Vanishing Point - Marc Cerasini [30]
"Ray Perry was supposed to be watching him, Jaycee. I gave him the orders myself. I don't know what the f..."
"Where's Perry now?" Jack asked, cutting the other man off.
Driscoll shook his head. "The guys are looking for him, but he ain't turned up yet. I... I think he ducked out last week to bang some chick over at Circus, Circus. Maybe that's where he is now..."
Driscoll's voice trailed off, his eyes still glued to the corpse on the other side of the glass. "Hell of a way to die..."
"What?" Jack demanded.
"I said that's a hell of a way to die," Driscoll replied. "Suicide, I mean..."
Jack and Curtis exchanged glances, neither convinced the death was a suicide.
"When you find Ray Perry, I want to see him. Immediately," Jack said through gritted teeth.
"You got it, Jaycee."
Then Driscoll tapped the glass. "What do we do about him."
"I'm going to seal the room for now. Nobody comes down here until I say so. Nobody..."
"Why don't I have the guys dump this stiff in the desert. Nobody will be the wiser..."
"No," Jack shot back. "I'll deal with the problem my way..."
Don Driscoll raised his arms in mock surrender. "Whatever you want, Jaycee."
In his mind, Jack had already decided to summon a CTU forensics team to examine the scene and perform an on-site autopsy, even if their arrival aroused suspicion among the staff. He'd find some way of explaining it all. Right now he only suspected Farrow's death was homicide. Before he could make his next move, he had to know what really happened, because if Max Farrow was murdered, there was a traitor in his ranks. And that traitor had to be weeded out as soon as possible, before the turncoat did more damage.
4THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 P.M. AND 4 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
3:01:16 p.m. PDT
Mesa Canyon Townhouses
North Buffalo Drive, Las Vegas
The streets surrounding Mesa Canyon, a sun-washed residential development on the outskirts of Las Vegas, were deserted. Paul Dugan parked his Dodge Sprinter right outside the gate of Compound One, on the corner of Smoke Ranch Road and North Buffalo Drive. He opened the truck's door, and immediately knew why. With nothing but concrete and sand all around, there was no shade, so the residents had taken refuge from the punishing heat and relentless sun inside the air conditioned comfort of their mock adobe townhouses.
Fair-haired, tall and lean — despite hours of relative inactivity spent behind the wheel — Dugan retained his boyish good looks late into his third decade. That's precisely why he was hired by Fit-Chef on the very day he filed an employment application, before he even passed his background check. Ric Minelli, Fit-Chef's smooth talking Las Vegas regional manager, was a former salesman himself. Ric understood his company's clientele and realized immediately that Dugan's home-spun charm would play well with his customer base, which was ninety-six point five percent female.
Paul had been with for Fit-Chef for a year now and liked his job. Fleeing a massive layoff in the blighted northeast, he left Johnstown, Pennsylvania and his shrew of an ex-wife, hoping to relocate to Los Angeles where he had friends. But the transmission on his car failed just shy of the California border, and while Paul waited in a Las Vegas garage for repairs, he met another driver for Fit-Chef. The man told Paul that the most popular food service in Nevada was always looking for an experienced delivery driver. Now Paul was another transplant to the fastest growing urban area in the United States.
Feeling the burn on the back of his ruddy neck, Dugan unlocked the back of the white panel truck, checked the manifest on his electronic pad. "T. Baird" was his next delivery destination. Paul grinned in anticipation. Tiffany Baird played a scantily-clad vampire at the new Goth extravaganza at the Castle Casino. Though he'd never actually seen the show, Paul couldn't