Ryne Pearson - Capitol Punishment

“Dammit,” Frankie said softly.

Art pointed to the same muddy footprints in the tiled floor. “Upstairs,” he said.

They left the kitchen and went to the stairs. Each step was taken slowly to avoid the obvious tread marks. The agents stopped on the upper-floor landing. There were several doors along the corridor that stretched to either side. Only one of them, the second to the right, was open. The prints led to and from it. Art paralleled the tracks to the door as his partner hung back, but did not enter, using his eyes to examine the room — a bedroom — from the hall.

No . Even from fifteen feet it was clear that the scene in the kitchen had been repeated upstairs, though the stark contrast between what remained of the frilly white bedding and the explosion of crimson near the headboard took this to a higher level of grotesque.

This was not random, Art knew. It was not a run-of-the-mill burglary gone wrong. Nothing was missing that could be seen. No obvious disturbance. This was a hit. Plain and simple. And he had a good idea who was responsible for it.

“Another one,” Art said. “Looks like the mother.” He looked back to Frankie. “Come on.”

They moved quickly back down the stairs and outside, holstering their weapons as they ran to the front of the property and grabbed on to a decorative tree to help rescale the wall. A black-and-white was rolling up just as the agents hit the sidewalk.

“Is everything all right?” the nurse inquired worriedly.

“I’m afraid not,” Frankie answered.

Art trotted to the police car, making his shield obvious to the two officers. “There’s two dead inside.” The passenger immediately took the mic in hand. “It looks fresh.”

“What are you doing here?” the driver inquired.

“We were hoping to question one of the victims.” Someone had seen to it that that was not going to happen, Art thought. “Look, I’ve got to make a call.” Art stepped away, reaching for his cell when it began ringing. “Jefferson here.”

“Art, it’s Hal. We’ve got a mess here.”

A mess? He felt his eyes widen. Oh no . “Mankowitz?”

“He’s dead. Someone did him good. Blew the hell out of him with automatics.”

“Royce is dead, too. And his mother.”

“What?!”

“Hal, get up to Barrish’s house now. Fast!”

“All right.”

Art knew that no more explaining was needed. What was supposed was quite obvious. Someone was cutting his ties to a place, and to a time. And if that someone wasn’t stopped fast he might just disappear…if he hadn’t already.

Darian set the bag with the guns in it on the floor of the backseat. “Where’d you get it?”

Roger smiled. “From some guy’s ad in the paper. Two grand. It runs perfect.”

Perfect it didn’t have to be, Darian knew. Just good enough to get them across country. “Then let’s get out of here.”

Roger got behind the wheel of the Olds Cutlass, Mustafa taking the seat next to him. Darian and Moises climbed in the back.

“Brother Moises here do good?” Mustafa asked, looking back over the front bench seat.

Darian looked to the newest of their number and smiled. “He did good.”

Moises looked to the floor, a combination of embarrassment and a sudden nervous stomach hitting him. The adrenaline had worn off now, allowing the reality of the situation he’d walked willingly into to flash crystal clear in his mind. The reality, and a discovery he’d never considered. “It was easy,” he said, the revelation coming not from the soul but from the heart. He wasn’t sure he had the former any longer.

“Righteous things are,” Mustafa said, sharing some wisdom with the boy.

Roger started the car and got them moving. He headed immediately for the Santa Monica Freeway, entering eastbound at La Cienega.

“No turning back now, Brothers,” Darian said.

Mustafa agreed with a rare smile. “Power, brother.”

Darian started to answer, but was cut off.

“Power, brother,” Moises said, his hand extending forward.

It was a good beginning, Darian saw. And there was so much still to come.

“Ray!” Assistant Building Engineer Carl Tomei yelled as he entered the roar that filled 74. He let the door close behind and looked left, then right. Where the hell was he? “Ray!”

Nothing. Even in the steady, constant drone Ray should hear the call, Tomei knew. The hearing protectors required on this level were “tuned” to muffle the machinery noise while allowing sharper, more defined sounds, such as voices, to be heard.

But he had to be here. That camera crew he’d brought up to snoop around had already left, unless the receptionist was mistaken. Not likely, he thought. Then where was he? Tomei walked along the main feed duct, looking over its top on the off chance that Ray was checking something in an out-of-the-way place. He leaned on the duct every few yards, then continued on, giving up once there was no more area to check. “Dammit, Ray, where the hell — Oh, shit!”

Tomei saw the legs first, then his supervisor’s entire body, lying face-up on the floor. A circle of red the size of a salad plate covered his chest. “Ray!” He dropped down to the man’s side and touched his face, which was whiter than he’d ever seen. “My God!” Tomei stood tentatively, then ran through both doors and down the stairs to 73, stopping at the nearest phone. Once there his actions were automatic.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Seventy-fourth floor! First Interstate World Center! My boss! My boss!”

“Calm down, sir.”

“He’s bleeding and he’s unconscious! I think he’s dead!”

“Calm down. You have to—”

“Just get here! I’ve got to get back to him!”

Tomei tossed the handset back toward its cradle, missing badly, but not giving a damn either. He raced back up to 74 and to Ray’s side, checking for a pulse this time.

“No, Ray. No.” CPR . He had to try. Tomei scooted toward his boss’s head and put a hand under his neck, lifting gently as the other hand pinched the man’s nose. “Let me do this right, God,” he begged, then brought his mouth down to cover Ray’s.

A few feet away, however, a small microchip timer counted through the last digit of value and set in motion an action that would make Carl Tomei’s lifesaving efforts fruitless; but then he would not live to know the folly of his actions.

Zero.

A small cam rotated toward a magnet suddenly energized, freeing a piston that had held the deadly contents of the cylinder in check for several weeks. Instantly, pushed by the several atmospheres of inert gas with which Nikolai Kostin had pressurized the cylinder, the VZ began to spray freely into the ventilation system. This misty liquid was instantly picked up by the forceful flow of air from the SunSnow blowers and pushed through the diving turn of the ductwork and into the treelike divider network that snaked through the bowels of the building.

The fine droplets of VZ did their first damage on 71.

The secretary looked to the A/C vent, her nose twitching at the unpleasant smell now invading her office. The noxious sulfur odor, a product of the binary method of combination, caused her to recoil, her face a grimace.

“What is that ?” Annoyed and wanting to give Building Services a piece of her mind, she took the phone in hand and reached to the keypad, but her hand tensed before any numbers could be pressed. The appendage clenched, then shook as she looked at it, then both hands began vibrating.

What?

She looked upward, not at anything, as her neck muscles spasmed. Her head shook now, and suddenly both legs flexed like bent twigs and released, propelling her backward off the chair. On the floor her mouth went wide, as did her eyes.