INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL

by Richard B. Schwartz

  “I understand.”

  “Continue to follow him and continue to check in with me.”

  “I will.”

  “I have just passed Banning.”

  “He is going to Palm Springs.”

  “Yes, unless there is some isolated place in the desert.”

  “He would have turned off and driven up into the mountains. There are many more locations in which to hide there. A single place in the desert would make too fine a target.”

  “That is true.”

  “Whatever you do, do not lose him.”

  “I won’t.”

  “He is in Palm Springs. He just passed the road for the tram.”

  “That would have made a nice rallying point. Apparently he’s going somewhere else.”

  “The traffic is light. I am two blocks behind him.”

  “There are many hotels there where they could be hiding. False names are not uncommon in Palm Springs hotels.”

  “I understand.”

  “What will you do if you find them all there?”

  “I could kill them promptly but that would draw a great deal of attention.”

  “We do not want any more attention. If you find them we will arrange for some sort of accident. They have to leave sometime. The detective cannot know anything, but the sister might. Her brother might have said something, something that she did not understand at the time, but something that could come out later. It is essential that she be removed.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have passed through Cathedral City and am coming into Rancho Mirage.”

  “Yes . . .”

  “I am a block behind him now. Wait . . . he is turning right, driving up into the mountains. There is a resort there.”

  “A resort? The police would not pay for a resort. Bennett’s sister must be paying.”

  “This will be difficult . . .”

  “What? What is wrong?”

  “There is a long driveway into the resort, with a prominent porte-cochère There are several bellmen walking around. They will see me if I drive up behind him.”

  “Park at a distance and continue to speak on your cell phone. Make it obvious that you are involved in a call. They will think you are there to pick someone up.”

  “I will. Wait . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “They have taken his car to valet-park it. A woman is coming out of the hotel to greet him.”

  “Is it Bennett’s sister?”

  “I don’t think so. She is dressed in a swimsuit, with sunglasses and a short robe.”

  “How can you be so sure that that is not Bennett’s sister?”

  “The woman is very beautiful. She is kissing him.”

  “Damn.”

  “It could be a diversion of some sort.”

  “Damn.”

  “This could all have been arranged as part of their plan.”

  “It was all arranged to make you look like a fool.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The 101 at Isla Vista, Santa Barbara

  Thursday, 7:30 p.m.

  The glimmer of lights on the waves was punctuated by the motions of an occasional pelican gliding in search of a late dinner. “You can see the oilrigs in the distance,” Chris Dietrich said, trying to talk her awake. “It looks idyllic, but you can still pick up some tar on a moonlight walk if you don’t watch your step.”

  “I appreciate your driving me here,” Diana said. She had slept for most of the drive and her head was beginning to clear as Chris merged and slowed for the off-ramp. She shifted in her seat, stretching her legs and working out the cramps in her ankles. “When will I connect with Tom?”

  “Passenger lists are easy to crack, even with phony names, but we’ll add some static to the system,” Chris said. “We’ll fly you to Washington by way of Santa Barbara and Oakland. Tom will leave from Ontario and meet you there two days later. The pictures of you we took in Temecula have been Fed-Exed to a P.O. Box in Falls Church, Virginia. New passports will be ready when you arrive. They’ll put the pictures in old folders and date-stamp some of the pages so the passports won’t draw any attention. Your British Air ticket will have an Edinburgh leg attached, but the Brits will send two stand-ins to Scotland for you, while you change terminals at Heathrow and fly to Bordeaux with separate tickets on Air France. Complicated for anyone trying to follow, but not complicated for us. How much time do you think you’ll need in France?”

  “That depends on what we find. There are so many questions and so little time. The longer we wait the harder it will be to retrace David’s steps. That’s what Tom said and I agree with him.”

  Tom. Twice now, Chris thought.

  “How do you feel now?” Dr. Whelan asked.

  “Better than I did an hour ago,” Tom said.

  “Maybe you’re pushing yourself too hard. You’ve just had major surgery.”

  “I understand. I was afraid that the headache might be a symptom of something serious.”

  “I don’t see any indication of that,” Whelan said, “but you shouldn’t press yourself just yet. It takes time to heal. Think about when you go to the dentist . . .”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “When you go to the dentist there’s something wrong with your mouth. You know it instantly. And whatever it is—a cracked tooth, a loose filling, an abnormal sensitivity—you’re constantly aware of it. You keep exploring it with the tip of your tongue. You know there’s a problem and you can’t stay away from it. Even after you’ve identified it and know what needs to be done to solve it, your tongue keeps going there.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s as if there’s an intruder there; something’s wrong; the problem has to be solved. Now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then as soon as it’s fixed you have similar feelings. The new filling or crown . . . and especially an extraction . . . it’s an affront to the system. There’s something new going on and your mouth feels out of kilter. It’s not used to the new thing there or the old thing gone, even if it means you’re cured. It takes awhile until your mouth starts telling your brain that everything’s OK. You’ve found a new normal, as it were.”

  “I understand.”

  “Your whole body’s like that, Tom. It’s a highly integrated organism. It notices disruptions. It tries to get used to them and accommodate itself to them and eventually it does, usually. But it takes awhile. The body is both incredibly hearty and incredibly sensitive.”

  “I’ll try not to think too much for awhile; maybe that’ll help.”

  Whelan smiled. “That’s easier said than done. The brain has its own ways of keeping itself in order. Why do you think we dream?”

  “I don’t know . . . to sort back through the problems of the previous day?”

  “There’s some of that, but the brain is exploring patterns, coherent patterns. It’s exercising; it’s doing what it always does . . . finding facts and forms and integrating them through the use of stories. That’s one way of putting it anyway. And it’s only a theory . . . but it’s a theory that makes sense to me.”

  Tom suddenly noticed that while every feature and object in Whelan’s examining room was either white or silver, everything in his office was brown, including Whelan’s hair and eyes. He felt better there. Or his eyes and brain did. He hadn’t thought of his brain as separate from the rest of his body before the identification and removal of the astrocytoma.

  “So what should I do now, Doctor?”

  “Just what you would normally do, but don’t push,” Whelan said.

  “Get good sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t overextend.”

  “Right.”

  “Try to avoid violence.”

  “Absolutely, especially traum
a to the head.”

  “How about exercise?”

  “Of course, but in moderation.”

  “I’ll do my best, under the circumstances,” Tom said.

  “That’s all we can ever do,” Whelan said. “You’re fortunate in the fact that your general physical condition is very good. Just take it easy. You know what would be good for you now?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You should sit back in a chair, raise your feet a little, try to clear your head, and just rest.”

  “For how long?”

  “Not for five minutes. Five hours would be better. Ten would be better still.”

  “I think I can actually do that,” Tom said.

  “And when you get up . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Everything in moderation.”

  “I’ll try,” Tom said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dominion Conference Center, Chantilly, Virginia

  Saturday, 9:40 p.m.

  Diana turned off the air conditioner and slid back the window in her second-floor room. The evening air coming off the Blue Ridge was warm and moist. She sat down in the armchair nearest the window and let the warm air engulf her head and neck and shoulders. The room was a combination of generic luxury and conference-room efficiency. She had a simple coffee maker with a tray of foil packets, some pouches of whitener and a selection of teas, sweeteners, and powdered soups. The soap, shampoo, and conditioner came in plastic bottles with an ornate, English-looking design and a Hartford, Connecticut manufacturing address. The shoeshine “cloth” was paper, not cotton, and the heavily-laundered, single bathrobe had no logo. The flat-screen TV offered 120 cable channels along with the principal networks and PBS. Next to it, on an imitation mahogany desk, was a standup, cardboard card detailing the hotel’s business-center services and facilities. There was also a card entitling her to a free drink with any entrée in the Commonwealth Room. It had been there when she arrived, nearly two days ago now.

  The room next door was actually the security headquarters for the hotel. With all the Washington muck-a-mucks and wannabe muck-a-mucks seeking shelter beyond the beltway, the facility built its market niche on an array of special security services. In the private wing there was a bank of rooms with ingress and egress by separate, locked staircase. The central kitchen made room-service deliveries to the security headquarters and the food was then brought to individual rooms by armed officers. No one from the regular staff knew which guest was in which room. The entrance to the principal section of the private wing from the main hallway was through a locked, dummy door labelled the Jefferson Suite. Calls were screened through a separate switchboard and electronic messages on the TV’s came through a line serving only the security headquarters and the rooms in the private wing.

  There were also adjoining pooled-space rooms for aides, assistants, and gofers; soundproof meeting rooms, laptops for PowerPoint dog and pony shows, multi-tipped power cords for Androids, iPhones, and Bluetooth accessories, heavily-encrypted wireless setups and other mover-shaker emoluments. The windows overlooked a stand of dense spruce surrounded by a twelve-foot security fence. The Blue Ridge and piedmont were visible in the distance, rippling across the horizon like a series of leap-frogging clouds.

  At twelve minutes before 10:00 there was a knock at the door. Diana looked through the fisheye peephole and saw the guard’s identification tag. They always held it at eye level. She opened the door and the guard, a tall, stocky man named Alan, said, “Someone to see you.” He stepped aside and Tom stepped forward. “Hi,” he said. He was carrying a brown paper bag.

  “Hi,” she answered. “Come on in.” The guard turned and she closed the door behind Tom. She gave him a hug that was half affection, half relief. “You look so much better,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Good, even after two flights and a stopover in Denver. Actually, because of the two flights and the stopover. My doc told me to sit down and kick back, so that’s exactly what I did.”

  “Where’s your room?”

  “Two doors down the hall, just on the other side of your gofer room. How do you like this place? The city is ringed with them. The goal is to offer just enough luxury to attract the private sector and just enough simplicity to keep the price under the government per diem rate.”

  She smiled. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Something to inaugurate our trip. He slid a second chair next to hers, opened the window all the way, and took a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and two glasses from the bag, placing them on the table in front of them. “French,” he said. “I thought we should practice before we do it with the natives.” She smiled.

  “I wasn’t sure what they were serving you here, but I figured it could always stand to be improved,” Tom said, taking the dark blue, lead foil from the top of the bottle and going to work on the cork. He eased it out slowly, deliberately. “Try this,” he said, pouring her half a glass of the wine. “It should be worth drinking. That’s what the guy at the wine store said. I told him I didn’t want anything playful or overly assertive. He said this might be a little forward, but I said that that was OK, I could do forward.”

  She took a sip, put the glass back on the table, and took his hands in hers, clutching him like a lifeline. “It can’t be that good,” he said. He squeezed her hands gently, released them and picked up his glass, sipping the red wine. “This is very good,” he said, “and did I happen to mention how nice it is to see you again?” He tilted his head toward her but her face was turned and her eyes were closed.

  He felt awkward and looked around the room, searching for some indication of why she might be feeling this way. On the desk were pictures of her and her brother. He couldn’t see them all, but it appeared that there was also a picture of David and Diana with their parents. She and her brother were very young, David no more than twelve, Diana no more than six or seven. There was a snow-covered mountain behind them. They were dressed warmly, the sun in their faces. The parents held ski poles; the children had been brought in for the picture, their parents’ hands on their shoulders. A happy and loving family. All of them gone now, but her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dominion Conference Center, Chantilly, Virginia

  Sunday, 8:15 a.m.

  When her phone rang she picked it up without speaking. “How about some breakfast?” Tom asked. “Fine,” she said, “just something simple.” She sounded better, rested.

  “I’ll call it in,” he said. He ordered toast and breakfast rolls, fresh fruit, and coffee. He thought about where they were going and added two bagels with cream cheese. He told them to bring it to Diana’s room. They said it would be there in twenty to thirty minutes. He waited fifteen and then walked down the hall to her door. He knocked and bent down so she could see his face in the peephole. When he heard her hand brush against the door he smiled.

  She opened the door and stepped back. She was wearing a knee-length robe. Her hair was pinned up, her eyes were clear and her lips were a deep pink. As he entered the room he saw that she had put the spread back over the bed, covering the sheet and pillows.

  “Breakfast should be here in five minutes or so. How did you sleep?”

  “Pretty well,” she said. “The wine helped. How about you?”

  “Fine.”

  “When do we fly out?”

  “The first flight is at 7:50. There’s a second a half hour later. We booked the first in case there were any problems with it. If there are problems with the second you have to wait until the next day to fly.”

  “What about the tickets and passports?”

  “I’m picking them up at noon.”

  “Let me see your incision scar.”

  “You want to see my scalp . . . before breakfast?”

  “I was thinking, here you are running around, buying wine, ordering breakfast, lookin
g after me and all, and I haven’t even said anything about you and how you’re doing.”

  “You asked me how I felt when I came in last night.”

  “That was like saying hi. We never really talked about how you were healing and whether or not you were in pain.”

  “Have a look,” he said, pulling his hair back from the entry site, “still intact. I’m sure it looks sufficiently bad to threaten your appetite but it actually feels pretty good.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, “how about your general strength?”

  “Getting better by the hour. I had a little headache a couple days ago, but my surgeon thought it was unrelated to the procedure. Just a standard, run-of-the-mill throb.”

  “Any dizziness?”

  “No, not really. I was a little lightheaded yesterday, but that was after I had been sitting for awhile with my legs locked and I hadn’t eaten for about six hours.”

  She took him through some basic exercises, touching his nose with his fingertips with his eyes closed, keeping his own head rigid, but following her moving fingertip with his eyes. She then took his wrist in her hand and checked his pulse.

  “So what’s the verdict?” he asked.

  “I don’t see anything irregular. The pulse is lower than normal, but that’s good. So long as it’s not irregular and . . . ”

  “And it doesn’t suddenly stop.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “You see,” he said. “Completely serviceable. Or at least 90 percent so. How about some breakfast?”

  Total Wine & More is a successful discount store, the successor to the Hafts’ Total Beverage outlets. The Chantilly version sits on the south side of route 50, in the back of a long strip mall. What used to be a quiet road to the hunt country is now a clogged, divided highway through an endless line of housing developments, with subdivision signs, nurseries, gas stations, fast food chains, and ersatz town centers as roadmarks. The clientele at Total is a cross-section of Northern Virginia, with upscale wine buyers checking Parker ratings, beer-by-the-case natives loading their RV’s and pickups, Evian and flavored-Perrier yuppies searching for small-bottle six packs, and suburban hostesses loading up on imported crackers and Riedel glassware.