Terrorbyte (11 page)

“What kind of car is it?” I asked, still fighting with the door.

Mac appeared next to me. “It's not Lee's car. Let me.” He handed me his flashlight so he could use both hands.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

He braced himself against the back passenger door and tried forcing the door handle up; the handle lifted but the door didn't budge. Mac shoved his fingertips into a gap at the top of the door and pulled; the metal groaned but stayed fast.

“Crowbar?” I suggested.

“Trunk,” he replied. “I'll get it.”

He turned then stopped by the back door, which was unscathed compared with the front of the car, which was a twisted wreck.

“Shall I draw you a map to the trunk of your own car?”

A wet finger flew in my direction. “One sec.” He pulled the rear door handle, the door sprang open. Mac disappeared into the car.

I pulled my cell phone from my wet pocket and punched in ‘911'. As the operator answered, the driver's door screeched then popped open. Perfect timing: I had zero clue where we were. I knew at some stage we'd left the highway but my tired mind couldn't recall when or why.

“Mac, what road is this?” The irony of the question didn't escape me. I was asking a directionally-challenged person where we were.

Sometimes I have no idea what goes on in my head.

He climbed out the passenger door and took the phone from me, shaking his head and saying, “This time I do know where we are.” There was a touch of surprise in his voice. Directions weren't something I usually had to ask for, let alone something he was usually able to give.

Something was very wrong. I leaned closer to him. Rain poured, taking the scent of chlorine with it.

I grabbed the phone back from Mac and spoke into it. “There is chlorine present at the scene. You will need hazmat gear with self-contained breathing apparatus for the body recovery. We have no way of knowing how potent the chlorine is or the quantity involved.”

The voice on the phone confirmed what I'd said and hung up.

Mac stared at me. “I didn't smell it!”

“It's all over you. You have spare clothes?”

“Of course. How bad is it?”

“Take your clothes off, all of them … and thank God it's raining hard.”

He looked at me in absolute horror as he began peeling off his saturated clothes. I returned to our car and found him clean stuff from our bags, plus a large plastic bag for his contaminated clothing.

“How bad, Ellie?”

“It's highly toxic and irritates the respiratory system. It can form hydrochloric acid inside your lungs by reacting with the water in the mucosa.” Take no prisoners. “It causes burns especially to eyes, mouths, airways. It's also flammable; just add a spark and it's an instant firebomb.”

“And it's in our drinking water and our swimming pools?” Mac said. “That's just fuc'n fantastic.”

“At safe levels.”

While pondering the scariness of the strong chlorine and Mac's inability to smell it, I donned two pairs of latex gloves – not easy to do in the rain – and went to have a look at the car. Chlorine gas is heavier than air and settles low. I attempted to reach the driver's side of the wreck and slipped in the mud at the edge of the road. Hauling myself back to my feet was difficult. Mud covered my jeans and tee shirt and it began to act like sticky body armor, causing my movements to stiffen as my clothes grabbed my skin.

I stood by the driver. I knew I couldn't bend down near him, because a greenish gas was visible about his knees. His body smelled strongly of chlorine. His head was turned, facing away from me. The airbag was fully deflated so it was easy to reach him. I noted he wore his seat belt.

“Sir?”

I shook my hand hard hoping to dislodge some of the mud. The charms on my bracelet sent mud in all directions. I reached into his neck and felt for a pulse.

I couldn't feel anything.

Moving my fingers under his jaw, I tried again.

Nothing.

I went for his wrist.

“I can't find a pulse.”

I sloshed away from the car. The smell was unbearable; it began to irritate my nose. A large puddle near the rear tire gave me somewhere to wash my gloved hands. I didn't want chlorine on me, no matter how little.

I felt Mac's hands on my shoulders. “Police and ambulance are on their way with a hazmat team and all the gear. There are landslides and flooding, so some parts of roads are blocked with debris … might take them a little while to get through.”

“Can you smell it now?” I asked. With the car door open, gas was leaching out into the rainy atmosphere, drifting under the car and around the front tires.

“Yeah, smells like a swimming pool.”

“Did you notice anything about the body?”

“No.”

“Why was the driver looking at the passenger seat? Maybe he turned his head instinctively on impact – but what if there was a passenger?”

I looked up at Mac; rain ran into my eyes as I did so. It stung. It really stung. The rain had washed the leave-in conditioner from my hair into my eyes. I found a moderately clean piece of my shirt and wiped some of the tainted water from my eyes.

“Was there a passenger?”

Mac disappeared, then reappeared on the other side of the car. He opened the front passenger door with surprising ease and more gas wafted to freedom. “This door wasn't closed properly. Bag's deployed as it would in a crash, but no one is here. Curious, no?”

I joined him, the beam from my flashlight playing upon the front console, allowing me to inspect the airbag. “There's something there.”

The smell was too much; after a few seconds I pushed the door shut and pointed through the glass. “See that?”

“Hairspray? Is that what that is?” Mac asked.

“Looks like it. Strange thing for a guy with very short hair to have,” I said. He didn't look like the hair product type. I don't know exactly what that type is, but it wasn't him.

“Look at the bottom of that canister.”

“It's been blown off …”

“What would cause that?” Mac asked.

“A small explosion.”

I went back to our car and found an umbrella. With the umbrella up to shield my phone from the worst of the rain I used the integral camera to snap pictures of the canister and the driver. I had a good view of the driver's face from this angle. There was a long gash down the side of his face, open to the cheek bone. Blood had run down his neck, soaking into his collar and shirt. The whole side of his face was discolored by blood and bruising was evident across his temple. I determined he was hit by something, maybe a few times. These weren't crash-related injuries. I'd heard of air bags breaking people's noses before but not doing this much damage to a face. I took a closer look at the picture I'd taken of the canister. To me it looked as though the bottom of the canister could have caused his disfiguring cut and maybe the bruising.  There wasn't much to see on the canister, which probably had blood and skin tissue prior to the bottom blowing out.

Mac's shoulders dropped as he sighed. “Okay, so it's possible there is a passenger, maybe female, wandering around in this storm.”

“Damn!” I surveyed the saturated ground. The heavy rain would have washed away any footprints. I scuffed my foot in the mud, uncovering a glimpse of something shiny. I reached down and picked up the object.

“What is it?” Mac asked.

“A lighter … a Zippo lighter.” The lid was open and the wick full of mud. I wiped one side as best I could on my shirt. “What do you think this is?” I asked, showing Mac the etching I'd uncovered.

“A two-headed eagle,” he said, after careful inspection.

“Wonder if it belonged to someone from the car.” I looked around for something to put the lighter in. Mac held out his hand. Problem solved. “I doubt there'll be anything useful on the lighter by way of DNA or prints, but you never know,” I said. Something else in my head pushed forward. “If someone was injured, got out and walked away from this accident … why bother to close the door?”

“Instinct maybe; it wasn't properly shut, just pushed to. You get out of a car and flick the door behind you,” Mac replied. “Well, I do and I know you do.”

It seemed reasonable that this person did so too, or they were in a state of confusion and had no idea what they were doing.

“If you'd set off a chlorine gas delivery system you'd be getting out too fast to be worrying about doors.”

“What?” Mac said, with as much horror as a single word can convey.

“Could be my imagination. Or it could be that the hairspray is a clever way of getting weapons' grade chlorine into the country. I've heard of it before.” I ran my hands through my hair, pulling it back off my face; the gloves grabbed and pulled my hair. I peered in through the car windows.

“You've heard of it?” he replied. “You know what, forget it, I don't want to know how you hear of these things.”

I was looking for something that might tell us whether we were looking for a male or a female. I found a handbag on the floor in the back, the contents spilled across the floor. Maybe it happened as the person went for the hairspray.

“That's a passport.” I said, pointing. There was no comment. I looked at Mac to find him walking back towards me with latex gloves in his hand.

I watched as he pulled both pairs onto his wet hands, one atop the other.  Difficult at the best of times but it helps if you display total concentration.

“I bagged the lighter,” he said, then opened the door. I thrust my hand in and snatched up the passport.

I photographed it and had a quick read. “Selena Onslow from Canada. Aged thirty-three.” I threw the passport back into the car and slammed the door.

“Want to try the driver?” Mac asked.

“Yep.”

Already had gloves on and I couldn't see a problem; the gas was most concentrated on the floor of the car. I could see wisps of greenish-yellow cloud. I didn't need to bend down or get anywhere near the toxic cloud to check the driver's pockets. I made a rapid search of the driver and the glove compartment, netting a wallet and a passport.

“The driver appears to be Jacob Riest from New Zealand,” I said holding the passport up to show Mac. There was little resemblance between the picture in the passport and the dead man in the car. Mac took pictures. I glanced at the picture again. I thought I'd seen him somewhere but knew I hadn't come across any New Zealanders recently. I tossed the passport back into the car.

I ripped off the gloves and tossed them in the bag with Mac's clothes. The umbrella was rendered useless by a large gust, its spokes sticking out in all directions, the nylon ripped. I shoved it in the trunk of our car.

I needed to get out of the rain for a while, so climbed into our front passenger seat. Mac got in the driver's side.

“We're going to make a huge mess of the interior,” he said, shutting his door and leaning back against the seat.

“Not much we can do about that,” I replied. “We're looking for the chick, so we should get to it.”

“And she potentially set off chlorine gas? Do we really want to do this?”

I shrugged. “Not especially … but she could be hurt.”

I called Sam and Lee to let them know we were having a quick look for a potential crash victim, who may or may not have set off a chlorine bomb in a car. They were understandably concerned. So long as they knew where to look if something went wrong, I felt okay about the situation.

We had perhaps twenty feet of visibility if we were lucky. Woods ran along either side of the road. I loved the experience of a wet and wild late summer and the effects of yet another hurricane. Wind whipped up puddles of water and mud, tossing it all at the car. Dawn wasn't really happening but it wasn't dark either. The road was lost in an ethereal murk that failed as both night and day. A hefty tree branch slammed against the wrecked car.

I wouldn't want to be wandering around, injured, out there.

“Let's see if we can find this chick, then,” Mac said, as he checked his weapon.

I nodded. “We're already wet through; may as well keep going.” My flashlight flickered. I smacked it on my hand. The beam brightened then faded. “Let's get fresh batteries for this.”

He leaned over and kissed me. “First, change into a dry shirt and put on a jacket.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

I glanced down at my legs. I was caked in mud. Rivers of it ran from my legs to the floor. I squelched with every movement, no matter how slight. My backside stuck fast to the seat.

Mac leaned into the back of the car and found me a dry shirt from an overnight bag.  A portable shower would be handy, especially with the chlorine. But I figured the rain would do a good job of rinsing us off.

We had started leaving an overnight bag in the car after the Jack Griffin case. During that case, I seemed to be bootless and semi-clothed more often than not. The longer we were together, the more like MacGyver Mac appeared to be. I happen to know he does carry string and gum in his pocket and there's duct tape in the glove compartment. I've seen him remove a magnet from a car stereo speaker, attach it to a piece of string and use it to find a key in long grass.

He changed the batteries in my flashlight while I changed my shirt. It literally peeled away from my skin. I held the shirt out the door and wrung out as much water as I could. I think I could've filled a small bucket from the run off. I balled it up and shoved it in the plastic bag with the other clothes. There was no point changing our mud-saturated jeans until we'd found the woman. We donned waterproof jackets and caps to keep the rain out of our eyes.

With the crash area lit by road flares to warn of the hazard and to guide the emergency vehicles, we headed farther down the road on foot. It was a toss-up; she could've gone either way, but we chose to go down the slight rise we were on. Down seemed easiest for a crash victim possible murderer. The longer we searched, the more the hairspray and the dead guy played on my mind.