“Do you now understand me-you-Father's obsession?”
“I do, more than anyone on the planet, I do.”
She struggled to keep him engaged, her mind doing cartwheels. She wrote out a note telling Richard to call Chicago PD to get a car immediately to the address where Petersaul and Cates had staked out the apartment. Richard was immediately on it.
Giles said over the phone, “Have I become your obsession, Jessica? You keep coming at me like it's so, like you're looking for Father in me. If so, there's no stopping the inevitable, is there, and you become my obsession, and together, we are both mad.”
“Giles, there's a name for what you have, a mental disorder, and there are drugs and therapies, and we will get you the best doctors in the-”
“Only doctor I want is you, Jessica. You'd make a wonderful gift for dear old Dad.”
“It does not have to come to that, life or death for either of us.”
“They say history repeats itself. It happens all over again like New Orleans in that Mardi Gras graveyard where you almost died. We'll just have to find the proper time and place, you and me. But I won't take just your blood like Father.”
“You don't have to be like him, Giles!”
“But I am… just like Father. And I will take all of you. I'm going to cut out”-she heard him rummaging through Petersaul's wallet-”to cut out Agent Petersaul's spine like the others, you can be sure, along with this fat man, Cates.”
Jessica heard the sound of the car's ignition, and then Giles Gahran came back on. “I know you've been chasing me just as you chased my father before me, as you've chased all the truly brilliant and ingenious monsters, all the heirs to Jack the Ripper, all of us. But if you come after me, I will debone you, do you understand? Debone you.” His laughter was the last thing she heard before the phone went dead.
“Christ! I don't even know the address.” Jessica was rattled, but she knew she had to remain calm.
“Chicago field office agents are racing to the scene now,” Richard told her. “They're on it, Jess. Nothing we can do but pray they cut off his escape and that our agents are not dead.”
“Not sure I want to wish them alive in his hands,” she replied.
Robert Towne listened closely to the terrible turn of events.
“We've got to get to Chicago without any further delay!” she announced once off the line with Chicago FBI, who were on the lookout now for the car, the apartment at 3010 North Sheffield, the Hermitage Apartments, in the Wrigley Field ballpark area known locally as Wrigleyville.
“They're going to treat the apartment as a crime scene. We'll see it as is, untouched. They hope to have word on the missing field vehicle, Agents Petersaul and Cates, and the suspect by time we get there.”
“What're we waiting for?” asked Sharpe. “The jet is juiced up.”
“What about our video?” asked the young director. “This is going to go to CNN, Fox, MSNBC, all of 'em. It's going to put Scorp-Ion Productions on the fucking map, man.”
“Perhaps more than you know. How dramatic will it be to do a live feed from a jet plane to the networks? And can you do it? Do you have the equipment for it?”
“Are you kidding? We've got state-of-the-art, same as reporters had during the Iraqi war. Sure…”
“Terrific, but there's to be no information going out about our destination.”
The young man, Darren Callahan, turned to his technicians and fellow actors. “So, who's up for a trip to Chicago?”
“Cool!”
“Way cool!”
“I'm in, man.”
“Hey, bud, this is going to rock!”
The others looked at Jessica with large, expectant eyes. She replied, “Why the hell not? My expense account is blown anyway.”
“Before we send this out to every major network in America-”
“This is going worldwide, Dr. Coran,” Callahan corrected. “The final take, after we're OK with the last edit and audio, is going to hit a number of satellites at once, and it's going via laser-beam feed to the world.”
“All the better. But we give Governor Hughes one last chance to call the warden for a stay.”
“Damn, can't we just run it?” asked Callahan. “It's great stuff.”
Sharpe replied, “The kid's right. Hughes had his chance. Fuck him.”
“No, Richard. We lay it all out for Hughes. Give him fair warning.”
“He's not going to believe you, Jess. It's just a waste of time.”
“All the same, we warn him.” “Prick doesn't deserve any warning,” said Towne, “but go ahead, Dr. Coran.”
Jess contacted Hughes's office, getting Mrs. Dornan, who began making excuses for her boss, saying he couldn't be disturbed.
“You mean he's sleeping through the execution?”
“Not at all. He's simply washed his hands of your… you crusaders.”
“Mrs. Dornan, I called to give him fair warning. The man sitting in the cell on your death row is not Robert Towne but his brother, Darwin Reynolds.”
“What? I've never heard of such… such a bold ploy in all my life. The very idea.”
“We have a tape of the exchange between the brothers, and a blood test performed by Dr. Waters only an hour ago will prove you have Agent Darwin Reynolds on death row and not Towne. Towne is here with me, on a jet plane, thirty thousand feet over D.C.,” she lied. “Now, would you care to wake the governor or not? Your call, dearie. Oh, and by the way, within fifteen minutes, the story is going to break on every network in the U.S. and abroad.”
“I–I-I will get the governor on the line. Hold on. Hold on.”
It took several minutes but finally Hughes, his voice thick with sleep, came on, asking, “What is this nonsense, Dr. Coran? Do you know how upset you have made Mrs. Dornan, my personal-”
“You don't have Towne on death row.”
“What're you saying?”
“The FBI has Towne. / have Towne. You have Reynolds. Take a lot closer look at the man you intend on executing while you sleep.”
“This is preposterous, a lie.”
“Ask Warden Gwingault why Dr. Waters gave your phony Towne a last-minute blood test tonight, and it will prove what I say. Or call Dr. Waters directly and put it to him. He is expecting your call, and he expects to lose his contract with the state over this.” She gave him Waters's phone number. “He is waiting for your call.”
“You're bluffing, and if you aren't… if there is anything to this… if you have broken a man out of a maximum-security prison, you will pay, all of you to the fullest extent of Oregon law, you will-”
“Five minutes!” Jessica hung up on him.
The pilot informed them that he would start his descent for Chicago in ten minutes. “We gave the governor five minutes to call off the execution. If we don't hear back, then it's a go.”
The film production company hoped for a go. She could see it in their anxious eyes. Richard's eyes told her he held out no hope for the governor's coming around, and Towne voiced what was on everyone's mind. “Even if he does call the warden now, you people ought to air that tape.”
Giles had driven the two dead cops, whom he had since discovered to be Milwaukee-based FBI, to the castlelike Gothic-gated Rosehill Cemetery at 5800 North Ravenswood where he drove the car into the enclosed courtyard just beyond the open mouth of the castle. Ever interested in the “permanent” residents of a city, ever the cemetery buff and headstone reader, Giles had gotten a book called The Graveyards of Chicago. He'd earlier visited Rosehill with his box, thinking he might buy a plot and have the damn thing buried alongside some of Chicago's most famous scoundrels and get-rich quick artists, schemers, dreamers and real-estate investors whose final investment had been plots here at Rosehill.
He pulled the car to a stop and one by one, he groped and tugged and dropped the dead weight onto the paved courtyard, an enormous foyer leading up to the final gate, locked against him at this hour.
When he had slipped through the apartment building after seeing the two cops, and had sneaked around the back of their vehicle where they seemed in argument over their next step, he had brought his bag with him, filled with his tools, and the gun he had purchased as a precaution walking Chicago city streets. But now the hefty little.22-caliber proved extremely fortuitous.