The Devil's Analyst (37 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Josh

The confrontation
wasn’t satisfying. Handing over the synopsis of files on Danny’s mother should have provided great satisfaction, but he felt nothing. No, worse than that, he felt guilty, a feeling he never liked.

Testing Danny was proving disappointing, and it was becoming an issue. Just in case it was ever needed, years ago, Josh planned a detailed escape route. To do so, he created more than one false identity and scouted out various countries with non-extradition treaties. He always thought such foresight might prove handy—one never knew when old crimes might come back to haunt one. Even though he somewhat exaggerated the level of grand larceny he perpetrated on Oliver’s gang of Arab friends, Josh had siphoned more than a few million dollars of their funding that had been secreted away in European banks. Some of that purloined cash was used to give Premios and Danny breathing room, but the rest was in a safe place for Josh’s future use. He saw no reason to feel guilty about the financial hack. In some ways, it was downright patriotic. Who knew what Oliver’s gang planned to do with that money? Let them think their own colleague made off with it, just in time to get murdered in a home burglary. Even if these guys suspected Josh was behind the loss of money, they weren’t going to find him.

As long as he got out of the country.

But he still needed to complete things with Danny. That wasn’t happening. By now he had offered Danny both the carrot and the stick. Over the years, he showered Danny with all the blessings of a good life. He helped engineer Danny’s fame as a blogger. And he bestowed wealth. Such things didn’t come easily, but Josh was always willing to pull whatever levers of influence were needed to grease the skids. He gave the kid everything, but Danny never abused his new powers. It was inexplicable. So much for the carrot.

He had no alternative but to use the stick and take things away. Doing so would surely nudge Danny into his baser nature until he would collapse into the despair that Josh was certain ran deep inside everyone. Destroying Danny’s image of him was a small price to pay and Josh had paid it; yet Josh still didn’t see the change he wanted. It wasn’t fair.

He had only one card left to play—Danny’s mother—and he was lucky to have it. Since Josh truly believed that some horrid truth lay behind every action of every person, he had often thought there had to be a reason the woman killed herself. Maybe that speculation gave him the idea to go digging, or perhaps someone in town referenced the woman’s past. Whatever, once he decided one day to seek out more, never expecting anything to come of it, he found it easy enough to submit Freedom of Information requests to the various federal agencies. Soon he had several folders on Lempi, her parents and even her husband Toivo—Danny’s father. Josh figured that all those odd Finnish names would make it easy to scope out forgotten facts.

His requests had been a lark, but then he hit the jackpot. While there was nothing about Danny’s father, it was another situation with Danny’s grandmother, Marja Makinen. Turns out the government tried to deport her during the Fifties and the Red Scare era. They didn’t succeed.

But there was an even bigger surprise. It was Lempi, Danny’s mother. She had her own skeletons, including a suspected radical past. Although several major passages in the documents were redacted, the FBI files clearly documented their unproven suspicions about a never-solved bombing and those details were enough to fill Josh with an anticipatory rush of joy. Even Danny couldn’t withstand this revelation. His mother’s death haunted Danny, but it was a haunting of longing and love, not fear. What would he do with the truth?

Josh never considered leaving those files in his hidden room. It would have been like displaying a thermonuclear bomb in an open field. No, Josh had held onto his secret for more than two years, never expecting to use it. But times changed. Turned out that Danny was tougher than he thought.

There was no alternative but to deploy his one remaining tool, and Josh was certain the unveiling would have the greatest impact in the backwoods of Thread. That was his only reason for hiding out in the camp. He needed to disclose reality in the setting where it had been forgotten. Unfortunately, over the past few months, Danny never acted as Josh anticipated. As far as Josh could tell, Danny never even checked if Josh was sequestered at the lake house. Finally, Josh deliberately made himself visible to fishermen off shore so that sooner or later, word would get back to Danny.

Maybe he was losing his touch. Josh always thought he could with equal skill read people and manipulate them. That’s why he was so quick to hire Orleans, expecting to mentor her until she could apply her skill at reading people and be a companion in his machinations. Sometimes it was lonely trying to play god with people’s lives. But Orleans hadn’t lived up to her potential. Unfortunately by the time her backbone of morality became clear, he had grown too dependent on her financial acumen. Orleans had to stay, but not in the role he had planned.

Jesus Lopez was another acolyte who offered great potential. Discovering Lopez’s novels was an almost sexually charged event. Josh delighted in this amoral author who thrived on chaos and evil. Josh even suggested to Danny that he enroll in Lopez’s seminar, not because he thought the man would be a good teacher, but because he wanted to meet the guy.

It worked. They hit it off. Jesus even dragged Josh into some darker sexual escapades that wouldn’t normally have intrigued him, but proved to be a form of brotherly bonding. Josh had been ecstatic when he stumbled over the amazing coincidence that Jesus and Oliver knew each other from their days together at a university in Chicago, and he played that opportunity for everything that it was worth.

Whatever Josh asked Jesus to do, he was always downright eager to follow through. That included trailing Chip, especially when Josh made up some cock-and-bull story about why Jesus should wear that old fisherman’s hat on the stakeout. Josh still didn’t understand why he added such a stupid detail. Sometimes, Josh thought a part of him wanted to be caught. In the end, the hat didn’t matter. Jesus saw Chip check out the buildings. As Josh hoped, Jesus shared the news about Chip’s investigation with Oliver. Admittedly Josh failed to anticipate that Oliver would call in reinforcements to deal with Chip. But that didn’t matter. Josh didn’t own any responsibility for what happened to Chip. Plausible deniability. He only helped people get to where they wanted to be.

It was too bad about the break-ins at the Los Feliz house. Life had its coincidences, and Josh was sure the attempted burglaries were just the actions of local kids. At first the occurrences greatly angered him, but then he realize how much the actions spooked Danny, and that proved good for his test.

But Josh still had to get Danny to reach that point of personal self-discovery. Someday Danny would understand and appreciate that Josh wasn’t being vindictive. He was doing this out of love. He really was. But he couldn’t take these actions directly. He wasn’t a murderer. He only helped things along. Turning the gun on Oliver was an anomaly. Just like stabbing Pete wasn’t really Josh’s nature.

Josh didn’t want another anomaly. He wanted Danny to make his own choices.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Flowage

“
You need to call
the police,” Cynthia was firm.

From across the dinner table, Danny replied equally adamant, “I can’t.”

They were at a crossroads and blocked. On one hand, Danny could choose what Cynthia considered the only logical path to follow even though it would betray Josh. On the other hand, he might choose the alternative of staying silent, which each knew should never be taken, even if it might protect the man that Danny once thought he loved but now didn’t trust. Both choices were untenable, and Cynthia could understand why Danny just floated between the two, unable to moor on either. After Chip’s murder, she felt a similar sense of being lost. But at some point, you needed to drop your feet to the bottom, stand up and start walking in one direction or the other.

The night before, the tornado left a streak of fallen trees in its wake. While the storm caused no damage to the American Seasons resort, downed trees continued to block several back roads between Lattigo and Thread. Safely driving the country lanes from Danny’s camp to reach the resort was still impossible. When Danny called that morning to rage about Josh, Cynthia encouraged him to take his motorboat through the flowage to reach the American Seasons marina. With its powerful engine, the trip would take less than half an hour. She wanted them to meet in person, sooner rather than later. She wished that he had called the night before, and didn’t like imagining him brooding alone in the huge house with Josh in the vicinity

Danny resisted her recommendation, partly because the boat remained stored in the boathouse. Cynthia persevered until he finally broke down and said yes. Still she questioned if he would really follow through. At mid-morning, he called and changed the timing to an early dinner. He claimed he was having trouble lowering the boat into the water. She prepped herself for the possibility of a no-show. But eventually he appeared and now he sat opposite her at Harvest Landing Restaurant, arriving at five, just as he said he would. Located outside on a screened deck, the dining room overlooked the marina and a lake that shimmered brightly in the afternoon sun. In mid-June, the sun wouldn’t set for hours this far north. It provided plenty of time for talk, while still ensuring Danny could motor home in daylight.

The trouble was they weren’t really talking. Instead, Danny stared out at the docks below and his enormous boat; it was almost a cabin cruiser and not at all well suited to the waters of the flowage and interconnected lakes. Cynthia suspected the purchase had been Josh’s since he always sought out whatever was the biggest and flashiest.

Finally, she spoke, “Tell me what you’re thinking.” He had already described the surprise appearance of Josh during the storm as well as the unexpected files he handed over. She wasn’t certain what upset Danny the most—Josh’s reappearance or the biography of Danny’s mother.

Maybe it was a mistake trying to connect with Danny. Days ago when one of the men in the office mentioned that he saw lights at the camp, which all the locals still called the Van Elkind place, she immediately thought it had to be Josh. She debated whether to alert Danny, but finally decided it was her responsibility as a friend.

Over these past few years, she grew to dislike the hulking lake house. As a child, she was never allowed to visit the estate but because her parents, who occasionally interacted with the Van Elkinds, often told glamorous tales of the place, she endowed it with an almost mystical elegance. Her childish imaginings made it a gateway to the kind of world she daydreamed she might eventually inhabit. But when she joined Josh and Danny on their first walk-through, reality gave a different interpretation. Years of standing empty through harsh Wisconsin winters resulted in a downbeaten look. The layout was spacious, the views incredible, and the lake frontage and acres of surrounding virgin forest inspiring. But for some reason the overall setting was not the fairy-tale place she once imagined. Maybe being married to a Native American whose tribe was robbed of these lands made her focus on what had been lost when the original lumber barons ruthlessly clear-cut entire counties. In this case, the man only left pristine the one area he wanted for his own summer home. She preferred to imagine the original landscape still inhabited, haunted really, by the native spirits who once lived in these woods. Such a setting deserved a fate other than being Josh’s trophy.

Because Josh liked the house so much, it didn’t surprise her that he might use it as a hideaway. What she didn’t understand was why she encouraged Danny to fly out and check for himself. The police had already visited and deemed the place empty again. She shouldn’t have meddled, just like she probably should not have suggested this meal. What could she possibly advise Danny? Each of them was in over their heads. Why did she want to know what Danny was thinking, when she didn’t even understand her own thoughts or motivation?

“My heart lifted when I realized Josh was in the room with me,” Danny blushed as he admitted that fact. “I longed for an explanation that I could believe. I wanted it all resolved.

“That’s all that I’ve wanted since the day I first walked into his secret room in Los Feliz. I need a story that makes sense of it all. Without it, I can’t believe in him, and then how can I possibly believe in myself?”

Cynthia saw no value in hiking down that path. “Listen, Josh is a psychopath. He occupies a space beyond the behaviors that make the rest of us human. Don’t try to make sense of him. Just because he took you in doesn’t say anything about you. We all believed him. We’ve all known him for years.”

Danny returned to staring at the lake, and his voice was disconnected as though Cynthia had dissolved into the summer breeze. “But you didn’t kiss this man every day, wait for him, and miss him. You didn’t wake up in the middle of the night, and fall back asleep with the comfort of hearing him breathe, knowing that he was beside you, that he held your back. Discovering all of this . . . it’s like he stripped me bare and has left me nothing.”

“He’s changed nothing about who you are,” she insisted.

“Hasn’t he?”

Danny looked down at his steak frites. He hadn’t touched them. The glass of red wine remained full.

Cynthia knew she needed to ask about Danny’s mom. “You haven’t said anything about the information he left you on your mother. When we talked on the phone this morning, you seemed very disturbed by it. What exactly did he tell you?”

“You’d be upset too,” he snapped. “To learn that your mother had an FBI file, that she was suspected of bombing a university building in an explosion that killed her best friend. I always thought I somehow disappointed my mom, but now I have to look at her as a murderer. I used to worry that I had too much of my mother inside me and that one day I would try to kill myself. Now . . . I never knew her. How can I share anything of my life with her? Maybe suicide wasn’t good enough for her.”

Cynthia was shocked. She vaguely remembered Lempi Makinen, a woman she never found the least bit interesting, certainly not a person with a history. “Maybe your father . . .”

He cut her off. “I can’t discuss this with him. He still loves her. He worships her memory, and he’s never even really accepted her death. For a while I thought he was starting over, but then he fell back. I always wanted him to be there for me, not her, but she held on to him even after she died. How do you compete with a memory?

“That’s why it was so easy for me to leave Thread. I couldn’t live any longer with my father and the way he was living in the past. I needed to abandon him and her. But now it feels like she’s reaching back, pulling me down into her darkness. I don’t know how to resist.”

“Maybe it’s time to reconnect with your dad,” Cynthia said. “Maybe he knows more about what Josh uncovered. You don’t even know any of this is true. It could all be lies. You can’t trust Josh.”

Danny seemed to be thinking about some memory, as though it now made sense, and Cynthia wanted to ask him what that was. But she felt she was already on the border of having gone too far. Instead she asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I think I will go home and burn those files. Then I can pretend that I never saw them. I’m good at burning things.” He knew Cynthia was unaware of what he had destroyed back in California. “And while I’m tossing the past into the fire, I should burn every picture of Josh.

“But, no, I have to keep one. I need to give one to the police. They need to know what I know. They need to understand Josh.”

As the sun sank
toward the horizon, and against his better judgment, Danny joined Cynthia in ordering a full bottle of merlot. He knew a glass or two would mean nothing to her. She could always stay in the hotel adjacent to the restaurant and marina. After all, the resort was partially hers, and even if she drove home, her house was only minutes away. On the other hand, Danny would need to maneuver several miles through the flowage, motor through the channel to Clearwater Lake and then speed across the broad lake to reach the dock at his camp. He didn’t want to undertake the journey in the darkness, and twilight was rapidly approaching. He needed his wits.

Nevertheless, he was the one who ended up drinking most of the wine. Cynthia only toyed with her glass and he remembered that she was pregnant and shouldn’t drink.

As he walked from the restaurant to the marina, he felt a bit unsteady. The light wind shimmered its way through the quaking leaves of the white birch trees that lined the brick path to the wooden docks. Everything was taking on a golden hue in the lingering light. Even as the ripples of lapping waves along the shore grew more iridescent, the deeper waters toward the center of the flowage darkened. Evening birds called out to proclaim the boundaries of their territories. Around his ear, Danny heard the whir of encroaching mosquitoes. Not many here, so close to the resort, which sprayed its grounds, but Danny knew that out on the water the insects would hover as a heavy, hungry, buzzing cloud. Lacking any insect repellant, his trip home would be filled with bites.

His comforting relationship with Cynthia lulled him into lingering too long. A room filled with happy tourists, a friendly waiter, and a good glass of wine momentarily gave the world a mask that made it appear sane once more. For a moment, the jumble of facts and emotions that defined his life receded as unimportant.

But under the growing onslaught of evening insects, reality reasserted itself. Danny hurried toward his boat and clambered into it. He needed to get home. At twenty-four feet in length, this boat was among the biggest in its class; its powerful motor could make good speed. Originally Josh chose it because it was fast enough for water skiing but still provided the set-up for fishing. Danny was glad to have the craft tonight. It would bring him home before dark.

He unknotted the mooring line, pulled it into the boat, and stood at the steering wheel. As he began to maneuver his way past the end of the floating dock, someone ran down the planks and leaped from the end of the pier to land on the boat’s prow. His unsteady body crouched in front of the windshield and blocked Danny’s view into the lake.

The person looked up and laughed. It was Josh.

Before Danny could yell for him to get off, Josh scrambled over the windshield, landed on the floor of the craft and pushed Danny from the controls. Josh yanked up on the speed control, revved the engine, and turned the boat so it sped past the docks into the open water. No other boats were in the way. Before long the two were alone in a boat on the water, speeding toward the center of the flowage, away from the marina and resort, heading into the depths of the woods.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get you home,” Josh said, “but I needed one more chance to talk. You owe me at least that, don’t you?”

“I owe you nothing,” Danny replied.

Had Josh been watching him and Cynthia all afternoon, just waiting for his return to the boat? Soon they would be too far from shore for anyone to see them but Danny hoped that Cynthia had remained at the table, watched him board his boat and saw Josh boatnap him. Would she call the police? Didn’t the tribe maintain some kind of watercraft patrol to handle all the vacationing fishermen and water-skiers at this end of the flowage? Maybe her alarm was already sending someone on the way.

“You owe me everything,” Josh replied. “I gave you everything you have and I can take it all back. Whenever I want.”

“Then take back my mother’s file and everything I learned,” Danny spat.

“That I can’t do,” Josh responded. “But the material things. The fame. The fortune. Those are the things I can take back. But these other things. The mental images. The emotions. They’re more like computer viruses that infect your mind. They’ll just grow and turn until they fulfill their mission. Everything has its purpose, you know. You just have to wait to find out what it is. I’ve been waiting a very long time for that to happen.”

Danny’s fears were true. Josh was mad. In some crazy way, everything Danny discovered over the past weeks truly reflected the yearnings and imaginings of this man. He wondered if he could survive the night. On the horizon, the first star of the night popped into view and he made a promise. If he lived to morning, he would do everything possible to ensure that the proper authorities arrested Josh.

Without offering explanation, Josh suddenly stepped away from the controls and sat on one of the back seats. The boat was still going forward full speed. Danny rushed toward the controls to slow the speed. With its many shallow spots, the flowage often hid copses of dead trees just below the surface. Hitting one could sink a boat and he didn’t intend to drown out here in the inky waters of the night.