by John Lutz
It was the second time he’d used the word. “Who do you think seduced you?”
Markman inclined his head. Harper thought at first that he was indicating the girl in the photograph, but he meant the television. “All the voices coming out of that. Whatever else they disagree on, they all agree on this one point, don’t they?”
“What point?”
“Hang on to your dream and it’ll come true.” Markman smiled ruefully. “The preachers who tell you Christ will make you euphorically happy. The pitchmen who say you can easily be worth a million bucks. The gurus who tell you you’re up for a much nicer reincarnation next time. The Democrats who promise the government can help you and the Republicans who promise it will get out of your way. And of course the stars, who make you think you can be like them, that you’re special inside. Everybody on that screen wants you to keep on dreaming.”
Harper had to admit that Markman had a point.
Still smiling, Markman turned to Harper. “But let’s talk about the way things are in real life. What do you think, Mr. Harper? Do you expect a happy ending?”
His gaze dropped to Harper’s maimed hand. Harper looked down at it too. His thoughts went back to that quiet corridor in the Queens high school. He’d been so sure, in that last moment, that everything was going to turn out all right. He was going to get rid of that stick of gelignite safely. Already he was thinking about going home that night, about Laura.
Then the stick exploded.
No, there had been no happy ending to his career at the NYPD. Instead there’d been a brief period of agony, followed by a long period of tedium and frustration as he struggled to recover, knowing all along that he’d never be as good as new. Then there’d been the humiliation of being forced out of the Department by Captain Brand.
Harper put the thoughts away. He realized that Markman had diverted him, placed him on the defensive. A devious tactician sensing weakness and seizing the initiative. He looked up, to see that Markman was waiting for an answer. “No,” Harper said, “I don’t expect a happy ending anymore. The best I can do is hope for one.”
Markman nodded. He seemed keenly interested, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Instead he rose and walked over to where Harper was standing.
“I’m afraid I’m out of time,” he said. “But good luck, Mr. Harper.”
And he held out his hand.
Harper took it with his maimed hand, watching Markman’s eyes.
Two maimed men, he found himself thinking.
30
After shutting his front door behind Harper, Markman ran to the bathroom and vomited. The spasms went on racking him until his stomach was empty. Pale and trembling, he sank down on the edge of the tub. He didn’t know how he’d gotten through the last fifteen minutes. Never in his life had such a supreme effort of self-control been required of him.
When he’d first seen Harper coming toward him from the garage, he’d been unable to believe it. Only when he looked at the crippled hand did he grasp that this really was the man he’d seen on the televised press conference, the night of Speed Rogers’s death. Somehow Will Harper had tracked him down.
In that first moment, Markman assumed it was all over. Harper had been in the garage and knew everything. In a split second, cops and FBI agents would burst from concealment, surround him, hurl him to the ground. They would carry him off to interrogation, imprisonment, even execution. But Markman hadn’t been thinking of his future. He’d thought only that he had failed. The pattern would go uncompleted. His statement to the world would never be made. She would make her visit to the Constant Light Hospital and would depart unharmed.
These thoughts passed through his mind in a second. But as Harper got closer to him, Markman realized that he was smiling, speaking politely. He even seemed a little embarrassed. Markman grasped that Harper didn’t know everything. Not yet.
So now it was imperative to deceive Harper—and find out just how much he did know. Markman would have to push his fear deep down inside himself. It would be necessary to control his emotions more completely than he had ever done.
Now, sitting on the edge of the tub, he reviewed his performance. It had been a good one. He’d learned it was the Jake Blake mail bomb that had led Harper to him. This wasn’t really a surprise. It had been Markman’s first strike, and he’d been brooding about it ever since. Not that he regretted crippling Blake—the conceited bastard had it coming. But he’d made so many mistakes, acted without his emotions completely in check. It was sheer luck that he’d gotten away with the bombing at the time.
He’d been an amateur then, unable to spend the time and money to do the thing right, gripped by feelings over which he had no control. That was before the great change in his life, before the setting of the goal, the establishment of the pattern. Before Aquila.
Just as he’d been beginning to relax a little, even to enjoy the game of question and answer, Harper had dropped the casual announcement that he’d been down to the old plant. Talked to Hayden. So he knew all about Markman.
Markman knew now that this should have put him on his guard. But at the time, it’d had the opposite effect. He’d felt relief. And not only the much-talked-about relief of the guilty man finally able to confess at least part of his crime. What had affected him so was the realization that he and Harper were much the same sort of person, sharing many qualities, and it relaxed him to think that Harper knew his story and understood him. Markman couldn’t resist the impulse to talk to the man. It was a long time since he’d talked to anybody.
Markman dug his fingernails into his palms and glared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Stupid shithead,” he muttered. Will Harper wasn’t his friend. Wasn’t his goddamn shrink. He was a cop, trying every trick he could think of to provoke Markman into a fatal mistake.
But had Markman made such a mistake? He went over what he’d said to Harper. It humiliated him that he’d spoken so carelessly, revealed so many of his thoughts. But his tone had been that of a defeated man, a helpless victim. He must have fooled Harper.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Markman ran up the stairs to the second floor, stood on tiptoe to grasp the pull for the hatch, and brought down the ladder that led to his attic. It was warm and musty up there. And the wood floor was mostly bare, since he had little to store. His telescope stood on its tripod near the north-facing dormer window. He moved it forward and leveled it to scan the horizon.
It was only after he moved the telescope to the east window that he spotted Harper. His car was parked on the edge of the public park, just a block down the street. He must be waiting for Markman to make a move—probably to jump into his car and roar away in a desperate attempt to escape.
Markman straightened up from the telescope. So Harper was suspicious. But he wasn’t sure. He was hoping Markman would panic and make up his mind for him.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen.
Ducking beneath the angles of the roof, Markman moved the telescope from window to window, continuing to scan the horizon. He saw no helicopters, no snipers on rooftops, no police cars, no TV minicam trucks. There were no watchful men sitting alone in parked cars—except for Harper. He had no official support, then. He was as alone as Markman.
Returning to the east window, Markman focused the telescope on Harper’s broad-browed, gray-bearded face. He was quite still, gazing steadily down the street. He looked as patient and calm as a fisherman on a shady riverbank. He wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
Eventually, of course, he’d decide that Markman wouldn’t be making a run for it. Then he’d go talk to the police about his suspicions, or continue poking around St. Louis, delving into Markman’s past. He wasn’t going to give up.
Which meant he’d have to die.
Markman straightened up and slapped the telescope so that it swung away from him. He wasn’t happy about this decision. The Aquila pattern did not call for Harper’s death. In fact, it would have been a go
od thing for him to be alive after May 15, to help explain Markman’s intentions to the world. But he had to be killed, and right away. So there was no point in debating or thinking any more about the decision—the death sentence.
Markman brushed the attic dust off him and went down the ladder and then down the stairs. He would take no chances on Harper seeing him leaving the house. He went out the dining room window, on the side of the house away from Harper. It bothered him, having to leave the screen up. Insects would get in. Using the house to block him from Harper’s vantage point, he ran to the garage. His heart was beating fast and he was breathing hard from his exertions. His hands trembled a little, so that he had trouble fitting the key in the lock.
But he knew from experience he would calm down as soon as he was seated at his workbench, with his familiar tools in his hands. The workshop had always been his place of sanctuary, where with a calm mind and steady hand he devised the answers to his problems.
Today’s bomb would be a very simple one.
31
Harper’s heart was pounding and he felt light-headed with excitement. He felt certain that Markman was the bomber. But he didn’t know why.
As he sat in his car looking down the street, he kept imagining himself talking to Special Agent Frances Wilson, making the case against Markman. There was no case, though. Markman hadn’t said anything that could be considered incriminating.
Yet Harper’s instincts told him Anthony Markman had killed thirty-three people. And was laying plans to kill many more.
Harper stared through his windshield down the quiet suburban street. Markman had known who he was; Harper was as sure of that as he was of Markman’s guilt. But he didn’t know if his visit had alarmed Markman. Someone like the Celebrity Bomber would be driven by raging ego and a smug superiority that brushed morality and law and compassion out of the way. Possibly the killer was supremely confident and thought he was in no danger. He certainly wasn’t making any attempt to flee.
What Harper wanted most was to get into that garage. One minute in the workshop and he’d know for sure that Markman was the bomber—and be able to prove it.
But he couldn’t get near the garage as long as Markman was home. So he’d decided to wait and watch. If Markman drove away, he wouldn’t follow, but would grab his chance to break into the garage. If Markman stayed put, he would wait until nightfall. Under cover of darkness, he might be able to reach the garage unseen. It would all depend on where Markman had put his yard lights.
For the rest of the afternoon, Harper waited, watched the empty street, and pondered the drawbacks of his plan. One possibility was that Markman had booby-trapped the garage. He certainly had the expertise to set an undetectable trap, if he was the Celebrity Bomber. It was also possible that Harper’s instincts were wrong and he wasn’t the bomber—in which case, Harper might end up spending tonight in jail on a charge of breaking and entering.
Harper pushed away his excitement and apprehension and settled down in the seat behind the steering wheel, conserving his energy, gathering his strength and his nerve for what was to come.
The small public park behind Harper was empty and quiet until four. Then a group of skinny teenage boys in baggy shorts rode up on skateboards. For the next two hours, they practiced riding the boards down a short flight of concrete steps into the parking lot. The ceaseless banging and clattering got on Harper’s nerves, but he figured listening to it wasn’t as bad as doing it. None of the boys managed to reach the bottom of the steps without falling off, not even once. It looked unbearably tedious and frustrating. Not to mention painful.
Finally it got too dark for the boys. They put their skateboards under their arms and started limping for home across the softball field. Watching them go, Harper noticed a sort of small pavilion near the field. It had a Coke machine inside it.
Harper remembered his promise to call Addleman. He was overdue, and besides, Addleman might have something for him. He rose stiffly from the car and walked toward the pavilion. Time for a Coke and a phone call.
From his hiding place in a thicket at the side of the road, Markman watched Harper walk away from his car. This was what he’d been waiting for, but Markman never let impatience get the better of him. He was going to stay put until he could no longer see Harper through the thickening dusk—until there was no chance of Harper seeing him.
It had been a long wait. Markman had finished his work in the garage quickly, then gone over his back fence and crossed his neighbor’s yard to the street, to work his way around behind Harper. None of the drivers who’d passed him had looked twice at the man walking along the sidewalk with a shoebox tucked under his arm.
He’d only used a car bomb once before, back in Oklahoma ten years ago, to get that idiotic weather girl. That had been a fairly complex bomb, with the explosive mounted under the hood against the firewall, and the priming charge wired to the ignition. This bomb was much simpler: just four sticks of dynamite and a blasting cap, wired to a simple radio receiver and its small battery. After planting it, Markman was going to return to his hiding place, wait for Harper to return to the car, and detonate the bomb. It wasn’t that he wanted to watch Harper die. Nothing like that.
He simply had to be sure.
Harper was no longer in sight. Markman waited for a car to pass on the street, then got up and walked quickly over to Harper’s car. The best place for the bomb was under the seat. Markman tried the door and found it locked. He could have opened it, but there was no need to waste time. Placed under the car, the four sticks of dynamite would still do the job.
He waited until another car passed, then went down on one knee. From the shoebox he took the bomb and a roll of duct tape, which he was going to use to strap the bomb to the undercarriage. Before handling the tape, he put on latex gloves. Tape took fingerprints extremely well. Markman had read once of a terrorist who’d been caught because a one-inch square of tape that happened to have his thumbprint on it had survived the blast and been found by the police.
They weren’t going to get Markman that way.
As he was about to plant the bomb, he heard another car approaching. Unhurriedly, he got to his feet, holding the bomb close to his chest so the passing driver wouldn’t be able to see it, but not so close that the tape could pick up fibers from his shirt. He turned away from the road.
The car went by without slowing. But Markman remained standing, staring across the dark softball field to the little pavilion. There was no light inside, but there was one of those vending machines whose whole front was a glowing red Coke label. In front of it, Markman could see the silhouette of a man. He squinted. It was Harper, using his cell phone.
This was unexpected. He’d have to think about this.
Markman backed away from the car, stepping on the shoebox and almost tripping. He bent to scoop it up along with the roll of tape. Then he walked quickly away. His heart was hammering and there was a bitter taste beneath his tongue. There was nothing he hated more than a last-minute hitch that forced him to change his plan.
He’d seen no police around, and assumed that Harper was working alone. That had been a mistake. Harper was talking to someone and it was possible—no, probable—that he was reporting about Markman.
So killing Harper wouldn’t make Markman safe. Instead, it would bring the cops down on him even more quickly.
Bending forward, Markman moved quickly away into the darkness. He didn’t know where he was going or what his next move would be. Sweat broke out on his brow and he mopped it with his sleeve. It humiliated him to think about how stupid he’d been, how close he’d come to making a fatal mistake.
He’d felt secure in his home base for so long. He’d become wedded to his timetable and his fastidiously laid plans. Harper’s appearance had changed all that. Markman had been slow to understand that. He’d reacted instinctively, thinking he could take Harper out and carry on with the plan as before.
He’d been stupid. Panicky. Markman burned with h
umiliation when he thought of how he’d let his emotions run away with him. Blowing up Will Harper, only a block from Markman’s own home. Christ! He might just as well have called the FBI and turned himself in!
At least he could see the realities coldly and clearly now. He was going to lose his home base. The old timetable would have to be scrapped, the plan he’d labored over for so many months would have to be thrown out. He’d have to lay out a new and entirely different route that would take him to the Constant Light Hospital on May 15. And he’d have to do it fast.
Markman walked on, deep in thought, until he came to the house that backed on his own. He ran lightly up the drive and jumped over the fence.
He was going home for the last time.
32
When Harper had arrived at the pavilion, he’d been annoyed that someone had packed the Coke machine’s dollar-bill slot with what looked like chewing gum. Squinting at the keypad in the rosy glow from the machine, he tapped out Addleman’s number on his cell.
“Hello!”
Addleman gasped out the word. Harper would’ve thought he’d had to run to catch the phone, if he hadn’t known that Addleman never went anywhere. So it had to be excitement.
“What’s up, Harold?”
“Harper! Where the hell have you been?”
“I’ve—”
“Never mind. I found something on Markman. He’s our guy for sure.”
“For sure?” Harper repeated. He felt the rush of exhilaration again. A combination of satisfaction and apprehension that came with the knowledge that at last they were closing on their quarry. Had men felt this since the hunt had begun aeons ago?
“I’ve been downloading stuff from the local paper out there, the Post-Dispatch. Found a story about our friend, from eleven years ago.”
“A story about Markman? What did he do?”
“Bear with me for a minute. You have to understand the time frame. This is after his father died, after Markman Manufacturing was sold, with not one red cent going to our Tony. He’s given up on his comedy career, and he’s back in St. Louis working at a Six Flags amusement park.”