But would he really come around? Donnie Verso wondered again. Time would tell. Like Mother always said.
He walked into Starbucks, ordered coffee and sat down next to Wes, who was texting. The kid glanced up, nodded and put his phone away.
"Hey."
They bumped fists.
For the next ten minutes they talked, in whispers, about how best to get into Goldshit's garage and steal their bikes back. Wes thought it was smart not to do it just the two of them, but get Nathan and Vincent too.
Donnie thought that wasn't a bad idea.
After a few minutes Wes said, "I heard Kerry and Gayle'll be at Foster's. Want to go up there?"
"Is Tiff with them?"
"I don't know. I just heard Kerry and Gayle."
"K. Let's go."
They headed out and turned north, making for the old department store, now a restaurant--at least on the first floor.
They got about one block and Donnie laughed and slapped Wes's arm. "Look who it is."
It was that prick, Rashiv. Mrs. Dance had mentioned him the other night. Donnie and his D.A.R.E.S. crew had whaled on him about six weeks or so ago. Donnie didn't quite know why; maybe because Rashit wasn't even a democratic U.S. citizen and he should go back to where he came from, Syria or India or wherever. But mostly they pounded on him and pulled his pants down and launched his book bag into the water off Lovers Point because it was something to do.
And here he was now.
Rashiv glanced up and, terror in his eyes, he saw Donnie and Wes walking right toward him. They were on Lighthouse, the main commercial street in Pacific Grove, and plenty of people were around so the kid didn't think he was going to get lashed but he still looked plenty scared.
"Yo, bitch," Donnie said.
Rashiv nodded. He was a way skinny little guy.
"Whatchu up to, bitch?"
A shrug. "Nothing." Looking for a place to run, just in case Donnie decided to lash on him even with people around.
Wes, just looking at him with this blank expression.
"Hey, Wes."
No response from Wolverine.
Rashit said, "Haven't seen you for a while. I called."
"Busy."
Donnie said, "You been busy too, Rashit?" It was funny how a question could be both friendly and threatening.
"Sorta. Yeah. You know, school."
Wes said, "What's that?" Squinting at a book the boy was carrying.
"Just some manga."
"Let me see."
"I don't--"
Wes lifted it away.
"Come on, please!"
Wes blinked in shock. He said, "Japanese edition of Death Note--it's signed by Ohba."
Shit, Donnie thought. Holy shit. One of the best, kick-ass manga comics of all time. And signed by the author?
Donnie said, "I figured you'd beat off to Sailor Moon."
Death Note was about a high school student who has a secret notebook that gives him the power to kill anyone just by knowing their name and face. Fuck, this was pure solid, the most righteous of any manga or anime in the world.
Wes flipped through it. "I'm going to borrow it."
"Wait!" Rashiv said, eyes wide.
"I'm just going to read it."
"No, you're not! You're never going to give it back. My parents brought it to me from Japan!" Rashiv reached forward and gripped Wes's arm. "No! Please!"
Wes turned to him with a look that even sent some ice down Donnie's back. "Get your hand off me. Or you know what?" He nodded toward Donnie. "We'll totally fuck you up."
The boy dropped his hand and stared in pure misery as Donnie and Wes walked leisurely away sipping their coffee.
And with that--totally fuck you up--Donnie knew that, at last, Wes was one of them.
Chapter 60
Dance's Pathfinder careened along the hilly stretch of Highway 68.
Not a good vehicle to be executing these maneuvers on.
And not a good driver to be attempting them. Kathryn Dance had her talents but motoring wasn't one of them.
"Where are you, Michael?"
"Twenty minutes. There's a cruiser there now. CHP happened to be nearby."
"I'll be there in three."
Whoa, a faint skid and a blare of horn. You're allowed to honk angrily at a large Nissan SUV straying over the centerline toward you, even if there is a flashing blue light on the dashboard.
She tossed the phone on the seat next to her. Get serious here.
Bounding into the lower lot at the inn, the Pathfinder sped up to the Highway Patrol trooper, dressed crisp, as they always looked, standing next to the Pacific Grove cop, whom she knew.
"Charlie."
"Kathryn."
"Agent Dance," the CHP trooper said. "I got the call. This is the Solitude Creek suspect?"
"We think so. Where is he?"
Charlie offered, "Headed inside just after he parked. He didn't make me, I'm sure."
"Where's the car?"
"Follow me."
They eased along the path, through gardens of pine and succulents. They paused behind a large bush.
The silver Honda was parked near the loading dock of the large hotel, a stone-and-glass structure that featured about two hundred rooms. The dining room was top-notch and on Sunday it did a huge brunch business. Dance and her late husband, Bill, had come here several times for romantic busman's holiday weekends while Stuart and Edie kept the kids.
Two more patrol cars pulled up, quiet, with three MCSO deputies inside. Dance waved them over. Another car arrived. O'Neil. He climbed out and hurried along the path, joining his fellow officers.
"There's the car." Dance pointed.
O'Neil glanced at her and then said to the others: "What he's going to rig, incendiaries, flash bangs, whatever it is, probably isn't life threatening itself. That's not what turns him on. He wants to kill with the panic, people trampling each other. But remember, at Bay View he was armed. Nine mil. Plenty of ammo."
The officers nodded. One cinched up his body armor. Another absently brushed the Glock sitting high on his hip.
They started to leave and go inside.
Which is when, with a whump, rather quiet actually, the Honda began to burn. In seconds the fire began to rage. The device, whatever it might be, was in the trunk. Just above the gas tank. Dance imagined the unsub had drilled or punched a hole into it, to accelerate the fire.
Dance then noticed smoke being drawn into the HVAC system, just like at Solitude Creek.
"The inn's exit doors--he's probably wired them shut. Get 'em open, now! All of them."
Chapter 61
Always happened, the orderly reflected.
The two elevators in this part of Monterey Bay Hospital were pretty dependable. But what happens, a woman comes in, contractions counting down, and car number one is out of commission.
"You'll be fine," the thirty-five-year-old career medical worker told her. He turned his kind face, under a fringe of curly hair, toward her.
"Ah, ah, ah. Thanks. My husband's on his way." Gasp. "Oh, my."
The orderly had been on duty since 5:00 a.m. He was beat. Sundays were the days of rest for almost everybody--but not hospital workers. He eased the wheelchair a bit closer to the door, through the group of eight or nine visitors and medicos waiting for the car. He didn't think there'd be any problem with getting on the next ride, though. They weren't about to deliver.
The blonde, in her late twenties, was sweating fiercely. The orderly was happy to see a wedding ring on her finger. He was old-fashioned.
She grimaced in pain.
Come on, he thought to the car. A glance at the indicator. Second floor.
Come on.
"Where is he? Your husband?" Making conversation, putting her at ease.
"Fishing."
"What's he fish for?"
"Ah, ah, ah...Salmon."
So he was on a party boat. Four hours minimum. Was he out of his mind? She looked like she was ready
to pop at any minute.
She glanced up. "I'm two weeks early."
Oh. Forgiven. The orderly smiled. "My son was two weeks late. Still's never on time."
"Daughter." A nod toward the impressive belly. She gave another assortment of gasps.
Then, the car doors opened and people streamed out.
"Like one of those funny cars at a circus, all the clowns."
The woman in labor didn't laugh. Okay. But it got a smile from a nurse and an elderly couple, carrying a balloon reading IT'S A BOY!!!
After the elevator car had emptied only one person pushed on first--a doctor, natch. Then the orderly wheeled on his passenger--well, technically, two passengers--and turned her, facing out. The others walked in as well, jockeying for space. As in all hospitals, the elevators were large--to accommodate gurneys--but with the other car out, this one filled up fast. Several people said they'd wait. A dozen, fourteen people climbed on. The orderly looked at the maximum weight. How the hell helpful was that? He supposed that buzzer would sound if it was too heavy; it had a safety system like that, of course.
He hoped.
It was really packed, stifling. Hot too.
"Ah, ah, ah..."
"You'll be fine. We're three minutes away and the staff's all ready for you."
"Thank y--ahhhh."
The door closed. She was in the far right-hand corner of the car, the orderly behind her, his back to the wall. He was extremely claustrophobic but for some reason being in this position, having no one behind him, kept the discomfort at bay.
A businessman looked around. Frowned. "Shit, it's hot in here. Oh, sorry."
Maybe directed to the pregnant woman, as if the fetus might be shocked. But, the orderly thought, shit, it is hot. Prodding the claustrophobia to squirm.
The elderly couple was discussing their granddaughter's choice of a name for the boy who'd just been born. The orderly heard the beep of phone keys. The doctor, natch, again, had pulled out his mobile.
"I'm confirming a reservation..."
Blah, blah, blah.
The restaurant apparently didn't have a particular table he'd requested earlier. And he wasn't happy. The orderly sighed loudly. He never got reception in an elevator. Super Doctor Phone.
The car stopped at the second floor.
Three people got off. Five got on. One was a biker, a Harley variety. Leather jacket, boots, stocking cap. And chains. What did anybody need to wear chains for? There was protest in the form of sighs and a glare or two and the doors closed and the car rose slowly, bobbing under the weight. Not because he looked dangerous, which he did, but at his size. They were completely packed in now, belly to back. Man could've waited for the next trip.
This is hell.
Shit.
"Ah, ah, ah..." the woman gasped.
"Almost there," the orderly said, reassuring himself as much as the pregnant woman.
Not that it worked.
As the car climbed toward floor three, conversation slowed, except for the complaining doctor, who was abrasively asking to talk to somebody in charge. "Well, I don't know. Maybe the restaurant manager? Is that so very hard to figure out?"
Almost there...
Seconds unreeled like hours.
Jesus Christ. Get to the floor. Open the fucking door!
But the door didn't open. In fact, the elevator didn't even make it to the third floor. It bounced to a stop somewhere between two and three.
No, no, please. He believed he thought this. But the prayer or plea might have been uttered aloud. Several people looked his way. That might, however, have been from the look of encroaching panic on his sweaty face.
"It's all right. I'm sure it'll get moving soon." It was the doctor, slipping his phone away, who'd offered this reassurance to the orderly.
And the pregnant woman in the wheelchair wiped abundant sweat from her forehead, tucked stringy hair behind her ears and tried to steady her breathing.
"Ah, ah, ah. I think it's coming. I think the baby's coming..."
Chapter 62
In surgical scrubs, cap and booties, Antioch March left the engineering room on the top floor of Monterey Bay Hospital, where he'd just cut the power to the east-wing elevator car number two. Twenty minutes earlier he'd done the same to car one, when it was empty. This drove the passenger traffic to the second car in this wing of the hospital, assuring it would be packed when disaster struck.
Which it was. He was watching the video image of the interior from the camera inside. Of particular interest was the pregnant woman, whose head was tilted back and who was gasping. Her face wincing in pain. Even better was the expression of the orderly accompanying her. Panic starting to foam. Exquisite.
March imagined what it was like in there. A dozen--no, more--people inside, belly to back, side to side, the air becoming denser and more useless. Hotter too. The power loss took out the air-conditioning unit, as well.
He closed up his computer, tossed his tools into a tote bag. He left the top floor, the fifth, and then headed to the basement. He didn't have much time, he knew. The repair crews had already been summoned to fix car one and, given their location in Salinas, could be here in twenty minutes. Car two, the occupied one, would be their priority once they arrived. The hospital maintenance staff too would head up to the infrastructure room on the top floor and look over the system. They'd see the vandalism immediately and might rig a solution, though given the dangerous nature of a two-thousand-pound piece of machinery, they'd probably wait for the pros.
Not much time, no, but he'd choreographed this attack as skillfully as the others. After deciding, at the aborted church supper hall, that a hotel would make a good target he'd come up with a plan that he believed even the brilliant Kathryn Dance could not anticipate.
He appeared to attack the nearby inn, setting fire to the Honda--he needed to dump it anyway. The police would concentrate on that, and assume the hotel was the target, while he hurried on foot to the hospital a quarter mile away.
They wouldn't consider the hospital much of a threat and wouldn't have added extra guards, he speculated, because there wasn't any one particular area of concentration; patients and visitors and doctors were spread out over several large buildings, which had numerous exits.
No, the charming and not unattractive Ms. Kathryn Dance was clever but she'd surely miss that those oversize elevator cars in a hospital would be a perfect site for the panic game.
He now double-stepped down to the basement and peered out from the stairwell. He was in scrubs, true, but had no ID pinned to his breast so he had to be careful. The corridor, though, was empty. He stopped in the storeroom and collected a gallon container of a substance he'd found here earlier, on recon.
Diethyl ether.
Ether was a clear liquid, nowadays utilized as a solvent and cleanser but years ago it was used as an anesthetic. Famed dentist William T. G. Morton, of Boston, was the first to use inhaled ether to put patients under for medical procedures. The substance was soon praised as better than chloroform because there was a large gap between the recommended dosage and how much ether it would take to kill you--with chloroform, that window of safety was much smaller.
However, ether did have one disadvantage: Patients who were administered the drug occasionally caught fire. Sometimes they even exploded (he'd seen the remarkable pictures). Ether and oxygen or, even better, ether and nitrous oxide--laughing gas--could be as dangerous as dynamite.
Hence the chemical was relegated to other uses, like here--a solvent. But March had been delighted to find some during his reconnaissance.
March now made his way to the elevator room door. He opened it up and dumped some of the liquid on the floor of the elevator shaft pit, holding his breath (ether may occasionally have blown up patients but it was a very efficient anesthetic).
He tossed a match into the puddle and it ignited explosively. The liquid was perfect since it burned hot but without any smoke; this would delay the fire department's arrival, s
ince no automatic alarm would be activated. Meanwhile, though, the passengers would feel the heat rising from beneath them and smell the smoke from the Honda burning at the inn and be convinced the hospital was on fire and they were about to be roasted alive.
Now Dr. March walked casually down a corridor, head down, and took the exit to the hospital's parking garage.
He pictured the people in the elevator car and reflected that they were in absolutely no physical danger from what he'd done. The smoke was faint, the fire would burn itself out in ten minutes, the car's emergency brakes would not give out and send it plummeting to the ground.
They would be completely fine.
As long as they didn't panic.
Chapter 63
Got to get out, got to get out...
Please, please, please, please, please.
The orderly was paralyzed with terror. Emergency lights had come on--the car was brightly lit--and it didn't seem to be in danger of falling. But the sense of confinement had its muscular tentacles around him, choking, choking...
"Help us!" an older woman was crying.
Three or four people were pounding on the doors. Like ritual drums, sacrificial drums.
"You smell that?" somebody called. "Smoke."
"Christ. There's a fire."
The orderly gasped. We're going to burn to death. But he considered this possibility in a curiously detached way. A searing, painful death was horrific but not as bad as the clutching, the confinement.
Tears filled his eyes. He hadn't known you could cry from fear.
"Is anybody there?" a woman nurse, in limp green scrubs, was shouting into the intercom. There'd been no message from security through the speaker.
"It's hot, it's hot!" A woman's voice. "The flames're right under us. Help!"
"I can't breathe."
"I've got to get out!"
The pregnant woman was crying. "My baby, my baby."
The orderly ripped his shirt open, lifted his head and tried to find some better air. But he could only fill his lungs with stinking, moist, used breath.
In one corner, a woman vomited.
"Oh, Jesus, lady, all over me." The man beside her, forties, in shorts and a T-shirt, tried to leap back, to escape the mess. But there was no place to go and the man behind him shoved back.
"Hey, watch what you're doing."
The smell of vomit overwhelmed the orderly and it was all he could do to control his own gut.