Yes, the wound between the 9 and the 3 was already healing up nicely.
The General followed Markham with his binoculars until he disappeared into the apartment building. It had grown darker, but the General would wait a while longer. He lowered the binoculars and gazed down at Andrew J. Schaap’s BlackBerry. At that moment, his own cell phone began ringing on the seat beside him. He picked it up and read the name on the screen: Cindy Smith.
The General answered as Edmund Lambert. “Hi, Cindy.”
“Hi, Edmund. How’s your aunt doing?”
“Fine. Still a bit shaken up, but she’s sleeping now. My uncle is here, too, so I’ll be taking off shortly.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yes, it is. Any word on Bradley?”
“No,” Cindy said. “No one’s heard from him all day. Looks like he just bolted after last night’s show—car is gone and everything. I hope he’s okay.”
“I hope so, too,” Edmund said. “Did the show and the photo call go well?”
“Yes, but it was weird playing opposite George Kiernan. The show ended up being pretty good, actually. We even got a standing ovation, but the whole thing seems like a dream. Everything, I mean—the show, me and you, what happened the other night. You think we can talk about it?”
“Of course. How about I give you call when I get settled back at the house?”
“That’d be awesome, yeah.”
“But it might be late, okay? I still have some things I need to do.”
“Okay. Talk to you later.”
“Yes, you will. Good-bye, Cindy.”
Edmund picked up the BlackBerry and held it up next to his cell phone—stroked each of them with his thumbs and smiled. He was the General again.
“Sam Markham has no idea his partner is even missing,” he said. “If he did, Ereshkigal would have told us.”
Chapter 78
Markham sat at his kitchen table with the lists spread out before him like a big flower. He’d grown frustrated with the sheer number of suspects—knew that Schaap had to be working from a more specific list—and had just picked up his BlackBerry to call him when the theme from Rocky sounded off in his hand. He looked at his watch—9:12 p.m.—and felt a wave of relief when he saw the name on the BlackBerry’s screen.
Schaap.
“Finally,” Markham answered. “Where the hell are you?”
“Watching you from the sky, Agent Markham,” said the voice on the other end.
Markham froze, his stomach dropping into his shoes.
“Schaap?” he said weakly, but the man on the other end only laughed and said:
“His body is the doorway.”
The voice was deep and thick with a Southern drawl, and even as Markham’s mind began to spin with “Dark in the Day” and the thousand reasons as to why this couldn’t be happening, all at once he knew that Andy Schaap had stumbled onto the Impaler.
“Who is this?” Markham asked, wincing at the futility of his question.
“I am the three,” said the man on the other end, “but you are the nine. Will you know him when he comes for you, Agent Markham?”
Markham felt his words stick in his throat—managed to squeak out, “What have you done with Schaap?”—but the man on the other end only laughed.
“His body is the doorway,” he said, his inflection like a child’s. Markham felt suddenly as if he would vomit. He swallowed hard, was about to speak, when the voice in his ear said: “But there’s still time, Agent Markham. If you hurry, if you truly understand the equation, you’ll be allowed to touch the doorway, too.”
“What have you done to Schaap?!” Markham screamed, but got only the blinking call timer for an answer.
And then he was moving.
He ran into the bedroom and grabbed his gun—punched a number on his BlackBerry and put on his Windbreaker.
“This is Markham,” he shouted. He was back in the kitchen now, gathering up the lists. “Andy Schaap is in trouble. Get the tech unit to put a trace on his vehicle. Get them on his cell signal, too, and get the plate number into the local systems ASAP. I’m on my way back to the RA now.”
Markham hung up and slipped the paperwork into his briefcase.
He was out the door in a streak; dashed down the front steps and reached his TrailBlazer in a matter of seconds—when out of nowhere he felt a searing pain shoot across the back of his skull.
He watched his BlackBerry and his briefcase fall from his fingers in slow motion; saw himself stumbling sideways as the cars and the streetlights and the shadows swirled about him and grew blurry.
But Sam Markham stayed on his feet long enough to see the man in the ski mask stuff the smelly rag in his face.
“Textbook,” he heard Alan Gates say somewhere far away.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 79
By ten o’clock that evening, the two blocks of Lewis Street between Third and Fifth had been cordoned off. The residents were ordered to evacuate, and the parking lot across the street from Bradley Cox’s apartment building was completely surrounded by marked and unmarked vehicles.
A SWAT team leader gave the signal, and he and two other officers, weapons drawn, cautiously approached the black TrailBlazer in tactical formation. They looked first into the rear window, then into the front seat. And after a tense thirty seconds, the officer on the driver’s side called out, “Clear!”
A collective sigh of relief was heard as the members of the SWAT team lowered their weapons.
Looking on from across the street, just a few feet from Bradley Cox’s front door, an FBI agent from the Greenville Resident Agency said to his partner, “Call it in to Raleigh.”
The other agent began dialing as the SWAT team leader tried the door handle. It was locked. Another signal, and a local police officer with a Slim Jim rushed up to the Trail-Blazer and slipped it down into the driver’s side door.
“The car’s clear,” said the FBI agent into his BlackBerry. “But there’s still no sign of Special Agent Schaap.”
The FBI agent listened to the tech specialist on the other end. Something about Schaap’s BlackBerry being off the grid; something about it taking time to get the tower records.
Then he saw the TrailBlazer’s door open.
Even from where he was standing he could hear the series of loud clicks across the street. The tech specialist had gone on to say something about Sam Markham being unreachable, too—when suddenly the explosion sent the FBI agent’s BlackBerry flying from his hand.
Chapter 80
Cindy was just stepping out of the shower when she felt the tiles rumble beneath her feet. A thunderstorm’s coming, she thought, and dismissed the distant boom at once.
Fifteen minutes later she was in her pajamas, lying on her bed with her biology book, when her mother knocked on her door.
“Yeah?”
“You need to see this,” her mother said, entering. She was dressed in her nurse’s scrubs—graveyard shift this weekend, Cindy suddenly remembered.
“You’re going to be late,” Cindy said, and was about to complain that she needed to study, when the look on her mother’s face changed her tune at once.
“What is it, Mom?” she asked, but her mother had already clicked on the TV atop her dresser—immediately changed the channel from VH1 to a local station and sat beside Cindy on the bed.
“This happened near the Theatre building,” she said. “Over on Lewis Street.”
Cindy listened in shock as the reporter, a pretty woman with blond hair, recounted what the press knew thus far: something about a missing FBI vehicle, a parking lot, and an explosion; unconfirmed reports of at least four people dead, more people injured, shattered windows, a nearby resident said this, a nearby resident said that—
“Bradley Cox lives on that street,” Cindy said suddenly.
“The boy playing Macbeth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t think this has anything to do with him not showing up today, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Cindy said.
“I need to get moving, honey,” her mother said, rising. “I’m late, and if what they’re saying is true, they’re going to need me in the emergency room. Promise me you won’t go down there, will you?”
“I promise.”
“I love you,” said her mother, kissing her forehead.
“Love you, too,” Cindy replied absently, eyes glued to the T V. She didn’t hear her mother leave; had no idea how long she’d been sitting there watching the news report, when her cell phone startled her from her trance.
She reached for it, saw that the call was from Amy Pratt, and let it roll over into voice mail—waited patiently for the ding, then listened to Amy’s message. Typical Amy blabbering and nothing more to add than what she’d already learned from T V.
“Edmund,” Cindy muttered. “I wonder if Edmund knows.”
She dialed his number—let it ring and ring—and felt her stomach sink when the call went into voice mail. She left him a message—sent him a text, too—and began pacing her room, faster and faster as the minutes ticked away with no reply.
She had to get out of there; couldn’t bear the idea of being alone and wanted nothing more than to watch the news with Edmund Lambert by her side. Something was wrong. The explosion of the FBI vehicle on Bradley Cox’s street, the young actor’s disappearance—it was all connected. Cindy could feel it.
“Fuck this,” she said, and changed out of her pajamas into a pair of jeans and a Harriot T-shirt. She was downstairs and ready to go in less than a minute—grabbed her keys from the kitchen table, her denim jacket from the den, and dashed outside to her car.
Once inside, Cindy accidentally dropped her keys, cursed herself for being such a klutz, and ran her hand back and forth between the seat and the shift column. She reached under the driver’s seat and found them—inserted the Pon-tiac’s key into the ignition—but the car refused to turn over.
“Come on, Daddy’s piece of shit!” she cried, turning the key and pumping the gas until finally the old Sunfire’s engine sputtered to life. She didn’t wait for it to warm up, just threw the shift into reverse and backed down the driveway.
As she drove out of her neighborhood and headed for the highway, Cindy felt not the slightest bit guilty about breaking her promise to her mother.
After all, she’d only promised not to go down to the scene of the explosion.
She’d said nothing about going to Edmund Lambert’s.