The Event Read online

  “Everything’s exactly as it was when we arrived,” one of the uniforms said.

  “Was the ceiling light working?” She turned and glanced up. Two bulbs beneath a glass diffuser. One hundred and twenty watts, minimum.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Bright?”

  “Not bright enough for our purposes, ma’am.”

  “Hmm.”

  She lifted the edge of the comforter and ran her fingers along the sheets. Smooth. Satin. He expected to entertain at some point, if he hadn’t already. Thinking of the future, not the present. She stopped. Gnawed her bottom lip. Turned in a circle.

  Flash. Flash.

  Bright overhead lights. White walls. A tackle box that once housed paints. Not a single painting.

  “Did you find any bulbs down here at all?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Any of you have a black light wand on you?”

  “Yeah,” the criminalist on his hands and knees in the closet said. “Case is behind me. Why? Teenage boy? You’ve got to figure his bed will light up like the night sky. You wouldn’t be able to find a sample other than his on a dare. Besides, we have no reason to suspect any sort of sexual component.”

  Lawton removed the wand from its custom insert, walked to the center of the room, and eased the photographer out of her way.

  Seventy-eight minutes post-event.

  “Someone kill the lights.”

  “I’m not done—” the photographer started.

  “Trust me. You’ll want to get this, too. Now would someone mind…?”

  The auxiliary spotlights extinguished with a snap and a thud. The only light was the alternating red and blue filtering through the blinds from the street.

  She turned on the black light and held it up over her head. The blue glow diffused throughout the subject’s bedroom, causing the designs he’d painted all over the walls and the ceiling in invisible, phosphorescent paint to glow a pale shade of purple.

  “Jesus,” the photographer said.

  “Well?” Lawton said. “What are you waiting for? Take your pictures.”

  Two

  Webster & Lloyd Investment Management

  520 Madison Ave, 16th Floor

  New York, New York

  October 18th

  Five Years Ago

  “Just lower the weapon and let go of the girl.” Lawton spoke calmly, clearly. Held her Glock away from her body in the least threatening manner possible, drawing attention to it in the process so her partner could ease around the office to her left to get a clear shot. “Easy. Easy. Lower the gun and we all get to walk out of here.”

  The man wore a powder blue Henley with white pinstripes and cuffs rolled to the elbows. Top two buttons down. His red silk tie tugged loose. His pits were discolored. His face and hair were wet with sweat. His eyes were wide and wild. Twitchy. They ticked from her partner to her and back again. Over and over. He shifted his stance and her partner stopped his advance.

  “Look at me. Anthony, is it? Talk to me, Anthony. Look at me. Over here. My name’s Renee. My partner over there is Wes. Okay? We don’t want to hurt you. And we sure as hell don’t want to get hurt ourselves. So why don’t you put down the gun so we can talk this thing through, all right?”

  He made a sound that reminded her of a dog whining to be let out. Looked at her. At her partner. At her again.

  Tick-tock.

  Tick-tock.

  “Talk to us, Anthony. Help us understand what’s going on here. Maybe we can figure out a way to get all of us home safely tonight? What do you say, Anthony? We’re all on the same side here.”

  Another mewling sound from which words formed.

  “You can’t help me. No one can help me.”

  “That’s not true, Anthony. You see these three letters on my cap here? That’s right. These three letters mean I have the full might of the federal government at my disposal. They mean I’m authorized to help you solve your problems, whatever they might be. But only if you—look at me over here, Anthony. Only if you let go of—What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  Lawton already knew the woman’s name was Holly Middleton and she had been a pool secretary at Webster & Lloyd Investment Management for three years. The same length of time as Anthony Hargrove, a Harvard-educated associate widely considered to be one of the real up-and-comers at the brokerage. She’d obtained as much information as dispatch had been able to ascertain on her way uptown: A representative of the Securities & Exchange Commission had signed in at the front desk less than twenty minutes ago on unannounced business and asked to see Hargrove, who had stalled for nearly ten minutes before walking out of his glass-walled office looking disheveled, a gun in his hand. He had pulled Ms. Middleton from her chair and dragged her back into his office, where Lawton and Adams found him, behind his desk and Ms. Middleton’s slender frame, silhouetted against the full-length window and the buildings across Madison. A digital billboard glowed on the other side of the street, above the entrance to the 53rd Street Station, advertising first the new Cadillac CTS, then new Batman movie, with the Dark Knight standing beneath a building that burned with flames shaped like a bat. A flock of pigeons circled over the street, their wings clapping like applause.

  It was crucial that Hargrove see Holly as a living, breathing human being, a person with a life and a family and people counting on her. Not as a subordinate or as an inferior, and certainly not as a shield.

  “H-holly. Holly Middle—” She cleared her throat. “Middleton.”

  She was stunning despite the mascara streaks on her cheeks. The kind of woman whose assets guaranteed her secretarial skills would be in demand for the foreseeable future.

  “You have a husband and kids at home, Holly?”

  Special Agent Wes Adams moved slowly in Lawton’s peripheral vision. She wanted to signal for him to wait, but couldn’t afford to draw attention to him while all of Hargrove’s attention was focused on her.

  “T-two boys.” She glanced back at Hargrove and struggled to keep from sobbing. She had the trace of a Boston accent, as though she’d spent a lifetime trying to erase it. “I have two boys at home. Christian and Michael. Their father. Their father left us. He moved away. I…I take the subway. I take the subway in every morning.”

  Another moaning sound from Hargrove. His lips quivered. The sound was clearer this time. Not an animal wanting to be let out. A cornered animal for whom there was no way out.

  He readjusted his sweaty grip on the handle of the gun. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 Special. The kind of revolver you could buy at just about any sporting goods store or pawn shop. Probably half of the brokers here had the same model in the bottom drawers of their desks or in their nightstands at home. Theirs was a profession where phenomenal risks were taken every single day. Success was the expectation. Those who gambled and won big ruled the world; those who gambled and lost dug their own graves.

  “Why don’t you let Holly go, Anthony? Let her take the subway back to her two kids.”

  Adams sidled to the left, his pistol raised. Tension radiated from the expression on his face, from his hunched shoulders, his stiff posture.

  Anthony caught her looking and pulled Holly closer. Ducked lower. Only his right eye and forehead were visible over her shoulder. Neither of them had a clear shot.

  “Keep him away from me! Don’t you see? He’s going to kill me!”

  “Let the girl go, Anthony,” Adams said. “Here’s how this works. You shoot the girl and we turn you into flesh confetti before her body even hits the ground. She’s your only leverage in this situation. Think of her as your partner. Right now, your partner’s the only one keeping you alive. She dies? You die. You let her go and we all walk out of here as friends.”

  Another moaning sound. He closed his eyes. Tight. Bit his lip. Hard. Hit himself in the forehead with the butt of his gun. Once. Again. Again. Until the skin split.

  “No. No.” He opened his eyes and shook his head. “There is no rig
ht thing. Not anymore.” A ribbon of blood rolled down through his eyebrow and into his eye. “Too many people have died already. You can’t take that back. I didn’t understand. Not then. They never fucking explained to me how this worked!”

  His voice rose an octave and she recognized hysteria in his eyes. He was rapidly unraveling. Lawton realized that if they didn’t end this standoff quickly, they would be dealing with two deaths. She caught Adams’s eye and gave him the slightest nod, their prearranged signal. If either of them got the shot, they were taking it.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with Holly, Anthony. Why don’t you—?”

  “Shut up! Shut! Up! Let me think, for Christ’s sake!” He smacked his forehead again and again. Blood flowed freely down the right side of his face. Dripped from his chin onto his shirt. He looked at Lawton. Adams. Lawton. Adams. Lawton. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. They promised. They fucking promised me!”

  Holly whimpered. He tightened his grip around her neck. Pulled her to him. Screwed the barrel of the revolver under the right side of her jaw, forcing her head to the left. She sobbed and closed her eyes. Her lips trembled. The tears flowed.

  “Anthony—”

  “Fuck it.”

  “You can still fix this, Anthony.”

  “Fix it? They’re dead. They’re all fucking dead! And for what? For. What?” He started to laugh. “All for the fucking money.”

  “You can help your investors earn their money back, Anthony. This isn’t the end of the world.”

  “Earn it back? What are you…?” More laughter. “I didn’t lose anyone’s money. I made a fucking fortune for them! For them!”

  “Then why—?”

  Movement from the corner of her eye.

  Hargrove swung his gun toward Adams. He had a clean shot, but all Adams had was Anthony’s right eye.

  “Stay back! Can’t you see what he’s doing?”

  “Anthony. Put down the gun and we can—”

  “He has to kill me!”

  Adams’s shoulders tensed. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  Lawton watched her partner swallow. Lick his lips.

  Hargrove panicked. Fired without aiming. Caught Adams through the side of the face. Snapped his head sideways. Threw off his aim. Maybe five degrees. Enough to hit Holly squarely in the upper chest.

  Lawton fired a split-second later. Took Hargrove below the right collarbone. He left his feet and struck the window. The glass spider-webbed away from the point of impact. He dropped like dead weight behind the desk.

  Her ears rang. High-pitched. Messing with her balance.

  She tasted warmth and salt. Focused on the point where the broker had vanished behind the desk.

  Her heartbeat sounded like rushing water in her ears, metering the humming.

  Smoke twirled from her barrel, merging into the sulfurous haze.

  People screaming in the hallway behind her. Crying. White noise.

  Quick glance to her left: Adams crumpled on his side in an expanding pool of blood. Both trembling hands clasping his face. His left foot scraping slowly against the floor.

  Rounded the desk.

  Holly. Wailing. Her blouse a Rorschach pattern of blood. Her neck and arm were wet with it. Crimson spatters crossed the floor, up the wall, across the window. Drained down the Manhattan skyline.

  Hargrove. Gun still in his hand. She kicked it. Hard. Sent it skittering against the wall. His right sleeve was black with blood. His left hand red and wet. Unable to stop the blood sluicing between his fingers. Each inhalation made a crackling sound. His lips were red. Droplets on his chin.

  She’d hit a lung.

  Didn’t care. Hoped he drowned in his own blood.

  A starburst of blood traced the cracks in the broken glass. Dribbled into his hair.

  Lawton shouted into his face. An incomprehensible bellow of anguish and fury. She put the muzzle of her Glock four inches from his forehead. Raised her left hand to shield her face from the blowback.

  Pressure around her right shoulder. Then her left. Voices in both ears. Pulling her away. She kicked in futility. Struck the desk. Her gun was pried from her grip.

  She screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Watched the paramedics converge on the room. On her partner and the secretary. On Hargrove. Watched them put an oxygen mask over the broker’s mouth and nose. Watched the inside freckle with red spittle.

  His eyes. Fixed on hers.

  He fumbled with the mask. Smeared blood on the plastic. Knocked it askew.

  She watched two words form on his lips before the paramedics forced the mask back on and rolled him onto the backboard.

  They were words she would never forget as long as she lived. Two words that started her down a road from which there was no turning back. Two words that always returned with the memories of blood and screams. Two words that meant nothing and everything at once.

  New Brunswick.

  Three

  Billington Residence

  27 Cohawney Road

  Scarsdale, New York

  September 29th

  10:20 a.m.

  Eighty minutes post-event.

  “He’d internalized his chosen persona,” Lawton said. She turned as she spoke in an effort to take it all in. “He believed himself to be a basilisk. Metaphorically, anyway.”

  Flash. Flash.

  The paintings covered every inch of free space and had to have taken months. She imagined the boy down here in the eerie blue aura of the black light screwed into his lamp, painting in nearly invisible paint that only he could see. Flipping the overhead lights on to recharge the phosphors in the paint when its purple glow faded, then turning it back off and picking right up where he left off. Standing on the chair from his desk in only his underwear so he didn’t stain his clothes, his flesh stippled with goose bumps from the cold night air blowing through the window he had to keep open to vent the smell of the paint, wearing headphones so as not to awaken his parents all the way up on the second floor with the loud music that fueled his progressive dissociation from both society and reality.

  “The mythological serpent whose stare killed whoever looked at it?” the agent working the laptop said.

  “No. The actual extant lizard bearing its name. Sometimes called the Jesus lizard.”

  “Why—?”

  “Because it can run across water. Flanges on its toes.” She bit the inside of her lip. Released it. “Maybe he was figuratively shedding his skin. Maybe his Christianity. Whatever the case, this was a child who through some conscious mental process first identified with, then literally became—at least in his own mind—the basilisk.”

  Flash. Flash.

  The reptilian faces on the ceiling and walls had a unique quality she equated to sentience. It made her uncomfortable on a primal level. The boy’s artistic talent was staggering. It enabled him to paint life into their flat eyes and menace into mouths designed to express no emotion. Hundreds of basilisks peered out from a jungle of intricately designed leaves and vines and bromeliads. Tall casques stood from their heads. Their jaws bulged with muscles powerful enough to make teeth not much larger than those of a trout break the bones and carapaces of their prey. Clawed appendages. Glimmering scales. Arched crests along their almost serpentine backs and tails. Their anatomy was accurate, not exaggerated. They were representations of the lizard. No more. No less. Yet somehow he made them appear predatory, as though they would still be stalking the room, unseen, when the lights came on again. The overall impression raised the hackles up the backs of her arms and neck. How many nights had the boy lain awake, staring at this demented forest like some might the stars in the heavens? Did he view himself as a part of this fictional jungle of foreboding or the ruler of it?

  Flash. Flash.

  No. That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t about the lizards emerging from their surroundings, but rather about their ability to blend into them. The boy wanted to disappear. So what caused a boy who wanted nothin
g more than to be invisible to step out onto the largest stage in the world for everyone on the planet to see? What external force had acted upon him or what coalescence of events had driven him to—?

  An RRT criminalist burst into the bedroom.

  “Special Agent Lawton. We found his lab.”

  Eighty-two minutes post-event.

  She was behind him before he even turned. She’d worked with him before, although she couldn’t remember which case it had been. She couldn’t immediately recall his name. Dark, thinning hair. Hooded eyes. Gamble, that was it.

  He led her through a slatted door, around the furnace and the hot water heater, and to a small door set chest-high into the concrete wall behind them. It was maybe three feet to a side. A simple wooden number ordinarily held in place by a padlock. It stood wide open now. The light pouring out was overwhelming. She had to shield her eyes to block out the sodium halide dome lights the criminalists had mounted to the bare, cobweb-riddled floorboards that served as the low ceiling.

  It smelled of ammonia and alcohol. Something bitter that reminded her of bug spray.

  “You’re going to need to put one of these on if you plan on going in there.”

  She turned to find Gamble holding out a full-body isolation suit.

  “You haven’t collected trace yet?”

  He smiled indulgently.

  “For your safety.”

  Eighty-four minutes post-event.

  She climbed into the cumbersome suit, donned the helmet, and sealed the collar. The respirator made each breath sound like a gasp. She pulled herself up onto the narrow concrete ledge, then dropped down into the crawlspace. The substrate was packed dirt. Damp in the far corner where the foundation met the yard. Fuzzy white mold grew from a handful of soggy cardboard boxes. The walls were lined with insulated pipes, the ceiling with dusty aluminum ductwork. Electrical wires had been run through holes drilled in the joists. There were dozens of crates to her left. A cracked fish tank, an oscillating fan, wooden baby gates. The ground sloped upward and away from her to a point maybe a foot and a half tall, where torn insulation blossomed from the foil backing amid cobwebs so thick they appeared to predate the house. The other agents were to her right, where the floor of the living room above them was just high enough that they could crouch without hitting their heads.