Eureka

CHAPTER 40

It was a little past midnight when we drove through the gate in the eight-foot stone wall and kept going as quietly as we could, past the pond down to the Victorian main building of the Shuler Institute. The guard at the gate saw Earl and waved us through. There was a light over the door and a dim night-light in the main office, but the place was deserted.

We cut off our car lights and followed the gravel drive around the main building, guided by the moon. We stopped under a group of trees and turned the car off. The second car followed. I got out, walked to the edge of the trees, and listened.

It was deathly quiet. A cricket chirped way down at the end of the property and an occasional breeze whisked the leaves. Otherwise there was not a sound.

The rage ward loomed behind the main office building like a haunted Victorian mansion etched by moonlight. Like the main building, the third floor had four large gables, one facing in each direction, their spires reaching up like daggers toward the full moon. The second floor had several high windows on each side. That would be the ward for “the loonies” as Morningdale had called them. The first floor, apparently the gym and swimming pool, was windowless.

There was a single light on. It cast an eerie yellow glow from the gabled window facing west, toward the Pacific. Otherwise, the building could have been deserted.

“Is that where Riker’s holed up?” I whispered to Morningdale.

“Probably,” Earl said. “I know Dahlmus had the south room, and me and that nut from Baltimore each had a room.”

In the darkness of the south room, Riker had watched the two cars drift under the trees and stop. Was it Guilfoyle and his bunch coming back? They had left in a hurry, he assumed to pick up Earl and that loopy one in the gaudy shirt. Riker sat on the window seat, saw two of the men come to the edge of the grove of trees and stare up at the building. He began to get nervous. He took out a cigarette, cupped his hand when he lit the match.

Big Redd squatted in the safety of the trees and stared hard at the one darkened window he could see. Then he thought he saw a flare. He squinted his eyes. Not sure. He focused on the dark window. Then he saw a red pinpoint brighten for a second. He picked up a pebble and tossed it at Bannon.

I felt a stone hit my leg, turned around, and saw Redd, hunched down. He made a motion for me to move back and with the other hand pantomimed someone taking a drag on a cigarette. Then he pointed to the dark window on the south side of the third floor. I moved back and focused on it, saw a momentary glow. Someone was in there. Smoking. Watching us. Now we had a problem. If it was Riker, we couldn’t move from the cover of the trees without being spotted.

The gravel road wound down past several utility buildings and swept around the rage ward, almost to the end of the large compound, before circling back to the main entrance. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the moon was so bright there was no possibility of making a dash across fifty yards of lawn to the entrance of the secured building without being spotted. Riker could be sitting there with a high-powered rifle, ready to take down anyone who entered the building.

There was one possibility. At a certain point, the driveway came within ten yards of the southwestern corner of the building. From the third floor of the building, it would be impossible to tell how many people were in the car. Also, from any one of the gabled rooms, it was only possible to see any three sides of the building.

I decided to send our two fastest runners, Redd and Aaron, to zigzag fifty yards across the lawn to the cover of two bays of trees under the south window. At the same time, one-eyed Max would drive straight to the northeast corner of the building, and one-armed Lenny, Rusty, and I would pile out of the car and blow the lock on the door Riker could not see. Once inside, our objective would be to cross the swimming pool room, to the stairwell on the southern side of the building. I would go up the stairs followed by Rusty, and hopefully trap Riker on the top floor, while Lenny and Max would cover the entrance to the elevator. Redd and Aaron would make a dash for the building and back me up. Riker’s only option then would be the roof.

There was still that if. What if Riker was someplace else? Maybe making a run for it on a boat. Maybe some pilot was flying in to pick him up and fly him down to Mexico. Riker was a devious, psychopathic, cold-blooded killer. No time to worry about what-ifs. I had to move.

Riker watched the copse of trees, wondering what their next move would be. He had to assume that Culhane and Bannon were down below with plenty of backup. And if that was the case, he also had to assume that Guilfoyle had been trapped or arrested at Lefton’s place. Maybe even killed. Riker had to get off the third floor. To stay there was suicidal.

Below him, two dark figures darted from the trees, dodging like rabbits in the moonlight, and behind them, one of the cars roared from the shelter of the small orchard.

The car was heading for the north side of the building. His blind side.

He had only one option. Get off the third floor and go through the second-floor ward to the north side of the building.

And create a diversion.

As he ran from his apartment and down the hall, he was smiling. Culhane and Bannon commanded the top of his hate list.

What a diversion he had planned for them.

Rusty handcuffed Earl to the branch of a eucalyptus tree.

“One sound outta you and you’re morgue meat,” I said, then jumped in the car.

We screeched down the gravel drive, slued around the corner, the car’s rear wheels spewing stretches of lawn behind them, and slammed to a stop. The four of us piled out. The door’s interior lock was a bar lock, a long steel slat running the width of the door. It could only be unlocked from the inside by a key.

“Lose the door,” I said to Rusty, who swung his pump shotgun up and blew the hinges off. We charged through and ran around the pool to the exit on the south side. That door was unlocked.

As Lenny and Max headed for the elevator, I followed Rusty up the stairs, two at a time, to the third floor. There was a short flight of steps, a landing, then another flight up to the second-floor landing and the door to the ward for the insane.

Riker was waiting for us when we reached the first landing. As we rounded the corner, his shotgun roared, echoing up and down the narrow stairs. It deafened me for a moment but the blast hit Rusty in the legs, just below the knee.

I squeezed off three shots as fast as I could but Riker had spun back around the corner.

Rusty rolled down the stairs to the landing, his legs shredded by buckshot. I jumped down and pulled him around the corner just as Riker got off another shot. It ripped a three-foot hole in the wall. And once again, Riker was gone.

Eerie screams came from the rage ward. At first one or two, then a chorus of terrified cries and shrieks. I peeked around the corner just as Riker fired a third load of buckshot into the lock of the mental ward. Riker dove through the doorway, my shot missing him by inches.

Rusty was groaning in pain. I got on the walkie-talkie. “This is Bannon. Rusty’s down with leg wounds. I think it hit an artery. Riker’s in the mental ward, going north. Get a doctor and get some backup to the north door. I’m in pursuit.”

“On the way,” Max answered.

I took off my jacket, wrapped a sleeve around Rusty’s thigh, and used the shotgun barrel as a tourniquet to stop the arterial blood pumping from one leg.

He pointed up the stairs. “Go, go,” his lips told me.

Like the hounds of hell, screaming, moaning, babbling howls led me up the stairs into bedlam.

The mental patients were raving mad, chained to beds, clutching at Riker, tearing at his clothes. They were scratching his face, some looking for a savior, some striking out in fear. He was slashing at them with his shotgun and punching them, dragging them and their beds as he raced toward the far door. Another group rushed me as I charged in. Under the dim rays of the overhead night-lights, they were faceless hands and arms clutching at me, restrained only by the chains that bound them either to the floor or their beds. I spun around, trying to break loose, when I heard Riker’s shotgun roar again. On the other end of the ward I saw two or three inmates spin away from him, screaming in pain. He turned and fired a second blast into another group. Bodies lurched as the buckshot ripped into them.

Then Riker saw me. He shook loose the last of his attackers, dodged through the door, and raced down the stairs leading to the pool room.

I holstered my Luger and tried to break free of the terrified people surrounding me so I could follow him.

Riker reached the first floor and ducked into the pool room. Adrenaline-spiked, he looked as crazed as the victims he had left on the second floor. He went to the corner of the room, pulled open the door. A broom closet. He went to the next. A large boiler rumbled in one corner, fed by gas and feeding hot water into the heated pool. Riker backed across to the room to the door, aimed at the gas valve, fired his shotgun, and dove through the opening.

I was halfway across the ward when I heard the boom of the shotgun followed by the gas explosion. The floor erupted, showering the room with bodies, bedding, chairs, shards of tile. An instant later, a geyser of flame burst through the hole. The searing blast struck me, throwing me on my back. The whole room began to tremble. Flames ate the deck, the ceiling, the walls.

Inmates were tossed around like puppets without strings.

A young woman staggered toward me, her brown hair ablaze. I scurried across the floor, pulled her down, and beat out the flames with my hands.

A crack jagged across the floor under me. I started to get up. There was another explosion. More debris swept through the room.

The floor split open and collapsed beneath me.

I plunged, arms and legs flailing, straight down into the swimming pool below.

It knocked my breath out. I was in a surreal world. A world of debris, of gowned bodies chained to sleeping-cots, a world tainted by orange flames reflecting off the surface above.

I hit bottom, got my legs under me, pushed upward through the wreckage to the surface, and burst out gasping for breath. The building was ablaze around me. As I reached the side, a hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the pool. It was Max. He shoved me along the edge of the pool, shielding me from the flames, to the north door. We rushed outside. Cool night air filled my lungs. Then I remembered Rusty.

“Rusty?” I asked.

“He’s hurting but he’s okay,” Max said, as we rushed away from the flaming pyre.

“Riker…”

“I didn’t see him.”

Inmates in their white gowns were staggering around the yard, babbling inanely, some pointing at the blazing ward and giggling, some flailing at their burning gowns.

“He can’t be far,” I said. He went one way, I went another, both of us working our way through the stunned victims of the fire. Behind me, another fireball erupted from the burning building.

In the flare of the explosion I saw Riker.

He was twenty yards ahead of me, wielding a switchblade, slashing at the crazed tenants. He grabbed one of the inmates by the hair, threw him to his knees, slashed his throat, and pulled off his gown, putting it on himself.

“Riker!” I yelled.

He turned and looked at me. I pulled my Luger and walked toward him.

He looked down at my gun and then back at me and laughed.

“That pistol’s soaking wet. It isn’t worth shit,” he hissed. He held the knife toward me.

“Come on,” he said, and rushed at me. I held the Luger at arm’s length and squeezed the trigger.

It misfired.

He was so close I could feel the heat from his burning body when he slashed my arm with the knife. As he did, another screaming human comet rushed to him, grabbed him, and knocked him down. Riker tried to struggle free but the human torch was twice his size. Flames licked at Riker’s purloined robe, etched up it, set Riker’s hair on fire. As fire engulfed them both, he kicked and screamed, and finally rolled over and broke free of his fiery captor. His terrified eyes locked on mine for a moment. He charged up at me.

He was three feet away from me, engulfed in fire, his face literally melting from the flames, when I heard the whoosh and saw a flash of silver an instant before the thick knife blade pierced his throat. It cut windpipe and jugular and went all the way through his neck, stopped only by the hilt of the bowie knife.

Riker’s scream was cut off as air rushed from his lungs and blood spewed from his jugular, and the vile mixture of breath and blood burst from his throat. Riker’s mouth gaped open. I stared into eyes of pure madness and watched life flicker out of them before he fell dead.

Big Redd walked up and looked at my arm. He pulled out his shirt, tore a strip off the tail, and tied it tight just above the knife wound.

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s two I owe you.”

“One,” he said. “Charlie and I fished together.”

It was the second and last time I heard him speak a word.