The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  “A high-resolution digital camera,” I said, “that could be used for guiding smart bombs.”

  “Ned Bowles always has his finger on things. He knows everything about everybody in that business. He heard about this digital camera, miles ahead of the field. He went after it.”

  “Meaning he stole it,” I said.

  “Ned put it in motion, but it was Markaris who took care of the dirty work. The camera was under development at another company. They were only a few months from final testing. Markaris bought somebody off. They stole everything—the plans, the lab notes, and three prototypes of the camera. After the Braeder people tested it out and put on the finishing touches, Markaris came to Eric and me. All we did was get a lawyer at our firm to draft the patent applications.”

  “And slap Lois McGuin’s name on them,” I said.

  “She worked for Braeder; she had the right kind of background.” He shrugged. “She made out all right in the end. I never heard any complaints from her.”

  “You think this is funny?” Scottie said, shaking him again.

  O’Shea sagged forward. “No, not funny. But everyone had a part to play, and they did it without asking any questions.”

  “Except my mother,” I said.

  “Yes, except her. Her part was dumb bad luck. The plans and patent applications were never supposed to get into Braeder’s file room. When they got shipped back from the law firm, some clerk filed them with all the others. Your mother just happened on them one day.”

  “She could tell there was something wrong, probably because of Lois’s name on the applications.”

  “I never knew anything about that,” O’Shea said. “I only heard that she’d taken the plans, and Bowles had fired her for it.”

  I said, “If she thought there was a problem with the plans, why didn’t she talk it over with Bowles or Lois McGuin?”

  “I don’t know!” He tried to twist away, but Scottie wrestled him back to his knees.

  “Look,” O’Shea said. “Everybody who worked for Braeder knew there was something off about the company. We all went along for the paycheck, and we all kept our mouths shut. Even Eric and I had secrets from each other.”

  “Did you know my mother took photographs of those plans? She had them around the house that summer.”

  Something changed in O’Shea’s face, a beam of understanding. “No. I thought Bowles got everything back. It makes sense though. She always acted like she had a hole card, something to bargain with. She went to Eric again and again, trying to get her job back. He tried to let her down easy, but that didn’t work. Finally he refused to see her any more. She still kept calling him.”

  “That’s not all,” Scottie said. “She tried to get him disbarred.” He dug the gun barrel into O’Shea’s scalp. “I told you we’d know if you lied.”

  “Scottie that’s enough,” I said.

  “No! He did it for Russo. He came to the house, and he killed them all.”

  “I didn’t,” O’Shea whined. “I don’t know what happened. I always hoped . . . I thought it was a suicide, like the police said.”

  “Stop it!” Scottie threw him forward and jammed the gun into the base of his skull. “You’re not leaving here until you tell us!”

  I started toward them but stopped when I heard a twig snap. Scottie spun behind O’Shea.

  Jamie Weston stepped into view. In her blue suit, I could barely make her out. Her gun—was it pointed at me or the other two?

  “I thought I told you to whistle.”

  “Things moved a little fast,” I said.

  She advanced slowly, keeping her eyes up and sliding her feet forward so she wouldn’t trip. “Mr. Glass, you’re going to set the gun down and move aside.”

  “Like hell I will.” He ducked lower behind O’Shea.

  “Jamie we’ve been through this once,” I said. “He’s not going to give in. Just back off.”

  “Is that what you want? Sure.” Her voice was cool, very controlled. She stooped as if she was putting her gun on the ground, but in the darkness I couldn’t tell. “There. Now we can relax.”

  Scottie shifted a few inches. I saw her arm tense.

  “Scottie, she’s still got the gun.”

  He jerked O’Shea around and yelled, “Drop it! Come on, you heard me!”

  Weston glared at me, but she put the gun down this time.

  “That’s better,” Scottie said. He shook O’Shea hard enough to make his head snap back and forth. “Now you’re going to tell us exactly how you came to the house that night.”

  “No, Scottie,” I said. “I don’t think he’s lying. He’s as confused as we were.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You remembered it was a left-handed person who shot you, so you guessed it was him.”

  I was close enough to O’Shea to see his expression change, from tension to surprise. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “The person who killed Markaris was left handed,” I said. “The shooter at the house, too.”

  “Not me,” O’Shea said. His voice had dropped, barely a whisper. He glanced around at the bushes.

  “What’s wrong?” Weston said.

  “We need to go.” O’Shea thrashed, trying to shake loose. “Back where it’s light. The street.”

  “No you don’t,” Scottie said, pushing him down.

  O’Shea lurched back with all his might. Scottie stumbled and went down, hard, while O’Shea took off up the slope. He hadn’t gone five paces before a gunshot split the air.

  He dropped and slid back to us, dead.

  FORTY-THREE

  “Scottie, dammit!” I screamed.

  He was down, flopping like a fish. “I didn’t . . . Help me up!” He’d gotten tangled in a vine and dropped the pistol.

  I turned to Weston. She had her gun up, wheeling from side to side as she backed toward the trees.

  I said, “Jamie, why—?”

  There was a hard thud, and Weston flew off her feet, landing in a crumpled heap. The trees rustled, and a figure stepped over her. Tall, cut-thin. Peter Sorensen.

  Scottie had gotten clear of the vine and stopped thrashing. “Why is he here?” He thought this was some trick I’d pulled off.

  Sorensen bent to make sure Weston was out. He kept his eyes on me.

  “O’Shea had you follow him here?” I said. “Some kind of backup plan if he got in trouble?”

  Sorensen moved on to check O’Shea. I could see the dim glint of a pistol in his hand, a big automatic.

  “I don’t understand,” Scottie said. His voice had bounced up an octave.

  “Look at the gun,” I said.

  “Gun? I—” Then Scottie saw it.

  “Left hand,” I said. “He could type with that hand, and he poured scotch with it.”

  “Why?” Scottie whispered.

  Sorensen wagged the gun at us. “Move together.”

  I motioned for Scottie to stay where he was. Our best chance—if there was any chance—was to keep apart, buy some time.

  “Sorensen is the other half of the transaction, the one who sold the plans to Braeder. His own invention—his family’s company. They probably never suspected him, or if they did they couldn’t turn on him. My mother must have figured that out. What did she do, call you or drop by for a visit? The cops knew about it. They interviewed you back then.”

  Sorensen twitched the gun impatiently. “Move together. Now!”

  I motioned again to Scottie. He nodded slightly and rolled up to his hands and knees but didn’t stand.

  Sorensen watched all this. He was calculating, putting a plan together.

  “Tell me one thing,” I said. “How did you get the gun from my mother? She must have had it out that night.”

  Sorensen smiled quickly, like a man who’d just made up his mind about something. “I only had to ask.” He stepped forward and aimed at my head, point blank. “Find your gun and bring it to me,” he said to Scottie. “Do it now, or I
’ll shoot him.”

  “You pulled that on my parents?” I said.

  “It didn’t fool your father, but your mother bought it, and that’s all that mattered.”

  Scottie stood up. The pistol was in his hand. Sorensen shifted to my side, holding the tip of the barrel against my throat.

  “Scottie, you can’t,” I said. “He’ll use your gun on me, then Weston.”

  “Quiet,” Sorensen snapped.

  I kept right on: “He’ll make it look like you did it, just like he did with my mother.”

  Scottie stared at me, eyes wide, that cornered-rabbit look.

  “Run,” I said quietly.

  Scottie took a step back. I wished he didn’t have that white shirt on, making him such an easy target. If I jerked when Sorensen pulled the trigger on me, I might still have enough strength to turn, hold him up for a second or two.

  “Go,” I said.

  Scottie darted for the tree line.

  “No!” Sorensen spun toward Scottie, and I shoved him as hard as I could.

  Scottie ducked and turned, a move so quick he must have had it planned. He raised his gun and fired, still smooth. Then he was so surprised by the kick it gave he nearly dropped it.

  Sorensen reeled a half step and fired his own gun straight into the ground. A moment later he sank to his knees.

  His eyes rolled up, and I thought he was going to pass out, but he pulled back into focus. A large blotch of blood had already appeared below his right shoulder. He looked at it, surprised, and then sighed as the reality of it hit him. At the same time, Weston stirred slightly. Sorensen gave her a slitted glance.

  “Put the gun down,” I said. “We’ll get you some help.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. He shook his head. “You two—Howie figured there was no chance you could dig it all up.”

  “Markaris told you about us?” I said.

  “He got the whole gang back together. Russo and O’Shea. Me. McGuin. Just a warning. Keep our heads down.”

  “None of them knew you were the killer,” I said, “until Markaris started to figure it out.”

  He glanced at Scottie, who had his gun leveled on him. “Every piece separate. Everybody carries his own guilt.” I didn’t like his expression—tired but calculating again, some new plan forming. I wanted to get to Jamie, to make sure she was OK, but I wasn’t going to take my eyes off Sorensen as long as he had the gun.

  Scottie moved forward. “Put it down.” Sorensen glared at him, a direct challenge.

  I waved Scottie back. “My mother told you she was going to blow the whistle on you. You couldn’t let that happen. I can understand that.”

  Sorensen’s eyes slid over to me. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. “Blow the whistle? You don’t understand a thing.”

  “Tell me then.”

  He shook his head and glanced at the gun in his hand. The expression on his face was dazed and empty. I could see his plan now, quick and final.

  “You were with her when she shot herself. She did that to save us, didn’t she? She made a deal with you.”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.” He lifted the gun, letting his hand rest on his chest and the barrel against his jaw. He took a shuddering breath. “I promised her the kids would be safe. I’ve had to live with that.”

  “At the end, what did she say—when she went down the steps into the yard?”

  He gave a slow laugh, enough to make the blood bubble on his lips. “Did I kill Brookey? I never heard of a Brookey.”

  “It was our cat. He was hit by a car. Maybe she thought it was a warning.”

  His tongue flicked out. More blood. But there was still strength there, enough to live if he wanted to. That’s what I wanted—to have him answer all the questions and then rot away in some jail cell forever.

  “What else did she say? There was more.”

  He just stared blankly at me.

  “What about Bowles?” Scottie said. “Did he know what you did?”

  His head moved. A nod, maybe. “Bowles was—”

  His eyes fluttered. The gun slipped away from his throat. Two steps and I could grab it.

  Before I could move—before I could think—there was a sharp crack on my right. Sorensen’s head bloomed like a flower, blood and skull and brain. I felt the spray hit me. Scottie jerked back.

  I turned slowly, half paralyzed. Weston was on her knees. She had her gun trained on Sorensen, on what was left of him.

  Scottie started screaming. “You didn’t have to! He was going to tell us!”

  There was a coldness in Weston’s eyes that faded slowly. She put her gun away and looked at me. Was that guilt I saw? Just a touch of it?

  “No choice,” she said. “He was—”

  I didn’t hear the rest. The tingling had started in my hands the moment the bullet tore through Sorensen’s head. The numbness reached my shoulders. I looked up at the sky as I started to sway. The last thing I remember is Scottie grabbing me. We both fell under my weight.

  FORTY-FOUR

  By the time I came back to the surface, the park was crawling with FBI agents and DC cops. Scottie and Weston and I were taken to separate vans to be interviewed. The three agents who talked to me were all silver-haired and very slick, more like lawyers than field men. It wasn’t what they asked me that stood out, but what they didn’t ask. They didn’t want to know anything about what Sorensen had done twenty-five years ago, or his connection with Braeder . When I brought those things up, they pleasantly, but firmly, steered the conversation back to the present.

  I was on my third cup of coffee when they started to draw things to a close. “So Mr. Sorensen was bringing his gun around on you when Agent Weston fired?” one asked.

  “Like I said—four times now—I don’t know what he was thinking. He was close to losing consciousness. He moved the gun down and away from his chest.”

  “Which could pretty clearly be taken as a threat,” the agent said.

  I gave up. I wasn’t going to convince them there was more than one way to see what had happened. “I suppose so, sure.”

  “That’s it then,” one of the others said. “Sounds like a clean shooting. When you get a chance, you should buy Near Miss some flowers.” They all chuckled.

  The third man pushed open the door of the van. “You’re parked down on 5th Street aren’t you? I’ll give you a ride to your car.”

  I wasn’t sure how these three knew where my car was, but I didn’t care. We were about a block from Scottie’s house. All the lights were on. I thought about stopping by to make sure he was all right, but I decided against it. With the way I was feeling, I’d probably do more harm than good.

  The agent drove with the same one-handed looseness as Weston. He talked a streak like she did, too, and I realized he was holding the floor so I wouldn’t have a chance to say anything. They’d cleared Weston, and they didn’t want any extra information that could mess up the works.

  He pulled up next to my car. “You and Weston and your friend Glass did good tonight. Feel proud about that. But if you start having trouble, if you need someone to talk to, give me a call. We’ve got people to deal with that sort of thing.” He handed me a business card. Then he gave a low chuckle. “What am I doing, saying something like that to a psychologist?”

  He waved as I climbed out, and I watched him roll away.

  I sat for a long time behind the wheel of my own car, trying to figure out how I felt. I wasn’t tired; I wasn’t numb; I wasn’t all wound up. I felt empty, almost as if I was hungry. Hungry for what, I wondered?

  I put the key in the ignition. As I turned it, I caught sight of my face in the mirror. The right side was speckled with blood. I’d been with those agents for hours, and they hadn’t said a thing about it. Maybe they’d seen so much blood in their time they didn’t even notice.

  After I parked behind my apartment building, I sat for a while more in my car, thinking. That gnawing feeling in my gut—was that because I knew for su
re now that my mother wasn’t a murderer? That no taint from her had passed down to me? Had I really been worried about that? No, that wasn’t it. Whatever was wrong, I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Faint tendrils of dawn were showing as I left the car and headed through the alley to the front of my building. I had my eyes down and almost walked right into him.

  “Carl? That’s your name isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Good memory.”

  In the dim light, he seemed unbelievably huge. I remembered what Scottie had said when we were waiting outside Ned Bowles’s bedroom. “How do we handle him?”

  Like a grizzly bear, I decided, and I backed away slowly. Before I’d gone two feet, I heard someone move at the other end of the alley. I had to look twice to make sure of what I was seeing. He was a perfect replica of Carl, except half a foot shorter. Carl Junior.

  I said, “Did you guys ever tell your mother you feel her pain?”

  Carl had a nervous habit of clenching and unclenching his fists. He stepped very close and said, “Better watch your manners, OK?”

  I patted him on the chest. “Ditto for you, big guy.” I knew it wasn’t a good idea to be such a smart-mouth, but the whole thing seemed so unreal. Then there was that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. That had changed, grown to something like an angry little flame.

  Carl waved to Junior—“Go.”—and Junior went past us to the street. I heard a car door open and close, and Ned Bowles walked into the alley.

  He didn’t look good, and it wasn’t the kind of thing he could fake. His eyes were puffy, and there was a twitch in one cheek where the nerves were firing at random. He had on a polo shirt and pale pants. The white belt was what made the outfit.

  “You on your way to meet Tiger Woods?” I said.

  Carl used his forearm to shove me against the wall. “Manners!” he hissed.

  Bowles shot him a look that made him back away a few steps. Then Bowles moved in front of me. “I want you to know what you’ve done. Howard Markaris was a good man.”

  “Some people would disagree with you on that.”

  He shrugged impatiently. “Then they didn’t know him the way I did. He was like family to me.”