Thirty-nine
John paced his basement den cradling his aching right
hand, waiting for the hours of darkness to arrive. A helicopter throbbed
as it passed over the house. David coughed in his sleep from his room
upstairs. The boy had never completely recovered from his fight with Tony
Doran and Steven Farley.
"He's been under too much stress," he said to the
empty room. "If he doesn't snap out of it, I'll have to take him to the
hospital."
"David must remain with us," Marlene said, always
close at hand.
"Dead or alive?"
"John, please."
"I need to check out Kahl’s estate. I need to know
why Kahl thinks I’d harm his kid. There’s something going on we don’t
know about.” He eyed Marlene’s image. “It would be something
you’d know about.”
“You will find it more emotionally satisfying to
resolve your crisis in your own time and manner, John. I will assist
you.”
John sorted through his store of military equipment
contained in footlockers in the basement and selected flat-black fatigues
and boots and a black metal, small-caliber pistol.
He awoke David and explained his plan for the night.
"I'll be gone three, four hours tops. You're staying next door.
Empty and spooky, maybe, but nobody will bother you there. Catch some sleep
and don't worry about me."
John carried the boy across the yard dressed in
pajamas and slippers. David helped pull the shades to the windows. Some
of David’s color had returned, but none of his usual vigor. John picked up some of the overturned furniture as he
passed through. With Roy dead and Joyce gone, the property would soon
belong to the first local attorney who managed to ingratiate himself into
Roy's posthumous affairs and claim it as part of a legal fee.
"Don't leave the house," John cautioned his son, but
David looked to his mother for assurance. Marlene beamed a smile and
winked. David winked back. "I'll just watch some television until you
guys get back," the boy said.
“Power’s out. I’ll run you over an extension cord.”
John attended the task, and then moved up the dark
slope to the crest of the valley wall. A forest centered by a small lake
filled the twenty-mile width of the valley. He jogged fire trails along
the rim. In the dead of night nothing could be seen but the stars
overhead and the occasional glimmer of lights from the Kahl estate. He
had let his physical conditioning slide since the accident, but he had no
trouble reaching the double security fence surrounding the estate within
the hour. He selected a spot alongside the access road to observe
activity within the grounds.
A helicopter passed overhead and set down near the
house, idling for twenty minutes before sweeping back up into the sky and
dwindling to a flickering stroboscopic running light. In the space of
one
half hour, several cars arrived and one left through the automated gate.
John moved closer to the gate, deciding that his only
source of information was going to be a random interrogation of something
leaving the grounds.
"You could save me a lot of trouble," he said to the
night. "If you can read minds, you know what's going on in there."
"You will trust the information you garner if you
acquire it on your own, John.”
“Yeah, I guess I would at that.”
The gate ahead swung open. A large black Jaguar
inched its way through. Impatiently, the car accelerated with the hum of
a powerful engine.
John fired a single shot. The car swerved, the night
suddenly filled with the flapping of a deflated tire. The driver
over-steered in a wild effort to control the heavy vehicle, then lost
control altogether. The car spun one graceful arc and broad-slid into a
tree less than a dozen feet away.
The air filled with the odor of leaking antifreeze
and the ticking of the cooling engine. John opened the driver's door
before the driver recovered. The driver reached for a gun in a shoulder
holster. John dragged him from the car with his one good hand and shoved
him face down to the ground. He put a knee in the man's back and drew his
own handgun, putting the cold metal to the back of the man's neck.
"Toss it, please," John said.
As soon as the man’s weapon clattered into the
underbrush, John holstered his own and backed away.
The driver looked up in abject fear. His gaze came
to rest on John's twisted hand held protectively against his chest.
"It hurts," John said. "Pain makes me irritable. If
you want to see what my left hand can do to relieve the tension, make your
move."
"You're dead meat, Hartman," the man growled. His
high-pitched voice ruined the effect.
But John was startled. "You know me?"
"Yeah, I know you."
John hauled him to his feet by a fistful of shirt and
shoved him against the stalled car. The man held his arms out to show
that he was unarmed. "I'm just a gopher. I'm not into that karate
bullshit."
"Gopher?"
"Go for this, go for that."
"My reputation precedes me," John said. "Why?"
The man stared at the ground.
"If I'm such a badass, why do you want to play
stupid? Do you really want to dent a Jaguar with your unprotected head?"
The man shook his head nervously. "Kahl brought in
two guys to deal with you. We wondered why, is all."
"You don't know why he'd go to the trouble?"
Eyes bright with fear glanced furtively at him. "He
went to a lot of trouble, but we don't ask questions."
"We?"
"Security. I'm on the maintenance end. Carrying a
piece wasn't my idea."
"How many are you? How many at the house at any one
time?"
"Ten, maybe more. Callavier's always around. He's
our boss. You won't get past him."
The name meant nothing to him. "Who else is at the
house right now?"
"Just Kahl and Kiki."
"Kiki?"
"Some oriental chick he uses as a punching bag. And
Silverstone. He's Mr. Kahl's servant. He runs the house."
"And those newcomers you mentioned?"
"Yeah, those, too." The man gave a shuddering sigh.
"I take it Kahl's upset because his little girl is
missing. I don’t understand why he thinks I did it. He’s not stupid. If
he’s checked on things, he knows I couldn’t have been responsible for
everything that’s been going down. Why is he coming down so hard on me?”
The man just stared off into space.
"Is that a foolish refusal to answer my question, or
just an innocent hesitation?"
"Kahl never gave a shit about the kid," the man
said. "He figures you killed her, and he's scared. I don't know why."
"Is the child's mother at the house?"
"She's dead." The man corrected himself quickly.
"Gone, rather,"
"Dead or gone?"
The man sighed again. John had a grip on one arm.
He was using the ebb and flow of tension as a makeshift polygraph to gauge
reaction to his questions and steer their direction.
"Dead, we all figure," the man said.
"Dead like Roy Rockingham?"
The man looked away. "Yeah, I suppose."
"What do you know about Roy Rockingham?"
"I just heard the name at the house. I heard he
screwed up and then I heard he was dead."
"So," John said, wrapping up his interrogation. The
man was growing agitated and would start telling fibs as he regained his
composure. "What's Kahl on my case for? Give me a straight answer and
we'll part company peacefully."
The man took a deep breath and forced himself to
relax. "It's not about you personally. I heard it's about something you
might have found out about. It has to do with the Spruce Valley
development project."
"What is it I might have found out about?" John
asked, not needing to fake the growl of anger in his tone of voice.
"I don't know. Honest. I hear things. I don't
always know what they mean. I don't want to know. Kahl's a sick
bastard. I just do my job and get paid for it."
John stepped back. "Get out of here."
The man started back toward the estate.
"Not that way, stupid. Toward town. Run like hell
and don't stop."
"Blackburn and Chambers," John said to the darkness.
The man looked back. "Yes, those are the names."
"I figured I'd meet those bastards in hell." John
held his aching right hand against the warmth of his chest. "I can't
defend myself against them, Marlene. I never thought of myself as a
cold-blooded killer. Those two took pride in it."
"I will lend what aid you require as the need
arises," Marlene said gently.
With crickets chirping in the background and a cool
night breeze rustling the treetops, John stepped back a few feet and sat
on a fallen log. He thought about the weightless sphere he had taken
below the highway and the ease with which it had deceived and defeated Jim
Langton. He wondered at the limits to the power the alien device had to
probe and beguile the human mind.
"It has no limits," Marlene said quietly,
tactfully unseen.
"There's something like six billion people on this
planet, Marlene.”
“It has no limits."
He looked at her, puzzled. "But you do, is that it?"
"My influence in your life must narrow to that which
I had before my death."
"I suppose that means there's an easy way to deal
with Kahl and a hard way. You're telling me I've got to do it the hard
way."
"The mirror is not responsible for Orville Kahl's
attempt upon your life."
"The mirror took the man's daughter."
"The danger Orville Kahl poses to you has always been
far more imminent than you know."
"Aside from all that, I don't relish the idea of
locking horns with Blackburn and Chambers. It would make a whole lot more
sense for me and David to make a run for it."
"We need to be together here, in this place that has
been our home since David's birth."
"So that you can be Marlene Hartman."
Silence.
"And if I get myself killed? What happens to you
then?"
"Remember that it is not for you to achieve my
expectations, John. It is for me to achieve yours."
Which left the final question to be asked, the answer
to which he knew for certain Marlene could give him. "Why does Kahl want
me dead? You've known all along, I suppose. I can handle the rest
myself, but I need a straight answer from somebody."
"He wants you dead before you find out what he did,"
she said gently. "Once you know, you will stop at nothing to destroy
him."
John rose to his feet, cold with dread. "What did
Kahl do?"
"You have suspected by now," she said, her voice
hardly more than a whisper.
John locked tight inside. To accept what she implied
would be to unleash more anguish and rage than he could ever hope to
control. It would destroy him. "I don't know what you're talking about.
I never did anything to him. I never met the man."
"I did, John. I was researching his acquisition
of Spruce Valley."
Roy's brakes had failed. His own brakes had failed.
He had always secretly harbored the suspicion that someone had tried to
kill him, but he had never made a connection between Marlene’s death and
Orville Kahl.
“That foul bastard.”
John eyed the Jag. He walked over to it and slipped
behind the wheel. The engine popped off and idled smoothly despite the
damage to the fender and grill. As an afterthought, he latched his seat
belt.
Marlene made no effort to stop him. He backed the
car from the tree, leaving a trail of broken plastic, glass and dribbling
antifreeze. Jamming the gear select to drive, he floored the accelerator
and started back up the hill to the gate of Orville Kahl's estate.
By the time he reached the gate, the car had
accelerated to eighty miles an hour.
