Tag Man (28 page)

And so it was that Paul Hauser, with no technology or subterfuge, was also in the neighborhood, having been here ever since the Kravitzes had first arrived.

He might have lost Dan in Gloria’s house during the chase to the roof, but Hauser hadn’t given up. In the manner to which he’d adapted his life—in his own way, as ghostly, quiet, and self-effacing as Dan—he’d been tracking the latter all along.

Dan was the only living soul who had ever seen the contents of that suitcase, and to Paul’s thinking—which had taken on a peculiar shape over the years—that made him a man who needed to be stopped.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Dan sat in the rickety aluminum lawn chair and gazed out at the panorama before him. He was inches from the plate glass window of the stadium’s highest vantage point—the uppermost of the stacked sky boxes that Sally had noticed upon their arrival. These were really like small apartments, seemingly placed as afterthoughts on top of the building’s vast flat roof, six cubes arranged in a perfect double row.

The view was impressive, as the front wall of each of them was all glass, and perched well over one hundred feet above ground level. Below, as in an archaeological dig of an ancient Roman sports arena, the vague outline of the racetrack’s enormous oval was just discernible in the overgrown grass and weeds circling the stagnant pond. Beyond were the railroad tracks gleaming in the setting sun; still farther off was Route 7, thinly traveled and as white as an ironed flat ribbon; and finally, the remnants of the Green Mountain foothills, petering out on their way to becoming the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Overhead, the sun to Dan’s back had colored the clouds a virulent and gaudy swirl of variegated pink, which changed in shade and tone as he watched.

He’d been troubled earlier, after traveling all the way to the post office to retrieve the school’s mail and finding nothing. But right now, a day later, faced with this overwhelming beauty, he allowed himself a moment’s relaxation. He’d noticed nothing around the post office, had seen nothing in the rearview mirror, despite the endless switchbacks and false turns on his way back, and had disposed of the tracking device he’d found attached to his car—a discovery that, while alarming in itself, had both confirmed his concerns and partially addressed them.

He rose to his feet to see Sally next door, to make sure that she, too, was enjoying this natural light show. The sky boxes were interconnected by a back hallway that also led to a staircase down into the vast stadium itself. The rooms had been a mess when he and Sally had arrived, but they’d swept and tidied up two of them, and moved a few pieces of somewhat functional furniture from elsewhere in the building to vaguely emulate a pair of living quarters. It wasn’t great, but he was hopeful that it would hold until the next development—whatever that might be.

He wasn’t thrilled to have been reduced to a wait-and-see position, feeling but never seeing suspicious movement all around him, and unable to distinguish reality from any figments of his already sharpened wariness.

He left his room, marched down the few feet to the next door, and entered his daughter’s room, already speaking her name, “Sally…”

He got no further. The room, as flooded with pink light as his own, was empty.

He frowned and reflected for a moment. Rick, his contact here and the place’s caretaker, should have left for home by now. He’d greeted them warmly earlier, and he and Sally had immediately hit it off, he being just the grizzled type of old-timer that she loved to chat with.

That being said, she wouldn’t have necessarily known of his work hours, and might have gone down to swap stories.

Dan headed for the stairs and the hangar-sized main hall just below, filled with its thousands of banked wooden seats, all seemingly transfixed by the spectacle he’d just been enjoying. In the almost disturbing total silence, he listened intently, straining to hear some evidence of his daughter’s wanderings.

*   *   *

Far below, on the building’s nondescript back side, Lloyd Jordan got out of his car, which dwarfed Dan and Sally’s latest loaner, walked up to a narrow glass employees’ entrance, and—without hesitation—picked up a rock and smacked it through the glass in one smooth movement. He reached through the resulting hole, triggered the door latch, and let himself into a narrow hallway with small, abandoned offices off to both sides.

He had no clue what the name of this place was, although its purpose once was clear enough, nor did he care. He was sick of the crap that had befallen him, and now that he had its source within reach, he was eager to start rebuilding his life. Not to mention that time was of the essence. If this loose cannon ever shared what he’d stolen with certain Boston-based parties, Lloyd would quickly become an endangered species.

He had little left to lose.

He reached a T-intersection with another, longer corridor that ran the length of the stadium, turned left toward a flight of steps he saw far in the distance, and marched off as if he’d been here a dozen times before.

But he was in for a surprise. Taking the steps two at a time, he surfaced into a single room the size of a football field, packed with hundreds of tables and chairs, located behind and beneath the ramped army of seats facing the racetrack. This was the stadium’s once jam-packed food emporium, now lined with shuttered stalls with fading signs advertising hot dogs, burgers, and soda. Through several wide, sloping bays across from him, he could see the staired entries to the stadium’s seating and glimpsed the view overlooking the racetrack.

“Jesus,” he murmured. “What the hell?”

He’d been functioning as if on autopilot until now, responding simply to what appeared before him—Dan at the post office; the blip representing Dan’s car; watching the caretaker leave for the day. Now, abruptly, he was at a loss, feeling like the sole inhabitant of an empty factory.

Which is when he heard the regular thumping of footsteps resounding above him and echoing through the distant bays.

Running on soft-soled shoes, he bolted toward the wall of fast-food cubicles and flattened himself out of sight beside one of the ramps, just as the overhead footsteps rounded the corner to enter the food-service area.

He watched as a teenage girl jogged past him unseeing, headed toward the very staircase he’d used to get here.

“Rick?” she called out into the stillness. “You still here?”

Lloyd checked to see if anyone was following, and then soundlessly slipped in behind her, reaching out.

*   *   *

Paul Hauser worked his way along the treeline bordering the stadium’s employee parking lot, grateful to be in motion at last. Neither an athletic nor a young man, and certainly not one to seek the outdoors, he’d been living out of his hidden car for days, after tailing Dan and his daughter here from Bellows Falls. The strain of waiting and watching had plumbed his reserves. His inner resources were slim at best, and he was ruled by random thoughts, colliding images, and seething flashes of anger—a jumble of lunacies in conflict. He could function in the world, if not held to exacting standards, but even that balance was known to wobble when he was upset or dislocated, both of which he was now.

Dan Kravitz had done him significant harm, throwing off his ability to fake normalcy. Now, all Hauser could see clearly was that by eliminating Dan, life would return to what it had been.

Which was why he needed to move now, at last, in part stimulated by the anomaly of the mysterious man leaving that huge car and entering the stadium. As if investigating some God-given sign, Paul had to find out what was going on, and he needed to see it for himself.

And take action if necessary. Not for the first time, his hand wandered to his waistband, to make sure the gun there hadn’t somehow shifted beyond his grasp.

*   *   *

Dan heard Sally’s distant voice call out, although he was unsure of her wording. He wasn’t inclined to shout in turn, and try to catch her attention, so he merely continued his descent from the building’s roof, traveling along the broad, deeply set steps of the tilted viewing deck, noticing as he went how quickly the light was fading with the setting of the sun. By the time he’d reached the second-story tier of seats, dark shadows were already cascading in from the far corners of the space around him.

This was also when he heard a crash and a sharp, high-pitched scream, instantly cut short.

“Sally?” he shouted, and began to run.

*   *   *

“Damn,” Sammie commented, craning forward over the dashboard and squinting into the sun’s remnants. “That place is huge.”

Joe was at the wheel. “My brother loved coming here, way back when they ran horses. In its day, it was a major deal.”

“But, Gramps,” Willy cracked from the backseat, “didn’t everybody ride horses when you were a boy?”

Lester burst out laughing as Sammie twisted around to glare at him.

But Joe smiled as he trundled the SUV across the train tracks between the highway and the racetrack property and approached the gargantuan hulk that had caught Sammie’s attention.

“Hey, Techno-Man,” he addressed Lester. “What’s your GPS reading? Is Lloyd’s land yacht in the front or the back of this place?”

“Back,” Les responded immediately. “And he’s still not moving.”

“That one’s not either,” Willy commented, his voice serious.

“What?” Sam asked.

Willy’s arm appeared between them, his finger extended. “There’s a car parked in the bushes over there, half hidden.”

She swung her head and stared. “Where? How can you see that?”

“I was trained to,” the ex-sniper answered grimly.

“You see anyone inside it?” Joe asked.

Lester had already extracted a pair of night-vision binoculars from a canvas bag at his feet. Of them all, he was the one who most enjoyed the latest tools of the trade. He quickly brought the glasses to bear as Joe slowed to a crawl.

“Empty,” he announced.

“Unless the guy’s on the floorboards,” Willy said.

“Check it out?” Sam asked.

Something was playing on Joe’s sense of urgency to keep moving.

“You get the registration?” he asked.

“Yup.”

He sped up. “We’ll do it later,” he said simply.

Earlier, unknown to them, Dan had given his daughter the scenic tour, traveling the ghost of the old racetrack proper, and thus circling the pond. Joe stuck to the broad, paved access road leading to the northern parking lot, where they could see the narrow end of the building in the distance, looking vaguely like a snub-nosed cruise ship, beached and left to rot in the rapidly growing gloom.

*   *   *

Sally was staggering, fighting to keep on her feet as the man who’d grabbed her half dragged her downstairs by the hair to where Rick kept his office. In his other hand, he held a knife to her throat.

“One word,” he said in a whisper. “One sound, and I cut your throat.”

As they dropped below the dining area, she thought she heard a sound far behind them. Her father’s voice?

She tried feebly to break away, only to have her neck snapped back by another violent yank.

The man’s face was so close to her own, their noses were almost touching. “You stupid or something? You
want
to die?”

She stared at him.

He stopped at the foot of the staircase, back in the corridor that led to the exit and his car beyond.

“Answer me,” he insisted. “Or better still…” He let her go and stepped back suddenly, pulling a large pistol from under his jacket.

She staggered against the wall and stood staring at him.

He waved the gun toward the stairs. “You want your
dad
to die?”

She opened her mouth to protest when he swung the gun around like a snake’s head and almost hit her in the teeth with it.

“Quiet,” he hissed.

“No. Please,” she pleaded, barely audible.

“Then move your ass.
Now
.”

He shoved her roughly by the shoulder and she began to stumble in the direction indicated. They heard another shout from upstairs, this one closer and clearer.

“Sally.”

*   *   *

Hauser took advantage of the abrupt darkness between the woods and the back of the stadium to step clear of his cover and enter the parking lot. Like a dim fire far away, the sky’s lingering pink tinge barely colored the gap overhead.

His eyes were fixed on Dan’s and Lloyd’s parked cars, and beyond them the small door with the broken glass. A movement inside—the smallest flash of something pale—caught his attention.

For no reason beyond his own obsession, he saw only what he chose to.

“Dan Kravitz,” he murmured. “Dan Kravitz,” and he pulled the gun free of his waistband.

*   *   *

“There,” Willy said from the backseat. “Straight ahead.”

Joe accelerated and ignited his high beams starkly revealing a shabby-looking man in the middle of the parking lot, growing in size as they approached. He twisted from facing the parked cars to the left to looking straight into their headlights, his eyes wide and disoriented.

Then he suddenly returned to his original position.

At that same moment, they saw movement at the door—a girl in a white shirt, followed by a man holding something dark.

“Gun,”
Sammie shouted, as a flash of light erupted not from the twosome but from the man standing in the open.

No one fell by the door, but as the man there raised his own gun to return fire, the shooter swung around once more and brought his weapon to bear on Joe’s car, firing twice. As Joe slammed on the brakes and yelled, “Get out. Get out,” they heard a thud strike the engine block and saw a star explode in the middle of the windshield.

Despite his disability, Willy got out first, diving into a tight roll and coming up on his feet, drawing his gun from its holster.

“Don’t move. Police!”
he yelled, as Sammie landed beside him, on her stomach with both hands outstretched, clutching her .40-caliber. Joe was still skidding to a stop ten feet off to their side.

The man before them looked momentarily confused—his gun arm straight out but his weapon silent—until the Hummer’s slamming door startled him.