The Immortalist (51 page)

At a stoplight, Kohl looked at Hank. “How sure are you about Reiverton?”

“Damned sure. It's the only destination that makes sense.”

Officer Kohl clicked the mike. “Dispatch, contact Precinct Fourteen captain. Tell him I'm requesting permission to leave jurisdiction in active pursuit of said vehicle. Husband of kidnap victim is with me.”

With the light still red, Officer Kohl gave a whoop of his siren and edged out into the intersection. “Hold on,” he said, as he made a squealing left turn. “You and I are about to make a little trip to the Nutmeg State.”

Five

CRICKET FELT AS
IF SHE WERE
in a speeding coffin, driving 40 mph on northbound Route 9A, with the Hudson shimmering black as the river Styx.

She knew the very air she breathed was poison. Even with the window down, she smelled the same sickening-sweet nail-polish odor as in Yolanda's bedroom—a sign that Gifford, too, had gone into metabolic ketosis. He couldn't have had much time left.

Gifford swore under his breath as he fumbled to unbutton his trench coat through his thick leather gloves. Giving up, he tugged the gloves off, finger by finger. Cricket almost fainted at what she saw. It was as if he had removed his own skin. His hands were raw and bleeding, and she could see shiny white cords—the naked extensor tendons of the backs of his hands—working themselves up and down.

When Gifford at last managed to open his coat, Cricket was astonished to see his shirt glistening with blood. With perfect clinical detachment, Gifford unbuttoned it and exposed a wad of bloody gauze pads taped against his stomach.

“What happened?” she gasped.

“Jack shot me.”

Jack?
Cricket thought of Niedermann's body as she had found it in Gifford's lab.
Jesus, even with a bullet in him, Gifford had strength to snap Jack's spine in two.

Gifford carefully pulled off the dressing. A small spurt of blood came with it, staining his pants and the car seat between his legs. From the glove compartment, he grabbed a new bunch of gauze pads, tore open their wrappers, and pressed them against the wound.

“You need to get to a hospital, Charles.”

“This wound is nothing. Clean entry and exit. I just need a few minutes to rest while you drive. I'll be fine to take over once we reach the plane.”

“The plane? Where do you think you're going, Charles?”

“Anywhere I like. My Cessna has a flight range of over twelve hundred nautical miles. What I have in the backseat will guarantee me asylum anywhere.”

Gifford closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. A small rim of skin remained around his eyelids, like eyeliner in reverse, grotesquely encircling his ruby-red eyes. In repose, he looked like the first cadaver Cricket had dissected in medical school. It was hard to believe he wasn't dead.

I can't let him reach that plane.

Gifford had once been like a second father to her. But this man beside her wasn't Charles Gifford. He was holding a gun on her. He had murdered a man and shot a cop. She shuddered to think what he might be capable of.

Then she saw a glint of hope.

In the rearview mirror, she spied the roof lights and white-and-blue markings of a New York City police car, nudging its way through traffic in the left-hand lane.

With a trembling hand, she reached under the steering wheel and slowly edged out the emergency-flasher switch, bracing it with her fingers to muffle any snap at the end. Immediately the signal lights began to blink—silently.

A check of the mirror. A semi came up in the next lane and blocked the view.
Oh, hell. I've got to force that cop car to notice me.
She pressed the floor pedal. Just enough room ahead to veer in front of the truck . . .

And then, with her brain almost comatose from exhaustion, conditioned reflex took over. Just as she was about to make the lane switch, she did what she had done a thousand times before: she hit the turn signal. And unlike the flasher, it immediately gave out a clocklike tick.

Gifford opened his eyes, lunged forward, and slammed the flasher back in.

“Stupid prank!” he roared in his rasping, mechanical voice. “You want to get us both killed?” Training his gun on Cricket's midsection, Gifford kept an anxious eye on the next lane. The police car hovered in view for a moment, then accelerated out of sight.

As soon as the cop car was gone, Gifford doubled over with a hacking cough. Cricket could see droplets of blood standing fresh against the half-dried smears on his shirt cuff.

“Charles, you've got to get help. It might not be too late. The antiserum Wig made worked on Emmy. It might work on you.”

“I'm not sick.”

“Are you crazy? Look at your face. Your hands.”

“You don't understand. The Methuselah Vector—it changes you. I see that now. I've moved on to the next step in human evolution. There had to be changes. Yes, they're grotesque to the uninitiated, just as the nakedness of man must be revolting to the ape. But we'll get used to them. There's beauty in anything once you see it in context.”

She felt like screaming. How could he be so blind? But she had to find a way to get through to him. “Listen—if you die, the Methuselah Vector d-d-dies with you,” she stammered. “It's flawed, Charles. But it might be p-possible to fix it. Only you can do that—and only if you live.”

“Take exit four, Cross County Parkway east,” he said matter-of-factly. “It'll turn into Hutchinson River Parkway. Follow it into Connecticut, where it becomes Merritt Parkway.”

“Wake up, Charles. Look in the mirror. You need help. Help!”

“Enough! You're getting on my nerves. Do I need to shut your mouth?” He held his bloody, skinless cadaver's hand in front of her face, poised as if to muzzle her. It was so close she could smell the rot of his flesh.

“Please . . . don't touch me,” she gasped. She pushed her head back as far as she could against the headrest.

“Then drive. Stop talking and drive.”

Six

THE BIG NYPD
CROWN VICTORIA WAS
going so fast that it went airborne whenever the road took a dip. Still, it wasn't fast enough for Hank.

His mouth had a salty taste. His left eye was swollen shut, his lips were like overinflated inner tubes. The broken ribs in his side knifed him with every breath. His knuckles were a bloody, black-and-blue mess.

None of it mattered. Cricket was all he could think about. He felt like an idiot for letting Gifford get away with her. An idiot and a coward.

Traffic was light on the four-lane parkway, as it curved left and right through the rolling hills of Connecticut. The road had a manicured look. Maples and white oaks were planted along the median and joined their roadside counterparts to make twin dark green canopies. Every few miles, quaint stone bridges arched overhead, no two alike.

The radio crackled with a tense voice on the Connecticut State Police band. “Dispatch Troop A. This is car One-Five. Advise that I have a visual ID on suspect vehicle Eight Seven Seven X-ray Victor Zebra, white, late-model Mercury Grand Marquis. Vehicle is eastbound on state Highway Fifteen, seven miles east of state line. Suspect vehicle is accelerating to evade contact and I am in pursuit. Request backup from all available units.”

“Jesus,” said Hank. “That's around here somewhere. We must be right on top of 'em.”

“You might want to make sure you're buckled in,” said Kohl. With the bright eyes of a hound catching scent of the fox, he turned on the siren and rammed the accelerator to the floor. “Car One-Five, this is One-Four Car F of the NYPD, Officer E. P. Kohl. Am also in pursuit of suspect vehicle, not more than a mile from your location.”

“Welcome to the party, New York.”

Within minutes the chase had left the parkway and worked its way onto Wappinger Road. The landscape here was open, the highway straight enough for Kohl to push a hundred. On either side, little white and gray frame houses whizzed by, along with the occasional antique barn, church spire, or farmstead. Hank clutched a handle on the door pillar and tried to fight off a growing tide of motion sickness.

Then, on one of the longer straightaways, Hank saw the flashing blue lights of car One-Five a quarter mile ahead—ten seconds away at their present speed. The Crown Victoria began to shimmy as Kohl hit the gas even harder, trying to close the distance. By then the radio was popping with calls from a half dozen converging cruisers. A blue ring was closing in on Charles Gifford.

Hank felt like a coiled spring, ready for anything.
I won't let Cricket get on that plane,
he resolved.
Cops or no cops. I won't let it happen. I've got enough regrets.

Then Kohl slammed on the brakes and made a wild squealing turn into a farmyard on the left. Hank saw a big white house and barn go by in a blur. Yards ahead were the lights of car One-Five, racing down a dirt path. Dust was everywhere. Hank caught a glimpse of the Grand Marquis through the dust cloud as it turned sharply to the right. Then red lights—brake lights—dead ahead. Pain, fucking pain, as the seat belt dug into his broken ribs and the Crown Victoria came to a brick-wall halt, almost slamming into car One-Five as, blinded by the dust, the lead car dived nose-down into an irrigation ditch just beyond the intersecting road.

Without waiting for Kohl, Hank popped off the seat belt and sprang out, while the rear wheels of car One-Five were still spinning in the air. He tore across the rows of waist-high tobacco plants with one thing and one thing only in his mind—a small, blue-and-white, single-prop Cessna poised at the end of the side road.

He charged as if he could outrun the Grand Marquis as it barreled toward the plane. His feet were pistons. Cracked ribs be damned—his lungs were bellows, blasting out huge breaths of superheated air. Meanwhile the car was moving so fast it seemed to be hydroplaning on the smooth-packed dirt. It didn't slow a whit as it got near the Cessna. It kept going and going, crazily, like a cannonball to its target, as if it had every intention of smashing the thing to bits.

Then, at the very last moment, it swerved into an irrigation ditch, crashing onto its side with a huge jangling whump and plowing up a wall of dust.

“Cricket!” Hank shouted, almost in despair.

Seven

CRICKET WAS SO
DAZED FROM THE
air bag that she was scarcely aware when Gifford grabbed her and pulled her up through the passenger's side door. She came to on her feet, to find herself being dragged running through a muddy ditch, with rows and rows of tongue-leaved plants beside her. She vaguely remembered having tried to crash the big white car into the airplane, and Gifford jerking the steering wheel from her at the last second.

“Keep your head down,” shouted Gifford. Cricket was dimly aware that the firecracker-like popping sounds coming from behind her were dangerous.
Oh, fuck. They're shooting at us.