3 Great Thrillers

by Churton, Alex; Churton, Toby; Locke, John; Lustbader, Eric van; van Lustbader, Eric

  Stanz ponders the unexpected situation he finds himself in. At length, he nods. “As it happens, I can help.”

  He holds out his hand. Jack gives him the folder and he stashes it away.

  “The knife we took out of Gus’s back is so unusual, it took the ME two weeks to track it down,” Stanz says. “It’s called a paletta. It’s used in bakeries. Gus introduce you to any bakery-store owners? Yeah, I thought so. His calling card, right?” His glittery eyes regard Jack without even the smallest measure of sympathy. This is a business transaction, pure and simple. “The thing of it is, there’s no prints, so we can’t prove anything. The Metro Police’s hands’re tied, know what I mean?”

  Jack, his mind already fixed on Cyril Tolkan, knows precisely what he means.

  36

  Unlike other places in his past Jack had visited recently, the Marmoset’s house looked just as he remembered it, with its deep-blue exterior and white shutters. It must have been repainted recently, he thought.

  With the real possibility of a kidnap victim inside, along with her abductor, Jack wasn’t prepared to take any chances of some overeager idiot tipping Kray/Whitman off. He got no argument from Nina. What he didn’t tell her was that, incredible as it seemed, he was now quite certain that Kray/Whitman was the same person who had killed the two nameless men at McMillan Reservoir, the Marmoset, and Gus twenty-five years ago. He was also the man who had abducted Alli Carter, and Jack had little doubt that he would slip his paletta into Alli Carter’s back if he was given the slightest hint his lair had been compromised. What he couldn’t work out as yet was the overarching pattern into which all these terrible offenses fit, because there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that all the crimes were somehow connected. He was drawing close, however, because he could sense its color in his mind: a cold, neon blue, as beautiful as the developing pattern was ugly.

  There was something else the developing pattern told him: In gunning down Cyril Tolkan for Gus’s murder, he’d gone after the wrong man. Now, as his mind rolled all the emerging facts around, he had to wonder whether his stalking Tolkan was a case of deliberate misdirection. After all, it was the unique murder weapon that both Stanz and Jack had found most incriminating. The paletta was used in bakeries; Cyril Tolkan owned one: the All Around Town bakery. But though Jack had killed Tolkan twenty-five years ago, the strange filed-down paletta was being used again as a murder weapon. Jack didn’t believe the paletta turning up again was a coincidence, nor did he think it was a copycat killer, simply because twenty-five years ago the murder weapon had never been revealed to the public. That meant Gus’s murderer had been alive all this time. But why surface now, and why abduct Alli Carson?

  Jack sat stunned, trying to regain his equilibrium as past and present rushed headlong at each other.

  At last, he roused himself. “I know this place,” he said as they sat in the car where they’d parked down the block. “I’ll take the back, you take the front.”

  They synchronized their watches. It was dusk, the light grimly fading from the sky as if whisked away by a sooty broom. The air was cold but still. Dampness lay on the ground like trash.

  “Give me ninety seconds from the time we split up to get into position,” he continued, “okay?”

  Nina nodded and they both got out of the car. Together, they glanced at their watches as they parted company on the pavement. Jack counted to himself as he made his way down the side of the house, past a couple of garbage cans on his right, a chain-link fence on his left. Jack thought of Zilla, the huge German shepherd Gus treated so well.

  He arrived at the back door with sixteen seconds to spare. On his way, he’d passed three windows. Two were heavily curtained, making it impossible to see in. The third looked past lacy curtains to a kitchen, yellow as butter. It was deserted.

  Inserting a pair of hooked picks into the lock, he manipulated them so that they simulated the turn of the proper key. The door popped open at almost the same time Nina was knocking on the front door. Glock drawn, Jack went from room to room, listened for any human sounds in between Nina’s insistent knocking. It was dim, gloomy, full of bad memories that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. In the hallway, he paused at the line of photos. His hair stood on end—they were all of Alli Carson. They had the telltale flatness associated with a long telephoto lens. Then his breath caught in his throat, for there in the middle was a photo of Alli and Emma walking together on the Langley Fields campus. As he stared at the two girls, Emma’s image seemed to flicker, grow wavy, and move toward him. He could swear she knew he was here; he thought the smile on her face was for him.

  As if from the wrong end of an amplifier, he heard her call to him. He wanted to answer her, but the fear of Kray/Whitman being in the house kept him silent.

  Nina’s renewed banging on the front door caused him to jump, but that was hardly the source of his fright. He passed into the foyer, reached out and opened the door to let her in. A quick negative shake of his head let her know he hadn’t found anyone, but he led her silently to the photos in the hallway.

  With his left hand, he indicated that she should check the second floor. He went room by room: the cobwebby basement, smelling of raw concrete and damp, the living room with its astounding volcanoes of books, magazines, papers of all kinds. The bathroom was clear, as was the kitchen. It was curious, though. The living room and foyer were just as he remembered them, cluttered and musty, but the kitchen and bathroom were neat and spotless, shining like a scientist’s laboratory. It was as if two completely different people inhabited the same place: the ghost of the Marmoset and Kray/Whitman.

  To the left, he found a closed door. Trying the knob, he ascertained that it was locked. His picks were of no help here. The lock was of a kind he hadn’t encountered before. He stood back, aimed, then shielded his eyes as he fired the Glock at it. The resulting percussion brought Nina at a dead run.

  He kicked in the door, found a room with only a huge painted wood chair. At one time, probably when the Marmoset had lived here, the room had had a window. Since then it had been bricked up and painted over. It reeked sourly of sweat, fear, and human excrement.

  The two of them returned to the hallway, went down it until they found themselves back in the cheerful kitchen.

  “Check everything,” Jack said.

  They opened closets, drawers, cabinets. All the utensils, bottles, cans, mops, brooms, dustpans were arranged in order of utility and size. The oven was empty inside. Nina pulled open the door to the refrigerator.

  “Look here.”

  She knelt in front of the open refrigerator. All the shelves had been removed. She pointed to the bottom, where something translucent was wedged between sections.

  “I think that’s a piece of skin.”

  Jack nodded, his heart thudding in his throat. “Let’s bag it, get it over to Dr. Schiltz. I have a feeling it belongs to our Jane Doe who had her hand amputated.”

  Nina donned a pair of latex gloves. “Let’s pray it doesn’t belong to Alli Carson.”

  As she produced a plastic bag and tweezers, Jack moved to the pantry door. It was closed but not latched. Gingerly, he pulled it open.

  He expelled a long sigh of relief. The First Daughter was wedged into a corner, her back against the far wall where it met a set of cabinets. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins. She was rocking gently back and forth, as if to comfort herself.

  Jack squatted down to Alli’s level.

  “Alli?” He had to call her name three or four times before her head swung around, her eyes focused on him. By this time, Jack could hear Nina speaking to HQ. She was asking for an ambulance, the Carson family doctor, who was standing by at Langley Fields, and an armed escort. She had initially asked for Hugh Garner, but for some reason Jack couldn’t make out, wasn’t able to speak with him.

  “No sirens,” Jack said softly, and Nina relayed the message.

  Jack edged closer, and Alli shrank back. �
��Alli, it’s Jack, Jack McClure. Emma’s father. Do you remember me?”

  Alli regarded him out of depthless eyes. She hadn’t stopped rocking, and Jack couldn’t help thinking of the room with the monstrous chair, the straps, the smell.

  “Don’t be afraid, Alli. Nina and I were sent by your father and mother. We’re here to take you home.”

  Something in what he said put the spark of life into her eyes. “Jack?”

  “Yes, Alli. Jack McClure.”

  Alli suddenly stopped rocking. “Is it really you?”

  Jack nodded. He held out one hand until Alli reached out, tentatively took it. He was prepared for her to draw back, but instead she launched herself into his arms, sobbing and shaking, holding on to him with a desperation that plucked at his heart.

  He rose with her in his arms. She was trembling all over. Nina moved in beside him. She was opening the drawers in the cabinet, one by one. All were empty, save the top one, which held an assortment of the usual handiwork tools: hammer, level, pliers, wire-cutter, a variety of screwdrivers and wrenches.

  Alli began to whimper again, and Jack put one hand at the back of her head in an attempt to calm her. With the other, he fumbled out his cell phone, pressed a button. A moment later, president-elect Edward Carson came on the line.

  “Sir, I have your daughter. Alli is safe and sound.”

  There was a brief rustle at the other end of the line that could have been anything, even Carson brushing away some tears. “Thank God.” His voice was clotted with emotion. Then Jack heard him relay the news to his wife, heard her shout of relief and joy.

  “Jack,” Carson said, “Lyn and I don’t know how to thank you. Can we speak with her?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it, sir. We need to extract her fully and assess her health.”

  “When can we see her?”

  “The ambulance is on its way,” Jack said. “You can meet us at Bethesda.”

  “We’re on our way,” the president-elect said. “Jack, you made good on your promise. Neither Lyn nor I will forget it.”

  At the same moment Jack put away his cell, Nina opened the cupboard over the small sink. Nina recoiled when she saw the horned viper slither down onto the countertop. The evil-looking wedge-shaped head with its demon’s horns quested upward. The viper was hungry, and she was annoyed. Her tongue flicked out, vibrating, scenting living creatures.

  Jack dug the pliers out of the drawer. The head moved forward, far faster than he could follow, but midway toward him a shadow fell across it, slowing it. Jack felt a breath of cool air brush the nape of his neck. With a well-aimed swipe of the pliers, he stunned the snake. Gripping the viper’s head between the ends of the pliers, he squeezed as hard as he could. Though its brain was pulped, the viper’s body continued to thrash, slamming itself this way and that in a random fury for a long time.

  Nina struggled to regain her equilibrium. “Jack, are you all right?”

  Unable to find his voice, he nodded.

  “It was coming straight at you; I was sure it would bite you.”

  “It would have,” Jack said, a little dazed himself, “but something slowed it down.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Nevertheless, something did. A shadow came between the snake and me.”

  Nina looked around. “What shadow, Jack?” She passed her hand through the space Jack indicated. “There’s no shadow here, Jack. None at all.”

  Alli twisted in his arms, taking her face out of his shoulder. “What happened?” she whispered.

  Jack kicked the snake’s body away. “Nothing, Alli. Everything’s fine.”

  “No, it isn’t, something happened,” she insisted.

  “I’m taking you out of here, Alli,” he whispered as he took her back out through the kitchen and down the hall. “Your folks are coming to meet us.”

  The Marmoset’s house was crawling with the heavily armed detail Nina requested. Along with them came two EMS attendants with a rolling stretcher, a nurse, and the Carson family doctor. But Alli refused to be parted from Jack, so he and Alli, with Nina at their side, strode out of the house with the escort.

  Alli put her lips to his ear. “I felt something, Jack, like someone standing beside us.”

  “You must have blacked out for a minute,” Jack said.

  “No, I felt someone breathe—one cool breath on my cheek.”

  Jack felt his heart lurch. Could it be that Alli had felt the shadow, just as he had? His mind lit up with possibilities.

  He climbed into the ambulance with her clinging to him. Even when he managed to get her onto the stretcher so that the doctor could examine her, she wouldn’t let him go entirely. She was clearly terrified he’d leave her alone with her living nightmare.

  He gripped her hand, talking of the good times when she and Emma were best friends, and gradually she relaxed enough for the doctor to take her vitals and administer a light sedative.

  “Jack …” Alli’s lids were heavy, but the abject horror was sliding off her face like a mask. “Jack …”

  “I’m here, honey,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I won’t leave you.”

  His voice was hoarse, his breathing constricted. He was all too aware that this is what he should have said to Emma a long time ago.

  Part 4

  37

  The early January sunset was painting narrow bands of gold and crimson across the low western sky when Jack met with Dr. Irene Saunderson on the wide, Southern-style veranda of Emily House.

  “I’ve tried every way I can think of—and any number of new ones—to get through to Alli,” Dr. Saunderson said. She was a tall, stick-thin woman with dark hair pulled severely back into a ponytail, accentuating a high forehead and cheekbones, bright, intelligent eyes. She looked like a failed model. “She either can’t or won’t tell us what happened to her.”

  “Which is it?” Jack said. “Can’t you at least tell that much?”

  Dr. Saunderson shook her head. “That’s part of what’s so frustrating about the human mind. I have little doubt that she’s suffering from a form of posttraumatic stress syndrome, but at the end of the day, that tells us next to nothing. What’s indisputable is that she suffered a traumatic episode. But what form the trauma took or what the actual effect on her is, we can’t determine.”

  She sighed deeply. “Frankly, I’m at a dead end.”

  “You’re the third shrink to say that.” Jack unbuttoned his coat. A thaw had set in with a vengeance. “What about physical damage?”

  “The exhaustive medical workup shows that she wasn’t raped or physically harmed in any way. There wasn’t even a superficial scratch on her.”

  “Is there a possibility of Stockholm syndrome?”

  “You’re thinking of Patty Hearst, of course, among many others.” Dr. Saunderson shrugged. “Of course it’s possible that she’s come to identify with her captor, but she’s shown no indication of hostility toward us, and given the relatively short amount of time she was with her abductor, it seems unlikely. Unless, of course, he used drugs to accelerate the process, but there was no sign of chemical markers in her blood workup. As you know, the president’s own medical team at Bethesda took charge of her when you brought her in.”

  “It’s been three days since I asked to see her,” Jack said.

  “You can see her right now, if you like,” Dr. Saunderson said, brushing aside his complaint with a shrink’s easy aplomb.

  They always know what to say, Jack thought, even when they’re wrong.

  “Shall I take you to her room?”

  “Actually, I’d rather see her out here.”

  Dr. Saunderson frowned. “I’m not so sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why not? She’s been cooped up for the better part of ten days. This is a pretty place, but it’s still a prison.” Jack smiled his most charming smile. “C’mon, Doc. You and I both know the fresh air will do her good.”

  “All right. I’ll be right back.” She was abo
ut to turn away when she hesitated. “Don’t be surprised if Alli exhibits some erratic behavior, extreme mood swings, things like that.”

  Jack nodded.

  Alone on the veranda, he had a chance to take in the antebellum atmosphere of Emily House, a large, rather overornate confection whose exterior might easily have been used for a remake of Gone with the Wind. Save for knowing its true purpose, Jack would not have been surprised to find himself mingling with couples drinking mint juleps and speaking in deep Southern drawls.

  Emily House, named after a former president’s dog, of all things, was a government safe house in the midst of fifty acres of Virginia countryside as heavily guarded as it was forested. Over the years, a good many heads of state, defectors, double agents, and the like had called it home, at least temporarily. It was painted white, with dove-gray shutters and a blue-gray slate roof. A bit of fluff on the outside, belying the armor-plated walls and doors, the bullet- and bombproof windows, and more cutting-edge security paraphernalia than Q’s lab. For instance, there was a little number called ADS. ADS stood for active denial system, which sounded like something Dr. Saunderson might claim Alli was suffering from. However, there was nothing nonsensical about the ADS, which was to all intents and purposes a ray gun that shot out a beam of invisible energy that made its victims feel as if their skin were burning off. It wasn’t handheld; it wasn’t even small. In fact, it looked rather like a TV satellite dish perched on a flatbed truck or a Humvee. But it worked, which was all that mattered.

  Jack, hearing a door open, turned to see Alli with Dr. Saunderson right behind her. It had been only three days since he’d last seen her, but she seemed to have aged a year. There was something in her face, a change he couldn’t quite figure. It was another visual puzzle he needed to decipher.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling.

  “Hey.”

  She ran into his arms. Jack kissed the top of her head, saw Dr. Saunderson nod to him, then withdraw into Emily House.

  Alli was wearing a short wool jacket, jeans, an orange Buffalo Brand shirt, a screaming eagle with a skull in its talons silkscreened on the front.