by Taylor Smith
“Sorting the kids’ things. Carol wanted her old books for the baby, so I started going through this stuff, separating hers from Stephen’s. Let me take your coat.”
She shook her head as she stared at the juvenile paraphernalia spread across the floor, realizing the accumulated family history that it represented—a history of Frank’s and Joanne’s life with their two children. It was a life into which she had been a frequent and welcome visitor, with privileged knowledge of some of its ups and downs, good days and bad. But it was essentially alien to her own existence, outside the protective cocoon she had built for her own life with David and Lindsay. Even now, knowing the link that bound those two worlds together, it was impossible to really feel their connectedness.
“Mariah? Why don’t you sit down?”
She turned around to look up at him. “I spoke to Rachel Kingman in Los Alamos, Frank.”
Tucker sank into a chair but his eyes never left her face. “And?”
“She remembered you.”
“Mariah—”
“All these years, Frank—all these years you’ve known Lindsay was your child. And you never said a word. How could you do that, just walk away from her?”
“How could I not?”
“Oh, Frank! I know how hard things were for you. But didn’t it bother you that another man claimed your flesh and blood?”
“Yes, it did. But aside from my own situation, how could I step forward and stake a claim when it was obvious who you wanted the father to be?”
“David knew, and he kept silent, too. All these years, I thought I knew you both, but I don’t understand either one of you.”
“Don’t blame David. It was my idea.”
“Your idea? You discussed this? The two of you actually conspired to keep quiet about this and then left me in ignorance?”
“What would it have accomplished for you to know the truth?”
“Ignorance is not bliss, Frank!”
“Maybe not, but knowing the truth is no picnic, either. Listen, Mariah. I knew from the time my kids were babies that we were going to lose Joanne one day. It hung like a sword over our life together. I didn’t want that for you. I didn’t want anything to spoil whatever time you and David had.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He was afraid. He knew you understood radiation well enough to know what it probably meant for him in the long run.”
“What made you go to Los Alamos that time?”
“When the two of you started living together again, I asked the Office of Security to do a background check on him. I knew he had a high-level security clearance since he’d worked on the nuclear weapons program, but I was suspicious when he showed up out of the blue like that. Suspicious,” Frank admitted, “and maybe a little jealous, too. Not that I expected anything more between us. What happened was a mistake. You felt sorry for me. I knew that. But it did something for me, Mariah. It gave me hope. Up to then, I’d felt like my life was over. It sounds selfish and I’m not proud of this, but for the first time, I began to believe that I could go on after Joanne was gone. I would survive, hard as it was losing her.”
Mariah closed her eyes and nodded. This was something she could understand. Ever since David had been injured in Vienna, she had been just barely functioning in a cold, dark void. Not even Lindsay could alleviate the fear and loneliness she had felt since she had lost him. No one would ever be to her what David had been, but Paul Chaney’s presence these last few days had sparked a tiny glimmer of hope that perhaps one day there could be light and warmth in her life again.
“Anyway,” Frank went on, “just as you announced that you were pregnant, the security report came back explaining why David had quit the lab. Nothing about the situation felt right—even putting aside my own feelings. So I went to check it out for myself. I met with Dr. Kingman. Then I came back here and confronted David with what I knew.”
“Did he know, Frank, that it was you?”
Tucker shrugged. “I’m not sure—he might have guessed. I just told him that the baby’s father was married and would never interfere with your lives. David seemed satisfied with that.”
Mariah slid down onto the couch and stared at the floor. The cushions sank as Frank came over and sat next to her.
“Mariah, please understand. I didn’t mean to abandon you or the baby. But you were never really mine to have—either of you. I never kidded myself about that. Stepping aside for David seemed the right thing to do.”
“David saved our butts, didn’t he, Frank?”
“Maybe. What could I do, tell Joanne? Tell Carol and Stephen, ‘Gee kids, tough luck about your mom dying, but guess what? Dad’s got a new girlfriend and, as an added bonus, she’s pregnant’? I was a forty-three-year-old guy with a sick wife and two kids, one in the throes of teenage rebellion. You were twenty-five and in love with another man, your whole life ahead of you. It was just no contest. David was a better father for Lindsay than I ever could have been, better than I ever was.”
Mariah watched his agonized features, then sighed deeply and put her hand on his arm. “Oh, Frank, I’m so sorry for the mess I caused.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry, Mariah. You gave me strength to go on, but you got hurt in the end for your kindness. I wish I could go back and change everything.”
“I don’t—not if it would mean not having Lindsay. David understood that.” Mariah looked him in the eye. “I think you made the right decision, Frank, even though this hurts right now. But you were a good father, too—you are a good father. Don’t ever think differently.”
There was a contemptuous snort from the front hall. Mariah’s stomach plunged at the sight of the bulky figure that moved into the doorway. “Stephen!”
“How long have you been sneaking around?” Frank growled.
“Long enough. I saw her car outside so I came in quietly.”
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at work?”
“I’m off tonight. Carol said you were sorting through our stuff so I dropped by to make sure you didn’t chuck out my things.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Sure, Dad. You wouldn’t do that—not a model father like you.” He snorted again, looking from one to the other. “You’re a great pair, you two. I figured you’d find your way back together, sooner or later.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I always suspected, you know. Even back then, I thought you acted weird whenever she came over here. Mom was too good-hearted. She didn’t see what was going on right under her nose. But I always wondered if you were diddling Mariah.”
Frank jumped to his feet. “That’s enough!”
“And then I find out the truth. You cheated on Mom. And you,” he continued, turning on Mariah, “you foisted his kid on David. David was such a great guy, and you just made a fool of him.”
“I’m warning you, Stephen!”
“Frank, don’t!” Mariah said. “It wasn’t like that, Stevie. You don’t understand.”
“Oh, please! Spare me!”
“We made one mistake. And it was my fault, not your father’s. He loved your mother very much. You must know that.”
“He loved you. He had the hots for you back then and he still does.”
“That’s it, Stephen! You stop that right now and apologize!”
“The hell I will! Tell her, Dad, tell her you can’t forget her. You still think about her. Tell her about your password.”
“What?”
“Your password on the computer system at work. That was when I knew for sure.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was hacking on the system one night, about a year and a half ago. I broke into the main password file and I found your password—MARIAH. Now there’s an unforgettable one, huh, even for a byte-hater like you? And then, when it came time for a new password a few weeks later, I checked again.” Stephen turned to Mariah. “You’ll never guess what he’d changed it to,” he said,
shaking his head incredulously. Mariah shrugged. “Guess!”
“I don’t know, Stephen!”
“LINDSAY—surprise, surprise. And you know what it was the next month? MARIAH again.” He wagged his finger at his father. “That’s a no-no, Dad. You’re supposed to use a new word every time. But you never do. It’s just MARIAH-LINDSAY-MARIAH-LINDSAY—month after month.”
“It doesn’t mean anything, Stephen, an old man’s preoccupation, that’s all. Don’t read more into it than you should.”
“You were preoccupied, all right. So preoccupied about it that last year, you changed your will.”
Frank was stunned. “How do you know that?”
“When I started selling my games, I needed a lawyer, so I used yours. I was in his office one day to see about a contract. He had a new secretary and she didn’t realize that Stephen F. Tucker wasn’t the same person as F-for-Frank Tucker. She was supposed to give me some papers to read over, but she gave me more than I bargained for. It wasn’t till I started reading that I realized what it was.”
“Oh, no,” Frank breathed.
“I never let on. I didn’t want her to get into trouble with her boss.”
Frank passed his hand over his dome and exhaled sharply.
“What is it?” Mariah asked. “What did you do?”
Stephen turned to her. “He wrote Lindsay in. Changed his will so that one-third of his estate would go to a trust fund to be disbursed anonymously. Only the lawyer would know the name of the beneficiary—his bastard child by one Mariah Bolt.”
“Oh, Frank, no! Why did you do that?”
“It was little enough, but I wanted to provide something for her.”
“She doesn’t need your money. That’s the last thing Lindsay needs.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s going to be a wealthy young woman one day. After my mother died, I became sole heir of the great Benjamin Bolt. His damn books keep selling and the royalties keep coming in, but I never wanted money from him! When Lindsay was born, I had it put in trust for her. Being Ben Bolt’s daughter was no gift, as far as I was concerned, but I thought she might at least derive some benefit from being his granddaughter.”
“It wasn’t about money,” Frank said quietly. “There isn’t even much there. It was just the right thing to do.”
“What do you know about doing the right thing, either of you?” Stephen asked. “You made fools of the two best people I ever knew—my mother and David Tardiff. They didn’t deserve that.” Mariah watched as Stephen’s round face became twisted with hatred, wet with tears. He met her look. “David was so good to you—took you when you were pregnant with another man’s child, raised her like she was his own. And how did you repay him? By throwing yourself at that Chaney guy while David lay dying.”
“That’s a lie!”
“The hell it is! I saw you at the Christmas party the night David died all alone in that nursing home. Chaney couldn’t keep his eyes or hands off you. You left Lindsay with Carol so the two of you could be alone.”
“No, Stephen! You’re wrong!” Mariah cried. “I loved David. How could you say such a thing? How could you even think it? That wasn’t why I left Lindsay that night. I needed time to clean up. Our house was a mess after I was attacked and I didn’t want her to be frightened.”
“Rollie Burton should have done what he was hired to do.”
A stunned silence filled the room. The clock on the mantel ticked thunderously. Outside, a set of tires swished on the wet pavement.
“How do you know that name?” Frank asked.
Stephen shifted his bulk from one foot to the other, his dark eyes flitting around the room, his mouth opening and closing. Finally, he was saved by the rattle of a key in the front door and his sister’s voice in the hall.
“Don’t get up, it’s just me! I came to help sort through that junk.” She was shrugging out of her coat as she came in from the hall, smiling broadly. “Hey! The gang’s all here. Mariah, hi. I didn’t know you were—” Carol stopped as she caught sight of their faces. “What’s going on? Dad? What’s the matter?”
Tucker glanced at her and raised his hand, then turned to his son. “I want an answer, Stephen. How do you know the name of the man who attacked Mariah?”
“You told me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then Mariah did, at the party.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know his name then. The police only told me later, after I got home. And I haven’t seen you since.”
“Well, then, I must have seen it on a file when I was hacking on the system.”
“There’s nothing about the attack on any Company file,” Frank said. The two big men, so alike and yet so unalike, stared at each other across the room, no bridge of comprehension linking them despite the family tie and their outward physical resemblance. “You, Stephen? You hired Burton to kill Mariah?”
“Dad!” Carol cried. “Good God! What are you saying? He’d never do such an awful thing. Tell him, Stevie. Stevie? For God’s sake, tell them!”
“I shouldn’t have had to. If she had been where she was supposed to be that morning, instead of David—” Stephen’s voice suddenly broke, rising to an agonized wail as his eyes skirted the ceiling. “Oh, hell! You weren’t supposed to be there, David. I’m sorry! I never wanted to hurt you!”
Mariah watched Stephen’s swaying body and listened with astonishment to the keening voice, suddenly recognizing the symptoms of the corrosive, angry bereavement that comes with the worst losses in life—of a parent, a child, a mate. And as she watched, she knew that it was something more than friendship, more than hero worship of David that underlay the agony they were witnessing.
He rammed chunky fists into his jacket pockets and looked back at them, his eyes glistening. “I told David once how I felt about him,” he said, confirming her suspicion. “He wasn’t disgusted. He didn’t turn me away. He said he couldn’t love me that way, but we could still be friends. He was still willing to be my friend,” Stephen repeated, his voice filled with wonder.
“Stevie, I loved him, too.”
“You didn’t deserve him! When I found out what you did to him, and to my mother—I decided to give you a taste of your own medicine.”
“Katarina Müller.”
“Who’s Katarina Müller?” Carol asked.
“A woman who seduced and blackmailed David and then tried to have me killed in Vienna—only David and Lindsay got hurt instead. She was working for Stephen.”
“What? Mariah, no!” Carol protested. “That’s impossible. He doesn’t know people like that, he doesn’t really know anyone, for that matter. He doesn’t even go anywhere, you know that. Stevie’s got problems, I admit, but he doesn’t hire killers!”
Mariah studied this unlikely employer of assassins. Stephen’s face was flushed and shining, his breathing audible as the rounded shoulders rose and fell laboriously. He lived detached from human contact in a world of personally programmed fantasy, his mind-set dominated by the simplistic good guy-bad guy scenarios that he created for his computer games, where villains were dispatched with a few keyboard punches.
“He could do it without leaving the comfort of his bedroom,” she said. “He has everything he needs right there. A computer, a modem, a telephone. Access to all the billboards, I would imagine.”
“Billboards?”
“Computer billboards—information services available to anyone with a computer and a modem to link up to them. You’ve heard of the ads for mercenaries in magazines like Soldier of Fortune? Well, there are Internet billboard variations on the theme. If you want somebody blackmailed or murdered, it’s a buyers’ market out there, especially now, with the end of the Cold War. Some people have even set themselves up as agents, brokering for out-of-work spies and assassins. That’s how he found Katarina Müller—and Burton, I would imagine. With the earnings from his computer games, he could easily afford their services.”
“
Why would you do this, Stephen?” Frank asked. “Murder? For God’s sake, why?”
“I didn’t start out to have her killed. At first, I just thought it would be poetic justice if David had an affair with another woman. Mariah would have to find out about it, of course, so we needed pictures. But the problem was, it wasn’t easy to get David to go along. That Müller woman said she tried everything, but he wasn’t interested—until I gave her the ammunition she needed.”
“Why did you have to drag Lindsay into it?”
“She was in it from the start, wasn’t she?” Stephen snapped. Then his features softened just a little. “I didn’t mean for Lindsay to get hurt—this wasn’t her fault. She’s okay. She just got caught in the middle. I didn’t know they’d do it the way they did.”
“Why, Stephen?” Frank repeated. “If you didn’t set out to kill Mariah, what changed? Why did you up the ante?”
“Because I was monitoring the cables from Vienna and I knew David was trying to leave. I thought she’d luck out again, not get what was coming to her. And then I saw the report on the CHAUCER file about that Russian informer disappearing. Oh, yeah, Mariah, I knew about that file all along. And I figured that if anything happened to you, everyone would just think the Russians were responsible for that, too. It was a golden opportunity. But then it all went wrong and David got hurt instead. That was your fault, Mariah. You should have been in that car. When I saw David in the nursing home—what he had become—I wanted you to pay. I wanted it so bad! So I decided to hire Burton to finish the job.”
Stephen took another step toward the door and withdrew his hands from his pockets. In one hand he held a revolver, which he pointed at her.
“But Burton screwed up, too,” he continued. “I should have known. You can’t trust anyone. People always let you down, in the end. Well, no more. This time, I’ll take care of it myself.”
“Put it down, Stephen,” Frank said evenly. “It’s all over. You can’t possibly get away with this—you know that.”
“I don’t care anymore, not after what happened to David. It’s her fault and I just can’t stomach the thought of her getting off scot-free again.”
