Infected

72.

Dew’s vision felt fuzzy. He pulled off his leather gloves and rubbed his eyes. The cold clung to his clammy fingers. His breath streaming out in billowing cones, Dew put the gloves back on and refocused his attention on the apartment complex’s snow-covered roads.

The cops hadn’t found a damn thing during the night-the giant-size All-American psychopath was still running around like a rolling land mine waiting to bump into something and explode. Not a word from Wahjamega, either. Murray had dispatched several agents to the town. There were extra state police patrolling the area, the local police force was alerted to the danger, and NSA signal-intelligence agents scanned almost every line of communication in and out of the town. That, and the fact that Perry’s face was plastered on every TV screen in the Great Lakes area, made it unlikely he’d slipped into Wahjamega unnoticed. The public was alert and looking; at least in the Great Lakes region, the hunt for Perry Dawsey had already taken on the mythical proportions of the O.J. Simpson chase. Another murdering football player on the lam.

The murder was about seven hours old-if Dawsey had fled, he could already be in Indiana, Chicago, Fort Wayne or on the Ohio Turnpike heading for the East Coast, but Dew knew that Dawsey hadn’t gotten far. Let the public think what they want, let them get the man’s description and keep a sharp eye out. Dawsey might surprise them all, you never knew, and if Dawsey was heading somewhere, it was better that Joe Public knew enough to steer clear.

Dawsey’s Ford remained safely under the carport’s snow-covered metal awning. No cars had been reported stolen in Ann Arbor for two days-no motorcycles, mopeds or even a freaking ten-speed, for that matter.

So Dawsey probably hadn’t driven anywhere, and on top of that it looked as if something was wrong with his right leg. Brian Vanderpine, the Ann Arbor cop who’d discovered the murder scene, was the first to notice Dawsey’s bloody footprints in the apartment hallway. Despite the fact that blood was splattered all over the hall, Vanderpine only found prints made by a left foot. They hadn’t found any marks that might have been left by a crutch, so Vanderpine ventured the hypothesis that Dawsey was hopping.

So now you had a man-a huge man-without a car or any means of transportation, committing what amounted to a spontaneous murder, leaving in a hurry, probably without the time to plan anything or the forethought to call a cab (they’d checked, and no taxi had picked up a fare anywhere near the area that day), and he was hopping all the way. That was the key-people would remember if they saw someone hopping, and no one had reported any such person despite the ubiquitous news coverage.

All of these elements led Dew to one conclusion: Dawsey probably hadn’t left the apartment complex at all. Most everybody figured he was long gone, but they based their decisions on fabricated info saying Dawsey had terrorist connections that could help him fade into the woodwork.

The army of cops had checked inside every apartment in Building B, so he wasn’t there, but how far could he have gone? There were seventeen buildings in the complex, with twelve apartments in each building, four apartments each on three floors. An army of cops had knocked on every door in the entire complex, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything strange. No one had. But not all the apartments were occupied. Some people were at work, some were just gone. There hadn’t been time for a background check on every apartment owner to find out if each one was supposed to be home or not. No signs of forced entry-Dawsey hadn’t broken in anywhere.

But that didn’t mean Dawsey wasn’t in one of those apartments. Maybe with a hostage. Maybe forcing someone to say that everything was fine.

Dew stuck with his instincts. If Dawsey had blood on his feet, he might also have it elsewhere on his person. The obvious bloody footprints had led out to Dawsey’s car, but each print held less and less blood, and at the car the last of it appeared to have worn off his boot. A man wounded, hopping, moving fast…he might fall, and if he did, that hypothetical additional blood might leave a mark in the snow.

So Dew had walked a circle around Building B. He’d found nothing, so he’d walked around again, staring at the ground the whole time. He walked back to Dawsey’s car; disturbed snow in front of the hood indicated that someone, probably Dawsey, had stood there not too long before.

All the footprints in front of the car were from a left foot. You had to look very closely to see that detail, but once he saw it, he couldn’t un see it. Dawsey, crippled leg and all, had stood right there. Hell, he’d probably watched Vanderpine enter his apartment building.

Dew squatted in front of the car. His cold knees throbbed at the effort.

The CIA’s lead agent has arthritis, he mused. There’s something you don’t see in the movies.

Crouched in front of the beat-up, rust-speckled Ford, Dew looked at the door to Building B. He felt an unexpected surge of adrenaline-Dawsey had been in this same spot. Dawsey had watched the two cops enter the building, watched the door shut behind them, and then he…he did what?

Dew looked around his position, trying to see the terrain through the eyes of an infected man. On his left was Washtenaw Avenue, the main road that shuttled traffic between upscale Ann Arbor and low-rent Ypsilanti. It was full of ever-present thirty-five-mile-per-hour traffic. If he’d gone that way, someone would have noticed the hopping man.

Dawsey wouldn’t have wanted that. Too much noise, too many people. Dew looked to his right, down the apartment complex’s road. There were more apartments. A shitload more apartments. Almost no traffic, curtains and shades all drawn against the winter cold, nobody looking, nobody walking. That’s what Dawsey wanted. It was quiet, it looked full of hiding places-bushes, shrubs. The cop army had searched all of those hiding places and found nothing, not even a footprint or snow knocked off a bush branch.

But it was the dead of winter-why hide in a snow-covered bush when you could hide in a nice warm apartment? That’s what Dawsey had seen. He had just committed a brutal murder, then watched two cops enter his building. Dew reminded himself of the raging paranoia exhibited by all the victims. Dawsey had watched the cops go in, known they were coming for him, known they’d find the body. He’d wanted to find a hiding place and find one fast.

Dew came out from the hiding spot, grunting as he stood, his knees complaining against the unkind treatment. He walked toward Building G. Despite the fact that his pulse raced like a high-octane engine, he moved with deliberate slowness, examining the ground with a renewed focus.