gloves. He shivered at the thought. He swallowed deeply, took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. He looked back over his shoulder to see if the woman with the crew-cut was out of the bathroom yet but he didn't see her.
Then it was his turn to go through the metal detector.
'ID.'
The Homeland Security officer was a middle aged Latino man with pockmarked skin and a thick neck. Todd nervously held out his ID and his plane ticket. The officer looked at the ID and then back up at Todd then back down at the ID.
When he looked at Todd the second time Todd was almost certain the man was going to pull him out of line and arrest him.
'Have a nice day, sir.'
Todd sighed and forced a smile. He kicked off his shoes, removed his belt and walked through the metal detector just as the woman with the crew-cut left the women's room. She was too far away for Todd to see her clearly but he was almost certain that it was Cathy. Somehow, she had found him. Todd rushed to the terminal. If he was lucky, he would just barely make his flight. Then it wouldn't matter if that was Cathy or not. He'd be long gone. Then he remembered his plane ticket. It was in his own name just like the one that had brought him to Los Angeles. Anyone smart enough to trace him to LA would also be smart enough to find his connecting flight.
Oh well, there's nothing I can do about that now.
His plane was still boarding when Todd arrived at the terminal. He stepped into line behind an elderly black couple and shuffled down the runway sweating and jittering the entire time as if he were going through withdrawals. He shifted nervously from foot to foot and kept looking behind him. Yesterday he had been prepared to die or go to prison but now, with freedom so close, he was petrified that he'd be apprehended or killed before he could get away.
As Todd boarded the airplane he continued to examine the other passengers. He watched as they crammed their bags into the overhead compartments and wriggled and jostled their way into their seats wondering which one of them was really a cop and why it was taking them so long to arrest him. He expected a sky-marshal to handcuff him and pull him off the plane at any moment or for Cathy to suddenly burst onto the plane with guns blazing. He didn't relax until the plane's wheels left the tarmac and it began its ascent. He'd been in the sky for less than twenty minutes when exhaustion finally overcame him. Todd leaned his head against the window and stared out at the clouds. Soon he was fast asleep. He didn't awake until the wheels touched down ten hours later and the fasten seatbelt sign went off.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Todd exited the plane still reeling from his adventure. He had never expected to still be alive and free. His plan had been to get to as many women as he could before the cops caught up with him and then to kill himself. But he hadn't counted on Ms. Santiago's help. All the years he'd worked with her and he'd never known that they were members of the same environmentalist group. She told him that she'd only figured it out after she'd read a post on the Zero Population message board asking if it was okay to talk a woman into having an abortion and then the very next day Todd had been accused of doing that very thing. Since then she'd been following him. She'd seen what he did to Nicolene.
'I still don't understand why you're helping me though? Talking a woman into having an abortion is one thing but what I've done…' Todd's expression went blank and he'd stared off into the distance. Elizabeth dismissed his concerns with a wave of her hand as if he were merely being childish.
'I've been part of Heimlich's group for five years. I was in on his plan. I was given a different task. They sent me to dairy farms. I've been putting Progesterex in milk vats at some of the biggest dairy farms in the country. Dairy farms that ship products all over the world. I'd been at it for two weeks. I figured that if I put it in the milk, all of those women drinking milk during their pregnancies would find themselves experiencing premature menopause and spontaneous abortions. Heimlich didn't think it was enough. That's why he decided to put it in the water.'
Todd still couldn't believe it. She'd paid for his plane ticket and drove him to the airport and now here he was, in Sao Paulo, Brazil where no one would be looking for him.
He walked down to baggage claim and a man in a dark suit stood there holding a small sign that said 'Hammerstein'.
Todd walked over to him.
'I'm Todd…Todd Hammerstein.'
'Hi, I'm Vitor. Elizabeth sent me. There's a car waiting up front.'
Todd followed Vitor to a small economy car that looked more like an oversized golf cart.
'It's electric. Environmentally friendly.'
That was the last word he said as they drove through the labyrinthine streets of one of the biggest and most over-crowded cities in the world. They drove for two hours whipping in and out of traffic that made LA look like a quiet country road, darting down narrow streets at 60 miles an hour until they finally reached their destination. Vitor reached behind the seat and handed Todd a new messenger bag.
'This is for you. Elizabeth said you'd know what to do.'
Todd took the bag and stepped out of the car. Vitor smiled at him as he looked into the bag, he must have known what was inside. Todd was pretty sure he did too. He looked at the twenty little paper bags stacked inside. He opened one and it was filled with hundreds of tiny blue pills with the letter 'P' stamped into them. He smiled and looked up at the sign on the building and the acres of pools filled with water beyond it.
'Departamento de Sao Paulo do Tratamento da Agua'
Even though he had no idea how to speak Portuguese, Todd was pretty sure he knew what it meant just as he knew what was in those pills.
He walked around to the side of the building and scaled the gate, dropping down beside one of the vast pools of water.
He opened up a paper bag and began dumping the pills into the water. He opened the next bag and the next one, emptying their contents into the water basins. He was just about to open the next bag when a loud boom echoed in his ears and a burning pain speared through his back and into his chest. He tried to inhale and blood bubbled up in his lungs. Todd turned slowly as black spots danced before his eyes. The world tilted and shifted out of focus. He didn't need to see straight to recognize the person walking toward him aiming the gun at his head.
'Hello, Cathy.'
The next shot knocked Todd off of his feet and into the water. Todd sank to the bottom of the water basin. He knew that he was dying. His lungs were filling with water and he had two bullet holes in his chest. He could see Cathy's face above him contorted in rage, the messenger bag still floating on the surface, the remaining paper bags falling out into the water and all those little pills spilling out of the bags and dissolving.
