The Sleep Police Page 6

  “Okay,” Frank said and looked at Jeffers. Jeffers was staring at the package.

  “Just to be safe,” Porterly added, “why don’t you clear everybody out of there.”

  Frank glanced at Jeffers. “You want me to clear everybody out?”

  Porterly’s voice: “Yeah, just go around and tell everybody not to panic, tell ‘em there might be a gas leak or something. No big deal.”

  Frank swallowed hard. “What if—uh—what if I—miss somebody?”

  Another pause. “Tell you what. Why don’t you go ahead and pull the fire alarm. Like I said, it’s probably nothing. We’ll tell Media Relations it’s a possible gas leak. There can’t be that many people in the building.”

  Frank let out a breath. “Okay, Jim. If that’s what you think we should do.”

  “It’s probably a waste of time,” Porterly said. “I’ll take the thing out in a containment basket.”

  “Okay, Jim.”

  “You can meet me in the back lot. Like I said, it’s probably nothing.”

  “Okay, Jim, that sounds good.”

  Frank hung up.

  He looked at the package, then looked at Jeffers. “Come on, Randy. Let’s go have a cigarette.”

  On his way out, Frank pulled the fire alarm.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Making his way through the maze of desks on the second floor, lugging the portable bomb basket and a duffel bag full of gear, Jim Porterly was sweating. He always perspired like crazy when he had the bomb suit on, especially when he had to carry equipment. A heavy coverall made from Teflon-filled panels, the bomb suit resembled a deep-sea diving rig, but was more unwieldy.

  Through his helmet, Porterly could hear the muffled scream of the fire alarm buzzer. He could see Sully Deets’s desk straight ahead.

  The small brown-wrapped package was still sitting on the desk blotter.

  Porterly carried the bomb basket over to the desk and set it down with a thud. The basket looked like a large iron kettle in which you might cook stew for about a hundred people. On top was a pressurized hatch that you open like the top of a submarine. The vessel was rated at a maximum of ten pounds of C-4 explosives. Porterly opened the hatch.

  He used a mechanical reacher to pick up the unidentified package. He swung the package across the width of the desk very carefully, keeping his eyes on a fixed point between the package and the top of the bomb basket, just as he had been trained to do. The inside of the basket was as black as a stag’s heart. Porterly carefully lowered the package through the opening and into the vessel.

  Then Porterly very gently closed the top of the bomb basket, sealing the pressure lock.

  He let out a long sigh of relief. His scalp itched inside his helmet, but there was nothing he could do about that right now. He still had to get the thing out of the building, and then get the thing disarmed if necessary. Porterly still believed—especially after seeing the package—that it was nothing. But he couldn’t take any chances.

  The fire alarm kept buzzing.

  Carefully picking up the basket, Porterly carried it down the hallway to the elevator. He pressed G for ground floor, and the doors closed, and Porterly rode down breathing hard, the sound of his breaths like a huge bellows in his ears. He was hyperalert. He could hear the clang and rattle of the elevator pulleys just under the muffled din of the fire alarm. His mouth was dry. His eyes were watering.

  He reached the ground floor and proceeded down the hallway to the loading dock exit.

  When he finally made it outside, he allowed himself another faint sigh of relief. The night sky was huge and hazy above him, the humidity hanging low like a shroud. The lot was sparsely occupied by a few patrol cars, a couple of unmarked squads, and some civilian vehicles.

  Frank Janus and Randy Jeffers were standing about a hundred yards away, near the corner of the building, nervously smoking cigarettes, watching. Porterly waved at them. They waved back. There were a couple of other onlookers—some guys from Property Crimes—perched on an adjacent parking viaduct. In the gleam of the vapor lights, they looked like owls all lined up for the evening’s meal. Or maybe buzzards looking for carrion.

  Porterly carried the basket out to a safe zone in the center of the parking lot.

  Under the sodium lights the containment vessel shimmered with a dull gleam, like a cast iron skillet that had just been scrubbed. It looked slightly ominous. Porterly dropped his duffel bag next to it and took some deep breaths. The next few seconds were always the most critical. Porterly wanted to finish this thing quickly, with as little drama as necessary.

  In the duffel bag Porterly had brought along a portable X-ray scanner, an electronic stethoscope, and some hand tools. He also had a specially designed coil of rope that the bomb guys referred to as a “jerkus rope,” one of the indispensable low-tech items in his arsenal.

  He took out the jerkus rope and carefully threaded it through a rubberized opening in the vessel. Then, peering through a tiny window, Porterly looped the end of the jerkus rope around the package and gently pulled the slack out of it.

  Then he backed away from the bomb basket, letting out rope as he went along.

  The other cops were riveted. The parking lot seemed very quiet all of a sudden.

  Porterly flipped up the helmet visor. “You guys probably ought to take cover,” he called out to his colleagues. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  The cops ducked behind telephone poles and concrete ramparts on the edge of the lot.

  “Like I said, it’s probably nothing!” Porterly called out, flipping the visor down. He was maybe fifty yards away from the bomb basket.

  He yanked the rope.

  Nothing happened.

  Porterly could almost hear the collective sighs of relief from Frank Janus and the other cops in the shadows behind him. Even the crickets and the distant noises of the city seemed to sigh, resuming their normal drone of ambient noise.

  It was always an odd moment, when a device turns out to be nothing.

  Porterly felt a secret twinge of disappointment.

  “One more item on the agenda,” he murmured to himself, his voice loud inside his helmet.

  He went over to the duffel bag and pulled out a device that looked like one of those radar guns used by state troopers. About the size of a video camera, with a six-inch-wide window on one end, the portable X-ray machine was an invaluable part of the bomb squad field office. It was the only way to tell for sure if something was wired.

  He knelt down and opened the vessel.

  He scanned the package, and he watched the window flicker with a luminous blue image.

  Porterly smiled. The object inside the package was immediately recognizable.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Frank was watching Porterly hunching over the iron container, when Porterly’s voice suddenly rang out across the lot. “Come on over, Frank, we’re clear!”

  “Excuse me?” Frank called back

  “Come on over,” Porterly said, taking off his helmet, rising to his feet. The tac officer turned and waved Frank over. “Come over and take a look at your explosive device.”

  Frank looked at Jeffers, and Jeffers gave Frank a confused look, and then Frank made his way around the edge of the building and across the lot.

  “Take a look, Frank,” Porterly was saying, climbing out of his bomb suit.

  Frank approached cautiously. Gravel crunched loudly beneath his feet. His eyeballs felt too big for his skull. He was so dizzy the lot was beginning to spin slightly in his peripheral vision. He looked down at the X-ray gun.

  The ghost of a rectangular object glowed on the tiny display screen.

  “It’s a videotape?” Frank said.

  “That would be my educated guess,” Porterly quipped, peeling off his huge Teflon-lined trousers.

  Frank stared at the display. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Just an ordinary video cassette?” Frank said incredulously.

  “Th
at’s what it looks like, Frank.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry about all the trouble.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You did the right thing, Frankie. It’s my job, it’s what I do.”

  Jeffers was approaching, glancing over Frank’s shoulder. “What the hell is it?”

  Frank turned and gave Jeffers a sheepish look. “I think it’s what you would call a false alarm.”

  Jeffers took a closer look at the x-ray. “That looks like a fucking—”

  “It is, Randy, it is,” Frank said with a sigh. “It’s a videotape.”

  Jeffers stared at the glowing image.

  The other cops were coming now. One of the older guys—a graying, crew-cut sergeant in property crimes named Grasso—was staring at the X-ray with a grin. “Whattya got there, Frank? Debbie Does Dallas?”

  Porterly smiled, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “No, it’s probably home movies of Deets’s daughter.”

  The cops all had a big laugh at that one.

  “Gotta admit, it’s not one of my prouder moments,” Frank said with a sheepish, apologetic smile.

  “Don’t worry about it, Frankie,” Jeffers said, giving Frank a conciliatory pat on the back. “Probably would have done the same thing myself.”

  “Hey, Jimmy,” Grasso spoke up, “you gonna let us go back inside now or what?”

  Porterly was gathering up his gear. “Go ahead, fellas,” he said. “Just be on the lookout for any dangerous porno.”

  They all laughed and made their way back across the lot toward the entrance.

  Frank watched them filter back into the building. The fire alarm had gone silent.

  “—So whattya think it is?” Jeffers was saying.

  Frank turned and looked him. “Excuse me?”

  “The videotape,” Jeffers said, pointing at the black iron bomb container.

  Frank shrugged. “Probably nothing. Probably another witness statement.”

  Porterly was releasing the pressure lock and opening the containment vessel. He reached down into the hold, grabbed the package and lifted it out of the basket. He loosened the jerkus rope and handed the package to Frank. “Happy viewing, Frankie,” Porterly said.

  “Thanks, Jim, I appreciate all the trouble,” Frank said, looking down at the package. The plain brown wrapper was torn on one side from the pressure of the rope.

  “Don’t mention it, Frank,” Porterly said, then slung the duffel over his shoulder, grabbed the bomb basket and started across the parking lot.

  Jeffers gave Frank one last pat on the shoulder, then followed Porterly across the lot and into the building.

  Frank stood there for a long moment, clutching the videotape, feeling ashamed, woozy, lightheaded. His stomach was still tight with tension. What was happening to him? His life was falling apart. He looked down at the videotape, and he felt compelled to hurl it across the lot. Watch it hit the side of the building and shatter into a million pieces.

  He stared at it for a moment.

  Curiosity got the better of him, and he carried the package back inside the building.

  On his way back up to Violent Crimes, Frank passed the public information and complaint desks, the watch commander’s office, the briefing room, and the holding cells. The graveyard shift folks were still finding their way back into the building, making their way back to their desks—about a half a dozen ADs and a couple of desk sergeants, all chatting about the bogus fire alarm and all the excitement—and it made Frank feel like an idiot, like a problem child.

  He avoided their gazes.

  When he got back to his desk on the second floor, he couldn’t resist opening the package.

  Sure enough, it was a videotape.

  The trouble was, it was also unmarked. No box. No label. Nothing stamped on its plastic shell. Just a generic, unmarked videocassette, relatively new, its black styrene cartridge still gleaming, factory fresh. For some reason, Frank shook it again. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do. The cassette rattled slightly, the tape hubs loosely fastened inside its contours. But nothing else out of the ordinary. Just a generic, black, plastic, unmarked videocassette.

  Frank knew that that Deets was not the type to give a damn if Frank looked at it.

  Frank took it into the property room, went over to the VCR near the window and ejected the white-faced prostitute. Then he popped the mystery tape into the machine, and he pressed PLAY.

  An image flickered on the screen.

  Frank became very still.

  The image was of a solitary man, alone in a room, staring into the lens of the camera. The room was very familiar to Frank. The man looked very intense, maybe even a little exhausted. He was seen in medium close-up, and his eyes had the strangest look—both glassy and intense at the same time. He was trembling faintly. It was obvious he was about to say something very important—maybe even frightening—into the camera lens.

  Frank’s entire body rashed with gooseflesh, and not merely because it was obvious that Frank was about to learn something terrible...

  ...but also because he was looking at an image of someone he thought he knew fairly well.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Okay, heads up, Deets... I want to make a statement.”

  The image was poorly framed, the sound hollow and tinny, the lighting harsh, as though a bare light bulb were shining just out of the frame, throwing an awkward glare on the side of the on-screen face. The background was the faded blue cardboard backdrop of the interrogation room. The voice was hoarse and slightly strained.

  “This is regarding the thumb sucker case, and I’m only going to do this once, so get your notebook out, Deets. Sharpen your pencil. And listen closely.”

  There was a pause then, the man on screen staring feverishly into the lens.

  In the world of television production, there’s a thing called a “talking head.” It’s an all-purpose catch-phrase for the kind of bland close-up you see on the nightly news. A single on-camera personality, their face filling the frame from roughly mid-chest up to a few inches above their head, the talking head is usually the best medium for the objective dissemination of information, news, and educational content.

  Right now, the talking head on the battered CPD Trinitron was Frank Janus.

  It was Frank.

  And he was speaking into the camera in hushed, measured tones.

  “Now I’m sure you’re probably wondering: Why would my partner send me a videotape like this? Why not just talk over a cup of that shitty squad coffee, right? Well, there’s a good reason I’m making this statement on video, Deets, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, I want to get to my statement. I want to do this properly.”

  Across the room, Frank stood very still, a rivulet of cold sweat spidering down the hollow of his back. He was staring at a talking head of himself, and he had no memory of videotaping it. He had no memory of making any videotape of himself. His mind reeled for a moment. Was this some elaborate video notebook that he had made and forgotten? Why the hell was he addressing Deets with such an obvious attitude?

  The Video-Frank was talking into the camera lens.

  “This concerns the Wacker Jane Doe from ten years ago, the Jeeter case, and the Pakistani Jane Doe. Are you listening, Deets? All those theories you had about the MO... the methodology, the signature...the privacy, the amount of time it takes to alter the bodies post mortem, the state of mind of the killer, all that stuff...you were right, Deets, about everything. You want to know how I know this? Because the guy we’re hunting for—the thumb sucker killer—is me.”

  Another pause.

  Frank felt his stomach seizing up, his pulse racing in his neck, the dizziness washing over him. What in God’s name was going on? Was this a joke? Some kind of gag Deets was working on? But how could it be? It was Frank on screen. Frank. Frank was watching himself.

  He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t tear his gaze from the monitor.

  “You heard right, Deets, I’m the guy. I’m the pe
rp. I killed that stripper down on Wacker Drive, and I killed that Jane Doe in Little Pakistan, and—”

  All at once Frank lunged at the VCR, slamming the PAUSE button.

  The image froze.

  Footsteps were coming. Just outside the door. Somebody striding down the corridor toward the property room. Frank quickly pressed the INPUT switch, and the screen went blank, filling with electronic snow.

  Randy Jeffers appeared in the doorway. “So what did the mystery tape turn out to be?” he asked, sipping coffee from a paper cup.

  “Take a look,” Frank said, pointing nervously at the monitor.

  Jeffers entered the room, walked over to the Trinitron and glanced at the screen. Jeffers’s face fell like a little boy at the end of a party. “Blank?”

  “Yep,” Frank nodded.

  “You gotta be kidding me? After all that?”

  “Typical, huh?”

  The black detective shook his head. “Hell, at least it coulda been Marilyn Chambers.”

  Frank managed a fleeting smile. “Yeah, just my luck.”

  “There is no God,” Jeffers said, staring at the snowy screen.

  “Tell me about it,” Frank said.

  Jeffers shrugged, then walked out.

  Frank stood there for a moment, his heart hammering.

  He rushed over to the door, carefully closed it and twisted the deadbolt.

  Then he went back to the VCR and pressed PLAY.

  “—and I killed Irene Jeeter. But it’s not what you think. It’s very complicated, Deets. Which brings me to the reason I made this videotape. You see, I’m not Frank Janus right now. Not exactly. I’m what’s known as an alter personality. I live inside Frank Janus, and I only come out when Frank’s asleep.”

  There was another pause.

  Standing in front of the monitor, fists clenched like tight little stones, Frank was paralyzed. This had to be a joke. It had to be. There were all sorts of gizmos out there on the market nowadays that enabled home computer enthusiasts to fuck with video images. Gizmos that would have made George Lucas drool ten years ago. You can get them down at the local Radio Shack. But the more Frank grasped for feeble explanations, the more the image on the screen drew him in, terrified him. The face was his, and it was pumped up with adrenaline and madness.