Phineas Troutt Series - Three Thriller Novels (Dead On My Feet #1, Dying Breath #2, Everybody Dies #3)

by J. A. Konrath

She stretched as far as she could, took off her pants, and peed next to the brick wall.

  Time ticked by like ants crawling across an oiled table.

  She thought she heard noises. People noises. Faint, but busy. An office? A business of some kind?

  Or another Nazi camp?

  Pasha didn’t call for help, and her own cowardice made her feel even worse.

  Eventually, she fell asleep, waking up sometime later when the light came on.

  Hugo. He’d brought a plastic bucket which contained two plastic bottles of water, some toilet paper, and a bag of fast food. He set it on the floor next to her, then squatted on his haunches, staring.

  Pasha met his stare, but she was concentrating on her peripherals, trying to figure out where she was. The shelves were lined with… stuff. Weird stuff. Big lights, like the kind they use in movies, but rusty and cracked with age. Baskets. Chairs. A sofa. Milk cartons. A butter churn. Lots and lots of tarps, rolled up and stacked like giant cigarettes. What was this? A warehouse? An old storage facility?

  “Why do you love him?”

  The sound startled Pasha, so deep it vibrated, and she almost yelped. She focused back on Hugo, trying to keep her face neutral.

  “He’s kind,” she said.

  “Being kind is weak.”

  “Being kind is strong. It means thinking of others. Putting them first. That’s how species survive.”

  “I thought nature is survival of the fittest.”

  “Nature is also about caring. All mammals raise their young.”

  “You can survive without being raised,” Hugo said.

  Pasha wasn’t about to argue with him. She tried a different track. “Have you ever had someone try to make you happy?”

  The way Hugo stared at her, Pasha felt she might as well have been speaking a different language.

  “No one?” she asked.

  After a moment, he said, “The CN is good to me.”

  “The CN?”

  “The Caucasian Nation. They treat me well.”

  Pasha nodded, eager for, needing, some common ground. “They do things for you. You do things for them.”

  “They fear me. Just like you do.”

  Pasha took a shot. “Maybe they like you. As a person.”

  Hugo laughed, the sound of a dog barking, showing his horrible, broken teeth. A stench of hot rot washed over Pasha’s face, curling her nostrils.

  “Do you like me?” he asked.

  Pasha had no idea how to answer. Lie and have him call bullshit? Tell the truth and have him get angry?

  She decided upon, “I don’t know you. You’re using me to get to Phin. Like a carpenter uses a hammer. There’s nothing personal between us.”

  “I disagree. I broke your finger. How much more personal can you get?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Fucking?” Hugo said. “You think that’s more personal?”

  Pasha struggled not to look away.

  “Anyone can fuck,” he continued. “There doesn’t have to be caring. There doesn’t have to be consent. It doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t reveal anything. You can still hide while someone is fucking you.”

  Again, she didn’t want to say anything. This was a road she didn’t want to go down. Luckily, Hugo wasn’t looking for her to respond.

  “But pain…” he went on. “Pain is much more intimate. More private. You shared your pain with me. We had a moment. Like that moment when the lion locks his teeth into a gazelle. The gazelle knows it’s dead. The lion knows it can live. That connection is real.”

  “How can you live like that?” Pasha whispered.

  “The world doesn’t matter. You can try to ignore the world. You can try to fight the world. Me? I want to make the world scream.”

  Pasha wanted to change the subject, quickly. Hugo was getting a strange look in his eyes.

  “Thank you for the food, and the bucket,” she said.

  Hugo stood, undid his pants, and pissed into the bucket.

  He turned out the light before he left.

  Pasha began to sob.

  Minutes—hours?—passed.

  Pasha ignored her rumbling stomach. But she couldn’t ignore her thirst, and had to take the water bottles out of the bucket. She shook off the urine and let them dry before drinking one of them, finishing it in less than ten gulps.

  Is this what I’ve been reduced to?

  No dignity?

  No hope?

  She sulked.

  When the door opened again, Pasha almost sobbed when she saw it was Hugo. He had something sticking out the top of his front pocket. It looked like a magazine. The border on top was yellow, and Pasha could make out the letter P.

  “You’re my insurance that Phineas doesn’t try to screw up our plans,” he told her. “If you can behave thirty-four more hours, I’ll let you go.”

  She didn’t believe him, but found herself wanting to. So badly.

  “Why thirty-four hours?”

  “That’s the egg scene.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Aliens,” he said. “Six thousand people are going to die. We need to make a call. Keep absolutely quiet, until it’s your turn.”

  PHIN

  My cell phone woke me up.

  I was groggy and stiff and sore from sleeping in the Bronco, having pulled over into a rest stop on the way back from Decatur. I looked at the screen and saw the name.

  UNKNOWN.

  I knew who it was, and a jolt of adrenaline shocked me into full alert.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Good morning, little brother. I hear you’ve been up to all sorts of trouble.”

  “Let her go, Hugo. I’ll meet you anywhere you’d like.”

  “Leave Packer alone. If you contact, him, bother him, or post anything about him online…”

  Pasha screamed. I shut my eyes so tight I saw stars through my eyelids.

  Her scream went on and on, and then Hugo came back on and said, “Are we clear?”

  “Yes. Can I speak to Pasha?”

  “You just heard her. Want to hear her again?”

  “Hugo, don’t—”

  Another scream cut me into pieces and then flattened those pieces with a hammer. I thought about hanging up, knew that would make it worse, and held on until the sound ended. And afterward, the woman I love yelled, “Phin! Six thousand people will die! Aliens!”

  Then the line went dead.

  Aliens?

  Jesus, was Pasha so badly hurt she’d lost her mind?

  I set the phone on the passenger seat, started up the Bronco, and headed to Chicago to meet with McGlade.

  Hopefully he had some kind of lead.

  Two hours later I was in McGlade’s office in the heart of downtown Chicago.

  “Sorry for the mess,” he said, taking me through a plastic tarp. “They’re getting rid of black mold, and the guys are union so they only work six hours a week. We should be done in 2037, as long as they keep their coffee breaks down to forty-five minutes.”

  “I heard from Hugo,” I said. “He told me to leave Packer alone. Then he made Pasha scream.”

  Harry made a face. “Sorry, man. I couldn’t do anything to Packer now anyway. The leverage is the threat of doing it. Once I post the pics, we lose all power. He say anything else?”

  “That he’d meet me on Monday.”

  “Huh. Why wait until then? I can think of three reasons. He’s somewhere far away. He’s hurt. Or he’s got something planned.”

  McGlade might not be as stupid as he seems, Earl said.

  We went into what seemed like an interrogation room, complete with a table, two chairs, and a giant mirror covering one wall. I didn’t ask, but he told me anyway.

  “It’s a TV set. They shot a few scenes of Fatal Autonomy here. You know, the TV show based on my life.”

  Talking about McGlade’s television show was a rabbit hole I didn’t want to go down, because once you went in you might never return.
I stayed silent and let him burn himself out. There was simply no other way to deal with him. He was the middle-aged equivalent of a hyperactive child who had to burn off all the sugar.

  “This room cost me, like, a fortune to build, and they only used it once, because my electric can’t handle those huge TV lights. It was the episode Terrorist Sex Junkie Confession. Did you see it? That one was the unofficial tribute to TJ Hooker.”

  I stared with zero expression, and waited for McGlade to get over himself. It took a few minutes. After name dropping several celebrities that were siblings of more famous celebrities, and bragging he’d once had sex with an elderly woman famous for her risqué cat litter commercials, my Job-like patience was rewarded by him actually getting down to business.

  “So Bradford Milton… this dude is a piece of work. His connection to the Caucasian Nation has never been publicly proven, but the Feebies are pretty sure he’s the SC. The money trail indirectly leads to him, and the guy is just weird enough that it’s believable he’s fronting a white supremacist group. You know how some millionaires are philanthropists? He’s an anti-philanthropist. He actually lobbied against building the Holocaust Museum in DC. It’s rumored he’s the one who bought Hitler’s dagger a few years back, at that big auction. Also, and this is disturbing, I’ve seen pictures of his estate, and it has dozens of those stone fountains of little boys peeing.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Outside of Des Moines. About a five hour drive. I tapped into the city database, doing a building permit search, and his mansion is all buttoned up. He’s got every type of security measure, except armed guards. His place is so wired that a mosquito can’t fart a mile away without him hearing it. This is one seriously paranoid old man.”

  “Most Nazis are.”

  “No kidding. That’s probably the reason for no guards. He doesn’t want anyone peeking in the windows while he’s whacking off to The Triumph of the Will. Take a look.”

  McGlade dropped a printed picture on the table, and I hoped it wasn’t a picture of Milton whacking off. Instead, it was the mansion.

  It was big. And intimidating. Perimeter fence. Spotlights. Iron bars over the windows.

  “Looks tough,” I said. “But not unbeatable.”

  “You sound like a man who knows a little something about breaking and entering.”

  “I’ve done my share.” Both as a juvenile delinquent, and as an adult delinquent. The way I earned my living, solving problems for desperate people that the law couldn’t solve, sometimes involved illegal entry. I couldn’t pick a lock or crack a safe, but I knew my way around burglar alarms.

  “Me, too. Though I prefer the entering part more than the breaking. Here’s what I’ve got planned, maybe you can spot any holes.”

  Harry reached under the table and grabbed a large rucksack, the size and shape of a golf bag. He unzipped the top and began taking things out. Contents included a crowbar, a bolt cutter, a rechargeable drill, a glass cutter, a propane torch, duct tape, magnets, a liquid compass, copper wire, tree spikes, glazier’s suction cups, and a canvas boat winch, among other things.

  “That’s a good start. What if Milton has infrared?”

  “I’ve got some Mylar survival blankets. Block it no prob.”

  “Dogs?”

  “Packer has two licensed dogs, according to the City Clerk website. But I have this.”

  McGlade pulled out a plastic garbage bag, containing—

  A stuffed animal German Shepherd.

  I take it back, Earl said. He’s an idiot.

  “You’re joking,” I stated.

  Harry shook his head, looking disappointed. “I’m disappointed,” he said, in case I was immune to non-verbal cues.

  I resisted the urge to shake him hard and make him hurry up, and instead lied and said, “I see where you’re going with this.”

  “That’s because we’re on the same broadband, Phin. We’re so much alike, we’re like two people sharing two minds.”

  That made no sense. I let it pass.

  “There’s no keypad or lock on his gate,” I said, reviewing the picture. The gate stretched along the driveway on a thin track.

  “I noticed that, too.” McGlade produced a black object with buttons on it that looked like a remote control. “It’s a remote control.”

  No shit.

  “It probably operates between 300 and 400 megahertz, and this transmitter can send all possible codes in under a minute.”

  “Can it detect ultrasonic?” I asked.

  “No. But I got that covered.” He dug into the bag and came out with a plastic hamster ball. Containing a hamster. Not a stuffed hamster. A real, flesh and blood rodent, white with grey highlights, and little pink feet. “I just got him this morning. Still trying to think of a name. What do you think of Beetlejuice Skywalker Van Damme?”

  “Not much. We need to go.”

  Harry scratched himself in an unattractive place. Granted, most places on him were unattractive, but this one was more unattractive than most. “Good call. Let’s roll. I’ll drive.”

  I’d never been to Iowa before, but any novelty I may have obtained from the visit was nullified by spending five hours in a car with McGlade.

  After we hashed out a breaking-and-entering plan, which was just bizarre enough to possibly work, McGlade further endeared himself to me by singing for the entire first few hours of our journey. Lots of old hard rock and heavy metal. He only knew about half the lyrics, and faked the rest. I was pretty sure Creedence Clearwater Revival never sang, “Hey there’s a bathroom on the right.”

  I’d been waiting for his voice to wear out, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

  “You need to stop,” I said.

  “We just stopped a few miles back. I’m telling you Phin, those gas station chili dogs were fine, even though they looked really bad. I’m pretty sure they were supposed to be that chewy.”

  “You need to stop singing.”

  “Really? How can you not like good music?”

  “That’s the problem. I do like good music.”

  “We can do a duet. You know Islands in the Stream?”

  “No.”

  “How about I Got You Babe?”

  “I don’t want to sing.”

  “That’s chill. I can do both parts.”

  “I don’t want you to sing, either.”

  Harry considered it.

  “Fine. No singing. Want to swap sex stories?”

  “No.”

  “Want to hear about the time I bought some of that aerosol Hair In A Can, sprayed it on my junk, and then picked up a hooker?”

  “No.”

  “How about the time I had sex with a girl who had an eating disorder? Spoiler alert: she didn’t swallow.” He frowned. “Maybe that wasn’t really a spoiler.”

  “How about we just don’t talk.”

  “Fine. Be a king prick.”

  He lasted all of seven minutes.

  “I’m wearing a diaper,” said McGlade.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” I had my eyes closed and was focusing on all the pain I was feeling, which was preferable to dealing with Harry.

  “I brought one for you. If we have to stake out Milton’s place, we don’t have to worry about finding a bathroom.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “It has Power Rangers on it. Custom made. They don’t normally come in this size.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “My testicles are the size of oranges.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “I can fit my whole hand up my ass.”

  “The real hand or the fake hand?”

  “Ha! I knew you were listening. Want to play Scrabble? I’ve got the traveler’s edition, with magnetic letters.”

  “No.”

  “You’re just afraid because I have a really really big, uh, use of, that thing for words…”

  “Vocabulary.”
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br />   “Yeah. Want to play? I’m really good.”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough. I think there are a few Beatles songs I haven’t sung yet. Did I get through all of Abbey Road?”

  “Fine,” I acquiesced, “let’s play Scrabble.”

  “It’s in the glove compartment.”

  I opened said glove compartment and found it laden with old nudie magazines. Titles like Ass Master Classic and Foot Bondage Monthly.

  “In between girlfriends?” I asked.

  “You never know when you might get stuck in traffic.”

  I tossed the mags over my shoulder, looking for the Scrabble set.

  “Careful,” admonished Harry, “I can sell those back to the bookstore when I’m done with them. Can you believe that stores actually sell used porn?”

  “Says the guy who buys used porn.”

  “Only if the pages aren’t ripped. Or stuck together.”

  I found a slim plastic case with the Scrabble name on the side, and opened it up.

  “You’re missing some letters,” I told McGlade.

  “How many?”

  “All you’ve got left are seven E’s and a J.”

  “I’ll go first.”

  “We can’t play, McGlade.”

  “My first word is EEEJEEE. Double word score, plus a fifty point bonus for using all of my letters.”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “It is a word. It’s the sound you make when you step barefoot in dog shit.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You win.”

  “Told you I was good at Scrabble.”

  I tossed the game in his back seat and recruited one of the magazines, settling in to read a fascinating article about the proper way to paddle an ass. Funny, how that’s what I felt like doing at that very moment.

  Harry resumed his massacre of early 80s rock, going through the entire Pink Floyd The Wall album.

  I had to hand it to him; it was just annoying enough that I couldn’t really think about Pasha.

  Maybe that was McGlade’s intent all along. Maybe he was trying to distract me. Maybe he really was a decent guy.

  “You know, with the bald head, and the saggy face, you sort of look like my scrotum.”

  Compliment rescinded. He was a self-absorbed asshole.

  “What is it with you?” I asked.