The Goodbye Man

by Jeffery Deaver

  Mary Dove resembled a lean frontierswoman, her gray hair in a braid. Her present appearance wasn’t very different from that of years ago, when she was a star medical professor, grant director and psychiatrist/general practitioner in the Bay Area. Her quiet yet unyielding demeanor also was largely unchanged. After Ashton’s death, most in the family assumed she’d resume her life in San Francisco. Colter had known she wouldn’t, though. Here she’d remain, practicing general medicine and physical therapy, hosting retreats on topics like women’s health and psychopathology, and delivering the occasional baby.

  “Well?” She gestured vaguely in the direction of Echo Ridge, miles away and not visible from the cabin.

  “Found it.” He told her where the package was, that he’d get it in the morning.

  Mary Dove was incapable of registering surprise but her son thought that maybe, just maybe, her eyes widened a millimeter or two.

  “We’ll talk when you do. Decisions’ll have to be made.” Mary Dove’s voice was firm. After all, what Shaw had found at Echo Ridge was this secret that had led to her husband’s and others’ deaths. She was not a vindictive woman by any means—revenge, as Victoria had suggested, is a waste of time at best and leads to misfortune at worst. But self-preservation and survival of the family? That was paramount. Shaw had seen his mother calmly lift a .30-30 to her shoulder and squeeze off a round to drop a rabid wolf. To learn Ash’s secret meant to understand a lethal threat. And once you comprehended a risk, you could minimize it.

  Or, better, eliminate it.

  Mary Dove now poured two cups of coffee, added some milk to each. Shaw took them from her and walked into the living room of the cabin and looked out the window. He said, “Always liked this view.”

  “Beautiful,” said Victoria Lesston, who was sitting on the couch. He handed over a steaming mug and sat down beside her.

  75.

  When she’d fallen, she’d fallen into water, not upon rock.

  In anger or dismay, Samuel hadn’t planned his assault; he’d simply picked the target he could succeed with. He knew he’d never beat Colter Shaw. So he’d flung Victoria over the cliff, assuming that a rocky shore lay below. Or perhaps not assuming anything at all.

  In fact her landing bed was the deep lake that stretched to the foothills below the soaring peaks in the distance.

  Shaw had run to the cliff’s edge. And peered down to the place where Victoria floated faceup, bobbing, bobbing.

  Samuel too floated but his back was skyward.

  Shaw had called Special Agent Slay’s number, gave his location and said, “Now. EMTs.” Then he assessed. Eighty feet. Not an impossible dive but one whose trajectory would have to be planned perfectly, and practiced.

  No time for that. He pulled off his shirt, shoes and socks. Then he’d climbed down to a narrow ledge about twenty-five feet below the crest.

  Shaw gazed down. The shade of the water suggested it was deep.

  No time for percentages. Victoria was going under.

  He leapt, windmilling his arms to stay vertical, which never worked as well as you’d hope, he’d learned. Jumping from this height he hit the water at twenty-five miles per hour. He reflected in the three-second descent that one can still float with two broken ankles.

  Then the jarring impact, compressing bones and muscles and organs. Shaw managed to fill his lungs an instant before hitting the surface. The stinging cold, though, had the effect of pushing out all of that air.

  His soles stung like hell but the complex architecture of the ankles remained intact; water had not shattered bone, and the lake bottom was far beneath.

  He kicked hard to Victoria and, in a lifeguard’s grip, got her to the shore.

  Shaw had looked back. Samuel might have been alive when he hit. Probably wasn’t now. In any event, survival involves triage, the decision-making process about assessing who is likely to live and who is not. Shaw had removed Inner Circle Journeyman Samuel from his thoughts.

  Soon, fire and rescue had deposited them both on the top of the cliff. The medics examined Victoria, ran their tests and determined that nothing was broken; her spine and legs were fine. She had, however, walloped her shoulder. Maybe dislocation, rotator cuff issue. They affixed her arm to her body with flesh-colored bandages to keep it from gritty movement and she was offered painkillers, which she declined.

  She also vetoed a trip to the local hospital.

  “Been hurt worse. This’s nothing.”

  With her good arm hooked through his, Victoria and Shaw, in fresh clothing walked back to the staging area in front of the YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW gate. The place still bubbled with chaos. FBI and state police crime scene evidence technicians were doing their meticulous job, as busy and efficient as accountants on April 14. Other investigators were under tents, which had appeared miraculously, vacuuming up details from the Companions and staff.

  Shaw had noted that many of the law enforcers used tablets just like those the Foundation staff carried around.

  Victoria released him and snagged her backpack with her good arm.

  Shaw asked, “You drove, didn’t you?”

  “My pickup. There. The black one. It’s got a manual, so I’m not driving anywhere soon. I’ll bus it to wherever they drop us off. Call my parents or brother or a friend.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “My parents’re in Glendale.”

  Not really an answer to the question. He assumed a woman of her age who is a security consultant/former soldier doesn’t live with Mom and Dad. However, no need for her to be completely forthcoming. Shaw, after all, was not unspooling his own pertinent data to her particularly quickly.

  Victoria had continued, “It’ll be an adventure. I haven’t stayed in a hotel across from a bus station since that post-college junket to Europe. I’ll bet there’s even a Jack-in-the-Box on the corner.”

  Shaw fished his truck keys from his pocket. “Let me throw an idea out there.”

  She glanced his way, her eyes tinted with cautious reception.

  He pitched his thought, and, after some mental juggling, she said, “Sure.”

  An hour later they were on their way to Tacoma, where he would return the Silverado and pick up the Winnebago.

  On the way, Shaw negotiated the switchbacks and Victoria handled the phone, trying to get details of the pursuit of David Ellis and Hugh, whose last name turned out to be Garner.

  Special Agent Slay and the state police, though, were still not having any luck in tracing them.

  Once in the Winnebago, they hit the road, south. They made good time. The first rest break was well past Oregon’s southern border, in the small town of Barkley Heights, California. The burg’s WELCOME TO sign sported a cartoon dog, its open mouth raised skyward, tongue dangling.

  “A barking dog? Not the friendliest of logos,” Shaw said.

  “Why not a seal? Seals bark,” Victoria pointed out.

  “Don’t imagine there’s a seal within four hundred miles.”

  “Logic and town planning,” she said, “don’t always go hand in glove.”

  They looked around them for a restaurant or bar.

  “Not much of a town,” Shaw observed.

  “But I’ll bet you can buy plenty of Barkley the dog toy souvenirs and T-shirts.”

  They parked and walked into the only diner on the main drag.

  Victoria won the bet.

  76.

  Now, in the Compound, they sat on the old couch, which was covered with a Native American blanket. Shaw sipped from the coffee mug and asked, “You okay?”

  “The worst movie line ever written,” Victoria replied.

  “Hm?”

  “Movies. Big gunfight. Car crash. Tornado. Sharks. Aliens. There’s a lull in the action. Hero A—that’s you—says to Hero B, me, ‘You okay?’ Cliché. The scriptwriter’s asleep at
the switch.”

  “That may be. But it’s a valid question. You fell off a cliff.”

  “Was thrown.”

  “And the answer is?”

  Victoria said, “Better every day. She’s good, your mother. I’ve had PT, time to time, and I know a pro when I’m worked on.”

  They were facing east, and the lowering sun behind them was igniting mountaintops in a most impressive way. Even in this gentle month, defiant snow embraced the staunch peaks.

  Shaw had originally thought, believing Victoria to be beset by the loss of spouse and child, that he might arrange for her to see Mary Dove for psychological help. That plan had been negated by the facts: she was homicidal, not suicidal. But, after Samuel’s attack, it had then occurred to Shaw that Victoria might benefit from some time in the Compound where his mother’s physical therapy skills might be of some help.

  “What’s her plan?” Victoria asked. She was referring to Anne DeStefano, the deprogrammer. Shaw had spoken to the woman at length about the Osiris Foundation.

  DeStefano had said, “A lot of cults talk about immortality. Not a lot of them encourage you to see if their theory holds up. And people seemed to buy it?”

  “Enough did.” Shaw had given her the relevant details.

  “I’m going to get on top of it now. Since most of the members were in for the short-term—just three weeks’ indoctrination—it shouldn’t be hard to reverse most of the damage. The ones who came back for the follow-up sessions will take a bit more work.”

  Shaw told Victoria that DeStefano would be in touch with the authorities interviewing the Companions and give them her name and the names of psychologists and deprogrammers in the areas where they lived.

  Shaw had also heard from Walter and Sally, who had returned home safely to Chicago. Abby was staying with them for the time being but would soon be released to child protective services in her hometown. Frederick and Shaw had spoken several times. He was working with the police to build the case against Eli and Hugh.

  Movement from their left. Chase plodded close, moving with purpose. Like an airplane easing into the airport gate, he turned and slowed to a stop between them. Then flopped down, his chin on Victoria’s sneakered foot.

  She looked into the sky. “Hey, there. Is that a . . . another golden eagle?”

  Shaw squinted. “Believe so.”

  Their mascot. A thought Shaw kept to himself.

  The dark brown form was winging muscularly back toward the forest and cliffs. “That’s a male. It’s mating season now and the mother will be with the eggs for about a month. They don’t make nests. They build platforms.”

  “So Dad’s been grocery shopping.” She then asked, “What’s the latest on the Guiding Beacon and his sidekick?”

  Shaw shook his head. “Not good. According to that agent, Slay, they were spotted getting into Canada, but then disappeared.”

  The authorities had contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who were sympathetic, but the area of southern British Columbia was huge and the Canadians simply didn’t have the manpower for the kind of search necessary to track down Eli and Hugh.

  His phone hummed with a number that was only slightly familiar, like that of a cousin you’ve met only once, at a wedding a few months ago.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Shaw, Bob Tanner.”

  Erick Young’s attorney in Tacoma, Washington.

  “Just wanted to let you know that the charges’ve been dropped. The police tracked down a couple of kids in a neo-Nazi cell east of Tacoma. Forensics on the graffiti on the church matched cans of paint in their possession. They pled. And when the detectives interviewed the lay preacher? It was like you said: the janitor started shooting at Erick and Adam, and Adam only returned fire. After the boys fled, he gave the gun to the preacher and told him to hide it. He didn’t have a license.”

  Shaw thanked the attorney and disconnected. Victoria knew something about the reward for Erick and Adam and he explained how the job had been resolved.

  Shaw and Victoria sat in silence for a moment.

  “Just for the record, I’m no longer murderous.”

  “So my mother can get the sharp knives out?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Sometimes normal gets bushwhacked.”

  How well Colter Shaw knew this—the man who traveled the country, picking through the bones of mysteries that some people hadn’t been able to solve, and others simply didn’t care about and still more decidedly did not want to be solved.

  Shaw received a text. He read it twice and rose. “Have an errand to attend to.”

  Victoria said, “See you at dinner?”

  “Probably not.”

  77.

  Shaw preferred his Winnebago and motorcycle for transportation. However, he picked the vehicle to suit the need.

  Presently he was fourteen thousand feet in the air, aboard the Learjet, an older model, a bit battered but dependable. The trip was expensive, as all private aviation flights are. Yet he had no option. Time was critical, and commercial wouldn’t get him to the town he sought quickly enough.

  As they flew, he thought of the box hidden at Echo Ridge. What would it contain?

  Whatever that might be, it was worth killing for. Torturing too. He pictured Ebbitt Droon’s face, determined to get the treasure, as he pointed a gun at Shaw’s knee.

  A voice from the cockpit. “We’re landing, Mr. Shaw.”

  The plane swooped down toward the runway, the craft skewing sideways at an acute angle—it was called crabbing and would be alarming if Shaw had not experienced small aircraft landings several dozen times. The Lear straightened at the last minute, flared and touched down smoothly. They taxied to the fixed base flight operation and cut the engines.

  Shaw rose and stretched—to the extent he could in the low-ceilinged interior—and walked to the door.

  “This won’t be long.”

  “What should I do about the flight plan?”

  “One option is I’ll be going back home. The other?” He shrugged. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

  “Sure, Mr. Shaw. Good luck.”

  * * *

  —

  The spread was pretty much as Shaw expected: a rambling one story house with two garages and a workshop attached. A shed behind the home that could’ve inspired the set designer for Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As he drove the rental up the dirt drive, he passed a messy shooting range, in which were mounted dozens of black iron targets. They’d ring like gongs when hit. The ground was littered with fun targets: exploded milk jugs and glass soda bottles blown to dusty smithereens.

  The Montana hills were in the background, and ridges of trim forests surrounded the place. The grounds here, though, were mostly scruffy and overgrown. Dead stumps and fallen branches protruded from thick, mustard-colored swamp. The smell was what you’d expect.

  On the other hand, there were some pleasing aesthetic elements: an elaborate koi pond was filled with a dozen sleek elegant inhabitants, in sharp black and white and stark orange. There was, of all things, an easel set up beside a rusting V-block engine; the canvas was a well done oil of a mountain peak and circling bird. It was not an eagle.

  He was thirty feet from the porch when the screen door opened. Before he saw anything other than a beefy hand and tree-trunk arm, a voice called, “Well, if it ain’t my good old buddy.”

  Grinning, Dalton Crowe stepped out and trooped over the planks, which sagged under his weight. He seemed to be wearing the same outfit as when he’d shot out the tire of Shaw’s rental Kia last week: camo overalls and lumberjack shirt. A .45 autoloader was in a holster, riding high on his broad hip.

  “So nice of you to come for a visit, Shaw.” Crowe looked him up and down. His smile was less welcoming than gloating. Shaw’s trip here had been both expensive and inconvenient, and Crowe knew it
.

  “Here.” Shaw pulled out his wallet, extracted a check and handed it to the big man.

  Crowe pulled out his cell phone and took a picture of the draft. Odd to see a biker/mountain man taking advantage of a camera-phone deposit. But the truth was, Crowe’s embrace of high technology was why Shaw was here.

  “’K.” He handed Shaw a piece of paper. “That’s the name of the app you download. And the user name and passcode.”

  The name was: TroubleMan666.

  Shaw pocketed the slip and walked away.

  The man grumbled, “I’m doing this as a favor, Shaw. You still owe me for the reward, the whole fifty K. I woulda got them boys, you hadn’t fucking cheated. I’m going to remember that.”

  Without pausing, or turning, Shaw nodded at the easel. “Like the painting, Crowe.”

  * * *

  —

  An hour later, he was in yet another rental, many miles away. The Land Cruiser SUV was rocking over an unlit dirt road. He was taking his time.

  He checked the GPS. Drove another mile and then noted a haze of illumination ahead of him. It was a small town in the hills. The name of the place was Moody. There was a lake nearby, and the burg was dedicated, it seemed, to the art and business of fishing. You could buy bait everywhere except for the ice cream parlor, a used bookshop and an off-brand cell phone store, according to window signs.

  At the one traffic light in town he turned right and proceeded to Lake View Motor Inn. When he was nearly there, he pulled onto a service road. He killed the engine.

  The motel was in a good location for what he had in mind. Behind the place was a dirt road that bypassed the town and led south, good for an escape. He’d checked it out on Google Earth and some better topographic maps and he knew that the SUV could handle the terrain and keep ahead of pursuit.

  Shaw slipped from the car and closed the door, leaving the vehicle unlocked. He picked up the empty plastic grocery bag—a thick one—and slipped it into his jacket pocket. No sport coat now. He was dressed in black jeans and matching tactical assault jacket. Gloves too, made of thin leather.