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Using the service elevator, he brought all of his equipment, including the man inside the commercial-grade rolling trash can whom he had drugged with the same paralytic he had used on the woman in Georgia, to the fourth floor. Once he had ascertained where he needed to set up, he positioned all of his gear and began to unpack.
He wasn’t a fan of the coarse hemp rope. It was thick and difficult to deal with. He would have preferred to use a modern climbing rope, but the instructions had been explicit.
Cautious not to be seen from the street, he used his small flashlight sparingly and never near the windows. Even at this hour, there were still people on the street stopping and looking up at the building’s faïade. Most would be armed with cell phone cameras and some might even be disposed to take a picture or two. He couldn’t afford to be caught in anyone’s casual photos. Within a few hours, everyone was going to be talking about this building and anyone who had passed by and snapped a picture was going to be reviewing their footage to see if they unknowingly caught anything that might have warned of what was to come.
With everything staged, he attached the hoses together and ran the end with the rubber faucet adapter to the restroom. Even though the trash can had wheels, it would be difficult to move. He preferred to position it and then fill it in place. Things would be much easier that way.
As the water sloshed into the trash can, he looked at his watch and measured the rate of flow. He had pla
He doubted his figures were absolutely precise, but they didn’t have to be. All that mattered was that his work be done before the first person entered the Registry of Motor Vehicles in the morning. If anyone came in before, everything would be ruined.
He had been told not to get violent with the prisoner unless absolutely necessary. Of course, being told he couldn’t do it had only made him want to do it even more. It was yet another wave added to the tumultuous sea of whitecaps roiling inside him. He tried to focus on the minutiae of his assignment; the importance of completing the job properly and not leaving behind any clues.
The distraction worked at first, but its force soon began to wane. He was tempted, so tempted, to abuse the man; to break him mentally and emotionally, to have him weep and beg for his life. He positioned himself so that the man could watch him knotting the heavy rope and made sure he could also see the backboard that had been prepared specially for him.
He wanted to ask the man if he had ever heard of an engineer named Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, or simply Rube Goldberg for short. He wanted to share how Mr. Goldberg had inspired the contraption he had built and lay everything out for the man so he could watch the already intense fear in his eyes build to an even greater degree. He knew, though, that if he toyed with the mouse, he might very well end up eating it and that was strictly forbidden. Everything had to be done according to the instructions. Any deviation and everything would be ruined.
He tried to take his mind off the man in front of him. His thoughts wandered to the woman he had taken from Sea Island, how powerful he had felt with her life in his hands, and what it was like extinguishing her. It was like the final wisp of smoke rising from a candlewick. One moment there was pain and fear and death in her eyes, then release as everything just slipped away. But he hadn’t been able to savor it. He had wanted to take more time, especially with her ears, but his schedule meant that he had to keep moving.
That woman, and the one in the cemetery, made two back to back now who had gotten him significantly aroused without his being able to do anything about it. Tonight, after his work here was complete, he would find a way to change that. He deserved a reward. The mere thought of taking a woman shortly sent a pulse of excitement racing through his body. He now had the perfect goal to get him through what he had to finish and he focused on his task like a laser.
He finished his knots, placed everything just so, and even went back and rechecked his calculations for a fifth time. Once he was confident he had everything all set up exactly as it needed to be, he removed his cordless drill and selected a drill bit.
The prisoner’s eyes widened as the killer attached the bit and then gave the power tool’s trigger a quick press to make sure it worked. It did.
Satisfied, the killer closed the box of bits and began walking toward his victim. Before he even reached him, the man started to scream from behind his gag. The killer wasn’t listening. Raising the spi
CHAPTER 26
Bill Wise had sent Harvath home with a stack of books. The two he wanted him to focus on were The Creature from Jekyll Island and Economics in One Lesson.
The Jekyll Island book, all about the secrets behind the Federal Reserve, was thick enough to be a doorstop. Thankfully, its author encouraged readers to skip around in it and not read it from cover to cover. Harvath loved to read and if he’d had the time, he might have tackled it from front to back. Instead, he followed the author’s advice and read the summaries at the end of each chapter and then dipped into the chapters that interested him the most.
Economics in One Lesson was a sliver of a book in comparison. Like The Creature from Jekyll Island it was well written and easy to read. He was halfway through it before finishing his first cup of coffee. The slim volume had originally caught his eye because its author was the same Henry Hazlitt whose economics quote had been hung around Claire Marcourt’s neck. He was plowing through the book not only in hopes of better understanding the killer’s, or killers’, mind-set, but also because of how interesting it was and how much he was learning.
Despite not having hit the sack until well past midnight, he awoke at 5 A.M. feeling rested and decided to go for a run. Four miles in, he could feel his IT band tightening up. He hadn’t stretched as well as he should have and now his body was punishing him for it.
He pushed himself to his five-mile marker and then turned back toward home. It was a cloudy, overcast morning with lots of humidity that hinted at a good rain at some point during the day. It was a good thing he was getting his run in now. As he ran, lots of things passed through his mind, predominantly about the case. He made a mental note to call Bill Wise after breakfast to see if he had made any progress.
Arriving back home, Harvath showered, shaved, and was downstairs with the TV on cooking breakfast when the Old Man called. “You need to get to Boston,” he said without so much as a good morning.
Harvath muted his TV. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“There’s been a second victim.”
“Who?”
“Herman Pe
Harvath looked at his watch. “I can be out the door in fifteen minutes.”
“Be out the door in five. I want you there before the trail goes cold or the Boston cops muck it all up. I’ll send what I’ve got to your phone. You can read it on the plane.”
After shoveling his half-cooked eggs into the garbage, he ran upstairs to get dressed. Flying private, he didn’t have to worry about carrying weapons, so he gu