She lifted her eyes to his. “My husband shot himself. I don’t understand why. If you can help answer any questions, it will do me much more good than sympathy.”
He smiled again. “All right then.”
He wheeled from his desk and turned to a wall safe where he began to turn the combination tumbler.
“Darby spoke to you?” Paige asked to his back. She could not recall Darby ever mentioning this small-town lawyer. “You knew him?”
“On both counts, I’m afraid not,” Hargrove replied. His voice was muffled by his body. “The instructions were in the letter taped to the package.”
“But why...”
“Why me?”
Paige nodded yes, then realized Hargrove could not see her, so she repeated her answer aloud.
“Good question,” Hargrove said. The last tumbler clicked into place. He sighed with satisfaction, leaned forward, and fumbled inside the safe, then straightened. When he wheeled back to the desk, she saw the package on his lap. A heavily taped thick manila envelope with a smaller white envelope attached to the outside.
“A manuscript?” she guessed.
“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it.” He placed it on the desk between them. Paige’s hands quivered in her lap, but she did not reach for it.
“Let me read you the letter,” Hargrove said. He paused to polish his glasses with a plain white handkerchief he pulled from a desk drawer. Spectacles back on his nose, he reached for the package, pulled a letter from the smaller envelope, and read slowly with the manner of a bedside doctor.
“January 2 –”
“Five months ago?” Paige interrupted.
“Yes.”
Five months. Had he been planning his death for that long too?
“Franklin Hargrove, attorney-at-law, et cetera, et cetera. Dear Mr. Hargrove, three years back, I overheard a colleague, Bill Morely, mention your name. I remembered it because Morely was impressed with your honest evaluation against a house purchase in Cedar Key.” Hargrove stopped and looked over his glasses at Paige. “Very minor, I can assure you. I had to search my files for Morely’s name to discover what Darby meant. It was a recommendation against purchase that cost me a chance at title registration fees, and I’d waived the initial consulting.”
He peered back at the letter and resumed. “...honest evaluation against a house purchase in Cedar Key, and I am trusting it reflects your integrity in all matters. For reasons too lengthy to mention, I cannot afford to deliver this package to any lawyer within my regular association of friends and can only direct this package to someone who cannot be traced.”
Franklin Hargrove pointed at the postmark on the manila envelope. “He mailed this from New York. Was he afraid someone was watching him in Clearwater?”
“He was in New York last January.” Paige slowly shook her head. “Except for that, all of this is new to me. And very troubling.”
Franklin turned back to the letter. “You will find enclosed a retaining check of five thousand dollars. I wish for you to keep this package in trust, unopened. Should I die – and I would request you subscribe to the Clearwater Times to review the obituary column on a weekly basis – contact Paige Stephens at the voice-mail number enclosed and deliver this package in person. I presume the retainer will cover any inconveniences. Yours sincerely, Darby Stephens.”
“I see,” Paige said after some thought. She did not see. The list of questions she’d written on the motel stationery swirled through her mind. The mysterious nature of this package easily suggested it held many of the answers. But did she truly want them?
“I see,” she repeated, slower, as if she were daydreaming.
Franklin filled the silence by reaching for his pipe. He tapped the old ashes into a large glass ashtray and filled the pipe bowl.
“I’m afraid I’m too set in my ways to ask if you mind whether I smoke,” he said as he lit the pipe. “However, if the smoke bothers you, I invite you to open an office window.”
Paige shook her head. The package. It was there in front of her. All she had to do was take it.
Franklin drew on his pipe. The aroma was cherry wood, and the smoke swirled around his face. He spoke with the stem clenched between his teeth. “Your husband did not know that my wheel-chair made it next to impossible for me to deliver this to you. Other than that, I have followed his instructions as wished.”
“Of course,” Paige murmured. She stared at the package. It hadn’t escaped her that five thousand dollars was an extremely large retainer. Some of the words of Darby’s last conversation echoed in her mind. You get paid, what, a half-million a year? That’s for expertise. Not my conscience. Five thousand was peanuts – no peanut shells – compared to five hundred thousand. What would she find out about her husband’s secret life in this package? How much of her remaining love for him would survive?
“Perhaps I may help further,” Franklin Hargrove was saying. “For whatever reason, it appears your husband went to great lengths to remove this package from his normal business and personal circles. I suggest you review the contents here. By asking for any legal advice here, you, too, will be staying out of those normal circles.”
Paige was hardly capable of any decision at this point, so she nodded and reached for the package. “May I borrow scissors or a knife?”
Hargrove opened a drawer, found scissors, and pushed them across the desk.
Paige watched her fingers as she cut through the top of the package. It seemed her hands were working separately from the rest of her; she could have been watching a stranger open the envelope for her.
She pulled a sheaf of papers loose. A quick glance showed them to be laser printed on plain white paper. Numbers in columns on some sheets. Business report format on others. The top sheet, however, was filled with familiar handwriting. Darby’s.
Paige set the pages on Hargrove’s desk and rubbed her eyes with both hands. She fought for the strength to reach for the top sheet.
Hargrove studied her face. “Perhaps I should leave you alone for several minutes.”
He wheeled himself away from the desk without waiting for her answer. The door shut quietly behind him, and the squeak of his tires continued down the hardwood floors of the hallway.
Finally, she reached for the handwritten letter.
***
Paige,
Pray there is no God who waits for me on the other side of death. Because as I write, I know you will only read this letter in the event of my death. I am afraid of death, especially with the price I have paid for my soul. Yet I am afraid of life, for each day the burden for me becomes more terrifying.
I ask myself, what should these, my final words to you, say? An apology for putting myself into a situation that has led to my murders Or, as I daily wrestle with the thought of ending my life, an apology for removing myself from you and the world? How could any apology seem adequate?
Should I try to explain instead – to justify – the course of events leading me to this letter? But how does one justify the Institute? Let me only say it began with a small step, and that each following step led me to steeper and steeper slopes, so that now I feel as if I am plunging without control. The steps you will see on the following pages, for at one time I believed that keeping separate documentation on TechnoGen and the Institute would protect me.
I was wrong. Instead, I became prey for a psychopath who used each of my successive sins against me, until I became as helpless as any insect in a web.
I have imposed upon you my death. I have no right to impose upon you further. Yet I must.
The rest of this package is a printout of the information that will stop the monster and the Institute. If you need the disks, you can find them. They are not enclosed, for I want them as a backup for this package.
Both these sheets and the disks contain all I know, and all that I have guessed, about the operations.
I have thought of having this released to the FBI or the media, yet I could not unleash the
storm upon you unawares. You, then, read through it first. You judge me, and you decide what to do with the package. After you have read it, you will understand what I am asking, for as my wife, you will be the one to face a public hell during trial by media. Yet I beg that you stop the 1nstitute, an action I am ashamed to say I could not face for how it would crucify me.
Remember me not as the person you will see in the next pages, but remember the best of our love, especially our first honeymoon night together.
***
Paige laid her head down on her arms and wept on the desk. How long, she could not tell. When she raised her head again, Franklin Hargrove was across from her, holding out a fresh handkerchief.
“I can also offer you tea,” he said, “or even a hand to hold, except I’m afraid in this political climate you might file a sexual harassment lawsuit.”
She tried a brave smile at his attempted joke.
“I’ll take the hanky now,” she said. “No tea. And a rain check on hand holding.”
“Legal advice?” he asked. “I can assure you it has been amply paid for.”
“Not yet. I haven’t been able to read beyond his letter.”
“Later perhaps? You are welcome to this office for as long as you need.”
“Not today,” Paige said. She stood. “I don’t know when I’ll finish.”
Hargrove wheeled to the side of his desk as she gathered the papers and weakly pushed them back into the envelope.
He followed her to the door of the office where Paige drew a deep breath and exhaled. “I may return.”
“You are welcome any time.” He paused as he looked at the envelope under her arm. “Wait a moment, will you?”
Paige nodded. He went to a filing cabinet, searched briefly, and returned with a large, unused envelope.
“A personal quirk,” he said. “Ever since college and a history course that dealt with the war between the states.”
Paige smiled politely.
“Yes,” he said. “The story’s probably apocryphal, but it has stayed with me. At a crucial part of the war, General Lee made a daring move – split his army into three and began to invade the north. Had he shown a decisive victory, many of the European powers would have backed the South for the rest of the war. One of Lee’s couriers misplaced a few papers containing his orders for the upcoming battles. The battle-plan papers were passed along until they reached McClellan, the Union general, and Lee was forced into a stalemate.”
Paige’s question was plain on her face.
Franklin Hargrove chuckled. “Bear with me; it’s one of my favorite stories and far too much time has passed since I was able to lecture a new assistant with it. You see, Mrs. Stephens, had the South won that battle and the substantial European resources it would have gained with victory, this would be an entirely different country. The South would have kept its independence, and we, no doubt, would be a pack of petty, squabbling nation-states all guarding small borders, not a unified major power.”
He took the envelope from her arms and pulled the thick sheaf of papers loose. Then he placed the papers into the large envelope and sealed it. “There,” he said. “Just like new.”
He noticed her amusement.
“Yes. I’m fussy,” he told her. “But think of it this way. One set of misplaced papers drastically changed the history of the modern world. If the United States hadn’t risen to become a whole greater than the sum of its parts, World War II, for example, would have become Hitler’s playground. No space race for the moon. I could give you dozens of examples.”
He waved his forefinger at her in good-natured admonishment. “In short, Mrs. Stephens – and this is the heavy moral I always drew for my young legal assistants – you can never tell how important a piece of paper might be. To a country. Or to a client. Which is why I’ve made it a rule from the beginning never to let loose Files or opened envelopes leave this office.”
Franklin Hargrove handed the sealed package back to her. “Now I feel much better. Call me an outdated, stubborn old man, but you never know when an ounce of prevention saves you from a pound of cure.”
***
Peter Zwaan and Henry L. Mosse could have been mistaken for a comedy team acting out a hospital skit. Zwaan wore ridiculously small green scrubs; his sleeves were so short each movement around the operating table showed six inches of his wrist. Standing as he was at the tray of surgical instruments, he dwarfed Mosse. It only added to the surreal quality for Zwaan to obediently hand Mosse a requested scalpel.
Had there been an audience, however, a zoomed-in shot of the dark-skinned patient on the operating table would have immediately dispelled any laughter. The gaping cavern in the woman’s side was not a special effect, but real. As was the blood on Mosse’s thin rubber gloves. As were the glistening organs beneath the operating lights.
Henry L. Mosse tried not to think about what he did on his hundred-thousand-dollar house calls, but when he did, as would inevitably happen during post-cocaine blues, he comforted himself by telling himself he was innocent, he had no choice, that Zwaan was completely to blame for all of this.
The first time Mosse had stepped into this room, Zwaan had pointed to a man on the same table, equally dark-skinned, face up, strapped to the table and obviously terrified.
“Your patient,” Zwaan had said.
“The simple operation?” Mosse asked. “You told me I would be paid for a simple operation.”
“Kidney removal.”
Mosse had laughed, actually laughed out loud. Back then, of course, he did not understand Zwaan.
“Kidney removal? You’re nuts. That would take a skilled team of doctors and nurses. A proven anesthetist. I can’t do this alone.”
“As you requested, we have every surgical instrument you might require.”
“I said a skilled team. Years of combined experience. Kidney removal is not the simple operation you promised. I don’t care what machinery you have in here, I can’t do this alone. “
“You have me,” Zwaan said. “I learn fast.”
Henry L. Mosse laughed again. Normally, his lack of height prevented him from such arrogance, especially in the presence of such an eerie giant, but Mosse was in his element. He was the expert, Zwaan the layman, and Mosse had already squirreled the first half of his cash payment in a security box at a local bank. He could walk out now and still be tens of thousands of dollars ahead.
“You don’t understand,” Mosse told Zwaan. “Without a team, this patient will die.”
Zwaan had smiled in a manner so chilling that Mosse had his first insight into his precarious position. “No, Doctor, you don’t understand. The patient is not expected to live.”
Mosse gaped at Zwaan.
“Furthermore,” Zwaan said, “you may notice the video camera so discreetly placed in the ceiling corner nearest you.”
Mosse noticed.
“That camera will record the method you choose to end your patient’s life before you remove his kidneys,” Zwaan continued. “As a doctor, you should find it simple.”
“I will not do it,” Mosse said.
“Self-righteousness does not suit you. Not a doctor who on two different occasions bungled routine surgeries because of cocaine addiction. Not a doctor now in general practice because his partners threatened to initiate malpractice proceedings unless you swore never to return to the operating table. No, Dr. Mosse, it was not coincidence that I approached you.”
“My medical background does not include deliberate murder. I am many things but I am –”
“– three times divorced, twice investigated for your private bedside manners with female patients, and willing to sell your soul for a week’s worth of cocaine.” Zwaan had allowed an emotion to creep into his rasping voice – contempt. “You are a weak, spineless excuse for a human being. You won’t find it difficult to remove this man’s kidney.”
Mosse opened his mouth to protest.
“Neither, Doctor,” Zwaan interrupted, “will
you decline further invitations to our little Institute. I predict once you survive today’s task, your queasiness will disappear.”
“Survive?”
“Certainly, for today, you face a simple choice. Operate on this man, or have him operate on you. Either way, I’ll have my kidney.”
Zwaan smiled dreamily as if he were envisioning the switch.
“Your patient does not speak English, but I will have an interpreter explain to him what must be done. From where he comes, it is very common to butcher cattle and pigs. Messy as it might be, and inexperienced with humans as he might be, I'm sure he’ll salvage at least one of your kidneys.”
Zwaan broadened his smile. “Your patient, though, will have a slightly more difficult task. For he will not have the luxury of working with an immobile body. If you refuse to operate, I will ensure that you are alive when he operates on you.”
At those quiet words, and seeing the demonic joy in Zwaan’s smile, Mosse fought to control his bladder.
During the first operation at the Institute, Mosse had kept his head bowed, not necessarily from shame, but because it gave him the illusion that he was safe from the eye of the camera.
Zwaan had been right about many things, including Mosse’s frequent returns to the Institute.
And Mosse did discover it possible for the queasiness to disappear as he cut out his own soul along with the organs of unwilling donors. All it took to push back the hollowness was to pretend it didn’t exist and to feed it with more and more cocaine and the pursuit of another future ex-wife.
Chapter 6
Sunday, May 19
You're sure this is the entire list from Wednesday?”
“Del,” Louise said, “you’ve asked twice already, What exactly’s got you to the point where you let your omelet collect flies?”
Del frowned and absently waved at his plate. It was the only disadvantage of brunch on the veranda. Bugs. The sunshine, crisp air, and his twenty-mile view of brown-and-pink hues along the valley of the Rio Grande, however, more than made up for the flies. And it was only once every couple of weeks that their shifting schedules gave them the luxury of a shared Sunday morning. Usually at this point, Del and Louise had finished small talk. Louise would be buried in the New York Times she went into town early to get; Del would be pouring more coffee into a belly stuffed with ham, eggs, and corn pone and leafing through boat magazines, and when Louise asked, as she always did, about the practicality of looking at boats here in the middle of mountains and desert, he’d reply it made as much sense as reading about plays and operas on the East Coast, and they’d both grunt neutrally and get back to reading.
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