Beyond belief (28 page)

There was some reluctance on the part of the students,
but they scattered. Kellner hurried back toward his office.

Joe pulled up the last of the carpet, pushing it all into a large clump in a corner of the room. There was nothing there. Just a big concrete slab and glue stains. How could that be?

He beat on the walls, listening for any hollow cavities. He knew he should sweep them with his sonar reader, but at the moment his car seemed so far away. And even without the reader he could tell there was nothing behind the damned walls.

Exhausted, he sat on the cement floor and nursed his bloody finger. His gaze wandered around the room. Christ, what a mess. Had he lost his mind?

“Are you all right?”

He looked up to see Suzanne Morrison in the corridor, carefully stepping over the ceiling panels. “What happened here?”

“Just looking for a lost contact lens,” he dead-panned. “Don't you hate that?”

“Missed you this morning.”

“Yeah.” He let out a long breath. “This room was unattended a full fifteen minutes after your session. You could have removed your rigs.”

“Without anyone seeing me?”

“The test was over. No one was looking.”

“I didn't come here to argue with you.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“I ran into some of the kids outside, and they told me you were in here. I wanted to invite you to a concert. One of my chamber pieces is being performed at Kennesaw State University. I thought you and your daughter might like to come.”

He stared at her in bemusement. “Do you realize how weird that invitation is under the circumstances? I just tore apart this test facility because of you, and now you're inviting me to a concert.”

She smiled. “You can't help being stubborn. Do you want to come or not?”

“Nikki can't make it. She's out of town.”

“What about you?”

“I really don't know.”

“If it's crowds you're worried about, believe me, it won't be an issue.”

Joe managed a smile.

She knelt next to him. “You look tired, Joe. Really tired. Are you sure you're okay?”

He closed his eyes. He still hadn't absorbed it all: Vince's death, the thought of almost losing Nikki, and his complete inability to explain Jesse's and Suzanne's tricks. He had never felt so weak, so powerless.

“Just tell me how you do it,” he said.

“You know how I do it, Joe. Even if you don't want to admit it to yourself yet.”

“I
don't
know. I wish I did.”

“I wish you did too.” She stood and moved toward the door. “There will be a ticket for you at the box office tonight. I hope you can make it.”

He nodded.

“Get some rest, okay?”

He didn't reply. His eyes were fixed on one of the ceiling panels lying on the floor of the hallway. He walked over and picked it up.

“What is it?” she asked.

He held the panel up to the light. There were four
circular indentations in its soft upper surface, forming the corners of a square. “Something was resting on this.”

“My hydraulic crane,” Suzanne said sarcastically. “You caught me.”

Joe shook his head. He dragged a chair back into the room, jumped on it, and peered through the ceiling. A shaft of light appeared about thirty yards away, poking through another dislodged ceiling tile in another room.

He jumped off the chair and quickly walked down the hallway. Suzanne followed him as he measured his paces to a storage closet. He tried the knob. Locked.

“What did you see?” she asked.

Joe pulled out two rigid pieces of wire from his wallet and began working on the lock. “Maybe nothing.”

There was a sharp click, and he turned the knob and opened the door.

Suzanne nodded her approval. “I'm impressed.”

“Don't be,” Joe said. “I used to be able to do this submerged upside down in a tank of water.”

He walked into the janitor's closet and glanced up at the ceiling. One of the tiles was slightly askew over a high shelf. He turned over a bucket and stood on it, peering at the top shelf. There were four marks on the dusty surface.

“I'm telling you,” Suzanne said, “I've never been in here.”

Joe stepped off the bucket. “I believe you. You'd have no reason to put a VCR in here.”

“A VCR?”

Joe walked back toward the testing center, and she followed. “I think so. Something the size of a VCR was sitting up there until recently. If that's the case, I have a pretty good idea what was sitting on that panel above the testing center.”

They walked into the testing center's observation booth and he lifted a small receiver unit that picked up signals from the array of wireless video cameras. He placed the receiver on the ceiling tile, and the feet perfectly matched the size and layout of the indentations.

“We have a winner,” Suzanne said.

“I think somebody was using a receiver unit to intercept the tests done here and record them on a VCR in the closet down the hall. They probably strung a video cable from here to there.”

“Someone else was recording my test sessions?”

“Yours, Jesse Randall's, everyone's.”

“Who would do that?”

“Good question.”

Joe went to headquarters, where almost every cop he met asked about Nikki. He knew they weren't just paying him lip service; they cared. That spirit was one of the things that had brought him to the force in the first place.

He bypassed the third floor and went straight to the A/V lab, where a technician helped him grab a frame from one of Jesse's test sessions. The video printer spit out the enlarged picture, and Joe took it down to Jennifer Li, a sergeant in the special investigations
unit. Jennifer cracked most of her cases seated at a large computer workstation, where she pieced together paper trails with blazing speed. She also possessed a memory that rivaled the array of hard drives at her fingertips. A glance at a tire tread was usually all she needed to reel off the make and manufacturer, and a tiny piece of a receipt was often enough for her to pinpoint the retailer that had issued it.

She looked up from her monitor. “How's your girl, Joe?”

“Shaken up pretty bad, but she'll be okay. I need your help.”

“Anything.”

He handed her the print, a zoomed-in image of the red-haired man at one of the test sessions. “I'm trying to figure out who this guy is.”

Her eyes zeroed in on the keys clipped to the man's belt loop. “You want me to look at the key chain?”

“Yes. See that bar-code card attached to it? Is that a supermarket discount card?”

She picked up a magnifying glass and examined the picture closely. “I don't think so. It's a little too large. It could be a health club membership tag or …”

“Or?”

She moved her mouse over the pad and brought up a page of bar-code key tags on her monitor. She scrolled down the collection, comparing the low-resolution print to the images on her screen.

“What are those?”

“Security cards. You wave them at a scanner to get into building garages, elevators, offices, those kinds of places.”

“There must be thousands of buildings in this city that use cards like that.”

“Yes, but there are only a few dozen security companies that service those buildings.” She clicked on one of the cards to enlarge it, then held the picture next to the monitor.

“It's a match!”

“Same shape, same color, same lettering position,” she said. “It belongs to Apex Security. They're pretty small. I don't think they service many properties.”

“Looks like I win.”

“What do you mean?”

“Howe thought it would take you at least thirty minutes to run this down. I bet him you could do it in less than five.”

As Lyles and Natalie drove into the tiny Acworth airstrip, the last traces of sunlight disappeared behind a nearby row of pines. Ryland was already there, flanked by his two bodyguards.

“He's not expecting me,” Natalie said. “You should have come alone.”

“I need to know you're not working with him to set me up.”

“So if he tries to kill you and take your money, you'll use me as a shield?”

“Something like that.”

“You don't know who you're dealing with. If
that's what he wants, he wouldn't hesitate to blast right through me to get to you.”

“I don't know. Seems like he has a crush on you.”

“Doesn't matter. He'd kill his own mother if it meant more money in his pocket.”

They pulled alongside Ryland's car and climbed out. Lyles glanced around the deserted airstrip. “Where's Kahn?”

Ryland crossed his arms. “On his way. You hear that?”

Lyles cocked his head, and he could hear the staccato rhythm of a helicopter engine in the distance.

“You got my money?” Ryland asked.

Lyles tossed him a banded stack of fifty-dollar bills.

Ryland looked at it with disgust. “This is bullshit. We agreed on twenty thousand. There's not more than two or three here.”

“It's three. I'll get you the rest after I've met Kahn.”

“That wasn't part of the deal.”

“It is now.”

The bodyguards moved into alert mode as the chopper's engine grew louder.

Ryland stared at Lyles. “If I don't get the rest of it, you're not going to live through the night.”

“I wouldn't expect anything different. I just need some assurance I'm going to get what I want out of this transaction.”

The rotor suddenly grew louder, and the helicopter roared over the treetops. It was a red and white Crown Windrider, better suited for corporate charters than drug runs, Lyles thought. It hovered over
the tarmac and slowly came down for a smooth, beautifully controlled landing.

Lyles's gaze narrowed on the pilot.

Was it you? Did you take him from us?

The rotor powered down. The pilot kicked open the cockpit door and ambled toward them with a shit-eating grin on his face. What a piece of work, Lyles thought. Michael Kahn was a thin, long-haired man who wore silver-painted cowboy boots and a plaid flannel shirt that covered a tie-dyed T-shirt. A ridiculously long walrus mustache covered half his face. He looked like the result of a bizarre cowboy-hippie gene-splicing experiment.

Ryland playfully pounded fists with Kahn. “I heard you made the delivery this morning. Good work.”

“Easyville, big man.” Kahn's southern accent was about as thick as it could get without being completely unintelligible.

Ryland pointed at Lyles. “Here's the guy I was telling you about.”

Kahn smiled even more broadly. “Hey there, friend. I hear you got some work for me!”

“Maybe,” Lyles said. “Ryland tells me you're pretty good.”

“Pretty good? Was Jimi Hendrix a
pretty good
guitar player? Is Jack Nicholson a
pretty good
actor? Is—”

Lyles cut him off. “Okay, I get it. I do have a job, but I'm not sure if you have experience in this kind of thing.”

“Friend, I have experience in pret’ near every kind of thing.”

“Kidnapping?”

Kahn's smile vanished.
It was him.

“Kidnapping?” Kahn said it as if he'd never heard the word before.

“Yeah. Me and another guy make the grab, you airlift the three of us out. Easyville?”

Kahn nervously scratched his cheek. “Uh—I don't do that shit, friend. You'd better look somewhere else.”

“No, I think you're just the man I'm looking for.”

“Bullshit.” Kahn turned toward Ryland. “What the hell's going on here? Do you even know who this guy is?”

Ryland obviously didn't understand his anger. “He wants to throw some work your way, man. Listen to him.”

“Fuck you.” Kahn walked back to his helicopter.

Ryland nodded to his bodyguards, and they advanced on Lyles.

In one smooth motion Lyles reached into his holster, gripped the handle of his Lanchester, and squeezed off five quick shots through the back of his jacket as he spun around. One bodyguard fell dead and the other lay twitching on the ground.

As Lyles whirled toward Ryland, he caught sight of Natalie holding her Berettas. Who was she siding with? Before he could decide, two shots rang out and Natalie fell to the ground. Ryland had put two bullets into her with his snub-nosed.38 revolver.

Funny. Lyles had him figured for an automatic.

He killed Ryland with one clean shot through the mouth. The bullet broke his front left tooth in half before demolishing the entire back of his head.

Lyles spun toward the helicopter. “Don't move, Kahn.”

Kahn stood at the open cockpit door, again wearing that idiot grin.

“What's so funny?”

“I was starting to think you were a cop. Shows what I know.”

“Get on the ground, arms and legs spread to the four corners. Don't even think of reaching for the handgun you're carrying.”

“Whatever you say, friend.”

As Kahn spread out on the ground, he was still grinning. Crazy bastard.

Lyles knelt beside Natalie. She'd taken hits in the arm and right torso. She was still conscious. “Goddamn, it hurts. What's your expert opinion?”

He examined the wounds. “The arm's nothing. I can't tell about your side. Too much …” His voice trailed off.

“Too much blood?”

He nodded.

“Great. And the one person who can help me will be five thousand dollars richer if he lets me die.”

He applied pressure to the chest wound. “I pay my debts. If it comes to that, is there anyone I should give the money to?”

She closed her eyes. “No. No one. Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“Just relax.”

“Jesus, I sold Ryland that gun.”

“Are you having trouble breathing?”

“Not really. It just kind of … burns.”

After glancing up to make sure Kahn was behaving
himself, Lyles shed his jacket and tied it snugly around Natalie's chest. “That should slow the flow of bleeding. You could come out of this okay.”

“Get me to a hospital.”

“No. Too many questions. Surely you know someone who can fix you up.”

“Yeah, but he charges a fortune. He'll eat up all my profits.”

“But he'll give you your life. We're going there.”

“What about your friend?”

Lyles stood and walked to where Kahn was lying on the ground. He struck him three times on the base of the skull, knocking him unconscious.