"Cross street!" The Wind Minstrel yelled.
"Eighth!" Shiff called back, and he heard the computer keys clicking… Ahead of him, at the last second, the Eighth Street light turned green. They shot through it, and in the rearview mirror he watched as it immediately turned red again. It was then that Bob Shiff understood what The Wind Minstrel was doing. He had cracked into the traffic-light computer system and was controlling all the lights on Twenty-seventh Avenue.
In the Lincoln, Lockwood was too slow as he slammed on the brakes. The light on Eighth Street had turned red a second before they got to it. Lockwood was still fighting his bad depth perception and went squealing through the red light in a four-wheel skid, leaning on the horn as the flow of cross traffic swarmed into the intersection. He crashed into a yellow pickup truck, throwing Malavida into the dash. Fenders crunched and locked as the two vehicles skidded together toward the curb and came to a smoking, shuddering stop. Lockwood threw the car into reverse and floored it. The bumpers were hooked, and the Lincoln's tires smoked and screamed on the hot, sun-cooked pavement. Then, finally, he pulled loose, after dragging the pickup about ten feet into the intersection. People were yelling; horns were honking. Lockwood floored it, driving up onto the sidewalk and around the mess he had caused, then off again in pursuit of the VW van.
Lockwood looked over and saw that Malavida was curled up in pain from the collision. He was doubled over in his seat, holding his stomach. "Great move, Zanzo," he grunted through a clenched jaw.
"Something wrong with traffic lights," Lockwood said.
"He's into the system," Malavida whispered in pain. "He's controlling them."
Suddenly all of the lights ahead of them turned red. The next intersection they hit was the four-lane downtown junction for the Tamiami Trail. The cross-traffic was intense and Lockwood and Malavida sat in frustration at the red light, watching the heavy traffic flow past in front of them, completely blocking their pursuit. Finally, Lockwood slammed his hand down hard on the wheel.
"Now what?" Malavida said as they both scanned the street up ahead. The van was nowhere in sight.
Chapter 40
They were huddled in the basement of the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library. The room was too cold and the stone, turn-ofthe-century architecture didn't offer much warmth. Malavida was in bad shape, still bleeding from the opened incision. They couldn't get it to stop.
"Leaking like a Mexican fishing boat," he said through gritted teeth.
Lockwood attempted to put his hand on Mal's forehead to check his temperature but Malavida knocked it away. He looked flushed.
They had been plowing through microfilm for an hour, looking for the obit on Shirley Land. Finally, an article about her death came up on the screen. The date was July 10, 1984. There was a small picture with the article, which was the same one Karen had shown to Malavida. They both leaned in and read the story quickly…
The article gave a brief description of the fire that had burned Shirley to death. There was very little about Shirley Land's personal history.
The article said she was the only daughter of a Baptist minister, who also made a meager living by designing underground bomb shelters in the fifties. It noted that she was survived by a son, Leonard, who was fifteen years old. It went on to say that she had been active in church affairs and that she was being buried at the Old Manatee Cemetery in Bradenton, Florida.
"Dead end," Malavida said. He started shivering and now Lockwood was sure he had developed a fever.
"You gotta go to the hospital, man, before you shake apart and die from infection," Lockwood said, forming one of his first complex sentences since the halon attack.
"Shut up. I'm in this," Malavida said, determined to hang tough. "Your funeral," Lockwood said, then added, "We're down to seeds and stems here."
He knew if he were working a regular investigation for Customs and had time, he would do a full search for Tashay Roberts. He would have choppers searching the Manatee wetlands for The Wind Minstrel's barge. And he would check all the old addresses where Leonard Land had lived, hoping to interview an acquaintance who could give them more information. But he had lost his power base. The cops would arrest both of them on sight and they were out of time. Karen might be dead already. Lockwood knew they had to get some traction and get it fast.
"Sometimes," he said, forcing the words into the right slots in the sentence, "sometimes delusional people will go someplace they feel safe, like home…"
"He won't go back to that bomb site near Tampa," Malavida said. He was now shivering so badly he was having trouble staying on the chair. "We'll never find that Barge again. There's a hundred square miles of swamp he could hide in… We're flicked."
"Maybe here," Lockwood said, pointing to the article about Shirley's burned house in Bradenton, Florida.
"He burned that house down, and we don't have an address. It was twelve years ago…"
"County records! Your computer?" Lockwood said.
"Okay," Malavida answered and then, without warning, he threw up on the stone floor.
When she woke up, she was in a new place. A twenty-foot-square windowless concrete room. She had been unconscious when they brought her here. The last thing she remembered, Leonard Land had held her down on the floor of the van while Bob Shiff pried her mouth open and forced her to swallow two pills.
She was no longer tied. She slowly regained her senses, struggled to her feet, and went to the metal door at the far side of the room… It wouldn't budge. She stood silently in the center of the room and listened. Her entire body was quivering. She then realized that it was absolutely quiet. The quiet was unrelenting. The room was frigid. There were no ventilation ducts except for two small tubes that came into the high ceiling five feet above her head. She put a hand out and touched the concrete, which was extremely cold. For the room to have such cold walls and be so deathly quiet, she suspected it was underground. She remembered her profile of brown rats, written six days and two lifetimes ago. Brown rats lived underground. Was this The Rat's hiding place? She fought back a powerful urge to just sit down and cry. She knew that she had very few tools left to use against him. The only thing she had was her profile on The Rat, gathered with guesswork over the last week. She thought she understood his sickness.
She had to use her ability as a psychologist and apply her knowledge effectively. She needed to buy herself some time.
She looked at her watch. It was 10:30 Sunday night, or at least she thought it was… unless she had slept the night through and it was now Monday morning. She had no sunlight to tell her for certain. She had to assume the pills they had given her would last only four to six hours. They had forced them down her throat sometime around five, so she deduced it was probably Sunday night. In a pinch she might be able to use that. She tried desperately not to let her thoughts ramble or turn to self-pity. She tried not to think about the horrible pain in her mouth. With her tongue, she carefully touched her broken teeth, crying out and almost fainting as she struck the exposed nerves. Then she kneeled down on the floor and prayed to God.
"Dear Lord," she said in a whisper, "forgive my sins. Help me to withstand this pain. Help me to find a clear vision. Lead me out of this darkness. In the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen." And then she sat in the corner farthest from the door and composed her thoughts, steeling herself for whatever would come.
At eleven the door opened and Leonard Land was standing there. The harsh fluorescent lights turned his pale, rash-reddened skin an ugly purple. His grotesque body filled the opening, his ghastly bald features glowering. Then he reached behind him and turned a dimmer rheostat, bringing the lights low so that he was no longer clearly visible, only a huge outline in the doorway. His smell reached across the small room, gagging her.