Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3)

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  But the damage of consequence was to the body’s most vital muscle: the heart, a muscle that contracts and relaxes, drawing blood in and pumping it out. Without the delicate rhythm in place, without being able to relax and draw more blood in, the heart spasmed uselessly. It quivered, moving no blood, a state that it, like the rest of its host, could not survive for any extended period.

  Mercifully, the woman lost consciousness after two minutes, but the death that was slowly taking hold would take several more to reach its clinical state of definition. Until then, life, or some form of it virtually impossible to imagine, would continue, then surrender to the inevitable.

  The same scene was repeating itself in the large offices on 71, and in the more numerous spaces on 70. And 69. And 68. It was almost without change. First the sulfur smell, then a sense of wonder, then the first twitch. Down farther, to 67, where the occupants of an entire suite of offices, crammed while wishing a colleague a happy and healthy retirement, were overcome and struck down. A fellow reveler, returning from the rest room, opened the office door to see her co-workers writhing on the floor, and splayed across desks, their mouths frothing, trying to draw in air like landed fish. Her mind went into overdrive as the sulfur smell reached her, and instinct took over. Gas leak! she thought, and bolted down the hall, unaware that she was being chased by the airborne droplets traveling through the ductwork hidden in the ceiling above her, and those being pulled along in the wake turbulence her body made as it scrambled to get away. She stopped at the elevator and stabbed madly at the down arrow, her finger breaking on the third attempt. Looking to the ceiling, and knowing not why her head was rearing back, she flopped backward and became the last victim on 67.

  Then it was 66. 65. 64. 63. A full ten floors the VZ mist had been spread, and now it was having difficulty traveling through every duct, as its volume was being absorbed by its victims and by inanimate objects, such as furniture, ceiling tiles, and even, in small amounts, by the interior of the ductwork. On 62 a young lawyer, working on the day the more senior people in the firm had off, caught a faint whiff of the sulfur odor, and opened his office door. Seeing two others from his office on the hallway floor, their bodies twitching and rolling, he slammed the door and ran to the phone.

  “Nine-one-one, what is—”

  “First Interstate Tower, the offices of Lothrop, Bowman, and Finch. Something’s wrong! Some sort of gas leak or something! I can smell it, and...and...”

  “Sir...? Sir...?”

  The downward journey continued, the big and powerful SunSnow blowers living up to every claim their designers had made. To 60, then 50, then 40. By the time it reached 32, a minute and a half after release, it was sufficiently dissipated that dozens of frightened workers were able to reach the phone and complete calls to 911, as well as to Building Services. On 12, Lena Carerra collapsed against the door to Anne Preston’s outer office, one hand on the knob. On 74, the pagers worn by Ray Harback and Carl Tomei were vibrating on their belts, but no response was to come. A frightened junior engineer, seeing the first throngs of people pouring from the stairwells and racing toward the front doors, some dragging grotesquely convulsing friends, ran to the main security desk.

  “What in God’s name is going on?!” the security director screamed at the junior engineer, the sight on the monitors before him having already sent one of his officers scurrying out of the building.

  “I don’t know!”

  “There’s bodies everywhere! Look!” The security director pointed to the monitors, which received video images from the cameras mounted in every main hallway.

  “They’re running for the elevators and dropping. My God, what is this?”

  The junior engineer, three years out of Texas A & M, stared at the piles of bodies against what seemed to be every elevator door. “Hit the alarm.”

  “What?”

  “Shut the elevators down and hit the alarm. Now!”

  The security director took care of both directions in only a few seconds. “Done.”

  “Are all the emergency systems up?”

  “Of course they are.”

  “Throw the breakers.”

  “What?!”

  “Dammit, there’s something spreading around up there, and it’s coming this way. Gas or something.”

  The calls were saying something about a strange smell, the security director remembered. In the vents.

  “We’ve got to cut the environmentals,” the engineer said. “The only way to do that is to simulate a power failure. The emergency lights will keep the halls and stairwells lit.” If anyone is still alive to need them. “Now. Do it!”

  The security director grabbed his keys and followed the engineer to the main breaker panel a few yards away. His key was in the safety lock when the first hint of sulfur snapped his head toward the vent.

  “Hurry!” the engineer shouted, taking the keys from his petrified colleague. He pulled the panel open, ignoring the groan and slap of the man falling to the floor, and grabbed the main breaker switch, yanking it away from the wall as his head, inexplicably, snapped backward.

  FIFTEEN

  Reunion

  The first Bureau forensic team arrived at the Royces’ Westlake Village house just as Art’s cell began ringing.

  “Jefferson.”

  “Art, Hal. Barrish is gone. His family, too.”

  Art said nothing immediately, but made a flapping action as Frankie looked to him. He had flown the coop. “Have you gotten inside yet?”

  “I’ve got no warrant.”

  “Get one. Fast.” Art hung up with the push of a button and started to replace the handset when it rang again. “Jefferson.”

  “Get downtown now.” It was Lou Hidalgo.

  “What? Why?”

  “They may have hit with the nerve gas.”

  “No. Where?”

  There was a pause. “The World Center, Art.”

  Frankie saw her partner’s jaw drop, his chest heave once.

  “Wha—what?”

  “I don’t know anything more than that, Art. Just get there.”

  Art clicked the phone off and tossed it across the front seat, jumping in right behind it. Frankie didn’t need to be told they were leaving.

  “What is it?” she asked as he accelerated away from the house, swinging a tight U-turn that made the tires scream.

  She’s all right, Arthur. She has to be.

  “Art, what is it?”

  Art told her through bared teeth as they entered the southbound 101. The rest of the drive was made in worried silence.

  * * *

  “Take the Fifteen,” John Barrish told his youngest son from the backseat.

  Stanley silently questioned the reasoning behind that routing, but expressed none of it. He simply obeyed his father’s instruction and slid to the right on Interstate 10, merging onto the long, sweeping transition to Interstate 15.

  “Hey, Pop,” Toby said with feigned excitement as they passed under the sign marking the 15 as the choice route to Las Vegas. “We could do some gambling.”

  John gave a mild smile in response to his son’s kidding. “I don’t want to take the obvious route.”

  Toby’s head bobbed up and down as he looked back from the front seat. Interstate 10 would have been the quicker route across country, but quicker wasn’t always better. “Pop?” Toby offered, holding a bag of chocolate chip cookies over the seat. He got a head shake in response, and shifted his attention to the left. “Mom?”

  Louise Barrish, hands resting one atop the other on her lap, mouthed a polite “No” and looked back out the window, watching as the mountains became clearer through the haze. Seeing the first wisps of snow, the lush green hills, the animals meandering through pastures. All the beautiful things. All the good things. All the...

  “What are you crying about?” John asked his wife, seeing the tears roll down her face.

  Louise looked toward the floor and shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Sta
nley rose up in his seat a bit and leaned toward the driver’s door to get a look at his mother in the rearview mirror. “Mom? You okay?”

  “I’m fine, Stanley.”

  “She cries over anything,” Toby commented. Especially lately, he thought to himself next. No offense, Pop, but no wife of mine will ever snivel like that.

  “I am fine,” Louise repeated, wanting to deflect attention from herself. She knew what unwanted attention elicited from her husband, and the bruise he’d given her that first night back had just gone away. She had avoided any more by simply fading further and further into the background. No challenges, at least none that she could identify as such before letting them slip out. No. It was best to just stay in the shadows. To cook his meals. To keep wherever they were living clean. And to say nothing. Nothing. She felt the tears want to come again, and looked out the window to the beautiful scenery to force the desire from her mind.

  “Listen,” Toby said loudly as he turned the volume up on the car radio.

  “...the casualties are numerous, and area hospitals are inundated. Initial reports, still unconfirmed, indicate the cause of what can only be called a disaster that began to unfold this morning in the First Interstate World Center in downtown Los Angeles may be nerve gas. We’ll have more on this breaking story next...”

  “YEEEEEESSSSS!” Toby screamed. “Pop! Pop! Did you hear that?”

  John drew in a deep breath and let his head fall back. “I heard.”

  “It worked! They did it!” The niggers were good for something after all! The thought of it made Toby roll with laughter in the front seat.

  “We really did it,” Stanley said, though his words were drowned out by his brother’s raucous laughter.

  Toby regained his composure and looked to the backseat. His mother was staring out the window, more tears streaming down her cheeks, and his father’s head was still resting on the rear deck. He looked so peaceful. So content. So... “Pop?”

  Stanley looked in the rearview. “What?”

  “Shh,” Toby said. “He’s asleep.”

  Stanley looked back to the road ahead. His father was made of steel, though some would say stone, and others ice. But there was no denying the man was made of something that others were wise to respect... even to fear. Stanley saved a little of both for the man who had given him life.

  “Just drive, Stan,” Toby said. “He deserves the rest. It’s been a rough couple weeks.”

  “I know it’s been rough.” He glanced again to the mirror and the sight of his quietly weeping mother. “For all of us.”

  * * *

  “Dammit, Frankie,” Art said painfully. “She’s in there.”

  Frankie put a hand on her partner’s shoulder and rubbed firmly. She could understand the feeling of helplessness completely. Standing a full two blocks from the tower, a position enforced by the fire department’s hazardous materials unit and a phalanx of no-nonsense blue suits, there was little anyone could do but stand in the steady downpour and wait. Even the members of the haz-mat team were holding back, waiting for instructions from the Army personnel on-scene.

  “This can’t be happening.”

  “Art, go easy.”

  “They’re not doing anything.”

  “Orwell is in there now.” Frankie dug deeper with her fingers. “He’ll know what to do. And they’ll listen to him.”

  Art nodded curtly, his eyes locked on the scene just outside the tower’s Fifth Street entrance. Body upon body, some collapsed on top of others, littered the sidewalk and the empty street. Anne could be there. She could be one of...

  “Damn you, Barrish. If she...”

  “Art.” Frankie gave her partner a gentle shake and gestured down the street. Emerging from the building were three men in oversized white coveralls topped by bubble helmets. “Orwell’s out.”

  They watched together as the trio of men moved to a decontamination area they had set up a hundred feet from the building. A shower assembly, with several heads arrayed around a frame somewhat larger than the standard-size door, stood inside what looked like a large wading pool surrounded by a clear plastic tent. Several hoses snaked from the base of the containment pool to a small pump, and from there to a tank truck. The three walked one at a time through the high-pressure shower, which sprayed a mixture of water and a chemical neutralizer over every exposed portion of their protective outer suits. Once all three were through, one man used a hand-held gas probe to check for any residual contamination left on his comrades, and was then checked himself. Once satisfied, they passed through the shower once more, then through blowers in a similar tent enclosure a few yards away. Emerging from that they removed the white outer suits and disposed of them in seriously marked red drums. Beneath the outer suit was the basic camouflage “gas suit” issued to all Army personnel, though to this a nonstandard respirator and rebreathing apparatus had been added. It took just a minute for the men to step out of these restrictive garments, which two members of the team went about drying of perspiration. Captain Orwell, wearing just an olive-drab jumpsuit now, headed directly for the agents a block and a half from him.

  “Is it?” Art asked as the officer drew near.

  “VZ,” Orwell answered, nodding, the welcome cool rain cascading over his body. “But I was ninety-nine-point-nine sure of that when I heard the first fire reports. A lot of people were saying they smelled sulfur, or the scent fireworks give off when they’re set off. That’s a product of the VZ binary.”

  “I thought these things were supposed to be odorless,” Frankie said. “You know. No warning until it’s too late.”

  “It was too late for most of the people that did smell it,” Orwell reported reluctantly. The sight of bodies everywhere inside the skyscraper was burned into his psyche. He feared he’d be having nightmares about this for weeks to come. “But you’re right about the common concept of how the agents can be detected. VZ is no different in a complete state. If Kostin had manufactured it as a singular product it would have been odorless. But when VZ is made as a binary there’s a reaction between the two reagents that produce not only the desired agent, but also several by-products. It was the by-products that people were smelling.”

  “And that clued you in,” Frankie said.

  Orwell nodded. “We also verified it with a chemical analysis. There’s no doubt.”

  “Is there anyone alive in there?” Art asked.

  “We were only able to make a cursory inspection, but, no. I didn’t see anybody.” Orwell knew the agent’s reason for concern. “I wish I could tell you more.”

  “What now, Captain?” Frankie inquired.

  “I’ve got more personnel coming in, and we’re going to get the haz-mat guys from fire up-to-speed on procedures so we can use them. Let me tell you, those guys saved a lot of lives. The first fire and police units on scene rushed in just like up on Riverside. They look like official rag dolls now strewn all over the lobby and stair wells. The haz-mat crew held everybody back once they got on-scene.”

  Frankie’s head shook slowly. Dead cops. Dead firefighters. Dead civilians. “Are you going back in?”

  “As soon as I have more people. We need to find out how the stuff got in there. I know it was spread through the ventilation system. That’s the only way it could get from the top of the building to the bottom. We only got up to ten, and there were bodies up to there.” Orwell looked skyward briefly. “Thank God for the rain. We didn’t have to make our own here. On a dry, windy day... We were lucky.”

  “Lucky?” Art snapped out of his narrowly focused state of worry. “Lucky? Captain, the woman I love works in that building. Tell me how lucky I am.”

  Orwell looked to Frankie, who gave a very slight shake of the head. “I didn’t mean—”

  Art turned away and paced several yards before stopping. This just couldn’t be happening. Not Anne. Not her. Next came the selfish streak, and the pain that any thought of living without her brought on. Not now. Not when I’m starting to live
again...

  “Art!”

  His head jerked up at the faint call, which came from somewhere in the distance. He looked right, through Pershing Square, then left, then every which way in search of the face to match the familiar voice. Or was it just a dream, a wish already dead? Something he wanted to hear but never would again.

  “Art!”

  It wasn’t his imagination. “Anne!”

  “Art! Here!”

  A hand swung back and forth in the air behind the police barricade two blocks distant. Below it was a face that he would have recognized had their separation been twice what it was. “Anne!”

  “Art! Art!” Anne yelled, tears mixing with the rain on her face as she jumped high to be seen above the crowd of onlookers.

  Art covered the distance almost before his partner knew he was gone, and she was now racing to catch up with him. But his attention was focused forward, on one set of eyes, on one face, on the one woman he loved.

  “Anne!” He reached the barricade line as she pushed forward and threw his arms around her, pulling her as close to his body as possible. But not close enough. Never could he bring her close enough to wipe away the pain, the fear that had enveloped him at the thought of her being...

  “Art. You’re okay.” Anne had an equally tight grip on him, and let herself be pulled over the barricade. Neither noticed the protestations of the nearest police officer, which were ended as Frankie came up and set matters straight.

  “Anne. God, I thought you were in there.”

  “Art, what happened?” Anne asked, her voice trembling. “Lena was in there, Art. She’s got three kids. Three kids!”

  Art held on tight as Anne began to sob. “Anne, it’ll be all right.”

  “Art. The radio said someone did this. It wasn’t an accident. Who? Who would do something like this?”