by Dean Koontz
Many of the faces were familiar to Elliot. Half of the guests were attorneys and their wives. Although a judicial purist might have disapproved, prosecutors and public defenders and tax attorneys and criminal lawyers and corporate counsel were mingling and getting pleasantly drunk with the judges before whom they argued cases most every week. Las Vegas had a judicial style and standards of its own.
After twenty minutes of diligent mixing, Elliot found Harold Kennebeck. The judge was a tall, dour-looking man with curly white hair. He greeted Elliot warmly, and they talked about their mutual interests: cooking, flying, and river-rafting.
Elliot didn’t want to ask Kennebeck for a favor within hearing of a dozen lawyers, and today there was nowhere in the house where they could be assured of privacy. They went outside and strolled down the street, past the partygoers’ cars, which ran the gamut from Rolls-Royces to Range Rovers.
Kennebeck listened with interest to Elliot’s unofficial feeler about the chances of getting Danny’s grave reopened. Elliot didn’t tell the judge about the malicious prankster, for that seemed like an unnecessary complication; he still believed that once the fact of Danny’s death was established by the exhumation, the quickest and surest way of dealing with the harassment was to hire a first-rate firm of private investigators to track down the perpetrator. Now, for the judge’s benefit, and to explain why an exhumation had suddenly become such a vital matter, Elliot exaggerated the anguish and confusion that Tina had undergone as a direct consequence of never having seen the body of her child.
Harry Kennebeck had a poker face that also looked like a poker — hard and plain, dark — and it was difficult to tell if he had any sympathy whatsoever for Tina’s plight. As he and Elliot ambled along the sun-splashed street, Kennebeck mulled over the problem in silence for almost a minute. At last he said, “What about the father?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
“Ah,” Kennebeck said.
“The father will protest.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes.”
“On religious grounds?”
“No. There was a bitter divorce shortly before the boy died. Michael Evans hates his ex-wife.”
“Ah. So he’d contest the exhumation for no other reason but to cause her grief?”
“That’s right,” Elliot said. “No other reason. No legitimate reason.”
“Still, I’ve got to consider the father’s wishes.”
“As long as there aren’t any religious objections, the law requires the permission of only one parent in a case like this,” Elliot said.
“Nevertheless, I have a duty to protect everyone’s interests in the matter.”
“If the father has a chance to protest,” Elliot said, “we’ll probably get involved in a knock-down-drag-out legal battle. It’ll tie up a hell of a lot of the court’s time.”
“I wouldn’t like that,” Kennebeck said thoughtfully. “The court’s calendar is overloaded now. We simply don’t have enough judges or enough money. The system’s creaking and groaning.”
“And when the dust finally settled,” Elliot said, “my client would win the right to exhume the body anyway.”
“Probably.”
“Definitely,” Elliot said. “Her husband would be engaged in nothing more than spiteful obstructionism. In the process of trying to hurt his ex-wife, he’d waste several days of the court’s time, and the end result would be exactly the same as if he’d never been given a chance to protest.”
“Ah,” Kennebeck said, frowning slightly.
They stopped at the end of the next block. Kennebeck stood with his eyes closed and his face turned up to the warm winter sun.
At last the judge said, “You’re asking me to cut corners.”
“Not really. Simply issue an exhumation order on the mother’s request. The law allows it.”
“You want the order right away, I assume.”
“Tomorrow morning if possible.”
“And you’ll have the grave reopened by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Saturday at the latest.”
“Before the father can get a restraining order from another judge,” Kennebeck said.
“If there’s no hitch, maybe the father won’t ever find out about the exhumation.”
“Ah.”
“Everyone benefits. The court saves a lot of time and effort. My client is spared a great deal of unnecessary anguish. And her husband saves a bundle in attorney’s fees that he’d just be throwing away in a hopeless attempt to stop us.”
“Ah,” Kennebeck said.
In silence they walked back to the house, where the party was getting louder by the minute.
In the middle of the block, Kennebeck finally said, “I’ll have to chew on it for a while, Elliot.”
“How long?”
“Ah. Will you be here all afternoon?”
“I doubt it. With all these attorneys, it’s sort of a busman’s holiday, don’t you think?”
“Going home from here?” Kennebeck asked.
“Yes.”
“Ah.” He pushed a curly strand of white hair back from his forehead. “Then I’ll call you at home this evening.”
“Can you at least tell me how you’re leaning?”
“In your favor, I suppose.”
“You know I’m right, Harry.”
Kennebeck smiled. “I’ve heard your argument, counselor. Let’s leave it at that for now. I’ll call you this evening, after I’ve had a chance to think about it.”
At least Kennebeck hadn’t refused the request; nevertheless, Elliot had expected a quicker and more satisfying response. He wasn’t asking the judge for much of a favor. Besides, the two of them went back a long way indeed. He knew that Kennebeck was a cautious man, but usually not excessively so. The judge’s hesitation in this relatively simple matter struck Elliot as odd, but he said nothing more. He had no choice but to wait for Kennebeck’s call.
As they approached the house, they talked about the delights of pasta served with a thin, light sauce of olive oil, garlic, and sweet basil.
Elliot remained at the party only two hours. There were too many attorneys and not enough civilians to make the bash interesting. Everywhere he went, he heard talk about torts, writs, briefs, suits, countersuits, motions for continuation, appeals, plea bargaining, and the latest tax shelters. The conversations were like those in which he was involved at work, eight or ten hours a day, five days a week, and he didn’t intend to spend a holiday nattering about the same damned things.
By four o’clock he was home again, working in the kitchen. Tina was supposed to arrive at six. He had a few chores to finish before she came, so they wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time doing galley labor as they had done last night. Standing at the sink, he peeled and chopped a small onion, cleaned six stalks of celery, and peeled several slender carrots. He had just opened a bottle of balsamic vinegar and poured four ounces into a measuring cup when he heard movement behind him.
Turning, he saw a strange man enter the kitchen from the dining room. The guy was about five feet eight with a narrow face and a neatly trimmed blond beard. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie, and he carried a physician’s bag. He was nervous.
“What the hell?” Elliot said.
A second man appeared behind the first. He was considerably more formidable than his associate: tall, rough-edged, with large, big-knuckled, leathery hands — like something that had escaped from a recombinant DNA lab experimenting in the crossbreeding of human beings with bears. In freshly pressed slacks, a crisp blue shirt, a patterned tie, and a gray sports jacket, he might have been a professional hitman uncomfortably gotten up for the baptism of his Mafia don’s grandchild. But he didn’t appear to be nervous at all.
“What is this?” Elliot demanded.
Both intruders stopped near the refrigerator, twelve or fourteen feet from Elliot. The small man fidgeted, and the tall man smiled.
“How’d you
get in here?”
“A lock-release gun,” the tall man said, smiling cordially and nodding. “Bob here”—he indicated the smaller man— “has the neatest set of tools. Makes things easier.”
“What the hell is this about?”
“Relax,” said the tall man.
“I don’t keep a lot of money here.”
“No, no,” the tall man said. “It’s not money.”
Bob shook his head in agreement, frowning, as if he was dismayed to think that he could be mistaken for a common thief.
“Just relax,” the tall man repeated.
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Elliot assured them.
“You’re the one, all right.”
“Yes,” Bob said. “You’re the one. There’s no mistake.”
The conversation had the disorienting quality of the off-kilter exchanges between Alice and the scrawny denizens of Wonderland.
Putting down the vinegar bottle and picking up the knife, Elliot said, “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Calm down, Mr. Stryker,” the tall one said.
“Yes,” Bob said. “Please calm down.”
Elliot took a step toward them.
The tall man pulled a silencer-equipped pistol out of a shoulder holster that was concealed under his gray sports jacket. “Easy. Just you take it real nice and easy.”
Elliot backed up against the sink.
“That’s better,” the tall man said.
“Much better,” Bob said.
“Put the knife down, and we’ll all be happy.”
“Let’s keep this happy,” Bob agreed.
“Yeah, nice and happy.”
The Mad Hatter would be along any minute now.
“Down with the knife,” said the tall man. “Come on, come on.”
Finally Elliot put it down.
“Push it across the counter, out of reach.”
Elliot did as he was told. “Who are you guys?”
“As long as you cooperate, you won’t get hurt,” the tall man assured him.
Bob said, “Let’s get on with it, Vince.”
Vince, the tall man, said, “We’ll use the breakfast area over there in the corner.”
Bob went to the round maple table. He put down the black, physician’s bag, opened it, and withdrew a compact cassette tape recorder. He removed other things from the bag too: a length of flexible rubber tubing, a sphygmomanometer for monitoring blood pressure, two small bottles of amber-colored fluid, and a packet of disposable hypodermic syringes.
Elliot’s mind raced through a list of cases that his law firm was currently handling, searching for some connection with these two intruders, but he couldn’t think of one.
The tall man gestured with the gun. “Go over to the table and sit down.”
“Not until you tell me what this is all about.”
“I’m giving the orders here.”
“But I’m not taking them.”
“I’ll put a hole in you if you don’t move.”
“No. You won’t do that,” Elliot said, wishing that he felt as confident as he sounded. “You’ve got something else in mind, and shooting me would ruin it.”
“Move your ass over to that table.”
“Not until you explain yourself.”
Vince glared at him.
Elliot met the stranger’s eyes and didn’t look away.
At last Vince said, “Be reasonable. We’ve just got to ask you some questions.”
Determined not to let them see that he was frightened, aware that any sign of fear would be taken as proof of weakness, Elliot said, “Well, you’ve got one hell of a weird approach for someone who’s just taking a public opinion survey.”
“Move.”
“What are the hypodermic needles for?”
“Move.”
“What are they for?”
Vince sighed. “We gotta be sure you tell us the truth.”
“The entire truth,” said Bob.
“Drugs?” Elliot asked.
“They’re effective and reliable,” said Bob.
“And when you’ve finished, I’ll have a brain the consistency of grape jelly.”
“No, no,” Bob said. “These drugs won’t do any lasting physical or mental damage.”
“What sort of questions?” Elliot asked.
“I’m losing my patience with you,” Vince said.
“It’s mutual,” Elliot assured him.
“Move.”
Elliot didn’t move an inch. He refused to look at the muzzle of the pistol. He wanted them to think that guns didn’t scare him. Inside, he was vibrating like a tuning fork.
“You son of a bitch, move!”
“What sort of questions do you want to ask me?”
The big man scowled.
Bob said, “For Christ’s sake, Vince, tell him. He’s going to hear the questions anyway when he finally sits down. Let’s get this over with and split.”
Vince scratched his concrete-block chin with his shovel of a hand and then reached inside his jacket. From an inner pocket, he withdrew a few sheets of folded typing paper.
The gun wavered, but it didn’t move off target far enough to give Elliot a chance.
“I’m supposed to ask you every question on this list,” Vince said, shaking the folded paper at Elliot. “It’s a lot, thirty or forty questions altogether, but it won’t take long if you just sit down over there and cooperate.”
“Questions about what?” Elliot insisted.
“Christina Evans.”
This was the last thing Elliot expected. He was dumbfounded. “Tina Evans? What about her?”
“Got to know why she wants her little boy’s grave reopened.”
Elliot stared at him, amazed. “How do you know about that?”
“Never mind,” Vince said.
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Never mind how we know. The important thing is we do know.”
“Are you the bastards who’ve been harassing Tina?”
“Huh?”
“Are you the ones who keep sending her messages?”
“What messages?” Bob asked.
“Are you the ones who wrecked the boy’s room?”
“What are you talking about?” Vince asked. “We haven’t heard anything about this.”
“Someone’s sending messages about the kid?” Bob asked.
They appeared to be genuinely surprised by this news, and Elliot was pretty sure they weren’t the people who had been trying to scare Tina. Besides, though they both struck him as slightly wacky, they didn’t seem to be merely hoaxers or borderline psychopaths who got their kicks by scaring defenseless women. They looked and acted like organization men, even though the big one was rough enough at the edges to pass for a common thug. A silencer-equipped pistol, lock-release gun, truth serums— their apparatus indicated that these guys were part of a sophisticated outfit with substantial resources.
“What about the messages she’s been getting?” Vince asked, still watching Elliot closely.
“I guess that’s just one more question you’re not going to get an answer for,” Elliot said.
“We’ll get the answer,” Vince said coldly.
“We’ll get all the answers,” Bob agreed.
“Now,” Vince said, “counselor, are you going to walk over to the table and sit your ass down, or am I going to have to motivate you with this?” He gestured with his pistol again.
“Kennebeck!” Elliot said, startled by a sudden insight. “The only way you could have found out about the exhumation so quickly is if Kennebeck told you.”
The two men glanced at each other. They were unhappy to hear the judge’s name.
“Who?” Vince asked, but it was too late to cover the revealing look they had exchanged.
“That’s why he stalled me,” Elliot said. “He wanted to give you time to get to me. Why in the hell should Kennebeck care whether or not Danny’s grave is reopened? Why should you care? Who the hell are you people?”
Elliot pretended not to have heard the threat. The pistol still frightened him, but he was now thinking of something else that scared him more than the gun. A chill spread from the base of his spine, up his back, as he realized what the presence of these men implied about the accident that had killed Danny.
“There’s something about Danny’s death . . . something strange about the way all those scouts died. The truth of it isn’t anything like the version everyone’s been told. The bus accident . . . that’s a lie, isn’t it?”
Neither man answered him.
“The truth is a lot worse,” Elliot said. “Something so terrible that some powerful people want to hush it up. Kennebeck . . . once an agent, always an agent. Which set of letters do you guys work for? Not the FBI. They’re all Ivy Leaguers these days, polished, educated. Same for the CIA. You’re too crude. Not the CID, for sure; there’s no military discipline about you. Let me guess. You work for some set of letters the public hasn’t even heard about yet. Something secret and dirty.”
Vince’s face darkened like a slab of Spam on a hot griddle. “Goddamn it, I said you were going to answer the questions from now on.”
“Relax,” Elliot said. “I’ve played your game. I was in Army Intelligence back when. I’m not exactly an outsider. I know how it works—the rules, the moves. You don’t have to be so hard-assed with me. Open up. Give me a break, and I’ll give you a break.”
Evidently sensing Vince’s onrushing blowup and aware that it wouldn’t help them accomplish their mission, Bob quickly said, “Listen, Stryker, we can’t answer most of your questions because we don’t know. Yes, we work for a government agency. Yes, it’s one you’ve never heard of and probably never will. But we don’t know why this Danny Evans kid is so important. We haven’t been told the details, not even half of them. And we don’t want to know all of it, either. You understand what I’m saying—the less a guy knows, the less he can be nailed for later. Christ, we’re not big shots in this outfit. We’re strictly hired help. They only tell us as much as we need to know. So will you cool it? Just come over here, sit down, let me inject you, give us a few answers, and we can all get on with our lives. We can’t just stand here forever.”
