KILLING PLATO (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller)

by Jake Needham

  I wanted nothing to do with Plato Karsarkis, nothing at all; yet I had to wonder if he had any idea what was really out there waiting for him. I wondered, too, who it was in Washington who wanted Karsarkis dead, and who commanded the power needed to turn the United States Marshals Service into a personal hit squad. But most of all I wondered what it was Karsarkis knew that frightened someone so much they were willing to run the risks involved in killing him; and I wondered what Karsarkis might do with that knowledge before they got to him.

  By the time I pulled up to the gates of our apartment building it was nearly eleven. The guard poked his head out of the shelter and I lowered the driver’s window and gave him a thumbs up. He jumped to his feet, hauled the gate open, and snapped off a salute. I returned it as I passed inside and I listened to the gate clang shut behind me.

  The garage was deserted. I locked the car and took the elevator up to the eleventh floor without seeing anyone. I knew Anita would be wondering where I had been. As I unlocked our front door, it occurred to me that I probably should have left a message on her voice mail, but with all the distractions of the evening I had forgotten.

  I entered the dark apartment quietly, not wanting to wake Anita if she had already gone to sleep. Pushing the door closed behind me and muffling the click of the lock with my body, I bent down and flipped on a lamp.

  I stared in puzzlement at the two suitcases. They were large bags, and they looked very much like the ones Anita packed for herself when she and I went on long trips together.

  Had Anita told me she was going somewhere tonight and I had completely forgotten? God, if I had she’d kill me.

  I frantically searched my memory. No, I was certain she hadn’t said anything like that, but then what were the bags doing there? If some emergency had come up, surely she would have called me.

  I pulled my telephone out of my pocket and looked at the screen. The date and time glowed back at me as always. No missed calls.

  Still trying to work out what Anita’s bags were doing in the hallway, I walked into the living room and switched on the lights.

  Anita was sitting in one of the two brown leather chairs facing the windows. She was waiting there in the dark, looking out at the city, her body turned slightly away from me and her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t move when the light came on. She didn’t even blink. She hardly seemed to know I was there. Although I had seen her sit in that same chair many times, it suddenly struck me how small she looked in it, as if either she had shrunk or the chair itself had become mysteriously enlarged.

  My first thought was that something had happened, that perhaps she was ill and waiting for me to take her to the hospital. Then she turned her head very slowly and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before, one I couldn’t even begin to put a name to. I knew then that she wasn’t ill. Something must have happened to someone we knew. Something terrible.

  “Anita, what—”

  “Please don’t say anything for a moment, Jack. Just come in and sit down.”

  I walked the length of the living room, growng room,ing more bewildered by the step, but I settled into the second of the pair of leather chairs facing the windows and waited for Anita to tell me what was going on. They were big chairs, deep and cushy, and Anita and I had often sat there in the evenings just like this, drinking after-dinner coffees, listening to music, and talking about our days. I looked at Anita, waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t seem to be in any hurry. She had turned her face back to the windows and I couldn’t see her eyes.

  “For God’s sake, Anita, has something—”

  “Can’t you do just one thing I ask, Jack?” she snapped before I could finish. “I asked you not to say anything for a moment and the first thing you do is start talking. Why can’t you do just one thing I ask? Just one fucking thing.”

  I couldn’t have been any more stunned if Anita had reached over and slapped me, which in a way I guess she just had. Her tone didn’t suggest there was a great deal of room for argument, so I sat in silence and offered no response.

  Later, looking back, I couldn’t remember how long it was before Anita spoke again. It was probably less than a minute, but at the time it felt like hours passed as my mind churned through every conceivable way to account for Anita’s obvious distress. I discarded each possibility in turn and wound up back again exactly where I had started: utterly and completely mystified.

  Evidently something absolutely awful had happened, but I was going to have to wait until Anita was ready to tell me about it, and to do it entirely in her own way.

  THIRTY THREE

  AFTER A WHILE Anita turned her head away from the windows and looked at me, then she folded her arms across her body as if she had suddenly become cold. I studied her face, but could read nothing in it.

  “I’m going to London for a while, Jack.”

  All at once I was aware of the sound of the air conditioning humming in the background. It sounded somehow unnaturally loud.

  “When? Tonight?”

  Anita shifted her body in the chair, turning further away from me.

  “Things aren’t right,” she said. “With us. Just not right.”

  “What are you talking about, Anita?”

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “I hoped getting the house in Phuket might help. Maybe even give us some kind of a fresh start. But obviously that’s not going to happen.”

  I leaned back and exhaled loudly, not even trying to hide my irritation. Anita seemed so upset she had scared me half to death and all the time it was just about that goddamned house again.

  “Okay, now I get it—” I began, but that was as far as I got.

  “No, you don’t,” Anita snapped. “You do not get it, Jack, and you never will.”

  Anita stood up and took several quick steps as if she were leaving the room. Then she stopped and turned back, her arms still folded tightly across her body. I remained sitting in the chair watching her, tilting my head in puzzlement and rubbing at the back of my neck.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do. But you’re dealing with it just as you do everything else. You acknowledge only what you want to know. You shut everything else out.”

  And just like that, I saw.

  I realized then exactly what was happening, and even though the massive shock of it nearly paralyzed me, some part of my consciousness still marveled at how I could have missed it up until then. The telephone turned off, the bags in the hall, the sitting in the darkness waiting for me to come home. Now it was all so obvious.

  Anita was leaving me.

  “Something has changed since we were married, Jack. Something’s changed, and I don’t like it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s all too much.”

  “Too much what?”

  “Too much like little boys playing spy games, hiding in the woods until people end up dead. Then you come out just as if nothing happened and go on just as you were before. You have no idea of danger, no concept of risk. Maybe you’ll be the next body to turn up somewhere, Jack. Did you ever think of that?”

  “I’m just a teacher, Anita. I’m not playing spy games and I’m not in any danger.”

  “Oh, bullshit, Jack. Everybody you know is a spook, a criminal, or a cop. And if you’re not up to your neck in one thing, it’s another.”

  The words were tough, but the look on her face was tougher.

  “Look, if this is about Plato Karsarkis,” I stammered, “last week you were saying you thought I ought to help him, and now you’re saying—”

  “I’m not talking about Plato. I’m talking about you.”

  “About me?”

  “Not you, I guess. Not really,” she said. “About what you do.”

  “Same thing.”

  Anita shook her head very slowly.

  “I knew you’d say something like that,” she said.
<
br />   “Look, Anita,” I started, “think about—”

  “I’ve done so much thinking these last few days that I can’t think straight about anything anymore. But I do know this, Jack. We have to be apart for a while. We have to sort things out.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, I do. And if I have to sort it out for us both, then I’ll do that. I need some time to decide, and believe me I’m thinking of you, too. I’m not sure I’m the right one for you.”

  “I’m sure, Anita. I’m absolutely sure.”

  “Please, don’t say that. Don’t make this any worse than it already is.”

  “I don’t want to live without you, Anita. I won’t go back to the way I was before.”

  “I have never asked you to change for me, Jack. I know you and I don’t think you could even if you wanted to. I’m not saying…oh, fuck, I don’t know what I am saying, let alone what I’m not.”

  Anita was crying now. I could see the tears in her eyes and I watched as they rolled down her cheeks, first from one eye and then from the other. I wanted to stand up and walk over and put my arms arut my around her, but I knew absolutely that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead I looked out the window and followed the blinking white lights on the wingtips of an airliner as it climbed out over the city and disappeared to the south. I wondered where it was going and who was on it, and I wondered whether I might like to be on it, too.

  “Look,” I finally said, “it’s after midnight and you can’t go out there alone tonight. You take the bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch in here and tomorrow we’ll decide what to do.”

  “No,” she said, “my flight is tonight. I have a car waiting downstairs.”

  There was a long silence as we both groped through our pain, looking for purchase or maybe just a place to hide. I glanced away, not able to bear the sight of Anita’s tears any longer, but there was nothing at all I could do right then to make them stop.

  “I’ll do whatever you want, Anita.”

  “I want you to go into your study,” she said in a voice that was suddenly clear and strong. “I want you to wait there and let me leave without making things any worse than they already are.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded as if in a daze. “Okay.”

  “Just give me some time, Jack.”

  “Time to decide?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Time to decide.”

  Anita walked over and collected her purse from the chair where she had been waiting for me. I stood up, but she turned away without looking at me. I put out my arm to stop her and she brushed by it. When she reached the doorway, she stood for a moment with her back to me.

  “Please do what I asked. Go into your study and let me leave, Jack.”

  Then she went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear her crying.

  I didn’t say anything. I just left the living room, walked into my study, and closed the door. I was sick at heart and I didn’t know whether I felt hopeful or hopeless or what I felt, but it was Anita’s move now and whatever feelings I might have or not have weren’t going to change that.

  I settled behind my desk and spread my hands on top of it, palms down. The room seemed to move around me and I sat as still as I could, holding onto the desk until it stopped. When it felt safe to turn loose, I lifted one hand cautiously and poked with my forefinger at a glass heart that lay on top of a stack of papers. It was crystal and Anita had given it to me for my last birthday, a beautiful pebbled glass heart with a ribbon of red winding through it. I hadn’t been sure what else to do with it so I had kept in on my desk and used it as a paperweight.

  Don’t break it, was what Anita had said to me when I unwrapped it. Don’t break it, Jack.

  I examined the crystal heart now and wondered about it. It looked intact, the same as it had always looked; but maybe there were fault lines there I had never noticed before, cracks and imperfections that even the best, most loving eyes could never find. Maybe it had already been broken when she gave it to me and I had never even noticed.

  I sat there for a while in absolute stillness staring at the little glass heart. For a time I teetered on the edge of hope that any moment Anita would walk in and tell me she hadn’t meant any of it, she had had a bad day and that was all there was to it; but then I heard the front door open and close again, and I knew A and I knita wouldn’t be coming in after all.

  Some time after that, I have no idea how long, I swiveled around in my chair and stared out the window. The city was very dark and seemed utterly still. I wondered what time it was, but something stopped me from looking at my watch. Instead I just sat and stared, focusing on nothing, seeing nothing.

  As blanked out as I was, at some level that was less than conscious I could feel my mind’s instinctive protective devices beginning to react. A part of my brain, entirely unbidden, began shuffling the cards, slowly dealing out new hands, examining each for possibilities, then collecting the cards and dealing more hands. I could not bear to look at any of them.

  All at once I felt as if only my body was sitting there in that chair looking out the window, that my conscious self had stepped outside my body and even then was doing a reconnaissance of the dark apartment like one of those mechanical devices bomb squads use to examine unknown packages, warily probing the gloom for hidden dangers.

  It found none, but it found no hope either.

  When eventually my consciousness returned and resumed its accustomed place within my body, the first thing I noticed was that I had been crying. I wondered about that because I couldn’t remember crying since I had been a child and I wasn’t absolutely certain I had ever cried even then. I stuck out my tongue and cautiously tasted the tears running down my cheeks. I did not find the taste to be one I could recommend.

  How long I sat like that I have no way of knowing. Eventually I realized the sky outside was no longer black, but had turned a sort of feeble gray. I gathered dawn was not far off so I pushed myself out of the chair, shut off the light, and walked into the kitchen. I took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, unscrewed the cap, and drained half of it. I hadn’t known how thirsty I was until the moment the cold water touched my tongue. But then I doubted I had ever been so thirsty, and I was absolutely certain water had never tasted so good.

  I walked into the bedroom and stood in the doorway for a while. Everything was just as it should have been, except of course that the bed was empty and neatly made. I went across to the windows and pulled a drape aside. The new day was beginning, creeping in as quietly as a mouse.

  I looked off beyond the brick wall that surrounded our building and saw a man on the sidewalk. He had a dog with him and followed it lazily, apparently unconcerned about where it was going. The pallid half-light of dawn rendered both figures in shadowy halftones, all gray and white and black. I watched the man and his dog slipping in and out of focus, first there and then not, and then suddenly there again, unearthly apparitions on the stroll, the air bit by bit coloring around them.

  It was all so beautiful that I could hardly breathe.

  THIRTY FOUR

  IT HAD BEEN three days since Anita had taken her bags and left for God only knew where. She had told me she was going to London, of course, but I didn’t really believe that anymore and I don’t think Anita expected me to.

  That morning I gave my last corporate finance lecture for the year and then went back to my office. A good many of my colleagues had already begun their end-of-term holidays so the building was unusually quiet. I had a few last papers to read and grade, but I really didn’t really feel much like it. Mostly I felt like sitting there just staring at the wall and feeling sorry for myself. When the telephone rang, I considered ignoring it, but eventually I snatched up the receiver mostly to shut the damned thing up.

  “Yes,” I snapped.

  There was a short pause as whoever was calling processed my curt answer.

  “Perhaps this is a bad time for me to call you, Mr. Shepherd.” It was a
woman’s voice, a very nice voice, mellow and warm with an unmistakably upper-class accent.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “Who is this?”

  “This is Kathleeya Srisophon.”

  It took me a minute to connect the name with a face, but then I did. Oh, Christ.

  “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled quickly. “I apologize. The damned telephone just caught me by surprise.”

  “You don’t usually receive telephone calls?”

  “Yes, I receive telephone calls, but…”

  I stopped talking before I sounded like a complete idiot, or maybe it was already too late to prevent that.

  “I will not disturb you further then, Professor,” she said. “I merely telephoned to express my hope that the death of Mr. Karsarkis’ assistant will not affect your decision in any way.”

  “My decision?”

  “As to whether or not to help us. To help Mr. Karsarkis.”

  I shifted uneasily in my chair. In the shock of Anita leaving, I hadn’t given much thought to anything else, certainly not to the disk or my promise to call after seeing its contents.

  “Have you read the files yet?” Kathleeya asked.

  “Yes, I have. But there’s been…” I was fumbling, so I tried again. “I’ve had…”

  What was I going to tell her? I felt like a jerk.

  “Something personal came up,” I finished quickly.

  “Yes,” she said.

  It was just one word and she spoke it without any particular inflection, but it left me with no doubt at all she already knew everything.

  “In any case, Mr. Shepherd, that’s not what I called about. I was actually wondering if you would have lunch with me.”

  I sat back, surprised.

  “Ah…okay,” I said. “When did you have in mind?”

  “Are you free today?”

  I waited for Kathleeya to fill in the rest, and I sensed there was a rest although I didn’t have a clue what it could possibly be. But she remained silent and against all odds the silence actually felt comfortable.