The Devil's Analyst (29 page)

“I’m afraid your guys in Beirut or Tehran or wherever they call home will never get to fully enjoy their plot. In fact, I think they will have a bit of a surprise tomorrow morning because I can confidently predict that they will discover that about $50 million in their secret accounts has vaporized. Do you think it will take them long to follow the paper trail through the offshore accounts? Sad to say but it will look quite clear that all their money was headed in your direction.” Josh smiled.

“Funny thing, though, I am also quite certain the final destination of that cash will never be determined. What choice will they have but to conclude you thought you were a bit too clever, and I am sure they would find ingenious ways to try to make you talk. A bit of advice: it’s never good to steal from terrorist gangs, especially when you work for them.”

“They know that I would never dare to double cross them. They’ll know it was you.”

“Will they? Perhaps. It will only be a coincidence that Premios attracts a surprising number of new advertisers in the coming weeks, and then that the firm just keeps growing with its unexpected business success. Believe it or not, revenue is going to save my little Internet company. But how will that have anything to do with your missing funds? That will be your problem. Not mine.”

Oliver was finally behind his desk. Like most of the furnishings in the house, it sported a very contemporary look. Josh would be disappointed to see it covered in blood.

“You see, your guys know that I know all about them, and they also understand how you were the weak link. We may have a little bit of a Mexican standoff at the moment, but as I see it, neither side will need you to reach an appropriate and stable understanding. In fact you’re just in the way.”

Oliver quickly opened the desk drawer. “You’ve been an asshole since the day I met you.” he snarled and pulled out his handgun.

Josh only thought, “That certainly took long enough.”

Monday morning
and Danny hadn’t heard from Josh all weekend. He didn’t pick up Danny’s calls; he didn’t respond to email messages. Because the circumstances seemed too much like what happened with Chip, Danny barely slept all weekend. One minute Josh was there, and the next he had vanished

Danny paced through the mansion late into the night, and was up again before the sun rose. There was no way he could sleep, and yet he was unwilling to reach out to anyone he knew. Cynthia needed no reminders of what she had lost. Kenosha and Orleans were trying to put out fires at the company, and he knew that they already doubted him when he said he couldn’t reach Josh. There were others. Francesca would dash over in a moment if he called. Certainly, Wally and Stephen would drop everything at their café if he asked for their help. But what could any of them do?

Once again he had to trust his instincts. Somehow he was certain that Josh was alive and staying hidden for his own reasons. Perhaps he just wasn’t willing to face the possibility that a cruel cosmos was pulling yet another person from his life, but Danny was sick and tired of the way fate toyed with him. So many people in his life had failed to stand by his side. His mother committed suicide for reasons he never learned. His father drifted into loneliness. Pete wanted too much and Oliver betrayed him. Perhaps, it was Danny who caused it all.

He glanced over and noticed the spine of Lopez’s book. Even his teacher was a traitor. He surely understood the implications of publishing
The Dumping Ground
, but Danny wondered if Lopez knew how far his story wandered from the truth.

In those days at the resort, Danny would have done anything for Oliver and Oliver surely knew it. Maybe Oliver pushed him down a path of sexual maturity faster than would otherwise have occurred, but he willingly trod that road. He was excited to experiment and a sixteen-year-old boy had a lot of energy. While Oliver was only a few years older, that time should have brought him maturity, not cruelty.

Could Oliver’s actions have been described as anything but cruelty? The boys’ bunkhouse was set well back from the rest of the lodge. It was always in the shadows of the tall pine trees that surrounded it, and the air inside had the odor of rotting wood, leaking roofs, and too many boys. All the male staff—the kitchen kids, the yard crew, the bellhops, and the marina guys—lived during the summer in that long cabin. It had been moved to the resort from a long-abandoned lumber camp. Oliver, as the oldest of the crew, carried authority and influence. The rest were just kids, impressionable, horny, and often drunk late at night. Were any of them still haunted by that night the way Danny was?

He was the youngest worker that summer, but already six feet tall, scrawny, and shy. Looking back, Danny knew he certainly wasn’t the most handsome or the most adventuresome of kids. On the other side of the resort, the comparable working girls’ cabin was filled with waitresses and room maids who swooned over Oliver. He could have had any of them. The few hundred yards that separated the two dormitories didn’t stop other boys and girls from spending nights together. The distance certainly wouldn’t have been a barrier to Oliver.

Instead, he chose Danny and that could only have been the man’s innate cruelty. No other explanation made sense, but Lopez omitted that cruelty from his fictional retelling of that summer. Lopez portrayed Danny as the precocious Lolita pursuing the reticent Oliver when it had been the exact opposite. Danny suspected Oliver knew from the very first moment where he intended to lead the summer sequence of events—to the night of Danny’s abasement on the moldy decrepit sofa.

Everything about that night was set up. It had to be. There was no other explanation for why all of the other boys would have crept in quietly into the cabin’s common room on a night with no moon, reassembling at midnight after Danny drank too many brandies and was laying naked against that crusty sofa giving head to a fully clothed Oliver. Oliver, the exhibitionist, always found a reason to discard his clothing. But not that night . . . when the lights suddenly blazed on and a naked Danny was sprawled on a sofa with Oliver in his mouth, when he was surrounded by a circle of coworkers laughing at him, when he looked up at Oliver sneering.

“I love this little cocksucker,” Oliver chortled. “You should all give him a try.” Danny still blazed red just thinking of how he wanted to sink into the ground and disappear forever. But he was caught.

If he could have, he would have killed Oliver that night.

But he never told anyone the details. And yet the newest book by this prizewinning novelist detailed a virtually identical scene. Only Oliver could have made it happen.

The doorbell rang
. Danny broke out of his unpleasant reverie. When he reached the foyer, he opened the door to find Kenosha. She walked in without waiting. “We have to talk,” she said.

He motioned his friend to follow him back into the kitchen. “I told you already I don’t know where Josh is,” he jumped in. He figured Orleans and Kenosha thought he was still holding out. “He hasn’t been in contact all weekend, and I’m starting to worry this is a repeat of Chip.”

“No, it’s not,” she replied sternly. “Josh just called me. Actually, he only left a cryptic message that said I had to help you find the secret room.”

That made no sense to Danny. There was no secret room, and why wouldn’t Josh call him if he had a message to deliver. “That’s all he said?”

“That’s it. Everything’s falling to pieces at work. People can tell that money’s running out, and I think some of those programming rats are abandoning ship. We need Josh. I don’t know what kind of sick game he’s playing, and I’m in no mood to go along, so just tell me about this secret room.”

“There isn’t one.”

“Really? I don’t believe you. Don’t you remember how Francesca told us her tales of this place? That old director loved that kind of shit. If he built a hidden room, it has to be on the bottom level. That’s where people tried to break in.”

“I tell you. There’s no such room. I don’t know what Josh meant.”

Kenosha stood there, grim and determined, and Danny wasn’t in a mood to fight her, because she had confirmed what he already felt. Josh was alive somewhere, but then he wondered.

“How can you be sure the message was from Josh?”

“Because the voice sounded like his. Because the call came from his number. Because no one else would have sent it.” She softened a bit, perhaps because she could see how little sleep Danny had had. “Tell you what. Let’s just go to the bottom level and look. If there is a room, there has to be a switch or knob or something that opens the door.”

Soft morning light was filtering through the lower windows, which provided a view over the back of the lot, the street, and the arched entrance to the stairs across the street. Kenosha looked at the room appraisingly.

“If there’s a hidden space down here it has to be on the back side, and built into the hill, like the wine cellar is. The rest of the space is accounted for. So if there’s a way in, it’s probably on these shelves at the back of the room, or from inside the wine cellar itself.”

“If there is such a space . . . ” Danny was having none of it. Josh would have told him if such a room had been uncovered during the remodeling, because Josh was no Nancy Drew character who had to hide away.

“I’m going to start in the wine cellar,” Kenosha said. “You never go in there, and we know that space was all rebuilt during the renovation.” She walked in. Danny stood behind.

“Are you coming or not? Josh asked me to help. There must be a reason.”

He followed. Kenosha was methodical. Assuming the entrance wouldn’t likely be along the back wall, which was already deep into the hillside, she instead examined the two adjoining walls.

“What are you looking for?” Danny asked.

“If there’s a door, it’s probably not where the wall is covered in stacks of wine bottles.” She pointed to a sidewall with a small built-in bar for tasting. “That seems the most likely spot.”

She stooped under the bar and examined it for a while, then pushed on one side, which caused it to slip upward into a vertical position. She stood. She looked at Danny as though waiting for a signal to proceed. He nodded his head okay, and she pushed against the wall. The space behind the bar smoothly swung open, carrying the bar shelf with it.

As the door opened, lights automatically came on in the space beyond. They peered into a good-sized room, maybe twelve by sixteen. It was filled with bookcases, a desk, and two easy chairs. A thick Oriental carpet lay on the floor.

“Welcome to the secret lair,” Kenosha said. But there was neither humor nor satisfaction in her voice.

INTERLUDE

The Final Session

Sooner or later
, it was going to be time to rip the Band-Aid off. Now is that time.

Sorry I have to phone this session in, doc, but I can’t be in your office right now. But I know you’ll understand. Just like you get why I’m always interfering in Danny’s life, trying to test him, and to see what he will do. Maybe the final test is to let him know me for who I really am. I think he deserves that.

Nothing to say about my latest confession, doc? Well, I got a lot to say.

I can’t know for sure why I started all this. I hardly knew the kid when his mother died. Back then I was in high school and he was still in middle school. Needless to say, we didn’t hang out together.

But I could see there was such a dogged air about him, and I could tell even then that he was gay. It made me notice Danny, watch him, and somehow I became fascinated. I could have protected him, but I liked the power of being in control. It filled some inner need for me to know that I had facts no one else had.

Danny’s father didn’t pay attention to his boy. I don’t think the guy had the slightest clue to the way Pete Peterson was invading his son’s life. You know, Pete was a crummy guy. Took advantage of young boys. Believe me, I know. But there was something about Danny that changed Pete and made him want to be a better person. It didn’t make sense to me that Danny could somehow do that and still escape Pete’s grasp. It was Danny’s innocence that turned Pete into that crazy kook showing movies on his garage door.

But that was the year when I began to think Danny was really something special. He held some kind of grace that I didn’t understand. But then I thought, maybe he just needs more testing.

I discovered he was working at the same summer resort as Oliver—little mean Oliver. What a prick that one was. A few years before, I learned how easy it was to manipulate him when his family vacationed for the summer down the road. I gave him the idea to harass Pete. Oliver was always ready to try something new as long as it would let him fit in. It made him feel important to create a gang of summer kids that targeted an old fag. Oliver never was good for much else.

Of course, Oliver loved my suggestion to taunt Danny. I just wanted to know if the kid would act out his true sexuality. Oliver got carried away. Maybe he even cared too much. Caring does that to you. But if I had known what Oliver planned, I would have snuck into the back of that cabin that night so I could have seen firsthand Danny’s expression when he discovered that he had been betrayed by the one he loved. That would have told me so much.

Trouble is none of these tests were ever satisfactory. They never told me what I wanted to know. I wasn’t trying to answer a question; I had a goal. I wanted Danny to fall into despair. Everyone falls into despair, but yet the kid always hung on. He kept landing on the side of hope. I can’t abide that. It gives a lie to everything I believe.

That’s why I finally needed to make that call to Kenosha. That’s why I prompted the search for my secret room. Danny needs the final test.

And Danny can take it only when he finally knows the truth about Josh Gunderson.

Doc, I think we’re about done here.