Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance (8 page)

“What the hell happened to him?” asked Will.

“If I have to guess—which I do—it looks like something that was … growing on the inside is now on the outside. And apparently that leaves a mess.”

“Wait, so is this Lyle or isn’t it?”

“I’d say … it used to be.”

“So you mean this is more like, what, like a—”

“A snake’s skin,” said Jericho, standing back up. “Although you can take it to the bank that when the cops get here they’ll decide they’ve found who they’re looking for.”

Will peered deeper into the dark woods, intending to scan the tree line for anything lurking out there that might be staring back at them. The frigid fear that stole over him all but wiped out his ability to call up his Grid.

“So this is just an empty husk … and Lyle
isn’t
dead,” said Will.

“Who he
used
to be sure is,” said Jericho; then he looked up and peered into the woods himself. “The part that grew inside him, cracked out of his chest, and ran straight down this creek so no one could track it? That part’s alive and kicking. And I don’t think I’d be calling it ‘Lyle’ anymore either.”

Jericho took out a cell phone and dialed 911.

“Really glad I didn’t eat a big lunch,” said Will, looking away, seriously queasy.

“Probably not an outstanding idea to talk up our little theory with the police,” said Jericho, his hand over the phone speaker. “Or anyone else.”

“I hear that.”

“We went out for a run, spotted the body from up on the ridge, and called it in. I told you to head back to campus while I came down here to take a look. You never saw any of this. Leave now.”

“Coach, are you encouraging me to lie?”

“Let’s call it showing you how to survive.”

Dad would approve,
thought Will.

“I’m good with that.”

Will took off running toward school. As he left, he heard Jericho speak to a dispatcher on the other end of the line.

“I need to report a body,” said Jericho.

The uproar caused by the discovery of Lyle’s body lasted three days. Will and his roommates monitored the official statements and coverage closely, and noted that none of the disturbing details Will had witnessed made it into the official version: A severely ill patient escaped from the medical center and died in the woods, apparently breaking his neck in a fall. Whoever was in charge seemed determined to frame the narrative to fit that conclusion, a sad end to the life of a troubled young student turned tragically wrong. The Center also appeared eager to use Lyle’s death as a reason to punctuate the end of the Knights of Charlemagne story. Only one report even mentioned that the whereabouts of Todd Hodak, the other major player in the Knights’ hierarchy who had disappeared last November, remained unknown.

As the campus emptied, Will and his roommates went to work. Ajay already had his gig in the science lab, and the others quickly secured jobs at the Center through the summer. Elise found work tending horses in the Center’s stables and gave piano lessons on the weekends, while Nick landed a job as a lifeguard at the neighboring town’s community pool. Once they knew Lyle was “dead,” Brooke’s family arranged an internship for her in the Center’s administrative offices and let her return.

Will was the last to find a job, but for good reason. After researching his target’s movements, he’d had to wait another week to put the first step of his plan into action.

RULE #57: IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON IN A SMALL TOWN, HANG AROUND THE BARBERSHOP.

At Will’s direction, Ajay had set up a small surveillance camera outside the school’s barbershop, until one particular client arrived for his biweekly shave and haircut.

Will was warming up at the Barn before his daily workout with Jericho when he got the call on one of the black house phones.

“It’s time for our study group, Will,” said Ajay, using the code they’d agreed on.

Will sprinted the mile from the Barn to the Center’s barbershop, arriving in less than three minutes. A part of school lore since the Roaring Twenties, the shop was tucked a few steps below sidewalk level in the southwest corner of Harvey Hall, one of the older ivy-covered buildings in the central quad.

A bell on the back of the door jingled as Will entered. Just as during his one previous haircut, the sights and smells that greeted him inside took him back in time as surely as the school’s soda fountain. He’d been in shops like this a few times as a kid—his dad usually cut his hair as he got older—and they had created powerful sense memories. They were his first glimpses of a man’s world.

A black-and-white-tiled floor. Two deluxe oxblood leather chairs on chromed hydraulics facing a mirrored wall above two snow-white porcelain sinks. Gleaming clippers and scissors and razors arrayed on a shelf between them like surgical instruments. Combs and brushes marinating in a jar of acrid ocean blue disinfectant. From somewhere the sound of an opera played on a tinny radio. Will caught the tang of hair tonic and the spice of industrial-strength aftershave in the air. A vintage pendulum clock ticked on one wall, alongside framed fading photographs of old sports heroes from the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Braves, and one of a horse at a racetrack. A few of the photos had been autographed—Fuzzy Thurston, Joe Adcock, and other names Will didn’t recognize.

The man Will was there to see wore a sleek, finely tailored suit and sat in one of the chairs, motionless, fully reclined, with a steaming towel draped over his face. Another man in pressed gray slacks and a clean double-breasted white tunic—the kids knew him as Joe the Barber—walked in from a back room when he heard the bell ring. He was whistling along with the opera and carrying a short white towel over his arm. His hair was jet black and slicked elaborately back with one of his own products. He gnawed at a piece of gum he kept tucked in his rear molars.

“Mr. West,” said Joe, flashing a practiced smile. “Good to see you again, sir.”

“Thank you, Joe.”

“Step right this way, my friend,” said Joe, spinning the second chair around as he lowered it by tapping a foot pedal, then slapped the seat with the towel.

Will stepped up into the chair and settled into the old creamy leather. With a flurry of hands as quick and effortless as a magician, Joe picked up a barber’s smock from a nearby shelf, snapped it open, spun the chair around to face the mirror, swirled the black smock into place around Will’s neck, and fastened the snaps.

“And what can we do for you this fine day?” asked Joe with the clipped nasal vowels of a Chicago accent.

“Coach Jericho said I need a summer cut.”

“If the coach so advised you,” said Joe, pumping up the chair, “far be it from us to disagree.”

“He says I won’t like working out with my usual do in this weather.”

“You’re from Southern California, if I recall correctly,” said Joe.

“You’ve got a good memory, Joe.”

“So you’re not acquainted with our delightful summer climate,” said Joe, holding out and measuring the hair near Will’s ears.

“All I know is it’s like running in a sauna.”

“This is June, pal. Wait till August. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Joe popped his gum for emphasis.

Will chuckled politely. He looked over at the man in the other chair, who still hadn’t moved since Will came in. Will wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

Joe began by drenching Will’s unruly mop into submission with a spray bottle and brush. Hardly a drop touched him anywhere but on his scalp. Joe moved crisply around him, leaving traces of bay rum and his black spicy-flavored gum—Beemans, maybe?—in his wake.

“How long you worked here, Joe?”

“Seventeen years now, Will,” said Joe.

“From Chicago?”

“What, the accent give me away?” Joe said, and chuckled.

RULE #52: TO BREAK THE ICE, ALWAYS COMPLIMENT A MAN’S HOMETOWN.

“Great town, Chicago,” said Will. “Second City, nothing. Second to no place, that’s what I say.”

“I can’t help but agree with you,” said Joe.

“You still have family there?”

“Absolutely. I get back down at least six to eight times a year.”

RULE #53: AND ALWAYS SYMPATHIZE WITH HIS HOMETOWN’S FOOTBALL TEAM.

“The Bears look like they’re for real this year, don’t they?” asked Will.

“And high time, too. My pop had season tickets the whole time we was kids. He could hardly afford it—city sanitation worker—but he said he’d quit eating before he’d give ’em up.”

“That wasn’t during the Walter Payton years, was it?”

“You better believe it, baby,” said Joe. “Sweetness was the man.”

A timer on the shelf behind the chairs dinged.

“What team do you follow, Will?” The voice came from under the towel on the face of the man in the chair beside him. A deep, pleasing, friendly baritone.

Joe immediately moved to the other chair to take the towel from the man as he removed it from his face. He had the generic good looks of a guy who’d play the president in a big budget movie: tall, tan, and fit, probably in his midforties, with a head full of obedient brown hair, grayed so precisely at the temples that it shouted dye job, but if that was the case it was done so expertly you couldn’t be sure. Will remembered some vague line from an old commercial: “Only your hairdresser knows for sure.” Was Joe that guy? And how much did he know?

“I don’t really follow any one team,” said Will.

“One of the hazards of living in Southern California, am I right?” said the man, smiling. His gleaming white teeth were as impressive as his hair.

“That’s right, sir,” said Will. “No one to root for.”

“Excuse me a moment,” said Joe, who moved to the counter, thumbed some heated shaving cream from a dispenser, and began lathering the face of the man in the chair.

“Oh my gosh, are you Mr. Haxley?” asked Will, as if making a discovery that delighted him.

“That’s right, Will,” said the man, extending his hand toward Will without moving any other part of his body. “Stan Haxley. Pleasure.”

Stan Haxley as in the gabillionaire who owns the castle on the island in Lake Waukoma.

Haxley had a crushing handshake, and Will gave him one back. Joe, standing by with a straight razor in his hand, waited for the handshake to end.

“I recognized your picture from the medical center, sir,” said Will. “I have to tell you I think it’s really great what you did, giving so generously to build that place.”

“Patricia and I have always been very supportive of the Center,” said Haxley, closing his eyes and signaling Joe to start his shave.

As if I’m supposed to know that’s his wife’s name. (Which I do.) Thinks quite a lot of himself, doesn’t he?

“They took excellent care of me while I was there, I can tell you that,” said Will, sounding as sincere as he could. “I’m very grateful.”

“Always glad to hear that,” said Haxley generically. “Are you spending the summer on campus, Will?”

“I am, sir.”

“What kind of work do they have you doing?”

“Nothing as yet,” said Will.

RULE #21: FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD.

Go for it.

“Because, actually, I’ve been hoping, sir,” said Will. “Hoping that I might be able to find some way to work for you.”

Haxley didn’t respond for a second, as Joe had the razor poised directly under his nose. Will resisted the impulse to fill the uncomfortable silence. Joe waited for a signal from Haxley, then finished the stroke and wiped off the razor.

“And what are your interests, Will?” asked Haxley.

“Medicine. Medical research.”

Joe waited to see if Haxley would respond before resuming the shave. Haxley finally gestured at him, a little impatiently:
Finish.
Joe moved in for the last few strokes and then wiped off the remaining foam from Haxley’s face.

Haxley sat up in the chair, craned his neck around, then leaned back again. Joe applied a splash of aftershave and massaged it into his pink cheeks.

“Medical research is quite a specialized interest for someone your age,” said Haxley with a smile. “Why is that?”

“That was my father’s field, sir,” said Will. “And it’s an important way to help people.”

Will relied on Haxley knowing just enough of the public version of his parents’ disappearance and death to find that irresistibly sympathetic. Haxley sat up as Joe pumped his chair back into an upright position and removed the bib from around his neck.

“That’s a very admirable sentiment, Will,” said Haxley, adjusting his collar as he rose from the chair.

“It’s more than just sentiment, sir. It’s the purpose of my life now. Following in my father’s footsteps. “

“I’m sure knowing that would make him very proud,” said Haxley. “As well it should.”

Haxley studied him for a moment with a patronizing half-smile that said,
You poor little orphan kid
—just the look Will had been hoping to see. Then a business card appeared in Haxley’s hand, and he extended it toward Will.

“I’m in town for the rest of the week,” said Haxley. “I’d like you to come visit with me at the Crag, if that’s convenient, so we can discuss your … ambitions.”

“What, out on the island?”

“That’s right,” said Haxley. “Call my office. Use the card. Ask for Barbara. She’ll make the arrangements. This evening, around six.”

“I really appreciate this opportunity, sir,” said Will, standing to shake his offered hand. “I won’t let you down.”

“Will, you’re a very impressive young man,” said Haxley, slipping on his sport coat. “Joe here will take good care of you.”

Haxley shook hands with Joe—and, Will noticed, smoothly slipped him a hundred-dollar bill in the process—then headed for the door.

“Be seeing you, Will,” said Haxley with a parting smile.

The bell was still jingling as Joe went to work on Will with the steady, effortless pace of a lawn mower.

Will studied Haxley’s business card and realized it wasn’t a traditional printed paper card at all, but a piece of thin flexible metal. Its single image—a 3-D logo of a revolving globe and Haxley’s name below it—glowed, all done with some kind of sophisticated micro processing. When Will touched the name, a phone number appeared below it like a hyperlink on the Web.

Joe switched on a pair of electric clippers and buzzed around Will’s neck and ears.

“He seems really nice,” said Will blandly.

“Very special people, Stan and his wife, Patricia. They built that medical center fifteen years ago. The work they do for people in need you wouldn’t believe.”

Not to mention that top-secret floor where they kept Lyle, with the rooms that look like prison cells. Haxley built that, too. Wonder if Joe knows about that part of his “philanthropy.”

“Try and find me a better human being,” said Joe. “You won’t. Because you can’t.”

“When did he buy that place out on the lake?”

“Before I got here. I think about twenty years ago?”

Joe splashed some tonic from an opaque green bottle into his hands and rubbed it vigorously through Will’s hair. It had an agreeable minty-lemony scent and made his whole head tingle, electrified, but pleasantly, like his scalp had just been reminded it was alive.

“From who?” asked Will.

“From Franklin Greenwood,” said Joe.

“Really? Wasn’t he the old headmaster here?”

Not to mention my grandfather.

Joe attacked with a brush and comb now, shaping and pulling, coaxing and stretching Will’s hair in all sorts of unexpected directions.

“That’s right,” said Joe. “He was in charge when Mr. Haxley went to school here. After he made his mark, he could’ve lived anywhere on the planet. But he came back here. Why? Loyalty. That’s what I’m talking about. A first-rate man of wealth and taste. There ain’t nobody I respect more than Mr. Stan Haxley.”

“He seems like quite a guy,” said Will.

“If he takes an interest in you? You are one lucky young man, my friend.”

Joe finished setting Will’s hair into place with a subtle flourish. He picked up a white rectangular hand mirror and gave it to Will, then spun him around in the chair. When he lifted the mirror, he could see the back of his collar line in the big wall mirror behind him.