Killer Instinct (44 page)

The emergency switch was at the bottom of the control panel. I couldn’t see it, but I remembered its position. Was it a button or a switch? I felt along the panel, completely blind, sliding my hands down the two rows of buttons until I felt the bottom edge of the steel panel. What felt like a toggle switch. I grabbed it, flipped it up.

Nothing. No alarm, no sound, nothing.

Other buttons down there. Was it a button, then? I jabbed at the bottom row of buttons, but nothing. Silence.

A wave of panic hit me. I was stuck in total darkness in an elevator cabin. I felt the cold smooth steel doors, the palms of both my hands sliding along the metal until I found the crack where the two doors met.

A tiny gap, not enough to get my fingertips into. Sweat prickled at my forehead, the back of my neck.

In frustration, I pounded at the door. Kicked at it. The steel was cold and hard and unmoving.

Found my cell phone, opened it so the screen illuminated. Punched 911.

That little chirp tone that told me the call had failed.

No reception in here.

My heart racing. The sweat was beginning to trickle down my cheeks, into my ears, down my neck. Tiny dots of light danced in front of my eyes, but I knew this wasn’t real light. It was some random firing of neurons in my brain. I backed up, swung my arms around, felt for the walls of the elevator.

Closing in on me.

I flung my hands upward, felt for the ceiling, had to jump to reach it. What was up there? Little screws or something? Could you loosen them? Were there panels up there, a trapdoor, an emergency escape hatch?

I felt the brushed stainless-steel handrail that wrapped around three sides of the cabin, stuck out a few inches. Maybe four inches.

I jumped again, swept the ceiling. Felt something round, a hole. Remembered that the ceiling in here had little recessed downlights in it. No protruding screws. A smooth, flat, brushed-steel ceiling with halogen lights in a regular pattern. Which were now dark.

But there had to be an emergency escape. Right? Wasn’t that required by code?

And if there was some emergency hatch, and I managed to get it open—then what? What was I supposed to do? Climb up into the elevator shaft like James Bond or something?

The sweat was pouring now. I had to get out of here. I tried to swing my foot up onto the handrail, to boost myself up, but it was too high.

I was trapped.

The ceiling lights suddenly came on.

Then the panel lit up blue, then white, then…

Kurt’s face appeared.

A close-up of his face, slightly out of focus. A big smile. His face took up the entire panel.

“The word of the day is ‘retribution,’” Kurt said. “Good word, huh?”

I stared at his face on the monitor. How the hell was he doing this?

“Boy, you are drenched,” he said. “Hot in there, huh?”

I looked up, saw the silvery black dome in one corner of the ceiling. The big black eyeball of the CCTV camera lens.

“Yep, that’s right,” Kurt said. “That’s me. And you look like a drowned rat. No need to hit the emergency call button. I disabled it, and besides, there’s no one in the control room. I sent Eduardo home. Said I’m taking over, running some diagnostic tests.”

“What are you going to do, Kurt? Leave me in here overnight?”

“No, I thought I’d entertain you with a little live video feed. Watch.”

The image of his face stuttered, blinked, and the screen went dark. Then another image came up, fuzzy and indistinct, but it took me only a few seconds to recognize my bedroom. The image slowly zoomed in on the bed. Kate lying there. Her head on the pillow.

Strange blue light flickering over her face.

“There’s the wifey,” Kurt said. “Couple of nights ago. Guess she fell asleep watching TV while you were out somewhere.
Desperate Housewives,
maybe? She’s a desperate housewife herself.”

My heart was going ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.

“Lots of opportunities to install that camera. Hell, she was always inviting me in. Like maybe she was attracted to me. A real man. Not a pathetic fake like you. A wannabe. You were always the armchair athlete, and the armchair warrior.”

Another scene appeared. Kate and me in bed. She watching TV, me reading a magazine.

“Oh, wait,” he said. “Here’s an oldie. From before she went to the hospital.”

Kate and me in bed. Making love.

The image had a greenish, night-vision cast.

“No comment on your sexual technique, bro,” Kurt said. “Let’s just say I’ve been seeing a lot of you two.”

“I guess you don’t want the other half then,” I said.

“The other half?” The image of Kate switched to Kurt’s face. Big, looming close-up. A curious look.

“The steering shaft in the Porsche Carrera is eighteen inches long,” I said. “The piece I gave you was, what—maybe ten inches? You figure it out.”

“Ah,” he said, chuckling. “Very nice. Maybe you did learn something after all.”

“I learned from the master,” I said. “Taught me to play hardball. You want it, you bring me back up to the twentieth floor. To my office. I get it from the hiding place, hand it to you. And then you let me go. I retrieve Graham. And it’s over.”

Kurt’s big face stared at me. Blinked a few times.

“Do we have a deal?” I said.

He smiled. His face pulled back, and I could see my office. He’d been sitting at my computer. Maybe a camera hooked up to it. Maybe the concealed one. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

All I cared about was that this looked like it might work.

The elevator made another jolt, and it started to move.

I turned away from the ceiling-mounted eye. Watched the buttons on the control panels light up orange: 12…13…

Hit redial on the cell phone. This time the call went through. It rang once, twice.

“Police emergency.” A man’s voice, clipped.

“I’m in an elevator in the Entronics building in Framingham,” I said. “My name is Jason Steadman. My life is in danger. There’s a guy on the twentieth floor who’s trying to kill me.”

“Hold on, please.”

“Just send someone!”
I shouted.

The orange 20 button lit up. A ding. The elevator doors opened.

On the phone, another voice came on. “Trooper Sanchez.”

I didn’t understand. “Sanchez? Where’s Kenyon?”

“Who’s this?” Sanchez said.

I could see a figure in the shadows in the twentieth-floor lobby. Kurt, it had to be.

“Jason Steadman,” I whispered. “I’m—I know Kenyon. I’m in the Entronics building—you’ve got to radio Kenyon, send someone over here
now.
Hurry, for Christ’s sake!”

“Steadman?” Sanchez said. “That scum-sucking piece of shit?” His Hispanic accent was even thicker now.

Two figures emerged from the shadows. Kurt was holding a cell phone to his ear. “Would you like Sergeant Kenyon’s voice mail,” Kurt said in his Sanchez voice, leering.

Another man, holding a pistol.

Ray Kenyon.

In his other hand was a pistol. Kenyon waved it at me. “Let’s go,” he said. “Go, go, go. Hand me the other half.”

I stared in shock. I’d pressed 911. Nine, one, one. I was
sure
of it. I hadn’t hit redial, hadn’t called Kenyon.

“Jerry,” came Kurt’s voice. “Hand me the weapon. I’ll take over.”

Jerry. Jeremiah. Jeremiah Willkie. His Special Forces brother. The one who wouldn’t testify against him. Who owned the auto body shop.

Who was “Ray Kenyon.”

Jeremiah Willkie handed Kurt the weapon. It looked like the Colt I’d stolen from Kurt’s storage locker, but I couldn’t be sure.

“The guys are never going to believe this one,” said Willkie/Kenyon.

“No, they won’t,” said Kurt, and he pointed the barrel at Jeremiah Willkie and fired. “Because they’re not going to hear about it.”

Willkie collapsed to the floor. His left temple was bloodied. His eyes remained open.

I stared at Kurt.

“Jeremiah has a drinking problem,” Kurt said. “Get a couple vodkas in him, and he talks too much. But he made an awfully convincing cop, didn’t he? He always wanted to be a cop. His uncle was a cop.”

“I called 911.”

“It’s called cell phone phreaking. Cloned your phone so I could listen to all your calls. And pick up on outgoing calls too. Your old cell, your new one, made no difference. So let’s finish our business here.”

He pointed the gun at me. “Sounds like you hid the part in your office. You tricky, tricky guy. Let’s go.”

I walked to my office, and he followed. I entered the office, stood in the center of the room, my thoughts racing. The wind howled. Papers covered the carpet, and piles of whitish glass fragments.

“Well, I know it’s not in your desk,” Kurt said. “Or in your bookcase. Or any of the usual hiding places.”

My eyes flicked toward the briefcase, then quickly away. It was still there.

“Ceiling panel,” I said.

He’d seen my eyes.

“No, I don’t think so,” Kurt said. “Hand the piece over, and you’re free to go.”

“I’m not going out that window,” I said.

“Hand me the rest of the shaft.”

My eyes darted again, almost involuntarily, toward the briefcase next to my desk.

“I’ll need your help,” I said. “I need a ladder or something so I can reach the ceiling panel.”

“A ladder?” he said. “Boy, I sure don’t think you need a ladder.” He stepped toward my desk, grabbed the English leather briefcase. “Didn’t I teach you about the ‘tell’? Those little giveaway signs in a person’s face? You’re good at reading them, but not so good at hiding them.”

I tried to grab the briefcase back from him, but of course he was much stronger, and he wrested it from my grip. Both his hands were on the briefcase, and as he fiddled with the latches, I took advantage of his momentary distraction, backed away from him.

“Nowhere to run, Jason,” Kurt said, loud but matter-of-fact. I backed away slowly as he flipped open one of the brass latches, then the other, and then my back was against the doorframe. Twenty feet away, maybe.

A tiny scraping sound.

I saw the realization dawn on Kurt’s face, an expression of fury combined with something I’d never seen in his face before.

Fear.

But only for a fraction of a second before the blast swallowed him, blew him apart, limbs flying, horrific carnage like something you might see in a war movie. The immense explosion threw me backwards, slammed me against something hard, and as I tumbled I felt hard things spray against my face, fragments of wood and plaster, maybe, and I didn’t know what else.

I struggled to my feet, ears ringing, my face stinging.

A block of Kurt’s own C-4 plastic explosive connected to the confetti-bomb apparatus he’d put in my briefcase that day. I’d left it in my briefcase and gone back to using my old one.

And he was right that a little C-4 was enough. I knew there was no chance of him surviving.

Reached the elevator banks, then stopped. Wasn’t going to try that again.

The stairs. Twenty flights was nothing. I’d learned that. I was in great condition now.

Well, not exactly. My back ached, and a couple of my ribs were sore, probably bruised if not broken. I was hurting, but I was also flooded with adrenaline.

Opened the door to the stairs and started down the twenty flights. Walking, not running. I was limping, and I grimaced from the pain, but I knew I’d make it just fine.

Not a problem. Easy.

Epilogue

Kurt was right, of course.

It was a girl. Nine pounds, twelve ounces. A beautiful, healthy little girl. Well, not so little. Big, in fact. She looked sort of like Jack Nicholson, with the straggly black hair and the bad comb-over. And I’d always hoped that, if we got a girl, she’d look like Kate Hepburn. Like her mom. Oh, well. Close enough.

The baby—Josephine, we named her: Josie—was so big that Kate had to deliver by C-section. So the delivery was scheduled a couple of days in advance, which was, unfortunately, plenty of notice for my brother-in-law to fly in from L.A. to join his wife and Kate and me in sharing the happy occasion.

I was so happy I barely minded having Craig there.

I had a lot on my mind anyway.

The police business took a few days to straighten out. Graham Runkel and I spent long hours at state police headquarters going over and over what had happened that night. Graham told them about how Kurt had locked him into a trunk, where he might have suffocated had I not released him, barely in time.

They wanted to know how I’d learned to make a bomb. I told them Kurt had done most of the work for me, and the rest I’d gotten online. It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet.

Now that Kurt was dead, it was fairly easy to get his Special Forces teammates to come forward and talk about what kind of person he’d been. The picture that emerged was consistent, and it wasn’t pretty. Just about every one of the cops and detectives who interviewed me said I was “lucky” I hadn’t been killed.

Lucky. Yeah, right.

Not long after Yoshi had passed on to Tokyo the information about how it was that the CEO of Entronics USA, Dick Hardy, had been able to afford his yacht and his house in Dallas, Hardy was jettisoned.

The board of directors voted unanimously to instruct their General Counsel to inform the SEC’s Enforcement Division, and that started the ball in motion. The SEC soon brought in the FBI, and then the IRS Criminal Division, and pretty soon Dick Hardy was facing what Gordy used to call a “gangbang” of civil and criminal and tax fraud charges. He put his yacht up for sale on the
Robb Report
just two days before the IRS seized it.

I was flown to New York to meet with our worldwide CEO, Hideo Nakamura, and about a dozen other honchos, both Japanese and American, to interview for Dick Hardy’s job. It was me versus a bunch of other internal candidates, all of them older and more experienced and much more qualified. Instead of just sitting there on the hot seat being grilled by Nakamura-san, I decided to go out on a limb and make a PowerPoint presentation to my interviewers. Hardy had told me how they all loved PowerPoint.