That a close relative to the disease without a name, one nobody had known about, had just shown up on the doorstep.
The doe strode softly into the thick stand of trees, her tracks like broken hearts in the fallen snow. Food was plentiful here, the low-hanging pine boughs bunched with cones, the needle buds on the saplings still succulent, only beginning to brown in their cold-weather dormancy.
Scanning a moment for predators, she saw nothing disturb the vegetation, heard nothing except the hushed whisper of the breeze. Then she lowered her head and tore at the young trees with her flat, blunt teeth, lacking incisors to bite into them.
The knife slashed up from beneath the dark shelf of a branch, plunged hilt-deep into the softness of her
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Dat, then slashed crosswise once and again. Arterial venous blood gushed over the animal’s white down stained the snow under her front hooves mingled es of red. She collapsed heavily, the brightness of frozen in eyes already dead.
Kuhl knelt to pull his knife from the wound, traces of or steaming from its wet blade.
For the first time in weeks, he felt released.
iian awoke, gasping for air. Feverish and disoriented, unable at first to remember he was, he felt certain a hand was clapped over nose and mouth. Then he got his bearings. He was i his hospital room. His bed light off in the dimness of ly morning. A thin crack of illumination spilling un his door from the outer corridor. Air.
He needed air.
Gordian struggled to pull down a breath, his body ched off his mattress from the effort. But his lungs I’t respond. They felt heavy and clogged. A muffled gling noise escaped him. Air. He fumbled under his bin for the oxygen mask. Couldn’t find it. He reached own to his chest and still couldn’t locate it. Groped at on his right side, where he sometimes clipped it the safety rail. Not there.
The oxygen mask. He needed the mask. Where was 9
His mouth opened wide, he swung his arm up over i head, found the feed hose running from the wall, and ith a surge of relief slid his fingers down along its ngth. Feeling for the mask at the end of it-
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His newborn relief suddenly plummeted away into confusion.
The mask …
He was already wearing it.
He cupped his hand over its curved plastic surface, pressed it against his face, drew hard. Air hissed through the tube. He could hear it over the strangled shreds of sound coming out of him. Hear it flowing into his mask … but that was where it seemed to stop. His throat, his chest, were blocked.
Desperate, choking, feeling as if his chest were about to explode, he clawed for the emergency button at his side to summon a nurse, hoping to God one was very nearby.
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EIGHTEEN
CALIFORNIA NOVEMBER 16, 2001
: CONDOMINIUM SUBLEASED BY DONALD PALARDY
ilonged to a large block of units UpLink International acquired to house its midlevel employees in one of newer planned developments in Sunnydale-a sub- an community with the conceit of a major city, about
miles south of San Jose. By the time he got into his car to drive down Wednesly morning, Ricci had started wondering if Megan and all could have been right about him making too much ‘ Palardy’s absence. Maybe Palardy had put on a well- earsed sick voice when he’d phoned Hernandez to Sy he wouldn’t be at work the previous Monday, aybe he’d met a hot number in a bar and spontaneHsly decided to take her on a cruise to nowhere. Maybe s would be in bed with his phone unplugged, munching potato chips and watching game shows or reruns of sties sitcoms on cable television. In hindsight, Ricci’s li-fall-down comment about Palardy and Gordian emed a bit silly, even to him. And his finger-snapping
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
had made it sound sillier. Of course, everyone had agreed that something wasn’t kosher about Palardy’s continued dereliction after three days, and felt it was at least worth checking out.
His thoughts had gone on in that mode until he finally located Palardy’s condo after several wrong turns leading onto streets named for different native flowers that all sounded alike to him, past rows of two-family stucco buildings that all looked alike.
Then Ricci stopped questioning himself and started noticing things. It was a mental shift to a scrupulous objectivity that grounded every good cop the moment he arrived at the scene of an investigation. And Ricci doubted even the Boston Police Department officials who’d once thrown him into the political winds would have disputed that he’d been among their best.
As he rolled his Jetta into the driveway, his first observation was that Palardy’s van was in his carport. His second was that Palardy hadn’t brought in his newspapers for a few days-there were three lying on his walk in their plastic delivery bags. That could mean he was home and too sick to bother picking them up or that he’d gone off somewhere without his vehicle, although he might own more than a single set of wheels.
He strode to the door, rang the bell, and waited. No one answered. He fingered the buzzer again, keeping it depressed a little longer. Still nobody. Then he knocked without getting a response. After a few minutes, he leaned over to peek through the glass panels on either side of the door, but they were covered with louvered screens. The shade was likewise fully drawn over the front window.
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ci buzzed again, let another minute pass. He heard and from inside, listened, realized it was the racket I,a cuckoo clock. Palardy didn’t come to the door, ci tried the doorknob. Locked. He bent to examine of old habit. A typical key-in cylinder lock. He retract the bolt with a credit card in ten seconds r In fact, the door had been opened that way before, ng by the scratches on the rim and doorframe. That “ted another observation. The scratches looked as might be fresh.
considered this a moment. The marks might not the slightest significance. Ricci would have been I pressed to count how often he had accidentally got- cked out of his own home and used a charge card his way inside. It was easy once you got the Anybody could do it. Every cop he’d known. Palardy, being a trained countersnoop, it seemed able to assume he wouldn’t need to hire a lock- if he forgot his house keys somewhere. Not with me Mouse job like this. On the other hand, Palardy I unexplainedly dropped from sight, and Ricci’s prob- 5 mind couldn’t rule out the chance that someone else ; have gained entry.
s thought about using the card trick to admit himself : now but then dismissed the notion. That very sort ctic had once helped his detractors pin the rogue- tive label on him. And he was just getting com- ble at UpLink.
stood there at the door, attempting to remember ; where he passed the management office. Fuch- > was it? Or Manzanita? Unable to decide, he returned r’his car and drove around a while, looking for the
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A quarter hour and multiple wrong turns later, he found it on Lupine. The building manager was a man named Perez whose reservations about admitting a stranger to Palardy’s apartment unit began to dissipate the instant Ricci flashed his UpLink Security ID card. And no wonder, since the company owned half the complex.
“We’re pretty concerned,” Ricci said. He kept his card displayed. “Nobody’s heard from him in days.”
Perez seemed fascinated with the Sword insignia.
“I do this, got to stick around while you’re inside,” he said with a heavy Mexican accent.
“Okay by me.”
Perez nodded. “Lemme grab the key ring, I meet you over there.”
Ricci offered to give him a lift instead, dreading another wrong turn. With Perez beside him to furnish directions, it took under five minutes to get back to the condo.
In the walkway Perez fumbled with his keys for a second, found the right one, and pushed open the door.
They found the living room unoccupied. Utterly still except for the ticking of the cuckoo clock.
“Palardy?” Ricci stood in the entry. “You here?”
Silence. Stillness.
Ricci stepped past the building manager to another door, slightly ajar. He glanced over his shoulder. “This the bedroom?”
Perez nodded.
Ricci rapped the wood. Again no answer. He grabbed the doorknob and entered.
In the doorway behind him, Perez inhaled sharply at the sight of the body.
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Ucci’s memory of the photo he’d pulled from the rity files confirmed it was Palardy. He was lying in Hon his back, his eyes wide open. A blanket covered to the chest. His face was gray, with dark purple she’s on the cheeks and forehead. His mouth was . into what appeared to be a grimace of pain. The sticking out from under the blanket was hooked tb a claw, the visible portion of his bare arm also le-