William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

“She could’ve just asked…”

“She felt she couldn’t. She knew you would be importunate and disapproving and would not give her anything, so she didn’t bother. Because you were too wrapped up in your own world to be a part of hers.”

Dr. Spencer was quiet for several layers of brick. When she spoke again it was with a sullen defiance. “So you’re doing this to punish me for being a bad mother?”

“Not at all. You’re the one who brought up your relationship with your daughter.”

“Then why?”

“I cannot let you continue to interfere with my work. My plan.”

“What are you talking about? What do you think you’re doing?”

He slapped down another slab of mortar. “At the moment, I’m building a wall.”

“Around me? Is that your sick idea? You’re going to entomb me in your basement?”

“More or less.”

“And I’m supposed to lie here till the end of time?”

“Goodness, no. That would be cruel and inhuman.” He continued laying the bricks. “This is a small alcove, and the way you’re breathing, you’ll use up the air quite quickly. I doubt if you’ll last more than an hour or two.”

Her arms and legs stiffened, straining against the leather straps. It seemed her muscular control had returned. “Sadist!”

He made a tsk ing sound, then continued working. Barely half a foot remained between the top of the wall and the ceiling.

“Please don’t do this.” Her voice finally cracked. “I’ll give youanything you want. Just let me go. I won’t hunt you anymore, I promise.”

He sighed a little as he slapped down the bricks. It was so disappointing. In the end, they all gave way to weakness.

“What is it you want from me?”

“Only your death. A slow and painful one. A terrifying demise.” The wall reached the ceiling. There was only one opening remaining, one space he had left vacant at eye level. “I’m afraid this is where I must bid you adieu,” he said, peering through the gap.

“Please don’t leave me in here!”

“Dr. Spencer, you are wasting precious air. Instead of this useless caterwauling, may I recommend that you spend your remaining time coming to terms with your Maker? Use these last precious hours to commit yourself to your faith. If you have one.”

“You’ll pay for this!”

“And if not,” he said wearily, “this might be an opportune moment to adopt one.”

“For God’s sake-”

“Yes. For the love of God. ”

With a splash of mortar he wedged the final brick into place, then plastered over the wall to ensure that it remained airtight. Not a bad bit of masonry, if he said so himself.

She did scream, of course, even though it was the stupidest thing she could possibly do. She threatened and pleaded and repeated the vile insults that had made this action so necessary in the first place. After a while, he realized he did not need to subject himself to this. He went upstairs, closing the basement door behind him, and waited for the screaming to end.

“Explain this to me again,” I asked Tony.

“My pleasure.” His nose was pressed against the glass of the vacuum chamber as he repeated the entire exegesis. “We put the floor mat in there with a milligram of gold in the heating element, then sealed it. The pumps suck out the air and create a vacuum. The gold boils, almost into a steam. A thin invisible layer coats the plastic. The gold will sink into the oil from the print, leaving only the ridges uncoated. Then we do it again, this time with zinc in the heating element. The zinc vaporizes, then recondenses only on metal-in other words, the gold from the previous treatment. And the result?” He directed our attention to his nearby computer monitor. “A great big beautiful high-contrast reverse-image print.”

“Nice little gizmo you’ve got here,” I murmured softly.

“Glad you think so, Susan,” he replied. “Because vacuum metal deposition costs a fortune, what with the gold and all. I’m telling Granger you authorized it.”

I hunched over his shoulder, peering at his computer screen, but no matter how much I squinted, no matter which way I turned my head, no matter how long I let my eyes go fuzzy, I couldn’t make out the print. “The lines all look the same to me,” I said, admitting defeat.

“Don’t sweat it,” he replied. “Psychos all look the same to me.”

What we were looking at was a computer enlargement of the print he had found on the floor mat in the car from which Fara Spencer was taken. It wasn’t all there-a chunk from the upper left never came clear-but Tony assured me that was enough to make a match. And this time it was a forefinger, not a palm print. I was trying not to get my hopes up, but we were all hoping this would allow us to identify the killer. With Patrick’s assistance, he’d already fed the print to FINDER, the FBI’s automatic fingerprint reader and processor. If this print or anything like it had been recorded by any computerized law enforcement agency in this country or several foreign nations, they could give us the identification we so desperately needed.

“We’ve got mail,” Tony said, pointing at his screen. “Three partial matches.”

I watched as three more prints appeared on the screen in a vertical column opposite the original. Tony scrutinized each whorl and swirl.

“Well?”

“Give me a minute.”

I saw that each of the match prints had a name beneath it with a hyperlink to a full FBI bio. If we could get a name, maybe even an address, this killer could be behind bars by midnight.

“No,” Tony said, after dragging the suspense out for what I thought was an ungodly length of time. “None of these work.”

“What do you mean?”

“They aren’t him. There are similarities, sure. Enough to pass the computer software match threshold. But they aren’t the same.”

“You’re sure?”

He was still staring at the screen. “Much as I wish I weren’t. Besides, none of these guys comes close to matching your description. This one’s a woman. The next is a guy in his seventies.”

“But we were sure that print came from the man who abducted Fara Spencer.”

He pushed back away from the computer, rubbing his eyes. “So now we know that our guy has never been arrested. Never run for political office. Never taken the bar exam. He’s managed to get through life without being fingerprinted. He’s never done anything like this before.” He slid out of his chair and switched the power off his monitor. “Or if he has, he’s never been caught.”

He ambled up the sidewalk outside Central Division headquarters trying to concoct a suitable conversation starter. As it happened, the young man sitting on the front steps eliminated the need.

“Are you a grown-up person?”

“Ye-es…”

“You must be kind of a short person. Are you kind of a short person?”

“I am as God made me.”

“I’m six foot one. Do you know how tall the Sears Tower is?”

He tugged at his collar. All his initial impressions were correct. There was something strange and more than a little disconcerting about this man’s demeanor. The way he struck up a conversation, albeit a nonsensical one, with a total stranger on a Vegas street. His voice was simple, almost childlike. And yet he was an adult, somewhere in his mid-twenties by appearances.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“It’s one thousand four hundred fifty-four feet tall. One hundred and three floors. It used to be the tallest building in the world. Not anymore.”

“Fascinating.”

“Do you know how tall the Empire State Building is?”

“Not exactly.”

“It’s one thousand four hundred fifty-three feet. One foot shorter than the Sears Tower. One hundred and two floors. Have you ever talked to a midget?”