by Daniel Kalla
Prince hadn’t won back my trust, but as I’d already confronted Maglio over the phone, I had little to lose by elaborating. “Philip Maglio had very good reason to kill Emily,” I said.
“Namely?”
Though I suspected Prince knew more about the doomed Whistler development than I did, I still summarized what I’d pieced together. As I spoke, I wrote the letters R.I.P. inside the gravestone and shadowed them in black ink. I saved the biggest revelation for last. “But that was just money. The kicker came when Emily risked Maglio’s life.”
“Oh?”
“Emily exposed him to HIV.”
Prince exhaled slowly. “As for Whistler, I can tell you unequivocally that factors far beyond Emily’s ill-conceived cocktail party led to its collapse.” He cleared his throat. “And as for the more personal motive, you’ll have to trust me when I tell you that it is simply not true.”
I dropped my pen. “Are you saying Emily and Maglio didn’t have a relationship?”
“I’m saying that Emily never exposed Philip to HIV.”
“How can you know that?”
“I am not at liberty to say.”
“Client-attorney privilege.”
“Something like that.”
“Very helpful, Michael.”
“I can tell you this, Ben,” he said adopting the tone of a concerned father. “It is a big mistake to antagonize someone like Philip Maglio.”
I’d grown numb to the threat of Maglio’s retaliation. “Let me ask you, Michael. What if it comes to the point where you have to choose between clients?”
“That won’t happen.”
“No?” I decided to take a stab in the dark. “Didn’t it happen to you before with Emily? And Aaron?”
For a moment, all I heard was breathing. Then he spoke quietly. “I don’t play favorites.”
I knew I was on to something. “You represented Aaron, didn’t you, Michael? What was it about?”
“We’ve been over this.”
“Tell me!”
“I can’t, Benjamin.” He sounded tired. “I have been practicing law for a long time. Believe me, it won’t be necessary for me to choose between clients.”
“You’re damn right, it won’t.” I slammed the receiver into the cradle before he could answer.
I buried my head in my hands, even more confused than I was before making the call. Prince was convincing, but I knew that this was how he made his living. Still, his insistence that Emily hadn’t exposed Maglio to HIV weakened my conviction. Irrationally, I wished that his version was true. I had no right to be jealous—our engagement had ended three years before her alleged involvement with Maglio—but the thought of Maglio possessing Emily with those cold hungry eyes of his had gnawed at me.
How had it come to this?
I reached for the folder in front of me, intending to lose myself in the pile of unfinished charts. I was working on the fourth one when the door to my office burst open. I looked up to see Edith standing in the doorway in her customary white uniform with a pen clamped between her teeth like a cigarette. She pointed at the phone. “You have a call, Dr. Horvath.”
“Oh?” I said, trying to mask my surprise. “Who is it?”
She shrugged. “Said he was an old friend.”
“He didn’t give you a name?”
She eyed me with undisguised scorn. “No name.” She turned away from me. “Line three.”
I picked up the phone and hit the button to activate line three. “Dr. Horvath,” I said in a tone far more relaxed than how I felt.
“Benjamin.”
The single whispered word froze me in mid-breath. I glanced at the call display on the phone that read PRIVATE NUMBER.
“Benjamin?” the whisperer repeated, singing the syllables.
I spun my chair away from the door and cupped the phone’s mouthpiece, replying in a whisper of my own. “Who are you?”
“Oh, Ben.” He uttered a throaty chuckle. “I wish I could say.”
My temples throbbed, my throat tensed.
“They’re closing in on you.”
“They?”
“The police.”
“How?”
“People talk, Ben.”
I rested my elbow against the desk to quell the shaking. “Who talked?”
He laughed again. “You have to be more careful whom you trust.”
“But I should trust you, right?”
“Could be worse people to trust.”
“If you know so much, tell me where Aaron is!”
“Gone,” he said.
“Gone where?”
But the whisperer didn’t reply.
“Listen to me, you son of a bitch—” But I was talking to dead air.
Chapter 26
I stared helplessly at the phone as if it held a supernatural grip over me. In an instant, the whisperer’s call had stripped what little sense of security and anonymity I’d cobbled together in the days since arriving in Vancouver.
Run! The impulse throbbed in my head like a siren. But where?
I remembered the whisperer’s exact words: They’re closing in on you. That didn’t mean they knew where I was, but the caller did. I was deluding myself to think I had time left in Vancouver. But more time was exactly what I needed. I was close. I had unearthed a promising suspect, and I’d picked up the trail of my presumed dead brother. I just needed a little longer.
How did the whisperer know where I was? I went through the names of people who knew my alias or whereabouts: Kyle, Prince, Alex, and Marcus. The last name resonated with me. I trusted Marcus Lindquist even less than I trusted my lawyer, who at least had warned me not to tell anyone where I was, including him. And I realized the list included only the people from Seattle who might have tipped off the whisperer, but he’d phoned originally from Canada, presumably Vancouver. In this city Malcolm Davies, Drew Isaacs, Joe Janacek, and Jenny Ayott either knew or suspected I wasn’t Peter Horvath. Any one of them might have talked.
Anxiety gave way to hopelessness. I had no idea who to trust or where to turn.
Rising from the desk, I grabbed my jacket and knapsack. I stopped in the bathroom to wet my face and wash the remnants of sweat off my forehead. Glumly, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I knew my artificially brown eyes and full beard weren’t going to help me much if the manhunt intensified and photographs of me surfaced in Vancouver as visibly as they had in Seattle.
I zipped up my jacket, tightened the straps on the knapsack, and then headed back out into the hallway, relieved to discover that Joe was busy with a patient in one of the examining rooms. I doubted I could face him. Head down, I hurried past Edith’s pen. “Have a good weekend, Edith,” I said without looking up at her.
“Night, Dr. Horvath,” she said coolly.
An unexpected pang of melancholy hit me as I stepped out into the rainy evening knowing I wouldn’t ever be coming back. The clinic had become the closest I’d found to a haven in the middle of my personal storm. Now that I’d been exposed, I couldn’t risk returning.
I unlocked my bike and hopped onto the saddle. With the wind whipping and the rain falling in horizontal sheets, the cold dampness soaked through the cheap nylon jacket down to my skin. The streets were slick, and my brakes were impaired by the weather. Stopping suddenly wasn’t an option, as I discovered when I twice had to swerve to avoid cars that cut into my lane. And yet the rhythm of the pedals, along with the demand the strong headwind placed on my heart and legs, helped to settle my emotional whirlpool.
Despite the unforgiving weather and poor lighting, I cycled twenty-five miles out through the suburb of Richmond. Along the way, I decided I would steal as much time as I could in Vancouver to intensify my search for Aaron and dig up more on Maglio. Then I would head back to the lion’s den that Seattle had become. If Helen weren’t willing to believe me, I would confront Philip Maglio face to face, as he’d suggested, regardless of the risk. I was sick of life on the run.
B
ack downtown, I stopped at an ATM and emptied out Peter Horvath’s bank account. A block from the YMCA, I stopped and debated whether it was safe to return to my room. I scanned my memory, but I didn’t remember telling anyone where I was staying. Still, I circled the block twice before I convinced myself there wasn’t a SWAT team waiting to ambush me outside the hostel. Satisfied, I pulled up to the steps and dismounted. Carrying the bike over my shoulder, I rushed past the front desk and up the steps to my room, planning to hunker down for one last night’s stay.
Sleep came surprisingly easy, but the nightmares were vivid. I dreamed that I was locked in the trunk of Aaron’s burning BMW. With smoke seeping in around me, there was enough light from the flames for me to see my own blood beginning to pool in the nooks and crevices of the trunk. That image was enough to jerk me out of bed for the night.
I waited for the first light of dawn before I gathered my belongings, paid my bill, and headed out into the sopping Saturday morning. I walked my bike to a nearby donut shop that served passable coffee. Leaving my helmet on for camouflage, I sat at the countertop while I sipped my coffee and half-heartedly chewed on a glazed donut. Flipping through the pages of The Vancouver Sun, I scanned it for any reference to my case. With relief, I reached the last page without finding any mention of me.
I walked outside to the pay phone by a sheltered bus stop. I tried Drew Isaacs’s cell number but heard only his voicemail greeting. I opted not to leave a message.
Hopping on my bike, I rode several aimless miles through picturesque Stanley Park—an oasis of forests, ponds, and paths in the midst of urban sprawl. Then I crossed over Burrard Inlet via the landmark Lion’s Gate Bridge to the stunningly mountainous North Shore. With much steeper hills to climb, I was panting hard when I finished the ascent that took me to the foot of Grouse Mountain. At the concession stand there, I bought another coffee and a tasteless muffin that at least replenished my blood sugar. As soon as I’d downed them, I found a pay phone by the rest rooms and tried Drew Isaacs again, only to reach his voicemail again.
As I rode back toward downtown, I mulled over how the anonymous caller might have tracked me down to Joe’s clinic. I thought of Alex’s comments about Marcus’s unusual level of interest in my whereabouts. Increasingly, he stood out in my thoughts as the most likely candidate to have blown my cover. I began to wonder whether Marcus might even be the whisperer.
It occurred to me that Marcus was far from an impartial bystander in Emily’s homicide. After all, he had once been intimate with the victim, too. I’d only learned about their relationship the last time I saw Emily alive.
After J.D. tucked his gun back in his belt and stormed out of her apartment, I cradled Emily in my arms for several minutes. Neither of us spoke a word during that silent slow dance. Finally, Emily ran her hand across her eyes and gently slipped out of my embrace. Staring at me, she broke into an amused smile.
“What?” I asked.
She pointed at herself and then to me. “Who would have thought that we could have ended up like this?”
I shook my head.
She bit her lip. “What did you picture back then? Happily ever after and all that jazz?”
“I imagined that all the time, Em.”
“But you didn’t expect it, did you?” She swallowed hard, but her tone was free of accusation.
“Not really,” I said.
Her smile withered.
“Em, remember how I grew up. My parents didn’t exactly wind up happily ever after.”
“Because of your dad’s drinking?”
“I guess. There were so many fights. So many hurtful comments,” I said. “And yet, there was still warmth there, maybe even love. Remember that night we all went out to celebrate after I finished my residency? Dad’s brain had already started to pickle from the booze, but he didn’t drink that night.”
Emily nodded warmly. “Your mom and dad ended up blowing us all off the dance floor.”
“I didn’t even know they danced,” I said. “Later, Mom told me that they used to go dancing all the time. Then Dad’s drinking got so out of hand that he usually couldn’t walk straight after dinner. And the dancing stopped.”
“Your mom was a saint to stay with him,” Emily said. “I wouldn’t have.”
“Me neither.”
She reached out and touched my hand. “You stuck with me through an awful lot.”
“Maybe not enough.”
“No, Ben.” She caressed my hand softly. “I used up all nine of my lives.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet.
She let go of my hand. “You deserve the real-life equivalent of happily ever after.”
“I don’t know, Em. I’ve never found anyone else since we broke up.”
“How about Dr. Lindquist?”
I frowned. “Alex?”
“Sure,” Emily said. “The two of you are pretty close, aren’t you?”
“She happens to be married.”
“Still?” Her eyes darkened. “I can’t believe she’s stayed with that prick.”
“You remember Marcus?” I said. “I thought you only met him at one or two hospital parties.”
“I know him a lot better than that.” She sighed. “He called me after you and I broke up.”
“And?”
“The guy has a silver tongue to go along with his black heart. He had me convinced that his marriage was over.”
I remembered Marcus’s drunken comments about Emily’s sexiness. I tasted bile. My surging jealousy might have been unfounded, but the thought of Marcus possessing both Emily and Alex tightened my stomach in knots. “Marcus and you were together?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“A while ago. But it didn’t take me long to see through him.”
“Christ, Emily, I didn’t need to hear this.” I turned away from her.
She grabbed me by the arm, pulled me back to her, and threw her arms around me tightly. She kissed me softly on the cheek, and her warm breath tickled my ear. “He couldn’t hold a candle to you, Ben.”
The sudden wail of sirens yanked me out of the memory. Instinctively, I sprang into action. I began to sprint up the hill, weaving through the traffic on the busy downtown street.
When the first fire truck screamed past me, the hammering in my chest subsided and I slowed my pace. They weren’t coming for me. Yet.
My thoughts drifted back to Emily’s admission. I hadn’t told Alex about Marcus and Emily, or any of his other affairs that I knew of, but now I regretted more than ever how we’d restrained ourselves in that hotel room in San Francisco. Bastard.
Feeling the chill through my nylon jacket, I wondered how I was going to put a roof over my head come nighttime. I couldn’t go back to the YMCA. Hotels were out of the question, as they would demand identification. I needed to find a cheap rooming house or apartment where I could pay in cash.
Cycling without a destination, I soon wound up in the lower-middle-class neighborhoods of East Vancouver. I slowed down on East Fourteenth Street as I passed a series of monotonously similar grayish-white two- and three-story apartment buildings that must have been built in the mid-fifties from the same set of blue prints. Several had vacancy signs on the front lawn. A few billed their one- and two-bedroom units as “fully furnished.” Randomly choosing an apartment complex in the middle of the block, I locked my bike on the stand out front. I buzzed the intercom for the manager. Two minutes passed before an obese gray-haired woman in a floral muumuu hobbled up to the door. She opened the door a crack. “I’m only looking for a certain kind of tenant,” she said, her tone and expression rich with the implication that I wasn’t what she had in mind.
“I am a physician from Spokane,” I said, improvising on the spot. “I’m coming up to Vancouver Hospital to do extra training in cardiology.”
“Oh, you’re a doctor!” The mention of my M.D. had a magical effect on her disposition. She threw the door open and ushered me up to the “best” apartment on the sec
ond floor. On the way, she shared her medical history with me as she solicited my opinion on the merits of knee-replacement surgery.
Dorothy Fleemand—“Dotty to you,” she insisted—unlocked the door to the apartment, which smelled cleaner than I expected. The furniture, consisting of a sofa, a kitchen table, and two matching chairs, was in better shape than I would have guessed, too. Without even checking the bedroom, I agreed to rent the apartment. After I paid four hundred dollars for the damage deposit and the balance of the month’s rent in cash (leaving me nearly tapped out), Dotty handed over the keys and promised to return with the paperwork.
I dropped my knapsack on the bedroom floor, and I collapsed on top of the bedspread. I was half asleep when I heard Dotty’s heavy fist on the door. I stumbled out of bed and signed the papers, unsure a minute later whether I’d signed as Peter Horvath or Ben Dafoe. But I was too tired to care.
Returning to the bed, I meant only to catch a catnap, but by the time I woke the fading light through the bedroom window told me it was late afternoon. I looked at my watch: 5:30 P.M. I realized Joe and Eliska would be expecting me for dinner in half an hour.
At first, I dismissed the thought of going to the Janaceks as reckless. But recognizing I was hungry and broke, I decided I had little to lose by showing up for a free meal. Despite my disequilibrium, and unsure whom I could trust, I was confident Joe posed little threat. I walked into his life long after the whisperer had begun to torment me, and my photo had yet to hit the local news.
I showered and changed into the least-crumpled clothes I dug out of my knapsack, then headed downstairs.
The rain had finally relented. And with the thick cloud cover, it was warmer outside. I realized I could have easily walked the fifteen or sixteen blocks to Joe’s house if I wasn’t running so late. Cycling along the thoroughfare of Broadway, I passed a liquor store and stopped to duck inside. When I found the Eastern European wines, I couldn’t resist. I bought a bottle of white and headed back out to my bike.
I found Joe’s house easily in the heart of the City Hall district. Wearing a jacket and tie, Joe met me at the front door of his renovated duplex. He read the label on the bottle of wine and shook his head, breaking into a belly laugh. “Hungarian! I give you one simple instruction…”
