Thr3e (15 page)

“What connection is there between the boy and the three riddles he’s given?” She grabbed a piece of paper. “Sixty minutes. Yesterday it was three minutes and then thirty minutes. Today it’s sixty minutes. What time did he call?”

“Nine o’clock. Three times three. That’s what he said.”

Her eyes studied the riddles she’d jotted down.

“Call Agent Peters. Tell her about Slater’s call and the confession. Ask her to call the newspaper and tell her to get over here as fast as she can. We have to crack these riddles.”

Kevin punched in the number Jennifer had left him. The clock read
9:07
. They still had fifty-three minutes. Jennifer picked up.

“He called,” Kevin said.

Silence.

“He called—”

“Another riddle?”

“Yes. But I think I might know who he is and what he wants.”

“Tell me!”

Kevin told her the rest in a halting run-on that ate up several minutes. An urgency he hadn’t expected crowded her voice. She was impatient and demanding. But her intensity reassured him.

“So you think you know who he is, and you neglect to tell me about his demand that you confess. What are you trying to do to me? This is a killer we’re dealing with!”

“I’m sorry, I was scared. I’m telling you now.”

“Any other secrets?”

“No. Please, I’m sorry.”

“Samantha’s there?”

“Yes. You have to get this confession out,” Kevin said. “That’s what this is about.”

“We don’t know that. I don’t see the relationship between the riddles and the boy.”

“He was here, last night, and he wrote on my milk jug,” Kevin said. “It has to be him! You wanted motivation; now you have it. I tried to kill someone. He’s mad. How’s that? You have to get this confession on the air.”

Silence stretched on the line.

“Jennifer?”

“We need more time!” she said and then took a breath. “Okay, I’ll put the confession on the wire. Stay put. Do not set foot outside that house, you hear me? Work the riddles.”

“Sam—”

But Jennifer had hung up. Now there was a no-nonsense girl. He found comfort in the fact.

Kevin hung up.
9:13
. “She’ll call the paper.”

“Three,” Samantha said. “Our guy’s tripping over his threes. Progressions. Three, thirty, sixty. And opposites. Night and day, life and death.
What takes you there but takes you nowhere?”
She stared at her page of notes and numbers.

“She wasn’t exactly thrilled about you being here,” Kevin said.

Sam looked up. “What takes you there? The obvious answer is transportation. Like a car. But he did a car. He won’t do a car again. He’s into progressions. More.”

Kevin’s mind spun. “A bus. Train. Plane. But they take you somewhere, don’t they?”

“Depends on where somewhere is. I don’t think it matters—
there
and
nowhere
are opposites. I think he’s going to blow up some kind of public transport!”

“Unless the confession—”

“We can’t assume that’ll stop him.” She jumped to her feet, grabbed the phone from its cradle, and punched the redial.

“Agent Peters? Sam Sheer here. Listen, I think—” She paused and listened. “Yes, I do understand jurisdiction, and as far as I’m concerned, Kevin has always been
my
jurisdiction. If you want to press the matter, I’ll get authorization from the attorney gen—” Another pause, and Sam was smiling now. “My thoughts exactly. But how long will it take to evacuate all public transportation in Long Beach?” She glanced at her watch. “By my watch we have forty-two minutes.” Sam listened for a while. “Thank you.”

She hung up. “Sharp gal. Feisty. The news already has your story. It’s going out live on television as we speak.”

Kevin ran to his television and flipped it on.

“The next edition of the paper won’t hit the street until tomorrow morning,” Sam said. “Slater didn’t mention the paper this time, did he?”

“No. I’m sure television will work. God help me.”

Empathy lit Sam’s gentle eyes. “Jennifer doesn’t think this will satisfy him. The real game’s the riddle. I think she’s right.” She paced and put both palms on her head. “Think, Sam, think!”

“They’re evacuating the public—”

“There’s no way they can get them all out in time,” Sam said. “It’ll take them half an hour just to get the clearances! There’s more here. Slater’s precise. He’s given us more.”

The program on the television suddenly changed. The familiar face of Tom Schilling, news anchor for the ABC affiliate, filled the screen. A red “Breaking News” banner scrolled across the picture tube. The graphic behind Tom Schilling was a shot of Kevin’s charred car with the words “Riddle Killer?” superimposed in a choppy font. The anchor glanced off-camera to his right and then faced the audience.

Kevin stared, spellbound. Tom Schilling was about to drop the hammer on his life. Goose bumps rippled up his neck. Maybe confessing
had
been a mistake.

“We have a shocking new development in the case of the car explosion on Long Beach Boulevard yesterday. Kevin Parson, the driver of the car, has come forward with new information that may shed light on the investigation.”

When Kevin heard his name, the room faded, the picture blurred, and the words grew garbled, as if spoken underwater. His life was over. Tom Schilling droned on.

“Kevin Parson is a seminary student at . . .”

You’re dead.

“ . . . the hopeful clergyman has confessed . . .”

This is it.

“ . . . locked the boy in an underground . . .”

Your life is over.

He thought it odd that this exposure brought on a sense of impending death even more acutely than Slater’s threats had. He’d spent five years pulling himself out of Baker Street’s sea of despondency, and now, in the space of less than twenty-four hours, he found himself overboard, drowning again. Someone would start digging into the rest of his childhood. Into the truth behind Balinda and the house.

Here am I. Kevin Parson, a shell of a man who is capable of the most wicked sin conceived of by man. Here am I, a wretched pretender. I am nothing more than a slug, role-playing its way through life in human form. When you learn everything, you will know that and more.

Thank you. Thank you, Aunt Balinda, for sharing this with me. I am nothing. Thank you, you lousy, sick, twisted auntie for slamming this nugget of truth down my throat. I am nothing, nothing, nothing. Thank you, you demon from hell for gouging out my eyes and pounding me into the ground and . . .

“—vin? Kevin!”

Kevin turned. Sam sat at the table, remote in hand, staring at him. The television was off. It occurred to him that he was trembling. He exhaled and relaxed his balled hands, ran them through his hair.
Get a grip, Kevin. Hold yourself together.

But he didn’t want to hold himself together. He wanted to cry.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Kevin. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ll get you through this, I promise.”

It’s not as bad as it sounds because you don’t know the whole story, Sam. You don’t know what really happened in that house on Baker Street.
He turned away from her.
God, help me. Please help me.

“I’ll be okay,” he said and cleared his throat. “We have to focus on the riddle.”

A stray thought whispered to Kevin.

“It’s the numbers,” Sam said. “Public transportation is numbered. Slater’s going to blow a bus or a train identified with the number three.”

The thought raised its voice. “He said no cops!”

“What—”

“No cops!” Kevin shouted. “They’re using cops to evacuate?”

The fear he felt spread through her eyes. “Dear God!”

“I don’t care if they have to delay every flight in the country!” Jennifer said. “We have a credible bomb threat here, sir! Get the governor on the line if you have to. Terrorist or not, this guy’s going to blow something.”

“Thirty-five minutes—”

“Is enough time to start.”

The bureau chief hesitated.

“Look, Frank,” Jennifer said, “you have to put your neck on the line with me here. The local police don’t have the muscle to push this through fast enough. Milton’s working on the buses, but the bureaucracy’s thicker than molasses down here. I need this from the top.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Meaning what? That I’m jumping the gun? We can’t afford to risk—”

“Okay. But if this turns out to be a hoax . . .”

“It won’t be the first.”

She hung up and took a deep breath. It had already occurred to her that they’d violated one of Slater’s rules. No cops. But she saw no alternatives. She needed the local police.

A junior detective, Randal Crenshaw, burst through the door. “Milton says they’re tracking down the director of local transport now. He should have an answer in ten minutes.”

“How long will it take them to clear the buses once they have the word?”

“Dispatch can move pretty quick.” He shrugged. “Maybe ten minutes.”

She stood and paced the length of the conference table. They now had the first significant lead in the case. The boy. If indeed it was this boy. He’d be how old now? Early thirties? More importantly, someone other than Kevin knew the killer: Samantha Sheer’s father, a policeman named Rick Sheer, who’d caught the boy spying.

“I want you to track down a cop who worked Long Beach about twenty years ago,” she told Crenshaw. “Name’s Rick Sheer. Find him. I need to talk to him. Run a search on any of his logs that mention a boy who was threatening the children in his neighborhood.”

The detective scribbled the name across a piece of paper and left.

She was missing something. Somewhere in the notes she’d taken this morning was the identity of the bus or the train or whatever Slater planned on blowing, if indeed they were right about the riddle referring to public transportation.

The target wasn’t Kevin, and Jennifer found relief in the realization. For the moment it wasn’t
his
life at risk. For now Slater was more interested in playing. Play the game, Kevin. Lead him on. She snatched up the phone and dialed his number.

He picked up on the fifth ring.

“Any thoughts?”

“Just going to call you. It could be a bus or something identified with a three,” Kevin said.

That was it! Had to be. “Three. I’ll have them put a priority on anything with a three in the identifier.”

“How are they doing?”

“Looks good. We should know something in ten minutes.”

“That’s cutting it pretty close, isn’t it?”

“It’s the best they can do.”

Sam snapped her cell phone closed and grabbed her purse. “That’s it, let’s go!” She ran for the door. “I’ll drive.”

Kevin ran after her. “How many?”

“Long Beach proper has twenty-five buses, each identified with several letters and a number. We want number twenty-three. It runs down Alamitos and then back up Atlantic. That’s not far. With any luck we’ll run into it.”

“What about three or thirteen?”

“They started the numbering at five and skipped thirteen.”

The tires on Sam’s car squealed. She was certain Slater had a bus in mind. The planes were less likely targets for the simple reason that security was far tighter than it once had been. She had checked the trams—no threes. Trains were a possibility, but again, high security. It had to be a bus. The fact that there was only one with three in its designator offered at least a sliver of hope.

Twenty-nine minutes.

They flew across Willow toward Alamitos but were stopped by a red light at Walnut. Sam glanced both directions and sped through.

“Now is one time I wouldn’t mind a cop on my tail,” she said. “We could use their help.”

“No cops,” Kevin said.

She looked at him. Two more minutes passed before they hit Alamitos.

“You see a bus, it’s probably number twenty-three. You yell.”

But they passed no buses. They crossed Third Street through a red. Still no bus.

Ocean Boulevard, right; Atlantic, north. No bus. Horns honked at them on several occasions.

“Time?” she asked.

“Nine thirty-seven.”

“Come on! Come on!”

Sam backtracked. When they hit Third again, the light was red and cars blocked the intersection. A bus numbered “
6453–17
” rumbled by, headed west on Third Street. Wrong bus. The car was stuffy. Sweat beaded their foreheads. The intersection cleared and Sam shoved the accelerator down. “Come on, baby. Where are you?”