Harvest (36 page)

Abby frowned at him. "I thought the autopsy was confirmatory."

"We found something on toxicology. We got the results back just last week from the crime lab."

"Something turned up?"

"In his muscle tissue. They found traces of succinylcholine." She stared at him. Succinylcholine. It was used every day by anaesthesiologists to induce muscle relaxation during surgery. In the OR, it was a vitally useful drug. Outside the OR, its administration would cause the most horrible of deaths. Complete paralysis in a fully conscious subject. Though awake and aware, one would be unable to move or breathe. Like drowning in a sea of air.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "It wasn't a suicide."

"No."

She took a breath and slowly let it out. For a moment she was too horrified to speak. She didn't dare even consider what Aaron's death must have been like. She looked through the fence, towards the pier. Evening fog was forming over the harbour and starting to drift in wispy fingers across the waterfront. Mapes had not reappeared. The freighter loomed, black and silent in the fading light.

"I want to know what's on that boat," she said. "I want to know why he's gone there." She reached for the door. He stopped her. "Not yet."

"When?"

"Let's drive up a block and pull over. We can wait there." He glanced at the sky, then at the fog thickening over the water. "It'll be dark soon."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"How long has it been?"

"Only about an hour," said Katzka.

Abby hugged herself and shivered. The evening had turned even colder, and inside the car, their breaths fogged the windows. In the mist outside, the distant street lamp gave off a yellow glow.

"Interesting you should put it that way. Only an hour. To me it feels like all night."

"It's a matter of perspective. I've put in a lot of time in surveillance. Early in my career."

Katzka as a young man - she couldn't picture that, couldn't imagine him as a fresh-faced rookie. "What made you become a policeman?" she asked.

He shrugged, a blip of shadow in the gloom of the car. "It suited me."

"I guess that explains everything."

"What made you become a doctor?"

She wiped a streak across the fogged windshield and stared out at the boxy canyons formed by ships' containers. "I don't quite know how to answer that."

"Is it such a difficult question?"

"The answer's complicated."

"So it wasn't something simple. Like for the good of humanity."

Now it was her turn to shrug. "Humanity will scarcely notice my absence."

"You go to school for eight years. You train for another five years. It has to be a pretty compelling reason."

The window had fogged up again. She wiped her hand across it and the condensation felt strangely warm against her skin. "I guess, if I had to give you a reason, it would be my brother. When he was ten years old, he had to be hospitalized. I spent a lot of time, watching his doctors. Seeing how they worked."

HARVEST

Katzka waited for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he said softly, "Your brother didn't live?"

She shook her head. "It was a long time ago." She looked down at the moisture glistening on her hand. Warm as tears, she thought. And for one precarious moment she thought she might shed real tears. She was glad Katzka remained silent; she did not feel up to answering any more questions, not up to reviving the images of the ER, of Pete lying on a gurney, the blood splashed on his brand new tennis shoes. How small those shoes had seemed, far too small for a ten-year-old boy. And then there'd been the months of watching him lie in a coma, his flesh shrinking away, his limbs contracting into a permanent self-embrace. The night he'd died, Abby had lifted him from the bed and had sat rocking him in her arms. He'd felt weightless, and as fragile as an infant.

She told Katzka none of this, yet she sensed he understood all he needed to know. Communication by empathy. It was not a talent she'd suspected he possessed. But then, there were so many things about Katzka that she found surprising.

He looked out at the night. And he said: "I think it's dark enough." They stepped out of the car and walked through the open gate, into the container yard. The freighter loomed in the mist. The only light aboard the vessel was a weirdly greenish glow from one of the lower portholes. Otherwise the ship seemed abandoned. They walked onto the pier, passing a tower of empty crates stacked on a loading pallet.

At the ship's gangplank they paused, listening to the slap of water on the hull, to the myriad groans of steel and cable. The shriek of another jet taking off startled them both. Abby glanced up at the sky, and as she watched the jet's lights lift away she had the disorientating sensation that she was the one moving through space and time. She almost reached out to Katzka for a steadying grip. How did I end up standing on this pier, with this man? she wondered. What strange chain of events has brought me to this unexpected moment in my life?

Katzka touched her arm, his contact warm and solid. "I'm going to look around on board." He stepped onto the gangplank. He'd taken only a few paces towards the vessel when he halted and glanced back up the pier.

A pair of headlights had just swung through the gate.The vehicle was now rolling towards them, across the container yard. It was a van.

Abby had no chance to duck for cover behind the crates. The headlights' beam had already caught her, trapped at the end of the pier.

The van skidded to a halt. Shielding her eyes against the glare, Abby could see almost nothing, but she heard doors open and slam shut. Heard footsteps crunching across the gravel as the men moved in to cut off any escape.

Katzka materialized right beside her. She hadn't even heard him scramble off the gangplank, but suddenly there he was, stepping between her and the van. "OK, just back off," he said. "We're not here to cause any trouble."

The two men, silhouetted by the headlights, hesitated only a second. Then they began to advance.

"Let us by!" Katzka said.

Abby's view of the men was partially blocked by Katzka's back. She didn't see what happened next. All she knew was that he suddenly dropped to a crouch, that there was a simultaneous crack of gunfire and the zing of something ricocheting off the concrete pier behind her.

She and Katzka lunged at the same time for the cover of the crates. He shoved her head to the ground as more gunfire rang out, chunking out splinters of wood.

Katzka returned fire. Three quick blasts.

There was a tattoo of retreating footsteps. A terse exchange of voices.

Then the sound of the van being started, the engine revving and tyres spitting up gravel.

Abby raised her head to look. To her horror she saw the van was rolling towards them, bearing down on the crates like a battering ram.

Katzka took aim and fired. Four bursts that shattered the windshield.

The van bumped crazily onto the pier, swerved right, then left, a battering ram gone out of control.

Katzka fired two last, desperate blasts.

The van kept coming.

Abby registered a blinding glimpse of headlights. Then she flung herself off the pier and hurtled into pitch darkness.

The plunge into icy water was shocking. She sputtered back to the surface, choking on brine and spilled diesel, her limbs flailing at the black water. She heard men shouting on the pier above, then a thunderous splash. Water boiled up and washed over her head. She surfaced again, coughing. At the end of the pier the water

HARVEST

seemed to be glowing a phosphorescent green. The van. It was sliding under the surface, its headlights casting two watery beams of light. As it sank, the greenish glow faded to black.

Katzka. Where was Katzka?

She whirled around in the water, stroking as she scanned the blackness. The surface was still churning, wavelets slapping her face, and she was struggling to see through the sting of salt in her eyes.

She heard a soft splash and a head popped out of the brine a few feet away. Treading water, Katzka glanced in her direction, and saw that she was holding her own. Then he looked up, at the sound of more voices - from the ship?There were two men, maybe three, their footsteps thudding up and down the pier. They were yelling to each other, but their shouts seemed garbled and unintelligible.

Not English, thought Abby, but she could not identify the language.

Overhead a light appeared, the beam cutting through the mist and slowly skimming the water.

Katzka dove. So did Abby. She swam as far as her breath would carry her, away from the pier, towards the blackness of open water. Again and again she came up, gasped in a breath, then dove again. When she resurfaced a fifth time, she was treading in darkness.

There were now two lights moving on the pier, the beams scanning the mist like a pair of relentless eyes. She heard the splash of water somewhere close, and then a quick intake of breath, and

she knew Katzka had surfaced nearby. "Lost my gun," he panted. "What the hell's going on?"

"Just keep swimming. The next pier."

The night suddenly lit up with shocking brilliance. The freighter had turned on its deck lights, illuminating every detail on the pier. There was one man on the gangplank, and one crouching at the pier's edge with a searchlight. Towering beside them was a third man, his rifle aimed at the water.

"Go," said Katzka.

Abby dove, clawing her way through liquid blackness. She'd never been a good swimmer. Deep water scared her. Now she was swimming through water so dark it might as well be bottomless. She came up for another breath, but could not seem to get enough air, no matter how deeply she gasped.

"Abby, keep moving!" urged Katzka. "Just get to that next pier!" Abby glanced back towards the freighter. She saw that the searchlights were tracing an ever-larger circle on the water. That the beam was flitting towards them.

She slipped, once again, underwater.

By the time she and Katzka finally clambered out onto land, Abby could barely move her limbs. She crawled up rocks slippery with oil and seaweed. Crouching in the darkness, the barnacles biting into her knees, she vomited into the water.

Katzka took her arm, steadied her. She was shaking so hard from exertion she thought she might shatter were it not for his grip.

At last there was nothing left in her stomach. Weakly she raised her head.

"Better?" he whispered.

"I'm freezing."

"Then let's get someplace warm." He glanced up at the pier, looming above them. "I think we can make it up those pilings. Come on."

Together they scrambled up the rocks, slipping and sliding on moss and seaweed. Katzka made it up onto the pier first, then he reached down and hauled her up after him. They rose to a crouch.

The searchlight sliced through the mist, trapping them in its glare.

A bullet ricocheted off the concrete right behind Abby. "Move!" said Katzka.

They sprinted away. The searchlight pursued them, the beam zigzagging through the darkness. They were off the concrete pier now, running towards the container yard. Bullets spat up gravel all around them. Ahead loomed the containers, stacked up in a giant maze of shadows. They ducked down the nearest row, heard bullets pinging on metal. Then the gunfire ceased.

Abby slowed down to catch her breath. She was still exhausted from the swim, still weak from retching up seawater. And now she was shaking so hard her feet were stumbling.

Voices drew near. They seemed to come from two directions at once.

Katzka grabbed her hand and pulled her deeper into the maze of containers.

They ran to the end of the row, turned left, and kept running. Then both of them halted.

At the far end of the row, a light winked.

They're in front of us/

Katzka veered right, turned down another row. Stacked containers towered on both sides of them like the walls of a chasm. They heard voices and corrected course again. By now they'd made so many turns, Abby couldn't tell if they were moving in circles, couldn't tell if they'd fled this way seconds earlier.

A light danced ahead of them.

They halted, spun around to retrace their steps. And saw another flashlight beam winking. It swept back and forth, moving towards them.

They're ahead of us. And behind us.

In panic she stumbled backwards. Reaching out to steady herself, she felt the cleft between two containers. The gap was barely wide enough to fit into.

The flashlight beam winked closer.

Grabbing Katzka's arm, she squeezed into the opening, pulling him after her. Deeper and deeper she wormed, through a filigree of cobwebs, until she bumped up against the wall of an adjacent container. No way forward.They were trapped here, wedged tightly into a space narrower than a coif'to.

The crunch of footsteps on gravel approached.

Katzka's hand reached out to grip hers, but his touch did nothing to ease her panic. Her heart was slamming against her chest. The footsteps drew closer.

She heard voices, now - one man hailing another, then a second man answering in some unrecognizable tongue. Or was it the blood roaring through her ears that made their words seem garbled beyond comprehension?

A light danced past the cleft opening. The two men were standing close by, conversing in puzzled tones. They had only to shine their flashlights into the gap, and they'd spot their prey in the crevice. Someone kicked at the ground and gravel skittered and clanged against the container.

Abby closed her eyes, too terrified to look. She didn't want to be watching when that beam of light flooded into their hiding place. Katzka's grip tightened around her hand. Her limbs were rigid with tension, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. She heard another scrape of shoes across the ground, another skittering of gravel.

Then the footsteps moved away.

Abby didn't dare move. She wasn't sure she could move; her legs felt locked in position. Years from now, she thought, they'll find me standing here, my skelewn frozen stiff in terror.

It was Katzka who made the first move. He eased towards the opening and was about to poke his head out for a look when they heard a soft whick. A light flared and went out. Someone had lit a match. Katzka went dead still. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the darkness.