Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories, Volume 3

by Jeffery Deaver

  Oh, this was bad…this was terrible. It was the kind of scandal that could bring down governments.

  It would certainly end his career. And many others’.

  It might very likely end the process of black sites altogether, or at least set them back years.

  He thought about calling together the staff and telling them to destroy all the incriminating papers and to flee.

  But why bother? he reflected. It was too late now.

  Peterson decided there was nothing to do but accept his fate. Though he did call the guards and tell them to arrange to have Jacques Bennabi transferred back home. The enemy had won. And, in an odd way, Peterson respected that.

  “And make sure he arrives unharmed.”

  “Yessir.”

  Peterson sat back, hearing in his thoughts the words of the slim man from Washington.

  The weapon…it can do quote “significant” damage…

  Except that there was no weapon. It was all a fake.

  Yet, with another sour laugh, Peterson decided this wasn’t exactly true.

  There was a goddamn weapon. It wasn’t nuclear or chemical or explosive but in the end was far more effective than any of those and would indeed do significant damage.

  Thinking about his prisoner’s refusal to speak during his captivity, thinking, too, on the devastating paragraphs of the reporter’s article, the colonel reflected: The weapon was silence. The weapon was words.

  The weapon was truth.

  RECONCILIATION

  RANSOM FELLS BELIEVED from a young age that he disliked his father, if not hated the man.

  And was all the angrier when his dad up and died unexpectedly nearly a decade ago, before Ransom could find out for certain who the man really was and confront him. Maybe to sever ties forever, maybe to reconcile.

  But, talk about second chances, at age thirty-nine Ransom Fells coincidentally found himself in circumstances that did indeed let him learn a bit more about the man.

  And at the moment, he was now reflecting on these facts and thinking, too: Be careful what you wish for. Be real careful about that.

  Under a gray sky, he was sitting alone in his rental Camry in a city park in Indiana. He peered absently through the windshield at a splashy army of September trees surrounding an impromptu softball field, laid out sloppily by some local teams. The lot and park were empty.

  He considered again what he’d just learned about his father, things that he never could have imagined.

  And he considered, too, the bigger question they raised: Could a death—violent death—ultimately (and ironically) lead to something positive, a reconciliation of sorts?

  Ransom absently touched his chin and felt stubble, turned the rearview mirror his way and gazed back at his lean face, small buttons of gray eyes, hawkish nose, full head of businessman’s neatly trimmed black hair. Yes, he’d forgotten to shave. Unlike him. He flipped the mirror back, stretched and lifted his coffee cup to his lips, realized suddenly he’d ordered the cup four or five hours ago. Ice cold. Still he swallowed the sip and took another.

  His father.

  Impossible.

  And yet…

  * * *

  YESTERDAY, FOR HIS JOB, Ransom Fells came to this area, northern Indiana, on the cusp of the country’s terminally ill Industrial Belt. Chesterton was about ten miles from where he’d grown up and twenty from Gary. This was an area of the United States to which Ransom had never traveled since he left home at age fourteen with his mother and younger brother to be near her relatives in Virginia, after his parents’ divorce.

  He’d had a few chances to come here for business but declined. Another man at GKS Technology generally handled this part of the country.

  And as for a pleasure trip to these parts? No way in hell. There were a few remaining family members nearby, but they were indistinct, distant planets in the solar system of relations.

  But he wouldn’t have visited even if he’d known them better. No, the reason he was a stranger was Stanford Fells, his father.

  Coming here would remind Ransom way too much of those gray Saturday afternoons in the fall, when many of his high school classmates would go to the local football games with their dads or—unimaginable to Ransom—to Soldier Field to see the Bears, on season tickets! Stan had taken him to one baseball game, the White Sox, and they’d left at the seventh inning stretch, because his father figured they’d seen enough. “Seven’s good as nine. You wait till the end, takes you forever to get out of the lot.”

  Coming here would remind Ransom that Stan never bothered to tell his son anything about his job as a service tech for industrial power systems, which seemed really neat to the boy, who would’ve loved to see some of the factories Stan worked in. He never met any of his father’s work buddies, never went to barbecues with their families, like the other kids talked about.

  Coming here would remind him of Stan silently enduring holiday dinners for forty minutes or so and leaving before dessert and going down to the Ironworks Tavern—yeah, even on Christmas. Preferring the Ironworks to playing with the new football his son had received as a present or helping put together the train set or playing the computer game, even though it came with two controllers.

  Coming here would remind him of Ransom and his little brother—Mom dozing—glancing at the curtains of their bungalow when they heard the whooshing sound of a car approaching, lights glowing on the dingy cloth. Was it Stan? Usually not.

  But then yesterday fate, God or what have you (Ransom believed in the last of that trinity only) intervened, in the incarnation of a call from his boss. “Joey’s sick, I mean fucking sick.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Ransom’s heart fell. He knew what was coming.

  “Yeah. Can you take over for him?”

  “Where, Chicago?”

  “Indiana, north.”

  Wouldn’t you know it, he thought angrily.

  “You’re from there, right? You know it?”

  He debated but in the end decided to stop being a wuss. It was hard to say no to his boss and even though GKS was weathering the bad economy you never knew what the future would hold. Besides, the money would be great and who couldn’t use a little extra green? So he’d said a reluctant okay, downloaded Joey’s file and read through it. He then picked up a rental car near his home in downtown Baltimore, threw the salesman’s sample cases into the trunk and hit the road, growing increasingly edgy as he miled his way west on I-70.

  Near Gary he turned off the interstate and wound along state routes, until he came to an intersection he hadn’t seen for years, but remembered perfectly: Poindexter Road and Route 224. One sign pointed left toward Chesterton, six miles away, the other to his hometown of Marshall, four miles. He paused under a maple canopy of yellow and crimson, his head swiveling.

  The pause, however, was only to let a Peterbilt stream past on the perpendicular. Once it was past, he turned decisively left and accelerated. There’d been no decision about which way to go.

  Chesterton, Indiana, had a few upscale companies, like the one whose CEO he was set to see tomorrow, Hardwick Investments. He drove past it now, a two-story glass and metal structure in a groomed office park outside of town. But Hardwick was the exception. Soon he was into the real Chesterton, cruising by sagging and scabby one-level shipping companies and factories making products of mysterious purpose (“Compress-ease,” “Multi-span Tensioner Plus,” “Asphalux”). Plenty of abandoned ones, too. Forty, fifty years ago, when U.S. Steel and other heavy manufacturers were at capacity, there wasn’t an empty commercial facility for miles around or an unemployed worker who didn’t choose to be.

  Hell of a lot different now, half ghost town.

  Damn, I hate it here…

  The Shady Grove Motel nestled in what was now better described as stump grove, thanks to Dutch elm, it looked like, but the place was otherwise pretty decent.

  Ransom checked in and drove around back to his room, away from the busy road. He took a brief nap an
d then reviewed Joey’s file again. He carefully went through his salesman sample bags, organizing the trays containing tools for cleaning and repairing computers. Everybody tended to think of computers in terms of software, forgetting they were also physical boxes with moving parts. Desktops sucked in plenty of crap and laptops not only did the same but also got tossed around mercilessly. If not properly cleaned, a computer could conk out at any time.

  Ironically, though, it was the computer world itself that was endangering GKS Tech. People were now ordering more and more of the products online.

  Thank you very much, TigerDirect.

  The days of the traveling salesman would be over soon.

  But Ransom knew he’d find something else that would suit. He’d always landed on his feet. He’d learned that early. His father had dropped out of community college and didn’t value learning for anybody in the family. And so in reaction, Ransom decided that nothing was going to stop him when it came to education. Moderately smart, he’d muscled his way through high school by being extremely persistent. Faced with little money and less support after he graduated, the teenager did the army thing for two years, which let him slingshot his way into college, George Washington, in D.C., where he did very well. He foundered a bit after his discharge—Stan providing no guidance, of course—but Ransom heard back from one of his army buddies and the man hooked him up with some people in Baltimore. He took a temporary job that turned permanent. He’d never pictured himself in this line of work, but he turned out to be a natural.

  Ransom Fell’s ex could be wacky, with her walls of self-help books looming like glaciers in the living room of their old Baltimore apartment, but she was pretty sharp, Ransom never hesitated to admit, even to her. Beth would look at his situation with his father and diagnose that Stan Fells had not engaged in any “life lessoning” with his son. Instead, Ransom had to rely on “self-foundation-building,” “me-ness,” and “inner-core structuring.” Despite the language, which could get even weirder, the ideas made sense. He would have phrased it more simply: Stan taught him shit and so he had to learn to fend for himself.

  Which he did.

  As for his mother, sure, she was there some of the time. Sure, she tried. But she largely checked out; who wouldn’t with a husband like Stan? Besides, given his upbringing, Ransom figured a boy needs a mother only until he stops sucking and gumming pureed food. When the kid’s able to walk, it’s time for the other half of the act to step up. Your turn, Dad. Freud was totally screwed up—you don’t want to kill your father; you want to go hunting with him, you want him to take you to a ball game. All. Nine. Fucking. Innings.

  And with that thought he realized he was sitting forward in the cheap motel chair, hovering over his salesman’s cases, shoulder muscles solid as a tire.

  Shouldn’t’ve come here.

  The money’s good. Gotta keep the boss happy.

  Doesn’t matter.

  Shouldn’t’ve come.

  A little after six he worked out in the motel health club. For forty minutes he slammed along the treadmill and hefted free weights—30-pound barbells—as he worked up a good sweat despite the chill autumn air that bled into the underpopulated exercise room. These facilities were always kept cool in the motels and hotels. He was convinced it was to save money in heating costs and to discourage people from using them because of liability. A broken neck, despite the waiver, could be very, very expensive, he figured.

  Ransom took a fiercely hot shower and at 8 p.m. he dressed in tan slacks and a dark shirt, pulled on his navy blue sports jacket and headed out the door. At the front desk a fifty-something guy who looked like a lifetime front desk clerk directed him to the Flame and Fountain, a steakhouse. He was there in five minutes. He hardly needed the restaurant’s sign to find it. Out front an energetic, blue-lit water treatment surrounded an impressive plume of fire. Tacky, but the exhaust of grilled steaks was seductive.

  He smiled at the hostess and passed her by. When traveling for work he never sat at tables, only the bar, which was what he did now.

  Several stools away was a woman close to his age, late thirties. In front of her was a frothy drink in a martini glass with a stem the shape of a fat teardrop or skinny boob. It was that kind of bar.

  Tacky…

  Wearing a tan skirt and matching jacket, she was attractive, a little heavier than she probably would have liked but it was sensuous weight and definitely appealed to Ransom. Voluptuous. Her hair, probably bottle blond to combat premature white, not brunette, was matte textured and had been wrestled into a taut ponytail. When he’d sat down she didn’t look his way. But then she wasn’t looking at anything, except the New Yorker she gripped with fierce fingers, tipped in iron-clad red nails.

  Ransom assessed: She’d broken up or divorced about five or six months ago and had finally decided the severing was for the best and was now determined to abandon the comfort of Häagen-Dazs or Doritos for the real world. And here she was, meeting that tough challenge head-on, no safety net, as a woman alone in a bar. You needed to be vigilant, confident and constantly measuring what came your way.

  Ransom didn’t think he’d have the energy to handle it.

  He ordered a chardonnay, which turned out to be buttery and rich. Opening USA Today, he asked the bartender a few business traveler’s questions about the area, more making conversation than satisfying curiosity. He noticed, through his periphery, that the woman glanced his way twice then returned to the magazine. The bartender moved on and this time when she looked toward him he noted—not directly but in the smoky mirror behind the bar—her eyes graze the ringless heart finger of his left hand.

  Ransom gave it a few minutes longer then asked her politely if she’d eaten here and if so what was good.

  Food is always a good intro (she’d had a decent chicken, she told him in a husky, humorous voice; but two steaks had walked by and they’d looked better). From that icebreaker there followed typical banter—careers first, of course, then glancing reference to exes and children (the former yes, the latter no, in both their cases), then sorties about TV shows and movies and media and very careful forays into politics and religion.

  But still, an objective observer, fly on the wall, would note that they survived the ritual admirably, that the conversation flowed like silk and was buoyed with humor and that Ransom and Annie had more than a little in common. The New Yorker, NCIS, Dancing with the Stars and the guilty pleasure of Two and a Half Men, now that Sheen was gone. Cabs over pinots. They shopped at Whole Foods for special occasions, IGA or Safeway normally. They each had secret indulgences: unshelled pistachios in her case, Mounds bars in his, a line that Ransom managed to deliver without a spark of lascivious intonation.

  He had dinner—yes, a steak, which lived up both to her assessment and to the aromatic promise wafting through the parking lot. When he was through he talked her into sharing dessert, over two glasses of sweet wine.

  And then, pushing ten o’clock, the night concluded. As indisputable as a chime, they both knew it was time to go.

  But, the question remained, go where?

  That inquiry was answered as soon as they were swathed in their coats and outside in the nose-tingling chill of the evening, under a dome of staccato stars. She said in that low voice of hers, “Walk me home? Just two blocks?”

  “You bet.”

  And with that the night was settled. Love, or one of its many approximations, is always determined in subtle subtext.

  They walked down a street canopied by rustling leaves, washed gray of autumn color because of the missing streetlights.

  In the middle of a conversation about Miami, where Ransom had just been on business, she took his arm firmly. Her breast met his biceps with persistent pressure.

  And sometimes, he reflected, the communications are less subtle than at others.

  A moment later they heard a loud voice: “Hey, why’re you with that old, you know, guy? You want a real dick?” The words slipped and slid as if they had
vertigo.

  He was stepping forward from an alley. The kid was white, acne speckled and beefy. Eighteen or maybe younger. Annie tensed immediately and Ransom increased the pressure on her arm as he led her around the boy.

  “I’m talking to…you.” His brows knitted belligerently but it was hard to bring off ominous since he couldn’t focus.

  Ransom smelled beer mostly and guessed his already hearty belly would swell to double its already impressive size in five years.

  “What’re we going to do?” she whispered.

  “Just keep walking.”

  “Fucking slut. You’re a fucking slut. You want a dick?”

  “Go home,” Ransom said calmly. “Get some sleep.”

  “I’ll fucking take you down. I will. I’ll fucking do it.”

  Tighter on Annie’s arm, he moved to the left and then right, swerving slowly like a ship around an iceberg. The young man’s eyes were swimming as he tried to follow them. Ransom decided that in the next sixty seconds the boy would jettison most of the alcohol that wasn’t in his bloodstream and he wanted to make sure they weren’t nearby when that happened.

  The kid made a fist and stepped forward.

  Ransom stopped and held up a hand, palm first. “Think about it.”

  “You asshole…”

  “You hit me, it’ll ruin your life. You’ll be in jail for a year. You want to explain that to your parents? Your future employers?”

  The hesitation was enough to let Ransom and Annie get a breaking-the-spell distance down the sidewalk.

  “You’re both fucking sluts,” he shouted.

  He didn’t follow.

  A half block away Annie whispered, “Oh, that was terrible.” She was shaking. “I thought he was going to attack us.”

  “He couldn’t do much damage in that condition.”

  Ransom looked back. The young man staggered around the corner and the sounds of what he’d predicted a moment ago floated unpleasantly into the sharp air.