I quickly pulled out my phone to snap a picture of him, but I was too late as he reached the entrance to the building and turned away to ring the buzzer.
I muttered a curse, pocketed the phone, and watched. The killer pulled the steel-and-glass door open and disappeared inside. I charged down the street and got there just as the door closer was doing its job, and just managed to catch the big glass door before its lock clicked in. Behind the glass, I glimpsed Kirby’s killer before he disappeared through an internal fire door in one corner of the small lobby. It was no surprise he’d decided not to take the elevator, aiming to considerably reduce the risk of running into anyone.
I knew that if I followed him up the stairs, I’d be an easy target if he heard me, so I pressed the call button and waited for the elevator.
The bastard wasn’t getting away this time.
45
Sandman arrived on the second floor, checked the corridor was empty, then exited the stairwell and made his way past a dentist’s clinic toward Orford’s office. A shared kitchen stood opposite the door to the dentist’s suite. It was empty right now, but would surely start to get busy shortly.
Sandman only needed ten minutes, fifteen at the outside.
He found the door to the suite and entered, then locked the door behind him, crossed the reception area, and let himself into the psychiatrist’s office, closing the door behind him.
Ralph Orford was sitting in a large leather chair behind a polished oak desk on which sat an open laptop, a pen set, a blotter and several golf trophies. The office was tastefully decorated-mostly with large black-and-white photographs of Maryland’s national parks. A few personal photos sat on a lacquered filing cabinet beside a large window. There was an old-fashioned modular hi-fi on a side cabinet, with at least five hundred CDs arranged in tastefully designed wall shelves above. A leather sofa stood against the back wall beside a closet door.
Orford looked Sandman up and down. “This is completely against all protocol.”
“Not all,” Sandman replied. “We wouldn’t be talking right now otherwise.”
“But for you to come here? In broad daylight? That’s not how we work.”
Sandman sat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. He could see that the poor guy was trying to stay cool, but was clearly rattled.
“We need you,” he told Orford. “There was no time to set up a meet at the blind.”
The mere casual invocation caused a visible change in Orford’s attitude. He let out a ragged breath, then asked, “What do you need?”
“There’s a senator. He’s like a stray dog with a juicy bone he can’t stop chewing on. We need it to look like the guy’s gone bananas. Like everything he’s been doing for the past year is the delusion of an unhinged mind. It needs to be very public and as messy as possible. A total meltdown. Something that’s a shoo-in for the top of the six o’clock news.”
“Something like the Ukrainian ambassador?”
“Something exactly like that.”
Orford’s eyes widened. “You do know it’s highly unpredictable? It’s the nature of it. People react differently depending on what they’ve got tucked away in the folds of their brains.”
“That’ll be fine.”
“Delivery?”
“Injection. He’s diabetic, so the needle mark will be discounted as an insulin shot.”
After a moment’s consideration, Orford stood. “I have some in the fridge. You’ll need the right syringe.”
Sandman moved to one side as Orford walked over to a wall unit. He pulled out a key fob from his pocket and unlocked it. It led to a walk-in cupboard with a locked fridge, a fire safe, a set of golf clubs and floor-to-ceiling shelves of confidential patient notes.
“He’ll need zero-point-four milliliters per pound of bodyweight. Intramuscular.”
“The upper thigh. Yes, I know.”
“How much does he weigh?”
“About the same as you, I’d guess,” Sandman said.
Orford didn’t register the significance of the remark as he unlocked the fridge and pulled out a small vial. He then opened a shallow metal drawer in a standing unit and carefully selected a small syringe.
I had the door to Orford’s suite open in less than thirty seconds. There was no one at reception, but I could hear voices from inside Orford’s office. I drew one of the confiscated FBI Glocks from my coat pocket and edged toward the door.
“I still think I need to look at his medical file. He could be taking something that’ll react badly to the drug.” I assumed it was Orford talking.
“Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” That voice I recognized. And although the words were reassuring, his tone was full of thinly-veiled menace. “Tell me, doc, are you on any medication?”
The room went quiet for a moment, then I heard Orford, his voice clearly imbued with fear. “What are you-no, wait. You can’t!” Fear was quickly giving way to incredulity. “Dear God. Padley? That was you? You did that?”
“A fitting way for him to go, don’t you think?”
“But… why?” Orford pleaded.
“Think of it as a tribute to his work-and, in this case, to yours.”
“You’re going to make it look like I injected myself? No one’s going to believe it.”
“Why not?” the killer said. “Hoffman, Lilly, Bob Wilson. All the great warriors of consciousness have wanted to dive off the deep end. They wanted to know what was there before they sent anyone else. And you’re one of the greats, doc. You wouldn’t want to go out any other way, would you?”
“But why?” he asked again
“We’re just cleaning house. Think of it as the Janitors’ work coming full circle.”
“And Siddle?”
The killer didn’t answer. I guess he didn’t need to. Then it sounded like Orford knocked something over as he tried to back away. “No, please…”
“Come on, doc. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
It was time to intervene. I turned the handle as quietly as possible, then shouldered the door open and burst in, my gun leading me.
The killer already had his left arm around Orford’s throat and the needle about to go into the doctor’s neck when I leveled the gun at him.
I yelled, “Let him go,” stepping in closer. “Let him go right now.”
Orford screamed “No!” as the killer pushed the needle into his neck, his finger tight on the plunger.
I figured I could put a round through the bastard’s hand before he got the drug into Orford’s bloodstream, but even as I was thinking it, the guy adjusted his position so his hand was shielded by the psychiatrist’s shoulder.
Involuntarily, I gave a micro-nod of appreciation.
This guy wasn’t just good. He was exceptional.
For a second, I didn’t move. Nor did he. I could see he was thinking fast about his next move. He looked right at me, his eyes, though they kept darting out from either side of Orford’s head so quickly that I could only catch brief glimpses of them, so dark they were almost black.
“Really?” he said. “You want to save this guy? After everything he did to your son?”
Confusion gripped Orford’s face, but all I saw was a solar flare of blinding truth. The logic of it was so unassailably elegant, yet so totally perverse. This was the guy who had programmed Alex. The same guy who maybe, somehow, drove my father to kill himself.
It only seemed right that I should be the one to refresh his memory.
“Alex Martinez,” I hissed at the doctor. “My four-year-old son, in San Diego. The job Corrigan asked you to do.”
Orford couldn’t hide his own flash of recognition.
The killer must have felt Orford’s body momentarily tense-a crystal-clear tell that he knew exactly what I was talking about.
I could feel my finger tightening around the trigger before my brain had even sent a message to my hand. And just as the part of me that was still a reasonably clear-thinking FBI agent waged a split-second Armageddon with my raw hunger for revenge, the killer pressed down on the plunger and shoved his screaming victim toward me before pulling out his handgun with lightning agility.