John Locke - Lethal People

Look,” Quinn said, by way of clarification. “I keep pushing the switch till you die, and every assassin, every kill squad, and half the country’s armed forces will try to plant me in the ground.”

“Aw hell, Augustus, these guys try to kill me every time they invent a new toy. Don’t forget, they pay me well for this shit.”

“In advance, I hope.”

Speaking to the camera, Creed said, “If I die tonight, hunt this ugly bastard down and kill him like the dog he is.” Creed winked at his monstrous friend and set his feet.

Quinn shrugged. “I can always edit that last part.” He held Creed’s gaze a second and then checked his stopwatch and threw the switch.

Ten seconds later, Donovan Creed was on his back, lifeless, though his screams continued to echo off the prison cell walls.

Augustus Quinn, a man entirely unburdened by sentimentality, left Creed where he dropped and removed the video card from the camera. Tomorrow he’ll send copies to NSA, the CIA, and Department of Homeland Security.

Quinn pocketed the video card but stopped short after hearing a small sound. In the absence of certainty, he preferred not to squeeze his huge frame through the narrow cell door opening, but this was Donovan Creed after all, so Quinn entered reluctantly, knelt on the floor, and tried Creed’s wrist for a pulse. Failing to find one, he cradled the dead man’s head in his giant hand and placed his ear close to Creed’s mouth.

A raspy whisper emerged: “That all you got?”

Startled, Quinn drew back. “Son of a bitch!” he said for the second time that night. Some day he’ll be drinking in a biker bar or hanging on a meat hook somewhere, and some guy will ask him who the toughest man he ever met was.

Quinn will say Donovan Creed, and he’ll give a dozen examples of Creed’s toughness, ending with these most recent events. He’ll tell it just the way it happened tonight, no need to embellish, and he’ll end the story with a recitation of Creed’s final words, “Is that all you’ve got?” The guy hearing the story will smile because, as final words go, Creed’s were gold.

As it turns out, those were not Creed’s last words.

“This time,” he said, “give me twelve seconds.”

Quinn sighed. “I should’ve brought a sandwich,” he said.

Quinn fears no human or beast in the world, save for the man at his feet. Specifically, he fears that thing inside the man on the fl oor that drives Donovan Creed to sleep in a prison cell every night when he’s here at his headquarters in Virginia—or in the attics and crawl spaces of homes owned by clueless strangers the rest of the time. Nor can Quinn fathom what fuels Creed’s insane desire to build his resistance to torture by scheduling these horrific late night sessions in order to play human guinea pig to the latest military death weapon du jour.

Quinn makes his way back through the cell door opening and places the video card back in the camera. He peers into the aperture, presses the record button.

The lens displays a stark prison cell measuring six feet by nine. A narrow bed with a bare mattress hugs the left wall, separated from the toilet by a stainless steel sink. The reinforced cinderblock walls and concrete floor are painted institutional gray. Two-inch-thick iron bars span the front of the cell. A center section can be slid to one side to accommodate prisoner access. The ceiling is high and holds fluorescent lighting above a grid designed to discourage prisoners from hurling food or clothing upward in an attempt to obtain shards of glass from which to fashion a weapon.

The grid diffuses the light into a greenish glow that slightly distorts the image of the man on the floor in the center of the prison cell … as he struggles, once again, to his feet.

CHAPTER 1

Iawoke in mid-scream, jerked upright, and jumped off my cot like I’d been set on fire. My brain cells sputtered, overloaded by panic and crippling pain. I staggered three steps and crashed into the bars of my cell. I grabbed them and held on for dear life. It took a minute, but I finally remembered how I’d spent the previous night cozying up to the death ray.

My cell phone rang. I ignored it, made my way to the toilet, and puked up everything inside me, including, possibly, my spleen. The ringing stopped long before I felt like checking the caller ID. Nine people in the world had my number, and this wasn’t one of them. Whoever it was, whatever they wanted, could wait.

From my prison cell in Bedford, Virginia, getting to work was as easy as stepping into the elevator and pressing a button. I did so, and moments later, the row of nozzles in my office steam shower were blasting me full force. After several minutes of that, I knew my body wasn’t going to rejuvenate on its own, so I stepped out and shook a dozen Advil into my hand.

I looked in the mirror. Usually when I felt this bad I required stitches, and lots of them. I leaned my elbows on the sink counter and lowered my head to my forearms.

The ADS weapon was all I’d hoped for and more. I knew in the weeks to come I’d master the damn thing, but for the time being, it was kicking the crap out of me. I wondered if the suits at Homeland would be happy or miserable to learn I had survived the first session.

When the room finally stopped spinning, I swallowed the Advil. Then I shaved, put some clothes on, and buzzed Lou Kelly.

“You got anything on Ken Chapman yet?” I asked.

There was a short pause. Then Lou said, “Got a whole lot of something. You want it now?”

I sighed. “Yeah, bring it,” I said.

I propped my office door open so Lou could enter without having to be buzzed in. Then I dragged myself to the kitchen and tossed a few ice cubes and some water into a blender. I threw in a packet of protein powder and a handful of chocolate-covered almonds, turned the dial to the highest setting, and pressed the start button. By the time Lou arrived, I was pouring the viscous goop into a tall plastic cup.

Lou had a thick manila folder in his hand.

“Local weather for a hundred,” he said. He placed the folder on the counter in front of me.

“What are my choices?”

“Thunderstorm, ice storm, cloudy, or sunny,” Lou Kelly said.

My office apartment was above ground, but windows could get you killed, so I didn’t have any. My office walls were two feet thick and completely soundproof, so I couldn’t automatically rule out a thunderstorm. But it was early February, and I’d been outside yesterday. I drank some of my protein shake. Yesterday had been clear and sunny.

“I’ll take cloudy,” I said.

Lou frowned. “Why do I even bother?” He fished two fifties from his pocket and placed them beside the folder.

“Nothing worse than a degenerate gambler,” I said.

Lou pointed at the folder. “You might want to reserve judgment on that,” he said. He reached down and tapped the folder twice with his index finger for emphasis.

Lou Kelly was my lieutenant, my ultimate go-to guy. We’d been together fifteen years, including our stint in Europe with the CIA. I took another swallow of my protein shake and stared at the manila folder.

“Give me the gist,” I said.

“Your daughter was right not to trust this guy,” Lou said.

I nodded. I’d known the minute I answered the phone last week that something was wrong. Kimberly, generally a good judge of character, particularly when it came to her mother’s boyfriends, had felt the need to tell me about a curious incident. Kimberly had said, “Tonight Ken broke a glass in his hand. One minute he’s holding a drink, the next minute his hand’s full of blood!” She went on to explain that her mom (my ex-wife, Janet) had made a snide remark that should have elicited a withering response from her new fiancé. Instead, Chapman put his hands behind his back, stared off into space, and said nothing. When Janet whirled out of the room in anger, Chapman squeezed the glass so hard that it shattered in his hands. Kimberly had been in the loft watching the scene unfold. “There’s something wrong with this guy, Dad. He’s too …” she searched for a word. “I don’t know. Passive-aggressive? Bipolar? Something’s not right.”

I agreed and told her I’d look into it.

“Don’t tell Mom I said anything, okay?” Kimberly had said.

In front of me, Lou Kelly cleared his throat. “You okay?”

I clapped my hands together. “Wonderful!” I said. “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

Lou studied me a moment. Then he said, “Ken and Kathleen Chapman have been divorced for two years. Ken is forty-two, lives in Charleston, West Virginia. Kathleen is thirty-six, lives in North Bergen, works in Manhattan.”

I waved my hand in the general direction of his chatter. “The gist,” I reminded him.

Lou Kelly frowned. “The gist is our boy Chapman has serious anger issues.”

“How serious?”

“He was an accomplished wife-beater.”

“Was?” I said.

“There is evidence to suggest he’s reformed.”

“What type of evidence?” I asked. “Empirical or pharmacological?”

Lou looked at me for what seemed a very long time. “How long you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?”

I grinned and said, “A generous vocabulary is a sure sign of intellectual superiority.”

“Must be a lot of room in your head now that you’ve let them out,” he deadpanned.

“Let’s continue,” I said. “I’ve got a headache.”

“And why wouldn’t you?” he said. Then he added, “According to the letter his shrink presented to the court, Chapman appears to have overcome his aggression.”

“A chemical imbalance,” I suggested.

“Words to that effect,” Lou said.

I gave Lou his money back and spent a couple minutes flipping through the police photos and domestic violence reports. The pictures of Kathleen Chapman would be considered obscenely brutal by any standard, but violence was my constant companion and I’d seen much worse. Still, I was surprised to find myself growing strangely sympathetic to her injuries. I kept going back to two of the photos. I seemed to be developing a connection to the poor creature who years ago had found the courage to stare blankly into a police camera lens.

“What do you say to a woman with two black eyes?” I said.

Lou shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you say to a woman with two black eyes?”

“Nothing,” I said. “You already told her twice.”

Lou nodded. He and I often used dark humor to detach ourselves from the brutality of our profession. “Looks like he told her a hundred,” he said.

I removed the two photos from the folder and traced Kathleen’s face with my index finger. And then it hit me. I handed the pictures to Lou. “Have our geeks remove the bruises on these and run an age progression to see what she looks like today.”

He eyed me suspiciously but said nothing.

“Then compare her to this lady.” I opened my cell phone and clicked through the photos until I found the one I wanted. I handed Lou my phone. “What do you think?” I said.

He held my cell phone in his right hand and the photos of the younger Kathleen in his left. His eyes went back and forth from the phone to the photos. Then he said, “They could be twins.”

“I agree,” I said. I took the phone back and started entering some commands on the keys.

“So who is she?” he asked. “The one in the picture you’re e-mailing me.”

I shrugged. “Just someone I know. A friend.”

“The geeks might question this project,” he said.