The Pressure of Darkness (36 page)

Gina flattens against the wall. The little gun is gripped tightly in both hands and pointed muzzle-down at the floor. She slips the manual safety catch at the left rear of the aluminum frame and waits. The doorbell rings. Nicole Stryker emits a squeal and steps back into the office at the end of the hallway.

"Yes?"

A muffled voice from the porch: "Letter for a Ms. Stryker."

Gina raises the gun. "Oh, gosh. Leave it on the porch, okay? I just got into my pajamas."

"I need somebody to sign for this, ma'am."

Gina makes herself sound chipper. "Oh, can't you do me a favor on this one, pal? I'm a mess right now. Just scribble something on it. Hey, they'll never know the difference."

Heartbeats accentuate the long pause that follows.

"Yeah. Sure. I guess that's okay."

"Thanks."

"You have a nice night."

A minute passes. From the back office, Nicole calls out. "He's going back to the truck."

"Does he have anything in his hands, Nicole?"

"Just the clipboard. I don't think it's him," Nicole says, finally. "He looks too young."

"Keep watching."

"He's driving away. Gina, what is this? What does it mean?"

Gina lowers the Astra, swallows her fear. "Beats the crap out of me." She slides the safety back into place. Nicole comes back down the hall, her feet scuffling like a small girl's and her arms still tightly wrapped around her upper body. "Don't open the door, Gina. It might be a bomb or something."

Gina eyes her. "What did you see him carry up to the porch?"

"The clipboard."

"And he took that with him."

"Yes."

Gina sighs and tucks the Astra A-75 back into the leather holster. "Let's take a look at what's out there, then."

"But isn't there such a thing as a letter bomb?"

Gina already has the door yawning wide. She looks carefully out into the shadows of the yard, then down on the door mat. There is a small white envelope with Nicole's name and address on it. Gina picks it up carefully, looks at the return address.

"Hot damn."

Gina closes the front door and locks it behind her, turns off the porch light. She examines the envelope, sniffs the seams, and holds it up. It contains only a piece of paper. There is a small date written under the return address. "Looks like he arranged for this to be delivered tonight. Maybe in case something happened."

Nicole's eyes fill. "You open it."

Gina does. The single sheet of paper contains a long series of symbols and equations. They have been reduced to an almost infinitesimal size and printed out. There is a scrawl at the bottom. "Is this his handwriting?"

"Yes."

The sentence reads:
SEND GOV AT BEGINNING OF THE END
. Nicole is crying softly at the sight of that familiar, powerful handwriting—at once horrified, touched, and confused. Gina brushes by her and trots down the hall. She sits down before the computer. Her fingers dance over the keys and she feeds the page into the scanner. She dials her cell phone.

"Burke?"

* * * * *

"Yes?" He answers softly, for he is lying on his bed naked, one arm around Indira. Burke gently extricates himself and pads into the bathroom. He closes the door. "What's up?"

"I just e-mailed you something you need to see."

Burke feels his pulse quicken. He slips into his jeans. "What is it?"

"Peter Stryker sent his daughter a page full of some kind of equations, looks like math or chemistry stuff. The note on the bottom says she should give it to the government at the beginning of the end, whatever that means. Okay, this is getting to be some really strange shit."

"No kidding. And I'd be willing to bet I've seen this paper before. You scanned it?"

"Yeah. You should have it on your computer by now. Hey, you want me to ask Doc to take a look at this, too?"

"No. He's catching enough heat already." Burke thinks for a moment. "We need to get it analyzed as quickly as possible. I'm going to send a copy to the JB." JB is their slang for the e-mail account Burke uses for government work. The acronym is a cynical reference to James Bond. Any e-mail that goes there is automatically encoded and forwarded to Cary. Burke figures government scientists should make short work of the formula, whatever it is. "Hang on, Gina."

Burke slips into a tee shirt, sneaks back through the bedroom and into his office. His computer is already booted up and sitting online. He downloads the one-page file. "Yeah, this looks like the same thing I saw at Stryker's house the night someone broke in. Whatever this formula is, somebody probably killed him over it."

"And he sent it to his daughter through a messenger service, in case something happened to him."

"That's why the bastard kept asking Nicole where 'it' was, too. He tortured Stryker into admitting he'd sent it to her."

"Jesus. What now?"

"We'll find out soon enough." Burke prints out one copy of the page. He then encodes and forwards the e-mail containing the file to his secret account with five stars typed in the message line. This is a signal to Cary that the matter is urgent. "Everything okay there?"

"It is so far," Gina replies. "Watch your ass, Burke."

"You too. I'll get back to you later on."

They break the connection. Burke studies the printed copy. What could a horror author like Stryker have possibly been up to that would get him killed, much less over a set of numbers and images?

"Red?"

Burke whirls, leaps to his feet. Indira stands in the doorway in her bra and panties. She recoils from the look on his face. "I'm sorry. I wondered why you were up."

He calms himself, wraps his body around hers. "I need to leave for a little while," he whispers. "I have to make a few arrangements. Then you and I are going to go run far, far away."

"Jack, I can't just go. I have all of my memories at the house, the pictures of my family, the jewelry and other heirlooms. If I leave them behind, Mo will destroy them once he sees I'm not coming back. That would break my heart."

"You can't go back there. Not ever."

"Well, you can't leave me here alone."

"I have to, just for a bit."

"Please don't go." Indira reaches down, touches the piece of paper containing the printed formula. "Where did you get that?"

Burke covers rapidly. "It's nothing, something I'm working on with Gina."

"It looks familiar."

A chill passes over, perhaps the shadow of a demon. "It does?"

She nods, her eyes still filled with sleep. "Some of it, anyway. I saw something like that on his desk once."

"Your husband?"

"Yes. It was with some other medical papers of some kind. He got upset with me and scolded me for prying."

Mohandas Pal? What the hell?

"Indira, listen to me. I need to get some money together." He looks deep into her almond eyes. "I want you to promise me you'll stay here for a while, and that you won't answer the door."

Burke opens a desk drawer. He removes a small but functional Heckler & Koch .22 caliber pistol. "Do you know how to use this?"

"I suppose."

"You have to be fairly close for it to do much good, but if you have any room I want you to run like hell instead. You understand?"

"You're scaring me."

"I need to." Burke checks the time, hugs her. "There's a lot going on, Indira, and I don't understand any of it yet. I have to assume we're both in danger. It would be foolish to think otherwise. I don't like leaving you, but I won't be gone long, I promise. So just trust me on this and wait right here, okay?"

FIFTY-ONE

"I need the rest of my money, or as much of it as you can get together."

"Is that all?"

"And I need it in cash."

Tony Monteleone grinned like a threatened possum. "Burke, anyone ever tell you what a pain in the ass you can be?"

"You, just the other night." Burke closed the distance and slid into the booth. The plastic squealed. "I'm serious, Tony. Something has come up. I know I said I could wait, but I'm in a bind."

"And I owe you."

"I didn't say that."

"No, but it's true." Monteleone stirred espresso with a tiny, stained spoon. "Maybe you ought to tell me about this." He added two cubes of sugar. "I'm not too busy just now." He drank with an audible slurping, in the Sicilian tradition. "Who you running from?"

"I wish I knew."

"You need some help?" They both know what that means.

Burke shrugged. "I might at some point, but not yet. I'm serious about not knowing exactly who or what I'm up against."

"You want a drink?"

"No, Tony." Burke touched his hand, a personal gesture highly uncharacteristic of their relationship. "Look, somebody with clout has it in for me. There's a girl involved, someone I really care about. I want to get her away from here."

Tony Monteleone scowled. "Anybody with ears knows you work both sides of the street. But you do it without pissing people off, and you're a man of respect. This somebody is fucking with the wrong people when they fuck with you."

Burke shook his head. "The support is appreciated, Tony. But these people don't play by anybody's rules. Whoever they are, they seem to think they're above the rest of us. That's why I need to get her away. I need some time to think."

"And you need some cash."

Burke waited. Tony snapped his fingers. A stocky, muscular man moved noisily through the curtains and into the room. He acknowledged Burke, who didn't recall having seen him before. "Sal," Monteleone barked. "Get this man thirty large against the fifty and change we owe him. Make half of it in small bills. No funny money, the real deal."

"Thanks, Tony." Burke leaned back onto squealing plastic. Thirty thousand would get them far enough away, at least for now. In his mind, he was planning the route: a drive to Vegas and a plane to Denver, then from Denver to New York City and over the border into Canada. Nobody had that kind of power in two different countries. He hoped.

The money arrived quickly, already neatly packed in bundles, perhaps for some other nefarious purpose. It was a surprisingly small package, wrapped in brown butcher paper. The man called Sal dropped it on the table and moved away, face blank as a slab of granite.

Monteleone chuckled. "Hey, do you want fries with that?"

Burke tucked the package under his left arm, got out of the booth. "Now I owe you one."

"Damn right." Monteleone stood. "So stay alive, you hear?"

Burke nodded, looked behind him. He backed away out of habit, wary eyes fixed on the man called Sal. For some reason Tony Monteleone found that funny. "Look at this hard-ass, he don't even trust his best friends."

Burke cased the gloomy parking lot. The stash of money seemed like a flashing red light that could attract unwanted attention.

He opened the trunk of his car, removed the cash bundles and packed them into the wheel well, around the undersized spare tire; ripped the brown paper and buried the money as best he could. He covered everything up with tools, a grimy beach blanket, and an earthquake kit, slammed the trunk and got into the vehicle. He started the car and drove away, with one wary eye on the rearview mirror, but he was not followed.

As Burke approached the freeway, his cell phone vibrated. Gina sounded upset.

"Burke, I tried to call Doc."

"Why? I told you he was catching heat."

"I figured I'd say hello, maybe ask him to stop by my place for a drink. Then if he did, just as a friend, he could maybe look over what came in the mail without any hassle."

"And he said no."

"Burke," Gina's voice cracked. "Doc is dead."

Burke felt punched out of air. "What?"

"When I called I got that friend of his, the guy he plays chess with, a kid named Frank Abt? He said the meat wagon had just picked Doc up. The homicide dicks were on the scene, but Abt heard the cause of death was an overdose."

Burke was racing up the freeway on-ramp now, heart slamming like a wooden gate in a wind storm. "No other details?"

"No. This guy, he was figuring Doc did himself by accident. Doc liked his drugs. I guess it might be that simple, huh?"

"Not if the homicide boys were there. Something stinks."

"Yeah."

"Damn it to hell. Gina, I need to know the whereabouts of Professor Mohandas Hasari Pal. Right fucking now. Get on it. I'll keep this line open."

"Sure, but what's he got to do with this?"

"Do it, Gina."

"Okay, okay."

Burke dropped the cell phone and floored the gas pedal.

FIFTY-TWO

Red won't be gone long, he promised . . .

Indira Pal, still in panties and a bra but wearing one of Burke's oversized robes, is half-watching some ridiculous old black-and-white Mexican horror film on the giant screen television. She is curled up on the couch with a tall white wine cooler, lost in thought. When the station cuts to a histrionic car commercial, Indira sets down the glass. She gets to her feet, somewhat unsteadily, and walks to the bathroom. She drops the robe, sits down on the toilet to pee. She thumbs through a magazine.

Something rustles in the bushes outside the bathroom window.

Indira huddles forward, instinctively clasping her knees with her forearms. The gun is back on the couch. She does not flush the toilet. Tense, she waits for another sound. Nothing comes. After a time she cleans herself, then grabs the robe and walks on her toes, moving back into the now cavernous and desperately lonely living room. She slips into the robe, tucks the small Heckler & Koch .22 into her pocket and curls up again. After a moment she sees her cell phone on the coffee table, drops it into the other pocket.

"Hello?"

The voice is scratchy, weak, and yet its very presence startles Indira. Her nervous system reacts badly, tears spring to her eyes. She jumps to her feet and stands between the couch and the coffee table.

Knocking. Again: "Hello? I know you're in there. Answer me!"

There is something surreal about the experience; standing half naked in someone else's home, cringing at the presence of a stranger at the door. Something about the voice is feeble, non-threatening. Indira moves closer to the door, the peephole. She looks out, sees features elongated and distorted as if in some funhouse mirror. It is the face of a little old woman. She steps back, perhaps sensing she is being watched. The Granny wears a neat blue sweat suit and carries a small paper shopping bag. Her make-up is smeared and the blue-gray hair mussed.