Liquid fear

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“That was a little risky, don’t you think?” Briggs asked, glancing around his office as if expecting to see cops in the shadows. “An open attack on Dr. Morgan in broad daylight?”

“You said try to embarrass her,” Kleingarten said, tossing a handful of unshelled sunflower seeds into his mouth. “Besides,” he said amid crunches, “only sneaky people come under suspicion. The important thing is I got it done.”

Kleingarten looked around the bizarre office as he chewed. Briggs had rigged up a temporary lab on one side of the old factory, and he’d stuck most of his gear in what looked to be a zoo cage. It had a hinged grid of steel for a door, with a thick lock, as if Briggs anticipated the need to keep people out. On a low catwalk above, sophisticated equipment of some kind was at work, but Briggs had little more than a computer, some rows of test tubes, an autoclave, and moldering reams of research journals.

Somebody had sunk a fortune in state-of-the-art video monitors and what looked like a security and light system operated by remote control. The main gate was set on a rolling track, and it appeared Briggs could run the whole show from right here.

It seemed like a lot of trouble for a building filled with old tractor parts and farm equipment. He’d had a hard time even finding the place, and the closest buildings were about half a mile away. The huge factory was made of light-red brick, the concrete joints gray with age and spotted with moss.

It seemed like a weird place for a super-secret project, but everything about Briggs and this job was weird.

A large charcoal drawing of a nude woman was taped to the bars on one side of the cage. It wasn’t one of those boring pictures they usually did in art classes. This was like porn, with her tits stuck out and a smile on her lips as the fingers of one hand trailed between the dark patch between her legs. She looked Oriental, and Kleingarten wondered if it was a self-portrait of the Slant, because it was framed like a mirror.

But that wasn’t as strange as what hung above it. A Curious George clock, with George’s skinny arms pointing out the hour and minute, was tied to one of the cell bars with baling wire.

Maybe that’s why he calls this the Monkey House.

Briggs didn’t fit the criminal type, but he had the glittering, intense eyes down pat. The guy was wired, and Kleingarten had found over the years that obsessed people tended to make mistakes because all they saw was the finish line, not the track. With his soft hands and pale skin, he looked like he’d melt if stuck under a heat lamp for too long.

Kleingarten smiled and spat some salty shells onto the stained concrete floor. He’d have to try that sometime.

“I dosed her close to her office, and I trashed it just like you wanted,” Kleingarten said. “She had time to get there before she freaked out. Plus, I got to admit, I was curious to see what would happen. I’ve been juicing up all these people and I still don’t see the point.”

“Lucky for you, I’ve worked two time-release mechanisms into the compound,” Briggs said, heading into the cage of his office. “One is the diminishing effect of the chemicals, which occurs naturally as the substance is broken down by the body’s processes. The other is a narrow window of disintegration. The time between breakdown and complete eradication is so short that no trace remains even if the symptoms linger.”

“Symptoms? I thought you were trying to fix these people.” Kleingarten was bored with the man’s babble. It reminded him of his high school chemistry class and the time he’d had to set the asshole teacher’s lab on fire.

“Sorry. I meant ‘effects.’ My terminology is a little rusty.”

“Yeah, a long vacation will do that.”

Kleingarten always checked on the background of the people he worked with, for, or against. Research was just as important in his line of work as in this headshrinker shit.

Sebastian Briggs had been bounced from the UNC faculty after that stupid incident with the trials, but the university had tied it up in a nice little bow so that it looked like Briggs had resigned “to pursue other opportunities in private industry.” The Sharpe family had threatened a lawsuit but they got their hush money and everybody lived happily ever after. Except the Sharpe kid, of course.

“My reputation isn’t your concern,” Briggs said. “Your concern is following instructions to the letter.”

“There wasn’t no letter. You said stick the lady and I stuck the lady. You said run the car into the coffee shop and I put the pedal to the metal. You said kill the hooker and plant her with Doyle after I dosed him. You said mess with them and I messed with them plenty.”

Kleingarten omitted mentioning the murder of the football star. But it wasn’t really murder, to his way of thinking. It was suicide. Whether the guy died fast or died slow, what difference did it make?

And the Looker’s shrink. But that was a mercy kill, too. Saved her from a life of having to hear other people’s bullshit problems.

A metallic banging emanated from the bowels of the basement, as if someone were tapping on a large pipe with a cloth-covered baseball bat.

“Sounds like a toilet’s backed up,” Kleingarten said.

“A building this old, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Briggs said, now fidgeting in his top desk drawer.

Kleingarten heard a faint drumming on the high, flat roof and wondered if it had started raining. The day had been over-cast but not really threatening. He didn’t want to get his new shoes wet.

He glanced at the monitors, anxious to get his money and his next assignment. Pictures from a dozen security cameras filled the video screens. It was a nice system, a Sentinel brand with a mix of wireless cameras and motion sensors so nobody could knock it out by snipping a couple of wires, with a main monitor that was currently blank.

But few of the cameras monitored the outside of the building or its entryways. Most were pointing down the long canyons of abandoned lockers, stainless-steel tables, machine presses, and conveyor belts, as well as tangles of old plows, balers, cattle trailers, mower machines, and fat-threaded tires.

If the factory were in business today, Kleingarten could see where you’d need all those secret eyes on the floor to keep the workers from slacking off or nabbing the merchandise. But now the cameras just pointed at lots of stained concrete and rust.

“So, do you want to me to follow up on that Molkesky woman?” Kleingarten asked.

“No, that situation will resolve itself.”

“You don’t seem none too happy about it.”

“People are predictable, Mr. Drummond. That’s why I knew Roland Doyle would stop over in West Virginia at his brother’s cabin and would need that extra booster to keep him moving. That’s why I knew the two ladies would be in the waffle house. Our subjects will all be gathering soon, because they’re going to remember what happened ten years ago.”

“Christ, Doc, you got me driving to Cincinnati and then West Virginia when you knew they’d all end up here anyway? I had to buy a straw hat and overalls. I got expenses.”

Briggs held out a plain brown envelope. “Fifty thousand. The next installment.”

“Well, tell your people I might be billing for overtime,” Kleingarten said.

“Not necessarily. Roland Doyle will be in town this afternoon.”

“What did you do? Hotwire these people’s brains?”

“It’s a drug I call Seethe, and I was poised to introduce it to the world ten years ago. But I had to go underground and refine it a little after…well, after we had a little setback. Now it’s time our subjects came together again, so I can observe the long-term effects. A decade is a long incubation period, don’t you agree?”

The doc said it like he didn’t expect Kleingarten to know what “incubation” meant, but his family had raised chickens. He’d dosed Roland twice, assuming Roland hit the vodka bottle like Briggs had predicted, and the Slant and the Looker also took liquid doses, but he’d had to inject the Morgan woman this morning because she was behind schedule.

“Yeah, I can see where you’d be getting impatient,” Kleingarten said. “I understand giving them the juice. But I don’t get why you want to play games with them.”

Briggs gave him a smug look, like every schoolteacher whose face he’d ever wanted to bust, and launched into egghead talk. “My drug chemically alters pathways in the brain until the subject reverts to the dominant core impulse, filtering out reasoning and mitigating stimuli until the subject is obsessed and consumed by that basic impulse. You might say they become more like themselves, the people they would be without all the socialization, inhibitions, and morals that our so-called ‘evolved’ intelligence has imprisoned us with. Each of the subjects has a specific trigger that amplifies the effects of Seethe. That’s why your contribution is so important. You’re the trigger man.”

Kleingarten squeezed a little common sense out of the mumbo jumbo. “Like that guy in the comic book who gets mad and turns into the Incredible Hulk, right? And then starts smashing shit.”

“Yes, but anger is just one of the possible impulses. Each subject will have a reaction unique to their personality, which is why I need to observe their behavior and verify my thesis. The doctor, she’s proud and ambitious and aggressive. Roland is an alcoholic, so he’s his own evil twin just waiting for permission to mess up, but he’s also our problem child who needs additional exposure. Anita Molkesky is insecure and craves attention. Wendy…”

Briggs glanced at the framed nude drawing on the wall, confirming Kleingarten’s suspicions.

So you got the hots for the Slant, huh, Doc? And you don’t want to say what her weakness is. But I got a pretty good guess. Yes, sir, indeed.

The drumming was louder now and Kleingarten squinted up at the high sheets of gray windows that girded the uppermost five feet of each side of the cavernous facility. The glass was so smoky and dirty that he couldn’t tell how much of the gray came from rain clouds.

Then the drumming increased and Kleingarten saw movement in one of the cameras. It was gone before he could focus, but his impression had been of a hunched, pale form, as if maybe the monkey cages held one of those albino chimps they showed on Animal Planet. “There he is!” Briggs said, rushing from his office.

Kleingarten looked at the monitors and saw Briggs appear in one of the screens, gracelessly jogging between two rows of corrugated metal storage containers, leaning and peering anytime he came to a crevice. Briggs was near the end of the aisle, beneath a baler chute that had metal packing straps dangling from its opening.

The pale blur exploded from the darkness, slamming into Briggs.

“Easy!” Briggs’s shout echoed through the cavernous structure as Kleingarten ran toward the commotion. He wasn’t on the clock at the moment, but he was curious.

Curious Fucking George, that’s me.

The pale form scuttled over the machinery and Kleingarten wondered if he should draw his firearm. Maybe the doc had been testing monkeys on the side. He seemed like the kind of guy who could never get enough data.

Briggs was shouting and cursing, searching through the maze of abandoned equipment. Kleingarten followed, glad the old building was relatively isolated, especially for the Research Triangle Park. If Briggs had let loose a crazy monkey, it might need a round or two from Kleingarten’s Glock, and he hadn’t packed a silencer.

One bullet, maybe charge them five thousand bucks. Sounded like a fair deal, especially if the monkey attacked Briggs again.

Kleingarten was out of breath by the time he caught up with Briggs, who was also panting. The doc stood with his hands on his knees, peering under a metal work table whose top was pitted and scarred. The form was huddled beneath it, mostly in shadows, and emitting a low murmur that bordered on a growl.

“Need help grabbing your monkey?” Kleingarten asked, trying to hide his exerted breath.

“Shh,” Briggs said. “Keep your voice calm.”

“You’re the one who was yelling,” Kleingarten observed.

Briggs took a hypodermic needle from his pocket, removed the cap, and squinted at the tip as he pushed the plunger. A dewdrop of fluid oozed from the tip. It looked like the same kind of rig Kleingarten had passed to the jock to stick in Alexis Morgan.

“This is a special part of the experiment,” Briggs said. “Can I trust you?”

“Sure.” Kleingarten didn’t deal with people who expected trust. People like that deserved being lied to. “Don’t the bosses know about this?”

“Of course,” Briggs said, leaning low and approaching the huddled form. “But they don’t know that they know.”

Kleingarten braced for the monkey to come bursting out of the cranny and slam into the doc again. He didn’t think much of a man who couldn’t control his monkeys, no matter how well he paid.

The doc knelt, talking in soothing tones. “Come on, David, it’s going to be all right.”

David. That wasn’t a good name for a monkey. You named your monkey George, or Roscoe, something silly like that. You didn’t give it a regular name because monkeys were too much like people and both of you might get the wrong idea.

But Briggs seemed to have some practice with this game. Maybe David the Monkey had escaped before and the doc knew just how to get the job done. When Briggs reached in with the syringe, the creature scuttled away to the far end of the table. Kleingarten went around it, figuring to scare the monkey back toward Briggs.

With a screech, the animal burst from the shadows, all claws and waving arms, a liquid hiss coming from those too-wide lips. The monkey was on Kleingarten before he could react, and though he’d trained in boxing and self-defense, he found himself falling backward onto the cold concrete.

Kleingarten managed to twist and avoid cracking his skull as moist, rancid breath spritzed his neck, and he wondered if Briggs’s monkey had rabies. Despite the small, wiry frame, the monkey was strong, and Kleingarten didn’t want those claws digging into his skin. He’d seen monkeys in the zoo throwing shit, which meant those nails were nasty.

He spun and flexed, jabbing his thumbs toward the creature’s eyes, but stopped when he realized they weren’t primate eyes.

A man. Sweet Mary in a manger, it’s a man.

The naked man clambered away, passing up the chance to rip at Kleingarten’s skin.

“Get him,” Briggs yelled, rushing around the table.

Kleingarten blinked alert and grabbed at the man’s leg, encircling one thin ankle. He tugged and the man fell flat, his bony chest slapping against the floor. The man immediately curled into a fetal position, quivering beneath Kleingarten’s grip.

“Easy, David,” Briggs said, moving in and sliding the needle into the man’s arm. “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Nobody besides whoever did this to him.