Inmate 1577

by Alan Jacobson

  Burden swung around. “Robert, get us a helicopter. Faster than taking that Zodiac and we can land somewhere central, like maybe the cellhouse roof.”

  “Bureau’s Regional Aviation Assets might have a chopper,” Vail said, “but I’m not sure if San Fran—”

  “We just got one,” Yeung said. “A Bell 407, all tricked out. Staged at Crissy Field.”

  “Perfect,” Burden said. “Get it hot. We’re on our way.”

  Dixon rose from her chair. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Plan?” Burden harrumphed. “We don’t have a plan.”

  Vail tucked in her blouse as she moved for the door. “Sure we do. And I can sum it up in three words: Catch this asshole.”

  Dixon grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair. “Works for me.”

  THE BELL MOTORED OVER THE fog-socked Bay. Visibility was almost nil, with white enveloping the helicopter’s windows and increasing the confining feel of the chopper’s modest compartment. Vail closed her eyes and tried to calm the anxiety, focusing instead on what their next steps would be.

  Dixon, Burden, Carondolet, and Yeung sat alone with their thoughts until Vail tapped Carondolet on the knee. They were all outfitted with headsets tuned to the same channel.

  “Any agents still there from last night?” Vail asked.

  Carondolet shook his head. “They left on a cutter this morning. Around four or five, if I remember. Soon as they cleared the island.”

  “How many armed LEOs are normally on the island?”

  “None. There was a law enforcement ranger there for a few months once, but it wasn’t a permanent position. Just no money for it. Park Service has got the same problem Bureau of Prisons had with Alcatraz—costs a goddamn mint to maintain the buildings and keep that place in one piece. The salt air’s a killer. And cops just haven’t been necessary.”

  “Until today,” Vail said.

  Carondolet, seated beside the pilot, shrugged: What do you want me to say? “Park Police and FBI’s got people en route. I’ll get an ETA.” He twisted the radio dial and began speaking into his mike. A moment later, he tuned back to their channel and then turned his torso to face his task force members. “Backup should arrive about ten to fifteen minutes after we do. But you’re not gonna like this. It’s Alumni Day.”

  Vail leaned closer. “What the hell’s Alumni Day?”

  “Once a year deal. Former correctional officers and their families—and ex-inmates—go to the island. Have meals, reminisce, give talks for the tourists.”

  “Inmates and officers, socializing?” Vail asked. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

  Burden said, “And that’s today?”

  Carondolet nodded. “And tomorrow. It’s not publicized. The tourists who come this weekend just luck out.”

  “I don’t think ‘luck’ is the right word,” Vail said. “Call it off, turn the ferry around—”

  “They’re already there. Probably in the hospital by now. That’s where they eat and hang out. They close off the whole floor from the public.”

  The helicopter swung left, circling from over what Vail presumed was choppy Bay water, inward toward the island.

  “I’m gonna land us on the fresh-water cistern,” the pilot said. “Better access to all the buildings than the roof. Assuming I can see it.”

  Vail nudged Dixon. “This guy’s got a sense of humor.”

  The FBI pilot swept around in a tight arc, then hovered and slowly descended, as if the agent was holding out a hand and feeling around for the ground. A moment later, with a slight jolt, he brought them to rest on a large, flat, cement area just north of the cellhouse and water tower—both of which were barely visible in the fog. Dozens of seagulls scattered, vacating the improvised landing pad for a much larger bird.

  Carondolet pointed as he spoke. “We’re near the north tip of the island. Industries building and the Golden Gate are to our right.” Their heads swung in that direction. “Trust me, behind that wall of fog, they’re both there. Cellhouse and rec yard’s in front of us, which you can kind of make out. Powerhouse is to our left, down the hill.”

  “There’s the smokestack,” Vail said. “Or, part of it.” Looks a bit different without a dead body tied to it.

  “How do you want to handle this?” Yeung asked.

  “First question to ask is why Scheer brought us here,” Burden said. “We figure that out, we’ll have a course of action.”

  “Another body?” Dixon asked.

  Vail shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe. Maybe more than one. I think everything he’s been doing, it’s all been leading up to this. He chose today, and this place, for a reason. He wanted all the ex-officers and inmates on the island. And this Alumni Day gives him what he wants.”

  “Why?” Burden asked.

  “I can guess, but I’m sure we’ll find out.” Vail’s BlackBerry buzzed. “Apparently sooner rather than later.”

  welcome

  “He knows we’re here,” Dixon said.

  Vail frowned. “We flew in on a goddamn helicopter, Roxx. Fog or not, everyone knows we’re here.”

  They jumped out of the Bell and pivoted, taking in what they could see of the structures Carondolet had mentioned.

  Dixon put her hands on her hips. “He could be anywhere. We should get everyone off the island until we get things under control.”

  “The ferry’s back at Pier 33,” Carondolet said. “It’s loading up. They’d have to get everyone off, then it’d take at least twelve minutes to get here, and then another ten to fifteen to load it.”

  Yeung, who was peering into the thick soup, swung around and said, “We should leave everyone where they are, in the hospital. Soon as backup gets here, we put an agent at each entrance. Right now keeping things simple will keep everyone safe.”

  “Fine. We need to focus on finding Scheer,” Vail said. “You were him, where would you be?” Just then, her phone vibrated. “Here we go.”

  i would give you a clue but

  ur time is running out

  go to the diesel tank

  Vail turned to Carondolet. “What diesel tank?”

  “There are several tanks on the island, some of them hold fuel and others water, so it’s har—” He stopped and swung around, then peered into the fog in the direction of the smokestack. “Wait a minute. There is a diesel tank.” He walked to the furthest edge of the landing pad, then held out an index finger and settled on a location. “There.”

  Carondolet took off along the left side of the helicopter, leading them toward the water tower. Just before they hit its stanchion, he hung a left down a series of cement stairs. The steps ended at a lengthy, deeply sloping sidewalk that paralleled the cistern where the chopper had set down.

  As they ran along the path, to their right, the Powerhouse and Quartermaster warehouse rose from below the adjacent East Road.

  Carondolet led them up East Road and through a cyclone fence sally port, just past the end of the Powerhouse building. A chain-link gate, its lock forced open, blocked the entrance to a steeply sloped steel gangplank that spanned a gully below. The metal footway led down to a sizable cement slab that contained pipes of varying sizes and stainless steel hatches. A white, black and red warning sign stood sentry where the bridge ended:

  DANGER

  COMBUSTIBLE LIQUIDS

  DIESEL FUEL

  A large cylindrical tank the color of a fire engine and marked Diesel Fuel stood on wide rails at the far edge of the concrete base, seemingly at the edge of the island. Barely visible beyond the red tank was...nothingness. Regardless of the fog, Vail still heard it: crashing waves of the ocean.

  “There,” Carondolet said.

  Vail pulled open the gate and grabbed the railings of the narrow gangway, then headed down, followed by Burden and Dixon.

  She stood in front of the massive tank, hands on her hips. “Now what?” She pulled her phone to make sure she had not missed a text from the offender. Nothing—but with the crappy cell recepti
on on the island, she wondered what he would do if his messages weren’t getting through. How would he react? Not well.

  “Anything?” Yeung called out, standing watch with Carondolet at the gate, handguns at the ready.

  Dixon jumped down to the ground about five feet below the concrete support base, which stood beside the Powerhouse’s exterior wall. A moment later, she called up to Vail from the other side of the tank. “You wanted to find Scheer, right?”

  Vail looked down in Dixon’s direction, though she couldn’t see her. “Uh, that’d be affirmative.”

  “Well, we found him.”

  Vail and Burden jumped off the foundation, then climbed over a series of yellow pipes that protruded from the cement base. Dixon was standing on the other side of the tank...where Stephen Scheer was seated.

  “Is he—”

  “No,” Dixon said. “He’s alive. Unconscious, but breathing. Drugged, maybe.”

  Burden craned his neck and reached across the top of the base. “He’s chained to the tank.” He leaned in closer, then said, “And not to dampen the spirit, but we’ve got another problem.” He leaned against the edge of the foundation and pointed at a box to Scheer’s left.

  “Yeung,” Vail yelled. “We’ve got an IED!” A bomb. A goddamn bomb—

  Yeung, standing behind the cyclone fencing thirty feet away, pulled his phone and began dialing.

  Vail climbed atop the cement base and knelt next to the device. “Timer—set for...holy Jesus—three minutes.”

  “Active?”

  “Two minutes fifty-eight seconds. Yeah, it’s active.”

  Carondolet ran halfway down the gangplank. “Get out, we need to get away from here!”

  “Can you raise EOD—maybe they can talk us through deactiv—”

  “Karen, that’s a bomb attached to a diesel tank. And the slab you’re standing on? It’s a storage receptacle filled with fuel. Not only that, see that yellow piping?” Carondolet gestured at the tubes that snaked up the side of the Powerhouse building. “It runs the entire length of the island. All the way to the dock. This bomb goes off, it’ll take half the island with it.”

  And that’s the offender’s plan. Kill all the former guards and cons. Vail rose and, among the many valves protruding from the back of the tank, chose one that was perched above a coupling pipe.

  “What are you doing?” Dixon asked. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

  Vail began turning the burled knob. “Burden—try to reach someone on the dock, have ’em find a valve on the yellow pipe and open it full bore.”

  Burden pulled his phone and ran up the metal bridge with Carondolet.

  “Karen,” Dixon said. “We’ve gotta go.”

  “We leave, Scheer dies—”

  “If we don’t leave, we all die.” Dixon grabbed Vail’s arm, but she shrugged it off.

  “See if you can get him free,” Vail said as she continued cranking the knobbed wheel atop the valve. “We’ve still got time.”

  Dixon moved to Scheer’s body and began inspecting the bindings. “I can’t—chain’s tight. We need a hacksaw or bolt cutter—”

  A loud hiss, indicating tremendous pressure—blew back at Vail. She yanked her hand away at the instant a thick stream of diesel fuel blasted outwards, cascading out of the mouth of the coupling pipe in a downward arc toward the ocean below.

  The acrid odor constricted her throat. She twisted away and buried her nose in the crook of her elbow.

  Dixon, her face likewise shielded, asked, “What good is that?”

  “Emptying the tank,” Vail shouted. “Concrete slab might dampen the explosion. Maybe it won’t ignite the fuel underneath us.”

  “Now can we leave?” She leaned in close. “Ninety seconds left.”

  “What about Scheer?”

  “Not happening. He’s chained down. Unless you have a bolt cutter in your back pocket, there’s nothing we can do.”

  Shit.

  “Karen,” Burden yelled from above. “Let’s go—now!”

  Dropping her arm and holding her breath, Vail climbed around the tank to leave—but gave one last look back at Scheer’s chain.

  But she suddenly found herself hefted up onto Dixon’s shoulder.

  “Roxx, what are you doing? Put me down!”

  Dixon made it onto the gangway and did her best to run uphill. As strong as she was, moving up a narrow path on a steep incline with a grown woman over her shoulder was difficult even for her.

  “Put me down, I’ll go—I’ll go!”

  Dixon lowered her to the metal bridge’s surface, and then gave her a shove. Vail made it through the fence and continued across East Road, following Burden up the sidewalk they had come down earlier, toward the landing pad/cistern and cellhouse.

  “Did you reach someone on the dock?” Vail asked.

  “They found a valve and opened it up. Whether it’s too little, too late—”

  The explosion was concussive, an eardrum-pounding blast that shook the bedrock and sent the three of them sprawling to the ground. Vail lifted her head and saw, through the dusty fog, daylight showing through the left portion of the Powerhouse. From what she could see, the remainder of the island was largely intact.

  As they glanced around, surveying the damage, Dixon gave Vail’s shoulder a shove. “That was brilliant. Brilliant, but incredibly stupid.”

  “Thanks, Roxx. I think.”

  Carondolet and Yeung came running down the sidewalk toward them, sidearms and cell phones in hand.

  “You all right?” Yeung asked.

  “We’re fine,” Vail said as they got to their feet. “Everyone safe?”

  “Scheer’s obviously toast—uh, literally. Everyone else seems okay. We’ve got a fire running the length of the pipe,” he said, gesturing to the east side of the island.

  Flames licked skyward from behind the foliage and brush along the coastline, extending past the vacant Officer’s Club, and beyond.

  “Backup saw the explosion and called the Coast Guard. We’re heading down to the dock to help with deployment.”

  “If we’ve got service,” Burden said, “we’ll keep you posted.”

  The two men moved off. And Vail, Burden, and Dixon looked at one another. Now what?

  They didn’t have to ponder that too long, as another text arrived:

  Probly confused abowt nowe

  you weakish speller ;-)

  i can see clearly now

  im on top of the world

  “What’s the deal with the misspelled words?” Vail asked.

  “Who cares about—”

  “No, Roxx—it’s significant. He did this once before, in the—”

  “That manifesto,” Burden said. He pointed at her BlackBerry. “You have it on there?”

  “I got it,” Dixon said. She brought it up on her iPhone, and Burden and Vail crowded around the small screen.

  Burden reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pad and pen, then began scribbling. “Shit...” he whispered. And then his face went ashen, his skin instantly pimpled in sweat.

  “What’s wrong?” Vail asked, reexamining the document.

  “This sentence. It’s an anagram, a classic example. And I missed it.”

  “What sentence?” she said firmly.

  Burden jabbed a finger at the screen. “He wrote, ‘I am a weakish speller.’ And then he just wrote it again. Do you see it?”

  “I’ve played enough word games, Burden. Just tell me.”

  “Puzzles, right? I do number puzzles, but I started out doing word pattern games. Palindromes, metonyms, pangrams, all that shit. But I got bored with them, and then a buddy turned me on to Sudoku. I didn’t get those clues before because they were cryptic riddles. But this one was so goddamn simple, I should’ve gotten it. It was right in front of my eyes. ‘I am a weakish speller’ is a classic anagram. Rearrange the letters and you get William Shakespeare.”

  “So?” Dixon asked. “What’s Shakespeare got to do with this? T
he answer’s in one of his plays?”

  “No,” Vail said, “maybe he left other anagrams or word patterns for us. And we missed them.” She wiggled her fingers at the pad. “Let me see that.”

  “Give me your BlackBerry,” Dixon said. “I’ll pull up all those texts he sent us.”

  Vail handed it over and started writing down possible clues from memory. “No, this isn’t right.” She looked at the phone in Dixon’s hands. “It’d be something more significant. The ‘weakish speller’ thing was aimed at you, Burden. To clue us in, a slap in the face to pay attention. But it wasn’t the answer. And I don’t think the answer’s in those messages he sent us. Maybe...”

  Burden looked at the pad, then the BlackBerry. “Maybe what?”

  Vail wrote on her pad, Walton MacNally. “MacNally’s our prime suspect—with Scheer dead, our only suspect. What if...” She started drawing slashes across the name and writing something below it. But then she stopped. “Doesn’t work. Not enough letters.”

  “What doesn’t work?” Dixon asked. “What are you thinking?”

  Burden brought a hand to his forehead. “Oh, my god.”

  Vail looked at him. “If you’ve got something—”

  “Yeah, I’ve got something. It’s been there, right under our noses.” Burden kicked at a rock and sent it skidding down the sidewalk. “Son of a bitch! For me. It was meant for me.”

  He turned away from them, but Vail grabbed his shirt. “Burden, so help me god. Tell us what you’re talking about or I’m gonna wring your neck.”

  Staring into the fog’s suffocating cover of homogeneity, he said, “I know who the killer is.”

  69

  Burden clasped his hair in both hands. “I didn’t see it! Why couldn’t I see it?”

  “Who’s the killer, Burden?”

  “Goddamn son of a bitch!” Burden spun back toward her. “It’s Clay.”

  Vail stood there staring at him. Then she looked down at the pad, at Walton MacNally’s name.

  “It’s an anagram,” Burden shouted. “Walton MacNally—”