Kill Switch Read online

  Hargis nodded. “I’m sure you would.”

  Chris tried to extract anything—reassurance, doubt, suspicion—from Hargis’s words, but there was nothing there to grab on to. It left him feeling like he needed to defend himself from something. It took an effort not to.

  “What about Elisa?” he said. “Do you have an idea if she’s all right?”

  Drolezki glanced at his partner. “You understand why we can’t give you any information about her whereabouts.”

  “Yeah, because I’m a suspect,” he said. “Sure. I’m not asking where she is. I’m asking if she’s okay.”

  Neither man spoke.

  So either they really did lose her trail, or else she was their prime suspect.

  “Mr. Franzia—” Hargis began.

  Chris interrupted him.

  “I can tell you that Elisa wouldn’t hurt anyone. The others…” He paused, swallowed, and then continued. “If you think Elisa somehow has gone off her rocker, and is going back and killing all of her college classmates, you’re after the wrong person.”

  “But the others, you were going to say?” Drolezki said.

  Chris just looked over at him.

  “Mr. Franzia,” Hargis said, “if you really don’t know anything about what is happening here, you have every reason to help our investigation, not impede it. Remember, with the possible exception of Elisa Howard, you are the only one mentioned in that email who is still alive. Your life may be in danger. I urge you to tell us anything you remember about your classmates that might be helpful. Even if it seems unimportant to you.”

  “All I was going to say,” Chris said, fighting back the feeling of having been admonished by a superior, “was that of the seven of us, Elisa would be the last one who would ever hurt anyone. She was kind, gentle, and sweet.”

  Why was he talking about her in past tense? Could that sound suspicious?

  “What do you recall about the others?” Hargis said. “Personalities? Goals? How did they interact with each other, and with you?”

  So much for not giving anything up.

  “I can tell you Gavin McCormick was an excitable guy, kind of a flake. He wanted to go into biological research, but I never thought he had the personality for it. The rest of us always thought he was a little weird. Glen Cederstrom was the quiet, solid, steady one. He was headed toward education, like me. The others…” He paused. “Okay, Lewis Corelli wasn’t an especially nice guy. And I always thought that Deirdre Ross had a ruthless streak, but we all knew she was thinking pre-med, and that kind of goes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

  “And Mary Michaels?” Hargis said.

  “She was an odd one. She was taking biology classes purely because she thought it sounded interesting.”

  “There’s a problem with that?”

  “No, you misunderstand me. I was a Bio major; I loved that stuff. I don’t mean interesting in that sense. Mary more loved the idea of biology. The actual work she found pretty distasteful, because, you know, biology leaves your hands dirty. But being able to tell people she was ‘studying biological science’ was somehow exciting and glamorous. Honestly, most of us thought Mary Michaels was a neurotic prima donna.”

  “Really?” Hargis, his voice level.

  Chris shook his head in frustration. “Look, none of us hated the others. It was the usual odd mix of people thrown together in college classes. I don’t see why their personalities thirty years ago are important. We were young then. Who knows, maybe they all grew up to be perfectly nice, ordinary people.”

  “We don’t know the answer to that ourselves,” Drolezki said.

  “I don’t understand any of this.” He was becoming desperate, feeling almost like the walls were closing in on him from all sides. “There was nothing special about this group. We weren’t even all that close. We were classmates. We used to study together, sometimes with one or two others, sometimes not. We did field work together.”

  “So the email said,” Drolezki said.

  “But nothing happened.” In spite of his best effort, his voice rose shrilly. “We did field work up in the Cascades. But it was nothing unusual, and it involved all the students in the class. I don’t remember a single thing that happened up there that was out of the ordinary.”

  “How often did you go, and for how long?”

  “I think for that class, we went three times, for about four days at a time. We camped up there, collected our data, came back. It was routine.”

  “McCormick didn’t seem to think so,” Drolezki said.

  “I have no idea why. Do you know why he said that?”

  “If we did, we wouldn’t be asking you.” Hargis looked over at Drolezki, who gave a little nod.

  Chris wondered if that were truly the case.

  “In any case,” Hargis continued, closing up his briefcase, “we’ll leave a card with you. If anything out of the ordinary happens, anything at all, call us. We can have someone out here in fifteen minutes. Don’t discount what seems insignificant. We’d rather come out here for nothing than have a sixth murder to deal with.”

  Murder. First time he’d used that word.

  Hargis and Drolezki stood up, and Chris rose to take the card that Hargis was handing to him. They walked toward the door, and Chris opened it for them. “I have to move my car,” he said. “I boxed you in.”

  As they were walking across the lawn toward the cars, Drolezki nudged an old tennis ball lying in the grass with the toe of his shoe.

  “Ankle breaker,” he said, amiably. “Your dog leave this out here?”

  Chris picked it up. “No, I can’t give Baxter tennis balls. He eats them.”

  Someone must have put that there. Maybe it was booby trapped. Spring-loaded miniature hypodermic needles sticking poison into his hand right now. Maybe tonight he’d die in his sleep, like Gavin. Or collapse with a stroke, like Lewis.

  Talk about being spooked. Fuck me.

  Chris waited until Hargis and Drolezki climbed into their car, and he turned and winged the ball as hard as he could into the field across the street. Then he looked down at his hand, and felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

  I shouldn’t have touched it. Now it’s too late.

  Chapter 2

  Chris was awakened from a sound sleep by Baxter barking.

  He sat up in bed in the pitch dark, groggy and disoriented, and squinted at the clock. Its red display stood at 2:42.

  “Baxter, dammit, knock it off!”

  The barking continued, unabated. This probably meant that there was a deer in the yard, which was about the only thing that could really get Baxter going in the middle of the night.

  Getting out of bed, he fumbled for his bathrobe and pulled it on, then padded barefoot out into the living room. In the faint light from the streetlight down the road, Chris could see Baxter silhouetted, standing on the couch, nose pressed to the window. Now that he was up, the dog had subsided into woofs, but his tail was down, a sure sign that he wasn’t happy.

  “I am not letting you out. If that’s a deer, you’ll take off after it, and I’ll spend the next hour chasing you down.”

  Baxter looked up at him and whined.

  What if it wasn’t a deer, though? What if someone was actually out there lurking, waiting for an opportunity to kill him?

  Chris stood, staring at his dog and the dark window for a moment, then walked over to the door and switched on the outside lights.

  The yard was suddenly illuminated with that yellowish, artificial glow that makes everything look strange and colorless and surreal. Chris went up to the window, reached out and put one hand on Baxter’s furry shoulder, more for his own comfort than for the dog’s.

  Empty.

  Apparently satisfied that his job was done, Baxter turned and jumped down off the couch, went over to his dog bed and flopped into it with his usual heavy sigh. Chris watched him for a moment, then turned off the outside lights.

  Before he went back to bed, he locke
d all of his doors and windows, something he never did unless he was going to be away overnight. Afterward, he lay there, trying to relax, but listening for any small noise that might tell him what had awakened Baxter earlier. There was nothing but the usual small night noises, and those weren’t even enough to wake the dog again, who snored quietly in the living room, untroubled by the earlier disturbance, whatever it was.

  He didn’t fall asleep again until almost four.

  —

  Baxter was the one who woke Chris up again, this time at nine in the morning, with a cold nose pressed into the hand that hung limply off the edge of the bed. He came back to consciousness slowly and stumbled out of the bedroom, pulling his robe back on, to let the dog out into the back yard.

  So far, so good. He’d made it through the night without anybody killing him in his sleep.

  He was unable to sustain his sanguine mood, however. As he put the coffee on, shaved, showered, and prepared his breakfast, his mind kept going back to the visit from the FBI men. The details seemed foggy, and he tried to remember what they told him about how each of his classmates had died. And that started him thinking of each of them in turn, picturing their faces, remembering their voices, remembering funny incidents that they’d been involved in together.

  One random connection and you’re linked for life. None of them had known the others prior to the class, or at least, that was the impression Chris had. Fate had put them all into a Field Biology class in 1984, and that connection was, one by one, killing them.

  That’s what the FBI wanted him to think, at least.

  There was no proof of it, though, other than Gavin’s email—and Gavin always had weird ideas.

  What they really had was a bunch of dead fifty-somethings. Maybe it was all just simple coincidence. After all, that’s the age where people start dying of strokes and heart attacks... and cycling and swimming accidents can happen to anyone.

  The FBI was supposed to find connections. Maybe they were seeing them where there weren’t any.

  All morning he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, though. He even went to the window twice, looking for a mysterious black car parked across the street, or someone hiding in the bushes with a pair of binoculars. Of course, there was never anything there, but he still couldn’t relax into the book he was reading, and finally gave up and set it on the coffee table.

  “I think I need to get out of Dodge,” he said to Baxter, who responded with a thump of his tail against the floor. “Maybe we should go up to the Adirondacks and go canoeing, you think?”

  But that’s how they’d gotten Deirdre, wasn’t it? Out in the wilderness, where there was no one to help if you’re in trouble.

  Chris recalled Deirdre’s cool competence, all during their acquaintance, and allowed himself to feel a measure of reassurance. Knowing Deirdre, she left information about her whereabouts with everyone but the state police. Her office staff would have known, and probably any friends, family, acquaintances, whatever. Anyone looking for her wouldn’t have had to search hard. She wasn’t the type to takes chances.

  Maybe Deirdre had left a broad trail for them to follow, but if they’d gotten her, what chance did he have? She’d been tough, smart, and even in college had been working her way up the belt ranks in karate. She wouldn’t have been easy to catch off guard.

  “Well, I’m damned if I’ll stay home and fret over every noise I hear.” He looked at Baxter. “If I have a choice, which I do, I’d rather take my chances with meeting them out in the woods, than sitting at home waiting for them to show up on my doorstep one night.”

  He got up, and dialed a number on the telephone.

  “Hello?” came a female voice.

  “Hi, Joyce? It’s Chris Franzia. Is Adam around?”

  “Oh, hi, Chris. Sure, he’s here. I’ll get him.”

  There was a pause.

  “Hello?” came a cheerful teenage voice.

  “Hi, Adam? This is Mr. Franzia. Are you going to be around for a few days?”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “I’m heading out to do some camping. I was wondering if you could do the usual. Feed Jabs, water the plants once or twice. I’ll be gone for a week or so.”

  “Lucky you. Where are you going?”

  Chris paused. “Away.” He kept his voice light. “School’s over. I’m heading out where no one can find me.”

  Adam laughed. “Yeah, I know how you feel. No problem at all.”

  “Cool. I believe your mom still has a key.”

  “Yeah, she does. I think it’s still hanging on the key rack in the kitchen from the last time you were gone.”

  “Great. You have my cell number if anything comes up. I’m leaving this afternoon, and I’ll feed Jabs before I leave. You won’t have to come by until tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good. Enjoy your trip.”

  “I will.”

  Chris hung up the phone and looked around.

  I can be gone in an hour. After that, if there’s someone after me, let ’em try to find me up in the High Peaks, and good luck to them.

  —

  Chris gathered his camping gear and hauled it to the car, feeling strangely conspicuous each time he went outside, as if advertising where he was going to the entire world. While putting his backpack and sleeping bag in the back of the car, a blue BMW went by. He saw a hand give a little wave through tinted windows, but he didn’t recognize the face hidden in the shadowed interior.

  He didn’t know anyone with a blue BMW, though.

  Chris returned his attention to the task at hand, but his nerves were still on edge a few minutes later when, while struggling to get his canoe up onto the roof rack, a friendly voice behind him said, “Need some help with that?”

  He half turned, lost his grip on the canoe, and saved it from sliding nose-first off the car at the last moment. Standing behind him was a tall, well-built teenager, with an unkempt mane of chestnut brown hair and a cheerful smile in a deeply tanned face.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” the boy grinned sheepishly, getting underneath the canoe and giving it a gentle shove onto the top of the car.

  “Dear God, Adam, you almost gave me a heart attack.” He immediately regretted having put it that way.

  “Sorry, Mr. F. But I wanted to make sure that I knew where you were leaving the chinchilla chow. I called but no one answered. Mom said you most likely hadn’t left yet, that you were probably out packing up your car, and so I decided to walk over.”

  “And here I am.” Chris tossed a strap over the top of the canoe, and then walked around the other side of the car to hook it to the roof rack. “Glad you thought of it. I think I left it in a plastic sack on my couch. You’d have found it, but better to leave it in an obvious spot.”

  Adam raised one eyebrow. “Yeah. You wouldn’t want me to have to go through all your stuff, and find things no one’s supposed to see.”

  Chris gave the kid a wry smile. “You have an unwarrantedly high opinion of the interest level of my private life.”

  “C’mon, Mr. F., you must have a girlfriend or two. Or three.”

  “Not even ‘or one,’ at the moment, Adam.” He cinched down the strap.

  “Too bad,” Adam said, with feeling. “You coulda brought her along on your camping trip. Camping under the stars with your lady.”

  “Go home, Adam.” Chris gave the boy a clap on the shoulder. “I’ll leave the chinchilla chow on the top of Jabs’s cage. And I’ll make sure to come to you if I need any advice in the romance department.”

  Adam remained undaunted by the sarcasm. “Always happy to help. Have a good trip. See you when you get back.”

  —

  It was a relief when, a little over an hour later, Chris had the car packed. Baxter was happily ensconced in the front seat, his head already hanging out of the passenger side window, tail wagging non-stop. Chris climbed in behind the steering wheel, turned the key in the ignition, and backed out into the road.
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br />   He looked ahead, then into his rear-view mirror. No cars coming from either direction.

  If they’re going to follow me, they’d better get at it.

  He drove off down the road toward the highway.

  —

  The camping trip was brilliant fun. The first night he slept fitfully, convinced that every little noise was the stealthy footstep of someone with a knife or a gun creeping up to his tent. As the days passed, he relaxed, the tension draining away as he absorbed himself in nothing more stressful than paddling, swimming, hiking, and relaxing by a campfire. He did have one momentary pang three days in, as he stripped his clothes off to go for a quick skinnydip in a mountain lake and remembered how Deirdre Ross’ clothes were found, dry and neatly folded, on a rock by a lake on the other side of the country.

  He stood naked on the rock, looking down at the still water. This was it. Will he go missing the same way? Will some passing hiker find his clothes, still guarded by his faithful dog?

  He looked over at Baxter, exhausted by their hike and snoozing under a tree.

  Damned if he was going to wait here to find out.

  The next thing he felt was the chilly water sliding across his skin as he dove in, leaving nothing but a trail of silvery bubbles behind him.

  —

  He stayed out seven days. At that point, he began to long for the amenities of home. The ground, even through a foam pad, was not as kind to his body as it had been when he was twenty, and he found himself thinking about his bed, kitchen, and sofa more often than he liked to admit.

  He was becoming a wuss. Just look at Baxter. He could sleep on the bare ground every day, and he’d be as cheerful as ever.