Fires of Midnight by Jon Land Read Free Book Online

boss?”
    “I just left Crazy Harry in a bar down here in Key West. Told me somebody stole his kid, the one he had with his wife, Maggie. Said he hadn’t seen me since the funeral.”
    “So?”
    “So, Sal, there was no funeral. There couldn’t have been a kidnapping. Harry Lime’s never been married and he doesn’t have any kids.”

FOUR
    “I think I got this nailed,” Alan Killebrew reported Tuesday morning when Susan stepped into the trailer that had become Firewatch’s on-scene command center, parked in Charles Park across from the Cambridgeside Galleria.
    Killebrew was Susan’s lead technician on the Firewatch team. He had arrived here just hours after her on Sunday and hadn’t left since. Nor would he until their leads, clues and theories began to firm into fact.
    Killebrew backed his wheelchair up and aimed it for the computer monitor; his mussed hair and tired voice indicated he had spent Monday night working behind it. “I’m talking about the way our organism made its way through the mall. I think I got it figured.” He paused. “That and how it got in to begin with.”
    Before Susan could prod him further, Killebrew worked the keyboard and a computer-generated, animated graphic of the Galleria appeared in simulated 3-D. It was not unlike a video game; he controlled the flow of action by manipulating the computer’s mouse.
    “By analyzing the pictures from the mall’s security cameras and studying the placement of the bodies on all three levels, we were able to determine that not all the victims were affected at once. Whatever killed them had to travel, the time difference minor but present and crucial. What you are about to see is a model of the progression.”

    The action began on the third level, the mall patrons denoted by flashing white dots. As the cursor swept past them, they stopped flashing and turned to red. The sequence was repeated on the second floor and then the first.
    “Third to first floor, traveling downward, with a slight lag,” Killebrew elaborated. “Then there’s the dog. That storeroom he was locked in wasn’t in the original plans for the mall. The temperature inside it was over a hundred and ten degrees, while the air temperature outside at the time of the event was ninety-four. Now, doors must have been open at some points after the organism’s release. So it’s virtually inconceivable that at least some of the contagion would not have slipped out, and yet all those afflicted were confined solely to the interior of the mall. Because something stopped it, literally, at the door.”
    “Temperature,” Susan said, realizing. “My God …”
    “The mall was a comfortable seventy-two degrees,” Killebrew acknowledged, looking up at her from his chair, “thanks to the air-conditioning system. My computer-generated model of the invading organism’s spread conforms perfectly with the flow of air through the Galleria’s air ducts. Since the storeroom the dog escaped from wasn’t built at the same time as the rest of the mall, it possessed no duct work for air-conditioning.”
    “Good work.”
    “There’s more. The compressors which power the system are located in the mall’s boiler room, which can be found here.” Killebrew scrolled down his computerized schema of the Galleria until he came to the basement and a small square that was flashing red. “That’s where the organism gained entry.”
    “Then let’s go take a look at it.”
     
    M cCracken had arranged to meet Harry Lime first thing Tuesday morning, which for Harry meant nine A.M. He lived in a first-floor apartment inside one of Southpark Condominium’s six buildings. The buildings were similar to many others in the area, pseudo Spanish Colonial, and they had the advantage of being only three blocks from the ocean. Blaine figured Harry found the sounds and breezes calming.
    When Harry’s buzzer brought no response, McCracken hit two others and, as expected, was buzzed in without inquiry. He was