The Good Guy (28 page)

In the bedroom, heart hammering now, a metallic taste in the mouth, maybe the taste of disaster, he said to Pete, “He went after Mom, he’ll find her with Linda.”

Window, porch roof, lawn was faster than down the stairs and out, so he headed toward the raised sash, Pete with him, but from the corner of his eye, he caught movement, turned.

Beyond the open door, a large distended oval of golden light bright on the hallway wall, thrown by the high round window in the stairwell, and into it a shadow creeping, twisted shadow of a demon in a dream.

Not after Mom and Linda, after all, but out the front window, around the house, in the kitchen door, and up the stairs, behind them now and closing.

Open door, machine pistol, he’d come in spraying. Nothing to shelter behind, they’d be cut down dead, whether they nailed him or not.

Tim dropped the pistol, grabbed the highboy, and he didn’t know where the strength came from. He was big but so was the highboy, full of folded sweaters and spare blankets and whatever the hell else it was full of, yet he lifted it off the floor, lifted it away from the wall, swung it toward the door, and high-velocity slugs chopped into it even as he set it down, rapped it, drilled it, and a round came all the way through the drawer fronts, through the stuff inside, punching out the board back, two inches from his face, a splinter biting his cheek.

Pete flat on the floor, maybe hit, no, firing back from under the highboy, which stood on six-inch legs. Hell of an angle, all skill useless, just squeezing off rounds, but luck happens just like shit happens, and the guy in the hall screamed.

The pistol with the sound suppressor had made little noise, but the incoming rounds had chopped wood, pocked walls, smashed lamps. It all stopped, and there was just the scream, which diminished into a high thin keening.

Maybe the scream was a trick, maybe the guy was jamming a new magazine into the pistol, but when you can’t go by the book because the situation isn’t covered in it, then you go by the gut. Tim snared his gun from the floor. He broke from the cover of the highboy and saw no one in the open doorway and went for the hall.

The air ripe with gun stink. A litter of shell casings. Blood on the carpet.

Hit in the left leg, the shark from the tavern had backed off toward the stairs, still standing but leaning against the newel post. The clack of a fresh magazine locking in place. The black-hole eyes came up, found Tim, and in spite of the thin keening, here was the smile.

Tim squeezed off two rounds, and the shark took one in the left shoulder, but his right arm was still on the clock, and the machine pistol rose, the muzzle wavering but as deep as the dilated pupils of the hungry eyes. Wanting the guy alive, Tim went at him fast, because you have to walk straight into what you don’t dare run away from. The muzzle jumped, a burst of fire sliced past his head, and hot pain bloomed.

The second burst went wide because the shark needed two hands to hold the target, and Tim reached him and took the machine pistol away from him, the barrel hot in his callused hand, and the killer fell backward down the stairs, collapsed on his back on the landing, knocking the pillows aside, not dead but not ready to run a marathon.

Tim touched the right side of his head, where pain throbbed, and it was wet with blood. Something wrong with his ear. He could hear, but blood trickled down the ear canal.

Wanting the name of the guy with the parachuting dog named Larry, the guy who had paid for Linda’s murder, Tim went down the stairs. He squatted beside the fallen man, reaching out with the intention of lifting the killer’s head off the floor by a twisted handful of hair.

A switchblade flashed open, slashed, Tim felt a faint pressure across the palm of his reaching hand, the shark was rising, levering up on his good leg, he wasn’t a quitter, so Tim shot him twice point-blank in the throat, and that was the end of it.

Krait fell back into an infinite maze of mirrors, the light yellow and dim. Strange figures moved in countless silvered panes, aware of him, approaching and circling, from one glass to the next. He strained his eyes to get a better look at them, but the harder that he sought to see them, the faster the light faded, until at last he lay in a palpable dark, in a wilderness of mirrors.

The switchblade had merely grazed his left palm, scoring the skin but leaving the meat of the hand intact.

His right ear had fared worse.

“A piece of it’s missing,” Pete said.

“Big piece?”

“Not so big. Your head won’t hang out of balance, but you need to see a doctor.”

“Not yet.” Tim sat on the hallway floor, his back against the wall. “You can’t lose a life-load of blood from a torn ear.”

He fumbled his phone from his pocket and keyed in the number of the disposable cell that he had left with Linda. He put it to his damaged ear, flinched, and pressed it to his left.

When she answered, Tim said, “He’s dead, we’re not.”

Relieved, she let out her breath in an explosive expletive. “I never even kissed you.”

“We can do that, if you want.”

“Tim, they want us out of the car. Your mom and me, we put up the windows and locked the doors, but they’re trying to get us out.”

Confused, he said, “Who, what?”

“They came in so fast, sealed off the street, like just after we heard the gunfire. Look out a window.”

“Hold on.” He got up and said to Pete, “We have some kind of company.”

They went to the open window in the master bedroom. The street was full of black SUVs with bold white letters on the roofs and front doors: FBI.

Armed men had taken up position behind the vehicles and at other points of cover.

“Stall them two minutes,” Tim told Linda, “then tell them it’s over, and we’ll walk out to them.”

“What the hell?” Pete wondered.

“I don’t know,” Tim said, terminating the call.

“Feels right to you?”

“Feels something.”

He stepped away from the window and keyed in the number for directory assistance. When the operator came on, he asked for a listing for Michael McCready.

They offered to connect the call automatically for an extra charge, and it was not a day for pinching pennies.

Mickey answered, and Tim said, “Hey, Mickey, I’m going to have to postpone that visit for a while.”

“Angels in Hell, Tim, what’s happening over there?”

“You got your videocam on this?”

“It’s better than any of your kiddie birthday parties, Tim boy.”

“Listen, Mickey, don’t let them see you with the camera. Shoot from inside the house. Use the zoom, try to get as many of their faces as close up and clear as you can.”

Mickey was silent for a moment. Then: “Are they a bunch of bastards, Tim?”

“They might be.”

Sixty-Three

H
e said he was Steve Wentworth, which might
in fact be his name or only one of his names.

His photo ID, complete with convincing holographic details, said
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
.

Tall, athletic, with close-cropped hair and the ascetic features of a handsome monk, he looked plausible. Perhaps too plausible.

His generic Southern accent had been polished by an Ivy League education.

Wentworth wanted to talk to Tim alone in the small study off the downstairs hall. Tim insisted that Linda be present.

Resisting, Wentworth said, “This is a courtesy I can’t extend to anyone but you.”

“She is me,” Tim said, and would not compromise.

They brought her from the dining room, where they were holding her, ostensibly for questioning.

The house swarmed with agents. If they were agents.

Tim thought of them as orcs, as in
The Fellowship of the Ring
.

Entering the study, she said to Wentworth, “He needs treatment for his ear.”

“We have medics present,” Wentworth said. “He won’t let them touch him.”

“It’s hardly bleeding anymore,” Tim assured her.

“Because it’s all a clotted mess. My God, Tim.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said, though it did. “I had two aspirin.”

His mom and Pete were being held in the family room.

Supposedly somebody intended to take statements from them.

His mom probably thought they were safe now. Maybe they were.

The killer’s corpse had been bagged and wheeled from the house on a gurney. No one had taken photographs of it before it had been moved.

If CSI types were present, they must have forgotten to bring their gear. Evidence collection did not appear to be under way.

As Wentworth closed the study door, Tim and Linda sat together on the sofa.

The agent settled in an armchair and crossed his legs. He had the relaxed air of a master of the universe.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Carrier.”

Tim felt Linda’s analytic Egyptian-green eyes regarding him, and he said to Wentworth, “I don’t want any of that.”

“I understand. But it’s true. If you weren’t you, I wouldn’t be here, and this wouldn’t be over for you or for Ms. Paquette.”

“That surprises me,” Tim said.

“Why? Because you think we’re not on the same side of things?”

“Are we?”

Wentworth smiled. “Whether we are or not, even in this world, the way it’s changing, some things must remain above assault. In the interest of principled reconstruction, some things must be respected, including men like you.”

“Principled reconstruction?”

Wentworth shrugged. “We need our jargon.”

“I’m at sea here,” Linda said.

“He’s going to tell us some truth,” Tim said.

“Some?”

“As little as he has to.”

“I’d prefer not to tell you any,” Wentworth said. “But
you
—you’ll never stop until you know.”

“You’re not FBI, are you?” Linda asked.

“We are what we need to be, Ms. Paquette.”

His suit had the cut and finish of expensive hand-tailoring, and his wristwatch was worth a year of an agent’s salary.

“Our country, Tim, must make certain concessions.”

“Concessions?”

“We cannot be what we once were. In the interest of prosperity, there must be less of it. Too much freedom assures less peace.”

“Try selling that at the ballot box.”

“We do sell it, Tim. By inciting false fears in the people. Remember Y2K? All computers would crash at the stroke of midnight! The collapse of high-tech civilization! Nuclear missiles would launch uncontrollably! Thousands of hours of TV news and uncounted miles of newsprint sold the Y2K terror.”

“It didn’t happen.”

“That’s the point. For a long time now, has not the news been nothing but doom? Do you think that just happens? Electric power lines cause cancer! But of course they don’t. Most everything you eat will kill you, and this pesticide, and that chemical! But of course people lead longer and healthier lives decade by decade. Fear is a hammer, and when the people are beaten finally to the conviction that their existence hangs by a frayed thread, they will be led where they need to go.”

“Which is where?”

“To a responsible future in a properly managed world.”

Wentworth was a man completely without gesture. His hands rested unmoving on the arms of the chair. His manicured nails gleamed as if coated with clear polish.

Tim mulled the phrase: “Responsible future.”

“The people elect mostly fools and frauds. When the politicians make policy that leads this country toward the needed reconstruction of its systems, they can be supported, but when they make bad policy, they must be sabotaged at every turn, from within.”

Tim stared at the thin crust of blood that the switchblade had drawn across the palm of his left hand.

“Just wait,” Wentworth said, “till—oh, say—the threat of the asteroid impact builds in the years ahead. You would see unthinkable sacrifices quickly embraced by the people as we united the planet to establish a massive asteroid-deflection system in deep space.”

“Is there an approaching asteroid?” Linda asked.

“There could be,” Wentworth said.

Still looking at the dried blood in his hand, Tim said, “Why was Linda targeted?”

“Two and a half years ago, two men met for an hour over coffee on the patio of Cream and Sugar.”

“What men?”

“One was secretly in the employ of a United States senator. He was a liaison to foreign parties with whom the senator would not want to be known to have contact.”

“Foreign parties.”

“I’m already being too generous with you, Mr. Carrier. The other man was a deep-cover agent for one of those foreign interests.”

“Just having coffee at the Cream and Sugar.”

“Their mutual suspicions required a safe public meeting place.”

“And I was there that day?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“But I didn’t notice them that I remember,” she protested. “And I certainly didn’t overhear anything they said.”

Tim first pegged Wentworth as about forty, but longer inspection suggested he was in his mid-fifties, as much as fifteen years having been Botoxed from his now too-smooth forehead and crinkle-free eyes.

“Charlie Wen-ching,” said Wentworth, “loved his wall of fame.”

Linda frowned. “You mean those photos of his regular customers?”

“He was always snapping away with his digital camera, updating the wall. That day, he snapped you and other regulars on the patio.”

“He photographed me more than once,” Linda said, “but I think I may know the day you mean.”

“The senator’s man and the foreign agent were not regulars and were not approached by Charlie for a photograph. The quick photos he took of others hardly drew their attention.”

“But they were in the background of those pictures,” Tim said.

“So what?” Linda said. “No one knew who they were.”

“But over the next year, four things happened,” Wentworth said.

“First,” Tim guessed, “it came to be known in political and media circles that the secret liaison was the senator’s associate.”

“Yes. And the foreign agent eventually was publicly identified as a key strategist of a major terrorist organization.”

“What was the third thing?” Linda asked.

Wentworth recrossed his legs. He wore designer socks with a blue-and-red geometric motif.

“Charlie’s sons, Michael and Joseph, built a website. Very well done. A first step toward developing a chain of Cream and Sugars.”

“They got some business-magazine attention,” Linda remembered.

“And the website started getting hits. The regular-customer gallery featured two hundred of Charlie’s favorite photos—some with the liaison and the agent in the background, totally identifiable.”

“The senator’s man, meeting secretly with the equivalent of Osama bin Laden—that could wreck a political career,” Tim said.

“Even a political party,” said Wentworth.

“But with all your resources,” Linda said, “you could have hacked their website, somehow purged the photos.”

“We’ve done our best. If it’s on the Web, it’s out there somewhere forever. Besides, Charlie had discs of the photos in a safe at the Cream and Sugar.”

“Burglarize the place. Steal them.”

“He often gave copies to the customers he photographed.”

“So burglarize them, too. Why kill all these people?”

“If an ambitious prosecutor or a rebel journalist came to one of them, who knows what they might remember—or
pretend
to remember. ‘Oh, yes, I heard them talking about an embassy bombing, and months later it happened.’ People love the spotlight, their moment of fame.”

“So the decision was made,” Tim said, “to liquidate everyone who could have
pretended
to overhear them on the patio that day.”

Wentworth drummed his elegant fingers on the arms of his chair, which was the first movement of his hands since he had sat down.

“Much is at stake, Mr. Carrier. The fourth thing that happened is that the senator’s star ascended. We may be looking at our next president. Which would be a fine thing. The senator has been with us for twenty years, since our earliest days.”

“You mean with this shadow government of yours.”

“Yes. We thrive in bureaucracies, in law-enforcement agencies, in the intelligence community, in Congress—but now the opportunity exists to extend our reach into the Oval Office.”

Wentworth consulted his wristwatch and rose to his feet.

“The man I killed,” Tim said.

“A tool. A good one for quite a while. But his wiring seemed to be coming apart.”

“What was his real name?”

“He was no one special. There are multitudes like him.”

“Multitudes,” Linda murmured.

Lacing his fingers, cracking his knuckles, Wentworth said, “When we discovered he was targeting you and your family, Mr. Carrier, we had to intervene. As I said—some things must be respected for the sake of principled reconstruction.”

“But that’s just jargon.”

“Yes, all right, but behind the jargon is a philosophy in which we believe and by which we try to live. We are principled men and women.”

As Tim and Linda got up from the sofa, Wentworth adjusted the knot in his tie, shot his cuffs.

He smiled. “After all, if men like you had not so valiantly defended your country, we would have nothing to reconstruct.”

Tim had been both respected and put in his place.

Before opening the door to the hall, standing with one hand on the knob, Wentworth said, “If you try to go public with what I’ve said here, you’ll look like a paranoid fool. We’ll make sure of that, with all our opinionmakers in the media. And then one day, you will snap, kill Ms. Paquette, your entire family, then commit suicide.”

Linda was quick to Tim’s defense. “No one would believe he could do that.”

Wentworth arched his eyebrows. “A war hero, having seen such horrible things, suffering posttraumatic stress disorder, finally cracks, perpetrating a bloodbath? Ms. Paquette, considering all the impossible things that the public has been persuaded to believe these days,
that
one will go down as smooth as a spoonful of ice cream.”

He left the room.

Linda said, “Tim? War hero?”

“Not now,” he said, and led her into the hallway.

Wentworth departed the house by the front door, leaving it open behind him. Tim closed it.

All of the orcs seemed to have gone.

Tim’s mother and Pete were in the kitchen.

She had a haunted look, and Pete said, “What the hell was that?”

“Take Mom and Linda to your place.”

“I’m staying,” she said. “And you have to get your ear treated.”

“Trust me. Go with Pete. I have a couple things to do. I’ll call Dad, have him come home, take me to an emergency room. We’ll all meet at Pete’s later.”

“And then what?” she wondered.

“And then we’ll have our lives.”

The phone and doorbell began to ring simultaneously.

“Neighbors,” Tim said. “We’re not talking to any of them until we’ve talked among ourselves and decided on a story.”

When Pete had left with Linda and Mary, Tim went into the garage and got a carpet knife from his father’s tool cabinet.

He cut out the bloodstained sections of carpet on the stairs and in the upstairs hall. He bagged them and put them out with the trash.

The doorbell and phone rang periodically, but not as frequently as before.

Surprisingly, neither the small decorative pillow nor the chair cushion was bloodstained. He returned them to the living room.

He collected the ragged strips of the ruined painting and upstairs retrieved all the ejected shell casings and threw those things in the trash, as well.

With some effort, he walked the highboy against the wall where it belonged. He gathered up the broken lamps. He used the vacuum to sweep the wood chips and other debris from the master-bedroom carpet.

In a day or two, he would repair the bullet holes in the dry-wall and give the room two fresh coats of paint.

He closed and locked the open window, then closed but did not lock the window in his bedroom at the back of the house.

The orcs had taken with them all of the killer’s paraphernalia that had been on the kitchen island. They had taken the handcuff from the table leg.

The sliced apples in the metal bowl had turned brown. He put them down the garbage disposal with the peels that were in the sink.

He washed the bowl and the peeler and the knife, and he put them in the drawers where they belonged.

Later, he would repair the broken chair.

This was his home, where he had grown up, a sacred place to him, and he would put it right.

After calling his dad, he went across the street for a brief visit with Mickey McCready.