72 Hours (A Thriller) (21 page)

“Don’t insult me.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

“I’m not going to make it that easy.
 
The location of my wife and child is the only thing I have left that is mine alone.
 
And it happens to be the one thing you most need.
 
Ironic, isn’t it?”

Kline stared at the pilfered cigarette clinging to the edge of the bedding.
 
He lusted for it.
 
He could almost taste the paper on his lips.
 

Dunbar appeared relaxed enough to simply drift off to sleep.

“Special Agent Kline,” Dunbar said.

Kline hesitated a beat.
 
“What?”

“A confession is what you want, isn’t it?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Well, I suppose I’m ready to tell you the story.
 
How I did it and why.”

Kline did not respond.

“I loved Sidney from the first moment I saw her, but she betrayed my love and my trust, and I could not allow that betrayal to go unpunished.
 
I became suspicious.
 
I suspected she was seeing someone.
 
It was the little things.
 
She seemed no longer as interested in sex, this woman who’d been insatiable in bed from the moment we met.”

“How’d you discover Kenneth Brant?”

Dunbar wet his upper lip.
 
“Sidney got careless.
 
She’d gotten away with it for so long she became complacent.
 
I spotted her getting into Brant’s Ferrari.”

Kline rested his weight against the inside of the cell door, captivated and saddened and repulsed all in the same breath.
 
After all the endless hours of investigative work, he was finally getting the truth, the real story, straight from the mouth of the monster.

Kline asked, “Did you kill Brant first?”

Dunbar appeared to warm at the memory.
 
“Oh yes.
 
Such a pleasure killing him.
 
I did him first so that I could describe for him exactly what I intended to do to Sidney.
 
In detail.
 
I wanted him to know it was his fault that she would die and that he was helpless to stop me.
 
I had watched him for quite some time to learn his routines, his weaknesses.
 
I shadowed him for weeks.
 
Day and night.
 
Brant was too arrogant to be cautious.
 
Too arrogant for his own good.
 
So I followed him and studied him.
 
I patiently developed a plan, patiently formulated exactly how I would kill him.”

Kline folded his arms over his chest.
 
“How’d you do it?”

“I followed him home to his boat late one night.
 
Surprised him at his car.
 
Had him at gunpoint.
 
Walked him to his boat and went inside.
 
Chatted about Sidney.
 
I wanted to know everything about their relationship.
 
All the juicy details.
 
He told me how they met.
 
How long they’d been sleeping together.
 
I asked him how she liked it, what she liked him to do to her.
 
I bound his wrists and ankles and put a gag around his head.
 
Held the .38 to his brain so there’d be no confusion.
 
Then I injected him with a muscle relaxant called succinylcholine that causes temporary paralysis.
 
He was fully conscious but couldn’t move a muscle.
 
It was such a thrill to see the absolute terror in his eyes.
 
He had no idea what was happening to him.”

“And then you threw him overboard.”

Dunbar’s eyelids fluttered open.
 
He smiled.
 
“It was very early morning.
 
A dense fog had rolled in, blanketing the marina.
 
I had come prepared, and when I saw that Brant was completely paralyzed and immobile, I walked from the boat to my car and retrieved the tools I needed.”

“The concrete block and the chain,” Kline said.

Dunbar nodded.
 
“Yes.
 
We were inside the cabin of the boat with the lights off.
 
I sat on the floor next to him, right up beside his head.
 
He was horrified.
 
I wanted him to understand what I was about to do.
 
How I was going to kill him.
 
I wanted him to know he was going to drown.
 
He was going to sink to the bottom of the marina and breathe his lungs full of ocean water.
 
There was nothing he could do but listen in horror.
 
The fog was thick.
 
I dragged him by his arms to the rail.
 
I dropped the heavy block overboard, then I rolled him over the side and let go.
 
He was paralyzed so there wasn’t a struggle.
 
He disappeared into the fog, a muffled splash in the dark water.
 
Then the world was silent except for the lapping of the water against the hull.
 
I went home and slept like a baby.”
 

The pounding in Kline’s head was rising again.
 

“Is that what you did to Sidney and Robin?
 
Drown them?”

“No.”

“How did you do it?”

“I think I’ve said enough.”

“Not even close.”

Dunbar rose from the bed and paced to the far end of the cell.
 
He stood with his back to Kline.

“I will tell you this…I killed Robin first.
 
I wanted Sidney to suffer, to hold her dying child in her arms and watch her baby girl bleed to death.”

Kline felt his stomach clench.

“Robin was too much like her mother.
 
I shot her in the back of the head.
 
The girl never felt a thing,” Dunbar said with clinical detachment.

Kline closed his eyes.
 

“And Sidney?” he sighed.

“I told her what I did to Kenneth Brant.
 
Told her how I followed him, how I planned it.
 
She begged for mercy.
 
I made her say she loved me with the barrel of my gun shoved in her mouth.
 
And she actually said it.
 
Tears streaming down onto the cold steel, she told me she loved me.
 
Then I pulled the trigger and blew off the back of her head.”

“What did you do with them?”
 
Kline tasted bile rising at the back of his throat.

Dunbar turned slowly to face him, then he spread his arms wide and smiled.

“Very simply,” he said.
 
“I put them where no one would ever find them.”

“Where?
 
Where did you put them?”

Dunbar looked him hard in the eyes.
 
“Come back tomorrow,” he said.

CHAPTER 65

Night in the high desert.

Archer sat without movement among the shadows.
 
The landscape was a dim, jagged silhouette.
 
The only light was that of stars that had died and gone cold lifetimes before dinosaurs roamed the earth.
 
His night-vision field glasses portrayed the vast terrain in ominous thermal shades of green.
 

Raj updated him by radio.
 
The Toyota Prius was still sitting outside the first gate.
 
No movement, inside or out, though it looked like someone was still inside.
 
Archer decided that if the car still remained in place at the end of his shift he would investigate.
 

His walkie-talkie crackled.
 
He was surprised to hear Lindsay’s voice.

“Archer?”

“I’m here,” he answered.

“Watch for me.
 
I’m coming out.”

Archer frowned.
 
“Bad idea.”

“I want to stretch my legs and get some fresh air.”

There was no point arguing with her.

Archer stared at the monotony of the horizon until he heard her scrabbling up the path behind him.
 
He turned to look and saw movement in the dim moonlight, then eased down to give her a hand.

“There you are,” she said, out of breath.

“Here I am.”

“It’s actually chilly out here.”

“Should have stayed inside where it’s warm.”

“Nice try.”

Archer held her by the arm and helped her to the crest of the bluff.
 
They sat shoulder to shoulder in the grit among the desert scrub.
 

Lindsay hugged her arms around herself.

“It’s beautiful up here,” she said.
 
“Look at those stars.”

Archer wasn’t interested in the display above them.
 
He’d seen those same stars from mountaintops on each of the seven continents, from battlefields and through the bars of a POW cell, from jungles and rice patties half a world away.
 
The stars never changed and wouldn’t in ten thousand generations.

“How are you doing?” Archer asked her.

“I’m fine, I think.”

“Kline told me about Brentwood.
 
You handled that very well.
 
I’m impressed.”

“That was a nightmare.
 
It’s all a nightmare.”

“You protected your kids.
 
Got them out of there alive.
 
Most people would have panicked and gotten themselves killed.
 
Your children are alive right now because of you.”

“What’s your connection to Kline?” she asked.

“Long story.”

“Give me the short version.”

“Once upon a time he was my boss.”

“Wow.
 
Really?”

He nodded.

“You were FBI?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“But not anymore?”

“No.
 
Kline fired me.”

“What happened?”

“I killed an unarmed man.”

“Why would you kill an unarmed man?” she asked hesitantly.

“His name was Rivero.
 
He was a rapist and pedophile.
 
We nailed him but his lawyer got him off on a technicality.
 
Completely ridiculous.
 
He walked out a free man.”

Lindsay’s jaw dropped.
 
“You’re kidding me.”

“He walked out of the courtroom and out onto the sidewalk for a late lunch like it was any other Tuesday in June.
 
Free as a bird.
 
Head held high.”

“Oh my God.
 
How can something like that be allowed?”

“That’s the system we live with.”

“What happened next?”

Archer sighed.
 
“Not six months later, an eleven-year-old girl went missing, walking home from school.
 
I looked at the case and something clicked in my brain.
 
There were certain distinct similarities to earlier abductions in the same area.”

“Rivero again?”
   

Archer nodded.
 
“That was my suspicion.
 
I talked to Special Agent Kline, told him my thoughts on it.
 
Told him we needed to move on it, to pay Rivero a visit, but Kline was hesitant.
 
He was afraid if we went knocking on Rivero’s door and there was nothing going on and he had nothing to do with the missing girl, Rivero would sue the city, sue the FBI.
 
Pissed me off.
 
The evidence was clear.
 
That little girl was missing, and the case had Rivero’s fingerprints all over it.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to see Rivero on my own.
 
I hopped the fence and kicked in the basement door.”

“Oh my God!
 
What did you find?”

“Rivero and the missing girl.
 
Both were naked.
 
The video camera was rolling.
 
She had tape over her mouth and her arms and legs were bound.
 
He was on top of her.
 
When I busted the door down, he jumped up, naked as the day he was born.
 
Both of his hands were empty and I could see that very clearly.
 
But I didn’t care.
 
I decided right then and there, in less than a split second of time that I wasn’t going to let him hurt anybody else.
 
So I aimed my gun at him and unloaded on him.
 
Fired every bullet in it until it was empty and the gun just started clicking.
 
He was probably dead when the first bullet hit him between the eyes, but I wanted him all the way dead.
 
Didn’t want there to be a chance for the paramedics to rush in and revive him.
 
That decision cost me my job, my career, and I wouldn’t change a thing if I could.
 
I’d so the same thing over again a thousand times without even thinking.”