“Yeah,” I manage to grunt. “What else can you tell me?”
“Forrest Knox visited the crime scene in a helicopter a little while ago. He issued the APB himself, and there’s not a chance in hell of getting it recalled. I’m sorry. I know this is tough, on top of everything else.”
“John, what the hell is going on? There’s no way my dad killed a cop.”
“What about Garrity?”
The time it takes me to ponder this possibility tells Kaiser all he needs to know.
“John, it doesn’t matter if they did it or not. When an alert goes out for a cop killer, it’s open season. Every cop within five hundred square miles will be looking to shoot them on sight.”
“I know. The only good news is that your father seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, right along with Captain Garrity. My advice is, put on your thinking cap and try to figure where he’d go to ground with his life on the line. Nobody knows him better than you, right?”
I shake my head, not sure of this at all.
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything else,” Kaiser promises. “And I’ll be monitoring Royal’s and Regan’s communications for you.”
I almost laugh at this. “Like it matters at this point? After what you told me, who killed Viola Turner rates about a two on a one-to-ten scale. At this point I’d be happy to have Dad on trial for murder. At least he’d stand a decent chance of surviving.”
“You work on finding him, Penn. I’ll work on a way to take him into federal custody.”
My heart leaps. “Will you really?”
“I don’t think Dr. Cage will survive an encounter with Forrest Knox’s troops, even if he gives himself up with his hands over his head.”
“Thank you, John.”
“Keep your head high, man. I know who the good guys are.”
As I press END, my eyes well with hot tears, and my throat spasms shut. Never have I felt so angry or impotent or cut off from my family. Two minutes ago, I was trying to save my father by solving a murder mystery. Now I’ll be lucky if I can keep him alive long enough to go to prison.
My bladder, which felt like stone as I talked to Kaiser, suddenly ambushes me with a desperate need to pee. Stepping up to the urinal on the wall, I see a piece of duct tape stretched across it. A handwritten sign reads: BROKEN! USE THE STALL!
Pushing open the stall door, I unzip and stand over the commode, but despite my urgency, nothing comes. My heart is pounding, and sweat has broken out on my face and neck. Did the news of the APB cause this? Or did it begin during my confrontation with Royal’s son-in-law? Though Regan didn’t say one word throughout, he made it clear that a state of war now exists between us. Just as my urine starts to flow, the restroom door opens.
“It’s a one-holer today!” I call. “I’ll be out in a second.”
“No problem,” says an amicable voice.
While I strain to empty my bladder, the stall door crashes against my back, knocking me into the wall and spraying piss all over me. An arm like an iron bar locks around my neck and bends my spine back over what must be a knee, pulling me into an agonizing bow. A blast of air bursts from my diaphragm, but the choke hold traps it in my throat. I can neither speak nor breathe. While I try in vain to free myself, a big hand gropes me from armpits to ankles, not missing any place where I could conceal a weapon or a wire.
My vision’s going black. The hold loosens slightly. When the voice speaks again, it’s a savage rasp in my right ear, the mouth so close I feel its heat and moisture.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you? Well, you’ve got a lot to learn, Mayor. You think you saw some shit over in Houston? Well, you didn’t. That’s bush league over there, and you’re about to find it out.”
Steeling my muscles, I try to hurl us both away from the wall, but Regan has such a bind on me that I can’t muster sufficient leverage. His knee digs deeper into my spine, which feels on the verge of snapping. Laughing, he lowers his voice to an intimate whisper.
“Everything you said out there,” he hisses, “you got from Glenn Morehouse, and that fat-ass is dead as a hammer. All you did today is guarantee your little girl’s gonna grow up an orphan—if she makes it herself. Your old man’s as good as dead already, and you’re next. It won’t be quick, either, I promise you that. It’ll be more pain than you think a human body can stand. I’ve had a lot of practice killing slow. You’ll beg me to finish you.” Again the knee digs into my spine. “And after I’m done? I’m gonna send your little girl the pictures. How does that sound, Mayor?”
He wrenches my neck backward, and something pops near the middle of my spine. Then he lets me fall and backs out of the stall.
I clutch the toilet paper dispenser to stay erect, and it’s all I can do to keep from collapsing over the commode.
Regan grabs a handful of paper towels and throws them at me, laughing. “You pissed yourself, Mayor. Better clean up before you go out there to your adoring fans.”
Gripping the top of one of the stall walls, I manage to pull myself to a standing position. Regan watches me with animal curiosity, his wild eyes showing genuine pleasure. His blitz attack scrambled my higher thought processes, but my lower brain functions are still active. Fight-or-flee chemicals course through me like amphetamines, and Regan has barred the way to flight. As I stand paralyzed, the atavistic core of my being speaks in the voice of my old friend Daniel Kelly.
When it’s life or death, forget the eyes, the balls, and all the rest of that crap they teach women. When it counts, there’s only one target—
Knowing I must draw Regan closer, I begin to laugh. First a chuckle, then a snigger that grows into a hysterical cackle, like something out of a horror movie.