Book of Souls

Then he headed to men’s wear and picked up a pair of thirty-four-waist dark slacks and a fresh pack of underwear and socks. In the dressing room, he went to the back stall and peeled off his bloody pants. Standing shakily in front of the mirror he inspected his wound. There was a quarter-inch purplish hole in the inner thigh, about five inches from his groin fold, steadily oozing dark red blood. He’d attended enough autopsies to know he was lucky. The adductor muscle was a good distance from the femoral artery. But he wasn’t completely lucky. There was no exit wound. The robot must have decelerated the bullet enough to make it lose some of its energy. The bullet was lodged. Within a day or so, his leg would be infected. Without surgery and antibiotics, he’d be septic.

He unwrapped the three-pack of undershorts, rolled one of them into a tight cylinder, and bit down on it to keep himself quiet. He bathed the wound in a dark brown iodine solution, then got down to the painful business. With the tweezers, he pushed a ribbon of gauze into the bullet hole. He clamped down on the cloth, and his eyes watered in torment. He had no choice. The wound had to be packed to staunch the flow. If he didn’t clot, he’d bleed out. He subjected himself to repeated thrusts of the tweezers and pushed gauze through the skin and subcutaneous tissues, deep into the pulpy muscle.

When he had done as much as he could bear, he drenched the gauze in iodine and wrapped a bandage tightly over the wad. Then he spat out the cloth and sank to the floor, breathing heavily. In a minute, he was ready to put on fresh clothes. On the way out of the dressing room he trash-canned his bloody garments.

The pain was blinding but he had to suck it up to ask a clerk at the electronics department for help. “What’s your cheapest laptop with a USB port and a wireless card?”

The kid replied, “They all have USB ports and wireless cards.”

“Then what’s your cheapest laptop?”

“We’ve got an Acer for 498.”

“I’ll take it. And give me a shoulder bag too. Will the battery have any charge?”

“Should have. Why?”

“Because I want to use it out of the box.”

There was a taxi stand near the Wal-Mart. Will had all his provisions stuffed into his new shoulder bag and folded himself stiffly into the backseat of a cab. He touched his new pants and was relieved they were still dry.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked.

“Greyhound station. But stop at a liquor store first.”

Frazier got tired of driving around looking for a needle in a haystack. He had his man pull over into a diner. They had Piper’s info circulated to LAPD, including his rental-car tag number. He was suspected of murdering federal agents. He was armed and dangerous, possibly wounded. The police would take this seriously. The hospitals were on alert. All Frazier could do now was outthink him. What was he going to do with the database, assuming he had it? Where was he going to go? He wasn’t going to be able to fly back to New York without getting picked up. Then it hit him.

Spence. Tomorrow was Spence’s DOD.

He lived in Las Vegas. It only made sense that Will was going to meet Spence there to hand off the database. That was probably going to be Bentley’s next stop.

He didn’t have to chase after Piper. All he had to do was go to Las Vegas and wait for him to arrive.

The Ops Center was in his ear. “Piper used his VISA card twenty minutes ago at a Wal-Mart on Crenshaw.”

“What did he buy?” Frazier asked.

“A computer, a bag, some clothes and a shitload of gauze and bandages.”

“All right. We’re heading back to Nevada. I know where he’s going.”

Will purchased his one-way ticket to Las Vegas at the Greyhound station and paid cash. He had a few hours until the departure time but didn’t feel comfortable waiting around the terminal. There was a donut shop across the street. He limped into a booth, with a coffee and an extra paper cup. Under the table he poured himself a half a glass of Johnnie Walker, put six acetaminophens into his mouth, and drank them down in a series of fiery gulps.

The alcohol helped dull the pain or at least distracted him enough to get the new computer out of the box and booted up. There were no wireless networks detected.

“You got WiFi?” he called over to the dull Mexican girl behind the counter, but he might as well have asked her to explain quantum mechanics to him. She stared through him and shrugged.

He plugged in the memory stick and downloaded Shackleton’s database. In a minute, he was prompted for the password and he instantly recalled it: Pythagoras. It had significance to Shackleton, he imagined, but he’d never know what it was.

The searchable database was ready for his queries. There was a God-like feeling to be able to type a name, some identifying information, and find out, in an instant, that person’s date of death. He began with Joe and Mary Lipinski, just to pay them a moment of respect. There they were. October 20.

Then he did a double check on Henry Spence. It was confirmed: October 23rd. Tomorrow.