My sixth sense buzzed constantly, from what, specifically, I couldn’t tell. Despite the fact that he was but one short second from decapitation, Goodman seemed at ease; then again, he was a professional assassin. A squad of snipers could be aiming for my head, or the cushion under me could be hiding a Claymore mine.
I thought about what got me started on this case. “You murdered Odin, didn’t you?”
Goodman sneered. “You can only murder humans.”
“What about Marissa? She was human.”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
Goodman kept quiet.
I poked a talon against his ribs. “You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to live, either.”
Goodman said, “Sure you want to do that? It would make your job harder.”
“Why would you care? You’ll be dead.”
Goodman must have thought about that, because he offered, “The nosy bitch knew too much.”
“About whom?” I asked. “Naomi Peyton?”
The color receded from Goodman’s ruddy cheeks. “You know too much.”
“Not enough. What about Vanessa Tico and Janice Wyndersook? Where are they? Or did you kill them too?”
“They’re still alive.”
Where? Why? Are they with Carmen? “Why are you telling me this?”
“To make you aware of the stakes involved. You make a wrong move and it’ll be more than your friend Carmen who gets popped for good.”
I snatched Goodman by the throat. He grunted like he was passing a stone. “Don’t put their murders on my head.” Droplets of my spit sprayed into his face.
The cart shuffled to a halt. I wanted to squeeze his neck until his eyeballs popped out.
“You caused their commuter plane to crash, didn’t you? And murdered seventeen more innocent people.”
“It’s called collateral damage.”
Collateral damage? “What about Karen Beck? More collateral damage?”
Luminous red spots the size of peas floated on my arms. A couple of the dots hovered on my nose and dazzled my eyes. The guards were painting me with the laser pointers on their rifles.
Goodman’s eyes traced the laser dots dancing on my face. “Go ahead and play the angry macho man. See where that gets you.”
It would finish me off and Carmen would remain a prisoner. I let go. The laser dots disappeared.
Goodman took a deep breath. “I did what I had to do.”
“What you’ve done is mass murder,” I said. “And you’re admitting it?”
“What are you going to do about it? Tell the world? You’re a fucking alien.”
Alien? By using the word, Goodman admitted he knew about the extraterrestrials. I wanted to shout my questions at him, then pick him up by the ankles to shake the answers loose. But if I asked him, then I’d be giving away what I knew or didn’t know. Let him think I was an alien.
“What do you care?” he said.
I grabbed his collar. “I care about Carmen. Why did you do it? Why did you murder all those people? To cover up the kidnapping of Tico and Wyndersook? To kidnap Carmen?”
Goodman tensed his arms as he put a death grip on the steering wheel. His knuckles turned white. “Ever try making people disappear? Pretty soon the numbers add up and the goddamn noise about what happened to all these broads can get fucking deafening.”
“You like being a murderer on the government’s payroll?”
Goodman stared, and his expression grew ever more hateful. “Do me a goddamn favor, Felix. Don’t patronize me. I know I’m a henchman for this kleptocracy we call a democratic republic. I’ve always been a soldier. I still am. They give me my orders and I say, yes sir, three bags full.”
“Only following orders? You sound like a Nazi.”
Goodman stepped on the accelerator. The cart lurched forward. “Read your history books.” Goodman added a dismissive look. “We didn’t beat the Nazis by being pussies.”
“These are innocent women, not Nazis.”
“Orders are orders.”
“If you ever met Mother Teresa,” I said, “I’m sure she’d shoot you.”
“Not if I shot her first.”
“What happened to the blaster you used on Marissa and Odin?”
“I gave it back to Mr. Big.”
Was Mr. Big an alien? Why had he ordered the hit on Gilbert Odin? What did Mr. Big have to do with the disappearance of the women? Was this the threat the Araneum wanted me to investigate? Every question was like a box with another question inside.
We passed through a cordon of guards. Goodman nodded at them and they nodded back.
“Think you’ve seen everything?”
“Why do you ask?” I replied.
“Because if you think you’ve seen everything, guess again, wise guy.” Goodman smirked. “Compared to what’s coming up, you haven’t seen shit.”
Chapter
40
Goodman took a left and followed the fence around the service area. We rolled behind the maintenance shed and the Dumpsters and continued past the parking garage.
I’d come here to rescue Carmen and instead I was letting my enemies take me deeper into their lair. The guilt of failing to protect her weighed on me. My hidden ace was that Goodman assumed I was an alien and had no idea that I was a vampire. When the time came, I hoped my supernatural powers were enough to help me find and free Carmen and for both of us to escape.
Krandall and Peltier trailed behind us with three more carts and a Gator after them. Each of those carts carried three armed guards, the Gator four. To complete our little circus parade all we needed was a brass band and a bear riding a tricycle.
Our convoy went beyond the back of the hotel and halted at the gate in the chain-link fence around the enclosure of the annex building.
Two guards wearing sunglasses and cradling submachine guns waited for us. An electric motor retracted the gate.
Goodman drove the cart over the threshold and into the grassy enclosure the size of a baseball infield. A concrete pad with a yellow H occupied the middle of the enclosure. This was where I’d seen the military helicopter land before.
The annex, a featureless three-story box with the antenna farm on the roof, stood to our right.
The gate closed behind us. The guards and the other carts remained outside the enclosure. As far as I could tell, Goodman and I were alone, though I was sure we were being watched.
I didn’t notice an entrance into the annex until Goodman headed toward a concrete driveway that inclined into the ground under the wall. We proceeded down the incline. A metal door scrolled open and we entered an underground corridor.
My kundalini noir tightened with apprehension. I put my hand on Goodman’s leg above the knee and pressed my talons into his thigh. If this was an ambush, I’d pull him apart like a wishbone.
Goodman didn’t slow the golf cart as we drove onto the linoleum floor and under the fluorescent lights. The whine of the cart’s motor echoed in the hall. The corridor continued straight down a long tunnel that must connect the annex to the main hotel building. A second hallway opened to our right. Placards on the doors of wall compartments indicated access to power and water conduits. We made a right turn at this second hall and stopped at a set of elevator doors. They pinged open and waited for us. We were being watched, for sure.
Goodman halted in front of the doors. I locked my fingers around his arm. We got out of the cart and walked into the elevator. I turned Goodman toward the video camera in the upper left corner. I grasped his chin and lifted his face to the camera. I scratched his neck with a talon to make him wince. “There’s more of that, if your friends are not careful.”
The doors closed and the elevator rose. I got ready for anything and held Goodman by the back of his collar. If the floor dropped, I’d leap through the ceiling. If a flamethrower sprayed fire, I’d use Goodman for cover.