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Kaleidoscopic images spun around me, and shrieks of terror ricocheted off the walls. The situation went from bad to out of control. I kept scanning the room, trying to pick out a stocky boy with long brown hair, square jaw, the eyes of a killer — but I didn’t see him.
Where was Hans Vetter?
Where was he?
Chapter 115
THE LAB INSTRUCTOR stood transfixed at the front of the room, his blanched face going livid as shock turned to outrage. He was in his thirties, balding, wearing a green cardigan and what looked like bedroom slippers under the cuffs of his trousers. He shoved his hands out in front of himself as if to push us out of his classroom. He announced his name — Dr. Neal Weinstein — and demanded, “What the hell? What the hell is this?”
If it weren’t so damned terrifying, it would’ve been almost funny to watch Weinstein, armed with only his flapping hands and his PhD, face down adrenaline-pumped federal law enforcement officers primed to blow the place apart.
“I have a warrant for the arrest of Hans Vetter,” I said, holding both the warrant and my gun in front of me.
Weinstein shouted, “Hans isn’t here.”
A white female student with black dreads, a ring in her lower lip, peeked out from behind an overturned table. “I spoke to Hans this morning,” she said. “He told me he was going away.”
“You saw him this morning?” I asked.
“I talked to him on his cell.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
She shook her head. “He only told me because I wanted to borrow his car.”
I left marshals behind to interview Weinstein and his students, but as Conklin and I left the building, I felt terra firma shimmy beneath my feet.
Hawk’s death last night had sent Pidge underground.
He could be anywhere in the world by now.
In the parking lot across from the Gates Building, some kids were clinging together in clumps, others dazed and wandering. Still others were laughing at the unexpected excitement. News choppers circled overhead, reporting to the world on an incident that was a total disaster.
I called Jacobi, covered one ear, and summed up the situation. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was that we’d blown it and that Vetter was still out there. I tried to keep my voice even, but there was no fooling Jacobi.
I heard him breathing in my ear as he took it all in.
Then he said, “So, what you’re saying, Boxer, is that Pidge has flown the coop.”
Chapter 116
THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT and their SWAT team rolled up alongside our squad car as we braked on a crisp, well-shorn lawn. In front of us was a three-story colonial-style house only a couple of miles from the Stanford campus. The detailing on the house was authentic to the period, and the neighborhood was first class. The mailbox was marked VETTER.
And Hans Vetter’s car was in the driveway.
Walkie-talkies chattered around us, and radio channels were cleared. Perimeters were set up, and SWAT got into position. Conklin and I got out of our car. I said, “Everything about this place reminds me of the homes Hawk and Pidge burned to the ground.”
Using a car door as body armor, Conklin called out to Hans Vetter with a bullhorn. “Vetter. You can’t get away, buddy. Come out, hands on your head. Let’s end this peacefully.”
I saw movement through the second-story windows. It was Vetter, moving from room to room. He seemed to be shouting to someone inside, but we couldn’t make out his words.
“Who’s he talking to?” Conklin aske
d me over the roof of the squad car.
“Has to be his mother, goddamn it. She’s gotta be inside.”
A TV went on in the house and was turned up loud. I could hear the announcer’s voice. He was describing the scene we were living. The announcer said, “A tactical maneuver that began two hours ago at Stanford University has changed location and is centered in the upscale community of Mountain View, a street called Mill Lane —”
