Run For Your Life

“If you insist,” I said, and took a long hit of the cold beer. It tasted damn good.

“See? There you go. A little levity goes a long way. I knew we could be friends, that you were the guy I could explain myself to.”

I took another drink. The way my nerves were jangling, I could have gone through a twelve-pack. I set the Bud on the counter and stared at him with as much concern and understanding as I could muster. Oprah would have been proud.

“Explain away,” I said. “I’m more than happy to hear what you have to say, William. That’s your name? William Meyer, right?”

“Sort of,” he said. “My name used to be Gladstone. But my parents got divorced and our family split up. I went with my mom, and my stepfather adopted me and changed my name to Meyer.”

So that’s why we didn’t get a hit on any relatives for Gladstone, I thought, shaking my head.

“That’s what this was all about in a way,” the killer said. “My turning my back on my name and on my brother.”

Much as I wanted to see this psychopathic, cop-killing, walking infection on an autopsy table, the hostage negotiator in me won the day. Meyer wanted to tell his story, and the longer I could keep him talking, the more time I bought and the more likely he was to relax.

“Can I call you Billy?” I said in a voice that would make any therapist proud. “I’ve worked a million cases, but I’ve never heard anything like this. Will you tell me about it?”

Yeah. Tell me all about how much smarter you are than the rest of the world, you evil prick.

Chapter 85

Just as I’d figured, Billy Meyer didn’t need any prodding.

“Like I said, when I was ten, my parents got divorced, and my mom got remarried to a very rich financier. I went with her, but my little brother, Tommy, stayed with my dad. Pop was a nice guy, but a drunk. He worked cleaning trains for the Transit Authority, and that was the height of his ambition. As long as it kept him in booze.”

He took a slug of his beer. Good, keep drinking, I thought. Maybe I could get him to let me bust out the Jameson’s, and we could do shots. He’d get drunk and pass out. Or better yet, I could brain him with the bottle. I was all for that.

“My life completely changed,” he went on. “I went to snobby Collegiate and on to even more elitist Princeton. But after I graduated, instead of heading off to Wall Street like my stepdad wanted, I rebelled and joined the marines instead. I started out as a grunt and ended up in Special Ops. I trained as a pilot, like my brother.”

At the top of his class, no doubt, I thought, remembering his efficiency with a pistol.

“When I got out of the service, I joined up with the multinational corporate security firm Cobalt. It was great. Iraq was just starting up. It was just like Special Ops only better. All the action I wanted. It was great while it lasted. Cobalt’s the firm that’s been catching some heat lately. You follow current events, Mike?”

“I do what I can,” I said.

“Well, the FBI is actually going to try to charge me with murder. Of course I killed those people. You let off shots in the direction of my men, crowd or no crowd, you’re getting them back and then some. The Feds want to indict us for staying the fuck alive? Screw that. I came back to fight that nonsense. Point out the little fact that we were in a war zone. Cobalt hired a PR group to rep us. We were going to go on the morning shows and talk circuit. It was all set up.”

He paused to take another sip.

“Didn’t work out?” I tried.

“Well, that was before I came home to my apartment here in the city to drop off my bags and found my brother.”

The psychopath suddenly looked down at the floor. A pinched, sad expression clouded his face. I wouldn’t have believed he had that kind of feeling in him.

“My brother blew his brains out, Mike. They were on the coffee table all over my rug. There was a three-page suicide note on the table. Turns out things had totally turned to shit for him while I was away. He’d had an affair with a stewardess, and his wife, Erica, found out and filed for divorce. The big money, the fancy house – all that stuff was hers, so he was out in the cold. Then came the final blow. He got busted for tossing back a few before a London -to- New York run, and bingo, he lost his job.”

This time, I took a sip of my Bud, trying to mask my confusion.

“At the very end of my brother’s note was a list. It was a list of people who had wronged him, the ones who ‘made him do it,’ as he said.”

Billy Meyer let out a deep breath and made a “there you have it” gesture with his gun-free hand, looking at me as if he’d just explained everything.

I nodded back slowly, trying my best to look as if it all made sense now.

“Standing over my poor brother’s body, I had an epiphany. I’d abandoned him when we were little. I never called him, never wrote, always blew him off. I was a self-centered prick. The more and more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d fucking killed him as sure as if I’d pulled the trigger myself. My first reaction actually was lifting the gun. I wanted to kill myself, too. That’s how messed up I was.”

If only you’d gone with that immediate instinct, I wanted to say. Think long, think wrong.

“That’s when I decided it. Screw defending myself in the indictment. Screw my career, my life, everything. All I ever wanted in life was a mission, and I decided that righting the wrong that had been done to my brother would be my last and final one. I decided to give Tommy a going-away present. Maybe he didn’t have the balls to get back at the people who fucked up his life, but I did. I decided to send out the Gladstone brothers with a bang.”

So we’d been right, I thought. The victims were people who had wronged Thomas Gladstone. Only Gladstone wasn’t the one killing his enemies. It was his brother. We’d gotten the sequence wrong, I realized. It wasn’t a murder spree that ended in a suicide, but a suicide that had inspired a murder spree.

“So all that stuff you wrote about society was bull?”

“I believe most of it, I suppose. But it was mainly just smoke to cover my tracks. There were a lot of people on the list. I needed time. I needed you to think my targets were random. Screw with the enemy’s head: Tactics 101. It was working, too, until you came along and stumbled between me and the last two people left on my brother’s note.”

He gestured with the gun for me to stand.

“Which brings us to why I’m here, Mikey. You got in the way of my taking out Erica’s parents. You’re going to have to make that up to me. Fortunately, I’ve come up with an alternate plan, and you’re going to help. So drink up that beer of kings, pal. Last call. We’re going for a little ride.”

Chapter 86

Thank God, was my first thought. If we got out of here, my family would be safe. That was all I wanted.

At gunpoint, he walked me out of the kitchen, back into the living room. But then with his free arm he scooped up Chrissy, still in her Barbie pajamas, off the couch.

“No!” I yelled. I managed to restrain myself from lunging for him, afraid he’d start shooting.

But Eddie screamed, “Get off her!” and jumped from the couch, trying to tackle Meyer. He went flying backward even faster as Meyer kneed him in the chest.

“Get your rug rats under control, Be

“Guys, stay where you are,” I ordered the kids, then turned back to the killer. “Billy, relax. I already said I’d help you. We don’t need to bring her. Besides, she’s sick.”

“Her condition’s going to get a lot worse if you don’t do what I say. That goes for all of you. I see a cop car, this family is going to be short two place settings at breakfast tomorrow.” Holding my squirming little girl under his arm, Meyer gestured me back toward the kitchen with his pistol. “Come on now, Mikey. We’re going down the freight elevator.”