by David Grace
Danny turned and kicked the door as hard as he could, just like they did in the movies. It exploded inward but he hadn’t expected it to hurt so much and when he went inside he limped. It took only a few seconds to confirm that the place was empty. He found Kane’s cell phone, wallet and gun on the floor of the closet next to the bathroom. He debated for a moment then stuck the gun in his belt figuring it couldn’t hurt to have a second weapon. Danny pulled up Franks’ number from his call list.
“Where’s Kane’s phone?” Franks asked him.
“I’m at his apartment. His phone, wallet and gun are here but he isn’t.”
“Does he know anyone in Alexandria?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“We got a lead to a cell tower there. I think it may have something to do with your partner. Does that ring any bells at all?”
“No,” Danny said after a moment’s thought. He quickly scanned the address list in Kane’s phone but nothing matched. “What’s happened?”
Franks hesitated. At that moment he was a few minutes away from linking up with his men. Rosewood was closer to Alexandria than he was.
“All right, get out your pen. I’ll give you our best guess about where Kane might be.”
“What’s happened to him?” Danny demanded.
“Here’s what we know,” Franks said and began to explain.
* * *
Franks’ men used a rolling tail to stay on Bellingham all the way onto U.S. 1 then followed him west toward the Alexandria National Cemetery where they had to fall back or risk being spotted. Somewhere between Highway 1 and the cemetery Bellingham got far enough ahead of the lead car to duck out of sight and then switch off his lights. By the time they turned the corner the street ahead was empty. Two of the trailing cars went north on parallel streets while Franks headed south in case Bellingham had doubled back.
The professor didn’t think he was being followed but by this time security had become second nature to him. Driving with his lights off and taking refuge several times in shadowed driveways he was able to work his way into the blocks of apartments behind the cemetery west of Four Mile Run. He pulled into the guest parking lot of a twelve story apartment house and waited until the road was clear. Finally he headed out, again without lights, moving north for half a mile then parked briefly before turning his headlights back on. Ironically, it was Bellingham’s attempt to avoid surveillance that revealed his location.
Danny had been cruising the western edge of the cell tower zone and noticed a pair of headlights blink off. Nothing about that was unusual but it was something and so far all Danny had was a lot of nothing. He made a left and headed toward where the lights had disappeared. He had almost reached the southern end of the search zone when he noticed a pair of taillights suddenly appear in his mirror. He made a quick U-turn but they too soon vanished. Danny slowed at the next intersection but the cross street was empty. Certain now that he would never find Kane Danny continued straight on then stopped for a red light. As he was sitting there a black Audi A6 crossed in front of him on the green. He only caught the last three numbers on the plate but they matched Bellingham’s car. Danny flicked off his lights and turned left, driving with one hand and dialing with the other.
“I’ve got him,” Danny said when Franks answered.
“Has he spotted you?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not using my lights.” Danny gave Franks his location.
Shit! Franks thought. I hope he doesn’t kill someone. “Keep feeding me your position. We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
The Audi made another turn then pulled into the driveway of a public storage facility. It paused briefly then the gate opened and it drove through. Danny parked on the street and ran up to the entrance. The gate was steel, eight feet high with a keypad mounted inside a steel casing ten feet back toward the curb. On the other side of the fence the Audi turned right at the end of the main aisle and disappeared.
“He’s driven into a storage yard,” Danny told Franks and gave him the address. “You need a key code to get in.”
“Don’t move. We’ll track down the owner. I’ll be there in about three minutes.”
Three minutes? Danny looked at the deserted rows of lockers. Screw that, he thought and parked his Mazda as close to the fence as he could. It wasn’t easy with his sore foot but he managed to climb onto the hood and then to the roof. From there the top of the fence was about chest high. Thank God they don’t have barbed wire, he thought and tried to swing himself over. Most of him made it but on the way down his coat caught on the steel and he tumbled the eight feet to the ground landing on his ass. When he looked up half his coat was flapping in the breeze like a flag.
Danny struggled to his feet. His hands were scraped and his butt hurt but nothing seemed broken. Where was his phone? Danny stared at the remains of his coat. Crap! It hurt like hell but on the third try he managed to jump high enough to grab the dangling sleeve. The coat tore free and fluttered to the ground but his cell was no longer in the pocket. He spent half a minute wandering around in the dark looking for it then gave up.
Danny glanced back through the fence at the deserted street then turned and scanned the rows of silent buildings. Stay or go? Agent Kane was in trouble. Screw it. He still had both guns. He wasn’t waiting for anybody.
* * *
Bellingham parked one row short of the target and walked the rest of the way. Munroe was waiting for him outside the closed door.
“He’s awake. I left him alone like you asked.” Munroe rolled up the panel and led the professor inside.
“Is your device all charged up?”
Munroe pointed to the stun gun on the table. “All set.”
“Wait outside and shut the door.” Munroe frowned but complied.
“Hi, Professor,” Kane croaked when Bellingham approached the chair.
“I need some answers, Agent Kane.”
“You need a hell of a lot more than that. I can’t even begin to count how many years you’re going to spend in a federal prison.”
Bellingham held up the stun gun. “How did you know it was me?”
“I read your bio.”
“Explain,” the professor ordered.
He’s basically a teacher, Kane thought. He likes to talk and I need to stall for time.
“The first time we met you told me that you hated addicts. Fine, nothing unusual about that, but then you called Danny and told him again how much you hated addicts. Not drugs, addicts. You weren’t upset about drug dealers or the availability of drugs. You hated the people who took the drugs. That got me thinking. After that it was obvious.”
“You’re stalling.”
“You wanted answers. I’ll shut up if you like.”
“What was so revealing about my CV?” Bellingham snapped.
“Well, not just your CV. Those articles you wrote were what really told the story. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots.” Bellingham frowned and sparks arced across the stun gun’s contacts. “Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Kane said with a warped smile. “I’m getting to it. OK, one you hate drug addicts. Two, you wrote that drug addicts should either be allowed to die or be sterilized. Three, your initial research was into finding a way to make insects sterile. Four, you elected to extend your research beyond insects, to mice, mammals. You wouldn’t have done that if all you were after was a better way to kill bugs. You had your eye on sterilizing people all along. My guess is that when the university realized that you were developing chemicals that might be used to make humans sterile you were asked to retire but by then it was too late. You’d already figured out how to do it.”
“That’s all supposition,” Bellingham said.
“Supposition? Really? Look around. You’re in bed with a wanted killer. You’ve kidnapped a Homeland Security agent. That seems like pretty solid evidence to me.”
“Not if you aren’t around to testify.” Bellingham turned away.
“Wait. Isn’t t
his the place where the mad scientist explains his great plan and attempts to convince everybody that they’re all wrong about him?”
“Since you’re going to be dead in a little while there’s no point in trying to convince you of anything.”
“Doesn’t a condemned man get a last request? At least satisfy my curiosity. I’m right about you, aren’t I?”
Bellingham paused, then turned back to Kane.
“No, you’re not, at least not entirely.”
I knew it, Kane thought. Your ego is too big for you to just walk away. You can’t resist the chance to tell me how brilliant you are, how right you are.
“OK, smart guy, where did I go wrong?”
“The delivery mechanism is more complicated than you think. More elegant.”
“It’s a drug that gets people high. What’s elegant about that?”
“It gets them high but it is not physically addicting. That’s key. There are no withdrawal symptoms, no tremors, no shakes, no hallucinations. People will be free to stop taking it anytime they want.”
“So what?” Kane demanded.
“That’s an absolutely vital element. The compound will only affect true emotional addicts. The occasional user, the teenage experimenter, the temporarily depressed individual will suffer no physical withdrawal which means that they can easily quit if they want to. That was a moral imperative. I’m not out to kill stupid children who swallow a pill that somebody gave them at a party. I’m not a monster.”
“Kill? This stuff is going to kill people?”
“Only if they take it hundreds of times. And technically it doesn’t kill them. It just shortens their life expectancy. A hard-core addict who took a hundred doses over six months would likely die within another two years. A hundred doses over a year would extend that to death in four or five years. Two hundred doses within one year and, statistically, they’d be dead within nine months. It’s not a straight line calculation.”
“You’re planning on killing thousands of people?” Kane asked.
“I’m not killing anyone. I’m allowing defective people to reduce their life expectancy by choosing to take illegal drugs. At most, I’m giving them the opportunity to choose to shorten their lives in exchange for sensory pleasure. It’s not really very different from selling sugar, bacon, alcohol and cigarettes to an obese diabetic. I’m just affording them an opportunity to exchange a long boring life for a short, happy one. Are people criminals who sell overpowered motorcycles to teenaged boys?”
“Are you going to put a warning label on this stuff? Will there be a little skull and crossbones on each pill?”
To Kane’s amazement, Bellingham smiled.
“You know, that’s not a bad idea. For some people it would probably make the product more attractive. And it’s not thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people. There are millions of addicts in the United States. Within five years after I begin distribution I expect that that number will be reduced by at least fifty percent. Within ten years I hope to have it down to under ten percent of current levels.”
“You’re hoping to kill millions of people over the next ten years and you think you’re not a monster?”
“Most of them are not going to die. The majority of the decline in the addict population will be from the elimination of addictive genes from the reproductive pool.”
Kane thought about that for a second. “The same way that you were going to get rid of the bugs,” he said, almost talking to himself.
“The product has a duel, cumulative purpose. Only fifteen or twenty doses will be sufficient to sterilize the majority of the users, given a standard normal curve. If they don’t exceed that dosage then the only effect, other than their inability to have or father children, will be a slight reduction in life expectancy, two or three years at most. It’s only the heavy and continuous addicts who will significantly reduce their life span, and their lives are such a hellish nightmare already that that would probably be a blessing.” Bellingham babbled on, oblivious to Kane’s disgust. “If we sterilize the addictive personalities who take repeated doses eventually their genes will disappear from the population leading to a natural and material reduction in the number of addicts in the gene pool as a whole.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m the most sane person in this room. Have you seen the statistics on the number of crimes committed by drug addicts? I’m going to save our country from millions of burglaries, hundreds of thousands of auto accidents, thousands of murders, and thousands of criminal drug gangs. The list of crime and pain and financial loss directly arising from drug addicts is almost beyond measure. I’m going to end that and most of that result will not be from people dying. No, it will be from people not being born with defective genes in the first place. You’re a policeman. If you had an ounce of sense, if you cared about the victims of crime instead of a bunch of loser drug addicts you would be helping me.”
“You killed Albert Brownstein. You’re a murderer.”
“One man died so that thousands can live. How many people died building the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge? In any great enterprise there is always, inevitably, collateral damage.”
Bellingham stared at Kane as if looking for some sign of agreement.
“Is that how you’ll justify murdering me?” Kane asked, thinking of Ronnie Dubois dismissing his killing Lyla Masterson as “collateral damage.”
“Dying is your choice, Agent Kane. If you would only recognize the value, no the necessity, of what I’m doing your death would no longer be required.”
“My choice, hmmmmm,” Kane said. “Well, hell, if I’ve got a choice, sure. Where do I sign?”
“Somehow I don’t think you’re being sincere. For what it’s worth, I regret that it’s going to be necessary for Mr. Munroe to kill you.”
“Well, if you’re sorry about it, that makes all the difference, asshole!” Kane shouted.
Bellingham frowned then turned as the door clattered up to the ceiling.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
When he reached the end of the row of lockers Danny looked left then right. In the shadows at the end of the next row down he caught the faintest glint of light. Half jogging, half limping he moved toward it then paused when he realized that he was looking at a strip of chrome on Bellingham’s black Audi. He made a hunched pass around the empty car then inched forward to the next aisle. The lockers on both sides seemed deserted. Carefully, listening at each door, Danny worked his way up one side and then down the other but he heard no sounds and saw no glimmers of light. He crossed the back of the next row and then peeked up the other side.
At first this aisle seemed as empty as the last but as he was about to turn the corner he caught a hint of movement in one of the shadows near the last locker on the far side. Danny ducked back. After a second or two the shadow resolved into a man-shaped form staring out toward the street. A line of light leaked from beneath the nearest door. Danny watched the man for several seconds. All his attention was focused on the storage yard’s main entrance. He’ll see Franks’ car! Danny realized. He’ll kill Agent Kane and then he’ll escape! I have to do something. The back fence was twenty feet to Rosewood’s left. I have to get as close to him as I can without him seeing me.
One foot at a time Danny crept back to the fence then worked his way forward until he was directly behind Munroe. His gun held two-handed, straight out in front of him the way he had been taught Danny moved forward as quietly as he could manage. When he was six feet away the man heard some rattle or scrape and started to turn around.
“Don’t move!” Danny ordered barely above a whisper. “Federal agent.” For a second Munroe froze then slowly continued his turn. “Stop or I’ll kill you!” Danny hissed, the fear clear in his voice.
“I rent a space here,” Munroe said. “I was just taking a break. I can show you my access card.” Munroe’s hand dipped toward his pocket.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Munroe paused t
hen pulled his hand back.
“Sure officer. No problem.”
Danny looked wildly around for some other threat but saw none.
“Open that door. We’re going inside. You first.”
“Whatever you say.” Munroe took a couple of steps forward and yanked the door up above his head. A wash of light spilled out and Danny squinted against the glare.
“Hands above your head. Get inside.” Looking past his prisoner Danny spotted Kane fastened to a chair with silver tape and another man standing next to him. “Raise your hands!” Danny shouted, “Federal agent.”
As soon as the door went up Kane heard the shouts and saw a figure in the darkness behind Munroe. It was only when the second man stepped into the light that Kane realized that it was Danny.
“Are you all right, Agent Kane?” Danny called.
Don’t look at me! Kane wanted to scream. Keep your eyes on your prisoner, but he was afraid that saying anything would distract Danny even more. The kid was doing it all wrong. He needed to get both men face down on the floor then cut him loose. Instead Danny just kept walking Munroe deeper into the room.
“I’m fine,” Kane said, “Get them–” but it was already too late. Munroe’s hand darted toward his belt and before Danny could decide whether to shoot him or yell at him Munroe had his pistol out and pointed at Kane’s chest.
“Drop your gun or I’ll shoot your friend!” Munroe shouted. Wild-eyed Danny looked from Munroe to Kane and then back to Munroe. If he pulled the trigger the man might still have time to kill Agent Kane.
“Shoot him!” Kane shouted.
Danny lined up the barrel but held his fire. His whole life he had been taught that decent people didn’t shoot a man in the back.
Munroe took a quick glance over his shoulder. “Put your gun down or I’m going to kill your friend.” Danny hesitated.
“Don’t do it!” Kane ordered.
“One. . . Two . . .”
“All right! All right!” Danny shouted and squatted down, gently laying his pistol on the floor.” At this point in the movies the gunman would turn around and motion for the cop to put up his hands or some such silly thing. In real life it never happened that way. Munroe instantly swung around and fired. Danny had been beginning to stand and shoved off on his bad ankle but only managed to move far enough for the bullet to hit him in the shoulder instead of the center of his chest. Munroe saw Danny’s body jar with the impact and then the stain blossom on the agent’s sweatshirt. Munroe took a second to make sure that Danny’s gun was far out of his reach and then he turned to Bellingham.