Grant Mckenzie

by Switch (v5)

  ‘I don’t like repeating myself, Sam. But if you need incentive—’

  ‘Daddy!’ a girl’s voice screamed over the airwaves.

  ‘MaryAnn!’ Sam shouted back.

  ‘Touching,’ said the voice. ‘Now kill Zack before I lose my temper.’

  Sam pointed the gun at his friend.

  Zack stared at him, his eyes so large, the whites were the size of river stones.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Sam.’ Zack held up his hands.

  Sam hesitated. ‘I don’t have a choice.’

  Zack’s face sank and a resigned calmness came to his eyes as he slowly lowered his hands. ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘Your life for hers.’

  Zack locked eyes with his friend. ‘Do it, Sam. You’ll be doing me a favour.’

  ‘Christ, Zack. I . . . I—’

  ‘DO IT!’ Anger made Zack’s face boil.

  Sam’s gun began to shake and tears ran down his cheeks. He still hesitated.

  ‘Do it, Sam,’ Zack pleaded, his voice quivering as he reached into his pocket and produced his own gun. He pointed it at Sam. ‘Do it now or I’ll kill you where you stand, Sam. I’ll take the money and run. Your family will die with—’

  Sam pulled the trigger and a geyser of blood erupted from the side of Zack’s head. His body collapsed noiselessly to the ground with barely a twitch or spasm.

  Davey screamed in horror, his mouth opening so wide it looked as if his jaw had come unhinged.

  Sam held the smoking gun at his side, his face a contorted mask of sorrow and fury. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘You had the choice, Sam. I always gave you the choice.’

  Sam howled in frustration and jammed the gun barrel against his temple. His finger trembled on the trigger.

  ‘DON’T!’ screamed the voice. ‘Do that and your daughter dies, too.’

  Sam collapsed to his knees, the gun still aimed at his head.

  ‘We’re not done with you yet, Sam.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Sam instantly brought the gun to bear on the camera and pulled the trigger. The camera lens shattered and the box sparked blue as the gunshot echoed across the park.

  After a moment of silence, the voice said, ‘Feel better now?’

  ‘No.’ Sam’s voice was tight.

  The voice chuckled. ‘I’ll add the cost of a new camera to your bill.’

  ‘Where do I pay?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked. It’s time to deliver.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Bring the money to the station. I’ll meet you on the platform by the first track.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now, Sam. I would hate for you to get arrested for murder before you see your daughter again.’

  The line went dead.

  108

  The detectives in-car radio reported: Shots fired in Waterfront Park.

  Detective Preston glanced over at his partner. ‘Should we go?’

  ‘If someone caught the bullet, we’ll get the call,’ Hogan said. ‘For now, let’s keep on Lucas. He’s the connection. Everyone connected with that rape is being punished.’

  ‘Because one of them got away with it?’ Preston mused.

  ‘And Lucas paid the price for a crime he doesn’t feel he committed.’

  Preston drove through an amber light and turned east. ‘Twenty-five years is a long time to plot revenge.’

  ‘For some people, high school still feels like yesterday.’

  ‘True,’ Preston agreed. ‘That’s why they invented Viagra, right?’

  Hogan’s laughter was cut short when the broadcast updated to report a grey Mercedes sedan was seen leaving the scene of the park shooting.

  Hogan lifted the transmitter and asked for more information on the Mercedes as Preston pulled a quick U-turn and headed for the park.

  109

  Sam fishtailed out of the park on to Hoyt and then pulled a sharp right on Sixth Avenue. The 150-foot-tall clock tower, the centrepiece of Portland’s historic Union Station, served as a beacon as Sam rushed the few blocks to his final destination.

  The Mercedes glided through the parking lot and came to rest against a yellow kerb.

  Sam scrambled out of the car and popped the trunk. He looked down upon the two large duffel bags and felt the realization dawn of just how little the contents really mattered.

  He had spent his life chasing a dream that included wealth as a reward for success, but now it was irrelevant. The only important thing was his family.

  With feelings of dread, guilt and sorrow chewing at his gut, Sam lifted a heavy red bag on to each shoulder and walked under the clock tower to enter the station.

  110

  Detective Hogan slid out of the car and approached a uniformed sergeant who stood beside a series of skid marks that blemished the untamed green lawn.

  ‘You investigating trampled weeds now, Detective?’ the sergeant asked. ‘Cause we ain’t got a body.’

  ‘We were interested in the car.’

  ‘The Merc?’

  Hogan nodded.

  ‘Tied to something you working on?’

  ‘Could be. Anybody see a plate?’

  The sergeant casually snapped open his black leather notebook, making a show of flipping the pages. ‘Oregon plate, but no number.’ He pointed down at a page with his finger. ‘The witnesses were all pretty far away.’ The sergeant closed his notebook. ‘Your guy camera shy?’

  Hogan frowned. ‘Why?’

  The sergeant pointed above the fence to the broken surveillance camera. ‘We’re pretty sure that’s what he was shooting at.’

  Hogan studied the camera, noticing its familiar box shape. ‘Why’s it pointing out here?’

  The sergeant shrugged. ‘I assumed it must have something to do with security at the station. With all these colour-coded terror alerts, cameras are popping up everywhere.’

  ‘Can you check that for me?’ Hogan asked. ‘See if the station owns it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  As the sergeant reached for his radio, Hogan turned to find his partner kneeling on the ground a short distance away. He was poking a ballpoint pen at something in the grass.

  Hogan walked over. ‘What you got?’

  ‘Blood,’ Preston said. ‘And something odd.’

  Hogan stepped closer as Preston lifted a small black box, not much larger than a standard 9-volt battery, on the end of his pen. Protruding from the box were two lengths of thin wire. At the end of the wire was a melted glob of red plastic attached to a thin metal plate. The metal was scorched on top and several strands of curly black hair protruded from its underside.

  ‘What is it?’ Hogan asked.

  In response, Preston dipped his finger in the blood coating the ground and brought it to his mouth. As Hogan watched in revulsion, Preston touched his finger to his tongue.

  ‘It’s fake. Strawberry, I think. Never was very good with fruits.’ He held out the device for his partner to get a closer look. ‘This is a squib. Homemade Hollywood magic at its best.’

  ‘Somebody faked a shooting?’

  ‘Oh, the shots were real.’ Preston indicated the shattered camera. He then turned to face the direction of the blood splatter and pointed at a tree. ‘We’ll probably find another slug in that trunk. They faked a killing.’

  ‘For the camera?’ Hogan surmised.

  ‘That would be my guess.’

  ‘Bleepin’ actors, huh?’

  Preston sighed. ‘You can say that again.’

  The sergeant approached across the grass. ‘Detective?’

  Hogan turned. ‘Yes, Sergeant?’

  ‘Just received a call on an illegally parked Mercedes. The plate doesn’t match your BOLO, but—’

  ‘Where?’

  The sergeant jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Union Station.’

  111

  Zack followed Davey’s lantern through the dark tunnel, his eyes straining to avoid any loose rocks or sudden dips
in the dirt floor that could trip his feet and break an ankle.

  When a train rumbled overhead, the whole tunnel shook, making Zack quickly scramble to find shelter beneath one of the solid stone archways. As he grasped the stone, waiting for the train to pass, his fingers found the pillar’s mysterious, undecipherable carvings, but he no longer cared what secrets they held.

  His head pounded from the tiny explosive charge Sam had stuck to the side of his skull, along with a condom of fake blood hidden in his hair and disguised with a small patch of wig. The wig had blown off in the blast, which Zack guessed must have added to the realism of a bullet blasting through his skull.

  Davey had been struck dumb, even though he had watched them attach the squib in the car before they drove to the restaurant. The realism must have erased Davey’s short-term memory as his face showed horrid fascination when Zack later rose from the dead and pulled the depleted squib out of his hair.

  He thought back to the tortured look on Sam’s face and the agony that filled his voice before he pulled the trigger. The performance had made him forget Sam was an actor, and for a brief moment the unnerving thought had crossed his mind that the squib was just there to placate him, a placebo, so he wouldn’t run if Sam was forced to shoot. They had both known that with Sam in possession of the full one million dollars, Lucas’s need for Zack was over.

  When Zack triggered the explosion and collapsed to the ground, he had even imagined he could feel Sam’s bullet passing before his eyes, a whisper of warm, electrically charged air brushing against his brow.

  Sam had driven off without a word, trusting that Zack would follow the original plan.

  Even though he knew of the earlier betrayal, Sam had still entrusted him with all he held dear. Zack could only hope that, this time, he could honour that trust.

  112

  Sam entered the lobby of the train station.

  Polished stone walls and elegant archways bordered a marble-lined floor, its grid pattern echoing the ornate ceiling two storeys above. Long mahogany benches filled the centre. They glistened with fresh polish under the dangling, chandelier-style lights.

  It was the type of location a movie director would use to film happy endings of husbands coming home from war and rushing into their lovers’ arms. It was not where one would imagine money being exchanged for the lives of a woman and child.

  Sam scrutinized the sparsely populated benches for Lucas, but saw no one he recognized. He scanned the concourse, stopping in front of a large marble clock, its face scuffed by time. The tall, black letters beneath the clock indicated the trains lay just beyond its doors.

  Sam gathered all his courage, and, with a bag over each shoulder, headed for the platform beyond.

  113

  The giant smoothed a dab of Vaseline across his face, feeling bloody welts rising from his flesh. The puckered skin burned from the alcohol swabs he had used to disinfect the cuts.

  The damn tunnels were always damp and Richard wondered what century-old illnesses still thrived in the dark, cobwebbed corners. He knew the history of the tunnels, knew that dozens if not hundreds of people had died down here. Some were victims of violence, others of drink. But still others had succumbed to plagues and other skin-boiling, lung-eating maladies that modern medicine had thought long eradicated. And destroyed they may be, but that was on the surface, not down here in the dark and the dank.

  Richard wiped an alcohol-soaked cotton swab across the bite on his arm and gritted his teeth against the pain. The bitch had bit deep into muscle, tearing out a good-sized chunk of bloody flesh with her flashing white teeth. He hoped the resulting scar wouldn’t ruin the perfect shape of his bicep and destroy his chances at the upcoming National Bodybuilding Competition in Seattle.

  He had placed third in his last two competitions, and was feeling confident in his chances of moving up a notch this time around. Last week at the gym, he spotted his main competition, a large Asian who worked for Vadik, and noticed his treatments for testicular cancer had begun to show on his body. The man was definitely shrinking, which meant second place was there for the taking. He just prayed the bitch’s vicious attack hadn’t fucked things up.

  Women had long been his bane. And this one wasn’t even supposed to be down here. He had put up with her mouth, her crying and her mind games for the first week, and as long as he didn’t go near the child, she had been relatively easy to deal with.

  The fuck-up – his fuck-up, according to Lucas – at the switch had changed all that. Richard didn’t believe he deserved all the blame. After all, there were two women and two kids and he was all on his own. If Lucas had drugged the wine properly that white bitch wouldn’t have woken up and turned into a screeching banshee when she saw . . .

  The woman screamed when he appeared in the doorway with the chloroformed girl in his arms.

  The drug should have knocked her out for hours, but somehow the mother had woken up. She approached him on rubbery legs, a pair of No.4 knitting needles clutched in her hand.

  MaryAnn tumbled from his grasp as the woman lunged at him with murderous intent. Before he could raise his arms in defence, one needle broke off in his chest and the other dug into his thick neck, just missing the bulging carotid artery. Richard howled as he instinctively backhanded the woman with enough force to snap bone.

  Hannah flew to the side, blood spurting across her face from a broken nose as her head cracked loudly on the laminate floor. Richard expected her to stay down, and when she didn’t, he felt genuine fear.

  The woman before him was no longer a suburban housewife who read romance novels and knitted the occasional scarf. Instead, she was a demon with fireball eyes and razor claws.

  The woman sprang forward, her fingers curled into ten deadly claws, her teeth watering for flesh. Richard let her come, trying to calm his mind and remember his training. The woman moved blindly and without skill, her entire focus bent on ripping out his throat.

  As soon as her nails touched him, Richard trapped her throat between his forearms and performed a lethal scissor move. The woman’s neck twisted so violently that her spine snapped.

  The anger remained in her eyes as she slumped lifelessly to the floor, and the hatred he saw reflected back filled Richard with a boiling rage.

  ‘You bitch!’ He lifted his foot and brought it crashing down on the dead woman’s skull. More bones cracked as he repeated the action over and over until his rage ebbed.

  When he was done, his breathing laboured under the effort, the woman’s head was unrecognizable.

  Frustrated, Richard rubbed both hands across his smooth skull and wondered what he should do. Lucas expected him to return with a woman and child, but now . . . fuck it. There was only one thing he could do.

  He picked up the drugged child and returned to his van. The other woman was still unconscious in the back. She would have to do.

  After the stinging in his arm stopped, Richard wrapped a clean bandage around it and knotted it tight. Satisfied with his handiwork, he flexed his muscles and rotated his head to work out any kinks.

  When he was warmed up, he placed a scowl on his face, headed out of the cell and back into the tunnels.

  It was time to finish that bitch once and for all.

  114

  Davey turned a corner and stopped beneath a stone archway, his chest heaving and eyes glistening. When Zack arrived a few moments later, Davey flashed a set of rotting teeth.

  ‘This is as far as I’ve ever gone,’ he said. ‘There’s a door here that leads to a whole series of tunnels.’

  ‘Can we get through?’

  Davey grinned again. ‘They locked it, but the hinges are on this side. I took the pins out weeks ago, so we just need to pry it loose.’

  Zack leaned forward and touched the rusted hinges before sliding down the seam, his fingers finding a slim gap between wood and stone.

  ‘You don’t have a crowbar handy, by any chance?’

  ‘Just this.’ Davey held up his homemade k
nife.

  Zack slapped the man on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get to work.’

  115

  Detective Hogan parked beside the Mercedes and climbed out to quickly circle the car. When he arrived on the other side, his partner was peering into the open trunk.

  ‘If your theory is correct, then this has all the earmarks of an exchange,’ Preston said.

  ‘Money for his family.’ Hogan glanced at the station’s clock tower. ‘Strange place for it: public, open, few escape routes.’

  Preston shrugged. ‘Makes the delivery man feel comfortable, and if you’re not expecting him to follow you out . . .’

  ‘Because the delivery man is dead,’ Hogan finished.

  In the tunnels, Davey swore a blue streak as he strained against the thick, wooden door. His knife had proven useful for piercing flesh and keeping night thieves at bay, but it was awkward against the spongy, time-ravaged wood.

  ‘You move to the top again,’ Zack suggested as he squeezed in beside him. ‘You’ve moved the bottom enough that I can jam my fingers in there.’

  Davey did as he was told and jammed his blade deep into the upper part of the door, directly above the top hinge.

  ‘On three,’ Zack said. ‘One, two—’

  Both men strained, sweat popping on their brows as the door began to groan. Suddenly, it jerked in their hands with a popping of air and both men fell backwards into the dirt.

  Zack bit his tongue, drawing blood, as his head slapped the ground. Davey fell on top of him, too, all sharp elbows and boney butt. When the dust settled, both men looked at the door. It didn’t appear to have budged.

  ‘Damn it.’ Davey kicked the door with all the frustration he could muster. Upon impact, the door groaned and then fell, forcing Davey to scramble out of the way before his feet were crushed under its weight.