The Button Man: A Hugo Marston Novel (34 page)

When Hugo emerged from King’s Cross station, a wash of cold air greeted him, and his ears were filled by the sound of the rain that pounded the street, drumming off the roofs of the black cabs waiting for business, filling the gutters.

Hugo spotted the US Embassy vehicle, another black Cadillac Escalade, as it pressed its way under the station’s canopy. Once it was out of the rain, Hugo trotted over and slid into the front passenger seat of the familiar vehicle, and it felt like coming home. Hugo and Bart shook hands, an expression of relief as much as anything.

“Just for the record,” Bart said, “Your boss approved your request for leave, effective immediately.”

Hugo closed the door and the beat of the rain disappeared almost entirely, a leather-enforced hush taking over. “My request for . . . ?”

“Precisely. Some ruffled English feathers, plus we have no official interest in any of this right now.”

“Except the bastard tried to kill me.”

“Which is still a matter for the Brits, you know that.”

Hugo looked at the square head of the former marine, his large hands on the wheel. A reassuring presence in any situation. “Yeah, I know,” said Hugo. “Did you bring the printout of his blog?”

“Yep, just that one article, as I said. Find any hidden meaning?”

A taxi honked behind them, unimpressed by the diplomatic plates, only concerned with its place in line.

“Not yet,” said Hugo. “You drive, and I’ll read it again. Maybe something will jump out.”

“Will do. Anywhere in particular?”

“Nope.” Hugo already had the article in front of him. He read it once more for the overall impression, then started to take it line by line, letting everything he knew about Walton filter through the prism of this missive, like water running through coffee grounds. “I was right about his father,” Hugo murmured.

Denum looked across. “What do you mean?”

“He feels very close to him, he wanted to be like him, and when his father was robbed of his career, and ultimately his life, Harry Walton felt like he, too, had been robbed of everything.”

“I thought serial killers were all about their mothers?”

Hugo allowed himself a smile. “Technically, I don’t think he’d qualify as a serial killer.”
Even though I called him one to his face.

“Why not?”

“He has the required number of bodies, but the FBI also mandates a cooling-off period between kills. And there’s usually a sexual element to the crimes, manifested in a way most people wouldn’t see as sexual.”

“So you don’t think he gets off on what he does?”

“He gets satisfaction, sure, but not the way Ted Bundy or David Berkowitz did. His is almost a professional satisfaction. And his motives seem political, not sexually perverse.”

“Maybe time to rethink the FBI definition,” Denum said. “After all, I’m not sure the victims give a crap why he kills them, do they?”

“Good point. But the question is, what’s he going to do next?”

“He must know the net is closing.”

“Definitely.” Hugo stared at the piece of paper in his hand. “He’s readying himself for prison. For him, it’s the soft option. He’s railed for so long about killers getting prison instead of hanging, he really sees it as a decent ending for him. And yet . . .”

“And yet what?”

“I don’t know. The guy’s a journalist. He’s been planning this for years.”

“Yet he couldn’t know Ferro and Harper would be involved.”

“Oh, no, he didn’t know the details,” Hugo said. “But he’d been waiting for something like this to set him off; he may not even have known it. And as a journalist, one who’s not afraid of what’s going to happen to him, why would he go out with a whimper?”

“I have a couple of people working on that list, but when I looked at it no one stood out. And I checked before I left—none are from or planning to head into London, at least according to their parole files.”

“You got a look at their parole files?”

Denum smiled sheepishly. “Friends in high places.”

“Always helpful,” Hugo nodded. “This line bugs me: ‘Instead of a length of rope for my neck for just a few pounds, you’d be stumping up a couple million.’”

“Bugs you?”

“He uses the conditional tense.” Hugo tapped the paper and sat back, thinking. “Where the hell is he going?”

“His apartment isn’t safe. His face will be all over the news and Internet by now. He has to go somewhere he won’t be known.”

Hugo sat bolt upright. “Yet somewhere he knows.”

“And from your tone of voice, you’ve thought of that place.”

“It’s about his father, he feels a responsibility to his father, and I was right, he does want to end this with a bang.”

“He’s going to kill again?”

“No,” said Hugo. “His father is.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

T
he rain had stopped by the time they splashed onto Marylebone Road, the sidewalks refilling with window-shoppers and those out for an afternoon stroll, the adults relieved at the break in the rain and the kids jumping delightedly, two-footed, into the shallow puddles.

Bart Denum steered the car skillfully, taking them as directly as he could to their destination where, when they abandoned the car out front, the tourists were already back in line, shaking out umbrellas and looking hopefully toward the brightening sky.

“How do we get in?” Denum asked as he rounded the front of the car.

“Shiny badges and attitude,” Hugo said grimly. “If that doesn’t work, we push and let them call the cops—we’ll need them anyway.” Hugo chose the door designated for groups to enter the museum, figuring it would be easier to deal with people already in sheep mode than dozens of irritated singles and couples.

Their badges got them the initial attention, but it was Hugo’s brusque and urgent tone that got them inside. Two guards gave him their full attention as he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, relaying the threat of a danger much greater than merely letting two American officials in without paying. After radioing for their chief, the two anxious guards started turning guests away and steered those nearby back into the street. Hugo and Denum moved to a map of the interior.

“I’ve never been here before, which way?” asked Hugo.

“I was here with the wife and kids, it should be . . .” Denum quickly traced a path from where they stood to where they were going. “Here.”

“Not exactly direct. And God knows how long he’s been here already.”

“If he’s here at all.” Denum looked around. “Wouldn’t there be a commotion?”

“That’s the beauty of it, from his perspective. He’s worked here and knows the place, which includes the shortcuts. He can go through his entire weird setup and no one will bat an eyelid.”

“OK, then I’m going to have security clear that area. I know, I know.” Denum held up a hand. “Quietly and without alerting him.”

“Fine, but the security people may not know who they’re looking for, so have them close off that part of the museum subtly. People will leave of their own volition, so we just need to stop people going in.”

“You don’t think any of the tourists are in danger?” Denum asked.

“Do you?”

“No, but you seem to know him better than I do. I just want to be sure of that if we’re not going to hit the panic button and clear the whole place.”

“We do that and he disappears with the crowds. Bad idea, Bart, very bad.”

“OK, I hope you’re right.” He nodded at a broad-shouldered man in his midfifties, tall and lean, headed their way. “Here’s the cavalry leader. I’ll start giving orders.”

“Good, but I’m not going to wait.”

Denum patted Hugo’s shoulder. “I never thought you would.”

Hugo took another look at the map, drilling the route into his mind.
Dammit, gotta go up before I can go down.
He nodded to Denum and started up the stairs to the first exhibit, his eyes automatically drawn to the people around him. He passed plenty he didn’t recognize but several he did and had to resist the temptation to slow down; he wasn’t there to stare into Nicole Kidman’s sparkling eyes or check out the tone of Brad Pitt’s skin. A pink light tinted the whole room, and he brushed past the tourists who laughed and pointed at the stars, many going nose to nose with their favorites. He followed directions to the next space, where red and gold dominated, except for the looming green figure of Shrek and the even greener and larger Incredible Hulk. Hugo looked for the way through, stepping around the gawkers who lingered in the spaces between Marilyn Monroe and Spiderman, all the while the buzz of voices around him giving the colorful room the air of a Hollywood after-party. He spotted the way out and moved quickly down some stairs into the Sports Zone, where a Formula 1 motor-racing exhibit seemed to be drawing most of the spectators, the waxen Pele almost ignored, save for a small boy who stood gazing upward, his head tilted to one side as if trying to place the soccer legend.

As Hugo pressed on, a sense of surreality wrapped itself around him, a many-layered blanket woven from the lifelike images of the Tussauds exhibits, the blissful ignorance of the tourists who admired them, the bizarre nature of the man he was looking for, and the horror of what that man had planned. Hugo had already noted that cameras were allowed in the museum—not just allowed, but being held in almost every hand, a fact that Walton was no doubt counting on.

In the next exhibit, Hugo bumped into a German couple as he passed several members of British royalty, almost tripped over a little girl taking some kind of interactive test with Albert Einstein, and wanted to block his ears at the music as he sped through the Music Megastars Zone. Finally, adrenaline pumping and barely able to think amid the crowds and visual stimulation, Hugo moved to the last door, the exit out of the World Leaders Room. Two men stood in front of the closed door, calmly steering customers to an alternate exit to their left, their buzz haircuts and cold eyes persuasive enough for most, their bulk and stony silence adequate deterrents to at least one irate tourist, an Eastern European who’d paid to see the Chamber of Horrors and was going to either see it or get his money back.

Hugo caught the eye of the security guard farthest from the now-crowded exit, a rock of a man whose narrow eyes told of an Asian lineage, and showed him his US security badge, hoping these guys had been told he was coming.

The man looked at him, unblinking, then took Hugo’s ID in a meaty paw. He handed it back with the merest of nods. “You want some company down there?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”
If I’m right about what he’s doing
.

“I hear you screaming, I’ll be down.” The man nodded again and stepped aside, opening the door with the flat of his hand. Hugo started down the stone steps.