Somehow, everyone but me seemed to discover humor in my capture and confinement. We ascended a flight of black stairs, our shoes creating a strange staccato echo that followed us into a wide hall. Two guards were posted at the cellblock gate. One of them buzzed us in.
“12 A,” Barker said as we passed through.
Dim recessed lights made an eerie trail of light and shadow between the cells that lined both sides of the hall. Just my luck. All the inmates seemed to be very interested in the new arrival. A woman with stringy hair and a pinched face struck a pose behind the bars. “Hey, baby,” she cooed.
I looked away and found myself staring into the bloodshot eyes of a massive African-American man in the adjacent cell to my right. When I say massive, I mean he was four hundred pounds if he was an ounce. He looked at me like I was a snack.
The next cell contained what I took to be a sleeping vagrant. A Hispanic man wearing a very well tailored, expensive gray suit paced in the opposite cell. In the span of moments it took me to pass by his cell, he glanced at his wristwatch six times. Maybe he was due to be bailed out soon. Maybe it was just a nervous habit.
The third cell on the left held a wispy young woman with strawberry blond hair. She looked up from her weeping just long enough to meet my eyes. Inexplicably, I read her. Why her? I don’t know. I never know. But I said the first thing that came to my mind: “He hears you.” She wept even louder then.
“What’d that mean?” Barker asked.
“Stick around my cell for a bit,” I said. “Happy to explain.”
Barker shrugged, and we continued down the long hall.
I didn’t know at the time why all the inmates on that floor left such an impression on me. They just did. All eleven of them.
There was the angry young man with all the tattoos who cursed at me; the African-American woman who stood in the corner of her cell and mumbled; black-leather-chapped biker who could have been stunt double for ZZ-Top; the guy with huge, bulging eyes who stared at me from the shadows of his cot; the Dominican bodybuilder whose cell could scarcely contain him, much less his white undershirt tank; and finally, there was the nervous man. He looked to be in his middle forties. He spent half the time shaking his head; the other half running his hands through his thinning hair. He looked like a family man, maybe a guy who had one too many at the company party and tried to drive home anyway.
“Here we are,” Barker said. “Your penthouse awaits. We call it 12 A.”
I stepped into the cell, and I must have been smiling because Pony Boy said, “Get that smug look off your face.”
Sunglass Man added, “Think you know something we don’t?”
“Doesn’t much matter,” Barker said. “You’re gonna be here a while.”
I said nothing. The truth was, I did know something they didn’t know. I knew those cell bars wouldn’t hold me, and I knew exactly what it would take for me to free myself.
The cell door slammed home. I heard the lock mechanism trigger. Barker and the Feds left me. I saw the family man across from me staring. As soon as our eyes met, he looked away, started rocking on his feet, and ran his hands through his hair again. I felt bad for the man. I felt bad for every person I’d seen. While I’d never discount a person’s personal responsibility for his actions, I also knew that many people had rougher starts than some others. And many a rough start led to a rough path and a rough end.
I waited my best estimate of five minutes after the cell block gate closed. I stood up and inspected the bars of my cell. It was 16 or 18 gauge stainless steel. I wrapped my fingers around the bars and felt the tension. Definitely steel.
“Thinking of breaking out?” the family man asked.
I just looked at him and smiled. But my smile vanished instantly. The steel bars began to vibrate.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“Judge Deacon came through!” Culbert shouted as he emerged from the FBI’s temporary offices. “We got the warrant for search and seizure.”
“It’s about time!” Barnes thundered. He nodded to the task force commander, a sniper named Kelly Phippen.
“Phipps,” as they called her, made a propeller motion over her head, and her squad of sixteen poured into the waiting vans and SUVs.
Agent Rezvani watched with fascination as the hornets’ nest of activity raced around her. But, as the group thinned, it seemed that each agent had a designated task. Rez had waited patiently, assuming she’d be riding shotgun with the Deputy Director. But when he hopped into the lead SUV and hadn’t even glanced in Rez’s direction, she knew something was wrong.
“Not again,” she hissed. She ran up to the SUV just in time for the door to shut in her face. She rapped hard on the window.
Barnes rolled down the window. “What are you doin’, Rezvani?”
She stammered, “Well, I…you…I thought—”
“Get in!” Barnes growled.
Rezvani blinked. “Oh,” she said. Without another moment’s hesitation, she jumped into the second seat and slammed the door.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
It was a faint vibration at first, passing from the stainless steel bars into the flesh of my palm. I flung my hands back from the bars.
“Shocked you, did they?” the family man said, wringing his hands together. “I know those guys don’t screw around, but electrifying the bars? That’s just wrong, man.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t them.”
“Huh?” The guy blinked at me. “Whaddaya…whaddaya mean?”
“Sir, I don’t know what you’ve done—”
“DUI,” he said.
I raised a hand to shush him. “Sir, there’s about to be a serious problem here,” I said. “Your life depends on you hiding now. Get under your cot and make yourself as small as possible.”
This man was nobody’s fool, save perhaps when he’d been drinking. I didn’t have to tell him twice. Almost before I finished my sentence, he dove beneath his cot. His hand shot out and grabbed the corner of a jacket so that it draped over the end of the cot. Unless you went into the cell and looked around, I didn’t think you’d see him.
“Stay down,” I said. “Don’t make a sound.” I cringed. The itching, electrical aura penetrated the soles of my shoes and clambered up my shins.
The overhead lights began to flicker. “Blood and brimstone!” I muttered in disbelief. I didn’t understand this thing that was happening. A small rational part of my mind identified the threat, but I couldn’t rationalize that something out of ancient legend could be real. I’d seen what I’d seen outside the Butterfly Conservatory. I’d felt it then as I did now. But this time, I was completely trapped.
But I knew my priorities. I’d save as many of them as I could. Frantically, I searched my cell. There wasn’t much to work with. I did the only thing I could think of to do: I tossed the top sheet and the meager mattress onto the floor and tore the cot’s metal frame from its old anchor points on the wall. Then, I raised a spectacular ruckus.
Again and again, I slammed the cot’s frame across the bars. The sound was a combination of grating metallic shrieks and trembling clangs. In between, I heard the other inmates stirring.
“Listen to me!” I cried out. “Shut up, right now, and LISTEN!” I’d allowed my voice to alter on the last word to a decibel just above thunder. The cellblock became silent.
“I don’t have time to explain!” I yelled. “Something’s coming in here, and if you don’t hide, you are going to die!”
“Guards!” an inmate roared. “What’s this lunatic on?”
“Yo, Parker, get yo—”
Then came the gunshots.
And the screams.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Rez was glad to be out of the evening gown and into tactical gear. That slime Klingler had tried to cop a look from the rear view mirror as she changed, but Barnes had cuffed his ear. Hard too, and the memory gave her a bit of sadistic joy.
She took the little Glock from her purse an
d tucked it into the waistline of the black utility pants at the small of her back. She missed her Sig Sauer, but was familiar enough to be effective with the Beretta 9 mm. Barnes had provided her.
“This is it,” the Deputy Director called from the front seat. “Phipps goes in first. We follow.”
The SUV ground to a halt. Four doors opened, and all four passengers rushed out into the teeming night. A single streetlight burned overhead…for a moment.
Phipps took it out with one shot from a silenced handgun. She made numerous signals with her hands, and her team fled like spirits toward the home of Dr. Garrison Lacy and his partner in life, Jacqueline Gainer.
Watching the tactical team work, Rez wondered if she hadn’t sold herself short by taking the investigative career path. Phipps had her team moving with mechanical precision. No, it was better than that. It was the organic precision of a human body, the deliberate inhaling and exhaling, the fueling of blood cells with oxygen, and the fluid motion of those life-enriched cells coursing to their destinations. In moments, the tactical team covered every possible exit from the house.
Rez knelt by the SUV’s back bumper and took a deep breath. This was it: the moment for which she had worked and waited all those years. She’d tied herself in knots over the Smiling Jack killings. First, with the agony of the young women being slaughtered; then, with the dueling barbs of inadequacy and frustration at the paucity of evidence; and finally with the exasperation of having it all declared a hoax—Rez had dwelt in a living hell. Sure, there had been dozens of other assignments, but the Smiling Jack case was always there in the back of her mind, lingering like a black spider in a dusty corner.
Rez switched her Cobra 2-way radio on and popped in the earpiece. There wouldn’t be much chatter until they were inside, but Rez didn’t want to miss a moment. Several heartbeats passed. There was a single click. Then, Armageddon.
Glass shattered. Flash-bang grenades overwhelmed the darkness with phosphorus white and ruined the silence like a host of wrecking balls. The next thing Rez knew, the tactical team had bludgeoned their way through the front door of the home.
“Den, clear.”
“Living room clear.”
“Kitchen and dining room, clear.”
“First floor clear.”
It went on like that for several seconds as the team scoured the home. But, with each territory cleared, Rez began to wonder. There were no shots fired. No loud commands of “Get down on the floor!” The icy finger of doubt slid down her spine.
“Bedroom one, clear.”
“Second floor, clear.”
“Wait,” someone said. “I’ve got an elevator shaft. Back of the kitchen by the pantry.”
Another voice: “Door’s stuck open on an overturned trash can.”
“Caution, Phipps,” Barnes said. It startled Rez because his voice was right behind her and on the 2-way. She hadn’t seen him circle back around the SUV.
“Roger that, sir,” Phipps returned.
Rez shivered from more than the chill in the night air. She could only imagine stalking around the home of serial killers in the dark.
“Elevator panel shows there’s a basement level.”
“No stairs?” Phipps asked.
“Negative. Take it?”
“Barnes?” Phipps asked. “Your call.”
“You have a plan?” the Deputy Director asked.
“Yes, sir,” Phipps replied.
“Do it.”
For nearly a full minute, Rez heard nothing but a few clicks.
Then: “Some kind of combination of turns,” someone said.
“Turning what?” Phipps asked.
“Key,” the other returned. “There’s a key in the lock. One moment. There, got it.”
Rez wondered why Lacy and Gainer would leave the key.
Thirty seconds later: “Basement clear.”
“House is empty.”
“But we got the cages,” Phipps said. “This is the right house.”
“You would not believe the tech gear they’ve got down here,” someone said. “It’s a freakin’—hold on.”
Rez tensed.
“I’m picking up some kind of…”
“…it’s cycling higher,” someone else said. “Do you hear that?”
He kept the channel open, and Rez heard something faint in the background. It reminded her of the cooling fan in her computer when it ramped up. “Barnes,” she said over her shoulder. “Barnes?”
“Phipps, get your people out of there!” Barnes yelled. He looked to Rez like he might crush the 2-way in his fist. “Phipps!”
“You heard the man,” Phipps said. “Clear out!”
“Dear God,” someone said. “…elevator’s locked out.”
“Run a by—”
FOOM!
The flash lit the entire suburban neighborhood. The explosion wasn’t a thunderous thing but rather a sudden vacuum of all sound.
Rez picked herself up off the ground and blinked stupidly at the scene. Bloody fire and a gargantuan vomit of smoke boiled up into the night sky. Rez’s ears rang so fiercely that she didn’t hear the chunk of burning debris that hit the sidewalk just a few feet from where she stood. She saw it though and leaped backward, crashing into the arms of Deputy Director Barnes.
She shuddered, turned, and backed away from him. There was blood on his forehead, dribbling over his brow and down his cheek. She could see his mouth working, but couldn’t hear him.
She turned back to the burning home. She’d seen all kinds of explosions before. She’d even caused a few. But this seemed different. The house had not exploded outward. The outer structure was still intact. But the roof was completely gone. It was as if the force of the blast had come from below and was channeled upward. Even now, the fire looked more like a focused torch, belching its fiery breath into the sky.
The ringing began to subside, and Rez heard a man shouting. It was Klingler. She turned and found him walking in slow circles, shouting the same question over and over again: “What happened?”
Rez strode to him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?” she asked. He didn’t answer but blinked as if not recognizing her. “Are you hurt?”
“N-no,” he mumbled. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Give me the keys,” Rez demanded.
“What?” he asked. “Why?”
“Klingler, you give me the keys or so help me I will knock that sorry excuse for a hairpiece into the Gulf!”
The burning house reflected in Klingler’s uncertain eyes. He blinked and then held out the keys.
Rez snagged them from his hand and ran to the SUV. She rammed the keys into the ignition, cranked the engine, and got on her cell. “This is a police emergency,” she said to a 911 operator. “There’s been an explosion. There are multiple officers down, and the fire is still burning.” She gave the address and her best estimate on casualties. She ended the conversation by invoking all the authority of the FBI to get rescue and fire to the scene as fast as possible.
“This is Sanderson,” came a voice suddenly from the two-way radio.
Rez tossed her cell onto the passenger seat and snapped up the radio. “Go ahead, Sanderson,” she said.
“Phipps is down,” he said. “I repeat, Phipps is down. I’ve got Gray, Karchek, and Marks with me. Three more are on the east side of the structure.”
“I’ve got this, Rezvani,” Deputy Director Barnes said, his voice a little shaky on the radio. Rez stared out, and there he was, on his feet. She caught his eyes. “You sure?” she asked.
Barnes nodded, a little trickle of blood still oozing down his forehead. And then, Klingler was there at the window.
“Look after the Deputy Director,” Rez told him. “He’s hurt.”
“Wait a minute, Rezvani!” he whined at her. “Where are you going?”
“To see a man who can help us,” she said. “A man I had thrown in jail.”
Chapter 35
I counted fiv
e shots: three from one gun; two from the other. The screams were high on the register, strained, and cut ominously short. And then, the inmates started to scream.
“Shut up!” I roared, again projecting my voice. “SHUT UP OR YOU WILL DIE!”
I pressed my head into the space between two bars and tried to see up the hall. There was no way to turn my head, but in my peripheral vision, I could see the cellblock’s door. Maybe it was the angle, but I couldn’t see anything through the thick glass window on the door. Then, an inky blotch appeared in the center of the door and began to spread outward malignantly. The flowing black engulfed the frame of the door, and I saw glowing embers appear along its outline. No flicker of flame or tongue of fire. Just voracious bloody orange embers–they consumed the door. A gout of black liquid spouted from the center of it all like crude oil gushing from a vertical wound.
I’d been a fool. Legend or not, this thing was coming. And it was coming for me. I had no choices left. I’d need to unmask. But could I harness enough concentration? The crawling, itching, electrical aura of the thing intensified greatly as it drew near. I could barely think straight, much less call all of my body’s systems into perfect symmetry.
“No! NO!” It was a woman’s voice, shrill and desperate.
I slammed into the bars, straining to see, pushing my face until my skull ached. I saw the shadow form, a writhing, cloaked apparition. It stood before the first cell, and a searching, smoking tendril surged across the distance and drove through the cell bars.
There was a dire scream and then, a wet gurgling groan. Transfixed, I watched the smoky tendril withdraw and heard a sharp suck of air, a lifeless gasp, and a sound like a gallon of paint splashing across the floor. Then, the cell block exploded in a cacophony of shrieks and screams as the other inmates recognized the approaching cloak of death.
“What are YOU doing!” I cried out through the bars. “You came here for me!”
There came no answer, but the shadow figure, a storm that walks, came forward. I threw myself to my knees and gasped for air. I was dangerously close to hyperventilating. I needed to think, needed to find an inner calm…a void where I could transit to my unmasked form. It took form in my mind like an undulating blue horizontal plane. I could feel the pulses of energy begin to throb. I was almost there.