The Schwarzschild Radius (54 page)

“Your goggles okay?” he asked the other man.

“Yeah, still working.”

“Good, give them to me. You head back. That’s an order. Take the dog.”

McKenna stumbled over the debris with only himself to worry about. His balance was wobbly and his ears would be ringing for a week. Was the explosion triggered by a tripwire? Motion detectors? There was no point in slowing down now. At the platform, he leapt up and scanned the area. Nothing. Then, on the ground, he saw a twenty dollar bill. It was wet, but looked like it had come right out of a teller’s tray. Even smelled fresh. McKenna looked up and down the tracks. Ahead on the west-bound tracks there was another bill. It was fresh too. What did this mean? Was Brazos chumming the water? Did the girls have money on them? In Rachel’s emails to Achara they talked about money to get over here.

His heart pounded at the thought that he was getting closer to his quarry. Now his attention was divided between the ground and any motion ahead. There was another bill on the floor and McKenna started counting the number of paces between bills. Just under two hundred, which for a small girl would be about two hundred even. He got to some kind of storage room. It was padlocked. He knocked. No answer. The tunnel grade was rising and there was much more light coming in from the upper level. The visibility was several hundred feet. The bills appeared with greater frequency, about every hundred feet. They
had
to be alive. McKenna increased his pace, not bothering to pick up the bills along the way. The tunnel bent to the right and when he made that turn, he saw three figures about two hundred yards up ahead. He knelt to take the shot.

McKenna let the crosshairs rest on Brazos’ torso. The target moved and the crosshairs followed. McKenna focused on the beating of his heart. Systolic, diastolic. The best shots are fired in the space between heartbeats. He waited. His finger tightened around the trigger.

He fired. He missed. Brazos responded by emptying a clip in his direction. Dammit, he should have taken the shot from the prone position. Now Brazos lined the girls up behind him as human shields. McKenna saw them mount the platform ahead and vanish from sight.

He was still stunned from the explosion and got vertigo when he rose to his feet. He closed the distance to the platform quickly, then slowed as this would be the perfect place for an ambush. As McKenna approached the platform, he hugged the wall, pointing his weapon at torso level. Advancing one step at a time, he could hear no shuffling up ahead, nothing. He listened for hard breathing. Brazos may be in good shape, but those girls weren’t trained to hike like this. He ducked into a maintenance recess which gave good cover from the platform line of sight.

Above, he saw rusted truss work supporting the ceiling. About fifty feet diagonal to him was a package that looked out of place and out of time. McKenna scrambled to another recess that was on the opposite side from where he was.

An explosion ripped through the cavern, bringing down tons of concrete, collapsing the old truss work and sealing off the tunnel.

Brazos opened another utility room, this one much bigger than the last. When the lights came on, the place looked like the set of a cheap porn movie. A filthy mattress, chains on the walls, an axe, hacksaw, propane torch, ropes, leather masks. And video equipment. Brazos snapped on a spotlight, which blinded the girls after a night of darkness. He seemed agitated as if he was about to rush something that’s normally prolonged. Rachel had briefly seen the figure on the laptop screen when Brazos set off the bomb. There had been only one person pursuing them and now he was gone. Her hopes were dashed. Achara shook and clung to her waist. Brazos lined up some implements on a table: propane torch, hand cuffs, gag, rope, and an axe. Rachel shivered along with Achara. This was the end.

He pointed several video cameras at them to record their terror.

“Take off your clothes.”

Rachel stood between Brazos and Achara with her back to the killer and started to undress. She told Achara to do the same. Achara removed her shirt and bra, then undid her belt. Rachel aligned herself with Achara’s left leg, keeping in mind Brazos’ position behind her. When Achara pulled down her pants, Rachel dove forward and ripped the can of tire sealant off her calf. She pivoted, pointing the nozzle at Brazos’ face, and shot the flammable green slime into his eyes. Brazos’ hands came up, but Rachel lunged forward, keeping the spray going, and grabbed the propane torch with her right hand. She ignited the stream, turning the can into a flamethrower, engulfing Brazos in a column of fire.

Brazos slammed into the walls screaming, igniting the mattress. Rachel emptied the can on him, then went for the door, pulling Achara with her. The video cameras would record the flesh melting off Brazos’ bones. It was an execution worthy of one of his own online murders.

achel finished putting on makeup and pulled on the new black jeans she had bought at TJ Maxx. She had to sit down for the next step. Her feet were still healing a month after getting forty-seven stitches, but she was determined to wear the new black high heels. Just in case she couldn’t take it later, she packed her tennis shoes in her knapsack.

The strains of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suite flowed in from the parlor. Olivia had deferred enrollment at Harvard for a semester and was spending the time home-schooling her new sister. For her part, Achara had started teaching Rachel and Olivia the rudiments of Thai.

Life had slowed down after Achara’s arrival, and that was good. It gave Rachel a chance to reflect on her own passions and priorities. Chemistry was dropped and replaced with Romantic Poetry: Keats, Shelly, and Byron. It was one credit less, but so much more fulfilling.

She had read a great line from Byron last night:

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.

Not a bad motto to live your life by. She could lose herself in the music of the verses, in the power of words that she suspected was almost as great as the power of love. She hoped that if she ever fell in love, that it wouldn’t eclipse the poetry, but she wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t.

After the ordeal, Rachel had embraced Joules in a spontaneous moment and her lips fell on his cheek in the hope that he would kiss her. He patted her on the back, which body language experts say is a bad sign. Her hopes were dashed.

The shoes were on and she stood up like a new-born colt. She took a few tentative steps up and down the room. Now she tried doing it with grace. That took a little more acting.

A final check of her email before leaving. She and Detective McKenna had kept in touch. He said he was going to retire this year. The maintenance recess had saved him, but his hearing was gone in one ear. His last update stated that they had arrested two-hundred and fifty-nine subscribers to Brazos’ child porn site. But there was little hope of getting to the twisted souls who paid fortunes to see the slaughter of young girls. Rachel had tried to imagine what they looked like, those men. But they probably had ordinary faces and went home to their families every night.

She had become paranoid about her laptop being raided again, so Joules had come over and installed a fortress of security measures. As he was explaining what each component did, she became lost in his voice and couldn’t help thinking that his heart had all these measures installed, too, so no one could get to it.

“But for every measure, there’s a countermeasure,” he said. She made special note of that. She had expected him to bolt as soon as the software was installed and duly explained, but he lingered. He wore jeans, sneakers, a sweatshirt, and that bushel of blond hair. They were in her bedroom and her parents were out. She wondered for a nano-second how he would react if she closed the door, but she might lose him forever. How she wished that he would step into that other world where he would be jocular, sensual, and free of whatever held him back. She knew she was attractive and God only knew how she was awed by his brilliant mind, his detachment which ascetics struggle for in mountain caves and that face that grew more chiseled and handsome with every year. She had remembered his predilection for lemonade from when they were children and had made some in advance. She excused herself and fetched two tall glasses. She feared he would leave after finishing it, but the discussion extended into the afternoon.

Rachel closed her email and gave herself a mental command to banish all negative thoughts, at least for tonight.

She stood at the parlor entrance listening to Olivia on cello. The Bach prelude was lonely, dark, and so beautiful, the more so as it came from someone who had been immersed in ugliness. Achara sat opposite her, wearing dog paw slippers and her favorite clothes―flannel pajamas.

“How’s your student doing?” Rachel asked Olivia.

“Brilliant.” In the corner of the room was the vihara with three candles burning, which meant that Pra Prom now resided there as well.

“What are you dolled up for?” asked Olivia.

“Joules is taking me to Cooper Union tonight. Michio Kaku is giving a lecture. He’s a physicist.”

“Lecture on what?”

“The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle―it’s not dinner at the Stork Club, but I’ll take it.”

Olivia smiled. “Uncertainty Principle, eh? Sounds like a sure thing to me, kid.”