The Prophet (12 page)

Realizing that she had made the grave mistake of playing chicken with a deranged psychopath, Vasques jerked the wheel to the side. But Ackerman still clung to the center of the road, and there wasn’t enough space for both of them. He was only a hundred feet ahead and closing.

She waited until the last second and then slammed on her brakes and jerked the wheel hard, smashing into a little Chevy parked along the street. Then Ackerman was on top of her. Sparks shot from both sides of the Yukon as Ackerman slid along their left side and the Chevy slammed against their right.

The killer didn’t even slow down as he continued east down Taylor Street. Vasques tried to keep her vehicle under control and pull away from the collision, but the dual impacts had thrown her into a tailspin. The Yukon swung in a circle down the center of the road and crashed into a light pole directly in front of a squat brick building marked with three crosses and the words
Children of Peace School
. Luckily, the students were on Christmas break.

Her head shot away from the headrest and struck the windshield. She tasted blood, and her ears rang like someone had jammed an alarm clock inside her skull. She pressed her hands against her forehead and tried to get her bearings. Something wet and warm trickled down her forearm. She heard someone asking if she was okay, but the voice sounded distant.

After a few long seconds, her vision cleared, and she dropped the lever on the steering console into reverse, pulling away from the pole. Ackerman was still only a few beats ahead of them. They still had a chance.

Vasques scanned Taylor Avenue, but the silver Dodge sedan was gone. Ackerman must have taken the next turn, and he wouldn’t have headed back toward the FBI building, so he must have turned north down Damen Avenue. She slammed the pedal to the floor and took the next turn right. Damen was a four-lane road divided by a four-foot concrete median and bordered by tall black lamp-posts ornately designed to look like something from nineteenth-century England. Several vehicles dotted the road ahead, but no silver Dodge. Along the left side of the road, on the corner, she caught sight of a group of people at a black covered bus stop gesturing east down Polk Street. Reasoning that the people were most likely commenting about a car that had just skidded by at high speed, she took the turn onto Polk. The pale green and tan campus of John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital loomed off to her left. They were entering the heart of Chicago’s medical district.

Farther down Polk, she caught sight of Ackerman weaving in and out of traffic. From the back seat, Williams said, “There he is!”

Vasques thought she heard sirens heading their way, but they needed to maintain visual contact. A siren of her own would have helped. The traffic was extra thick on Polk, and she nearly collided with a red mini-van as she swerved into oncoming traffic to pass a slow-moving car. But then she got stuck behind a FedEx delivery truck as oncoming traffic and parked cars boxed her in on each side. The truck also blocked her view of the sedan. The intersections of Wolcott and Wood flew past, but before reaching Paulina she saw Ackerman’s vehicle parked along the right side of the road in front of a long row of multicolored newspaper dispensers. The driver’s door hung open. The raised platform for the Pink Line of CTA Rapid Transit sat only a few feet away.

The Yukon skidded to a stop. “He must be trying to get away on the train,” Vasques said as she leaped from the SUV and sprinted toward the glass front of the station’s entrance.

At her back, Brubaker called after her. “Vasques, wait! He wouldn’t have taken the train. We could just call ahead and have officers waiting for him at the next station.”

She hesitated in front of the station doors and glanced toward Paulina Street. A man wearing a blue stocking cap and a Chicago Bears jacket was securing a bright green ten-speed bike to a rack in front of the transit station. “Hey, you!” The man glanced up. “Did you see a guy get out of that car?”

The Bears fan nodded and pointed north. “Yeah, he went that way.”

Allen Brubaker felt like his lungs were being crushed in a vise. The air was cold and thin, and he wasn’t in nearly as good shape as he had once been. Still, he urged his legs to pump along with the others, who were at least twenty-five years his junior. The sound of their feet slapping the sidewalk and his own shallow breathing were the only noises he could hear. They sprinted north in the direction the man with the bike had pointed and were rewarded with a glimpse of Ackerman ducking into a large building up the street.

Allen’s eyes weren’t as good as they used to be, either, but he was fairly certain that he saw Ackerman clutching his left shoulder. Apparently, one of Marcus’s rounds had struck home, but it also hadn’t been enough to slow the killer down too much.

As they drew closer, Allen’s gaze traveled up the strange-looking building that Ackerman had entered. From his vantage point, it was the color of light sand with one central section touching the ground while the first levels of two adjoining wings were exposed and supported by square pillars. It reminded him vaguely of some sort of space station. A dark gray awning jutting out over the entrance bore the words
Johnston R. Bowman Health Center.

They pushed inside and glanced around the small lobby. A dark-skinned security guard with a gray Fu Manchu mustache sat behind an information desk. Vasques flashed her ID and said, “Did you see a guy in a dark coat come through here holding his shoulder?”

“Yeah, I told him the emergency entrance is all the way on the other side of the hospital, but he didn’t listen. He just jumped in the elevator.”

“Are there any other exits?”

“There’s a walkway that connects to the Academic Center on three.”

All stares fixed on the lights above the elevator. They indicated it had stopped on the third floor. “Dammit,” Vasques said. “The Rush University Campus is a maze. If he makes it into the Academic Center we might lose him.”

“Plus it’s full of people,” Andrew added.

“Okay,” Marcus said as he moved toward the exit. “Vasques and I will try to cut him off from the Academic building before he makes it across the walkway. Andrew, you and Allen take the elevator up after him and come at him from behind. We’ll try to box him in.”

Vasques followed Marcus out, and as she did, she raised her cell phone to her ear. Allen overhead her calling in reinforcements as she rushed from the building. The ding of the elevator sounded at his back, and the doors slid open.

Andrew stepped inside and stopped them closing with his palm. “Come on, Allen.”

Allen took a step toward the elevator but then hesitated. Something didn’t seem right. Off in the far corner was the door to the fire stairs. Maybe Ackerman was trying to double back on them? “I’m going to take the stairs and make sure that he doesn’t try to sneak past us that way.”

Nodding, Andrew slid his hand away from the doors’ sensor, and they slid shut. Allen moved off toward the emergency door and pushed inside. The metal stairs climbed skyward, and he bounded up them two at a time.

By the time he hit the door to the second floor, his lungs were burning, and a wave of dizziness swept over him. He gasped in large gulps of air but pushed forward. In the recent months of his retirement, Allen had often looked back fondly on his time with the Shepherd Organization. The thrill of the hunt. The knowledge that he was making a difference. Saving lives. Being a tool for justice and righteousness. The human mind had a funny way of romanticizing the past, and as he ascended the stairs, he realized that all too well. Now he recalled what it was truly like to be a Shepherd. It was adrenaline-filled, for sure, but it also meant fear. In fact, he now remembered that, in most cases, it was actually ninety-five percent terror and only five percent exhilaration.

As Allen fought for air, he wondered why in the hell he had volunteered to take the stairs.

But then, finally, he crested the last flight and came to the third-floor landing. As he reached out for the door handle, it seemed to twist on its own and swing toward him. The progression of time seemed to slow down and speed up simultaneously.

His hand flew to the Beretta holstered beneath his left arm.

Ackerman’s face appeared in the doorway.

Allen gripped the weapon and pulled it free.

Before he could bring his gun to bear on the killer, Ackerman rushed forward and slammed against him, his hand clamping onto Allen’s right wrist. Ackerman forced Allen back against the white railing. Allen swung his left fist into Ackerman’s side, but the killer smashed his forehead into the bridge of his opponent’s nose.

Allen felt something crack, and his vision blurred. A disorienting and nauseating deluge of pain thundered through his skull.

Then his whole world dropped out from beneath him, and he tumbled backward over the railing.

The waiting area at the Rush University Medical Center had both a modern and a retro feel. Marcus sat on a strange curvy couch that snaked across one entire wall of the room. It was brightly colored with red, yellow, orange, and brown stripes. Windows overlooking the city filled the entire wall at his back, letting sunlight invade the space. The whole place seemed too cheery for his tastes. The walls were bright yellow. Chairs were mint green. He wondered whatever had happened to hospital white. The only aspect of the room that matched his mood was the carpet checkered with shades of gray.

He pressed his palms against his temples, trying to push back the pounding in his skull. Andrew paced back and forth in front of a business center in the middle of the room. The door opened and the sounds of the hospital slipped inside. They both looked quickly toward the entrance, expecting a doctor with news of Allen’s condition. But it wasn’t the doctor; it was Vasques.

She walked over and sat next to Marcus on the technicolor couch. Her right hand held a tray filled with cups of coffee. Andrew took one with a nod of thanks.

As Marcus reached for a cup, he said, “Ackerman?”

She sighed. “They think he stole an ambulance and slipped through the perimeter. He’s gone, but we have an APB out. We’ll find him.”

Marcus shook his head. “No, you won’t. He’s lived most of his life on the run, learning every trick. He’s a chameleon when he wants to be.”

Vasques swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about Agent Brubaker. I know that I had only just met him, but he seemed like a wonderful man. Were you two close?”

“We
are
close,” Marcus snapped.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s fine. You didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just on edge. I’ve only known Allen for a little over a year. He actually helped recruit me into our organization, and then he took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. My parents were killed when I was little, but in a lot of ways, Allen reminds me of my father. Dad was a detective with the NYPD. That’s where I started out, too. Anyway, when I was learning from Allen, it was almost like I had a little piece of my dad back. He’s a good friend.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Marcus’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out, and the anger swelled up like a volcano inside his chest. He gritted his teeth, fought the urge to throw the phone across the room, and switched it off.

“Who was that?”

“It was him.”

“You mean Ackerman?”

He said nothing. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the couch.

“Who
are
you guys?” Vasques said. “I don’t know too many people on Charlie Manson’s speed dial.”

Marcus swallowed hard and let out a long breath. “Ackerman was sort of my first case within our organization. He became obsessed with me. Thinks I’m the yin to his yang. He claims that our destinies are linked. Since he got away he’s been following our investigations somehow and actually trying to help with them. In his own sick way.”

“So he’s following you around?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

“How does he know about your cases?”

“I don’t know.”

“What
do
you know?”

“I know that Ackerman is an expert in pain.” He reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose, thinking of the pain that the killer had caused him. Maybe that was truly why Ackerman had latched onto him. To kill him slowly, a little piece of his soul at a time. “Have you heard his story . . . what he went through as a boy?”

“Just that his father tortured him. I am familiar with his more recent exploits. There was a lot of buzz about that hospital fire in Colorado Springs and Ackerman’s escape.”

Memories of that night cascaded through Marcus’s mind like a tsunami.

Flames calling out for him, longing to devour him. Ackerman’s fists slamming against his ribcage. Hanging from the edge of the building, the killer looking down on him. Falling through the flame-damaged roof. The fire surrounding him, closing in. And then Ackerman saving his life, carrying him from the inferno to safety.

That was the night he had faced his darkest demons and deepest secrets and came through the flames alive, but not unscathed. It was on that night that his dreams of a normal life had died. Trying to push away the memories, he continued with his story. “Ackerman’s father was a nut-job psychologist who wanted to gain some insight into the minds of serial killers by subjecting his son to every traumatic experience ever documented in the lives of the world’s most deranged men.”

Vasques nodded. “Okay, I do remember this. He kept the kid in a little cell and taped all the experiments. The boys at the BAU treat those tapes like they’re some kind of sacred religious texts. The Ackerman Tapes, they call them. Like they’re the Dead Sea Scrolls or something. You’ve heard the conspiracy theory, right?”

“No,” Marcus said. “What do you mean?”

She turned in her seat as though she was about to share an extra-juicy piece of gossip. “Ackerman’s daddy taped every move the kid made. Everything he did to him and made him do. But one of the eggheads was watching the tapes and realized that there is a two-week period of time with nothing. No experiments. No video of any kind.”

“I’ve watched most of the tapes myself, but I’ve never paid attention to the dates and times. Maybe something interrupted him?”

She shrugged. “You’re probably right. But I guess we’ll never know.”

Marcus opened his mouth to ask if there were any theories, but thoughts of Ackerman were pushed to the back of his mind when a petite Asian woman in a white coat walked into the room. He shot to his feet.

“Is he alive?”

The doctor nodded. “He’ll live, but we still don’t know how bad the damage will be. He’s broken several bones, but our main concern is that he’s suffered significant damage to his spine.” She hesitated and looked to the floor. “It’s too soon to know if he’ll ever walk again.”

Marcus looked away as tears filled his eyes. He thought of Allen’s family—his son Charlie, his daughter Amy, and his wife Loren. They were good people and had taken him in as one of their own, a surrogate uncle or son. Allen had finally retired and escaped this life. He had came through all those years of hunting unscathed, and now when he could finally devote himself entirely to his loved ones, he might have to do so from a wheelchair. It wasn’t fair. This would devastate them.

Marcus could never imagine putting anyone through that. He didn’t understand how Loren or Allen could deal with the pressures of family and the work of a Shepherd. Two different worlds. Worlds that would never be compatible.

The doctor added, “He’s conscious and stable right now. You can speak to him briefly, if you wish. But only for a moment and then he needs to rest.”

Marcus’s head bobbed from pure reflex. The doctor led the way down a hall of grays, blues, and whites. The strange antiseptic smell of a hospital clung to everything, but they had tried to mask it with something floral. Allen’s room wasn’t far away. It was filled with different shades of blue. A sink was off to the right. A recliner and a love seat sat along the wall in front of a window. Allen lay in the hospital bed in the center of the room, connected to all manner of tubes and machines that buzzed, whirred, and beeped.

They approached, and Allen’s eyes turned in their direction. Marcus swallowed hard and squeezed Allen’s hand. “You scared us, Professor. You must be getting soft in your old age. Five years ago it would’ve been Ackerman in that bed.”

A ghost of a smile crept onto Allen’s lips, but he looked frail and weak. When he spoke, his voice was only a whisper, and they had to lean close to hear. “‘Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.’”

Marcus chuckled. But Vasques had a strange look on her face. “Shakespeare,” he explained.

“Don’t worry about me. I don’t want you sitting around here coddling me with your thumbs up your asses.” Allen coughed, and pain showed on his face. “Get out there, boys, and catch me a killer.”

Thinking of Ackerman and the Anarchist, Marcus said, “How about two?”

“Even better.”