Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller (18 page)

Chapter 27

The two men
sat across from one another in the bleak interrogation room. Alan on the side closest to the large polarized window, Darrow on the other. Darrow’s hands were shackled in front of him. He was still smiling. Alan wanted to reach across the table and slap the smile off the other man’s face. He hadn’t let Darrow out of his sight since they had met in the airport.

“It was you all along, wasn’t it?” Alan asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Darrow said. His voice was smooth and even.

“I’m done playing games. Do you go by Darrow, or do you prefer Morrie Arti?”

There was the million dollar question,
Alan thought.

They had fingerprinted Darrow (or Morrie Arti, or whatever his real name was) upon arrival at Queens Central Booking and run them against the national database, but hadn’t come up with a hit. Darrow really was a ghost. More than that really, since technically he didn’t exist at all. When one of the Port Authority officers had done a pat-down prior to loading him for transport, Darrow hadn’t had any identification on his person. His cell phone had been confiscated and was on its way to forensics for processing. Alan didn’t hold out hope that they would find anything on it. A man as capable as Darrow didn’t make mistakes like that. It was most likely a burner phone, and Alan would have gambled his reputation on the hunch that the only call to or from the phone was the one Alan had made to it just over an hour ago when both men had been standing at the Rome Airways gate in JFK.

“You can call me whatever you like,” Darrow said. “I want you to know that you played the game well.”

“I won, asshole,” Alan said. “I played your game and I won.”

Darrow’s smile widened. His teeth were so white they nearly gleamed. His short black hair was styled. It was a little tousled after the ordeal, but he hadn’t gotten his hair done by a hack. Alan’s eyes found their way to the man’s hands where they rested on the table between them. His fingernails were short and neat, probably professionally manicured.

Everything about the man’s appearance, along with the air of confidence he conveyed, alluded to the fact that the man came from money; that he had either been born with the handle of a silver spoon sticking out the corner of his mouth, or that he had made a success of himself somewhere along the way.

“Are you getting it all?” Darrow asked.

“What?”

“You were sizing me up just now. Taking mental notes about me. My hair, my nails…I’m curious to know what conclusions you’ve come to.”

He’s still playing a game,
Alan thought.
Why are you so smug? We’ve got you, and yet you don’t seem to have a care in the world.

“You come from a wealthy family. That, or you’re successful. Either you’re a trust fund baby or you started your own business. You’re arrogant.”

“Am I?”

Alan nodded. “Borderline egomaniac. Antisocial personality disorder maybe.”

Darrow chuckled at that.

“You’re of above average intelligence and resourceful. Good with people. Maybe a salesman at some point in your life. You’re persuasive. You would have to be to have recruited McKay. Got him to steal from his own company.”

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t all that difficult. Most people are just waiting to be turned. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

“Thoreau,” Alan said.

“The majority of people will gladly compromise their moral code for the ability to climb the fence in promise of greener pastures.”

“I don’t agree with that.”

“No. I don’t expect you would. See, I’ve been sizing you up as well. Obviously, it’s a necessity in your line of work. For me, it’s more of a hobby really.”

“I’ll humor you.”

“You live in a world that is black and white. A world of right and wrong, of good and evil. There isn’t a middle ground, no gray area. You prefer to keep things neat and tidy. You live simply. Some might call it sparse. You don’t do well with clutter, in both your physical life and in your mind.”

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” Alan said sarcastically.

“I’d commend you for your ability to see the world the way you do, but it also makes you colorblind. Causes you to miss things. Not often, but enough for one to consider it a weakness. You overlook a small section of the spectrum. The fuzzy space that overlaps the edges.”

“Maybe, but I caught you didn’t I?”

Darrow leaned forward in his chair. “Let’s not forget that I helped you along the way, Alan. I was always there to nudge you in the right direction, was I not?”

“I would have caught you either way.”

Darrow’s eyes narrowed, but the smile remained. “Perhaps.”

“I won’t bother asking about the specifics. Something tells me you wouldn’t talk about that. I don’t think you’re interested in the nuts and bolts as much as you are the grand scheme. But what’s the game? What’s the purpose?”

“Are you asking me what my philosophy is?”

“You can call it whatever you want.”

“Chaos.”

“Chaos?”

“Without chaos, life would cease to exist. The absence of chaos is nothingness. It’s what pushes us to evolve.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“So tell me then, Alan. What is it that you think makes me tick?”

“I think you relish causing others pain,” Alan said, leaning forward so that his face was less than a foot from Darrow’s, their eyes locked. “Or maybe you’re just a rich brat that’s bored with life in general and you get your jollies off by inflicting harm on innocent people.”

“I don’t think you really believe that,” Darrow said.

“It’s like you said. I like to keep things simple. And in this case, the simplest solution is that you play the game just to play the game.”

“I’ve spent a long time searching for a worthy adversary. It wasn’t enough to settle for any opponent. I needed someone that I could go to battle with. A battle of wits. One mind against another. I’ve studied you for a long time. We’re connected, you and I, in more ways than you know.”

“Is that a fact?”

“I needed someone that wouldn’t stop. That would keep playing the game, that would stay on the trail at whatever cost. Even if it killed them. I
chose
you, Alan.”

“And I caught you,” Alan said. “Game over.”

Darrow moved quickly, like a magician. Alan was too preoccupied with the man’s gaze to see Darrow’s hands flash forward as far as the shackles would allow, which was enough for him to cup his hands over Alan’s, gripping them firmly and holding them in place.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Darrow said. “The games have only just begun.”

Darrow threw himself back into his chair. The chair tipped and was frozen at a precarious angle for only an instant before both it and Darrow toppled backward to the floor.

Alan came around the table and saw the man laying there, his body shuddering violently, white froth bubbling out of his mouth and running down the sides of his cheeks.

The smile was gone.

Darrow’s eyes turned toward Alan before they rolled up to whites. His back arched and Alan heard a sharp snap like the sound of a whip being cracked as Darrow’s back broke.

Then the violent fit ended.

Alan stared down at the still body.

Chapter 28

He landed in
Omaha around one o’clock on Friday afternoon. He was beyond tired, and his body pleaded with him to bypass the office and drive straight to the Patriot Inn where his bed (uncomfortable or not) awaited him.

As he had been leaving Queens Central Booking, Alan had been stopped by one of the port authority officers that had ridden with them from JFK to the station.

“Agent Lamb?” the officer had asked. He was a man by the name of Kurt Yodel. He looked exhausted from pulling too much overtime.

“That’s me.”

“I want to thank you for what you did,” Officer Yodel said. “You saved a lot of people.”

“Thanks, but I didn’t do it alone. I better get going, or I’ll miss my flight home.”

“Agent Lamb, just one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

Yodel had extended his hand, offering Alan a small piece of folded paper. “I took this off the dead guy. I caught it during the pat-down, but things were moving so fast, I didn’t have time to give it to you before you went into the interrogation room with him.”

Alan took the paper and unfolded it.

There was a single date scrawled on it in blue ink:
05/08/2008

“I took a look at it,” Yodel said. “I hope you don’t mind. That date mean anything to you?”

Alan had stared at what was written on the piece of paper for a long time. Eventually, he had folded it and placed it in his pocket. “Thank you, Officer. I better catch my flight.”

And he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep during the flight home because the date written on the piece of paper
did
mean something to him. In fact, that precise date held great significance when weighed against all the other days that had occurred throughout the course of his life.

Because it was the date on which he had nearly died.

Alan arrived at GCB headquarters at around three-thirty that afternoon. When the elevator doors opened, he was greeted by a standing ovation. The first standing ovation anyone had ever received by the rest of the investigators and essential personnel in the agency. He accepted this little triumph, these little pats on the back, with tired gratitude as he made his way to Gant’s office and closed the door behind him.

He sank down into one of the chairs facing Gant’s desk, believing it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for him to fall asleep sitting upright.

Gant stared up at him over a stack of papers that formed a small mountain on the center of his desk. “Now you’re the hero,” Gant said.

“Am I?”

Gant looked at his right wrist, pretending to check the time on a wristwatch that wasn’t there. “Yeah, for the next five minutes or so. You better enjoy it.”

“I’m not in the mood to enjoy anything right now. Except sleep, maybe.”

Gant shuffled through some folders on his desk, found the one he was looking for, and slid it over to Alan. “Okay, time’s up. You’re catching again.”

Alan sat forward, grabbed the folder, and began to sift through the documents inside of it. “We’re popular all of a sudden,” he said, skimming over the pages.

“That’s what happens when you put yourself on the map. Though I gotta say, Strickland was pleased as punch.”

“McKay?”

“He’s been released. He’ll probably never know how close he was to taking the fall for everything. Of course, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder with Darrow still out there somewhere.”

“I doubt that’s his real name.”

“Crafty one, that one. Still haven’t figured out why he targeted you?”

Alan remembered the scrap of paper in his pocket. The one they had taken off of Darrow with the date written on it. He hadn’t mentioned it to Gant and he made the decision now that he wasn’t going to. What good would it do to open another barrel of mystery?

“No idea.”

“He’ll turn up.”

“Bad pennies always do.”

“You’ve got that right.”

Alan glanced down at the contents of the folder. “Váli Labs?”

“Yeah. Apparently, they’re involved in some real cutting edge physical enhancement experimentation. Might not be entirely on the up and up.”

“I better get to work.”

“It’s almost closing time on Friday night. Go home. Sleep. It’ll be here come Monday morning. By then your celebrity status should be a thing of the past.”

“I hope so.”

Alan left Gant’s office and returned to his own. Lucy was at her desk, her fingers tapping hurriedly at her keyboard. When Alan stepped into the office, she frowned without looking up. “You forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“To let me know you were okay,” Lucy said, glancing up at him. “That’s the second time now.”

“It slipped my mind. I’ve been buried up to my eyeballs in clones lately.”

Lucy’s fingers stopped, her hands coming away from the keyboard. “So Morrie Arti was Darrow all along?”

“More like Morrie Arti and Darrow were somebody. Both of them were figments of someone’s twisted imagination.”

“I can’t believe he was a clone. The real guy is still out there. Do you think you’ll hear from him again?”

“According to him, yeah, I guess I will.”

“So all he told you was that he’s like your arch nemesis. That’s it?”

Alan didn’t know what compelled him to do it, but he took the slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. He hadn’t planned to tell anyone about it, but it was tough keeping a secret. He needed at least one person to confide in, and Lucy would have to do.

Lucy unfolded the piece of paper and read it. She looked up at him and said, “A date? What does it mean?”

“That’s the day I had the car accident,” Alan said, surprised to feel better now that he had shared his secret with someone.

“The one that gives you recurring nightmares?”

“One and the same.”

“Wonder what it means.”

“No idea.”

“I’ll bet it’s another clue,” Lucy said.

“A clue to what?”

“I think you’re probably the only one that can answer that. Are you still having it?”

“The dream?”

“The nightmare.”

“Yes.”

“Occasionally.”

“You should really go see someone.” She held up a staying hand and added: “I know what you’re going to say, and I’m not saying it has to be a psychic. But you should talk about it with someone.”

“I’m still debating. What about you? I thought you were supposed to have your big date with Marvin tonight?”

“He stood me up.”

“You’re kidding?”

“It’s a long story, but it ends with him getting back together with his ex-girlfriend.”

“Marvin’s a player. Who would have thought?”

Lucy said, “It doesn’t matter. I consulted my psychic friend last night. He didn’t think it would work out anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“That Marvin didn’t pan out.”

“You win some and you lose some, right?”

Alan glanced at the folder in his hand and then pitched it onto his desk. “I haven’t eaten anything yet.”

“Okay.”

“So, I know what you said about guys that come off as desperate, and you’ve already shot me down once, but I’ll give it one more shot. Would you like to go to dinner with me, Lucy?”

“Like a pity party dinner?”

“Like a regular dinner.”

“You’re just taking pity on a girl.”

“I’m no Marvin, but maybe you can find it in your heart to settle for me as a consolation prize?”

Lucy hesitated, but Alan noticed that she was blushing. Finally, she said, “I guess that would be okay. But it’s only dinner.”

“Scout’s honor. But do me a favor? Cool it with the telling me to go see a psychic stuff?”

“Look at that. Our first date and you’re already trying to change me.”

“I thought it was only dinner?”

Lucy smiled and said, “That’s what I meant.”