Steve Forrester felt somewhat useless, unable to help in the interrogation of Jurgen Voss. He lit yet another Vantage 100 and returned his attention to the drama unfolding under the bright lights just a few feet from where he sat in darkness.
It seemed that Voss was finally ready to cooperate; springing the kiddie porn on him seemed to have turned the trick. Steve watched in fascination as Jurgen took off his glasses and buried his face in his hands, his thin shoulders racking with sobs. Marshall looked down at the exposed pedophile with unconcealed disgust while Jaworski turned off the computer screen and pulled a chair up beside him.
“Jurgen,” said the sergeant neutrally, “it’s time to tell us what we need to know.”
The little man continued to sob.
“Jurgen! Time’s running out. Give it up!”
With an effort, Voss raised his head. His eyes, sunken and beady without the thick lenses to magnify them, were red-rimmed. He pulled out a dirty handkerchief, wiped his face, and replaced his glasses. “I am sorry,” he muttered. “Please excuse me. I will tell you what you want to know.” Jurgen paused and swallowed. “But first … my throat is very dry. Could I have something to drink? Perhaps a coffee?”
“Sure, Jurgen,” said Morris. “How do you take it?”
“Black, please.”
“There’s a machine outside. I’ll be right back.”
Neither Frank Marshall nor Voss spoke while they waited. The police lieutenant did not trust himself to conceal his contempt for this pervert; he was afraid of shattering the fragile prospect of confession that hung so delicately in the room. Jurgen sniffled quietly.
On his way back from the coffee machine, Morris Jaworski paused for a moment in the anteroom behind the mirror and whispered enthusiastically to Forrester, “Watch closely, Steve. Our little bird will be singing real soon.”
“I hope so, Moe.”
Jaworski reentered the interview room bearing a steaming Styrofoam cup, which he placed on the table in front of the suspect. Voss nodded his thanks, reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled out a couple of pink envelopes.
“What’s that?” said Morris suspiciously.
“Artificial sweetener. For my coffee.”
The cop nodded and relaxed. Jurgen ripped the top off both paper envelopes simultaneously and shook the white powder into his coffee. Wrapping his hands protectively around the cup, he looked directly at Jaworski, then at Marshall.
“Gott forgive me for all I have done,” he said simply.
Outside the room, Steve Forrester watched idly as the little man emptied the white powder into the Styrofoam cup and lifted the hot brew to his lips. Suddenly, a flashbulb exploded in his head and he knew instinctively what was happening. Forrester leapt from his chair and burst into the interview room, causing Morris and Frank to turn their heads in surprise.
“Hold it!” Steve yelled. “Don’t let him drink that coffee!”
The two lawmen hesitated for a split second, confused by Forrester’s sudden noisy entrance. Steve’s momentum carried him toward the suspect; he lunged desperately across the table in an attempt to knock the cup out of Voss’s hands. But he was a fraction of a second too late; Jurgen squeezed his eyes shut and quickly gulped down the entire contents of the paper cup.
“Jesus Christ, Steve,” said the LVMPD detective, puzzled and alarmed at his ex-partner’s odd behavior. “What was that all about?”
Forrester stood up and brushed himself off. “I’ve got this sinking feeling, Frank,” he panted, “that Jurgen’s just poisoned himself.”
Buster Malloy parked the motorcycle next to Vegas Vic’s Bar and Grill, half a block south and across the Strip from his target. It only made sense to give himself a clear escape route after the place went up.
There was no record of Malloy’s possessing the bike. He had stolen it the previous afternoon near where he had abandoned his truck: Willow Beach, Arizona, a small town just across the border. He was smart enough not to have ripped one off in Nevada—any vehicle stolen locally would be
on the state and Metro police hot list, and right now was not the ideal time to be picked up for motorcycle theft. For extra insurance, he made sure that the license plate was covered with just enough dust to render the numbers illegible. It wasn’t hard; a few moments’ drive in the desert had done the trick.
With the visor pulled down on his helmet, Buster felt confident that he wouldn’t be recognized by any of the cops buzzing around Vegas like bees round a hive. To complete his biker disguise, he wore a black leather jacket, jeans, and steel-toed boots.
Malloy’s groin tingled with suppressed excitement as he noted that the parking lot surrounding his target across the street—even this early on a Wednesday evening—was already full to overflowing. Which meant the structure would be packed.
He checked his watch. Shiller had said if the place was crawling with tourists, that would mean Jurgen hadn’t given up the location. And that Buster should wait until eight-thirty, but not later—the crowds would be densest then, and traffic on the Strip the most choked.
With a little over an hour to kill, Buster Malloy decided to slip into Vic’s for a couple of drinks.
“Goddamn it, Jurgen,” Frank Marshall roared, grasping the prisoner by his shirtfront and dragging him to his feet. “What the fuck have you done to yourself?”
“Try and make him talk—I’ll get help,” said Morris Jaworski as he disappeared through the door, unable to phone for help because of LVMPD policy banning telephones from interview rooms.
Voss jerked spasmodically in Marshall’s grasp. “Help me with him, Steve,” the policeman said. “Grab his legs and we’ll lay him down on the table.”
Forrester did as he was asked. They laid Jurgen as gently as they could on the wooden table; Frank rolled up his jacket and tucked it under the man’s head.
“Jurgen! Can you hear me?” the police lieutenant shouted.
Voss nodded weakly and coughed violently. He tried to speak, but it was too late—blood had begun to well up in his mouth, and the words burbled out unintelligibly.
Marshall impatiently lifted the oversize head. “Jurgen! Try and tell us! Where’s the fire?”
Suddenly Voss convulsed violently and projectile-vomited a stream of bright-red blood, splattering Forrester, Marshall, and the tabletop with scarlet gore. He thrashed wildly, then shrank back into a fetal position, breathing shallowly.
“Jurgen! Where’s the fire?”
Voss’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly like that of a landed fish. His eyelids fluttered and his pupils started to roll upward. With what appeared to be a final supreme effort, his hand shaking, the little man drew a shape with the gnawed tip of his right index finger in the rapidly congealing film of blood on the tabletop. Then, after a final spasm, his thin body stiffened and he lay still.
Frank Marshall noted the fixed pupils and collapsed chest. “I think he’s dead,” the policeman said, anger and frustration evident in his voice. “Well, pal, you beat me to the punch again.”
Irritated, Forrester turned his attention from the recently deceased Voss to his ex-partner. “Beat you to the punch? Frank, why do these things always have to come down to a pissing contest?”
“Because I’m tired of getting pissed on.”
“By me, I suppose.”
“By you? Oh, no. Look at all those career opportunities you found for me at Summit—just like you promised. Jesus, Steve, I could be heading up the chicken-snatcher squad at that supermarket chain right now. Or maybe checking uniforms at some rent-a-cop outfit in Armpit City, New Jersey. How about—”
“Look, I did what I could for you, okay? Under the circumstances. Like I told you on the phone the other day, I’m not an employment—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What?”
“Under the circumstances.”
“You want it straight?”
“Why not? It’ll be a first.”
“Number one, you’ve got a drinking problem—”
“Bullshit. It’s under control.”
“No, it isn’t, Frank. And I couldn’t risk the repercussions if I recommended you for any kind of top-level position at Summit.” He paused, half expecting his ex-partner to take a swing at him. When it didn’t happen, Forrester continued: “Number two—”
“There’s more?”
“Number two. You’re the best cop I know. Why do you think I call on you every time we have a problem? Maybe I’m being selfish, but, goddamn it, Frank, I need you right where you are. Especially now, with this thing happening.”
“So I’m a drunk, but I’m useful to you. Well, that’s a comfort.”
“You asked for an honest answer. None of it’s personal. Never has been.”
“Okay, Mister—”
Morris Jaworski burst through the door, forcing Forrester and Marshall back to the gruesome reality of the moment and the exigencies of a now seemingly hopeless situation. He was followed by the desk sergeant carrying an emergency medical kit. “How is he?” Jaworski said breathlessly. “My God, you guys have blood all over …”
“The little asshole’s fucking gone and killed himself, Moe,” Marshall snapped, still angry at himself for not divining Voss’s intentions, and smarting from Steve’s revelations.
“Are you sure?” Jaworski gingerly felt for a pulse on Voss’s carotid artery. As he did so, the desk sergeant opened the kit, unscrewed an oxygen bottle and connected it to a respirator mask. Morris waved him off. “Never mind,” he said. “Frank’s right. Forget the oxygen. This guy’s gone. We might as well wait for the ambulance.”
“Guess we’ve lost any chance to find out what he knew,” said Forrester.
The police lieutenant stared at the bloody tabletop. “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe he did leave a message for us. Look at this.”
In the coagulating gore on the table, the dying man had drawn an odd pictograph, a shape reminiscent of an old-fashioned fountain pen nib:
“What do you make of it, Frank?” Forrester asked.
“Let me think about it for a minute.” Marshall stared at the strange diagram. “A bomb? An arrowhead? Neither of which makes much sense to me. But then, I’m just an old lush—or maybe a good cop. Sometimes hard to tell which, eh, Moe?”
The Forensics chief frowned at his associate, shrugged, and said, “I’ll get some Polaroids of it.”
Perched on a barstool in Vic’s Bar and Grill, Buster Malloy focused his good eye on the Seiko watch, all he had left to remind him of Helga. Impulsively, he raised the shot glass and silently toasted his deceased companion. Some days he missed her more than he cared to admit—but then, he thought philosophically, what was done was done. Besides, he rationalized with alcohol-induced sincerity, that Swedish bitch had always liked the desert. Maybe he’d done her a favor. Amused by this conclusion, the big man in the biker’s outfit grinned slyly at the bartender and ordered another drink. There was plenty of time; all he had to do was take a leisurely stroll across the Strip and push a button.
The preparatory work was all done. Malloy had needed the better part of the previous day, Tuesday, to carry in and conceal all twenty of the thermite incendiary devices. Five trips with the backpack loaded, five times up and down those stupid elevators, but at least nobody had paid the slightest attention to him—despite the fact that the entire town was overrun with cops and security guards.
Buster chuckled as he recalled how he’d successfully placed every single one of the devices, right under their stupid noses. Five in the restaurant, taped under tables. Three in the gift shop, concealed beneath piles of T-shirts and magazines. Three more in the cocktail lounge, hidden in heavy fabric drapes. Three in one of the wedding chapels, under wooden pews. One in each of the five high-speed elevators: these were the most crucial of all the devices because their function was to burn out the control panels and disable the elevators, precluding easy escape by those trapped above, as well as ascent by rescuers. They had also been the most difficult to plant; Malloy had been obliged to wait for each elevator to empty before hiding the firestarters behind the emergency-access panels. After that task was complete, he had strategically placed one last device in the stairwell, thereby blocking the only other means of escape from the planned conflagration.
Earlier, he and Shiller had mixed the simple but deadly cocktails—equal parts of powdered aluminum and powdered iron oxide—and packed them in innocuous cardboard boxes. Voss had assembled the ignition devices: explosive squibs connected to battery-powered receivers that the diminutive electronics expert had stripped from radio-controlled toy cars. Jurgen had coded all the ignition devices to one frequency and had provided Malloy with a single transmitter designed to set off all the devices
simultaneously at the push of one button. When ignited, Jurgen had explained, the aluminum would burn fiercely, extracting its combustion oxygen from the iron oxide. The resultant exothermic reaction would produce a temperature of almost four thousand degrees Fahrenheit for several minutes, in twenty different locations, virtually guaranteeing a raging, uncontrollable inferno within seconds of primary ignition.
In a way it was too bad the little wanker had gotten himself nabbed, Malloy thought. But like Shiller said, they didn’t need him anymore. And there’d be that much more money for each of them. Judging by the crowds he had seen flocking unhindered into the target structure across the street, Buster reassured himself that Voss hadn’t revealed the location of the upcoming fire.
He fingered the transmitter in the pocket of his leather jacket and downed the last of his beer chaser.
He glanced at his watch.
Plenty of time for another round, maybe two, before the fireworks.
“I should have seen it coming, Frank,” said Morris Jaworski glumly.
Marshall nodded wearily. “So should I, Moe. Especially after what they did to Barney Leopold. But then, who knew the little bastard was suicidal? With an ego like that, who’d have ever thought he’d poison himself?”
The two lawmen and Steve Forrester were huddled over coffee in the police cafeteria. Marshall kept glancing at the Polaroids of Jurgen Voss’s terminal scrawl in the pool of tabletop gore.
“Well, we knew the evidence from his computer would shake him up,” Jaworski offered. “It just worked a little better than we thought.”
“Yeah, right. Let’s face it, Moe, we both screwed up. Only Mr. Wizard here guessed what was happening, and by the time he could react, it was too late.”
“I doubt if any of us could have stopped him,” said Forrester. “And even if he didn’t take the poison, he would have hanged himself in his cell or something.”
“But in the meantime,” Marshall replied tiredly, “we could have squeezed info about this goddamn fire out of him.”
“The only hope we’ve got now is to nail Malloy,” Jaworski said. “That APB should be in the field by now. Every cop and security guard from here to Reno will be looking for him.”
“Right,” sighed Marshall. “But, you know, somehow I can’t get too optimistic about our chances. This guy’s too street-smart. He knows we’re looking for him. I’m sure he’s ditched the truck by now—and probably changed his appearance.” The cop paused and picked up one of the Polaroids of Voss’s death scene. “I wonder if he could be hiding out at a friend’s place. One of his neighbors in the trailer park mentioned this woman who used to stay with him—Helga Johnson, if I remember correctly. We ran the name, but there’s no record of it.”
“Maybe someone at the Galaxy knows him socially.”
“Could be.” Marshall slowly rotated the Polaroid print.
“I can ask his captain at the Galaxy,” said Steve. “But I don’t think he had many fr—”
“Hey, check this out!” Frank Marshall interjected, his mood becoming more positive as personal issues were forgotten in a sudden flash of enlightenment. “We were just looking at it the wrong way.” He turned the Polaroid ninety degrees:
“Christ, Frank, you’re right,” said Steve, quickly grasping his ex-partner’s meaning.
Jaworski peered more closely at the photograph. “I still don’t—”
“Look closer,” Frank urged. “Jurgen Voss has told us exactly what we wanted to know.”
“Wait a minute—I think I see it,” Moe said slowly. “It’s got to be … yes! When you look at it this way, it’s got to be a drawing of that new hotel-casino tower at the south end of the Strip … what do they call it …?”
“The Obelisk,” said Marshall.