The Color of Wounds Page 22

  “Merrill, I want you to be ready with the shotgun. If Aubrey sees a spot, she’ll call out. You can bet a pigeon will be coming in. You nail it.”

  “Got it,” Merrill said. “What are you going to do?”

  Kent’s eyes met his brother’s square on. “Lucinda and I are going to see where the birds are coming from. When I get the bastard’s location, we are going after him,” he said, his voice low, rumbling with resolve.

  Merrill had heard that tone before and knew there was no hope of changing Kent’s mind. “You be careful.”

  “I will.” Kent scowled at both of them like a football coach. “Let’s go!” He watched them jump the guardrail, descend across a swale, and disappear into the park, Lucinda on his heels.

  He cut around to the east, moving slowly and watching for Tice, figuring where the man would be hiding, but always keeping some part of the statue in view.

  He was scanning a small grove of trees when he heard Aubrey shout. A few seconds later the songbirds in the park went silent in response to the report of Merrill’s shotgun.

  Kent held his breath, waiting for a much larger explosion. None came. Thank God.

  He glanced at his watch. It was exactly one o’clock. To Lucinda, he said, “The sonofabitch is really doing it,” as if he ever doubted it.

  CHAPTER 40

  From his position, Kent was not able to see the first C4-rigged pigeon. But because he heard Aubrey shout and the blast of Merrill’s shotgun—and mostly because they were not followed by an explosion—he knew his plan was working. He moved to a better place to see the sky surrounding Simpatico. Before he reached it, he heard Aubrey shout again and a shotgun blast—no explosion. Still he did not see a pigeon.

  He was running when the sequence of shouts and shots occurred for the third time. His eye caught the silhouette of a pigeon against the sky just as Merrill fired. Its wings collapsed and it tumbled it to the ground. He heard an adrenalin-induced war whoop from his brother and saw another pigeon. They were coming in from over by the main building.

  Kent took cover behind a tree and caught his breath, all the time watching for more avian missiles and trying to think. Where could Tice be launching the birds from? A parked car or van? Hidden in the bushes somewhere? His body quaked each time Aubrey yelled and Merrill fired.

  Kent scanned around the main building. Thank God it was Sunday morning—no traffic, no vehicles parked out front, no people, no nothing. If it had been a weekday, there would have been any number of innocent bystanders.

  Out of habit he located the window of his office on the second floor. As he thought, his eyes drifted up one floor, and he had it. Tice’s lab had a window overlooking the park, too. Kent had admired Simpatico from it on the day he was there for the blood tests and EEG. He pressed his forehead against the tree until it hurt.

  “Lucy, that sonofabitch is bombing my statue from my building!”

  He moved closer to the CVC for a better look, and sure enough, there was movement at the window of Tice’s lab.

  Kent’s first instinct was to rush the building and counterattack Tice in a wide-open charge. But then reason kicked in. Tice had a bird’s eye view from where he was. If he tried to cross Copithorn Boulevard and the parking lot, Tice would see him for sure. Then what? He may run, try to get away. Kent doubted that. He may pull out a rifle and shoot him as he crossed open ground. Or he could shoot Aubrey or Merrill. He must have seen them from up there, know where they are. He might decide to blow up the whole CVC in some grand gesture of self-sacrifice. None of those risks were worth taking.

  When he looked at the building again, he saw the first small group of employees emerging from the building—the Sunday skeleton crew drawn by the shouting and gunshots coming from the park. He gave up a silent prayer for their safety.

  He needed to alert his employees that they were in danger. But he couldn’t even get to them, let alone take the time to explain what was happening.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, Kent saw Barry’s old black Toyota sputtering along Copithorn Boulevard. He ran toward it like a madman, emerging from the park, into the roadway, just as it reached him. He intercepted it with waving arms.

  Kent saw Barry’s perplexed look through the windshield. Ever the mellow teenager, Barry lowered his window and leaned out. “Hey Doc, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Kent dove into the passenger seat and Lucinda jumped in right behind him. “Man, I’m glad you are scheduled to work today.”

  “I don’t mind Sunday duty. I like the quieter pace.”

  “I need your help. We’ve got the bomber trapped in the main building, up in the Behavior Center. I need you to get everybody out of the building and away from the park.”

  “The bomber is in the CVC? You know that?”

  “Keep driving. Drop me off close to the building at the equine entrance, then go through the back to the main office and tell whoever’s there to evacuate the building. Don’t let anyone around front.”

  “Got it.”

  Merrill’s shotgun sounded as they eased along Copithorn

  Boulevard.

  “What was that?” Barry asked, wide-eyed and leaning for a better look at the park.

  “It’s the chief and your mom protecting the statue,” Kent said through clenched teeth, dreading the explosion that could follow. None. “I’ll tell you about it later. Don’t let anyone near the park.”

  “Wow!” Barry said and continued to scan the park as more shots rang out.

  Kent had to admit, sometimes Merrill was a pain in the ass, but he was the perfect guy for the job. Years of bird hunting and police training had made him an expert marksman. At that moment, he knew Merrill was crouched behind a cluster of shrubs, scanning the sky, waiting for Aubrey’s signal that another laser spot was glowing on Simpatico. And when Merrill fired, he would, no doubt, watch with satisfaction as the bird crumpled, then tumbled to the ground.

  Kent suspected that Merrill was, in some weird way, actually enjoying the moment. Aubrey, on the other hand, would be terrified. Not of Tice, not of the danger she was in, but of the possibility of failure and the loss of Simpatico—again.

  Barry pulled the Toyota around the building to the equine entrance. Before it stopped rolling, Kent had his door open.

  “Okay, you got it? Drive around back. Get everyone out as quickly as you can through that way. And Barry, be careful.”

  He ducked from the car to the door in a crouched run as if he was being shot at, Lucinda at his side.

  CHAPTER 41

  Kent tore through the equine hospital. The few staffers he met gave him a quizzical look, choked back their greetings, and stepped back as he ran past.

  He scaled the stairs to the second floor where normally he’d head for his office, but this time he charged up one more floor to the Behavior Center. He slowed there, stopped on the landing, and took a deep breath before opening the door into the hallway.

  He pushed it open slowly with the palm of his hand, the other hand on the latch ready to yank it shut. He leaned forward into the crack it formed and scanned the hallway with one eye, half expecting Tice to leap out of some hiding place and start shooting at him.

  The hallway was empty.

  Kent moved cautiously down the hall, every nerve in his body vibrating in the ready mode, and repeated his careful entry into the Behavior Center.

  No one in the reception area.

  He moved toward Tice’s lab. The door was not locked. This was too easy. Tice was letting him enter the lab unchallenged. Tice wanted him to attack. Kent had thought it quite good luck that he had avoided being spotted when he was in the park. Tice’s vantage point was a military power point. From there, no doubt, Tice had seen Kent’s, Merrill’s, and Aubrey’s vehicles arrive on Route20. And certainly, Kent had not been all that wily when he flagged down Barry in the middle of the
boulevard. Tice knew right where he was. Tice was rolling out the red carpet.

  Before he opened the door into Tice’s lab, he stood in front of it listening. He envisioned Tice at the same windows where the two of them had looked out over the park and studied Simpatico the first time Kent had entered the lab. Tice would have a window open and he’d be launching pigeons, listening to shots. Probably laughing, too. To him it was all a game.

  His suspicion was confirmed when he heard a distant shotgun blast followed by Tice’s laugh through the door. He opened it and stepped into the insane researcher’s lab.

  It was different from the last time he had seen it. Now it was stark, strangely vacant, since the experiments had been dismantled. No confusion of instruments and equipment. No smell or suffering animals. Only open space and a few remnants of equipment abandoned on the lab benches. With their smooth black tops, they looked like rows of caskets.

  Tice was at the window, his unbuttoned lab coat billowing in the breeze that was blowing in. His lips spread back in a smile when he saw Kent, but he made no attempt to stop what he was doing.

  He reached to his left and pulled a pigeon from a wire cage that held enough kamikazes to blow up all of Jefferson. Each had been previously equipped with a tiny harness like the one Kent had seen in Tice’s demonstration. Tice picked a cigarette lighter size block of putty and a tiny electronic device from a table. Holding the flapping bird under his arm, he pushed two wires into the putty and slipped the whole works into the bird’s harness. He cradled the pigeon in the open window with his one hand and flipped a toggle switch on a piece of equipment that looked like a rifle scope mounted on a tripod. It was as big around and about as long as man’s arm and was painted green and brown in camouflage patterns. A black electrical cord snaked from the small panel of dials on its side, down to a battery pack. It was aimed out the window.

  When Tice saw Kent’s puzzled look, he said, “It’s a military laser sight, the kind soldiers beamed on their enemies to assure that their M-16 rounds hit the mark.”

  Kent pointed his .38 at the middle of Tice’s back. “Don’t let that bird go.”

  Tice kept the bird poised for a moment, his eyes on Kent, then he released it. When Merrill’s shotgun blast resonated into the room, he let out a laugh.

  Kent raised his revolver higher. “I swear I’ll kill you.”

  “What’s the matter, Dr. Stephenson? Worried about your precious statue?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Don’t worry. Your two cronies out there are doing a fine job. Watch this.”

  Ignoring Kent’s weapon, Tice reached down to a cardboard box at his feet that Kent had not previously noticed. It was an ordinary stock box, brown corrugated cardboard, several mutilated labels in place with tape, the size a microwave would come in.

  “These guys are already loaded,” Tice said.

  He lifted the box to the window, adjusted his laser sight, and pulled back the cardboard flaps. Three pigeons beat the air with their wings as they took flight through the window. He snapped the lid shut, turned to Kent, and rested a hip on the ledge, one arm bracing his box of birds, and the other laying across his laser sight. He waited, staring at Kent with the eyes of a devious schoolboy.

  Kent began his warning again, “I told you I’ll shoot and ...”

  Tice cut him off with a raised hand. “Listen,” he said.

  There were three shots in quick succession, each one jarring Kent like a punch in the ribs. No explosion followed.

  “See? They’re doing great! All quiet.” Tice stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder how many rounds your brother brought.”

  “You don’t want to die,” Kent said. “You can stop this now, before anyone or anything gets hurt, and you’ll live to tell about it.”

  “Ha! You think I care whether I live or not? Hell, you killed me a long time ago. You took away my reason for living.”

  “Anything that happened, had to happen. We couldn’t let those experiments go on. They were hideous.”

  “You are a weakling. A coward. It takes courage to sacrifice a few for the good of the many.”

  “I don’t regret stopping your work for a second. What I hated then, and now, is that the university got off scot-free. You guys, the grad students, took the heavy. They ruined your careers, not me.”

  “Why not?” Tice said, refusing to accept pity. “We were the brains. Those were all our hypotheses we were testing. It was our sweat and long hours. You don’t think that moron, Professor E. Randolph Bentley,” he spit the man’s name, “masterminded anything. He couldn’t think his way past the corporate contributors or the coeds’ panties.”

  “If you are so honorable and willing to take the blame, why have you spent the last half a decade planning revenge?”

  Tice spoke slowly, enunciating each word as he thought about those years. “I spent most of that time trying to find a place to work, a research facility that would accept me, so that I could complete those experiments.” He looked squarely into Kent’s eyes, and there was a strange sadness. “Don’t you see? Those experiments were of vital importance. Not just for us as researchers. We were on the verge of breakthroughs that would help all of mankind. The military knows that. They didn’t want to stop them.” Tice gave a short laugh as he considered the Army involvement. “Maybe they kept them going. They might have carried them out secretly somewhere else. That happens, you know. Unfortunately, if they did, they did not solicit help from me.” He paused. Then he said, “I only spent the last few months scheming my revenge. Our revenge.”

  “Which brings up another point,” Kent said. “When you say ‘our revenge,’ I assume you are including Dee Mitt. Why did you kill her? She was one of you from the onset. She stuck by you.”

  Anger rose in Tice again. “She got weak and cowardly in the end, just like you. She started slipping up, talking to people about things she shouldn’t have.”

  Kent’s face twisted into a disgusted look. “So you killed her like she was nothing more than one of the animals in your Torture Lab?”

  Tice raised his shoulders in a shrug. He leaned over casually and peered into the laser sight, adjusted it slightly. “I had no choice. Dee became a burden.”

  He reached into his box and retrieved another armed pigeon. “I’ve got a few more,” he said.

  “Don’t even think of releasing that bird. So help me God, I’ll blow your lunatic head off.”

  Tice stroked the bird cradled in his arms and let out a soft laugh. “Maybe you better aim at the bird.”

  “I’ll let Merrill handle that part. I’ll take you out. He’ll get the bird.”

  “He probably won’t get this one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s not going to the statue.”

  Kent kept his gun aimed at Tice and waited for him to say more.

  “You can’t see from where you are standing,” Tice said, “but your girlfriend has a pretty red dot right between her shoulder blades and she doesn’t even know it. Neither does your brother, and he’s only a step away from her.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Tice, careful not to make a fast move, picked up a large pair of binoculars from the windowsill. He held them so Kent could see what they were, then tossed them to him. All the time he kept the pigeon warhead pointed out the window.

  Kent caught the glasses with his left hand. His right one held the .38 pointed at Tice in a monstrous stalemate.

  Tice motioned toward a window a few paces from where he was holding the pigeon. “Look for yourself.”

  Kent maneuvered between the benches, until he was at the window. He raised the binoculars slowly, still watching Tice and still pointing his gun. He only looked at Aubrey for a fraction of a second, but it was long enough to confirm a shiny red dot where the snaps of her bra would lie on her beautiful back. Unaware, she kept her binocul
ars fixed on Simpatico.

  Kent went weak with fear.

  Tice held the bird even closer to the window. “Gee. It would be a shame to kill the two of them.”

  “You bastard. If you kill her, I …”

  “Drop the gun,” Tice said with cool detachment.

  For a second, Kent considered taking a shot at the pigeon. A snap shot using a handgun with a three-inch barrel. The likelihood of killing the bird? Slim to none.

  He could rush Tice and topple the laser sight. Tice would release the bird on Kent’s first step and he was only a stride away from the sight compared to Kent’s half-dozen. Odds were slim.

  If he fired a lucky shot between Tice’s eyes, killed him on the spot, the bird would still fly out the window on its way to Aubrey’ shoulder blades.

  Anger gave way to frustration. Slowly, Kent released his grip on his .38 and let it fall to the floor.

  Tice reveled in victory, letting the moment hang. At length he said, “Now who’s got the upper hand?”

  “I do,” came a voice from across the lab.

  Kent and Tice both turned with a start, recognized the speaker, and blanched as if they’d seen a ghost.

  Standing in the doorway was Dee Mitt. She held her huge revolver leveled at Tice’s head.

  Kent recovered first. “No! No!” he said. “He’s got a beam on Aubrey. If he lets go of that bird, he’ll kill her and probably the police chief, too.”

  Tice was still dumbfounded. He stared at Mitt, head cocked, brow creased, not believing his eyes. Finally, he said in a dazed tone, “Dr. Stephenson is right. If this bird goes, they’re dead. Drop your gun.”

  Mitt looked from Tice to Kent.

  Kent nodded.

  She held her weapon steady, still trained on Tice.

  “Drop it.” Tice said again.

  Kent knew she hated Tice and wanted to kill him. And until her meeting with Kent earlier that day, she would have, without a second thought. But now she cared again. She hoped to start her life over and certainly she did not want to begin it by killing Tice or being responsible for the death of two innocent people.