Gone

CHAPTER 82

Dear God, I thought, feeling dizzy in the cramped, suddenly too-hot office. Dear God.

I watched as Perrine slid the door shut with a bang. He dusted off his hands as he plopped himself back down in the beanbag chair. He lifted the tennis ball and bounced it off the floor and wall of the van again.

“Now, where were we?” he said, catching the ball. “Oh, yes. Your kids. How is the law-enforcement version of the Duggar familia?”

“You bastard,” I said.

“Mike, Mike. Please,” Perrine said. “Do not mourn. That priest is in a better place now. He has gone to his God. You know, like your friend. What was his name? Hughie?”

He was taunting me now. Trying to get to me. He was. I wanted to smash the screen with my fist, but I couldn’t. I took a breath and refused to give him what he wanted.

“That’s true,” I said calmly. “Good point, Manuel. Hughie’s gone to God.”

I paused as I leaned in closer to the computer’s camera.

“Just like your wife, Manuel. No, wait. I made a mistake. How could she be with God? I sent that bitch directly to hell.”

Perrine hurled the ball against the wall and didn’t bother catching it this time. He stood up and walked over to the camera until his face filled the screen.

“I have one more thing to show you, Bennett. My men are sending it to you right now. If you have any popcorn available, I advise you to get it popping and pull up a seat. You’re going to like this, Mike. I know I will. We can talk after. Maybe when it’s over, we’ll trade notes. But if you don’t feel like talking, that’s OK, too. I’ll understand. You probably won’t be in the mood. Au revoir.”

The screen went blank.

“Wait,” I said to Agent Downey. “What in the hell is he talking about? He’s sending something else? What is it? Where is it?”

“Something’s coming in now. It’s another Skype request,” a tech said, clicking a button.

The first thing I noticed about the footage on the screen that opened up was that it was from a night-vision camera. It was showing an empty field. The grainy image reminded me of a black-and-white TV image, only with dark green instead of black, and light green instead of white.

And it wasn’t footage, I realized suddenly. Since this was Skype, it meant what I was looking at was something that was being filmed in real time.

The camera swung shakily to the left. A kneeling figure appeared. It was a soldier of some kind, wearing a dark hazmat suit with a full gas mask.

The fentanyl, I thought. Perrine was ordering another fentanyl attack and making me watch. Two more hazmat-suited soldiers appeared beside the first, and the camera started moving, shaking a little as the group moved across a field.

There was some kind of fence at the far end, which they climbed, and then they were standing in a dirt road. The soldiers started moving up the slightly curving, uphill road, covering each other. Then they went around a bend, and suddenly, there was a house.

Realizing what it was hit me not like an electric shock but like a sudden shot of anesthesia. I felt numb. Like I wasn’t there anymore. Like I wasn’t anywhere. Like the bottom of the world had just dropped out from underneath me.

“It’s his safe house!” Emily yelled from somewhere behind me as the soldiers on the screen arrived at the porch.

“In Susanville! My God, his family!” Emily yelled as she burst into the office. “Contact the marshals! Where are the marshals? Perrine is attacking the Bennett family in Susanville as we speak!”