Devoted(86)
Although he was accompanied by Johnson, each with his right hand on his holstered pistol, and although two more men were waiting for them at the shoe, Sheriff Eckman didn’t want to be part of this investigation. He preferred to call a higher authority, relinquish jurisdiction, but he was the highest officer of the law in Pinehaven County, an unfortunate consequence of winning an election.
The particular parking lot east of the hospital was reserved for the staff of the institution. The wind whistled and hissed off the polished flanks of at least two dozen vehicles, among which—or in one of which—Shacket could have been hiding. The two deputies who had run a quick search of the cars and SUVs assured him that the fugitive was not here. But they were men Eckman had hired for their lack of curiosity and blind loyalty, and he didn’t trust them to have done a thorough job.
Freeman Johnson, a holdover from the Sheldrake administration, who had earlier cattle-prodded Shacket into submission, inspired more confidence. He was the one who had found the shoe, and he led them past the vehicles, out of the parking lot, onto a service road that encircled the grounds.
The shoe lay on its side in that road, the knot in the laces having slipped loose. In the beam of Johnson’s Tac Light, the shoe was a pitiable sight, like that of a snatched child whose parents would never see him again, except this shoe was a size twelve.
Directly across the road, a separate building housed the gas-fired heating and cooling plant that serviced the hospital through a four-pipe fan-coil system, allowing every patient room, surgical unit, and office to be set at a different temperature from the others.
Freeman Johnson said, “That’s where he is. That’s where he took Thad Fenton. I’d bet my pension on it.”
The heating plant was built of slumpstone painted gray, with a metal roof. Inside were boilers and chillers and a maze of other machinery, including a cooling tower. Through a tunnel under the road and parking lot, one large pipe carried superchilled water to the HVAC equipment in the hospital, and another carried superheated water; two return pipes brought exhausted water back to the building to be filtered, chilled or heated again, and recycled. There weren’t many windows, and at this hour, half were dark. A thick corpus of steam, rising from a cooling-tower stack, was dismembered by the wind and harried through the night like a withering procession of damned spirits.
Sheriff Eckman didn’t want to go into that place. The building might as well have had a neon sign on the roof that said Come Here To Die. Because Freeman Johnson had always done what was required of him during a long career of service, he was ready to draw his pistol and search the building. Deputies Hardy and Drew were not merely game, but eager to bring Shacket to justice, because they were stupid.
Hayden Eckman made two phone calls, the first for backup. He wanted two more men, both with shotguns. He also called the night administrator of the hospital to find out who might be at work in the heating-cooling plant at this hour.
The administrator, Janet Fegin, said, “There are three during the day, but only one on the graveyard shift. Eric Norseman.”
As the sheriff waited with his team for the deputies bearing shotguns, the words graveyard shift echoed in his mind.
91
By the time that John Verbotski and Bradley Knacker arrived on Greenbriar Road, after driving from the abandoned shopping mall in Sacramento, their associates in Atropos & Company had researched the situation in Pinehaven. They provided necessary information acquired by hacking into the county sheriff’s communications system, the property-title records in the tax collector’s computer files, the county voter rolls, and the records of births and deaths.
At 4:43 a.m., Verbotski and Knacker cruised north on Greenbriar in their Cadillac Escalade, past the Bookman house. The presence of sheriff’s department vehicles and deputies sitting sentinel didn’t surprise them because they learned en route about the fugitive Lee Shacket, his violent acts at this residence, his arrest, and his subsequent escape. Their client, Alexander Gordius, hadn’t mentioned this complication; he was evidently not aware of it.
As they passed the house a second time, heading south, Bradley Knacker called the current number for Gordius. No answer.
“He was going back to his hotel, hit the sack.” Verbotski said.
“We might not be able to reach him for a while.”
“You know the hotel?”
“No. He’s not going to give me that, figuring I might try to get the registration records, learn his real name or whatever other fake name he used to register.”
For Atropos & Company, the only business more profitable than murder-for-hire was blackmailing selected clients who had paid them to kill people. Gordius, whoever he might be, was always careful not to provide a lead on his true identity. He always contacted them on a different disposable phone. And though they had tried to get his fingerprints, he seemed to have none; perhaps they had been removed with acid and CO2 laser treatments, a process that Verbotski had been considering for himself.
“So now what?” Knacker asked. He was the younger of the two and had less patience when the timing of a plan had to be revised. “We just wait around until we can get hold of this asshole?”
“No. Let’s secure our base of operations. Be ready to make our move. And never call a client an asshole.”
“Not even if he is?”