‘When we do,’ Justine said, trying to keep up her end, ‘can we lock her up for a while?’
Next to him was Houssman, his face covered with stubble, his gray fedora abandoned on the seat next to him, and his wispy white hair shooting out at crazy angles. He scanned a map of New York State, trying to trace where Glash had been and might go next.
Justine had called, desperate for information, wondering, like many, why the Department of Homeland Security had been placed in charge.
‘What aren’t they telling us?’ she asked.
‘I can’t say,’ Hobbs said, doing his best to stay out of the way of Cosway and his sidekick Zane. He had let Tom Anderson, the FBI agent, phone in their discoveries from Albert’s cabin hours earlier – the recently disturbed bomb shelter and Barrett’s card; proof positive that Glash had been there. Listening in, Hobbs had heard Cosway’s dismissive response. ‘Old news,’ he’d said.
Hobbs had slammed his fist into a tree, needing the pain to keep from screaming into the receiver, ‘You fucking incompetent!’ Thank God it had been Tom on the phone and not him. The FBI agent had his phone on speaker and had calmly told Cosway that the FBI would handle the kidnappings and the murders, but there was compelling evidence that Glash wanted to pick up where Albert had left off. ‘Isn’t that why Homeland Security is involved? This looks like bioterrorism.’
‘Let me clarify,’ Cosway had screamed back, ‘we’re not involved; we’re in charge. This comes under the National Incident Management System; I am authorized by direct order of the Secretary of Homeland Security to oversee what has been determined to be a national incident. Is that understood, Agent Anderson?’
Tom had stuck his middle finger up and waved it in front of the phone. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good, I’ll send a team back to do a proper search of the shelter. I certainly hope you didn’t disturb the scene.’
Now, with Justine still on the line, Hobbs was desperately trying to tell her that everything was under control, that Barrett was going to be safe and this was all a bad dream. But with a cold trail, an incompetent commander who viewed hostages as expendable, and a killer who sought destruction of biblical proportions, he didn’t have a lot of reassurance to give.
‘Just tell me she’s going to be OK,’ Justine begged.
‘I’ll do everything I can.’
‘I know you will, Ed. I’m just so scared. You’d tell me if you’d found her … dead?’
‘I think she’s OK. She’s smart and resourceful, and if there’s a way for anyone to figure out how to get away from this guy, she’ll do it.’
‘But would she?’ Justine said. ‘Or would she figure it was her duty to try and stop him? Look at what she did.’
‘I know … Justine, I’ll call you if I find anything. Where are you going to be?’
She gave him her cell. ‘I’m at the hospital. It’s all anyone is talking about. It’s on every station. People think Homeland Security is involved because of Clarence Albert and the anthrax mailings.’
‘They wouldn’t be wrong,’ he said.
‘Shit!’
‘Exactly,’ and feeling like his head was going to explode, he hung up, and made the turn up the sweeping drive to the Bella Vista Resort.
While Ed wanted to avoid any contact with Cosway, there was no mistaking the man being interviewed by a news crew as they drove up to the grand, castle-like Victorian hotel where earlier that morning Justin Green had been abducted and murdered.
Houssman looked through the windshield. ‘Ed, stop the car. This feels wrong.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Hobbs said, his frustration at boiling point as he took in the multiple media vans and reporters tramping through the grounds, mucking up the crime scene. ‘Idiots! Morons!’ Then he watched Cosway smooth back his shiny hair as he fielded questions.
‘Whatever Glash set out to do here, is done,’ Houssman said. ‘We’ll find nothing of use, just more bodies. We’ve got to think ahead of him. I think I’ve got an idea as to who might be his accomplice. I realized I’ve been making an assumption that could be wrong.’
‘Which is?’
‘That Glash had no contact with his biologic father – Peter.’
‘Isn’t he in prison? He killed his wife … oh, shit!’
‘Exactly … nearly forty years ago. He bargained down to second degree; I doubt he served more than ten to fifteen.’
‘Is he even still alive?’ But Hobbs already had his cell out and was dialing the department’s liaison with Corrections. He identified himself and gave his shield number, while punching Peter Glash’s name into the Crown Vic’s on-board computer, and the Department of Corrections’ prisoner locater.
Within minutes they’d learned that Peter Glash had been paroled nearly thirty years ago after serving less than ten years of an eighteen-year sentence. Hobbs held his breath as he asked, ‘Do you have his current address?’ He pushed the button for speakerphone.
‘We have his last known,’ the woman said, ‘it’s fifteen years old.’ And she read it out.
Houssman scribbled it down on the edge of his map. ‘Let me have your cell,’ he said.
Peering over his thick lenses to see the buttons, Houssman punched in Felicia’s number. ‘It’s George Houssman,’ he said as she picked up. ‘Do you have Glash’s visitor’s logs?’
‘Yes, give me a minute to find them.’
‘Read me every name along with the dates.’ As they waited, Houssman fished out a steno pad from a well in the passenger-side door.
‘Think we’ll get lucky?’ Ed asked.
‘I don’t know.’
Hobbs cranked up the AC as they waited. He stared through the windshield and imagined how good it would feel to smash his fist into Cosway’s smug face. ‘I think you’re right about this being a waste of time. That address for Peter Glash, it’s in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.’
‘Yes,’ Houssman said, ‘the family owned a business there, the entire building actually.’
‘Not a bad place for a hideout.’
‘No, indeed.’
‘Care for a drive to Manhattan?’
‘Of course.’
Ed backed up and did a quick, gravel-spitting U-turn. Houssman glanced through the back window at Cosway. For the briefest moment he thought the Homeland Security agent had spotted them. ‘I’m assuming you’re deliberately not sharing our new-found insight with the energetic Mr Cosway?’
‘A correct assumption.’
‘Dr Houssman,’ Felicia’s voice came through the speaker, ‘I’ve got the list … is there any word on Barrett?’
Taking a cue from Hobbs’s earlier call, he said, ‘She’s a smart woman, she’ll know better than anyone how to work with Glash; I think she’ll be OK. Now read me the list, and don’t leave anything off.’
Hobbs nodded, gritted his teeth and floored it.
Fifteen
‘There’s a ninety percent certainty that I will die,’ Richard Glash told Barrett as he drove. He listened for the sound of her typing. ‘Did you get that?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her back pressed against the van wall, a small Sony laptop duct-taped to her bound legs. It was night and they’d been driving for half an hour. Glash was dressed in a navy blue security guard’s uniform; he’d also put on a pair of thick, black-framed glasses. He was insisting that she record his every word. Despite the hours she’d spent formally interviewing Glash prior to this race to hell, it was only now that she truly saw who and what he was. Some of what she’d learned had shocked her, starting with the revelation that George Houssman had for a brief period been Glash’s foster father. Revealing that was one of the few times Richard Glash had shown anything that could have passed as a gentle emotion. She couldn’t see his face, but as he talked about George she’d wondered if he were crying.
‘He was supposed to love me and take care of me,’ Glash had said. ‘He didn’t. He and his wife, Delia, sent me to Albomar. They were supposed to adopt me like they did
their daughters – Alice and Stephanie. That’s what they told me. I was four years old and I believed them. Did you get that?’ he’d said angrily. ‘They were supposed to be my mommy and my daddy.’
She’d decided it was best not to comment. This was Glash’s world as he saw it. The fact that he’d nearly killed his next-door playmate didn’t figure into his reality. Occasionally, she’d hazard a question.
‘Why did you attack her?’ she’d asked, referring to the little girl.
‘I wanted to see. It wasn’t at all like in the movie.’
‘When you were eighteen you went after her again,’ she said, years of interviewing criminals having trained her to not flinch but go straight to the heart of things.
‘I wasn’t done,’ he’d said, his tone dry. ‘I needed to finish it. You have to finish what you start.’
‘Are you done now?’ she asked. ‘Did you finish that with Lucinda Peters?’
‘Yes. And if I don’t die I’m going to get married.’
‘Really?’ Her thoughts raced as she saw a connection with the tragic Lucinda, her scalping and Glash’s repeated references to a girlfriend. She would have asked for more details, but he brought the van to a stop and turned off the engine. Her breath caught as he got out and came around to the back of the van. She tracked the soft tread of his footsteps and startled as he opened the door.
She looked at him, dressed as a guard, disguised with glasses and wearing a single black glove on his right hand. ‘You want to know what I’m going to do, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Soon.’ And he abruptly reached across and forced a balled-up gym sock into her mouth. She didn’t struggle as he ran a strip of duct tape around her head, turned off the laptop, closed it and then threw the tarp over her. But before he did that, she glimpsed a large, squat, concrete commercial building. He’d left the van in the far corner of the lot, out of the range of the overhead lights. She could make out the first few letters of an illuminated sign – BIO. He’d brought her to Bioforward; the biotech firm that had employed Clarence Albert for over twenty years. Whatever Glash had retrieved from Albert’s property had led him here.
With Glash gone, she struggled against her restraints; her legs cramped and her right shoulder sent stabbing pains whenever she twisted. The numbness that had fallen over her evaporated as she realized the deadly peril facing anyone in that building who stood between Glash and whatever he hoped to find. She had to do something. She didn’t know how long he’d be gone, and pushing through the pain she bent down as far as she could and frantically worked away at the tape that bound her legs.
Glash calculates the distance between the parked van and the service entrance to Bioforward. Five years since Albert worked here. Glash wonders if the information he’s decoded will still be applicable. His entire plan could fall apart in the next five minutes. He knows that once he enters the building, his every movement will be captured on video. Albert said there would be a single security guard. That’s the first mistake. Through the lobby door Glash sees two, dressed just as he is – Albert was correct about the uniform – ‘A’ and ‘B’; they’re watching TV. He places a smile on his face, approaches the door and knocks.
‘A’ walks up to the heavy glass door and looks at him warily without opening it.
Glash flashes a Bioforward picture ID – it belongs to Clarence and was in the metal box; Glash has changed the photograph. ‘I’m supposed to be training.’
‘I didn’t hear anything about a trainee,’ ‘A’ replies without opening the door. He turns back toward ‘B’. ‘Colin, you know anything about a new guy training tonight?’
‘As though they’d tell us,’ ‘B’ answers.
‘Right.’ ‘A’ unlocks. ‘I don’t know what they want us to do with you, but …’
‘I’ll figure something,’ Glash says, pulling the trigger on the Smith & Wesson – four minutes, twelve seconds.
As ‘A’ drops, a startled ‘B’ draws his gun; and an alarm sounds.
Glash instantly cuts his time in half – he is approaching failure mode – one minute, fifty-five seconds. Was Albert wrong about the rest? He barrels toward ‘B’, firing as he goes.
The guard dives under the metal desk; worst possible move he could make. Trapped, he tries to shoot at Glash’s feet. He clips him in the right shoe; it grazes the skin off two of his toes.
Glash takes aim and puts a bullet in ‘B’’s head. He glances at the security console; a moment’s indecision. Too much is at stake – one minute, zero seconds. He pictures Mary the last time she came to visit – she was wearing a blonde wig; she let him see the scars underneath. The siren pulses – Albert was wrong about the number of guards. It was five years ago. The probability that he was wrong about other things is increasing rapidly.
He reaches down and pulls B’s body from under the desk. He tears the security badge off and runs down the corridor to the right. Sirens blare and pulse. Lights flash. He swipes the badge through the digital reader outside the laboratory where Albert worked. The door clicks open. Albert was right about that – forty seconds. Probability of success is now thirty percent. He bolts to the far side of the room to a refrigerated vault with a computerized keypad. His fingers tap out the ten digits. The lock does not open – twenty-seven seconds. Blood seeps through his shoe and on to the floor. He tries the code a second time – it does not open. He steps back, aims at the lock. Fires three shots; two just bend the plate, the third cracks the bolt. He yanks back on the door – ten seconds. It opens. Cool air rushes out as he looks into the shelf-lined room. He is out of time – minus five seconds. Police will soon be swarming the building – failure mode. He scans the shelves and comes to a series of small cryogenic freezers. It’s five years since Albert worked here: high probability that what he hid was long ago removed and destroyed. He reads the serial numbers on the freezers, finds the one he needs – that hasn’t changed. He unlatches the lid releasing a frosty steam from the liquid nitrogen. Inside are rows of vials and tempered glass ampoules. With his gloved hand he reaches deep inside – minus forty-two seconds. Probability of success ten percent; chance of capture or kill – fifty percent.
Thoughts of failure cloud his mind. He has miscalculated. Even if they’re still here, what chance that they’re still viable? Seconds tick; his fingers find a slight movement in the floor of the tank. He punches down hard with his gloved hand on the edge, sending the other side shooting up. Dozens of carefully arranged biological samples tumble down. Some shatter and spill their contents into the icy bath below. He doesn’t care. Potentially toxic fluids dribble down his arm and into his glove, because there, barely visible through the smoke, is a small sealed metal box. He grabs it, shoves it inside his pocket and runs – minus one minute, twenty seconds. He hears a single siren in the distance, and ignoring the pain that shoots up from his bleeding foot, he races down the corridor, out the door. He catches the flashing light of a police cruiser and then a second not far behind turning off the main road and heading into the industrial park.
He sprints across the parking lot to Saunders’ van. He is deep into failure mode – minus two minutes, eleven seconds. He glances in the back to see that Dr Conyors is still under the tarp as he turns over the engine and with his headlights off makes a dash for the parking lot exit. He sees the first cruiser heading toward Bioforward. He turns in the opposite direction. He glances in his rear-view to see if they are following. They aren’t. They’re headed toward the pulsing alarms that emanate from Bioforward’s open door. He circles the periphery of the industrial park – hears more sirens as he turns on to the main road. No choice but to head toward them in order to get back on to the highway. He turns on his headlights, keeps his speed well within the limit and counts the cruisers as they speed past – one, two, three, four … Probability of escape, seventy-five percent. Probability of success, seventy percent. He pictures Mary, he’ll ask her to marry him, she has to say ‘yes’. Maybe she’ll want t
o have children. It would be nice to have children … a wife.
Once past the last cruiser, he reaches across to the glove compartment and takes out a cell phone. He dials Channel Eight’s news hotline. ‘This is Richard Glash,’ he says. ‘I’ve killed two guards at the Bioforward Corporation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I’ve taken something that belonged to Dr Clarence Albert. I’m going to be very famous. Try to guess what I have. Try to guess what I’m going to do.’ Then, in a monotone, he sings, ‘Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posy. Ashes, ashes, we’ll all fall down.’ He rolls down the window and throws out the phone.
And for the rest of the ride, he thinks about Mary, children and the sexy, tingling feeling he gets when thinking about her wig and the scars underneath it. Maybe she’ll let him feel them … she did before.
Sixteen
Hobbs banged the still raw knuckles of his fist on the gated metal door of the Delancey Street building. It was 5 A.M. on Thursday morning, the sun was half up, and the street stank with yesterday’s garbage baking in the sweltering ninety-eight-degree heat. Houssman tipped back his gray hat and looked up at the façade of the four-story, iron-fronted structure. All the windows had been barred and the storefront had sheets of plywood in the window, with heavy steel mesh shutters pulled down to the ground. Over the store was a rusted sign that read IDEAL CANDY COMPANY – To the Trade and to the Public (established 1912).
Hobbs caught a vibration through the soles of his feet. ‘There’s someone in there.’ His right hand was on his sidearm, his muscles taut. His mind racing through the what ifs. Like what if Glash was on the other side of that door, a gun to Barrett’s head? Or a gun pointed straight at him? He caught the sound of something moving, too heavy to be a rat … at least, not the four-legged kind.
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