Immune (42 page)

Larry Fielding rose to meet him. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“Show me.”

Fielding slid back into his spot in front of the bank of keyboards and monitors. “You remember the shot from the blackjack table?”

“The one with the girl in it?”

“Right.”

“What about it?”

“Take a look for yourself.”

McKinney studied the image on the high-resolution display. “Not this one. Where’s the one with the girl in it.”

“This is the same shot. Only now she’s gone.”

“What about backups?”

“The story’s the same on every one of our copies.”

“What about the tape.”

“That’s just it. I pulled the tape and same story there. But get this. The last modified time on the tape was just a few seconds after I finished loading it. It looks like someone edited the data on the tape as I was bringing it up.”

“Bullshit!”

“That’s what I thought too. But look here.” Fielding zoomed in on a section that showed the hotel counter. “See the color artifact here, and then along here. The background’s been edited to replace this section of the image.”

“How?”

“I would say someone was using a program like Photoshop except that it happened too fast.”

“Edited, but not perfectly.”

“Right. Looks like it was done by some sort of computational algorithm running in the background.”

“On our system?”

Fielding shrugged. “Pretty much has to be. And that’s not the worst of it. I ran a check of all of the video data since then, looking for any odd color artifacts such as edge blurring or pixel copies.”

The computer technician’s fingers danced across the keyboard. “Watch this little video segment.”

A video clip showed a crowd of people just outside the Bellagio Buffet. It lasted just over thirty seconds and on the first pass, McKinney failed to notice anything out of the ordinary.

“Okay?”

“Now watch it at one quarter speed,” said Fielding.

Once again, the video showed the line moving toward the cash register. Then there was a glitch, a faint ghosting that moved through the display like a déjà vu echo.

“Freeze that,” McKinney said. “Now back it up frame by frame.”

For the next several minutes, he studied the imagery as Fielding took him frame by frame through the clip.

Larry Fielding spun his chair to face McKinney. “This evening I’ve picked up some similar anomalies in video from around the hotel. It looks like the data is being edited almost as fast as it is recorded. Just like the tape.”

“Fuck.” McKinney straightened. “Tell me someone made a hard copy of the original picture of that girl.”

“Afraid not.”

Fielding was just geek enough to fail to recognize the jeopardy that answer put him in. Fortunately, for him, he was also too valuable to throw away, at least for now.

Turning toward Norman, McKinney clenched his teeth. “Danny. I don’t care what kind of trouble you have to go through, but I want pictures of every guest entering or leaving their hotel rooms for the next two days. And I mean pictures from cameras that use film.”

Danny Norman’s mouth dropped open. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t give a fuck. It’ll give you and that overpaid staff of yours something to figure out.” McKinney shoved his index finger into Danny Norman’s chest. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Danny froze, as if considering a response, then turned on his heel and stormed out the door.

McKinney pulled a stick of gum from his pocket, removed the paper and foil wrappers, and folded it into his mouth, letting the rush of saliva soften it as he chewed. Looking around at the startled faces in the room, he raised his voice.

“Show’s over. Back to work.”

Then he walked out through the door Danny had just slammed.

The lights on this section of Maury Avenue had seen better days. Now, well past midnight, more gangbangers than pedestrians prowled the streets of Oxon Hill. Southeast D.C. had a reputation, sometimes deserved, sometimes not. Here tonight, a block southeast of Southern Avenue, danger filled the air. It was this atmosphere that called El Chupacabra. Tomorrow he would be on a private jet back to Bogotá, but tonight was his.

He strolled down the dark street, occasionally detouring into alleyways, drinking in the fear that seeped from the windows of the houses, from the occasional passing car on the streets. Having grown up in the barrios of Lima, Peru, this felt a little like home, a bit more upscale, but death was out there, waiting to claim the unwary.

Since Eduardo had been old enough to remember, the fear demon had been a constant companion. His mother had been the first to introduce him. Now, in ways so profound that it recalled the spirits of the Incas, it had become his one true lover.

Several times he was tempted to walk right up to one of the groups of young black men in his three thousand dollar Armani suit and use a line from one of his favorite Jacky Chan movies, “Hey, my niggas!” just to see them go wild, to bathe in their blood as they flailed their guns at him. But their hate would not satisfy his hunger. What he wanted was fear.

A car turned into a driveway on the north side of the street, three houses down from the alley in which Eduardo stood watching, its engine coughing and sputtering in protest as it switched off. The door opened, silhouetting a long black woman against the cab lights, her clingy dress and spiked heel shoes making a statement about her profession. Not a hooker, whose work for the night would be far from over. More likely she was an exotic dancer at one of the clubs that nuzzled up against the nearby military bases.

The woman leaned back into the car, bending down to reach across the seat for her purse, a posture that heated Eduardo’s blood. She would serve his purpose nicely.

The woman slammed the car door, pressed the lock and alarm button on her key ring twice, the second time producing a short squawk from the car horn. Then she strode rapidly to the door, glancing around quickly before sliding her key into the lock, opening the door, and stepping inside. As the lights inside the entryway went on, Eduardo remained in place, watching the shadow of her movements in front of the windows.

The next light to come on was on the second floor, the position of the room marking it as a child’s bedroom across from the master. Just a quick on and off, mama checking in on the kiddies. Was there a mister stripper? Not likely. Neighborhoods like this were the reason for the sky-high American statistics on single mothers. No sign of a second car. Eduardo very much doubted he’d meet the man of the house. But if he did, so much the better.

Moving across the street, Eduardo slid into the shadows, moving right up against the houses as he made his way toward his target. The building was a two-story brick structure, divided into two bedroom units, each with its own driveway and yard, often separated by chain-link fences. Pausing only briefly to survey the front, he moved around the side of the building and into the tree-lined space, which gave the houses some separation from the busy Southern Avenue.

Looking at the large trees that spread their branches right up against the building, Eduardo smiled. How inviting. Climbing was one of his specialties, and a climb like this wouldn’t even wrinkle his suit.

The light in the kitchen sputtered and then blossomed in all its fluorescent brilliance, allowing him to glimpse the face of his target as she moved in front of the window to reach up into a cupboard to grab a plate. With a face like that and a body to go with it, the stripper had to be pulling down some good money.

The woman moved to the refrigerator, and Eduardo turned back to the tree, effortlessly moving up along its branches until he reached the master bedroom window. He pulled two small, oddly shaped tools from his pocket, cut away the screen, and then slipped one through the crack where the first of twin latches held the window in place, wiggling it back and forth until he could feel the latch lift.

Repeating the process with the second tool, he popped the other latch free and slid the window fully open, pausing just long enough to secure his equipment before slipping into the dark bedroom.

Eduardo, more at home in the partial darkness than he was in full daylight, surveyed the room. It wasn’t much. A queen-size bed, a single nightstand, a four-drawer dresser, a closet, an open door into a small bathroom and another leading out into the hall.

No hesitation. Eduardo moved silently out the door, ears attuned to the movements in the kitchen below, his footsteps taking him to the other doorway, the one leading into the second bedroom. He turned the knob, pushing the door open just a crack. Then, hearing no squeak of hinges, he opened it a full twelve inches, just far enough to allow him to slide through. A nightlight plugged into the near wall revealed a twin bed, its headboard decorated with Power Ranger cutouts, a pattern that was repeated on the blue-and-orange comforter that was tucked in tight around the sleeping little boy’s neck.

Good mama.

Reaching inside his jacket pocket, Eduardo removed a flat plastic pouch, pulling out a sheet with precut strips of duct tape, each pressed up against a special 3M film. It was a kit of his own design; the plastic film had a coating, which let the duct tape stick only slightly, allowing it to be soundlessly peeled free, adhesive preserved. In addition to the duct tape packets, the kit contained a number of the plastic cuff strips that had become a favorite among both the law enforcement and drug trafficking communities.

In movements so quick and efficient that he was done before the child had struggled back to wakefulness, Eduardo stuffed a roll of gauze into the boy’s mouth and slapped a strip of duct tape across it, cuffing hands and feet together behind the child’s back. Hoisting the squirming form over one shoulder, Eduardo stepped back out into the hallway, closed the door, and walked back to the mother’s room.

Without a pause, he set the boy on the bed, his back pressed against the headboard. A quick twist with another of the plastic cuffs secured the child’s throat to the bedpost tightly enough to produce tiny gagging sounds whenever the boy moved but not tight enough to choke him unconscious. The boy whimpered, tried to scream, but the sound was so muffled that Eduardo barely heard it himself, a small snuffling like a rat in a garbage can.

Removing his jacket, Eduardo moved to the closet, selected an empty hanger, and hung the jacket beside a knee-length black skirt. He placed his shoulder holster and stiletto atop the dresser, continuing to disrobe until he stood entirely naked, the remainder of his suit hanging neatly beside the jacket. Then, picking up the knife, he stepped into the darkened corner behind the open doorway, the handle of the Beretta clearly visible in the holster atop the dresser, six feet away from the wide-eyed boy bound to the headboard.

Eduardo felt his anticipation rise. Humans were the most interesting of animals. They lived for change, the bad moments making the good ones better by contrast. Even intensity could not be sustained, every high followed by a downer of equal intensity. But it was the moments of transition that formed the ultimate in human experience, and Eduardo had determined the three most exciting transitions in human experience.

The moment of sexual climax peaked at the transition from extreme sexual excitement to satisfaction. Next came fear which, when pushed to the limit, formed the starting point of the next transition, that moment when the last shred of hope was ripped away, sending the victim over the peak of terror into the depths of despair. It was a moment of change so intense that only one other surpassed it. The passage across the life-death threshold.

Many people who had survived the near-death experience reported experiencing a great white light and a sense of ecstasy at the moment of passage. While Eduardo did not know about that, he had closely observed the death of enough people that he knew one thing; it was the most thrilling of all transitions.

He had also discovered that the ultimate life experience could be attained through a combination of all three transitions in one climactic event. Perhaps, at some point, he would be lucky enough to experience his own death in just such a way. In the meantime, he had found the next best thing, an act that produced his sexual climax at the terror-despair, life-death transition of his victim.

But as easy as it was to induce the life-death crossover, the difficulty lay in reaching into another person’s soul to extract the thing that bent her mind with terror. It was also the only thing that brought Eduardo to sexual fulfillment. It was his special skill, the reason he had acquired his nickname.

Footsteps on the stairs brought his reverie to a halt, tensing his naked body in anticipation. The stiletto pirouetted between his fingers in a ritual as unconscious as his breathing. The good mother was coming.

The woman stepped into the room, her slender arm flipping on the light switch as she passed through the doorway. For just a second, shock froze her in place, and in that second Eduardo moved behind her, the razor edge of the knife pressed against the curve of her throat, his other hand locked in a handful of hair.

“Fight me and I’ll cut your boy’s eyes out while you watch.”