Silhouette

by Dave Swavely

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  For Jillian,

  who may never read it

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  Ironic that I was listening to the Requiem on the night my daughter died. Dark, fiery Mozart that I could feel through my seat—Hostias or Sanctus by the time the call came.

  Lynn and I were in a box at the Carmel Symphony, and as usual I was having difficulty deciding whether to stare at the frenetic strings or swing my chair around to watch the beach and ocean through the transparent back wall. I remember that detail because I missed the first buzz of the glasses in the movement of the chair as I finally turned toward the water. And I know the waves were in front of me when Paul spoke; I could never forget that image and the accompanying thoughts, even if I tried.

  The second buzz was unmistakable as I was now sitting still, but I didn’t answer right away, because I was hit with an incomparable feeling of surprise and then dread. There were only two or three people who could have been calling me at a time like this, and it had never happened before—hence the surprise. There were very few reasons why someone would use that line, and they were all bad—thus the dread. I could almost feel the same emotions rising within Lynn when she saw me fumbling in my coat pocket for the glasses and slipping them on. Her eyes stayed fixed on me as I raised my hand and touched the top of the right arm to answer the call.

  The glasses were on audio-only because I had used them on the drive in, so I watched the spotlighted waves through the clear lenses and said hello.

  “Michael,” Paul’s voice said. “Was Lynette with D tonight?” Then a moment of silence that seemed to last forever. When I remember it, I remember that the waves had stopped moving.

  “Wh…” My throat constricted involuntarily. “What do you mean, ‘was’?” Another long silence, the waves still not moving.

  “God.” The word was stretched into several short syllables, like he was starting to cry. “There’s no easy way to do this. I’m so sorry.…” I heard Lynn say, “What?” next to me, barely audible over the din of the orchestra and choir.

  “They blew up his car, with him in it,” Paul continued. “And whoever else was with him.” I jerked to my feet, took a step away from Lynn, and then stopped. Her hand had gripped my jacket. I took it with both of mine and leaned down close to her ear.

  “Lynn,” as my mind flipped through the options, “just stay here. I’ll get back to you.” She shook her head, squinting her eyes, and started to say “What?” again. “Just wait here till you hear from me.” I said it louder, over the music. I pushed her hand down onto her armrest, as if that could keep her there, and leaped out the door and into the foyer. The big room started spinning when the light hit me, and I changed directions twice before finding the one I wanted.

  As I sprinted to the escalator, I heard my name repeated by two voices—the man’s was a soft pleading in my head and the woman’s was an angry shout from behind me. I started up the escalator, but stopped when obstructed by a wide-eyed couple in tuxedos, who were staring back at me and holding on to their drinks for dear life.

  At this point I finally gave attention to the voices. The man’s was Paul, speaking to me through the glasses. But I told him to wait, because Lynn had reached the bottom of the escalator and was catching her breath.

  “What are you doing?” she said, gasping. Then her anger turned, visibly, to fear. “You’re white as a sheet.”

  “I told you to—” I stumbled backward as the escalator ended, then bit my lip and took her hand when she arrived. As we jogged to the next escalator, I said Paul’s name.

  “Yes, Michael.”

  “Just tell me where. I want to talk to Lynn in the car.”

  “D’s city house.”

  “It’s over, right?” I asked, and stepped on another ascending stairway.

  “Yes, it’s over.”

  “Are you there?”

  “No, but I can be.”

  “Yes, please. And don’t assign anyone.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you there.” As I reached up to tap the glasses off, he said, “I’m sorry,” again. By then we had climbed the last escalator, and the roof access security booth was in view. Our fast approach startled the rent-a-cop; his hand rested on his gun as I dug the card out of my jacket.

  “Any problem, Mr. Ares?” he asked politely.

  “No, just open the door.” He did, after scanning the card, and we hurried out into the windy ocean air. The Infant was alone on the landing; we got in and took off.

  After the beeping and blinking of the air scan stopped, we sat in silence, Lynn staring at me and waiting for me to tell her what she already knew, somehow, as mothers do. When I did, she screamed and slapped at me ferociously until I got control of her hands. Then she just sobbed and kept saying, “It’s not true,” for the rest of the ride. I said, “We don’t know yet,” a few times, but it was unconvincing even to me, because somehow I did know, as if I had been there, that my little girl was gone.

  * * *

  The night was clear enough that I could see the castle from far away, as we approached the city. It was unmistakable because of its sheer size, the green-and-black checkerboard pattern of the huge rectangular lightpads on its sides, and, of course, its location. It sat atop Nob Hill, the highest point in the city, protruding thirty stories into the night sky (and almost as wide), like the medieval keep of a feudal lord overlooking the meager dwellings of his vassals. The mammoth structure had lost its wonder for me a long time ago, but on this night, for the first time, I actually resented the sight of it. If I hadn’t been working there, of course, my family would never have been at risk.

  I steered toward D’s house visually, using the big square building as a reference point, and didn’t use the windshield map until I was close, and the scan had begun protesting the unusual number of aeros congregated in the air and on the ground near the crime scene. The three or four in the air backed off conspicuously as I approached, much like a crowd of people would do to someone in my predicament. I descended to the street outside D’s gate, then locked Lynn’s door as she reached to open it.

  “You can’t just go running in there,” I said, and reached for her hand, which she pulled away.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, then added mercifully, “Right now.”

  I reached for the belt embedded in the seat behind my waist, and thought about strapping on the boas, as I would if I were working. But I was there as a father, not as an agent of BASS, so I left the guns there and opened the door, freeing Lynn at the same time. She must have gotten the point, because she stayed near her side of the car as Paul appeared out of the small crowd of public servants.
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br />   “Michael, Lynn,” he said, with a sad but somehow reassuring look on his face. He went to Lynn and hugged her before she could refuse, a gesture that seemed appropriate at first but then quickly turned awkward. So he stepped over to me and took my hand, then my shoulders, in his. There were tears in his eyes—another image I will never forget.

  “Listen, Michael,” he said. “We can do this as if you were just a civilian. You don’t need to know any more than is necessary, and you can let us handle it all. In fact, I would suggest you do that, as Dr. Gross does.” He gestured briefly with his head, and I noticed the suit standing at the edge of the crowd, watching us clinically.

  “But it’s your call, of course,” he continued. “Whatever you want.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Paul,” I said to the big man with the wet eyes. “But I’m involved, and I want to know it all. And I want him to be gone.” Glancing at the suit.

  “Yes, of course,” Paul said, and waved his hand at the man, who immediately walked away, muttering something into his glasses. “And Lynn?”

  We both looked at her, and she nodded stiffly. The pain on her face made her look like a different woman.

  “Then come with me.”

  Paul walked toward the gate and through the crowd, which parted for us like the aeros had. I stared at his big back, not wanting to see who was there or feel their eyes on me. Soon it was just the three of us and the smoldering piles in the driveway. There were familiar burning smells, plus one that you don’t encounter often. I knew what it was, and I was grateful that Lynn did not.

  These were the remains of a ground car; I knew that only because I’d seen such things before. For Lynn’s sake, Paul explained that it was the one D had used to go back and forth from the castle. His primary residence was in the Napa Valley, on a hill next to ours, but he had kept this place for when he didn’t want to make the trip up there. He used the ground car to get here for security purposes, not wanting to attract extra attention with an aero.

  I remembered that Paul had criticized D several times for the risks he created even by having the house, let alone by confining himself to the streets by not using one of the flying cars. Paul was repeating this idea now, adding, “That’s why we have the damn things.”

  “Tech been on this?” I interrupted.

  “Yes. Garland!” Another regal gesture, and the woman was in front of us.

  “Where do you want me to start, sir?” she said to me or Paul, who looked at me.

  “Victims,” I answered. She looked at Lynn, swallowed hard, and began.

  “Darien Anthony, forty-two-year-old African American male, was in the driver’s seat, with his foot on the brake. His eight-year-old son, Michael, was behind him, strapped in.” She swallowed hard again, but didn’t look at anybody. “And on her knees at the back passenger-side window was a four-year-old Caucasian female—”

  Fortunately for Garland, she didn’t have to finish, because Lynn shrieked and struck at me wildly again. I let her pound away for a few seconds, then Paul and I sandwiched her between us, immobilizing her as gently as we could until she ran out of energy. After an extended silence, her muffled voice asked Paul if he knew where the boy’s mother was these days. He said no, and if he didn’t know, nobody did. Perhaps she would surface when she heard about it on the news.

  I let Paul hold Lynn and turned to the woman again. I asked about the explosives.

  “All-switch claymore,” she said. “The perp slid it under the passenger side and dove away. The timing had to be impeccable for him to walk away, and the fibers on the driveway are untraceable. He knew what he was doing, and I have some very educated guesses about what else he knew, but I usually save them for when the sim is ready.”

  “Tell me now,” I said, but Paul moved himself and Lynn forward slightly.

  “Lynn’s had enough,” he said. “You need to take care of her. Take her home, let us finish here, and then if you still want to be involved, come in tomorrow. There are no suspects yet; there is nothing else to do tonight.”

  “I do want to go home,” Lynn said, still looking down. “But I want something first.”

  Paul’s eyes started searching the crowd, probably for Dr. Gross, but I said, “Not from those pain parasites.” So Paul suggested his father.

  “He wanted to see you right away, but he didn’t want to impose.” He looked down at Lynn, and added that the old man was the closest thing she had to a father. I thought for a moment, then nodded, and joined him in half dragging her to the aero. We made sure she was well strapped, then I lifted the aero away from the street, the scene, the crowd, the fried car, and what was left of my daughter and my best friend. My little Lynn, I called her. My little Lynette …

  I stabbed at the preset destination screen after I started shaking with sobs, and the aero bore us up the hill toward the castle, the scan beeping at the others nearby. Lynn actually put her left hand on my shoulder at one point, but she didn’t keep it there long.

  2

  When we reached the huge building, the car floated up its side, passing one after another of the lightpads, until it reached the top and landed on the roof. Most of the airborne vehicles owned by BASS entered and exited through the two open-mouth bays in the middle of the north and south sides of the building, but the roof was private access for Saul Rabin’s residence. The top floor of the castle was a penthouse apartment, but so much more: an inner sanctum, a holy of holies, a command center, a throne room, and living tomb for the king of San Francisco. And only his three princes—Paul, Darien, and I—could visit him without prior clearance.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had landed on the roof—I usually rode the external elevator when I needed to talk to the “Mayor,” as Saul was often called. It was always business, of course; I don’t think the old man ever received social calls. He had no friends, after all—just admirers and enemies. Except maybe for Lynn, who was one of the many abandoned children whom Mrs. Rabin had encountered and rescued during her heyday of philanthropy, before the disease had crippled and killed her seven years ago.

  Saul’s wife had sponsored thousands through her posh Presidio orphanage, but Lynn was the only one Saul ever saw or spoke to, because I met and married her the year after the Mrs. died. The old man had never met Lynn previously, but ever since he’d found out where she had been raised, he had taken an interest in her that was so slight, it would not normally have been noteworthy. It consisted mostly of asking to see her when she visited the castle. But this trickle of affection for Lynn seemed like an avalanche of love when compared to the icy distance between him and everyone else.

  Paul landed right behind us and the three of us entered a nearby elevator, inside which a thin red light crawled across our bodies and some hidden hardware confirmed our DNA, brain waves, heart rates, weaponry, and whatever else was necessary to keep the old man safe. I didn’t understand much about how the security system worked, but I knew it did. I had been the second man on the scene when one of the tunnel squatters had managed to enter the elevator with an insanely expensive black-market pick, and I had seen the state his body was in after the red line had reappeared on his chest, much thicker and much redder, because the lasers had nearly cut him in half.

  No such carnage occurred here, though it would have been a welcome relief from what I was feeling. Instead, after we felt the elevator drop slightly, the door swished open, and as we walked through it to a small anteroom, the slightly different smell and feeling of the artificial atmosphere were evident. Saul was as secretive about the purpose for this as he was about most things; I never knew for sure whether it was a treatment, an immunization, a life-extension technique, or what.

  At the other side of the small chamber, another door slid open to reveal our benefactor, standing in the middle of the dark apartment with his huge Chinese bodyguard planted just behind him, as usual. I felt a grave sense of déjà vu, as if I had known from the first day I’d met him that some tragedy like this would eve
ntually befall me, and I would end up standing here before him, feeling wounded and angry, but also guilty for being his accomplice.

  “Michael, Lynn,” Saul said, the same words Paul had spoken, but the differences reflected the differences between the two men. Paul’s younger voice had been musical and soothing; his father’s aging one was cracked and ugly. Paul’s tone had oozed genuine sincerity; the old man’s sounded more like a barked order. Perhaps Saul had seen too much, and carried too much, in his almost eighty years, to be moved by what was happening to us.

  I stared at him, wondering about his apparent indifference, studying the thick, lightning-bolt scar stretching from temple to cheek on the right side of his face, and the gang of thinner wrinkles surrounding it. Physically, the older Rabin was similar to the younger, but with gray hair, less muscle, the scar, and a slump in his still-broad shoulders. I also took in the bald, brown mountain of Asian bodyguard behind him, which made the two Rabins’ considerable height and bulk seem bantam by comparison. Min never spoke, and seldom seemed to move, let alone show any emotion.

  Because I wasn’t moving myself, Paul stepped in front of me and relieved me of my usual duty, escorting Lynn closer to the old man so that he could take her hand and contemplate her approvingly. He stared at her for a moment, but didn’t wear the customary proud smile this time, and when he said, “I’m sorry … both of you,” he did sound like he meant it. I also realized that he had called me by my name instead of “Bond,” “James,” or “007,” as he often did, while wearing another small but different kind of smile. I had grown up in England, still had a slight accent, and that character’s adventures were reminiscent of mine during the Taiwan crisis.

  “My son said you wanted something,” Saul said to Lynn, who closed her eyes, exhaled, and nodded. Then she opened her mouth slightly. The old man lifted his hand and placed a tiny disk on the tip of her tongue, which she pressed against the back of her teeth until it dissolved, then swallowed. She asked how long, and he said a few minutes.