“Good idea. Hadn’t thought of that. They could overrun the city if they wanted to.”
“I’ll need some information first,” Bane told him. “You’ll answer some questions, Mr. Renshaw?”
“Questions? Sure. Of course. Ask away.” His eyes wandered to the spot where his imaginary bullet had downed the imaginary giant cockroach. “You think they might be too big for your equipment? Big as rats, they are. You saw.”
“I’ll use a special adapter,” Bane assured him. “Can we sit down?”
“On the furniture, you mean? Well, I guess so but we’ll have to be careful. Caught a whole swarm under the couch last night trying to climb up my legs. I’ll watch yours if you’ll watch mine.”
“Legs? Of course.”
“And behind. They love to sneak up on you from behind. It’s not safe to have your back anywhere but against a wall. Big as rats, they are.”
Finally Renshaw sat uneasily on the couch. Bane took a chair directly before him, eyeing the magnum clutched in his fingers. Was there any way he could be sure the other chambers were empty as well?
“Mr. Renshaw, when did you first notice the bugs?”
“Notice them? While on the plane, of course. They came in through the windows. Smaller then. They’ve grown.”
“Did anyone else see them on the plane?”
“Of course they did. They were just too scared to admit it. I told the stewardess when the lights came back on and she said she’d handle it. Hah! You call this handling it? Maybe I’ll sue them for letting the bastards loose in my apartment. Must’ve snuck through in my luggage. Big as rats, they are.”
“What about the lights?” Bane probed.
“What lights?”
“The ones on the plane.”
“They went off for a few seconds.”
“And that’s when you first saw the bugs?”
“Yes.” Confusion claimed Renshaw’s face. “How did I see them if it was dark?”
Bane realized the man was being faced with his own delusion, dangerous potentially for someone in Renshaw’s state. “Because the emergency lights must have snapped on,” he said quickly.
“Of course,” Renshaw agreed, relaxing. “That’s it.”
“You say the lights were only off for a few seconds?”
“Long enough for the bugs to come.”
Bane was going to ask Renshaw if he’d noticed any of the other passengers behaving strangely but thought better of it. There was no way he could expect a coherent answer at this point.
“Oh God, oh God,” Renshaw muttered. “Don’t move! Do you hear me! Don’t move! …”
With that, the madman raised the magnum’s barrel and leveled it direct for Bane’s groin. He cocked the hammer, closed one eye to steady his aim.
“Hold still,” Renshaw whispered. “If you value your balls, don’t move a muscle.”
Bane strained his eyes to see if any shells were present in the chambers. No way to be sure. He gauged the distance between himself and Renshaw and decided chancing a leap against a potentially loaded gun was even more ludicrous than waiting for the madman to fire it.
“Steady,” Renshaw whispered and Bane held his breath. “Steady …”
The trigger started back.
Bane flinched.
Click.
“Bang! Got the sucker! Saved your balls, I did, saved your balls. Big as a rat, it was, big as a rat.”
Bane stood up. “I’d better go downstairs and get my equipment.”
Renshaw rose and a smile stretched from ear to ear. “I’d go and help you bring it up, but the bastards would overrun the place while I was gone. That’s what they’re waiting for you know. For me to leave or fall asleep.”
“I’ll be right back up.”
Renshaw regarded him thoughtfully on the way to the door. “Maybe you should call in more men. Big as rats, they are, big as rats.”
Bane closed the door behind him.
He had a friend at Bellevue he could call about Renshaw. Though it might prove a mistake from a security standpoint, there was no way he could stomach leaving the poor man up there, a captive of his mad delusions. He now knew two of the passengers who had traveled on Flight 22. One had developed psychic powers and the other had gone totally mad. Interesting contrast.
Bane couldn’t wait to learn what else might lie ahead of him. As it turned out, though, there wasn’t much in the next hour and a half. Of the next five names on his list, three were not home, a fourth claimed to have slept through the whole flight, and the wife of a fifth assured Bane that her husband showed no ill or unusual effects from Flight 22, certainly ruling out madness or psychic powers.
Bane then decided to give the COBRA cars following him a treat by leading them into Westchester County. There were seven names on the manifest that resided here and Bane elected to start with a woman named Gladys Baker, a widow from Scarsdale. Mrs. Baker was sixty-four and lived on Carthage Road, surrounded by yards that later in the afternoon would be dominated by children out to challenge the early spring cold. Her house was the simplest on the block, a two-story colonial with a flagstone walk. Strangely, Bane found himself teetering on the slabs, avoiding the grass at all costs. Once again a feeling of discomfort, of intruding, gripped his insides. It reached its peak after he rang the bell, when Gladys Baker opened the door and faced him from the other side of a screen.
“Yes?”
She was a gray-haired woman who looked more than her age. The glasses propped up on her nose were strung to a chain that would allow her to dangle them at her chest.
Bane flashed an ID card that made him a Federal Aviation Administration investigator. “I wonder if I might have a word with you, Mrs. Baker.”
“What about?” she asked nervously.
“It would be easier if we talked inside.”
Gladys Baker checked the I.D. more closely. “Joshua Bane … That sounds like a biblical name.”
“My mother was religious.”
She opened the door for him, her eyes thankful. “I’m so glad you’ve come. You don’t know what a load it is off my mind to see that someone else realized something was wrong with that flight.”
Bane felt his stomach flutter with anticipation.
“That is what you’ve come about, Mr. Bane, isn’t it?”
Bane followed her in and caught the familiar drone of soap opera music. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“I was just relaxing a bit,” Mrs. Baker told him.
“This won’t take long.”
“Let it take as long as it must. What a release it’ll be to talk about this finally. You’d like a cup of coffee or tea perhaps?”
“Well …”
“Please. It would be my pleasure. I was just about to make some for myself anyway.”
“In that case, thank you very much.”
He moved with her into the kitchen, feeling much more at ease and eager to hear the old woman’s story. She set the water boiling. Bane waited for her to sit down before he took a chair across from her at the kitchen table.
“I’m investigating some complaints we’ve had about the flight you took from San Diego back to New York six days ago,” he said.
Gladys Baker’s face whitened. She tucked her fingers under the table so Bane wouldn’t notice their trembling.
“Thank God,” she sighed, “it wasn’t just me who felt there was something wrong with the flight. But I didn’t say anything. Since my husband passed on I’ve had some … problems. Adjusting and all, you understand. I’ve spent some time in therapy. I have relatives who’d like nothing better than to make it permanent … from my husband’s side, of course. He left me everything, you see. So I couldn’t tell anyone about the flight, I just couldn’t.”
“You can now.”
“And you’ll take what I say in confidence?”