Security(66)

Two more paramedics wheel a stretcher into Franklin’s office. Brian lifts Tessa onto it. The police lieutenant tries to help, but Brian snaps at him, “I’ve got her.” The lieutenant asks Brian a question, taking a piece of paper and a pen off Franklin’s desk. Brian glances at Tessa, whose eyes still show slips of awareness. He slaps the paper on the desk, draws a crooked rectangle with twenty compartments, and slashes “Xs” here and there. When the medics begin rolling Tessa out, he hands the map to the lieutenant like he can’t be bothered. He holds Tessa’s hand, escorting her to the corpse--strewn foyer, through the busted--in front entrance, across the cruiser--packed driveway, into an ambulance. They load her cautiously. I have a strange, flustered reaction—the ambulance is malevolent. It’s being driven by Killers; it’ll crash on the way to the hospital. But as Brian climbs in after her, looking around in a similar paranoid fashion, he notices Camera 3 above the main doors. He holds there, his weight on one foot. Lithe and young. Capable.

He nods at me, once. I grin, almost hearing him say it: I’ve got her.

I nod in return, and he ducks inside.

A policeman shuts the ambulance’s rear doors and pounds on the roof. It drives away. No siren, but its lights whirl, painting the hedge maze’s tall exterior in smaller and smaller swatches, until it reaches the highway and merges. I lose track of it momentarily when it’s passed by an armored van doing at least eighty. Then it’s an ember glowing red to blue. Then it vanishes.

The SWAT team arrives. Twenty--two men in full gear pour out of the vehicle. Their CO looks at the maze with the affected wisdom of a wretched leader. He starts his stratagem speech by shouting, “Listen up!” and it only gets worse from there. The men nod, smack their helmets lower, and charge into the maze single file. They split at each turn so they’ll cover more ground. They lead with their rifles around turns, see dark--clad figures with guns, and shout, “Freeze!” repeatedly, while the dark--clad figures with guns likewise shout, “Freeze!” repeatedly, until both parties realize they are attempting to disarm and arrest a fellow SWAT team member. It takes “Freeze!” said an average of four times for both dark--clad figures with rifles to realize this. I’m laughing so hard, my tears are streaming onto the counter and forming puddles.

I stop laughing instantly when a trio of SWAT team members successfully corners a fourth SWAT team member. Their boots are trampling a patch of muddy grass recently churned by a life--or--death brawl. But no dead man lies there.

I’m oddly relaxed, perusing monitors for him. A distant smudge of average stature skulks toward the ocean, far past the pool. He’s able--bodied, still; Brian must have missed. When the Thinker gets to the shore’s soft sand, he kneels. He labors at some task. The navy blue of his clothing becomes flesh. So does his face. He’s taken off his mask and his coveralls. He’s too far away for me to distinguish any features, but I can tell he’s digging. He rolls up his clothing, deposits it in a deep hole, tips sand on top, and packs it tight. He adjusts his sling--cum--bandage into exclusively a bandage so it won’t get in the way when he swims. I remember the sting of salt water in open wounds, and the memory reassures me. What a professional. He’ll collect his fee and leave the country for a while. He won’t kill Brian and Tessa, because he won’t be paid to.

The Thinker dives into the ocean and disappears.

The police lieutenant is walking into the foyer, holding Brian’s crude sketch. “Everybody shut it! We’ve got a diagram of where the bodies are. Where’s Johnson?”

“He’s puking again, sir,” says a sergeant.

“Fine, Wisnewski’s on point. We’re going floor by floor. We’ve got eyewitnesses saying the perps are dead—one in a pool out back, the other in the maze out front. I’ve sent SWAT in there, so they might find the guy by the time we’re all on our next birthdays.”

“It’s my birthday today, sir,” says the sergeant.

“That’s great, Wallace. Shut your damn face.”

Charles Destin, Destin’s girlfriend, and Delores are in the foyer. Sergeant Wallace opens the dryers, finds Franklin, and has to breathe into a paper laundry convenience bag for ten minutes. The police search each floor, but not each room (they don’t have card keys), so Henri remains in the dark of Room 1408 and Twombley in the dark of Room 1516. Brian knew where Jules was, so the police find her, and Wisnewski makes the intuitive leap that another body might be across the hall. He finds Justin. Brian must have described the nineteenth--floor entrance to the secret elevator, since the police knock on the shelf with the juice concentrate, with no result. Behind the wall in Franklin’s first--floor office, Vivica stares at her handprint with eyes that are flattening and beginning to cave in.

The coroners drew straws for who had to retrieve the Killer from the pool. A sad old man with heavy jowls works with what looks like an insect net. He’s making a pile of bite--sized pieces near Tessa’s boots.

SWAT team members continue freezing one another in the maze until their CO declares, via comm link, that the area is secure. He’s lying—he has no clue—but it’s dawned on him how risky this is. His men try to find their way out. One attempts to crash through the foliage and gets stuck. Another shoots at the hedges until he creates a hole, steps through it, finds he spatially misjudged, and scratches his helmet inside another dead end. I almost die of laughter. I’m red faced and covered in tears by the time they’re clear.