“Hurt?”

“Yeah. You’re just about as jacked up as anyone I’ve ever seen, sport. You had the shit kicked out of you, you been shot more times than Bonnie and Clyde, and you slept in a refrigerator for a couple of nights. That can’t feel good.”

“No,” said Ruger, looking down at his hands. They were as white as cream except for some streaks of dirt, though the fingernails had thickened and grown dark, almost black. Ruger flexed them. With the loss of so much fluid—almost all of his blood and water—his hands were unnaturally thin, almost delicate. Even all that he had taken from that cop, Golub, hadn’t done much to flesh him out. “No—no pain.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Vic said with a nasty grin.

Ruger raised his eyes. They were no longer without expression. “Kiss my ass.”

His gaze was hard on Vic for a while and then drifted sideways to scan the room. As that stare left him, Vic could feel a change in frequency or perhaps of vibration, and he noted it down in his mental filing cabinet. He watched as Ruger assessed the basement—Vic’s domain. It was Vic’s totally private space, hallowed ground where Lois and Mike were never allowed to set foot. The basement was partitioned in a mirror-image of the partitions in Vic’s own mind, and he was aware of it—and was aware of what the basement and its contents were telling Ruger. There were gun racks heavy with rifles, shotguns, and pistols; along one wall there were stacks of unopened boxes of Panasonic DVD players, HD and plasma TVs, Black and Decker microwave ovens, and Craig CD players.

In the far corner was a computer workstation with a laser printer next to which stood a tall stack of yellow leaflets bearing a crudely drawn caricature of a Jewish man who looked shifty and avaricious, cringing beneath a bold, black swastika. In the opposite corner was a complex telephone rerouting and answering system that serviced several different lines: Vic Wingate’s Gun Repair, White America, the Aryan Brotherhood, the National Socialist Party, and a pornography distributorship called V.W. Enterprises. At this end of the basement was a second computer workstation and a Mission table that was piled high with bundled stacks of money that were splotched with reddish-brown stains. Old blood. Ruger sniffed the air as he looked at the bills and Vic noted just the smallest lift of one of Ruger’s eyebrows. He filed that away, too. Ruger turned to face Vic but let his gaze linger significantly on the money before shifting back to meet Vic’s assessing stare. “That looks familiar,” he said mildly.

“Finders keepers,” Vic said. “Guess you’re shit outta luck.”

A shrug. “I can always get more.” As he said this he flexed his thin white hands.

Vic said, “Tell me something else, sport…how’s the old noggin’ working? You know who you are?”

“I know.”

“Can you tell me your name.”

“Blow me.”

“Fair enough.” Vic thought for a moment. “The Man wants me to determine whether you’re damaged goods or not. You understand what I mean by that?”

Ruger said nothing, but he smiled. A tiny lift of cold lips.

“He and I have gone to a lot of effort to bring you to this moment, right here, right now. I want you to pay attention now ’cause this shit’s important.”

“I’m listening,” Ruger said softly. His gray tongue flicked over his dry red lips.

In one smooth movement Vic picked up his pistol and pointed it at Ruger. “If it turns out that your brain’s turned to mush just like your buddy’s then I hate to break the news but it’s beddy-bye time, you dig? And don’t get any ideas about leaping over and trying to wrestle this away from ol’ Vic. That would be the last stupid move you ever made, ’cause I made these loads myself and if you were to guess that they’re special then you’d be right. Am I making myself clear?”

“As glass,” Ruger said. He never even glanced at the gun. His black-within-red-within-black eyes were fixed on Vic’s.

There was a sound above them—Lois’s footfalls as she walked from the study to the kitchen. A pause, then a thunk as the refrigerator door closed, and her footfalls retreated back down the hall. Lois getting more ice for her drink. Vic and Ruger both stared at the ceiling and then lowered their eyes at the same time, reestablishing contact. “Just so we both understand who’s in charge here.”

“Your house, your rules,” Ruger said.

“Just what I wanted to hear.”

“What happened to Boyd? Why’s he so messed up?”

Vic shrugged. “Not exactly sure. Theoretically he should have turned out like you, but for some reason his brain turned to mush. Basically he’s cold cuts with teeth, and even though the Man was able to dial up his wits a notch or two he’s as close to brain dead as one of you clowns can be and still walk around.”

Ruger was still smiling. “Why?”

“Don’t know. Not even sure if the Man knows.”

“I thought he knew everything.”

Vic’s eyes became slits. “He knows everything that matters.” He raised the barrel of the pistol until it pointed at Ruger’s face. “And let’s be clear on one more thing, sport—it’ll help us get along. You don’t make any wise-ass comments about the Man. Not ever, you read me loud and clear?”

Ruger’s eyes glittered. “Griswold is my God,” he said.

Vic looked at him for a long time, trying to read those eyes, looking for mockery, looking for a lie, but finding neither. He set the pistol down, stubbed out his cigarette, and then leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Then we have a lot to talk about.”

Chapter 11

(1)

Terry arrived at the hospital at the same time as Gus, Saul Weinstock, and Frank Ferro, the four of them converging in the parking lot and then heading downstairs to where Jerry Head was standing vigil on one side of a streamer of yellow crime scene tape that was stretched across the doorway. Other cops thronged the hall, and from the inside of the room there were flashes as the criminalists took photos and documented the scene. “What the hell happened here?” Terry snapped before Ferro could open his mouth.

“Pretty much what I told you on the phone, sir.” Head looked as tired as Terry felt. “The night patrol was making its regular sweep of the back lot, where deliveries and such are made. It was supposed to be closed and locked at eleven. They said that they noticed that the chain on one of the gates looked funny and—”

“Funny how?” asked Ferro.

“They said it wasn’t hanging the same way that they had left it. They stopped to investigate and found that the chain had been cut, probably with bolt cutters, and that it was just looped through the bars. They called it into the head of security—”

“Brad Maynard,” Weinstock provided.

“—and Mr. Maynard came out to investigate, verified what the security guys said, and they did a full sweep of the parking lot. At first they didn’t see anything out of place, then when they went around and tried every door they found that one of them was unlocked.” He tilted his head toward the left end of the corridor. “That’s the door right there. Where bodies are wheeled out by funeral directors and such.”

“Was the door unlocked,” asked Ferro, “or had it been forced?”

“Unlocked,” Head said, and there was a moment of silence while everyone digested the implications of this. Terry rubbed his eyes and he suddenly looked about ten years older.

Weinstock was shaking his head. He was wearing sweats and sneakers—the easiest stuff to jump into after he’d gotten the call. “That door is always locked and there’s a security alarm on it that goes off if it’s opened without a key. There are only a few keys, and they’re registered and numbered.”

“That’ll help,” Ferro said. “Go ahead, Jerry.”

“Well, as you know most of us out-of-town cops have been using the hospital cafeteria as a kind of mess hall during all this stuff, so when the break-in was noticed they sent someone to see if there were any of us there. I was just sitting down to eat but I came down here right away to check it out and secure the scene, which is when I called it in to Pine Deep PD. While I was waiting for them to show, I verified that the door was, in fact, unlocked, and from what I can tell there’s no sign of forced entry. No scratches on the lock, nothing bent out of place. Door and lock are sound, just unlocked. I saw some footprints, kind of muddy, coming in from outside. They kind of fade out halfway down the hall, and I have them taped out and Dixie McVey’s standing over them to make sure no one scuffs them up.”

“Good job. What else?”

“By this time Jim Polk showed up and he and I began checking all of the rooms on this level. When we found that the morgue door was unlocked, we investigated and found that someone had definitely been in there. Like the exterior door, there were no signs of forced entry. We checked it out and saw that most of the doors to those drawers where the bodies are kept were standing open, and three of the drawers had been pulled out.”

“Whose?” Weinstock demanded.

Head looked at him. “Well, Ruger’s of course, and the two officers, Castle and Cowan.”

“Son of a bitch!” Gus said. “Was Ruger’s the only body missing?”

Head nodded. “The only way we even knew it was his was because of the toe tag. It had been ripped in half and the pieces were lying on top of the rubber sheet that I guess had been over the body.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be video surveillance of this room?” Ferro asked, turning to Weinstock.

“Yes, there is, but—”

Head cut him off. “Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Maynard went up to the security office and did a playback. He said that the camera does a slow pan back and forth every sixty seconds, so the picture changes and it’s fixed focus so the resolution is crap, but even so we have pretty clear video images of what appears to be Kenneth Boyd opening the drawers and bending over all three bodies. Then the camera pans away and when it comes back Boyd’s got Ruger slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and he’s limping out of the room.”