Run the Risk

by Scott Frost

  “Could we be wrong about the explosion at the bungalow?”

  Could we be wrong? I tried to think about what we had been right about but came up empty-handed.

  “Next question,” I said sarcastically.

  “Maybe Sweeny just didn’t remember meeting him?”

  I thought about the drawing of Gabriel’s face, the distinctive scar, the intense light eyes.

  “Would you forget that face?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Could Gabriel have made a mistake?”

  “That would be a first.”

  “What other possibility is there?”

  “He was trying to kill someone else,” Harrison said.

  “Such as . . .”

  “You.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  I stepped up to the door and watched the rain fall heavily on the street below. The water was beginning to pool on the road and passing cars were sending spray six feet into the air.

  “Because he’s trying to use me.”

  Harrison stepped up to the other side of the doorjamb.

  “The phone call?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s counting on you doing what he says in order to save Lacy.”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling a confused mix of shame and God knows what else. “I’m sorry, I should have said something.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” Harrison said without hesitation.

  I glanced into his eyes as if to say thank you.

  “It hardly matters,” I said. “I don’t think he intends to hold up his end of the . . .”

  I let the thought drift away. Trying to step into Gabriel’s mind was a losing proposition. He was a killer; to assume he would do anything other than continue to kill was foolish.

  “If Gabriel is so sure that you’re going to make a deal with him to save Lacy,” Harrison said, “we do nothing to let him think otherwise. We get as close to him as he lets us and hope he makes a mistake.”

  “I’ve been clinging to that very thought, but there’s damn little to hold on to. He hasn’t made a mistake yet.”

  “When he does, we’ll see it.”

  “We have to,” I said grimly. “I don’t expect there’ll be a second opportunity.”

  We both stood silently for a moment.

  “Why did you ask Sweeny about Mrs. Finley?” Harrison asked.

  “She said she never met him. Why would she lie about meeting Sweeny?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know his name. He was just a temp.”

  “Possibly, but that’s not good enough right now.”

  “You want to ask her?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I want to ask her.”

  My cell rang and I slipped it out of my jacket pocket. “Delillo.”

  There was nothing on the other end for a second, and then he was there.

  “Thank you,” Gabriel said in a voice entirely devoid of emotion or any connection to life at all.

  “What—” I began to say, but the line went dead.

  I turned to Harrison. “It was him.”

  “Gabriel?”

  I nodded. “He said thank you.”

  “Nothing else?”

  I shook my head. “Just thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked down at the parking lot below. Foley was opening the door to his squad. Sweeny was sitting in the backseat of my car, fifteen feet away, his head bobbing as if he were playing a song in his mind.

  “You think he was just playing more games?”

  I shook my head.

  “What’s changed since I talked to him before?”

  “We came here.”

  “Oh, God,” I whispered.

  I looked at Harrison and saw in his eyes the same horrible flash of recognition that was pulsing through me. He immediately began to sprint toward the stairs as I yelled to Foley.

  “Get him out of the car!”

  A truck passed by on the street shifting gears, smothering my words. Foley looked up and shook his head.

  “What?” he yelled back.

  Harrison rounded the first landing and started down the final steps toward the parking lot.

  “Get him out of the—”

  Under the car I saw a white flash of ignition reflect on the wet pavement. The blast moved silently up into the interior of the car, filling it with wispy blue fingers of flame that looked as unreal as the aurora borealis. I saw Sweeny look around in surprise as if a swarm of insects had just surrounded him. He began to shake his head violently, and then the interior of my car erupted in bright orange flames and he disappeared.

  15

  THE ACCELERANT Gabriel had used burned hot enough to melt the steel frame of the car. Harrison and Foley both attempted to approach the doors when it erupted in flames but it was already burning too hot. There was nothing they could do. Sweeny had died in a matter of seconds without knowing how or why. He saw the thin blue flames dancing around him without feeling any of the heat yet. Then the air was sucked out of his lungs. Before he could even gasp for a desperate breath, he was gone.

  I was sitting in the conference room at headquarters with a blanket over my shoulders to fight off the chill from the soaking rain I had stood in after the fire. Chavez walked in carrying a cup of tea and a sandwich wrapped in plastic.

  “When was the last time you ate something?”

  I shook my head; I hadn’t a clue.

  Chavez placed the food and drink in front of me then took a seat across from me. Behind him, Harrison stepped in and closed the door. It was nearly noon. Precious hours had slipped by as we secured the scene at the motel. And with every minute that ticked off, Lacy felt further from my grip.

  “I led Gabriel right to him,” I said.

  “You couldn’t have known.”

  “I should have. He was less than a block away. Lacy might have been in the car.”

  Chavez looked at me. I could see a question forming in his eyes, one he was reluctant to ask.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the rest of the conversation?”

  “With Gabriel?”

  He nodded.

  “I suppose I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t be trusted.”

  “I have no doubts about that,” Chavez said, unflinching.

  “How did you find out?” I glanced at Harrison and he shook his head.

  Before Chavez could answer, the door opened and Agent Hicks walked in with two other FBI suits who were unknown to me. I glanced at Chavez and he subtly nodded.

  “Why did Gabriel say thank you when he called you at the motel?” Hicks asked.

  I looked at Hicks at the end of the table, wondering what other surprises he had in store.

  “You’re listening to my cell phone,” I said.

  Hicks removed a small cassette player from his pocket and hit play.

  “You’re my partner now, Lieutenant. You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do. If you don’t, your daughter will die.”

  Hicks turned it off and slipped it back in his pocket.

  “Since you’ve been listening, you know why he said thank you,” I said.

  “Yes, because you just led him to the last person who could identify him and who is now a piece of toast! Was that part of the deal you made?”

  Chavez stood up, the veins in his neck swelling angrily.

  “Back up, Hicks. You know damn well no deal was made.”

  “Do I? How do we know there aren’t other conversations that we haven’t heard? What stronger motivation could the lieutenant possibly have than the life of her daughter? How can we be sure?”

  “Because I would trust my own life with her,” Chavez said.

  “How about the lives of the people on Colorado Boulevard? Do you trust her with their lives?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t afford to.”

  “There was no rea
son to kill Sweeny,” I said.

  Hicks looked at me incredulously.

  “Did you look at his remains? Because it sure looked like there was purpose behind it to me.”

  “We showed Sweeny the drawing. He had never seen Gabriel.”

  Hicks hesitated as if to measure my words. “And you believed him?”

  “About that, yes. He had nothing to gain by lying.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was looking into his face. I’m a good cop.”

  “If you were a good cop, Sweeny would be alive!”

  Chavez took half a step to his left, blocking Hicks’s view of me.

  “As I remember, Hicks, you’re the one who believed there was no connection between Lacy’s abduction and Gabriel. I think you should choose your words more carefully. Lieutenant Delillo’s daughter has been kidnapped by a madman. If you disrespect her again, you will no longer be a guest in this building, and I will have to get that door replaced.”

  They stared at each other for a second, then Hicks took half a step back and rolled his shoulders. He glanced uncomfortably around the room, then looked at me.

  Everybody plays games with the truth—every crook, cop, husband, wife, everyone, for every reason imaginable. The feds are particularly polished at it.

  “I don’t think we really know what Agent Hicks believes,” I said, fixing my eyes on him. “Do we, Special Agent?”

  “If I’ve given you the impression that I am not sorry about what’s happened to your daughter, then I apologize. We put the surveillance on your phone last night because we have identified Gabriel through the French police.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “I have a daughter myself. I understand the pressure you’re under. I had to be certain that he hadn’t manipulated you. He has some history with this.”

  “History?”

  Hicks nodded ominously.

  “Was he on a terrorist watch list?” Chavez asked.

  “No. He’s on a wanted list.” Hicks turned and looked at me. “The French detective I talked to called him a collector. They found what they described as a gallery of his work.”

  “A gallery of what?”

  “Victims. It’s believed he’s responsible for the murder of up to seven people in various . . . complicated scenarios. Gabriel disappeared nearly two years ago.”

  “Scenarios?”

  He hesitated. “He’s posed as a doctor, a handyman, even a policeman. And with each murder, the plots, for lack of a better word, became more and more complicated and elaborate . . . and more violent. He creates a story, a fiction, for each killing. Like a kid playacting.”

  “You’re not describing a terrorist,” I said.

  Hicks shook his head. “No.”

  “What the hell are you describing?” Chavez asked.

  “A serial killer,” I whispered.

  “I’m afraid so,” Hicks said.

  My heart sank. There wasn’t enough air in the room to breathe. I got up from my chair, walked over to the window, and slid it open. The heavy rain had now passed. Just a light mist dappled my face, gathering like tears on my cheeks.

  “What does this mean?” Chavez asked.

  I turned and looked back into the room. Glancing at Hicks, I saw by the look on his face that he knew just as I did what it meant. When you reach into the twisted psyche of a terrorist you still find a seed of a cause. A justification for their violence regardless of how twisted it has become. When you reach into the dark interior of a serial killer, there is nothing there but your worst imaginable nightmares.

  “It means he’s less predictable and far more dangerous than we previously thought,” Hicks said.

  “He kills people. I don’t see the difference,” Chavez said.

  “A terrorist’s acts are calculated to cause the most damage as an expression of a political goal. That opens the possibility that we can predict his actions because we know what he’s trying to achieve. A serial killer has no political agenda. Killing isn’t a means to an end for him. It is the end.”

  “So why is he pretending to be a terrorist?”

  “Because it’s the biggest stage there is now. His greatest role.”

  “Jesus, you talk as if he’s an actor,” Chavez said.

  “He is in a sense. As twisted as he may be, he still needs to take on the persona of another person in order to carry out his crimes. Many serial killers take on other personalities during the act of killing, just not to this extent. Whatever is broken inside him only feels right when he is playing another role.”

  “And killing,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re telling us this guy is just a wack job who thinks he’s gonna win a goddamn Oscar?”

  “Not just a wack job. He’s the wack job,” Hicks said.

  “What do you know about the other murders?” I asked.

  Hicks looked at me and hesitated—I recognized it as a parent’s hesitation.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “He took my daughter to get to me. The more I know, the better.”

  Hicks turned to one of the other agents in the room, who handed him an open file.

  “In ’ninety-eight he posed as a doctor in a hospital in Paris. For two nights he made rounds as if he was on the hospital staff. The one patient who had contact with him and survived claimed he was the best doctor he had ever had. Even several of the nurses thought he was the kind of doctor they wished there was more of.

  “On the second night of making rounds, he gagged and bound three of the patients to their beds and operated on them. The doctors doing the autopsies on the victims estimated they were probably alive through much of what happened.”

  Hicks took a crime-scene photograph out of the file and placed it on the table.

  “Jesus’ tears,” Chavez whispered.

  “I could go on, but . . . they’re all just as bad as this.”

  I looked quickly at the photograph, then turned away. I could imagine all too easily my daughter’s face in it, and that was not something I needed to see. I walked back to the window and looked out at the dull gray light.

  “We don’t have all the details on every killing,” Hicks said, “but it appears that the one thing they have in common is that he exhibited great skill and knowledge of whatever role he was playing. When he was a cop, he was the best one people had ever met. Even made an arrest. When he was a handyman, he was the most skilled carpenter.”

  “And now he’s a terrorist,” I said, still looking out at the city. “And a master bomb maker.”

  “Exactly,” Hicks said.

  I turned away from the window. “When he was a carpenter, did he use weapons that were specific to the trade?”

  Hicks nodded grimly. “Like he was rebuilding a house.”

  The room fell deathly silent as if words were no longer adequate to express what we were feeling. The weight of the information seemed to physically rest on my shoulders as if a shroud had been placed over me. I turned and looked back out the window. Panic began to swirl inside me like a storm trying to gather momentum and take shape. I thought I had understood what I was facing. I thought I knew who had my daughter and what I was up against. But now it was clear that I knew nothing.

  Be a cop, that’s all there is, work it.

  “Do you have a photograph of him?” I asked.

  “No. French police only had a drawing, but it was remarkably similar to ours.”

  “So there’s no doubt about the ID?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s him. The only difference is they believed him to be a Frenchman. According to our witness Philippe, Gabriel’s an American.”

  “So which is he?” I asked.

  “Philippe said Gabriel recently returned from Europe. That makes sense to us. But whether he is or isn’t, the one thing we can be certain about is that Gabriel can become anyone he wants to be.”

  “I want access to the French files.”<
br />
  “You’ll have a copy of what we get on your desk.”

  “You said one of the patients at the hospital survived?”

  Hicks quickly scanned the file.

  “Yeah, a man. That’s where the drawing the French have comes from.”

  The words hung in the air demanding attention. Why had Gabriel let someone live who had been in his hands? It was the same question I had been asking about Philippe’s survival. Why hadn’t Gabriel killed him? The existence of another surviving witness now gave me the answer.

  “Then it’s probably not a coincidence that Philippe survived,” I said.

  “That’s my guess.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Chavez said.

  “He wants us to know it was him,” I said.

  Chavez shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “At some level, conscious or not, he can’t commit these crimes without his audience knowing it was him. He craves the attention as much as he does the violence.”

  “He wants the credit for his work,” Hicks said.

  “Every actor does,” I said, as if describing a performance of Shakespeare in the Park.

  Harrison walked over and stood next to me looking out over the city. Somewhere below, a car horn blared. A small flock of green parrots went rocketing past in a blur of wings and high-pitched squawks, sounding as if their fight against gravity had become one of desperation.

  “I knew there were a million things I didn’t understand about being a parent. Clueless, according to Lacy. But at least I thought I had learned everything there was about being a cop,” I said softly. “Every assumption we’ve made about Gabriel so far has been wrong.”

  Harrison looked down at the people filling the sidewalks, blissfully unaware of the events taking a choke hold on their city.

  “You aren’t wrong,” he said. “There’re just some things we aren’t meant to ever know. Things no one should.”

  I scanned the streets below for a moment. I could feel Gabriel’s presence out there as surely as a hand brushing against the back of my neck.

  “He could be watching us right now. And if he isn’t, he has us thinking he could be. I wonder which is worse?”

  Harrison shook his head. “He’s studied his role very thoroughly.”