Dying Memories (25 page)

Chapter 78

Bill glanced again at the list of names and addresses he’d put together from Henry Schlow’s cell phone. Three of the addresses were in Arlington, and he had already broken into one of them—a small one bedroom condo that didn’t have its own security system. Bill had little problem getting in there—he broke into the building through the garage, and from there made his way up a back staircase. The door was protected by several locks, but there were no security cameras or anyone walking by to notice him, and after five minutes he had the locks picked and was inside.

No one was home, and from the messy condition of the apartment, Bill guessed the guy lived alone. From the books and papers scattered around the apartment and stacked on the floor, the guy must’ve been a scientist like Schlow with his area of expertise seeming to be topology theory. Bill confirmed this when he found several books on the subject authored by the guy. It took him a while to work his way through stacks of papers covered with calculations and drawn-out theorems, all of which simply made his head hurt looking at them. When he came across a folder providing test results and proofs for something called
Operation Bubonic
, he decided to take those with him. Before leaving he used the guy’s phone to call the number he had for Peter Kloot. After several rings the phone was picked up on the other end, but the person doing so didn’t say anything, and neither did Bill. After a minute of this Bill heard a click as the phone was hung up, and he decided he’d better get out of there.

Chapter 79

The next address Bill drove to was also in Arlington and was for an English-style Tudor. Looking through a front door glass panel, he could see that an alarm system had been activated. He wouldn’t be able to disarm it, and he decided he’d have to come back later, maybe late at night when the residents were sleeping. As he turned from the door he noticed a neighbor had pushed aside a set of curtains and was staring at him through the window. Bill continued to walk casually until he was out of view and then he hurried to where he had left his car. By the time he had driven away and parked to visit his third Arlington address, he heard sirens off in the distance.

This third address was for a colonial and it had a car in an attached garage, as well as a sign planted on the front yard supporting the third party presidential candidate, Howard Beasman. Maybe it was that other neighbor sending the police after him, maybe it was that sign out front endorsing what amounted to little more than a war mongering lunatic, or maybe it was just everything catching up to him, but Bill had reached his limit. A simmering, near murderous fury took over as he made his way to the front entrance and rang the bell. When an attractive woman about his age cautiously opened the door, Bill stuck the barrel of the 9mm that he had taken off Carlson into her ribs, and followed her into the house as she backed up.

She looked badly scared, her color in a matter of seconds having dropped several shades to a sickly white.

“You can take whatever you want,” she said.

“Awfully generous of you. Anyone else home?”

The woman shook her head.

“Okay then. I don’t want to shoot you. If you’ve got masking tape, I won’t have to. Do you have any?”

She nodded and led Bill into the kitchen where she rummaged through a drawer and came up with a roll of tape. Bill had her take a seat and then taped her wrists and ankles to the chair she was sitting in.

“You don’t have to hurt me,” she said.

“We’ll see. Are you the girlfriend or wife?”

She gave him a funny look before answering
wife
, as if she were uncertain whether he knew something she didn’t. Bill didn’t see any reason to cause undue marital discord, so he explained that it was a harmless question, that he had no idea whether there was a girlfriend in the picture, or wife for that matter. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” he asked.

She shook her head. He didn’t bother putting any tape over her mouth. If she started shouting, he didn’t see how it would help her, and besides, he’d shut her up quickly enough.

He left her to lower the blinds in the kitchen, then made a quick check of the rest of the house. There were no signs of any children living there. Upstairs were three rooms; a master suite, a bedroom that had been converted into an office, another as a guest room. Back downstairs in the living room were several framed pictures of the woman he had tied up in the kitchen with her husband, Lee Dobson. Ever since he got Dobson’s name from his reverse phone number search it had sounded vaguely familiar, and as he picked up Dobson’s photo for a closer study he realized why. Dobson was an advisor for Howard Beasman’s presidential campaign, which explained the sign out front. Bill put the photo back down on the mantel and joined Mrs. Dobson in the kitchen. He turned her chair sideways and pulled up another chair so they were sitting with their knees an inch apart. She struggled to maintain eye contact with him as if she were afraid that if she looked away he would kill her.

“I guess you know who I am,” Bill said.

She bit her lip as she nodded. Her eyes welled up with tears.

“Well, it’s not as bad as they’ve been saying,” Bill told her. “As long as you don’t give me any reason to hurt you, I won’t. How’s Lee involved with ViGen Corporation?”

She looked at Bill blankly before shaking her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I never heard of them, and I never heard Lee mention them.”

“Dr. Henry Schlow?”

Again she shook her head.

“But your husband knew him.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you know who he is.”

She looked away and murmured that she’d only heard about him from the news. She didn’t say anything about Bill being accused of his murder.

Bill waited for her to look back and make eye contact. When she did, he asked her about Peter Kloot. She shook her head and said she’d never heard of him either, but a flicker in her eyes betrayed her.

“It’s too bad you never heard of Kloot,” Bill said. “I need to know where he lives, and since Lee knows him, we’re going to have to wait for your husband. If I have to beat it out of Lee when he gets home, then that’s what I’ll have to do.”

Mrs. Dobson’s eyes drifted away from Bill’s, her brow furrowed severely as she tried to make a decision. After several minutes she told Bill in a defeated voice that maybe she had heard that name before. “I might’ve been to his house once,” she said, her mouth barely moving as if she were practicing a ventriloquist act. “If he’s who I think he is, he lives in South Brookline. Near Larz Anderson Park.”

“I need an address.”

“Twenty-three Ferncroft Road,” she said.

Bill appraised her carefully. “Why the big deal before in telling me this?” he asked. “Why lie to me about whether you knew him?”

Her eyes shifted again away from his. “Lee warned me not to mention Mr. Kloot to others,” she said in a faltering voice. “So now that you know where he lives, can you leave my home?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. I still need to talk to your husband. But I’m not going to hurt either of you if I can help it.”

She nodded, expecting this. Her mouth weakened as she tried to keep from crying, but it ended up being a losing battle and before too long the tears came. Bill watched silently as she sobbed. After she was done he asked if there was anything in particular she wanted to watch on TV since they had time to kill.

She sniffled, said, “CNN.” She showed him a sad smile and added, “I would like to catch the latest polls and see if Howard’s moved up.”

“I’m sorry,” Bill said, “but that would depress the hell out of me to see something like that happen. How about I find a movie we can agree on?”

The real reason he didn’t want to put on CNN was that he didn’t feel up to seeing whether he’d made the national news, and he certainly didn’t want to see any stories about Jeremy’s suicide. He ended up letting her pick a chick flick that he had no interest in, but it seemed to absorb her. Through the course of the movie he learned that her first name was Susan.

It was past six o’clock when the movie ended, and he asked her if she was hungry and whether she wanted anything to eat. She nodded, and told him she wouldn’t mind having some yogurt. “If you could mix in some fresh berries,” she added. “Maybe some honey?”

Bill prepared the yogurt as she asked and fed her. Afterwards he found a package of frozen link sausage in the freezer, fried a few of them up, and made some scrambled eggs. While he ate his dinner, Susan watched him carefully.

“I know this probably sounds insane with you breaking into my home and tying me up like this, but you don’t seem like a crazed killer,” she said.

Bill finished chewing his food, and smiled bleakly at her. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Why are they saying that you are?” she asked.

Bill shrugged. “Maybe your husband can explain it to you.”

At that moment a car pulled into the driveway. Bill was out of his chair, the 9mm automatic gripped in his hand. He put an index finger to his lips in a hushing moment. “Nobody has to get hurt,” he warned her. “Be quiet.”

Bill moved silently to the front of the house and listened to whether Dobson would be entering through the garage or the front door. When he heard Dobson at the front door, he moved so that Dobson wouldn’t see him when he walked into the house. Then he held his breath waiting.

The door opened. Dobson walked in, and at that moment Susan, from where she was secured in the kitchen, began screaming like a banshee that there was a killer in the house.

Chapter 80

“Lee, for God sakes, be careful! There’s a killer in the house! He has a gun!”

Bill was standing against the wall directly behind Dobson, who hadn’t seen Bill yet. His wife’s screaming visibly made him jerk his head first left, then right, to search for the killer his wife was warning him about. He was tall and rangy and had at least four inches in height over Bill, and as he looked over his shoulder he spotted Bill.

Without any hesitation Dobson spun around aiming a roundhouse kick at Bill’s head. If the kick had connected it would’ve put a dent in Bill’s skull, but before Dobson’s foot reached him, he dropped to his knees and drove a fist into Dobson’s unprotected groin. The blow sent Beasman’s campaign advisor toppling to the floor and gasping for air.

For a moment Dobson lay clutching his groin while tears filled his eyes. He didn’t stay like that for long. With a sudden burst he tried rolling away, but Bill landed on him and smacked him on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. That took the fight out of him. Bill kicked the front door shut and at the same time jerked Dobson’s arms behind his back. With the quickness of a rodeo star, he bound Dobson’s wrists together with masking tape.

“You know Tae Kwon Do, huh?” Bill said, grunting. “Those high head kicks don’t work very well if you’re going against someone who knows what they’re doing. They leave you vulnerable.” He tore off another length of masking tape with his teeth and used it for Dobson’s ankles.

“Did you hurt my wife?” Dobson asked through his tears.

Susan was still screaming bloody murder from the kitchen. “Not yet,” Bill told him. He got back to his feet and made his way to the kitchen. When Susan saw him she stopped screaming, a look of both fear and defiance shining in her eyes. Bill didn’t say anything to her as he wrapped masking tape around her mouth. He barely looked at her. Then he went back to Dobson.

“Tell me about your involvement with Peter Kloot and ViGen Corporation,” Bill said.

Dobson winced in pain. His eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said through clenched teeth, his breathing uneven.

Bill squatted so that he was sitting on his heels. Dobson sensed that his attacker had moved closer. He opened his eyes and for the first time recognized Bill. The fear in him became something palpable.

“Here’s the deal,” Bill told him calmly. “Susan’s already told me you know Peter Kloot, so that ship has sailed. Kloot and his people have been making things pretty miserable for me, so as far as I’m concerned all bets are off. I’m going to do whatever I have to to make you talk. So unless you want me go to the kitchen and bring back a piece of your wife, tell me about Kloot.”

“What did you do just now when you went back there?” Dobson asked.

“I taped her mouth shut. Right now she’s still in one piece. Tell me about Kloot.”

With only a momentary hesitation, Dobson said, “He’s a contributor to Howard Beasman’s campaign.”

“Fuck you. You think I was kidding about what I said?”

Bill started to stand. Dobson yelled out, pleading with him to wait. “That’s in effect what he is,” Dobson insisted. A shadow fell over his eyes as he looked away from Bill. “Except he’s diverting money from ViGen Corporation into the campaign,” he added.

“How much money?”

Dobson showed a sick grimace, said, “About twenty million.”

Bill stared hard at Dobson trying to figure out if he was telling him the truth.

“How else is Kloot involved?”

Dobson shook his head. “Isn’t that enough?”

Bill knew there was something else. What he was being told didn’t make any sense, not with the latest polls having Beasman with less than ten percent of the vote. Twenty million dollars of illegal campaign funds wouldn’t amount to much more than pissing into the ocean. It wouldn’t keep Beasman from losing badly in his third party bid. But it gave a possible explanation why Kloot would’ve wanted Forster killed, and if the money was diverted from ViGen to Beasman, Bill should be able to find it in the papers he took from Forster’s hedge fund office.

“Tell me Kloot’s address, and for both you and your wife’s sake it better be the same as what your wife told me.”

Kloot told him the same address.

Grimly, Bill kneeled by Dobson and wrapped what was left of the masking tape around Dobson’s mouth, then dragged Dobson to a coat closet and left him hogtied inside of it. He next went upstairs to the office he had seen earlier. They had a computer there, and Bill wanted to check whether
G
was leveling with him earlier about limiting access to his web-site from their safehouse in Chelsea. After he typed in his username and password, he got back a message chastising him that trust was needed before he’d be able to log onto
G
’s website. Before leaving the room, Bill pocketed a microcassete recorder that he found in a desk drawer.

He’d left the winter jacket he’d been wearing in the kitchen, and when he went to retrieve it Dobson’s wife refused to look at him. That was fine with him. He wasn’t too happy with her either. As he started to slip the jacket on, he decided to exchange it for an expensive looking leather jacket that he had seen earlier in Dobson’s coat closet. The leather jacket was a few inches too long in the sleeve, but it would make do.

Dobson lay hogtied on his side on the floor beneath him, and the campaign advisor wrinkled his nose at the smell as Bill left the his old jacket hung up in place of the leather one he took. Like his wife, he otherwise refused to acknowledge Bill’s presence.

Bill left through a back door. He cut through several neighboring lawns before circling back to where he had left his stolen junker. From there he drove to the English Tudor that he had stopped at earlier. Through a window he saw a teenage girl watching TV. He decided he didn’t have the heart to break in there. Instead he got back into the junker and headed off to Chelsea.