The Intruders

by Michael Marshall Smith

  Though her head was full of movement, in reality Madison was going nowhere. She was crawling on hands and knees along a corridor, dragging herself through dust and ash, unable to see anything. Her lungs were so full of smoke it felt like someone had shoveled earth into them. She’d burned her hand and arm in the room where she’d set the fire, caught by surprise at how quickly it had taken, and the pain was intense. She did not know in which direction to go, and she’d had enough. Of everything.

  She was not going to survive this. She knew that. So she was trying now to find the way to another place, one deep inside, pushing the man away, knowing how much he wanted to be back but feeling his grip falter as he realized she’d rather be dead than live like this, that this girl was not prepared to be his home.

  Then she banged into something. She raised her head, sensing that it was a fraction lighter here. There was cooler air coming from somewhere, too.

  In a flash of clarity she was aware that she was no longer in a corridor, but in more open space—and that what she’d run into was the foot of a staircase.

  She hauled herself onto the bottom step and started pulling herself up the wooden stairs. All she had to do was get up them and then run, really run this time. There was a door to the street up there, and past it was the outside world. She could get out through it and then keep running.

  Straight into the busy road, without looking left or right. It would be a sad solution, but it was workable. And it would teach Marcus a lesson. Be careful which little girl’s body you try to steal.

  Not all of them will stand for it.

  The right side of the room was a wall of fire now. I kept heading down the middle, plowing through the debris, smelling my hair and coat as they began to burn. A stretch of the bookcase fell away from the wall, toppling in slow motion and showering me with burning paper and wood and sparks. I ducked my head and just kept going through it, shouldering forward until I got to the doorway, flapping at the parts of me that were on fire.

  The corridor was choked with smoke, but I could hear retching sounds ahead. I stumbled straight through the thick, gray clouds, covering my whole face with my jacket now. The muscles in my shoulder had begun spasming, and I could feel how wet it was, and my arm had started going numb. I hit it with my fist to keep the blood flowing and to send a jag of pain up into my head.

  As I made it into the room at the bottom of the staircase, I nearly fell over someone crouched on the ground, rolled into a ball, coughing his guts up.

  It was Gary. I grabbed his jacket collar and pulled him along with me, hauling him to the foot of the stairs, screaming down at his face. He finally started moving under his own steam, and we fell up them together. I could barely see his back through my stinging, watering eyes. At the bend in the stairs, I slipped and crashed to my knees. Fisher turned and wrenched his arm under mine, pulling me around and back to my feet.

  We stumbled up the last stretch side by side.

  This hallway, too, was clogged with smoke. Gary ran straight down it toward the door to the street, which was hanging wide. I stepped over Todd Crane’s body but knew I couldn’t just leave it there and bent to grab his wrist. He made a sound as I pulled him down the hall toward the door, and I realized he was still alive. I felt a muscle in my back tear but kept dragging him until I fell over the doorstep and out into the cold night air.

  It was like being reborn.

  Cars, night sounds, glints of light. People were backing and running away from the building, shouting, pointing. Smoke was billowing out onto the street. I heard a siren in the distance, heading in this direction.

  I staggered a short distance from the doorway, leaving Crane slumped over the step. Gary was shouting somewhere in the melee, though at first I couldn’t see where he was. Everyone seemed to have a much clearer idea of what was going on than I did, to be moving faster and with greater intent, and what took place next happened so quickly that it’s only in recollection that I was even really there.

  The man with the gun was advancing toward the little girl, who was caught in the middle of the sidewalk. A gap opened up around her as people ran to get out of the way.

  Gary was not running, however.

  He had the girl’s arm gripped in his hand. He was trying to drag her behind a big SUV, to get her out of the other man’s line of fire. He was trying to save her.

  The girl was fighting him. She was struggling hard, screaming at him, frantic. Gary was shouting, too.

  “Bethany!” he said. “Wait!”

  The man aimed his weapon straight at the girl.

  Gary saw it happening and yanked her back again, rolling his own body to get between them, and the man’s first shot went wide.

  People started screaming louder. The sound of sirens was closer now.

  The girl suddenly got away from Gary. I can’t imagine where she thought she was going to go. She was trapped, and she wasn’t even running. It was as if she were making it easier for the man who was coming for her. Gary must have known he couldn’t get to her in time, couldn’t get her to safety. But he threw himself toward her nonetheless, knocking her off her feet and shielding her with his body as they stumbled forward.

  The man fired four times.

  All four shots hit Gary, knocking him back and down.

  Gary kept his grip on the girl and crashed down on top of her. They hit the ground together, the girl’s forehead smacking onto the pavement with a sound I heard from twenty feet away.

  I was running at the gunman by then, throwing myself at him to smash into his chest—as his gun went off once more, then twice. We fell together into a car door.

  The man bounced off, but I was twisted and dropped straight into the gutter. I wrenched my head up to see that police cars were now hurtling into the street.

  The man with the gun was back on his feet. He glanced over to the girl and saw a swelling pool of blood across the sidewalk. He hesitated. Then he turned and slipped away, dodging into the crowds.

  I pulled myself up onto the sidewalk, pushed myself up to hands and knees. Crawled over to where Gary lay.

  The girl was not moving. Her eyes were closed.

  Gary’s shirt was red, all over, and the pool beneath him was spreading fast.

  My arm gave out, and I collapsed to the ground next to him, my face landing no more than two feet from his.

  Much of the back of his head was missing. His eyes were open and flat and dry.

  chapter

  FORTY-TWO

  “We didn’t get him,” a voice said.

  I was sitting in a chair in a hospital room, after the most recent of a series of conversations with members of Seattle’s law-enforcement agencies. I’d given a selective account of events during the altercation inside the building in Belltown. It was not the first time I’d given this account. I doubted that it would be the last. I had burns on my face and arms, had lost a chunk of hair. The pain of the wound in my shoulder and its associated stitching was bitterly emphatic, even through a pile of painkillers. My lower back felt like I’d been hit by a truck, and my head hurt in a way that felt as if it would never go away. I was not feeling receptive to news of any kind. I glanced up. Blanchard stood in the doorway.

  “I hope you feel better than you look,” he said.

  He came in and leaned against the side of the bed, folded his arms and stared down at me. I waited for him to say whatever it was he’d come to say.

  “You could be worse,” he said eventually. “You were a lot worse, until half an hour ago. You’re a lucky guy.”

  “In what way?”

  “Forensic report came in. The bullets that killed Mr. Fisher and the one they dug out of you share a profile with those they found in Bill Anderson.”

  “I said it was the same guy.”

  “You did. But you know what? Ballistics reports carry a little more weight than the word of an ex-cop, especially one who’s happened to be on hand at every gun fatality Seattle has seen in the last week.”

>   “And there’s no sign of this guy? He just melted away on the open street?”

  “Like he walked away from killing Anderson, and Anderson’s family. The guy is evidently a professional. A professional what, I have no idea. All we do know is that it seems like his name might be Richard Shepherd.”

  I don’t think I did more than blink, but Blanchard was watching me closely. “Mean something to you?”

  I shook my head. “How do you know his name?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. I want to be sure on something first. You really have no idea of how the fire in the basement started? In these ‘storage areas’?”

  “No.” This at least was true. “How bad was it?”

  “Bad. The fire department is only really getting down there now. Anything that wasn’t rock is gone. Assuming there was anything there to be found?”

  I made a face indicating I had nothing to say on the matter.

  Blanchard smiled tightly to himself.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you out.”

  “I can go?”

  “For now. That’s what I’m telling you,” he said, standing. “You’re a lucky man.”

  I followed the detective down the corridor. Walking hurt more than sitting had. Nurses made a big deal out of not watching us. There’d been a couple of armed cops sitting outside my room since I arrived. They were gone now.

  “They can’t specifically put the gunman at the scene of the Anderson-family murders,” Blanchard said. “But since he killed both Bill and Gary Fisher—who was the only person making noise about that case—nobody has any problem assigning those to him, too. And you have no idea why he might have done all this?”

  I shook my head. It was barely a lie. “What about the other guy? Todd Crane?”

  “Private hospital across town. Lost a bucket of blood and took a lot of sewing up, but he’s going to be okay. He’ll live to hike again.”

  “What?”

  “He was babbling about it to his wife when he came out of surgery. Going hiking in the Olympic Mountains. So apparently Shepherd stabbed him, right?”

  “If that’s what Crane says.”

  “Busy guy.”

  Though the environment was clean and bright, it felt oppressive. I was glad to be alive, more or less. Other than that, I wasn’t sure what to feel. I’d spent the night awake, my eyes open, watching and rewatching the memory of Gary Fisher being killed. I’d told myself that the man in the long coat, Shepherd, had planted killing shots in Gary before I could have made a difference. It was true. It hadn’t helped a great deal. You always feel you should have been able to do something about events in the past, more even than those that may lie in the future. I don’t know why that is.

  Blanchard paused near the nurses’ station. Across from it was a room where a young girl was lying. A man and a woman were holding hands across the bed. I realized that this was the girl I’d last seen lying under Gary Fisher, covered in his blood.

  “She’s okay,” Blanchard said. “Serious concussion, some burns and scrapes. Seems to have lost a lot of the last week, though, big chunks gone like they never happened. Could just be she’s blanking stuff, abuse or something, but the psychologist thinks it’s permanent.”

  “What was she doing in the building?”

  “That’s the other thing I mentioned. Madison O’Donnell was abducted from a beach house down in Oregon five days ago. What happened since isn’t clear, or how she got up here, but a man was evidently involved. The girl says it was the man with the gun last night, who you say was trying to kill her. Her parents gave a good description of him, and the guy even left his card with them, which is how we know his name. Or the name he uses, at least.”

  I stared at him. “He kidnaps a child and then leaves a business card? How does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know,” Blanchard admitted. “But we’re never going to be able to join all the dots on this one until we find the guy. And on that, I’m not holding my breath.”

  I watched the family in the room for a moment. The girl’s face was badly bruised, but she was smiling. Her mother and father looked happy, too. Very happy.

  How nice to have a family, I thought. What a simple thing, and yet how lucky it is.

  When I turned back, I realized that Blanchard was looking awkward. “What?”

  “I don’t know how much of this you know,” he said. “So I’ll just tell you. Fisher’s wife and child were here very early this morning. Mrs. Fisher flew over to identify the body. She did it and went straight home again.”

  “Child? He had two.”

  He nodded slowly. “Okay, so you don’t know. The daughter died. Three months ago.”

  I stared at him. “Bethany’s dead?”

  “Yes, that was her name.”

  “How? What happened?”

  Blanchard’s face was composed. “She drowned. In the bath. Mr. Fisher…well, her father was the supervising adult at the time. According to his account, he went out to get her pajamas from her room, and in the meantime she slipped, banged her head. He tried to resuscitate her. He failed, even though she could not have been under the water for very long.”

  “You’re not saying…”

  “Nobody’s saying anything. But there had been some crisis at Mr. Fisher’s office. He was named in a massive negligence suit over some guy’s will. Subsequently Mr. Fisher had become unfocused in his professional and personal lives. Started refusing to sleep. This thing in the bath happened, and then a few weeks later he went out one day and just didn’t come home. His wife didn’t even know he was in Seattle. He’s been missing for over a month.”

  I suddenly had to get out. I didn’t want to be in the hospital anymore, didn’t want to hear anything else.

  “Wait here,” I said.

  I walked over to the bedroom where the O’Donnell family was. They looked up, all at once, as I entered. The parents frowned, doubtful and concerned. I probably didn’t look like the kind of person you wanted walking into your life.

  “I remember you,” the girl said, though. “I think.”

  “Right,” I said. “I was there. In the building. You don’t remember much, from what I hear.”

  She shook her head. She seemed groggy. “Not really.”

  “Do you remember a guy? Not me, not the…not the man with the gun? Another man?”

  “Is this important?” her father asked. He wanted to protect her, and I didn’t blame him. His wife was ready to back him up hard. I wasn’t going to stop, however.

  “Yes,” I said. “Madison—do you remember him?”

  The girl thought a moment, then nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “There was a man who was trying to pull me out of the way.”

  “His name was Gary Fisher,” I said. “He saved your life.”

  Blanchard went down in the elevator with me and walked me to the door. Stood looking up the street as I lit a cigarette.

  “There’s no call for you to be leaving the country, right? Or the state?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I guess we’d like it if you kept it that way. Being lucky doesn’t equate to a free pass just yet.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  He nodded, seemed to hesitate. “Don’t feel bad about what happened,” he said. “It seems to me that everyone put themselves in their own place. Fisher most of all.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Right,” he said. “Well…oh. Here.”

  He handed me a slip of paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “Left at the nurses’ station for you this morning. Now. Tell me you’re not going to try driving anywhere today.”

  “I’m not going to try driving anywhere.”

  “Good man. See you around, Jack.”

  I waited until he’d walked back into the hospital before I unfolded the piece of paper. It took me a moment to recognize the handwriting. Something about it had changed. The note said: />
  Meet me somewhere.

  chapter

  FORTY-THREE

  First I cabbed over to Belltown to retrieve my car. The area around the building was heavily cordoned. Police and firemen were going about their business. Passersby stopped to watch for a while, no idea what they were looking at. Just another thing in the background of their lives. The visible fabric of the building didn’t appear badly damaged, but if fire had been through the foundations, I guessed it was most likely coming down.

  To become another parking lot, and then apartments, and get knocked down again, and then be something else in some future world. Things go up and then come down, and the years go by.

  I got into the car and drove down to Pioneer Square.

  I bought a coffee in the Starbucks and took it outside. The metal tables were all empty. I chose the one with the best view of the square and lowered myself gently into one of the chairs. The process hurt. I told myself I’d give it an hour and then go.

  While I waited, I looked across at the trees. There was something about the quality of the light filtering down through them that lent the square an elusive quality. For a place that gave birth to so much, a whole city, it is actually rather small. Just those few trees, the sheltered seat, a drinking fountain, and that totem pole, all dwarfed and in shadow from the stolid stone buildings that stand around, like a defensive barricade.

  And yet it doesn’t seem small.

  It felt okay to be sitting there, and after a time I shambled inside again and got another coffee. I returned to the table and went back to watching people walking up and down, tourists and locals on their way somewhere, the homeless passing through, stopping in the square for a few moments, then moving on.

  I was halfway through the second cup when I heard a chair being pulled out from the other side of the table. I looked around to see that someone had joined me.

  “You’re good,” she said.