Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [119]
“They fell in the corridor as I was coming out. A couple hundred of them right behind me. I heard it. You heard it. I didn’t know what made the noise until I went back. They would have been impossible to walk on and hard to crawl over, and they sure weren’t smooth. You didn’t go down that corridor at all, did you?”
Reese glanced at G. A. for help and then at Oscar Stillman. “I risked my life, is what I did. You don’t believe me, check out the award on the wall behind my desk.”
Finney’s mind was racing down new pathways now, and he was furious. The problem had never been his directions. The problem had been the rescue team. The problem had been two liars who’d taken medals for their lies. Bill had been within reach of two masked firefighters who’d refused, for whatever reason, to step off twenty-eight paces to find him. From the first he’d been ill-at-ease with Reese’s version of events, but because Kub went along with it, because it had been their word against his, and because he’d been confused about so many other things, he’d tried to live with their version.
“You’re a damned liar,” Finney said. “I don’t know what you were doing, but you weren’t looking for Bill. You lied, and then you rode those lies into the chief’s office.”
The room grew quiet.
When G. A. stepped forward with the handcuffs, Finney said, “No need for those. Just let me get dressed. Can you do that for me? You know how drafty the King County jail is. Give me two minutes to get some longjohns? One favor. It’s the last one you’ll ever do me.”
Reese and G. A. exchanged looks. Stillman said, “What if he’s got a gun in the house?”
“I hope he does,” G. A. said, touching the sidearm on the back of his belt.
“Two minutes,” Reese said, looking at his wristwatch.
58. TEN MINUTES TICKING
1630 HOURS
Finney could hear voices behind him across the water, maybe two hundred feet off, several men shouting at once. He’d taken his oldest single kayak, knowing he would be forced to abandon it somewhere along the shoreline, had stepped out through the missing wall in his spare bedroom and paddled quietly into the fog on the lake, leaving behind confusion and outrage.
He knew G. A. would call the police boat stationed on Lake Union and that, if not for the fog, they would be on him in minutes. Still, G. A. couldn’t know for certain he’d taken a water craft. There were three kayaks left in the spare bedroom, the new single, the double, and a half-completed kit on sawhorses. Who would guess he owned four kayaks? When a lull came in the shouting at the dock, he guessed they were conducting a search, possibly extending to the neighbors. Mrs. Prosize next door wouldn’t be happy. The last people to raid her domicile had been Nazis in World War II Poland.
1805 HOURS
Accompanied by a tall, elegant-looking woman with narrow hips and long, pipe-stem legs, Robert Kub, dressed in slacks and an open-collar shirt under a sport jacket, was exiting his house when Finney’s cab scraped its tires on the curb. Finney thrust a handful of bills at the cabbie and climbed the front steps of Kub’s house.
Kub began to retreat back inside, but Finney ran up the steps, jammed his foot in the door, and shouldered it open. Walking across the room as Kub backed across it, he pushed Kub’s chest repeatedly with both hands, forcing Kub up against the living room wall. The drapes were open, the television on. Kub always left his television on when he left the house as a deterrent to burglars. Finney reached over and killed the big-screen.
“What’s going on?” Kub said. “You get my call? They’re looking for you right now. What?”
“After everything you’ve done, you’re still trying to be my friend?”
“I haven’t done anything. Tell me one thing I’ve done.”
“Leary Way.”
“Where do you come off saying that? We almost got fried trying to get out of there.”
“Yeah? Tell me about the pipes.” When Kub gave him a blank look, Finney said, “You don’t know any more about the pipes than Charlie did.”
“You been talking to Charlie?”
“Enough to find out you’re both liars.”
“Okay. I’ll bite. What pipes?