Kill Switch Read online

  Despite the internal pep talk, he was glad when he arrived back at the canoe put-in and saw his car waiting for him. He paddled to the shore, climbed out into the cold, calf-deep water, and dragged his canoe out onto the gravel. Chris was a quick and efficient packer, and had the car loaded up, Baxter in the front seat, and the canoe strapped to the roof rack within a half-hour. It was about three in the afternoon. Watertown, the nearest city of any size, was an hour-and-a-half away. With luck, he could find a restaurant that wouldn’t mind a guy who was on his last clean t-shirt, saved carefully for the occasion.

  He stopped for some food at a little Italian restaurant that didn’t seem too swanky. After eating his plate of lasagna, he pulled out his cell to call Adam and see how chinchilla-sitting had gone, and to let him know that he’d be back late that evening.

  “Hello?” came a hoarse voice on the other end of the line.

  “Joyce? It’s Chris Franzia.”

  “Chris. We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days. No one knew where you were, and you must have been out of cell range.”

  “Yes, I was.” He fought down a rising wave of apprehension. The waiter came up to ask if he wanted a refill on his beer, and Chris shook his head. “Is everything okay?”

  There was a pause. “No.” Joyce gave an involuntary sob. “No, nothing’s okay. Chris, Adam’s dead.”

  Chapter 3

  Chris wasn’t surprised to find the white sedan parked in his driveway when he arrived home.

  How long had they been there waiting for him this time? All afternoon? Or did they know exactly where he’d been and how long it would take him to get home?

  Hargis and Drolezki’s doors opened as soon as he turned his motor off. He got out, held the door open for Baxter and said, without preamble, “You already know, I presume.”

  Hargis nodded. Chris turned and led them to the front door.

  “Locking your door now, I see,” he said as Chris fumbled with his keys.

  “I was gone for a week. I may be trusting, but I’m not stupid.” He turned on the lights in the living room, and gestured for the two men to sit down.

  “Running away to the wilderness wasn’t the smartest thing you could have done,” Hargis commented, as he sat down on the couch.

  “I figured that if anything, whoever it was that’s behind this would come after me,” Chris said heavily. “I didn’t think they’d kill Adam.”

  “Well,” Drolezki said, “they did go after you. Adam was collateral damage.”

  “Bloody horrible way to put it,” Chris said. “Adam was a former student and a friend of mine. A really nice kid.”

  Drolezki looked over at Hargis for a moment, then reached into a folder he was carrying and pulled out a stack of typed forms, held together by a paper clip. “What it looks like is that they set a trap for you, and it got Adam, instead. Adam died four days ago. He was found dead on the couch, in his own home, by his mother.”

  “Poor Joyce.”

  “He was caring for your place while you were gone,” Hargis said.

  “Yes. Feeding the chinchilla and watering the plants. Keeping an eye on things.”

  Drolezki looked at the papers in his hand. “Autopsy and toxicology results came in yesterday. Looks like he came over, probably mid-afternoon on Tuesday, and while he was here, he pilfered a beer from your fridge.”

  Chris looked up and sighed. “He did? Yeah, I can see him doing that.”

  “We believe he drank it here, and then went home. The speculation from there is that he began to feel drowsy, and laid down on the couch for a nap. He never woke up.”

  “Poison?”

  “Looks that way. There was still a quantity of beer in his stomach, so it acted on him within fifteen to twenty minutes of consumption. The coroner’s office did a complete work-up, tox screen of his stomach contents and blood, and came up empty-handed. Whatever it was didn’t show up on any of the ordinary tox screens.”

  “Leading us to further speculate that it may have been the same chemical used to kill Gavin McCormick,” Hargis said. “His tox results were also negative, and he was found dead in his sleep.”

  “Someone poisoned the beer in my fridge?”

  “We believe so,” Hargis said. “Do you remember when you last purchased beer?”

  “Maybe two weeks ago?” He scratched his head. “I’m not sure.”

  “And where did you purchase it from?”

  “From the Save-a-Lot, right here in Guildford.”

  “Any left?”

  “I think there were three bottles left.” He shook his head. “Two now, I suppose.”

  “We’d like to take any remaining beer, and any empty bottles you have, for testing,” Drolezki said. “We have more sophisticated tests we can run, see if we can pinpoint what chemical agent is being used.”

  “Of course,”

  “And it would be advisable,” Hargis added, “not to eat any food that’s in your refrigerator or freezer. You might want to do a lot of eating out for a while.”

  “Jesus.” Chris shuddered and leaned back in his chair. “And you still have no idea why someone is after me? Or why Gavin, Glen, Deirdre, and the rest were killed?”

  “Our only working hypothesis is that it has something to do with the field work you did in ’84.”

  “Maybe if you could tell us a little more about what you did,” Drolezki said. “What sort of work was it?”

  His mind went back thirty years, searching for details lost in the haze of the past. “It was just a class. We went up into the Cascades. More than once. Sometimes only into the foothills, a few times into the high peaks, over Teanaway Pass, to Lake… Ingalls, I think it was. Little lake up near the tree line. The way Field Biology worked, each semester the class would learn some basics, the protocols and equipment and so on, and then spend the semester working on a specific project. The project varied from semester to semester. The term we took it, we worked on a study that involved tagging and monitoring bird populations. Mostly the residents, gray jays, Clark’s nutcrackers, crows.”

  “Toward what end?” Hargis asked.

  “The study was trying to see how much vertical migration the resident birds did. You see gray jays on Mt. Rainier in summer; you see them in winter. Are they the same individuals, or do the ones there in summer migrate down to lower altitudes in winter?”

  “Interesting,” Hargis said, not sounding interested.

  Chris looked at him. “See what I mean? What on earth could that have to do with somebody trying to kill us?”

  Instead of answering the question, Hargis asked a different one. “Was there anything on these trips that set the seven of you apart, that you did together that other members of the class didn’t do?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think so. I mean, we hung out together some outside of class, so I expect we probably spent more time socializing with each other than with the other members of the class, especially in the evenings when we weren’t working. Sometimes in our free time, groups would go off on short hikes for fun, and we did a bit of that.”

  “But nothing unusual happened on any of those occasions.”

  “No!” Chris slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair. “Nothing! I’ve told you, it was just a class. One more hurdle to jump to get your master’s degree. It was fun at times, and damned boring at times. Field work sounds a lot more exciting than it usually is. We did what was required of us and came home.”

  “I see.”

  He looked from one of the FBI men to the other, searching for some sign that they knew more than they were telling him.

  And if that something might help him to understand this.

  “Now what do I do? Sit here and wait to be killed?”

  Hargis shook his head. “We’ll have agents watching you and your house constantly. No one will get in or out without our knowing.”

  “Didn’t exactly help Adam, did it?” Chris said bitterly.

  “We didn’t expect you to run,
” Hargis said. “You should have told us what you were considering.”

  “And then I’d have drank that beer one evening, and I’d be dead now. Forgive me for not having a lot of confidence in you clowns.”

  Neither man rose to the bait.

  “It’s possible that the beer was poisoned some time ago,” Drolezki said. “Before we even located you. You said you purchased it two weeks ago, but you also told us that you don’t lock your door. It could be that while you were at work, someone came in and somehow introduced the poison into one or more of the bottles. After that, all they had to do was sit back and wait. Only a matter of time.”

  “They’d have walked into my house? Right past my dog?”

  Drolezki looked over at Baxter, who was asleep in his dog bed. “A couple of puppy biscuits in hand, and an intruder would be your dog’s best friend. You don’t exactly have a vicious animal, there.”

  “No, I guess not,” Chris admitted. “I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around this.”

  “Easy to understand,” Hargis said.

  “Thinking this way doesn’t come easily,” Drolezki said. “Most people never have to. Which is a good thing.”

  “So, they might have laid out other traps in my house, right?” He looked around, as though they might be visible. “Wouldn’t I be safer going away, then?”

  “Deirdre Ross wasn’t,” Drolezki said.

  “I think the likelihood is that there was only the one bottle poisoned,” Hargis said. “Not that you should chance it, but that’s my gut feeling. From the other deaths, it appears that the killer, or killers, are clever opportunists, and always careful to raise as little suspicion as possible. As I said when we spoke last week, without McCormick’s email, we never would have thought that the others’ deaths were out of the ordinary. Even Adam’s death probably wouldn’t have generated an investigation, given the toxicology results. His case would almost certainly have been closed with the conclusion of cardiac arrest, reason unknown.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “Mr. Franzia,” Hargis said, “I’m not going to pretend we can guarantee your safety. Whoever is doing this isn’t leaving a lot of footprints. But wouldn’t you say that being here, under our surveillance, gives you a better chance than if you were in a strange town? Or out in the wilderness?”

  “I suppose.”

  “We can’t make you stay here, of course,” Hargis continued. “You’re not under house arrest.”

  “And I’m not a suspect any more, I take it.”

  Hargis said, “Your story checked out. Unless you were in two places at once, you haven’t taken a trip to the Pacific Northwest in the past few months.”

  “Glad to hear I’m off the hook.”

  “This has nothing to do with suspicion, Mr. Franzia,” Drolezki said. “It has to do with your own safety. We can’t make you listen. All we can do is to urge you to stay home and relax.”

  “What happened to going out to restaurants to eat?” he asked pointedly. “Make up your mind.”

  Hargis sighed. It was the first emotional response Chris had seen. “All we’re asking is that you exercise some caution, and let us do what we can to help you.”

  Looking at Hargis’s unexpressive face, he stopped. Why exactly was he trying to antagonize the FBI men, anyway? Weren’t they on his side?

  He shivered. How could he know that? He let them into his house because they showed ID.

  An ID can be faked.

  What if they were the ones who had killed his former classmates?

  “Fine. I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry I’m being a bastard about the whole thing. But finding out that all the others were dead, and now, Adam…” He swallowed before continuing. “It’s kind of a lot to take in.”

  “No need to apologize. You’re under a tremendous emotional strain. But we’d urge you… don’t do anything foolish. Let us do our jobs. Take lots of naps. Catch up on your reading.” There was a sudden glint in Hargis’s dark eyes. “And if you suddenly—remember anything important about what went on during those expeditions into the mountains in 1984, please let us know.”

  The slight pause made Chris picture the word “remember” in quotations marks, and he wondered if they seriously thought he was hiding something.

  Was he?

  “I will. But don’t hold your breath. Nothing happened on those trips that would be of interest to anyone who wasn’t fond of birds.”

  —

  Cops was on when Chris turned on the television that night. The second channel had a spy thriller, something about a guy being chased by bad guys even though he couldn’t remember his identity and had no idea why they were after him.

  He turned the TV off.

  Those FBI guys were as in the dark about this as he was, by God.

  He looked over at the framed print on his living room wall—the blurry UFO photo with the caption “I Want to Believe.” A replica of the one that had been hanging in Fox Mulder’s office on The X-Files.

  Mulder and Scully would be able to figure this out. They always did. They were FBI, but weren’t gonna sit on their hands and wait for the guy they were protecting to get killed.

  But at least Mulder and Scully knew what the conspiracy was about. Aliens. It was always about aliens, plotting to take over the world.

  But he had no idea why these people are trying to kill him.

  He was a biology teacher, not someone with classified information about an alien invasion. None of them had been out of the ordinary. Just a regular assortment of kids you find in every college class in the United States.

  That started him thinking about Elisa, who seemed to be the only other survivor besides him—unless they’d gotten her, too, and the FBI just hadn’t found out about it yet.

  Chris winced inwardly at that thought. He’d liked Elisa, a lot. A sweet, soft-spoken artist, intent on pursuing a career in biological illustration.

  A wave of sadness washed over him. Maybe he and Elisa could have had something.

  If he hadn’t met Andrea.

  Andrea Goldman had been everything Elisa wasn’t—brash, outspoken, flashy, with a love for clubs and dancing and parties. Chris had been swept away. Compared to Andrea’s bright colors, Elisa had seemed painted with shades of gray.

  Chris had met Andrea about halfway through the same semester he’d taken Field Biology. Five months later they were living together. A year after that they were married, and by that time, Elisa had slipped from his mind completely.

  Unfortunately, Andrea hadn’t been all she’d been cracked up to be, but it had taken five years before he’d discovered her darker side. There’d been a string of affairs, the first one just three weeks after they’d exchanged their wedding vows. He’d discovered it by mistake—an injudicious message left unerased on their answering machine. A confrontation elicited tears and self-recrimination, and what had seemed like genuine remorse. As a result they didn’t split right away. Their marriage limped along for another three years before a second discovery of infidelity put the final note on the page.

  Upon reflection, he realized that the marriage had ended the day he’d listened in stunned silence to a strange man’s voice on his answering machine, wondering how he could have been so blind, so foolish.

  The pain had been unbearable.

  After that, there’d been periodic girlfriends, some serious enough to warrant a trip to the drug store for condoms, coupled with a silent prayer that there wouldn’t be a former student staffing the checkout register. But nothing lasted very long. No noisy, angry breakups; just a gradual drifting apart, a realization by one or both parties that the relationship, while pleasant enough, was going nowhere.

  Finally, Chris had more or less given up. He’d resigned himself to being single, to living a comfortable life. And to avoiding pushing himself unless absolutely necessary.

  Remembering Elisa brought back memories of what it had been like in his college years, before marriage and
jobs and mortgages. He’d had some fire then, a willingness to take risks and wrestle with life rather than let it win the match by default. He wondered briefly if Elisa’s romantic life had been luckier than his, but pushed the thought away. He was rapidly slipping into self-pity, an emotion he loathed. And if anything, the thought of Elisa in a happy marriage would only make the slide into maudlin depression faster and deeper.

  Why hadn’t the FBI been able to find her? She must have gotten married and changed her name, maybe moved away from Washington state. But she had to have left some records.

  Chris went to his computer and turned it on.

  He didn’t know why he thought he could find her if the FBI couldn’t, but a wild hope surged in him that maybe he had a shot. He knew her. They didn’t. And if he found her, maybe he could warn her.

  If it wasn’t already too late.

  What did he know about Elisa? She was from eastern Washington. Spokane, or one of the towns nearby. They had never really talked about their pasts that much, but if you’re together long enough, things come out. It had always sounded as though she’d had a crappy home life. Dad had died when she was young, mom had gone on to marry a real loser.

  Something happened right before we met, Chris remembered. He strained to remember snatches of light conversation over coffee in the student union. Something… something about the holidays…

  The mental circuitry finally connected. Thanksgiving! That was it! It was Thanksgiving, and all of them had been going home to family except her.

  It had been a casual chat during a Field Bio lab. They were looking at a collection of mammal skulls, identifying them using a key. Now that the floodgates of memory were opened, it all came back. He remembered the conversation as if it had just happened, and the awkward direction it had suddenly taken.

  —

  “My mom is the best cook,” Mary Michaels said, running a hand across her frizzy dark hair with a self-conscious gesture. “She studied to be a cordon bleu chef. She’ll be putting on a spread.”