The Matlock Paper

by Robert Ludlum

  And under his jacket he held the ugly automatic he had taken from the dead man in the raincoat on the slope of East Gorge. It was pointed under his left arm at the door.

  He could hear the mushed crunch of footsteps on the soft earth outside the station wagon. He could literally feel—as a blind man feels—the face peering through the shattered glass looking at him. He heard the click of the door button as it was pushed in and the creaking of the hinges as the heavy panel was pulled open.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder. Matlock fired his weapon.

  The roar was deafening; the scream of the wounded man pierced the drenched darkness. Matlock leaped out of the seat and slammed the full weight of his body against the killer, who had grabbed his left arm in pain. Wildly, inaccurately, Matlock pistol-whipped the man about his face and neck until he fell to the ground. The man’s gun was nowhere to be seen, his hands were empty. Matlock put his foot on the man’s throat and pressed.

  “I’ll stop when you signal you’re going to talk to me, you son of a bitch! Otherwise I don’t stop!”

  The man sputtered, his eyes bulged. He raised his right hand in supplication.

  Matlock took his foot away and knelt on the ground over the man. He was heavy set, black-haired, with the blunt features of a brute killer.

  “Who sent you after me? How did you know this car?”

  The man raised his head slightly as though to answer. Instead, the killer whipped his right hand into his waist, pulled out a knife, and rolled sharply to his left, yanking his gorilla-like knee up into Matlock’s groin. The knife slashed into Matlock’s shirt, and he knew as he felt the steel point crease his flesh that he’d come as close as he would ever come to being killed.

  He crashed the barrel of the heavy automatic into the man’s temple. It was enough. The killer’s head snapped back; blood matted itself around the hairline. Matlock stood up and placed his foot on the hand with the knife.

  Soon the killer’s eyes opened.

  And during the next five minutes, Matlock did what he never thought he would be capable of doing—he tortured another man. He tortured the killer with the killer’s own knife, penetrating the skin around and below the eyes, puncturing the lips with the same steel point that had scraped his own flesh. And when the man screamed, Matlock smashed his mouth with the barrel of the automatic and broke pieces of ivory off the killer’s teeth.

  It was not long.

  “The paper!”

  “What else?”

  The writhing killer moaned and spat blood, but would not speak. Matlock did; quietly, in total conviction, in complete sincerity.

  “You’ll answer me or I’ll push this blade down through your eyes. I don’t care anymore. Believe me.”

  “The old man!” The guttural words came from deep inside the man’s throat. “He said he wrote it down.… No one knows.… You talked to him.…”

  “What old …” Matlock stopped as a terrifying thought came into his mind. “Lucas Herron?! Is that who you mean?!”

  “He said he wrote it down. They think you know. Maybe he lied.… For Christ’s sake, he could have lied.…”

  The killer fell into unconsciousness.

  Matlock stood up slowly, his hands shaking, his whole body shivering. He looked up at the road, at the huge black limousine standing silently in the diminishing rain. It would be his last gamble, his ultimate effort.

  But something was stirring in his brain, something elusive but palpable. He had to trust that feeling, as he had come to trust the instincts of the hunter and the hunted.

  The old man!

  The answer lay somewhere in Lucas Herron’s house.

  29

  He parked the limousine a quarter of a mile from Herron’s Nest and walked toward the house on the side of the road, prepared to jump into the bordering woods should any cars approach.

  None did.

  He came upon one house, then another, and in each case he raced past, watching the lighted windows to see if anyone was looking out.

  No one was.

  He reached the edge of Herron’s property and crouched to the ground. Slowly, cautiously, silently he made his way to the driveway. The house was dark; there were no cars, no people, no signs of life. Only death.

  He walked up the flagstone path and his eye caught sight of an official-looking document, barely visible in the darkness, tacked onto the front door. He approached it and lit a match. It was a sheriff’s seal of closure.

  One more crime, thought Matlock.

  He went around to the back of the house, and as he stood in front of the patio door, he remembered vividly the sight of Herron racing across his manicured lawn into the forbidding green wall which he parted so deftly and into which he disappeared so completely.

  There was another sheriff’s seal on the back door. This one was glued to a pane of glass.

  Matlock removed the automatic from his belt and as quietly as possible broke the small-paned window to the left of the seal. He opened the door and walked in.

  The first thing that struck him was the darkness. Light and dark were relative, as he’d come to understand during the past week. The night had light which the eyes could adjust to; the daylight was often deceptive, filled with shadows and misty blind spots. But inside Herron’s house the darkness was complete. He lit a match and understood why.

  The windows in the small kitchen were covered with shades. Only they weren’t ordinary window shades, they were custom built. The cloth was heavy and attached to the frames with vertical runners, latched at the sills by large aluminum hasps. He approached the window over the sink and lit another match. Not only was the shade thicker than ordinary, but the runners and the stretch lock at the bottom insured that the shade would remain absolutely flat against the whole frame. It was doubtful that any light could go out or come in through the window.

  Herron’s desire—or need—for privacy had been extraordinary. And if all the windows in all the rooms were sealed, it would make his task easier.

  Striking a third match, he walked into Herron’s living room. What he saw in the flickering light caused him to stop in his tracks, his breath cut short.

  The entire room was a shambles. Books were strewn on the floor, furniture overturned and ripped apart, rugs upended, even sections of the wall smashed. He could have been walking into his own apartment the night of the Beeson dinner. Herron’s living room had been thoroughly, desperately searched.

  He went back to the kitchen to see if his preoccupation with the window shades and the darkness had played tricks on his eyes. They had. Every drawer was pulled open, every cabinet ransacked. And then he saw on the floor of a broom closet two flashlights. One was a casement, the other a long-stemmed Sportsman. The first wouldn’t light, the second did.

  He walked rapidly back into the living room and tried to orient himself, checking the windows with the beam of the flashlight. Every window was covered, every shade latched at the sill.

  Across the narrow hallway in front of the narrower stairs was an open door. It led to Herron’s study, which was, if possible, more of a mess than his living room. Two file cabinets were lying on their sides, the backs torn off; the large leather-topped desk was pulled from the wall, splintered, smashed on every flat surface. Parts of the wall, as the living room, were broken into. Matlock assumed these were sections which had sounded hollow when tapped.

  Upstairs, the two small bedrooms and the bath were equally dismantled, equally dissected.

  He walked back down the stairs, even the steps had been pried loose from their treads.

  Lucas Herron’s home had been searched by professionals. What could he find that they hadn’t? He wandered back into the living room and sat down on what was left of an armchair. He had the sinking feeling that his last effort would end in failure also. He lit a cigarette and tried to organize his thoughts.

  Whoever had searched the house had not found what they were looking for. Or had they? There was no way to tell, really. Except tha
t the brute killer in the field had screamed that the old man “had written it down.” As if the fact was almost as important as the desperately coveted Corsican document. Yet he had added: “… maybe he lied, he could have lied.” Lied? Why would a man in the last extremity of terror add that qualification to something so vital?

  The assumption had to be that in the intricate delicacy of a mind foundering on the brink of madness, the worst evil was rejected. Had to be rejected so as to hold onto what was left of sanity.

  No.… No, they had not found whatever it was they had to find. And since they hadn’t found it after such exhaustive, extraordinary labors—it didn’t exist.

  But he knew it did.

  Herron may have been involved with Nimrod’s world, but he was not born of it. His was not a comfortable relationship—it was a tortured one. Somewhere, someplace he had left an indictment. He was too good a man not to. There had been a great decency in Lucas Herron. Somewhere … someplace.

  But where?

  He got out of the chair and paced in the darkness of the room, flicking the flashlight on and off, more as a nervous gesture than for illumination.

  He reexamined minutely every word, every expression used by Lucas that early evening four days ago. He was the hunter again, tracking the spoor, testing the wind for the scent. And he was close; goddamn it, he was close!… Herron had known from the second he’d opened his front door what Matlock was after. That instantaneous, fleeting moment of recognition had been in his eyes. It had been unmistakable to Matlock. He’d even said as much to the old man, and the old man had laughed and accused him of being influenced by plots and counterplots.

  But there’d been something else. Before the plots and counterplots.… Something inside. In this room. Before Herron suggested sitting outside.… Only he hadn’t suggested, he’d made a statement, given a command.

  And just before he’d given the command to rearmarch toward the backyard patio, he’d walked in silently, walked in silently, and startled Matlock. He had opened the swinging door, carrying two filled glasses, and Matlock hadn’t heard him. Matlock pushed the button on the flashlight and shot the beam to the base of the kitchen door. There was no rug, nothing to muffle footsteps—it was a hardwood floor. He crossed to the open swing-hinged door, walked through the frame, and shut it. Then he pushed it swiftly open in the same direction Lucas Herron had pushed it carrying the two drinks. The hinges clicked as such hinges do if they are old and the door is pushed quickly—normally. He let the door swing shut and then he pressed against it slowly, inch by inch.

  It was silent.

  Lucas Herron had made the drinks and then silently had eased himself back into the living room so he wouldn’t be heard. So he could observe Matlock without Matlock’s knowing it. And then he’d given his firm command for the two of them to go outside.

  Matlock forced his memory to recall precisely what Lucas Herron said and did at that precise moment.

  “… we’ll go out on the patio. It’s too nice a day to stay inside. Let’s go.”

  Then, without waiting for an answer, even a mildly enthusiastic agreement, Herron had walked rapidly back through the kitchen door. No surface politeness, none of the courtly manners one expected from Lucas.

  He had given an order, the firm command of an officer and a gentleman.

  By Act of Congress.

  That was it! Matlock swung the beam of light over the writing desk.

  The photograph! The photograph of the marine officer holding the map and the Thompson automatic in some tiny section of jungle on an insignificant island in the South Pacific.

  “I keep that old photograph to remind myself that time wasn’t always so devastating.”

  At the precise moment Herron walked through the door, Matlock had been looking closely at the photograph! The fact that he was doing so disturbed the old man, disturbed him enough for him to insist that they go outside instantly. In a curt, abrupt manner so unlike him.

  Matlock walked rapidly to the desk. The small cellophane-topped photograph was still where it had been—on the lower right wall above the desk. Several larger glass-framed pictures had been smashed; this one was intact. It was small, not at all imposing.

  He grabbed the cardboard frame and pulled the photo off the single thumbtack which held it to the wall. He looked at it carefully, turning it over, inspecting the thin edges.

  The close, harsh glare of the flashlight revealed scratches at the upper corner of the cardboard. Fingernail scratches? Perhaps. He pointed the light down on the desk top. There were unsharpened pencils, scraps of note paper, and a pair of scissors. He took the scissors and inserted the point of one blade between the thin layers of cardboard until he could rip the photograph out of the frame.

  And in that way he found it.

  On the back of the small photograph was a diagram drawn with a broad-tipped fountain pen. It was in the shape of a rectangle, the bottom and top lines filled in with dots. On the top were two small lines with arrows, one straight, the other pointing to the right. Above each arrowhead was the numeral 30. Two 30s.

  Thirty.

  On the sides, bordering the lines, were childishly drawn trees.

  On the top, above the numbers, was another simplified sketch. Billowy half-circles connected to one another with a wavy line beneath. A cloud. Underneath, more trees.

  It was a map, and what it represented was all too apparent. It was Herron’s back yard; the lines on three sides represented Herron’s forbidding green wall.

  The numerals, the 30s, were measurements—but they were also something else. They were contemporary symbols.

  For Lucas Herron, chairman for decades of Romance Languages, had an insatiable love for words and their odd usages. What was more appropriate than the symbol “30” to indicate finality?

  As any first year journalism student would confirm, the number 30 at the bottom of any news copy meant the story was finished. It was over.

  There was no more to be said.

  Matlock held the photograph upside down in his left hand, his right gripping the flashlight. He entered the woods at midsection—slightly to the left—as indicated on the diagram. The figure 30 could be feet, yards, meters, paces—certainly not inches.

  He marked off thirty twelve-inch spaces. Thirty feet straight, thirty feet to the right.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but the drenched, full overgrowth and underbrush which clawed at his feet.

  He returned to the green wall’s entrance and decided to combine yards and paces, realizing that paces in such a dense, jungle-like environment might vary considerably.

  He marked off the spot thirty paces directly ahead and continued until he estimated the point of yardage. Then he returned to the bent branches where he had figured thirty paces to be and began the lateral trek.

  Again nothing. An old rotted maple stood near one spot Matlock estimated was thirty steps. There was nothing else unusual. He went back to the bent branches and proceeded to his second mark.

  Thirty yards straight out. Ninety feet, give or take a foot or two. Then the slow process of thirty yards through the soaking wet foliage to his next mark. Another ninety feet. Altogether, one hundred and eighty feet. Nearly two-thirds of a football field.

  The going was slower now, the foliage thicker, or so it seemed. Matlock wished he had a machete or at least some kind of implement to force the wet branches out of his way. Once he lost count and had to keep in mind the variation as he proceeded—was it twenty-one or twenty-three large steps? Did it matter? Would the difference of three to six feet really matter?

  He reached the spot. It was either twenty-eight or thirty. Close enough if there was anything to be seen. He pointed the flashlight to the ground and began slowly moving it back and forth laterally.

  Nothing. Only the sight of a thousand glistening weeds and the deep-brown color of soaked earth. He kept swinging the beam of light, inching forward as he did so, straining his eyes, wondering every other second if
he had just covered that particular section or not—everything looked so alike.

  The chances of failure grew. He could go back and begin again, he thought. Perhaps the 30s connoted some other form of measurement. Meters, perhaps, or multiples of another number buried somewhere in the diagram. The dots? Should he count the dots on the bottom and top of the rectangle? Why were the dots there?

  He had covered the six-foot variation and several feet beyond.

  Nothing.

  His mind returned to the dots, and he withdrew the photograph from his inside pocket. As he positioned himself to stand up straight, to stretch the muscles at the base of his spine—pained by crouching—his foot touched a hard, unyielding surface. At first he thought it was a fallen limb, or perhaps a rock.

  And then he knew it was neither.

  He couldn’t see it—whatever it was, was underneath a clump of overgrown weeds. But he could feel the outline of the object with his foot. It was straight, precisely tooled. It was no part of a forest.

  He held the light over the cluster of weeds and saw that they weren’t weeds. They were some kind of small-budded flower in partial bloom. A flower which did not need sunlight or space.

  A jungle flower. Out of place, purchased, replanted.

  He pushed them out of the way and bent down. Underneath was a thick, heavily varnished slab of wood about two feet wide and perhaps a foot and a half long. It had sunk an inch or two into the ground; the surface had been sanded and varnished so often that the layers of protective coating reached a high gloss, reflecting the beam of the flashlight as though it were glass.

  Matlock dug his fingers into the earth and lifted up the slab. Beneath it was a weathered metal plaque, bronze perhaps.

  For Major Lucas N. Herron, USMCR

  In Gratitude from the Officers and Men of

  Bravo Company, Fourteenth Raider Battalion,