10 Tahoe Trap (43 page)

He wagged.

My heart thumped.

Paco!

FIFTY

My first thought was to call 911, but I knew the routine. Cops would come, then more cops. They’d pound on the door. They’d ask why I thought a kidnapped boy was inside of a dark building, and when I said that I knew because my dog wagged at the door, they’d think I was nuts. They wouldn’t be able to break in without probable cause and a warrant or some indication of an emergency within the building. Whatever terrible thing Dr. Garcia was doing could go on for hours uninterrupted.

I had to go in now.

I had to have surprise.

I had to do it alone.

I tiptoed up the stairway to check the door. There was no handle. It was designed to be opened from the inside only.

The tiny crack between the doors was dark. I put my ear next to it. Nothing. I sniffed as Spot had done. Nothing. But I knew not to put any stock in not being able to detect odors that were obvious to Spot. A human’s nose compared to a dog’s nose is like an ant’s eyeball compared to the Hubble Space Telescope.

I took hold of Spot’s collar and gently pulled him down the stairs. We ran around the far side of the building. There was no side door. Other than the double metal door at the back, the only way in was the front door.

I went back to the front of the building and gently pulled on the front door. It was locked. It was a standard commercial door, solid metal frame with a metal rim around heavy tempered glass. It would be difficult at best to breach. Even the glass would be nearly impossible to break with any force less than a well-swung baseball bat.

The building’s front show window was large and would be even stronger than the door.

I looked at the edges of the glass, trying to see if there were any gaps in whatever opaque material was behind the glass. But I could see nothing. No telltale hints of light at the edges of either window or the edge of the door.

Any attempt I made to break in would make a lot of noise. In the time it took me to find Paco inside the building, Dr. Garcia would gain a huge advantage.

Maybe I could get in from the roof.

I looked around for a way up, a dumpster or something that I could climb. There was nothing. The concrete block wall looked about a dozen feet tall with no handholds. I could search around nearby businesses and see if someone had left a ladder out back, but that might take hours and still yield nothing.

I saw a garage across the street that I hadn’t noticed before. The door was up. Parked inside was a van, facing out. It was hard to see in the dark, but it looked like a white Ford van, like the van Whitehall had said Dr. Garcia used to haul his son Martin in his wheelchair.

Still holding Spot’s collar, I ran to the garage with the Ford van. The key I’d taken from Garcia’s kitchen drawer fit in the lock. I ushered Spot into the back on top of the lift platform. At the rear of the van was the spare tire compartment. I opened the tire cover, felt around in the dark, and removed the tire iron. Then I got in the front and started the van.

The big engine roared loud in the enclosed space.

I put the van in drive, rolled out into the street, waited until I thought I had enough momentum, then turned off the engine.

The van went silent as we rolled. Without engine power, I had no power steering or brakes, but I didn’t have to turn. I guided the van alongside the building, then stepped hard on the brakes to stop.

“You stay inside here, boy,” I said to Spot as I got out and gave him a pet, then put my finger across his nose, the signal not to bark.

With the door open, I stood on the driver’s seat, and, holding the tire iron, boosted myself up onto the roof of the van and used my foot to gently shut the van door.

The top of the wall was now at face level. I grabbed the edge and boosted myself up, swung my foot over the edge, and pulled myself onto the roof.

Like many commercial buildings, the roof was flat and coated with small gravel. The rocks made crunching noises as I walked. Despite my rush to find Paco, I tried to move gently to minimize the sound.

There were several places where the flat roof was interrupted. There was a large exhaust vent near the back of the building and a small exhaust vent to one side. In the middle of the roof was a built-up skirt, and on its top a skylight mounted at an angle. I tiptoed over to look.

In the dim light from distant buildings, I could see that the skylight was an old model, hinged at the high end with a latch at the low end. From inside, a person could use a special rod to open the skylight for fresh air. From the outside, there was no way to unhook the latch except to break it.

I peered through the glass. Nothing but darkness below.

I thought of Paco. Maybe he was already cut open, his organs being carved out. Or maybe Garcia hadn’t gotten to that point. Paco might still be conscious, waiting his fate with indescribable terror. There was no time to find a better way in.

I took the tire iron and put the tip at what looked like the most vulnerable point on the window-jamb. Tensing my muscles and grunting with effort, I rammed it in as far as it could go, then levered it up and down with ferocious force.

The metal skylight latch tore and popped with a screeching sound loud enough to be heard a block away.

I jerked the skylight up. Stepped over the skylight skirt and lowered myself through. Hung for a moment from the edge of the skylight. Based on the height of the wall, I guessed the drop to be maybe six feet. But when you can’t anticipate, you can’t land with any skill. I let go and fell.

FIFTY-ONE

My feet hit, and I crumpled to the floor, startled but unbroken. I got up. Going on Spot’s tail wag at the double door at the back of the building, I turned that direction. I put my arms out, moved in the darkness, feeling for something, anything.

My hands hit a wall. I followed it sideways. Came to a door. Found the knob, turned it, yanked it open.

I was in some kind of room, mostly dark but with little green and red lights here and there. LEDs from high-tech equipment.

I felt a stabbing prick in my neck. I jerked sideways and down, hitting some kind of bench.

Lights went on. I reached up and pulled a syringe out of my neck. I looked at it and saw that the plunger was half-way in.

“I’m sorry you had to intrude, Mr. Owen McKenna,” a man’s voice said from behind me.

My elbows were on the top of a low, wide cabinet. My knees were on the floor. My hand still gripped the syringe.

I felt dizzy, and I started to sink down. I gently stuck the syringe’s needle into the loose fabric of my shirt. I pushed the plunger in the rest of the way, allowing the remaining liquid to squirt out under my clothing where it wouldn’t be seen. Then I collapsed onto the cabinet. As I lay helpless, my last significant move was to drop the spent syringe on the floor where the man would see it and notice that the plunger was depressed all the way. I wanted him to think that I’d gotten the full dose.

“I could tell when I met you that you were dedicated,” the man said. “But this time your dedication has reached its end thanks to a shot of ketamine.

“Lovely stuff, I think you’ll agree. It’s sold on the street in small diluted quantities. Special K, its devotees call it. Makes for a wonderful escape from the real world.

“In full strength, it’s a great anesthetic for vets operating on animals because it doesn’t impair respiration as much as most other drugs. Pediatric physicians use it, too, because it works so well with children. Not so good with adults, though. With the dose I just gave you, it anesthetizes so thoroughly that the body eventually shuts down and turns off. But before you die, you’ll experience double vision and hearing problems and then something like nightmares. Finally, just minutes before you expire, you’ll get to enjoy severe hallucinations. It’s not a pretty sight, let me tell you. But don’t despair, it doesn’t take all that long, even though I injected it into your muscle instead of your vein.”

I gritted my teeth, grunted again, and rolled so I could see him.

Dr. Andrew Garcia stood between two gurneys. On one was his son Martin, covered with a sheet, a gas mask of some kind over his face. There was an IV pole with a bag and a tube running down to his arm. He looked to be unconscious.

Above were large flood lights, turned off.

On the other gurney was Paco, immobilized by straps at his ankles, wrists and across his chest. There was tape over his mouth. He strained, lifting his head and moaning. His eyes were huge, his lower lids raised and twitching.

I tried to call out to Paco, to reassure him, but my words were garbled. It felt like my entire mouth had been shot with Novocaine.

“Of course,” Garcia continued, “because I’m all by myself and can’t monitor Martin’s respiration while I operate, I’m using ketamine on him as well. But he has been gradually building up an adaptive comfort level with the drug, taking it in small amounts, adjusting his body and brain to its effects. He’s already part way under. I need only increase his dose a touch before I begin operating.”

Garcia held his arm out and turned around in a circle. He looked blurry, and his movement seemed to warp and shift in my vision.

“Do you like my little operating room? It’s not as sterile as you would find in a human hospital, and of course I don’t have the luxury of the latest medical equipment. But this place served me well for countless operations in years past. Mostly dogs and cats, of course. But also rabbits and guinea pigs, parrots and pigeons and hawks. I’ve operated on a pig and a cow. Why, I’ve even operated on a snake and an iguana.

“This operation on my son is a bit heavy with emotional involvement, but it is no more complicated than what I’ve done before.”

Garcia turned and looked at a computer screen.

“The time is near,” he said. “It’s been a long time waiting for the perfect donor match, struggling with the idiotic health protocols in this country. We came close with a good donor a year ago, but bureaucratic red tape prevented it from going through. So I took matters into my own hands. Fortunately, I had the sense to follow those stupid thugs when they followed you to your trap.

“For three days I’ve been giving Martin chemo in preparation for this moment. And just today his final, most powerful dose. I’ve just taken his blood sample and put it on one of those new biochemical assessment chips. It’s the latest miniaturized method for analyzing blood. I put a drop of blood on it and connected it to the computer. It looks for markers that indicate the existence or absence of the item we’re seeking. In this case, we need to know if all of Martin’s cancer cells have been killed. The result will be up on the computer soon. When I know that we’ve killed the last of his cancer, I can proceed to give him the bone marrow and kidney transplants that will give him back his life.”

I watched as two Garcias sat down at the computer, clicked two mouses in perfect synchronized movement.

My head throbbed. My tongue felt so swollen that it took up the entire inside of my mouth.

Both Garcias swiveled in their chairs to face me.

“A few more minutes,” they said, voices not quite in synch, echoing in my head.

“You know, when I was a child, my mother was prone to a terrible melancholy. She should have had anti-depressant medication. But she was not the kind to go to a doctor for such a thing. She called it la oscuridad. The darkness. I remember when it would get bad. She’d sit up in the night, her tears invisible to me except by touch. Sometimes she’d sob out loud. She told me about her own teenage years in Spain during the Depression and during the Civil War in the land.

“My mother asked her parents, my grandparents, if they would be safe, and they told her yes, there was nothing to worry about. Then came the bombing at Guernica. You’ve probably heard about it. One of the most cowardly atrocities ever, committed by Hitler and Mussolini and ordered by the despicable dictator General Franco.

“My grandparents told my mother that it was a terrible thing that Franco had done, bombing women and children. The Basque men who came back to Guernica were understandably outraged. But some of them – instead of focusing their anger on General Franco – they took out their passions on anyone that they felt were Franco sympathizers.

“My parents had always kept out of politics. When accosted by people who were angry, they said that they were neutral. But after Guernica, some people didn’t believe them. One day, some Basque teenagers accused them of being Nationalists, of being Franco supporters. My grandparents explained that they were neutral. Nevertheless, that night their house was lit on fire.”

Garcia’s voice got very quiet. “The family had a dog, a terrier named Ruidoso. The dog slept in my mother’s bedroom. When the fire began to roar, he barked and woke my mother. They got out of the house. But my grandparents died, burned alive in their own home.

“While my mother lived, she said that it was only her body that escaped. The rest of her, her heart, her love, her life, burned up with her parents.”

Garcia stopped talking as if all energy had gone out of him. But I saw his chest rise and fall with heavy breathing. The red in his cheeks intensified. The color pulsed in my vision, and his face changed shape like it was melting, like in a Dali painting.