nauseum on the importance of reacting instinctually and correctly in the heat of battle. Consequently, they made students practice the same moves over and over and over until they became second nature. She had never fully appreciated the result of all that repetition until now.

  When the hyena didn’t move, she edged forward, kicked his shin. He didn’t budge. She pointed the baton at his body like a rapier. She jabbed him in the ribs. Nothing. She shifted the baton to her left hand. Cautiously, she bent over the body and pushed her right hand into the folds of shoulder and head and coat until she touched his neck. A pulse pushed rhythmically against her fingers. He was out but not dead. Too bad. She stood and used her foot to push him over. The part of his head she’d struck came into view. A four-inch gash rode the crest of a welt as prominent as his sharp cheekbones. Blood oozed into the surrounding hair.

  Restrain him first, she thought, spotting her purse, where she kept a set of handcuffs. Then find your gun and bandage your arm.

  As she did these things, she considered how to deal with Hyena. What came to mind was brilliant—and absolutely, utterly insane. She loved it.

  45

  The Anacostia Freeway running north out of Garrisonville was like an electrocardiograph on the pulsing heart of human pluralism. Farms and woods represented the downbeats, the rests. Everything seemed at peace. A burning porch light in the distance marked the occasional home where all other lights had been extinguished early, its occupants now deep in slumber. Then the heart would beat again and a city emerged, its sodium-vapor radiance revealing the bustle of activity. Bump-BUMP, bumpBUMP. Farm-city, wilderness-town.

  Brady chased his vehicle’s headlights along that ECG line. Through urban upbeats, he tried to hold his speed to eight over the posted limit; most cops went after the ten-and-over crowd. Brady opened it up through rural downbeats, figuring these stretches didn’t provide enough pickings to attract round-the-clock watchdogs.

  He glanced at Zach in the passenger’s seat, fast asleep. It was not yet nine o’clock, but Brady knew from experience that extreme stress was exhausting. The boy was leaning against the door, his head on his balled-up blankie. His legs were pulled up close to his body. His breathing was slow and deep.

  The Toyota Highlander was comfortable; the drive was easy. But it gave him plenty of time to think, and that was hard. He’d already worked through the reasons the Pelletier killer might want him dead. He hadn’t thought he and Alicia had discovered enough to threaten him. Maybe they were closer than they knew. Even if they were, how would the killer know? Was it possible the killer had latched on to him simply because he was an authority figure? Or did he possess some trait the killer was looking for in his victims, something the others had also possessed? The most disturbing possibility was the one that had spooked Alicia: that someone was controlling the killer, and this person knew intimate details of Brady’s life and activities. That brought him back around to his original question: why would someone want him dead? The circle of questions was maddening.

  He reached over and popped open the glove box. He pulled out a metal object about the size of a paperback book and shut the compartment door. He held it up to the light rushing through the back window from the car behind him. A chrome flask. Etched into the front were his initials—BDM—in old English script. It had been an anniversary present from Karen. She thought it was perfect because it was both personal and impractical—he had such little use for it. Back then he occasionally liked to spike his coffee, just a little splash. She’d had no idea it would become an item of daily use. He used his thumb to spin its lock-down collar and flip up the hinged stopper. He brought it to his nose and winced. Jim Beam.

  Zach’s presence beside him tugged at his conscience the way heavenly bodies drew smaller objects into their gravitational field. He did not look again at the sleeping boy, but his awareness of Zach had not been greater since leaving the house. The flask held so much more than whiskey; it was an acid that could dissolve his family—his remaining family—his career, his son’s future.

  At least I’m not in denial, he thought and took a swig, a small one. An aspirin, that’s all a sip is, liquid aspirin.

  He was thinking about taking one more nip—take two and call me in the morning—when his cell phone began vibrating. It was protruding from the unused ashtray. The few coins in the bottom of the tray rattled metallically with the phone. He picked it up and looked at the screen: UNKNOWN CALLER. He thumbed the answer button.

  “Hello?” he said quietly.

  “It’s me.” Alicia’s voice.

  “I’ll call you back from a land line.”

  She recited the hotel’s phone number. “I’m in 522, but make it quick; I’m changing rooms.”

  Ignoring his curiosity, he said, “Give me five,” and disconnected. If someone within the Bureau had sicced the killer on him, God knew what lengths he or she would go to to finish the job. Tracking the communications from a specific cell phone was as routine for the FBI as business lunches for civilian companies. And pinpointing the precise location of a cell phone was even easier than paranoid novelists claimed. With relay towers littering the landscape, every call was picked up by multiple towers. Typically the tower nearest the phone received the strongest signal and it would appropriate the call. By measuring the signal strength in all receiving transponders—with programs already heavily used by the government’s alphabet soup agencies—the phone could be triangulated to within a foot of its location, even while it was in motion.

  He passed a highway sign listing a variety of amenities available off the next exit. Anything would do. He exited and found a gas station with a phone in the lot. He owned a calling card but didn’t want to use it. Before leaving home, he’d taken a handful of quarters out of a big mayonnaise jar full of coins on his dresser. He pushed eight or ten coins into the slot and dialed. When the hotel operator answered, he asked for room 522.

  “What is the name of the guest?” the female operator asked.

  “Wagner.”

  The line clicked and rang once.

  “Yes?”

  Definitely her, but Brady asked anyway, “Alicia?”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “Shouldn’t we have a code word? How about ‘perplexed’?”

  “Not funny. Let’s use ‘Morgan.’ Say, ‘Is Morgan there?’”

  He realized she was serious. “‘Morgan’?”

  “Yeah, proper names make good pass codes. If everything’s okay, we’ll reply, ‘This is Morgan.’ But if something’s wrong, like you can’t talk freely or you think the line is bugged or someone’s coercing you, use the word wrong. Like ‘You must have dialed the wrong number.’ Okay?”

  “Are you sure this is really necessary?”

  “You were attacked tonight.”

  “I just thought—”

  “And so was I.”

  Silence. Finally, Brady said, “What are you talking about?”

  “Someone—” Her voice broke on the second syllable. She was playing tough, but whatever happened had really shaken her. She tried again. “Someone broke into my room. He tried to kill me.”

  “Alicia . . .” He didn’t know what to say. His heart felt squeezed, and his stomach had somehow become untethered and was floating and flopping loosely inside. It was the same sensation he experienced whenever he thought of the jeopardy Zach had barely escaped tonight. He leaned his shoulder against the booth. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll survive,” she said. “Look, I was going to come down there, but now I’ve got some things to handle here. Can you come to New York?”

  “I’m on my way. Really. I’m less than three hours away.”

  “Don’t say anything else. Don’t come to my room. Go to the third-floor stairwell landing. I’l
l leave something there for you.”

  He felt like Dorothy whipping around in a cyclone; any second it would deposit him in a world so foreign anything could happen.

  “Brady?” Alicia whispered.

  “I’m here.”

  “Be careful,” she said and hung up.

  ALICIA SAT on the bed in room 522, her back resting on pillows piled against the headboard. In the corner of the room, sprawled on the floor and handcuffed to the stout leg of a climate control unit, her attacker was still unconscious. Well, not still, she corrected herself. He was unconscious again. Ten minutes ago, he’d stirred and groaned. She wasn’t ready for him yet, so she’d given him another taste of the baton. She eyed the travel clock on the nightstand. She had called an old acquaintance thirty minutes ago. He had said to give him an hour. She thought the hyena would be good for the remaining half hour.

  Prior to talking with Brady, she’d been making calls to other rooms in the hotel. On the bed between her raised knees was a legal pad with a list of numbers. The Marriott Times Square towered to a height of fifty-two floors. Each floor contained between twenty and forty guest rooms, depending on whether it also accommodated specialty areas like meeting rooms, lounges, workout space, and large suites. The first one or two digits of each room number designated the floor on which it was located. Her room was on the fifth floor. Twenty floors above her, she presumed, was room 2522. A call to the front desk—pretending to be a hick tourist awed by the majesty of such a grand hotel—had revealed that there were 1,528 rooms in all. And her cousin who was flying in later in the evening and who had failed to make reservations—“I swear the woman would forget her head if it wasn’t screwed on!”—could rest easy: this was a slow time of year, and the Marriott had plenty of vacant rooms available.

  She knew that most hotels tried to keep occupied rooms clustered together, which often resulted in whole floors void of guests.