Mirror Image (18 page)
Nancy Mendors aimed her dark eyes up at mine as two cops fitted the Kevlar jacket snugly across my chest.
“Danny, you don’t have to do this.” Her soft voice dopplered away, lifted by the wind, shredded by the rattle of helicopter blades a hundred feet over our heads.
“Richie knows me,” I said. “He trusts me. I think I can get him to come out.”
All around us, steaming klieg lights were like blurred suns, making angled silhouettes of the piles of rubble, the fenders of cars, the upraised guns. The whole area was cordoned off, bracketing the tension. Hard faces, backlit against the night, loomed in at me.
Sgt. Chester, the bullet-headed SWAT leader, got in my face long enough to give me a sour, frustrated look, and then stomped off, shouting orders to his men. The decision to let me try to talk Richie Ellner into surrendering had come from upstairs, and Chester was cleanly pissed.
Bert Garman, shivering in his overcoat next to Nancy, wasn’t happy about it either.
“Richie’s out of control,” he said. “He’s taken a
hostage
, for Christ’s sake. The security guard…”
“They
think
there’s a hostage,” I said. One of the two cops prepping me slammed a thick black flashlight in my hand. Felt like a length of lead pipe.
When I got here twenty minutes ago, I’d found Bert Garman and Nancy Mendors conferring with the police. I pulled Nancy aside and got the story.
Apparently, Richie had been one of a group of clinic patients being taken by van to Memorial Hospital for observation. Their level of agitation had escalated after Brooks Riley’s murder, and Garman had ordered some tests.
According to the other patients, when the van stopped at this intersection, Richie had bolted from his seat, gotten past the orderly in charge, and ran out onto the street. The driver gave chase, but Richie had too big a lead and vanished into the bowels of the building.
“What
is
this place?” I’d said to Nancy, peering up at the dilapidated structure, streaked charcoal-black.
“Some old dry-cleaning plant.” Her words were clipped, as though hollowed-out from shock. “Caught fire a couple years ago. Burned out. Abandoned.”
She’d held my arm, dark hair buffeted by the wind. “Danny, I can’t bear the thought of Richie in there. Alone. Terrified. They’re going to kill him.”
Even as I tried to comfort her, I’d already begun thinking about running something by the cops. About getting them to let
me
have a chance to talk to Richie.
It took a lot of argument and calls to the brass, but I’d finally gotten the go-ahead. The fact that Richie’s father was a prominent senator, and was at that moment flying down from Harrisburg, put the idea over the top.
Now, as I slipped a reflective jacket over the vest, Lieutenant Frank Lucci, in charge at the scene, came over to have the last word. Lucci was former military, tall, solid, with a face tough as a shaving strop.
“Let’s get this bullshit over with,” he said, avoiding direct eye contact. “Chief says you get five minutes.
Five
fuckin’ minutes, okay? Then SWAT goes in and takes the bastard out.”
“Got it.”
“Remember, there might be a hostage. Building’s been abandoned since the fire, but the holding company says they keep a security guard on premises. To run off the crackheads, homeless. If he’s down, we gotta assume the perp took his gun. Which means the perp is violent,
and
armed.”
“I know all this,” I said. “Now let me get in there.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed with anger. “He’s right, Danny. This
is
bullshit. Some kind of misplaced—”
“Dr. Mendors,” Garman said. The sharpness in his voice seemed to surprise her, and Nancy fell silent. Then he put his arm around her. Also uncharacteristic.
As was the fierceness in the look he gave me. “I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” he said.
Then, with a proprietary grip on Nancy’s shoulder, he turned them both away.
***
Ten feet into the building, and the reality of a world beyond its crumbling walls was eclipsed. The lights and sounds at my back, proof of men and movement, grew fainter with every step into the burned-out hull.
I swung the flashlight beam in a wide arc to get my bearings. It illuminated a labyrinth of blocked corridors, scattered piles of rubble, the black and twisted remains of machinery. At the far end of this main floor, spiraling up like a DNA helix, stood a fire-scarred metal stairway.
“Richie!” I started walking. High walls of hulking, rusted equipment made a catacomb of the factory floor.
I glanced up, shining my light at the warped, bowed ceiling above. There were four floors stacked above me. He had to be up there somewhere.
“Richie!” I called again. “It’s me! Dan Rinaldi!”
I knew I couldn’t stop moving. Given Lucci’s deadline, every second counted. I headed for the spiral stairway.
It was slow going. The wind was a high shriek. Dust swirled like a live thing, a mix of plaster and ash that burned my throat, choking me with every step.
The flashlight beam bounced ahead of me as I made my way slowly, carefully, through the rubble. Thick darkness hung like a shroud beyond the stroke of the light.
A dull gleam shone off the railings of the metal stairway, just ahead now. I sped up, impatient suddenly, careless.
Come on, come on!
Running now—
Something caught my foot.
An upraised floor plank? Debris? I staggered and pitched forward, hitting the floor hard. The flashlight flew from my hand, skittered away.
Shit!
I lay there, gasping. A stabbing pain where my elbow had hit. I blinked against the dust, reaching with outstretched fingers for the flashlight.
It had rolled only a few feet, light elongating along the splintered floorboards.
Okay. Okay.
I took a breath and crawled forward to retrieve it. In the darkness, I felt a sudden whisper of movement across my knuckles, a pinch of claws—
Christ!
I lurched upright. I flapped my hand as if the rat still clung there, and, in two quick strides, scooped up the flashlight.
I grasped the rail of the stairwell and stepped up, panning the floor with the light. A dozen pair of moist eyes blinked up at me. Then that familiar scurrying sound.
At the edge of the circle of light were some overturned boxes, each about the size of a brick. Rat poison. Some of the boxes had been nibbled open, their contents spilled like dry riverbeds on the floor.
“You’re gonna need more than that,” I said aloud to no one in particular.
I climbed the winding metal stairs. Squinting to see up into the swirling opacity of dust and darkness. The stairway trembled, swayed, beneath my weight.
Finally, I reached the top, a charred expanse of mottled flooring and collapsed walls. Only half a ceiling stretched overhead, the rest exposed to the black sky.
Steeling myself, I threaded across the uneven floor. The wind’s shriek grew louder, like a cry of pain, of torment, of the damned.
It wasn’t the wind.
“Richie?”
I ran quickly forward, my path suddenly blocked by a huge chunk of masonry. Half a chimney stack, collapsed onto itself. I clambered down its jagged length.
I could hear Richie’s anguished cries clearly now. The cops would come breaking in any moment, and I was so close, almost there, almost—
On the other side of the barrier was a huge, rain-bloated cardboard box, wet and crumbling with mold. Though empty, it was slick, cumbersome. I put both hands on the box, pushed it aside.
There was something under it. Some
one.
Dead.
I bent down, aimed the light. Found his face, and the spindly black beetle scrambling out of his open mouth.
I got to my knees and quickly swept the light from the contorted, frozen face, down the expanse of blue shirt, pressed pocket, ID badge.
The security guard.
I pressed my fingers against his throat. Nothing. I bent to listen for breath. Again, nothing.
I felt for the holster strapped to his belt. His gun was gone.
“Shit, Richie,” I whispered.
Slowly, I got up and moved around the body. A charred leather trunk with brass hasps stood up ahead. I poked it with my light, and saw a fabric of spider webs shivering in the wind.
Then, not ten feet beyond, the walls converged to a deep V. There, latticed in shadow, cowering in the ceaseless push of the wind, was Richie Ellner.
I moved in a crouch to the trunk, then peered over it for a better look at him.
He was an apparition, a nightmare out of Goya. Clothes dirty and ash-covered. Huddled in semi-darkness, trembling violently. Head and torso cloaked in shadow.
On the floor between us, twisted frames secured by tape, lay his thick, cracked eyeglasses. Forlorn, hapless.
“Richie,” I called softly, urgently. I moved closer. “It’s me. Dan Rinaldi…”
The shadowy head reared up, and again that awful wail of agony. One of his hands waved like a stalk, and I saw metal glinting in the darkness. The security guard’s revolver.
“Richie, I know you have a gun…”
I crouched behind a splintered crate.
“I also know you didn’t hurt that guard. There’s not a mark on him. I think he died of a heart attack. You hear me, Richie? You didn’t hurt that man.”
His keening stopped abruptly, followed by an even more ominous silence. I took another step. I was only six feet away from him now, though in that empty blackness it felt like a chasm.
“Richie..?”
He began sobbing. Deep, choking sobs.
Then a voice so thin, so strained, it seemed to be coming from somewhere else. The dark side of the moon.
“They’re inside, Doc…they’re eating me up from the inside. That’s been the problem all along.”
“Richie, I’m going to come closer.” I walked very deliberately toward where he huddled against the wall.
“Stay back! Stay back!” His right hand shot up again, waving the gun.
“For Christ’s sake, put down the gun.” I kept my tone firm, unequivocal. “You’re not gonna hurt me.”
“You just stay back, okay? Okay?” His words were strangled. I could hear a gurgling sound.
“I got it all under control now, Doc,” he went on, wheezing. “Control, control. Been the damn problem all along. Crowd control. Mind control.
Pest
control.”
Slowly, I raised the flashlight.
“I’ll stay put, Richie,” I said, “but I want to take a look at you. Okay?”
“That’s what it’s about, see?” A choked spasm. “What it’s always been about. Pest control. They’re eating me up inside, and I never knew. Nobody did. Not even you.”
“I’m just taking a look, okay, Richie?”
I moved the flashlight beam tentatively across the floor, till it touched his shoes. Then, I inched it up his legs to his chest.
“Just a quick look, and then—”
“Not even
you
, Doc…”
Suddenly, the light hit his face, and I saw into the maw of hell. His features were haunted, blasted. His eyes were unnaturally wide, deathly white, rivulets of blood seeping from each eyeball. His mouth hung slack, foaming with a bloody froth.
He screamed at the beam, bringing his left hand up against his eyes. He had something in that hand.
A box, about the size of a brick. Opened.
“Richie, no!”
I lunged for him, but he backed away, swinging his gun hand wildly. Screaming in pain and outrage, he squeezed the trigger. Shots echoed.
I hit the floor and rolled, feeling and hearing the bullets whizzing past my ear. I scrambled across the floor and behind the crate again, gasping.
Forget my five minutes. If the cops heard those shots, they’d come swarming in.
Now.
And they’d cut him down.
“I
get
it now,” Richie was saying. “Just pest control. Like Terminix. All those shrinks and doctors and hospitals. Nothin’ but pest control…”
“Give me the gun, Richie. The cops—”
He fired another shot in my direction, then leaned back and poured some more of the poison crystals into his mouth. He staggered like a drunk swigging from a bottle, but stayed upright. Then he turned, transfixed, as he chewed and swallowed, blood-streaked drool streaming from the corners of his mouth.
Fuck it.
I jumped up and bolted across the floor, even as he raised an unsteady hand to fire the gun.
I didn’t make it. Turning too late, diving, the slug slammed into my Kevlar vest.
Richie doubled over in pain. He lurched against the wall, retching violently. The box of rat poison hit the floor. But he still held the gun.
Gasping, spackled with blood and vomit, Richie collided with the wall and scratched his way, crab-like, along its rough, pock-marked surface.
Staggering to my feet, I went after him. I had to. I knew where he was going.