Alpha Kill - 03 (12 page)

“The car’s only fifty yards down the road,” she said.

Ricky hefted a toolkit and grabbed a pack of brake pads from a box. It would save time, if it was the pads that were the problem. Though he found himself in no hurry to see the woman leave.

He walked with her across the oil-stained forecourt, noting that he was indeed an inch or two taller than her. She didn’t make conversation, and Ricky found himself tongue-tied.

At the bottom of the drive, the road slanted backward to the right. There was no sign of human habitation for miles, just rolling fields. Down the road, fifty yards away as she’d said, he saw the car. A little Hyundai.

As they approached it, Ricky saw something unusual. Another thirty yards back, two vehicles were parked up in a layby, end to end. Cars didn’t usually stop along this stretch. There were well-signposted rest facilities five miles ahead, and drivers normally held out until then before pulling over to rest or to pee or whatever.

Ricky gave a mental shrug and laid his hand on the Hyundai’s door. “May I?”

“Please.”

He got in, started the engine.  Pressed down on the brake pedal. Felt the sponginess.

“Yep. It’s the brake pads, ma’am.”

She nodded, half-smiling, as if she’d suspected it. As if she knew a little about cars.

“I can replace them for you right here.”

“Thank you.”

Ricky jacked the car up and removed each wheel in turn. The pad on the left was almost completely gone, the one on the right around fifty per cent. He fitted the new pads. While he worked, the woman stood by, her head on one side, watching with interest. Ricky did a pretty smooth job, he thought, and was pleased with himself.

At a couple of points, he glanced along the road at the two cars parked up by the side. A station wagon of some kind - he couldn’t see the make - and a big SUV in front. He could make out vague shapes through the windshield.

Ricky finished up, tightening the nuts on the wheels. He wiped his greasy hands on a cloth from the toolbox.

“All done,” he said.

She gave him that dazzling smile once again, and it was as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds.

She reached inside her purse and brought out a wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

And Ricky realized he didn’t know how much a job like this cost.

Cursing himself for an amateur, he said, “I’ll need to check the pricing schedule up at the shop, ma’am. If you’d care to head back with me?”

“Of course.”

Just before they set off, Ricky turned to look back at the parked cars.

Were they in trouble? The heads behind the SUV’s windshield, two of them, were completely motionless.

He was torn. His head told him to take this lovely lady back to the office and process her payment. She was, after all, his customer. But some impulse within him urged him toward the parked cars. What if they too had broken down? Or somebody was sick?

“Excuse me just one minute, ma’am,” Ricky said, genuine regret in his voice.

He jogged back toward the parked cars.

When he was ten yards away, the window on the driver’s side of the SUV slid down. A big man with a shaved head gazed out at him.

“Sir, are you okay?” said Ricky.

Without a word, the man nodded.

Ricky faltered. The guy didn’t smile. Didn’t show any expression at all.

Ah, well, forget it
, Ricky thought to himself.
I tried.

He raised a hand to the man and turned to go.

As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the guy in the passenger seat.

There was something familiar about him, though Ricky couldn’t put his finger on it.

He walked the woman back to the shop, in silence once again, even while he tried desperately to think of a way to make small talk, to prolong their contact. But he’d never been much good at that sort of thing.

It was when he stepped into the shop that the realization hit him.

On the wall behind the counter, pinned to a corkboard among a mess of receipts and notes and invoices, was a flyer. One of thousands that had been distributed across the state last night, and no doubt across the country.

HAVE YOU SEEN THESE MEN? its headline read. Beneath were seven photos.

Ricky’s eyes homed in on one face in particular. He’d studied the pictures for a good long time that morning, while he was sitting around waiting for Artie to come back, or for a customer to come in. And he’d memorized both the faces and the name attached to each one.

Eugene Drake.

Yes, there was little doubt in his mind. The man in the passenger seat of the SUV out there by the side of the road looked different than this photo. Quite a lot different, in fact. His face was fatter, his hair the wrong color.

But Ricky had an eye for detail, and in particular for the individuality of human faces. It might have been because of his years of study of actors in the movies he loved, or perhaps conversely he’d been drawn to actors because of an innate fascination for the way they stood out from those around them. Either way, he knew the guy in the car was the same one on the flyer.

With his heart hammering and a thrill in his gut that was at once exciting and terrifying, Ricky said to the woman: “I’m real sorry, ma’am. But I gotta make an urgent call. If you’d like to take a seat over there -” he pointed at the solitary chair, alongside a table strewn with grimy copies of
American Car
and
Sports Illustrated
- “I’ll be right back.”

She smiled that faint smile, still saying nothing.

There was a phone behind the counter, but Ricky knew there was another one in Artie’s office out back. He closed the door behind him and picked up the receiver.

Damn. There was a hotline number on the flyer, but he hadn’t memorized it. And he didn’t want to go back out and look at it. The lady would see him studying the flyer, and he didn’t want to spook her.

Well, he couldn’t go wrong dialing 911, even though it wasn’t strictly speaking an emergency.

With a finger that shook slightly, Ricky punched in the three numbers.

“Hello. Please state the nature of your emergency,” came the operator’s calm voice, almost immediately.

“It’s not an emergency. It’s Drake,” Ricky blurted. Feeling foolish, he said, “One of the fugitives. The people who escaped from the prison in Illinois. Eugene Drake. He’s sitting outside.”

Ricky realized as he was saying it that he ought to be more concise. More organized. He needed to state exactly where he was, and -

“One moment, please, sir,” said the woman, and there was a click.

A few seconds later, a man’s abrupt voice said, “Police.”

Ricky said, less haphazardly this time: “One of the men who escaped from Horn Creek, Eugene Drake, is sitting in a car outside where I’m working. That’s Artie’s Tires and Parts, off of Interstate 76 in Pennsylvania -”

He noticed, in a detached way, the smell of her perfume first.

It stayed in his nostrils, something musky and expensive-smelling, even as the confusion set in.

And then the pain.

Ricky was dimly aware that the woman had somehow managed to slip in through the door behind him without him hearing. And she’d also, somehow, succeeded in slipping something across his throat, deftly sliding her hand in between his arm holding the phone and his neck.

The agony lanced across his throat, pure and clean.

Ricky felt himself jerked backward, not just his head but his whole body, so that he lost his balance. He regained it, just, by stepping back, but his center of gravity was toppling.

He dropped the phone, from which a tiny voice was yelling,
Hello? Hello?
Both of his hands came up, clawing at his throat, at the wire across it that bit into his flesh. His fingers became immediately wet and slick. He felt the blood coursing down into the V of his shirt.

Worst of all, more incomprehensible than anything else, was her soft breath in his ear.

Black clouds started to scud across Ricky’s vision, then to coalesce. His fingers scrabbled uselessly at his neck, his feet drumming on the floor.

The wire dug deeper and he felt something give so that the pain hit a new level. At the back of his neck, he felt the woman’s knuckles, and he understood, somehow, that she was twisting her hands.

He couldn’t cry out. He couldn’t inhale. His windpipe was completely choked off.

Ricky’s last thought was that he was nineteen years old, and he was about to die. Not only that, it was to be at the hands of a movie star.

Then the gray overcame him.

––––––––

V
enn breezed past Shawna in reception, who was on the phone anyway and paid him little regard apart form a finger raised in greeting.

He found Harmony already back there, talking animatedly with Fil. Vaguely, Venn registered that they seemed to be getting along, which was good and made a change.

She stood up as he entered, a look of triumph on her face. “Jeez, boss, wait till you hear this.”

Venn had finally got through the traffic jam and reached the parking lot of the Division of Special Projects after an hour. One-fifty p.m. by his watch. He was irritable because of the delay. More than that, he was unsettled by what Dennis Yancy had told him on the phone.

“What you got?” he said.

Fil answered. “A match for Bruce Collins and the Bonnesante Clinic.”

“Huh.” Venn took off his leather jacket and slung it over the back of a chair.

Harmony said, “He’s CEO of a company in which Douglas Driscoll, the director of the clinic, owns forty per cent of the shares.”

She handed Venn a printout. Venn scanned it, his mind still not fully focussed. The sheet gave details of Triton Enterprises, a manufacturer of instruments used to sterilize surgical equipment. There was Bruce Collins’ name at the top. A little further down, highlighted with a green Sharpie, was Driscoll’s.”

“Then we’ve got a potential conflict of interest,” said Venn. “Dr Collins ships out her patients to an expensive private clinic whose director is a business ally of her husband.”

Fil grimaced, tipping his head this way and that. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’d be hard to prove wrongdoing. Plenty of people buy shares in plenty of firms. And we don’t know exactly why these patients got sent there. For all we know, the clinic provides some kind of specialized treatment that’s unique. There may be valid clinical grounds for Dr Collins to send her patients there.”

“Ah, come on.” Venn shook his head. “You smell a rat, just like I do. Admit it.”

“Sure as hell stinks to me,” said Harmony.

Venn hadn’t sat down yet. He stood, thinking, for a few moments. Then he said, “Fil, I want you to call the clinic. See if you can arrange a meeting between me and the most senior person  there.”

Fil raised his eyebrows. “Today?” He glanced at the wall clock.

“Yeah,” said Venn. “Today.”

Harmony said, “Hold on. You go in there and start asking questions, they’ll clam up tighter than a virgin’s ass.”

“I’m not going there as a cop.” Venn explained what he wanted.

Fil nodded. “Okay.”

While he made the call, Venn prowled around the office, drinking coffee, flicking through emails and memos he wasn’t interested in. He felt restless, wired.

Fifteen minutes later, Fil called: “You’ve lucked out.”

Venn went over to join him.

“Driscoll himself will see you,” Fil said. “Five thirty this afternoon.”

Venn checked his watch, grimaced. He grabbed his jacket off the chairback.

“Come on,” he said to Harmony. “We’re going for a ride.”

*

T
he Bonnesante Clinic was situated five miles outside of Glens Falls, in southeastern Warren County two hundred miles upstate of Manhattan. Venn figured it would take them three hours to get there, if he didn’t waste any time. Or hit any more damn traffic jams.

He left Fil grinding away through the remainder of the patients on the list Beth had given him, and told him to call with updates.

Ten minutes into the journey, Harmony said: “So what’s bugging you?”

He glanced across at her. “What?”

“Something’s crawling around in your boxers. And it ain’t the traffic jam you got stuck in.”

Venn was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You hear about the prison breakout? At Horn Creek in Illinois?”

“Yeah, of course.” Harmony gave a low whistle. “What a cluster fuck. Gotta be some red faces in the Department of Corrections right now. Some firings, too.”

“One of the guys who escaped. Gene Drake. I know him. I put him away, eight years ago, when I was a Chicago cop.”

“Yeah?” Harmony turned in her seat, intrigued. “Jesus. You must be pissed.”

“The irony was, I got him through sheer chance. He was wanted on three homicide charges, but I wasn’t hunting him for those. We got a tip-off about a planned hijacking of a bunch of armored cars, transporting cash for one of the banks. My guys and I ambushed the operation. Several of the hijackers were killed, but we got the leader. And it was Drake.”

“What did he get?”

“Life,” said Venn. “Two life sentences, in fact. For two of the homicides. He wriggled out of the other one, but it didn’t matter. It was enough. He went straight into Horn Creek, and he’s been there ever since. Until now.”

“Should of shot the son of a bitch when you had the chance,” said Harmony.

“I’ve been talking to a contact of mine in the FBI, and they think the prison break was an inside job. Somebody sabotaged the power supply. Drake may have been behind it, somehow. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“He won’t last,” said Harmony. “If he’s smart, he’ll keep his nose clean for a while. But he’s high-profile enough now that as soon as he so much as commits a parking violation, they’ll get him.”

“Thing is, he’s already making waves,” said Venn. “My FBI guy called me when I was stuck in traffic. A 911 call came through at eleven this morning, from an auto repair shop in Western Pennsylvania. The kid who called it in reported a positive sighting of Drake. Next thing, the line goes dead. By the time the local cops got there, they found the kid dead. Garrotted. A professional kill. No trace of Drake, of course.”