“Sorry.”
“No. It’s not your problem. As you can imagine, everyone here is very upset.”
“I’m sure.”
“And yet you still want to work here?”
“Who wouldn’t want to work at the next Genentech?” I smiled. “Which is not going to happen. Did you know Dan Missoula went to Harvard?”
“Of course. So did I.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Dan and I sing fight songs over gels. You know, Ten thousand men of Harvard want vict’ry today, for they know that o’er old Eli, fair Harvard holds sway.”
“I don’t know, actually. I went to Penn State. Hail to the Lion, Loyal and True.” She smiled. “Okay, so we didn’t have a lot of poets up there in State College. We would never use the word ‘o’er.’ We shot people who used the word ‘o’er.’”
“You’re a pretty funny guy, Dr. McCormick. Weird that Paul never mentioned you.”
Weird that Alex thought it weird. Why would “just a friend” talk to her about a guy who freefell out of his life ten years before?
I stood outside Tetra, outside the glass building’s glass doors, and watched the femme fatale A-Rod disappear behind the security turnstiles. What an odd and thoroughly disappointing day, I thought. And what a naive and utterly stupid strategy. Apply for a job and insinuate yourself into Tetra’s culture? Question all his colleagues more effectively than the police had? Get real, Dr. McCormick.
I needed to leave this place. Find a job in Philadelphia or Boston or call up CDC, hat in hand, and beg to get in there again. Or even, God forbid, make a real effort to find a job in the Bay Area. Brooke was right: I don’t do well without a job, without direction. And with my hopes dashed of getting anything—anything at all—out of Tetra, I had neither. Short of joining the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department, I didn’t know what else I could do for Murph.
But I could do something for my soul. There had to be a bar close by.
I crossed the lot to the Corolla, got in, closed the door, and started the monster. But I didn’t go forward; I didn’t even put the car in gear.
As if materialized out of nothing, a man appeared, leaning over the front of the Corolla, hands resting lightly on its hood.
He was of Asian descent, wearing sunglasses, a suit that cost more than my car, and a broad smile. I couldn’t put an age on him.
He stood there like a strong man daring me to put the car in gear and try—just try—to run him over. The smile didn’t change, the gaze didn’t waver.
I didn’t waver either. Instead of stepping out of the car, asking the guy what he was doing, who he was, why he was daring me to move, telling him he was leaving handprints on an exquisite twenty-year-old paint job, I held the gaze. It was clear this was a standoff, and I’d be damned if I was going to blink. It was also clear I had no idea what to do.
During our quality time with one another—two grown men making googly-eyes at each other—I noticed a large mark on his neck. Black and red ink, crawling up the side of his neck and disappearing around the ear. A tattoo. Looked like the end of a dragon’s tail. Fabulous, I thought, some Yakuza fuck is carjacking me for my classic wheels. Maybe he was one of those California fast-and-furious types who had a hankering to redo an old Toyota.
But he didn’t carjack me. He didn’t even move for a good forty seconds. When he did, he simply broke the stare—no nod, no words, no threats—and stepped away from the car, walked purposefully across the lot. I got out of the car and watched him. I had no trouble imagining him moving across the hardwood floors of Paul Murphy’s home, the cries of children and screams of adults bouncing off the walls.
A big black Lincoln Navigator sat waiting for him—the same type of vehicle I’d seen on my run yesterday. I couldn’t see the driver. My threatening friend made no attempt to hide where he was going, sauntering across the tarmac like he owned the freaking place. One last look at me, that same cocksure smirk on his face. He stepped into the SUV, and the two men motored off at a slow, deliberate pace. It was like they wanted me to feel how little they cared for me, like they wanted me to know they could find me anywhere and squash me like a bug.
And I had the sick feeling in my gut that they could.
24
TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES OF INCONSIDERATE driving later—dipping into parking lots, quick turns here and there—I felt I was probably free of any tail. Only then did I pull my car into the parking lot of Mid-Peninsula Regional Gun Club. As luck would have it, Dale Connolly was behind the desk.
“You’re the doc, right? Friend of that big guy.”
I wondered if he knew the big guy was dead.
“You have a good memory,” I said.
“Helps in this business. We get questions about some of the people who come through here, know what I mean?” He looked at me as if I might be someone he’d have to answer questions about. Or not. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
“I need a gun,” I said.
“We have guns.”
“I see that.”
“What do you need it for?”
As a first-time gun buyer, I was a little nervous. I mean, I didn’t want to tell him I needed it to drill holes through the engine blocks of big SUVs, did I?
“Uh, for protection.”
“We got those. What are you thinking about?”
I didn’t know. So Dale brought out enough small arms to outfit an insurgency. I settled on a Sig Sauer P229 semiautomatic. It felt the best in my hands and, according to Dale, had become the standard weapon for the U.S. Coast Guard and Homeland Security.
“This, Doc, is the weapon of choice for the War on Terror.”
If it’s good enough to protect the land of the free, it should be good enough to protect me, I thought. I asked him if he had a demo model I could shoot.
Of course he did.
So I spent the next forty minutes plugging away at silhouettes. Now, if I could only have gotten them to put some fancy Revo shades on the target, give it a neck tattoo, then we’d be in business.
I was becoming reasonably comfortable with my new toy, though I’m not sure my aim was improving that much. Still, I managed to perforate quite a few vital areas on the paper.
“I’ll take it,” I said to Dale, after I got back to the counter.
“You have a basic firearms safety certificate?” he asked. He saw the look on my face.
“You’ll need one of those before you pick up the weapon. Here.” He handed me a Xerox with a list of places where I could get the certificate. “You want to carry it, you got to go to the sheriff’s, get a special license to carry.”
This was becoming complicated. I was a healer, for God’s sake, I wasn’t about to go blast some guy who slept with my wife. “Okay,” I said, and I handed over my credit card and driver’s license. “So if I get the certification, I can get the gun tomorrow?”
Dale smiled at me with a big set of yellowed teeth. “Where you from, Doc?”
“Georgia.”
“Well, my friend, this ain’t Georgia. California’s got a ten-day waiting period for handguns. I know, I know. The flipping gestapo in this damn state wants the gangs and thugs to have weapons, but not good citizens like yourself. Really burns my butt.”
“That’s not soon enough,” I grumbled.
“You’re darn tootin’ it’s not soon enough, but those liberal, gestapo, tree-hugging, fascist—” The tangled, Limbaugh-soaked logic poured forth from the flapping lips of Dale Connolly.
Politics aside, gun control was throwing a serious wrench into my plans for self-protection.
Dale Connolly ended with “Wish I was in Georgia sometimes.”
Me, too, I thought. I looked longingly at the Sig Sauer. “Cancel the order.”
Dale Connolly shrugged, silently acknowledging those tree tugging fools who stripped us of our rights to mow down our enemies. I said, “And get me one box—no, two boxes—of the .357 Magnums.”
He went to the case behind him and rem
oved two boxes of ammunition, placed them on the counter in front of me. He kept his bloodshot eyes fixed on me. “Don’t do nothing stupid, Doc. They got real penalties in this state for firearms violations.”
“For my mother,” I said, handing over my credit card and scooping up the shells. “She’s got a helluva raccoon problem.”
25
THE DRIVE TO MURPH’S TOOK almost an hour, twice as long as it should have, as I shucked and jived my way south, trying to lose anyone who did not want to be lost, someone I couldn’t even see. Driving like this was becoming a pain in the ass, as well as a pain in the wallet, considering gasoline prices.
Strange how an hour before, I was ready to give it all up, to throw up my hands because the next steps were so obscure and hidden. Be careful what you wish for, right? Now, whatever it was had come to me. And I wanted to be ready for it.
At Laurel Road, I pulled up the long drive half expecting to see the area still choked with emergency vehicles. Fortunately, the place was deserted. The cops had left only fluttering crime-scene tape.
At the front door, I glanced at the notice threatening jail for a very long time if I entered the house. I reached through the lattice of yellow tape to find the door, predictably, locked. That would have been too easy.
I spent the next few minutes pawing around the front stoop, under the doormat, under the potted plants, on top of the beams that ran under the awning. No luck. I stepped off the porch, hunched down, and made my way through the dirt and rocks of the garden that bordered the house. The last thing I wanted to do was break through a window, but I was in serious violation of some law here and would be in violation of another soon enough; broken glass would just be icing.
As it happened, I didn’t have to smash a window. Next to some succulent-type bush, I found a little plaster rabbit. On its underside was a small door that pivoted to reveal a key. I took the key, replaced the rabbit, and unlocked the front door.
Squeezing through the yellow tape, I stepped into the house. It was too quiet, like a morgue. My dress shoes—I was still in my interview uniform—made a racket on the floor. All I needed now was the ghost of Paul Murphy to come lumbering at me like Hamlet’s dad, spouting something about spilt blood. I would have wet myself, then told him I was working on the revenge thing.
On the way down the hall, I passed by Drew’s, the boy’s, bedroom. The mattress was gone and the room smelled of cleaning fluids. Barry Bonds was still there, looking up toward the ceiling for his homer. How scared do you get, I wonder, if you’re five years old and a man puts a knife to your throat? How frightened are you when you realize your parents were mistaken all along and the monsters are real?
I pushed the sight of the dead kids out of my head, and kept walking to Murph’s bedroom. The scene had been cleaned up, not too well, I noticed. There was still blood caked in the cracks between the floorboards. The bed had been stripped, and brownish stains marred the fabric of the mattress.
And the goddamned images would not leave me alone: the tongue on the floor, the ears next to it. The dead wife loosing her last breath…
My phone rang and I jumped.
Okay, so I wouldn’t need a ghost to make me wet myself.
“We need to talk,” Brooke said.
“I can’t right now,” I said.
“Not now. Later. What are you doing?”
At that point, what I was doing was walking over to the wardrobe, examining it. Heavy dark wood. Chinese designs all over it. About seven feet tall, I guessed.
Suddenly, I remembered Brooke’s reproach about growing up and felt irritation fill me like a hot liquid. “I’m kicking around in the sandbox,” I said. “That’s what children do.”
“I’m sorry about that comment.”
The hot feeling passed. “You were angry,” I said.
I ran my hand along the wood of the wardrobe, opened the doors. It was filled with pressed dress shirts that would likely never be worn again.
“I was angry. I still am. But more than that, I’m worried,” Brooke said. “I’m very worried about you, Nate.”
I looked at the bottom of the wardrobe, a few pairs of shoes in it. One was the pair that Murph had worn in the café, on the first day I’d seen him in ten years.
“There’s nothing to be worried about,” I lied.
“Nate, whatever you’re doing, please stop. You’re all caught up in revenging Paul. You’re losing your head over it. We’ll talk and—”
“I miss you. I’ll call when I can.” I pulled the phone from my cheek and held the End button until the power went off. I looked at the dead phone for a moment.
“Damn it,” I said, and left the bedroom. I walked down the hallway, past the kids’ bedrooms, to the front door. I stopped there.
Brooke was right. This was the time to get off the merry-go-round. That’s what the jerk in the parking lot was telling me, wasn’t it? Get out now, Doc, while you still can suck a breath. Get out now and make sure you and yourn are safe. Protect the womenfolk. Save your ass. The logic seemed irrefutable.
But what, then, did that make me? How did you go about your life—getting a job, getting hitched, tending your garden, tending your flock—knowing that you let the ball drop for a guy who, even then, was reaching a hand down from his celestial haunt to clasp your shoulder and remind you what a strident twit you’d been for most of the past decade?
“Damn it,” I said again.
And what did that mean for “the really bad stuff” that Murph was caught up in? I’d spent much of my life trying to help people. Maybe I didn’t care too much about people, as Brooke insisted, but I sure as hell tried to help them. And I didn’t for one moment believe that “the really bad stuff” stopped with Paul Murphy.
And, importantly, I didn’t believe it started with him. He’d been trying to do the right thing, I knew that in my bones. And somehow that killed him. I could not turn away from this.
In the end, you do what you have to do.
I don’t know how long I stood at the door to Paul Murphy’s house, having it out with myself. In the end, though, I won. I also lost. Put that in your philosophical pipe and smoke it.
I walked back to the bedroom.
To get to the top of the wardrobe, I found a chair and pulled it across the room. It was a sturdy thing, the same one, in fact, in which Murph was murdered. I could see the gouged wood and scratches where the handcuffs had torn off the finish. Revenge, Brooke had said. Bad word. Justice. Better.
Climbing onto the chair, I slid my hand over the top of the wardrobe, collecting a colony of dust bunnies on my palm. Then I hit something metal, flat. The key. Murph was right, no way a kid would be able to climb up here.
Key in hand, I went to the nightstand with the door in it. A Thomas Friedman book sat on the top, the cover flap sunk somewhere in its middle, marking the last page Murph ever read. I opened the book, read a few sentences about the need to bolster the sciences, and felt sadness wash over me. We’d once had a scientist in Paul Murphy. All that brainpower, all those years of training, all that determination to improve people’s lives, had drained out and coagulated on the floor.
Inside the nightstand were a few books sandwiched next to a metal box.
There, I found what I was looking for: the gun case for Murph’s recently purchased .357. There, too, was a manila envelope and a box of ammunition. Strange. But first things first. I opened the pistol case and took out the Distinguished Combat Magnum, looking something other than distinguished. I spun the cylinder. The gun was loaded, ready to use. But that night, the key had been too far away, or Murph had been too slow, or any number of things.
The gun went back into its case. Now, to the envelope, which I expected to contain warranty and liability information for the weapon. It did not.
Ho-ly shit.
26
INSIDE WERE TEN COLOR PICTURES, close-ups of faces. Eight female, two male. The pictures, to put it mildly, were grotesque.
Holding them b
y their edges so as not to clutter them with my prints, I spread the photos across the bare mattress.
With the glossies fanned out in front of me, I stared, sickened, trying desperately to see the human features beneath the explosions of flesh that marred these faces. There were tumors—or what looked like tumors—everywhere, so that each face looked like a grisly latex mask. One woman had eruptions through her face, as if a hundred spiders had laid a hundred egg sacks under the skin. A golf-ball mass of flesh near her right eye had begun to ulcerate, leaving a red, glistening crater. What looked like a stick of melting butter sludged over her cheek.
Another woman had a lime-sized tumor at her nasolabial fold, the crease between the side of the nose and the corner of the mouth which is euphemistically called a “smile line.” The tumor lifted the flesh of her left upper lip, splitting the skin and twisting her mouth into a sneer.
In another, a man’s eyes were pushed shut by cauliflower masses on both lids. Another woman had actually lost an eye; the tumor seemed to have invaded the orbit and eroded into the sclera. And another, and another, and another. Ten, all together.
Something slammed.
Quickly, I slid the pictures back into the envelope. Doing so, I noticed a small jump drive in the bottom. I fished it out, stuck it into my pocket. Then I shoved the envelope into my pants. The gun? Loaded, good. I stuck that in the small of my back, under my belt, under the jacket. I pulled my belt tight, jamming the metal deep into my sacrum.
I closed the empty pistol case, shoved it into the nightstand. The key went into my pocket.
Feeling like I was about to spill weapons and photos out the legs of my pants, I walked to one of the kids’ rooms, pushed the curtain aside, and peered out toward the driveway. No Navigator. No machine-gun–toting, shades-wearing refugee from a John Woo film. Just a sandy-haired white man and a brunette woman, looking confused and a little worried, speaking to each other, scanning the area, fixing on my car.
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