The Black Silent

CHAPTER 24

Frick sprinted down the hall to the other end of the second floor, through the breezeway, and into the Oaks Building. His gun was out and adrenaline pumping. He slowed.

Slipping into Ben Anderson's lab with his gun at the ready, he was actually surprised that Robert Chase was nowhere to be seen. He checked the closets and the electron microscope room and other side rooms. Nothing.

Sweat poured off him. Back in Ben Anderson's office he saw a man and drew his gun, then stood down. It was one of the guards, staring openmouthed.

Saying nothing, Frick ran downstairs into the workshop, suddenly feeling sick with worry in his gut.

People made little slips when they did things in a hurry and he had created this particular set piece in a few minutes. When he arrived in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, he could see one regular deputy and one of his men standing in the room with Ranken hanging in the background. So far, so good. It should shock them.

"What happened here?"

"Somebody got in here and Ranken must have found them. They took his gun and his spray."

That shook Frick, but he didn't let on. Could he be that lucky, to have Sam in the building with Ranken's gun?

"It's that Sam-Robert Chase-or whatever he's calling himself at the moment," Frick growled. "He's got to be in the building, and now he's armed. Take a picture. Show all the regular deputies. I want them to see what they're up against. Get Ostrowski down here for the forensics." He turned on his heel and ran back to the Sanker Building and the conference room. Before he went in, he got on the radio and announced Ranken's death and made Chase's guilt a fact as fast as he could. His people would alert the media shortly, as to a new "grisly" killing.

When he entered the conference room, he broke up a conversation between Khan and one of the men.

Khan looked uneasy. That couldn't be good. Frick dismissed the other man.

"They found another body," Khan said, obviously suspicious. "But you look pleased for some reason."

"I'm sure Chase is in the building. This is our chance to get him."

"How do you know?"

"He killed Detective Ranken and took his gun. Or somebody did, and who else would do that?"

"Seriously?" Khan looked unconvinced.

"Absolutely." Frick spoke it like a challenge. "He took Ranken's gun."

"I'll start a search."

"Tell the guys in the boat not to waste any more time hunting bodies."

Khan began calling the security people in the building.

Frick picked up a call from their Vegas man at the Sullivan family dock in Anacortes.

"Rachael Sullivan arrived," the guy said, "or rather she drove up near the dock, then turned around and ran. We had three men in a boat. They went after her and, I guess, they're stuck in the mud."

"Where's the woman?"

"I don't know. Our guys talked to me on the radio and said they screwed up. They say she radioed the coast guard."

Frick thought for a moment. Staying around was riskier than letting her go at this point.

"Just leave, there's nothing to do with her."

'That was smart," Khan said.

"I'm gonna go talk to McStott," Frick said, "see what the greedy little bastard's up to."

Frick found him in a large lab area.

McStott seemed glad to see him.

"I found something weird."

"What?"

"A binder that advocates a recovery method for methane."

Frick sighed. He couldn't help himself; he was impatient.

"Listen," McStott begged. "This is worth a fortune."

The word fortune did it.

"I'm listening," Frick said.

"This stuff about mining methane from microbes is not crazy, like I thought," McStott said. "They may have this stuff nailed."

The egghead was almost squeaking with excitement.

"The global reserves for methane are eighty thousand times the global reserves for natural gas. Available U.S. reserves alone are 5.7 trillion cubic meters, and that's enough to meet this country's needs for the next two thousand years."

Frick let out a long, low whistle despite himself.

"So how are we gonna get rich?" he asked.

"There are problems with methane."

"Like what?" Frick asked.

"There are three, actually, aside from the danger of blowing something up. Methane is in two forms: frozen with water in an icelike substance called a hydrate, and beneath the hydrates as a gas. When the hydrate turns into gas, its volume increases by a factor of one hundred sixty."

"Okay. So?"

"The first problem is that the methane diffuses and is hard to collect. To make a long story short, they've found ways to get around that problem, to some extent. They don't specify how the mining is done. They only say it's not cheap or easy, but it is doable.

Let's leave it at that."

"Let's," said Frick.

"Problem two is finding exactly the right place to drill. Even though it covers large areas, drill sites are much more rare. That's the key to recovery."

Frick nodded. "And?"

"The third problem is that it's still a fossil fuel. It's the cleanest fossil fuel, but it still makes CO. Right?"

"If you say so. I suppose the do-gooders don't like that."

"That's right," said McStott. "So they developed a closed-system way of using it to make electricity. They burn it and use the heat to make steam and the steam drives a turbine that generates electricity. They break down the CO into water and carbon. The 2 carbon goes into the ground, leaving only water vapor."

"Where is all this written down?"

"That's the trouble. They've hidden all the details. So we don't have all the how-to parts," said McStott, "but at least we know what to look for. This is the end of the energy crisis as we know it, man. If somebody does something about it."

Frick grabbed the animated McStott by the shirt, shocking him into silence.

"Get the details. And get the aging technology. That's our priority. Got it?"

"Okay! I know," McStott said, pulling away. "I know you're in a rush. But hear me out.

There's something here, it's like a whole thing," McStott blurted quickly, making little or no sense. "Not just aging. But it's all related. See, oxygen-based creatures-"

"What the hell are you talking about? Read my lips. Does Ben Anderson know how to make people live a long time?"

Khan came into the lab in a hurry. "Something's going on. They're about to call me back." On cue Khan's phone beeped and Khan answered.

Frick watched Khan clamp his jaw as an angry shadow crossed his face.

"Where is… Hello? Hello?" Khan said. He turned to Frick, his eyes intense. "One of our guards saw a big man in this building. He sprayed our guy with pepper spray and took his clothes."

Sam had to get off the roof but had no good way to do it.

He stared down the peak toward the balcony, holding his bag of papers. Given the murderous drop to the balcony and then the ground, Sam decided to risk going back through the window. He tied the bag to his belt, and as he opened the window, he saw a shadow cross the hallway outside the door of Ben's office.

Immediately he felt he was in bad trouble. He looked at his other option: the jump off the roof to the balcony and then to the ground could paralyze him.

It wouldn't take much to start the swelling, and he had already badly abused his body.

He broke out in a cold sweat as he scrambled up the roof in pain that felt like surgery without anesthesia. When he got his leg almost straight and used two hands and one foot to do the bulk of the locomotion, it hurt less. The far end of the roof was a long way off, but he covered the distance in a few minutes. Approaching the balcony slowly, he peered over the edge. Then the door to the balcony flew open. Somebody was there with a gun making all the right moves.

A trained cop.

His mind did a quick calculation. One possibility remained-jumping to the big fir tree in the dark. Doing his weird three-point crawl and dragging the bad leg, he went down the roof to the fir. It was probably a second-growth tree that the second group of loggers missed.

It would be ironic to die falling out of a tree when the fountain of youth might be hanging from his belt. He made sure it was a fleeting thought. At this time of night it looked like he'd be jumping into a big shadow. A window onto the roof was opening. It was a simple calculation. The fear of pain was daunting. Fear of Frick's murder methods made it seem perfectly acceptable.

It was a good jump, probably ten feet to something really solid. He backed up on the roof and decided to pretend that he had more or less two good legs. It was a ridiculous assumption. In less than five seconds he noticed that he was nearly hyperventilating.

Looking at the gulf, the great fall to the ground, he imagined the clean snap of the bones.

He really didn't want to jump. He paused.

A few evil men, Ben had warned. Did Ben have any particular evil men in mind?

As someone scrambled up the far side of the roof, he realized he'd have to live if he were ever to find out what was really happening. Taking three giant strides, he leaped from his good leg. Airborne, he reached out with his arms and hit two branches, one near each armpit. The first was flimsy and bent as he grabbed it; the other snapped. Then he was grabbing as things broke and his body fell. Maybe for two seconds branches snapped like toothpicks. Then he slammed into the tree itself, sliding down the trunk, taking off plenty of skin. Everything from his testicles to his chest hurt like hell. His leg throbbed in pain beyond description.

He hung on as a matter of instinct, then sought something solid for his feet. He found it.

Somebody was shouting something on the roof. They would all come. He started sliding down the tree again, burning more skin at the friction points. Then branches thudded against his body like torturers with small clubs. Down he went, never stopping, just trying to control the fall. The last fifteen or twenty feet, he broke his fall only once. Then he hit the ground and pain was screaming in his face, in his ears.

Now he knew who was screaming. He was.

Knowing it was move or die, he rolled and began half-crawling and doing a three-point gallop, happy even to run like a three-legged animal, amazed that he wasn't yet paralyzed.

He hung onto the swinging duffel as he ran. After a few moments he made it to standing upright, and groaned with the terrible, pulsing pain. He grabbed a stick and bit down.

His breath came fast. The stick was putrid with rot, and soft, and had an acrid taste. But it stopped the groaning.

Men were coming out of the building and shining flashlights around, but nobody plunged into the thick of it. In seconds he was away from the building and away from them. As he came near the road, he saw flashlights in the distance moving along a path parallel to his. They also were running for the road. He halted at the shoulder and watched them turn down the road, jogging in his direction.

The clouds had opened, allowing the moon to shine down the road, making a fuzzy white worm snaking through the trees. Mustering his will, Sam half-ran, half-stumbled, across the road. Careless shots in the dark sent bullets into the forest, but none found him. Quickly he plunged back into the sopping wet branches of the forest, keeping low like a brush buck. Running wasn't possible, unless one was willing to risk running into a tree trunk. There were no more flashlights and he heard no movement through the trees from down the road. Likely, no one would follow, except in a large group. He began angling just a little west of north, as near as he could figure it, toward the area of the most trees and the fewest people.

He felt nothing now but a raw desire to survive, served by instincts millennia old. Vegas guys in stitched leather shoes, and without a dog, would be hard-pressed to find him, unless some of them were really, like him, country guys living in the city. Of course, as luck would have it, they had one police dog on Orcas Island. No doubt they would bring it over. With a dog they could find him. There were a few tricks he might employ, but with a group of men and a trained dog, they were long shots. If Haley didn't come fast, he was done, cornered on a small portion of a small island. He hoped he would be able to find the needed materials to buy himself a chance. It was either that or try to kill the dog. He didn't want to kill a dog.

Fortunately, the forever-reassembling clouds were disassembling at the right spot. When he had a moment, he intended to figure out an appropriate direction of travel. It was a damnably dense, small-tree forest that, if in northern California, would vaporize like so much confetti at the first forest fire. However, the underbrush was light and there hadn't been any recent windstorms leaving large windfalls that would make passage even more difficult. He would have preferred the windfalls. That he used no light would be his strength, and one of the several weaknesses of those who searched for him. They would advertise their presence long before they arrived. To find him in the thickest of the forest, they would have to step on him. It was the tracking dog that would make the difference. To land a seaplane or pick him up in a boat, whichever worked out (either was a long shot), he and Haley would need a rendezvous far away from all the hired help at Sanker. They had a contingency plan if she couldn't make it, but it wasn't good.

As he went, he looked for trails because they might lead him to what he needed.

The warm front was blowing through, opening holes, passing light from the full moon and making a soft glow at the treetops. True to its norm, the weather was changing rapidly. When he came to a break in the trees, he took his bearings by locating the North Star and made an imaginary line running north and south.

He bisected a north-south line with his eye on a bearing that led to the stars of the west in the November sky, and with that he had something of a compass by which to navigate the forest. After taking some precautionary measures he would travel northerly, but west of north, almost paralleling the shoreline until he came to the water. Maintaining a straight line was impossible. It was instead a matter of constant correction and meandering along a route that averaged the desired heading.

The bushes were wet from the rains and his stolen uniform and Top-Siders were now sodden. Above the waist he wasn't much better, although the shirt was wool and tended to be naturally warm even when wet. So far, his parka hadn't completely soaked through.

He did his best to shrug the sharp branches off and slide by; years ago he'd become adept at it. By watching the tree-tops against the sky, with a nearly full moon, he could tell the thin spots in the forest. By avoiding wet areas and staying as high as he could on the gently sloping terrain, he avoided the brush associated with moist soil.

Every twenty or thirty paces he stopped abruptly and listened so that he could discern if anyone was near. He heard only shouts in the distance from men who wanted an alternative to wandering through a dark forest looking for a mad Scots Indian.

Sam needed to know that Haley was all right; finally he could afford to find out. He slowed his pace, pulled out his cell, and dialed.

She answered, breathless.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Running like crazy," she said. "No time. I'll make it. Are you?"

"Worse for the wear, still at it, running through the woods like we talked about. I think I have fantastic stuff."

"I'm scared for Sarah. Frick's men have her."

"They won't kill her right away because they want information."

"I sure hope so," she said. "I'm feeling desperate for her."

"Then run fast," he said. "We'll find her."

"What did you find?"

He tried to explain that he'd found more than he'd been able to read.

"You'II read it. This is no fair," she joked, grunting as she jumped or ducked under something. "You're having all the fun. Please stay safe. Please. I'll be there."

Fun?

Next Sam called the dispatcher.

"Detective Ranken is dead," Sam said baldly. "He was killed by Garth Frick. Frick drained his blood into a barrel." He let that sink in, then explained where to find the evidence. "You might want to let the state and the FBI know."

"We already found the body, and you're wanted for that crime, Mr. Chase."

Sam knew that the dispatcher was not supposed to say that, even if she believed it.

Obviously she was shaken and he could only imagine how the rest of the deputies felt.

He needed to call Ernie.

"He went out Anderson's office window," Khan said. "They're chasing somebody on Warbass, maybe from Opus Magnum. "

"Give me an earpiece." Frick wanted to be directly connected to the action.

"We think maybe somebody came out of the water near where Opus blew up. We followed her. It looked like Haley Walther."

"Stop her. Bring her here."

"Roger that."

"He jumped off the roof and went into the woods," Khan interrupted.

Frick covered the receiver. "How the hell can somebody do that? It's a forty-foot drop, or better."

"Well, he's not lying dead on the ground."

"The men with Sarah James are on the phone," Delia said.

"Where the hell are they? It's been forty-five minutes?" Frick picked up the other line.

"Well, we thought you wanted information," Khan's man said. "Maybe we got a little carried away. We threatened to strip her down, and you know…"

"Strip her?" Frick closed his eyes.

"We didn't actually. Just said we had to search. Played with her. Scared her."

"Nothing we couldn't explain or lie about," the man's partner chimed in.

"What happened?" Frick asked.

"She told us Ben's boat was in the bay. You said we could take a look."

"Did you look?"

"There was a boat," the man said. "She says it's his. It had drifted onto the mud near the head of the bay. Harder than hell to get to. We had to wade. That's why it took so damn long."

"Yeah, yeah," Frick said. "So where the hell is Ben Anderson?"

"That's the thing. We don't know. But there's the boat-"

"Why would she lead you to his boat?" Frick interrupted. "Did she want you to think he was on the island?"

"Well, we can't figure it. But he could be on Lopez."

"Bring Sarah James here and let us do the questioning," Frick said.

"Well, there's a problem there."

"What the hell do you mean?"

"You said to soften her up. We thought we could get some more info out of her. And you know she seemed more afraid of the one-eyed monster than anything-well, Shawn was pretending like he was going to get on top of her, just scaring her, not raping her or anything, and she got his gun."

Frick gripped the handset, his knuckles whitening. "Are you saying she got away, or you had to kill her?"

"Got away. Back up to the dock at Lopez. Up the bay."

"That makes no sense," Frick said. "Why wouldn't she take off from the island, head to Anacortes or Orcas or something? Why back to Lopez, where you just caught her?"

"I can only tell you what she did."

"Go find her and bring her here. Think about why she went right back-if thinking is part of your repertoire."

"I'm all wet," the moron said.

Frick hung up in disgust, turning to Khan.

"This Sam character ran into the woods," Khan said.

"And your guys lost Sarah James. Call the dispatcher. Get the damn K-nine, he should have arrived from Orcas in the plane." Frick then said to Delia, "We'll start on Sam with the dog. But send more men to Lopez to help those incompetent bastards find the James woman. I can't believe I paid for this."

Frick thought for a moment. "We have a list of Sarah James's friends. We'll start there."

"We're running low on men."

"I'm sure that's exactly what the Indian bastard intended," Frick said. "Pull some of the men off the search for Sam. The dog will do more than ten men."

McStott showed up looking nervous, no doubt aware of Frick's murderous rage. He mopped the sweat from his brow with a yellowed linen handkerchief.

"Go ahead," Frick finally said.

"We found summaries-abstracts, they're called-referring to papers that analyze the psychological effect of an antiaging regimen. One study proposal apparently deals with the effects on people who don't get the various serums once they learn that it is available. Questions like, would they start a political movement? Would they be violent?

And how would the government respond? Would the government control who we give it to and how we give it, that sort of thing?" McStott watched Frick obviously trying to gauge whether he should continue. "I mean, are you going to have a checklist to qualify?

Bad grades and you die young? Guys with criminal records or drunks with bad livers?

How about guys who are just recognized assholes?"

"You mean like you and me," Frick said.

McStott thought better of responding to that. "You know you have a lot of people standing in line to live a few hundred years and you may have to choose who gets it.

Will the government decide that? Will Sanker? What'll be the rules for getting the live-longer-now juice? Would people have an inalienable right to this stuff? Even if Sanker owns it, maybe the government controls it."

"It's a cinch all the politicians will get it," Frick said. "So where are the actual papers discussing these things?"

"Can't find them yet. Just the abstract. There's a whole other proposal on what to do with people who get it. A psychological section to see if it drives them crazy, and then a whole legal section, like for the others. Only this is about whether it's fair for these people to compete in business. For example, do they just keep amassing wealth or do they have to start over? Are they forced into retirement for three hundred years, or can they build fortunes? How about restraints on political power and influence? Would they be seen as icons that would unduly influence the democracy? Would they become the ruling elite?"

"Just how long are they assuming these people will live?" Frick asked, feeling progressively more interested.

"If they start the intervention prior to thirty-five or so, these people will live, they assume, on average, four hundred years."

"So that's confirmed. Not a joke this time."

"It is," said McStott. "I must caution you that it seems incredible, but that is what they're suggesting. You can see that this topic will keep the politicians busy for years."

"Chaos," Frick said. "But as long as I'm rich and can live a long time, I don't give a crap. All of you will come to feel the same way, so keep digging."

McStott remained uncharacteristically quiet for a moment.

"What is it?" Frick asked.

"Something just hit me. I wonder how old that octopus Glaucus is. I'll try to figure that out."

"Think Anderson's been fooling with him?"

"It's possible. Maybe he did it a long time ago. Maybe he's still doing it. It's worth looking into."

"How long will it take?" Frick asked.

"Depends. If we find he did do something genetic and left markers, it could take months to find them. So we need a record."

"Months? I need something fast. And you don't know for a fact that if he is treating the octopus, the secret's in its genes, right?"

"That's true," McStott allowed.

"That octopus isn't going anywhere," Frick said. "If we can't find something better, we know where to find it."