Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts (45 page)

Someone else had control of her voice.

The words were true—he'd been gone awhile and she'd waited with growing concern—but the words weren't hers, and she couldn't stop them.

"Where did you go?"

Of course. That's what the Unity wanted to know. It had overheard him mention a countermove.

"Out."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing." He turned his head and looked at her with one eye, like a cat. "Is this a conversation or the title of a book?"

Kate tried to gesture to Jack, to let him know that she wasn't in command anymore, but her hands remained at her sides.

"If you're worried about the Unity listening in, it's okay. It's left me for the time being."

Lies! Jack, don't listen!

"Why would it do that?"

"I think it waited as long as it could for you to come back, then had to focus its attention elsewhere."

Jack rolled onto his back, staring at her, not quite convinced.

"You're sure?"

Kate felt her head nodding, tried to stop it—and succeeded. It worked! She wasn't completely helpless. But her voice… she still couldn't reclaim her voice.

"All right," Kate's voice said. "If you've still got your doubts—and I can't say I blame you—don't give me any details. But I'd like to know
something
. After all, I'm involved in this too—more than you."

Don't listen to me, Jack. It's trying to sucker you into revealing something.

He sighed and ran a hand over his pale face. "You've got a point there, I guess. Sorry."

"Well, then, how did it go? Were you successful?"

"I think so. I put some wheels in motion. We'll see if things turn out like I hope."

"Which is?"

Don't answer!

As Jack opened his mouth to reply, Kate willed her hands to move, to wave in the air before her.

Jack's eyes widened. "Kate? What's up?"

And suddenly her voice was hers again. She sagged against the bed.

"Oh, Jack!" she gasped. "That was the Unity! It took control for a few minutes there and I…" A sob burst from her throat. "It was awful!"

Jack sat up and gripped her hand. "But you fought them off. Keep fighting, Kate. We should know by late this afternoon if my plan works. Can you hang in till then?"

She nodded. "I think so. But don't tell me anything, Jack. Even if I'm in control, the Unity is part of me. It's always there, always listening."

His features hardened. "I shouldn't have let you talk me out of Plan A, damn it."

"Don't talk like that. You promised, remember."

"Promise or not, Kate, if Plan B doesn't work, it's back to A."

"It will work," she told him, and sent up a silent prayer that it would. "Whatever it is, it will buy me enough time for CDC and NIH to come up with a cure." If they can.

"It better." He flopped back onto the spread and closed his eyes. "And they'd better. Because if they don't, I'll use my own virucidal agent. Don't know about theirs, but mine's administered via nine-millimeter, hollow-pointed injection."

How could he speak so casually of killing eight people? Could he do that? Could her brother be such a cold-blooded murderer?

Looking at his features now as they relaxed toward sleep, she found it hard to believe. She touched Jack's cheek.

"Get your rest," she whispered.

She had an uneasy feeling he was going to need all his strength back, and soon. She'd sensed something while the Unity was controlling her voice. The same background of ecstatic anticipation she'd experienced last night, and something else: fear. The Unity feared her brother. It had feared Fielding, too, and look what happened to him.

Kate went to the front door and locked it.

And then an awful thought jarred her, stiffening her limbs with dread: How much of her would remain in the morning? Would she have enough of her own volition left to fight off the Unity and go home for Lizzie's concert? Maybe the distance to Trenton would attenuate its influence.

She prayed so.

6

"They didn't arrest Holdstock?" Sandy said into his cell phone. He wanted to shout but this was an NYPD detective he was talking to. "Why not? I served him up to you on a silver platter."

He'd called in his "tip" to McCann—the only NYPD detective he knew by name—who relayed it to the Queens precinct investigating the murder. Sandy had figured if the Savior's info was true, Holdstock would be locked up in no time. But when he'd called the 108th Precinct to confirm the arrest, he was told Holdstock had been sent home and no more. Unbelievable. He'd been trying to get hold of McCann ever since. Finally McCann had returned his call.

"You should get stuff appraised before you buy," Detective McCann said, his voice thin through Sandy's cell phone. "That silver platter of yours was mostly tin."

Sandy felt a twinge of nausea. Had he been set up?

He was seated in the dark in the front seat of a car he'd gone out and rented immediately after hearing the news. He was tempted to roll down a window for a breath of night air, but didn't. After what he'd seen a few moments ago, he wanted the windows up and the doors locked.

"What do you mean?"

"Had an alibi," McCann said. "Airtight, as they say on the tube."

"Who?"

"The seven other members of his cancer support group say he was with them at a meeting at the time of the killing. Hard to argue with that."

Cancer support group? What the—? Of course! The cult.

Sandy fumed. He should have foreseen they'd band together and cover for him.

"But the handprint—"

"Was just where you said it would be, and a perfect match."

That was a relief. At least he knew the Savior had been telling the truth about that.

"Well? Doesn't that prove he was there?"

"It does, but it doesn't tell us when. Holdstock says he must have left it there when he visited Fielding last Thursday."

"He's lying. He was there last night."

"He says different. It's not like they didn't know each other. Fielding treated Holdstock, and Holdstock says they struck up a friendly relationship."

"Bullshit. When was the last time your doctor invited you over to his house? And that's not a cancer support group Holdstock's been meeting with, it's a cult, and he's their leader."

McCann's chuckle grated through the little speaker. "You're a piece of work, Palmer. You come up with this interview with the Savior that says he's a former SEAL—which we're pretty sure now he's not—and now you come up with this eyewitness to a murder who says it was done by a cult. Where do you find these people?"

"I don't. They find me. And as for the cult, I'm sitting half a block from Holdstock's place now and believe me, this is a cult."

"Don't do anything stupid, Palmer."

"Not me. I'm just watching."

It was stuffy in the rental, the warm air tinged with the sour smell of old spilled coffee, but Sandy kept the windows up. His quick peek through one of Holdstock's windows had sent him scurrying back here with a bad case of the creeps. All those people sitting around the living room, grinning and humming as they stared into space. He shook off a chill and took a tighter grip on the phone.

"Listen, detective, every member of that cult is a former patient of Fielding's." Sandy hoped the Savior had his facts straight because he was going out on a limb here. "My source says they developed some delusion that Fielding had caused their tumors just so he could experiment on them, and so they decided to kill him."

"Let's put the cult aside and talk about your source," McCann said.

"The boys over at the One-Oh-Eight are still looking into Holdstock as a possible, but they're very interested in your source. They'd like to speak to him."

"Her," Sandy said.

That should throw them off. Sandy had been expecting this and figured he'd cover himself the same way he had after the Savior interview.

"Okay… her. She knew about the handprint and the electrical wire. Only way she could know that was to be in the room when the murder went down."

"She told me she was outside, looking through a window."

"The One-Oh-Eight boys say you'd have to be nine feet tall to see through the dining room window."

"Maybe she plays for the Liberty. I've never seen her, only spoken to her on the phone." Sandy smiled, happy with the way he'd slipped that in there.

McCann sighed. "Gonna run that on me again, are you, Palmer? No personal contact, everything over the phone, right? Well, listen up. The guys at the One-Oh-Eight think your source knows too much, and might be the killer himself."

"I told you she's—"

"Yeah-yeah, I know what you told me. But the killer wasn't a woman. It was a fairly strong guy. So if your source is really a guy, watch your back."

And then McCann cut the connection.

Sandy hit END on his phone and considered McCann's parting words. It had occurred to him before but now McCann had brought it up: could the Savior be the real killer and trying to use Sandy to divert attention from himself?

But why? Reading between the lines of his conversation with McCann he'd gathered that the cops in Queens had no suspects beyond what Sandy had provided. And Holdstock's print was there, just as the Savior had said.

And as for watching his back, if the Savior had wanted to harm him, the perfect time and place would have been at Julio's this morning: nobody had seen Sandy go in, and no one would have noticed if he never came out.

So far everything the Savior had lold him about the murder had been dope. Still, you couldn't be too careful…

What Sandy needed was a story beyond the crime itself. He needed to link Holdstock and his cult to the crime. And since the cops weren't doing it, it was up to him.

That was why he was sitting here. In the dark. In the Bronx.

But hey, that was what investigative reporting was all about, right?

He stared at the lighted windows of Holdstock's place, partially visible through the trees along the sidewalk. He'd watch, but from here. No way he was going back to that window and listen to that humming.

Maybe he'd be lucky. Maybe they'd kill someone else tonight.

7

Kate yawned. Tired. She'd watched the eleven o'clock news for further word of the Fielding murder but it wasn't even mentioned. James Fielding, MD, pioneering medical researcher, had been reduced to a statistic.

Sic
transit gloria
.

She unfolded the couch in Jack's TV room, expanding it to a bed, then went through the apartment turning out lights. In the kitchen she noticed the dinner dishes still in the drainer. Might as well put them away.

Jack had awakened around five, feeling better but still far from a hundred percent. She'd heated a couple of the frozen entrees from his fridge and wanted to know if he lived on that stuff. He'd explained that like many New Yorkers, he rarely ate in.

They ate and talked about old times, warily avoiding the subject of Jack's activities earlier in the day. Jack had faded after dinner and headed back to bed, leaving Kate alone with her fears.

The Unity hadn't bothered her since this afternoon. It had stayed in the background, far in the background, all day, as if preoccupied. Which was fine with Kate.

She put the two dinner plates into a cabinet with their mates, but as she dropped the spoons and forks into their slots in the utensil drawer, her hand drifted to the side and gripped the black handle of a long, wide-bladed carving knife. She tried to pull away but her grip only tightened.

An icy hand clutched her throat.
No
!

She'd meant to say it, to wail it, but her voice remained silent.

Her hand lifted the knife and held it before her, twisting the blade back and forth to catch the light. Her left hand stroked the sharp cutting edge, then touched the point.

This will do.

The Unity! Speaking to her. But how? No one else was here. She'd had to be touching them before, holding hands with their circle to hear the Voice. How—?

And then she knew and she wanted to scream.

Yes, Kate. You are of us now and we are of you.

No, please, I don't want this! Please!

You will, Kate. The closer you move toward full integration, the more you will welcome it.

Don't I get a say?

Integration is inevitable. Arguments are futile, a waste of time, and time is everything right now.

With the knife held before her, Kate turned and began walking from the kitchen.

What are you doing?

Your brother is a threat to the future. Threats must be eliminated.