Hard Fall Part 16

"Still ringing," Levin said, in a constricted voice. "No answer."

Anthony Kort, stuffing the bra with his own dirty socks, froze as the phone began to ring.

He fought for self-control, efficiency his only hope for escape. He pulled the panty hose as high as they would go. The dress wouldn't zip closed over his wide shoulders, so he donned a lab jacket. He tied a pink scarf over his head and under his chin, covering his sideburns, put on a pair of large sungla.s.ses and slung a purse over his shoulder. They could be out there by now, watching the building; they could be stopping every man they saw. But a woman?

Carrying a shopping bag filled with his own clothes, he took a deep breath, unlocked and opened the office's outer door, and stepped into the empty hallway. He headed for the stairs but then changed his mind to return to the elevator. Who would use stairs in this heat? When the elevator finally arrived it was empty, and he heaved a sigh of relief. He wouldn't pa.s.s too close an inspection.

As the heavy doors shut, he instinctively touched the weapon hidden just beneath the surface of clothing in the top of the bag.

As Levin and Daggett entered the office building's crowded lobby, Daggett waved Levin toward the fire stairs and headed straight for the elevator, fearing he was too late, hoping he might be wrong. The two most likely explanations for the unanswered phone were that the suspect had disconnected the phone and fled or that he had killed everyone. There was only an outside chance the man was still here.

In this building devoted to medical professionals, the lobby churned with activity. People from all walks of life stood cl.u.s.tered by the two elevators, which came open at nearly the same moment. Daggett, only a few yards off, stopped short and tried to get a good look at those disembarking, keeping his suspect's vague description foremost in his mind: fortyish, male, average height, average build, possible red hair, possible swollen jaw .. .

As the impatient group in front of him merged into those leaving the elevators, he felt overwhelmed by the variety of faces that blurred past him: this man was bald, this one too short. Too many.

An unexpected push came from behind as a fat lady made for the open elevators. Daggett lost his balance and b.u.mped a nurse coming at him.

Daggett! Kort thought as a fat lady pushed the man into him. A few minutes earlier, a blurred magazine photograph, now the man in the flesh. Head down! he reminded himself as he feigned attention on the contents of the shopping bag: never look back. FBI agents were like rodents, if you caught sight of one, then there were scores unseen. He kept his hips pumping ever so slightly, making certain not to overplay the part, his nerves raw, his skin p.r.i.c.kling beneath the dress.

He had no trouble spotting the nervous young man with the dark hair who stood by the fire stairs. He kept an eye on him as he approached the doors. If there was to be trouble, it would come from that direction. Any others? Were they outside in their officious unmarked cars, eyes trained on the entrances? Kort moved up to a noisy group of professional-looking types that bunched at the outer doors. The topic of conversation was the hot weather. As they pushed through the doors, he stayed with them. The man holding the door sparked at the sight of a nurse's uniform and said with a British accent, "I don't believe we've met. Are you coming along to " and caught himself when he recognized an obvious transvest.i.te. "So sorry," he demurred, side-stepping away from the silent Anthony Kort.

At the corner, Kort turned right and headed off alone.

Daggett covered his left hand with his handkerchief and pinched the doork.n.o.b tightly to avoid smearing any possible prints; his right hand remained stuffed inside his letter jacket ready with his weapon.

Locked!

He tried it again, to no avail.

An evil foreboding overpowered him. Had he gone too far in alerting the city's dentist offices? He had knowingly involved the inexperienced, the innocent. He wanted out of here. Let somebody else discover the carnage. Not him. Not again. He had had enough for one lifetime.

Ten minutes later, the building superintendent opened the door. Gun down, Daggett slipped inside. The medicinal smell of a dentist's office was something he a.s.sociated with pain.

The reception area was empty. He hesitated briefly, took the gun in both hands, trained it at the floor in front of him and quickly rounded the corner into the suite. Dead bodies. All female. Three of them. One, naked. To his right, the doctor .. . He felt his eyes sting, his stomach knot.

He jumped around the part.i.tion, ready to shoot, and progressively searched what turned out to be a file room, a bathroom, and a storage closet. It was only as he dared to look at the bodies once more that he noticed the naked one breathing. Relief came stubbornly. Could they be alive? Later, he would think how odd it was that he should accept death more readily than life, tragedy more readily than survival.

As he inspected the fallen bodies he found all with a solid pulse, only the dentist had a visible injury, and superficial at that. This discovery was at once both disturbing and unsettling, unexpected and appreciated.

His defenses relaxed, he suddenly understood the meaning of this one woman's nakedness. He rushed into the hall. Not waiting for the elevators, he bounded down the fire stairs in leaps and jumps, hand singing on the rail. As he burst through the door, he found Levin's semiautomatic trained on him.

"A woman!" Daggett said too loudly. "We're looking for a woman."

"Aren't we all!" came the voice of a man mopping the floor not ten feet away.

Daggett would have called for paramedics, but the paramedics in Was.h.i.+ngton were notoriously late, if they ever arrived at all. Instead, he called in a medic who belonged to WMFO's tactical response squad, the FBI version of a SWAT team.

On this man's advice, paramedics were called in anyway, responding at about the time the women came around. All but Li, Rosen's a.s.sistant, who remained under from a high dosage of anesthetic.

The victims were suffering from shock, and in the sweltering August heat and humidity all four were driven away fully wrapped in blankets.

The police issued a Be On Lookout for a man wearing a nurse's uniform, but not surprising to Daggett, nothing came of it. The afternoon dragged on, Daggett impatient to interview those involved.

He phoned Carrie, who was out was she ever in? and left a message. Mrs. Kiyak promised to stay with Duncan until Daggett made it home, which, he acknowledged, might be quite late. Personal matters handled, he and Levin found a burger and beer at a local bar and ate in relative silence, the cloud of failure hanging over them. They returned to Buzzard Point by seven, which was the previously arranged hour for Rosen's interview. His a.s.sistants, all but Li, who had finally awakened at the hospital, were to follow.

To Daggett's disgust, Rosen's employees arrived with husbands and attorneys in tow, bent on self-protection and suing Rosen. This, in turn, required Daggett to solicit one of the Bureau's on-call attorneys, a middle-aged woman who had to commute in from Alexandria. The attorneys combined to delay matters for several more hours and dilute their clients' testimony down to nothing.

At one o'clock in the morning, Daggett headed for home knowing nothing more than when he had started, angry enough to kick a hole in a wall. He sent Mrs. Kiyak home, poured himself a deep drink, and drank it on the small flagstone patio off the kitchen. The drink only served to depress him. The only objects in the night sky, other than a few brave stars, were jet aircraft. He took his second drink in front of CNN. He was chewing two antacids when his pager and phone sounded simultaneously.

"Dad?" he heard his son's groggy voice call from his bedroom.

"I've got it, Son," Daggett called out, lifting the receiver. He closed his eyes tightly, hoping that for once it was a wrong number.

It was the right number.

Pullman's weary voice said, "It's been a long one for you, Michigan, and I could put someone else on it, but I thought you'd want it first."

"Paul?" Daggett suddenly felt the drinks. He didn't appreciate the preamble. He'd had a day of it.

"They woke me up on this one, Michigan, but it's your ticket. This dentist. This Dr. Rosen. He never made it home, Michigan. His wife's worried sick. I thought we had better go looking for him rather than put city uniforms on it."

Dr. John Rosen is the first to leave the FBI following the interviews. He is still shaken from his experience of that afternoon, rattled by the hours of interrogation, desperate for a stiff drink, some dinner, and a long night's sleep.

All afternoon he has been thinking about his children and about his wife. You go through something like this and you learn where your priorities lie. If he hadn't had obligations to his patients, he would have booked a flight for two to Flagstaff and spent a week with his parents at their home just outside Cottonwood. He would have drowned himself in gin and tonics and made love as many times as his s.e.x organ could handle it. The tentative nature of life had reared its ugly head. He feels old and vulnerable.

After a block, he gets lucky and flags a cab. It smells like cigarettes. The radio blares news of the Middle East. A day earlier he might have been interested, but not tonight. He wants to hold her. He wants to get home and hold her and tell her how much he loves her. G.o.d, how he loves her.

"Here?" the cabbie asks.

"Fine," he answers, paying too much for such a short ride. The world is full of criminals.

To reach his parked car the reason for his return he can either enter the building and take the elevator or simply walk around back. At this late hour he chooses to walk it. The private parking garage is well lit. Only a few cars remain parked at this hour. As he's heading toward his, he notices her. She's squatting by the front tire of the car next to his. The tire is completely flat. She's tugging on the rim of the wheel thinking it's a hubcap.

"You can't do it with your hands," he tells her. "There's a tool you use for that." He fishes for his keys. "I have a cellular. I could call a service station."

She looks up at him. A pretty face beneath a curtain of fine dark hair curled at the shoulders. Bangs. Huge brown eyes. Startling in the way they dominate her face. High cheekbones. Wet red lips that sparkle as she smiles. "Would you mind?"

It's her French accent that throws him. She's too pretty and it's too late at night. He knows nearly everyone in this building by sight, but he doesn't know her. As his mind attempts to remain rational, to seek an explanation, he senses the man standing behind him. He hears the familiar voice before he can think of what to do. "Lightning does strike twice," it says. His knees go all watery; he can barely stand. His vision shrinks as if someone has strapped blinders onto him. He's lost his breath.

"He is going to pa.s.s out," the woman says in a panicked voice, and that brings him around.

"No," says the man who belongs to the gloved hand that sticks to his neck as it grabs him. "He's going to be fine."

The ride in the elevator takes forever. It is he who breaks the police seal, he who keys in the security code, he who locks the door behind them.

"You will finish what you started," the one with the infected 17 says. "She's here to make sure you do just that." The gloved hand pats him on the shoulder. "She'll kill you if you f.u.c.k it up."

She smiles at him. She doesn't look like a killer, but he believes every word. His heart hasn't worked this fast since the hundred-yard dash in high school. That was 1966.

"You'll use Novocain this time. No tricks."

"Why?" he asks.

"Because my tooth hurts," this horrible man answers.

"I mean why me?" he restates.

"Where's the last place on earth I would be tonight?" the man asks before answering himself, "Right in this chair." The grin is forced but effective. It's the eyes that are evil. Cold blue eyes that he suddenly realizes are some kind of contact lens. His legs forsake him again.

The woman lowers the blinds before producing a weapon that seems inappropriately large.

"I can't work with that aimed at me," he protests.

The man answers. "I suggest you try."

The work is difficult without an a.s.sistant. He realizes how dependent he's become on his a.s.sistants, how slowly it goes without them. He grows nostalgic for all the years he has spent in private practice. Melancholy. Several times he loses his concentration, teased away by both painful and rewarding memories. He can sense that this is the last work he will ever do, his final performance. He has always thought of his work as a performance. He knows that be cause of this, logically, there is no reason to do this at all. He debates stabbing his stainless grabber into one of this man's dead eyes and tearing it from the socket. But he doesn't have the strength for such things. He is a dentist, a d.a.m.n good dentist, and goes about his work to prove it.

When he's finished and it's d.a.m.n good work he steps back and signals the man to get up.

"I will need some antibiotics and some painkillers," the patient informs him. He's never liked patients telling him his job.

"I don't have any," he lies poorly.

"Of course you do. You are flooded with samples. Mistakes are costly in this game, Doctor. Have a seat," the man says, waving him into the chair. Then he is pushed down into the chair, and he can sense the violence, the intense anger, lurking within this man. He has to bite down hard to keep his teeth from chattering. He's strangely cold and more frightened than ever before. He feels dizzy and disconnected. "Tell me where the pharmaceutical samples are kept."

He can't answer. He tries to speak but his voice won't cooperate. He sees more of that anger surface in the man's face and he points as quickly as he can. The woman pa.s.ses the man that gun it looks smaller now and runs off in the direction of his own pointed finger. She comes out of the office a few seconds later waving a box of Amoxicillin samples.

"Good," the angry one says. The one with the st.i.tch in 17. Really a very good job, all things considered.

His arms are taped to the arms of the chair and he is briefly lightheaded with joy. Why bother to strap him down if they're going to kill him? it's his first glimpse of hope and he welcomes it by closing his eyes.

The panic fills him once again, and his eyes come open as he hears the paper wrapper being torn from the syringe. He knows that sound. The man with the ice-blue eyes fills the syringe with the mercury that has always been kept in the back with the plaster molds and plastic resins. The mercury doesn't belong out here. It certainly doesn't belong in a syringe.

When had they taped his mouth? It's only now he realizes he pa.s.sed out, that much has happened in the last few minutes. It's only now he regrets his life spent under a hot light in the throes of other peoples' bad breath, of failing to communicate his true feelings to his dear, sweet wife and children, of making a mess of things without any one incident he can point to. The mercury dances at the tip of the needle and he hears it hit the floor. Those eyes are awful. Like a mask. Inhuman and severe.

He feels that needle p.r.i.c.k his skin. He hears the woman gasp and he turns his head to plead with her, but his tears blur his vision, and justice is served in a blinding stab of pain in the center of his chest.

Levin was roused at his apartment by telephone, as was Mrs. Kiyak, who took an inordinately long time to return to sit Duncan. She mumbled something in pa.s.sing about having her own room, and trundled off to Daggett's bed to sleep, as per their arrangement.

Levin contacted the superintendent of Rosen's office building and Daggett met the two of them inside the N Street entrance. A few minutes later, they reached Rosen's office door. Their bright red police crime scene seal had been torn, indicating the door had been opened without authority. Daggett knew what they would find. He hated himself for it. This was his fault. He had not thought the situation through: interrupted, the killer had never received his dental work.

Daggett disliked the smell of a dentist's office. Always the same blend of alcohol-based medicine and old toothpaste. He walked through the reception area, noticing the chest of toys in the `@,70' corner, and the abundance of dog-eared, out-of-date magazines. He had never seen a dead body up close. He had seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photo graphs; he had seen a few corpses at the crash site of 1023, but only at a great distance. He had seen body bags, caskets, and his grandmother at her funeral. It surprised him to realize this all these years at the Bureau, and this his first body. He thought he had it wrong, and for several seconds, as he stared into the lifeless eyes of Dr. John Rosen, he tried to correct himself. It made him feel chaste, and he found this as distasteful as the sight of the poor man in the chair. He had not believed an ounce of innocence remained in him, given the harsh realities of the past few years. And yet this discovery was not unlike the loss of his virginity it was clearly a moment in his life he would never forget.

This man was not breathing. His eyes were dry, his pupils fixed. He smelled of excrement. Where had he been looking with those eyes? Where was he looking now? What had he been thinking at that moment? What would Daggett be thinking when his time came?

He heard Levin at the door. If he was ever going to do it, it would have to be now. It was childish, really, this desire. Strange and macabre. Not at all the sort of thing he would see himself doing. But the temptation proved too great. Levin would be here any second. This was his only moment of privacy.

He reached out and touched the man's skin, the tentative caress of a child petting a horse for the first time. He jerked back with the sensation, and on reflection he thought it was partly from fear of being caught, partly because of the surprising coolness. Partly because he knew this feeling, and he couldn't, for the life of him, remember from where.

THIRTEEN.

OUTSIDE HER OPEN bedroom window, the leaves of the rhododendron bushes clattered like thin slats of wood. A breeze! Thank G.o.d, wind. Perhaps the heat wave would finally pa.s.s and stop stunting the cycle of every flower in her garden. The tulips had long since pa.s.sed, of course, but oh, what a sight they had been. A riot of color intricately woven like the threads of an Asian silk, patches of yellow, salmon, and a cherry rose the likes of which she had never seen. She lived for her garden, both vegetable and flower alike, and resented the destructive heat.

Carrie uncoiled the delicately patterned floral sheet from her naked body and lay in bed with the delicious breeze streaming across her. It was like something sent from heaven. She rolled up onto an elbow and faced it headon, drinking in the scents and perfumes. The breeze lifted some hair from her face, and she thought that if it would only rain, and rain hard, this heat would pa.s.s. All would be well again.

Almost all.

Before donning a st.i.tch of clothing, the heavenly breeze still rus.h.i.+ng over her, she lay back, reached for the phone and dialed her sister, who answered loudly above the chaos of children at the breakfast table.

"It's me," Carrie said.

The children's voices faded. Carrie could picture her sister, the portable phone pinched on her shoulder, heading across the African hardwood floor toward the study with its red leather chairs and sofa, and walls of alphabetized books. Her husband was the type to alphabetize their books and keep a card catalogue of Christmas card addresses that included the names of any children and notes of the last time they had gotten together.

"You're calling late."

"It's a lazy morning. I have to get going. I can't find the energy."

"You see," her sister said. "There's the difference. There's exactly what I was talking about yesterday."

Carrie was wondering why she put herself through this every morning, for she knew what was coming long before the sound reached her ears.

"I'm telling you: When you have other interests you can't wait to get going in the morning. You dress differently, you eat differently."

"He's eighteen years old! How fair is that to Eric?"

"He's twenty-one. And who said anything about Eric? It's fair to me. I'm alive again. I love Eric. I love the children "

"Do you love .. . him? Whatever his name is .. ."

"Love? Love is not the issue here. I'm infatuated. My heart beats quickly when he touches me. My skin goes completely electric at just the sound of his voice."

"That's guilt."

"It isn't either."

"It might be."

"It's physical attraction. It's natural. It's multiple o.r.g.a.s.ms, for G.o.d's sake! When was the last time Cam did that to you?"

"Don't bring Cam into this."

"Not in recent memory, was it? I can hear it in your voice. That's because you've lost the infatuation. I'm telling you, nothing has been better for Eric and me than this .. . distraction. It makes you appreciate what you've got, and it makes you realize what you're missing."