Chapter One Hundred and Ten

The Lair

December 4, 9.45 a.m.

Time drifted in different ways in the dark. It wasn’t linear, it moved in waves and pulses. She was sure it hadn’t been long. Certainly not a whole night and day, but the outer door was opening. It wasn’t easy. It was stuck, but the killer barged through. Denise was still lying on her side. She sat up. This was the end.

Sebastian was lugging a huge pair of bolt cutters under his arm. He got to the barred door and placed them on the ground. ‘How you feeling, Doctor?’

She looked at him and stared. There was nothing for her to say, nothing to do. The killer was going to cut through the door. He was going to be able to put his hands on her. She’d been trying to avoid the thoughts about her future that were chasing her breath away.

Be strong, she kept on saying inside her head. Be strong.

‘A little preoccupied, Denise?’ said Sebastian. He picked up the bolt cutters and started to unwind the wire safety grips. ‘It’s a beautiful day outside, you know. It’s one of those days when you really want to take a long walk across a field or by the ocean. Not so cold. You like to walk?’

Denise stared ahead. Be strong. She turned away from him. She imagined her father. She closed her eyes. ‘What do I do?’ she whispered. ‘Come on, old man, you always said you’d be there for me. What do I do?’

There was no answer. Her mind was frozen with fear. The sound of Sebastian working away behind her. She saw her father sitting as he always had, his two hands clasped on the prison table, leaning back in his chair, his face pale and still. Light a fantastic sparkler. That was what he said. Light a fantastic sparkler. She heard it again and again. She didn’t know what it meant.

Her eyes darted about the room. Back to Sebastian.

‘You’re going to taste sweet,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about nothing else. Just you and me. I’ve not slept all night. Nick’s gone now, you know that? I think he’s gone for good.’

Denise stared past him. She wasn’t listening. She was concentrating hard. A fantastic sparkler was what she needed. She looked up at the single light bulb. There was nothing she could do.

Sebastian finally released the cutters, opened the small thick jaws and snapped shut its compound hinges.

‘We’re ready to roll, Denise. I want to get you ready. I want to get Harper here. I bet you want that too.’

He saw Denise pull the stool to the centre of the room. She stepped on to it. ‘What you planning to do, Denise? Jump on me?’

Suddenly, the light went out and the room was pitch dark.

‘So that’s your plan,’ came Sebastian’s disembodied voice. ‘You think you can stop me by turning out the light. I lived half my life in the dark, Denise. I’m not afraid. The dark is where I’m happiest.’

She heard the bolt cutter chink against the first bar. Sebastian took a moment to check the jaw with his fingers. ‘First one, Denise, first cut.’

He squeezed the long metal handles of the bolt cutters and felt the jaws push through the steel. The resistance increased and Sebastian used all his strength to push until the jaws bit right through. He repeated the operation at the top of the bar and the steel jangled to the floor.

‘First one down, Denise. I reckon I could slip through with just two missing, what do you think?’

The metallic chink started up again. Sebastian’s breathing emanated from the dark, like the sound of a beast. A low thumping in her ears was the sound of her own pulse. She was focused but terrified. She just kept on hearing her daddy’s voice. ‘Light a fantastic sparkler, like I always used to do. Then you can see for miles and miles and miles.’

Chapter One Hundred and Eleven

Dresden Home

December 4, 10.20 a.m.

At Nick Dresden’s suburban home, Dee was taken into one of the small back bedrooms and interviewed. There was no time for taking people down to the precinct; they needed information now. The two children were taken by social services and the house was pulled to pieces by a team of forty officers from the CSU, Blue Team and the Bureau.

The Feds had their control truck out on the lawn and had everything on Nick Dresden in an instant. He was a nobody from nowhere. His record was clean.

Harper worked on the lair. He knew a thing or two about a man’s lair. It had to be close enough to dispose of the trophies and return to the wife. He looked at the blue Merc in the driveway. ‘A blue car,’ said Harper. Denise’s profile had brought them to this address. It was her profile that Dee had read and recognized. Denise’s profile had worked.

‘If he’s been anywhere recently, then this car is going to tell the story,’ said Harper. He called in the CSU. ‘Give us anything you can on the car.’ There would be forensic evidence, but Harper knew it would take time. Too much time.

The Crime Scene detective looked at the car. ‘We’ll need to do a chemical spectroscopy analysis on the material. We need the lab.’

‘Fuck the lab,’ said Harper. ‘What can you tell me in the next ten minutes?’

‘Okay, but it won’t be much.’

‘I want a grain of sand. Anything.’

Harper watched as a team got the car lifted and slid underneath it, scraping the tyres and the undercarriage. He looked into each little clear Petri dish. They looked full of plain old dirt.

‘Can you tell anything?’

‘We’ve got four minutes left, give us a break.’

A microscope was brought from the van and the samples were quickly put on slides. Each slide was then passed through the microscope.

‘Okay,’ said Harper. ‘Ten minutes is up. This could save someone’s life. Where’s this car been?’

‘Well, it’s been somewhere with sand. Probably coastal. There looks like there’s faecal bacteria here too. Algae too from the footwell. Possibly somewhere damp, somewhere underground. Sewers?’

‘Yeah, well, that narrows it!’ said Harper. ‘Anything else?’

‘Just one more thing. Don’t know what it is, but there are chemical traces here too. We’ll have to check, but these are refined chemicals. Medical or industrial supplies, possibly.’

Harper chewed over the information. There weren’t many places in New York City that stored chemicals. He was near water. Sewers possibly. Industrial zone. It was something. Better than nothing.

Harper crossed to the Feds’ operations truck. ‘Give me his employment history in New York.’

‘Okay. Most recently, he’s working in marketing and sales. He supplied beautician salons with nail polish remover.’

‘That’s how he came across the girls,’ said Harper. ‘What else?’

‘He’s got a long history of short-term employment. We’ve got a two-year stint as a salesman selling art materials to schools; another two years working at MoMA in the acquisitions department. He’s worked many places as a salesman - he worked a year at Senderos, Mace Crindle, KCs, Andersons. Take a look.’

‘I don’t know the names. What are they?’

‘Senderos sells paper. Mace Crindle is the old chemical plant. KCs is food, Andersons is art supplies again.’

‘Show me more about Mace Crindle. Can you get it on a city map?’

‘No problem.’

‘Quick as you can. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. He can’t go home any more, so he knows this is it. And that’s going to make him very dangerous.’

Chapter One Hundred and Twelve

The Lair

December 4, 10.40 a.m.

Deep underground, Denise crawled forward towards the bars. She could hear the cutters snip through the bottom of the second bar. There was one more cut to go. Then he would be in.