He'd been there just about an hour already. In that time, thirty-two cars had driven by. One had passed by three times, but Morrison wrote it off as a friendly because each time it passed it had a different number of high school kids in it, and the driver couldn't have been a day over 17. Regardless, by habit forged through long, terrifying, sometimes tragic experience, he'd taken down the license numbers and descriptions of each and every vehicle that drove by. He'd run them at the office tomorrow.
There was also one man who'd jogged down the road in full running regalia during the first hour. Morrison watched him carefully, jotting down a thumbnail description of his features. His outfit looked normal. His jog looked natural. The only peculiarity Morrison could pick out was that he appeared to be missing his left pinkie finger.
The man hadn't turned to look directly at Arkin's house, Morrison was sure of that. But he also knew that a well-trained watcher on a well-disciplined surveillance team wouldn't overtly turn his head to observe his target for fear of being burned by just the sort of counter-surveillance Morrison was now conducting. No—they'd just observe out the corner of their eye, concentrating on the edges of their fields of vision. If they were looking to see if Arkin's car was in the driveway, that was all they'd need to do.
Morrison took a big bite of his homemade pemmican, shifted on his already sore ass, pulled the lens covers off his night vision binoculars and mounted them onto a tiny tripod. It was already almost too dark to see anything without them. That would complicate things just slightly. Cars would be easy enough to see coming because of their headlights. But he'd have to be quick in adjusting the direction and focus of his binoculars in order to catch the numbers on the rear license plates. As for people on foot, Morrison figured it took a walker two minutes to cover the distance from the curve in the road to the north, all the way to the house. Probably a minute and a half to do so from where a person would first come into view from the south. Half as long from either direction for a jogger. So he figured that if he shifted his binoculars between north and south every 45 seconds or so, he'd pretty well cover both approaches. Unless, of course, someone came down through the woods as he had. But it was the best he could do as one man with one set of night vision gear.
*****
Oblivious to Morrison's nearby vigil, Arkin was lying in bed, restless and unable to sleep, as seemingly random thoughts raced through his mind, many of which involved the old Priest case, or the evidence Pratt was gathering. In his youth, he might have blamed his insomnia on caffeine or his self-diagnosed tendency toward excitability over investigative work. But he'd been through this sort of spooled up borderline mania often enough to know he should pay close attention to what his mind was up to. Through long experience, he'd come to have great respect for the power of his subconscious to lead him in the right direction.
So what was it up to now? Was it picking up on things his conscious mind had yet to perceive? Threads linking the present to the past? He didn't know. He was all but sure that the two Wyoming-based credit card accounts were somehow tied to the whole conspiracy. But the back and forth movements of the cardholders perplexed him. He was missing something. Something he was sure would prove critical.
FIFTEEN
"I've been thinking that we should test your theory," Morrison said, as he, Pratt, and Arkin convened at the office water cooler the next morning.
"What theory?" Arkin asked.
"That you're being surveilled."
"I told you, it's more than a theory."
"You were pretty drunk when you got home last night."
"True. But somebody had been there."
"So let's do a clean-off. If someone really is following you, maybe we can catch them in flagrante and get a look at who we're dealing with."
"Now?"
"Why not? Get your blood pumping."
"Where?"
"Ah! Now, I'm so glad you asked. Because we can use this as an excuse to go get a proper breakfast at Carver's. On the way, I'll run ahead to the General Palmer Hotel. Give me two minutes lead. I'll set up in the lobby. You and Pratt just come through the front door and go right on up the steps. After the fun, we'll go get you some of your chorizo and eggs."
"I already had breakfast."
"Get a coffee then. Don't be difficult."
Fifteen minutes later, Arkin and Pratt strolled through the hotel lobby where Morrison sat in a Victorian armchair in a far corner while watching the door and pretending to read the paper. They climbed up to the third floor and waited. Ten minutes later, Morrison called Arkin's cellphone.
"You're clean, as far as I can tell. Nobody followed you in. And I took a sniff around outside after you came through. Didn't pick up on anything."
"They could be really heads-up. They could have suspected the trap and broken off."
"Well, if there is anybody, there has to be a pretty-good-sized team of them, and they're awful damn good."
*****
Later, Arkin was gulping down his last bite of ham sandwich, having just finished off his lunchtime internet chess opponent, when his phone rang.
"Arkin."
"Nate, it's Diane."
Diane was Hannah's best friend and colleague at the legal aid office. A shiver went up his spine. Oh, no.
"Nate, Hannah collapsed in her office. The ambulance just took her to the hospital."
He dropped the phone and ran for the door. In seconds, he was in his car and racing toward the hospital, driving well over the speed limit.
Halfway there, he got stuck at a red light. Waiting, squeezing the steering wheel and willing the light to turn green, he caught sight of Pratt standing on the sidewalk next to a parking meter. He began lowering his window to shout that he was on his way to the hospital when he realized Pratt was talking to someone. Arkin did a double-take. It was the man with the brown suede shoes. Pratt was pointing up the road, as if giving the man directions. Arkin rolled his window back up, faced forward, and drove on toward the hospital as soon as the light turned green as though he hadn't noticed a thing.
*****
By midafternoon, Hannah was stabilized. They'd moved her from the emergency room to the radiology lab, and, at last, to a regular room. They chalked up her collapse to a combination of dehydration and exhaustion, probably brought on by the chemo. But they'd run some diagnostic scans as a matter of routine. Shortly thereafter, Hannah's oncologist showed up at her room, looking somber, only to inform them that Hannah's cancer had spread to her liver. That it must have metastasized before they surgically removed her ovary three months earlier. That it was inoperable. She said she was sorry, and then left them alone.
Arkin held Hannah's hand and stared at the ceiling as she lay in bed. He did his best to be stoic, but his face betrayed his agony.
"Inoperable doesn't mean we don't have options," he said. Hannah just looked at him. "I thought the chemo was supposed to keep it from spreading."
"It doesn't always respond," Hannah said very matter-of-factly. "And some cancers respond to some drugs but not others."
"Then they can switch to a better drug."
"We'll see."
"Or radiation. Can they try radiation? Maybe we should move you to Denver."
"They know what they're doing here."
"Or Johns Hopkins."
"Nate."
Arkin shook his head.
"They said I can probably go home tomorrow, after they watch me for 24 hours. You're squeezing my hand too hard."
"Sorry."
"Nate, look at me." He did. "Do you remember that hike we took in July, northwest of Silverton?"
"Ice Lake Basin."
"Right. It was a warm, sunny day. The sky was so blue. And those high alpine lakes, in that green grassy valley high above the trees, the peaks still with snow on them towering above."
"We took a picnic lunch," Arkin said, "and we ate on the shore of one of the tiny lakes." He smiled, his mind's eye revisiting the place, the day, his nostrils filled with the
fresh scent of alpine grasses, his ears taking in the gentle sounds of meltwater trickling down from receding ice fields. "And we talked about Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night's Dream. I hate that story."
"And you teased me because I like it, and insisted that I explain why."
"A beautiful place."
"The most beautiful place I've ever seen. A beautiful day, and a beautiful memory."
Oh no.
"I want you to spread my ashes there."
Arkin's face fell and went pale. He felt nauseated. "Hannah, they didn't say—" He couldn't finish his statement.
Hannah shook her head, still looking at him. She smiled. An understanding smile, as though Arkin were the one who needed sympathy. "Nate, you can't let this destroy you too, or I'll never forgive you."
"We're not going to talk about this." His voice cracked. He took a breath, mastered himself. "You are going to fight."
"I am fighting. But you have to accept that this is out of your hands."
"The hell it is. There are options we can still—"
"Nate, it is out of your hands. The only thing you can do, the only thing I want you to do, is to hold mine. That's all. Just hold my hand."
SIXTEEN
Two days later, Hannah was still in the hospital, her physicians monitoring the levels of some unpronounceable chemical in her blood. But after the first night, with a restless Arkin noisily rolling around in the recliner next to her bed the whole time, and asking her, almost hourly, how she was feeling, she insisted that he go home and return to work. Insisted that it would be easier for her to sleep, and to recover more quickly, if he wasn't sitting in the room fidgeting every night. He could visit during the day. It would be better for both of them. When his resistance finally began to anger her, he donned his jacket, kissed her forehead and, with great reluctance, let himself out. But he didn't go home at first. He stopped at a park bench under a great sycamore tree on the side of the street opposite the hospital, sat down, and, for the better part of an hour, stared up at Hannah's window as yellow leaves fell all around him in a stiff and chilling afternoon breeze that poured out of the high San Juan Mountains, down the long valley of the Animas River.
He actively avoided confronting the fact that Hannah might not beat the cancer. But in doing so, all he really did was confirm to himself that it was a serious possibility. As he struggled to refocus his thoughts, to distract himself, his mind wandered back in time, to a scene in the dark wood-paneled study of Roland Sheffield's house on the southern shore of the Potomac, barely a mile upstream from Mount Vernon. Arkin had just flown in for the funeral of Sheffield's wife, Claudia. He sat in Sheffield's old leather chair, in his freshly pressed black suit. Sheffield sat at his desk, his back to the giant picture window revealing large old oak trees framing an expansive view of a broad, brown stretch of the great river. They were drinking warmed cognac from snifters. An ancient bottle someone had given the Sheffields on the day of their wedding in 1964. The sun had set and the sky was growing dark. Below them, the broad Potomac was glassy. The starboard running lights of a small sailboat were visible out near mid-river. Sheffield looked broken and pale, slumping in his chair, dark bags beneath his downturned eyes.
"Ah, Nathaniel," Sheffield had said in a voice weighed down by alcohol and sorrow as he stared at the warm amber liquid in his snifter. "We may grieve. We may feel the loss. The emptiness left behind. But we mustn't fear death." Arkin sat quietly, watching and listening. "There's no reason to. Oblivion holds no pain. No suffering." But his voice cracked as he said this, leaving Arkin to wonder whether Sheffield truly believed the things he was saying, or was just trying to convince himself. "We mustn't fear it. It's our only hope," he added, taking a sip of his cognac as his face seemed to harden just perceptibly. He shook his head slowly. "So much fear."
Back in the present, still sitting on the park bench, Arkin realized he was getting cold. But he didn't like the idea of going home to an empty house. Not today. Not yet. He headed for his office instead, making his way down to the river trail and turning south. Soon he came to the pedestrian bridge, where he stopped, midspan, to watch the water slide by. At one point, a magnificent cluster of bright yellow aspen leaves, a foot wide and at least 30 feet long, came floating downstream. Arkin wondered at the innumerable little chance happenings that must have come to pass for the cluster to have taken shape. Leaves falling here and there along the riverbank. Then riffles, micro-currents, and eddies bringing them together to form this beautiful accident, this brilliant yellow stripe slipping along the surface of the clear river water.
He followed the progress of the leaf cluster, as it floated down a broad calm reach and on toward the small rapids near the edge of town. There, the current quickened, the water grew rough. In the blink of an eye, in the churning rapids, the great yellow cluster of leaves broke up and was scattered until its unremarkable constituent parts were too small for Arkin to see with his naked eye.
*****
Back at home that night, Arkin couldn't sleep a wink. He worried about Hannah. He worried about what options they had, what choices they faced. He worried about the implications of Pratt talking with the suede shoe guy. He worried about getting sucked back into the Priest case, and reflected on how his one-time obsession with it became so unhealthy.
Revisiting the past, he wondered whether things might have turned out better—better for him, better for Hannah—if he'd just made one or two different choices at key decision points. If only he'd done a better job of negotiating the minefield of his career. If only he'd had the foresight or intelligence to set a course for a happier future. But deep down he knew that he'd made the right choices, done the right things, and that what had happened to him was as unpredictable as it was arbitrary. It was never in his power to look out for or control. Knowing this brought solace on one level, but strong anxiety on another.
In the middle of the night, he gave up on sleep, got up, turned on the outdoor floodlights, and went about trimming every single bonsai in his Japanese garden to shapely perfection before raking the decorative pebbles into an even, orderly plain.
SEVENTEEN
The next day, Arkin sat in his desk chair, his radio off. He was fatigued to the point of feeling dumb and had no desire to work. He didn't even want to play chess. Yet thoughts of the Cortez shooting kept popping into his mind. The last thing he wanted to think about was the Priest case. But it kept jumping to the forefront of his consciousness. It didn't help that he again had the feeling he was being followed on his commute to work.
It also didn't help that he now had to worry about Pratt. There could have been any number of innocent explanations for Pratt standing on a sidewalk talking to the man with the suede shoes. Maybe their meeting was just a coincidence, the guy just asking for directions. Maybe the guy wasn't even involved—just someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Arkin was being paranoid. On the other hand, maybe Pratt was involved somehow. If not as an actual conspirator, then maybe as someone who, thinking he was doing the right thing, was simply following the orders of a DCI traitor. Or maybe Pratt was a part of it. Maybe he'd been put in Durango to keep an eye on Arkin. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility. After all, it didn't really make sense for DCI to keep an agent in the region—especially now that 9/11 hysteria had largely subsided such that every frightened small town in America wasn't demanding that their senator get them their fair share of federal protection from terrorists. Didn't make sense, that is, unless there was some undisclosed reason for keeping him stationed here. He was almost certain he was being paranoid. But it didn't pay not to be.
Time slipped by as he thought about it. He might even have nodded off for a moment, for suddenly, it seemed, Morrison was standing in his doorway.
"You look like shit," Morrison said.
"And you always manage to say just the right thing."
"When was the last time you had a decent night's sleep?"
"Come in here and shut the door for a se
cond." Morrison did. "I need you to watch Pratt for me."
"Wow. You really do need some sleep."
Arkin explained what he'd seen, and Morrison agreed to do what he could.
They were interrupted when Pratt knocked on the door. Pratt and Morrison asked Arkin to join them for a joint defensive tactics practice session they'd scheduled with a handful of locally stationed state police at a nearby gym.
"I can't."
"Come on. A little fresh air and exercise will do you good."
Arkin thought about it, took a deep breath, and grabbed his gym bag. As they approached the exit, he stopped. "I want you guys to watch my back, alright?"
"Are you sensing surveillance again?" Morrison asked.
"On the way here this morning. Nothing definite. Just a feeling." He watched Pratt's face and body language for any telltale signs of deceit. But none materialized.
*****
Five minutes later, they were at the gym, suiting up to practice defensive tactics on the padded training floor. Arkin paired up with a young, short, muscle-bound state trooper—5-foot-3 at best—who might have been trying to puff his chest out. Never a good sign.
Things started out professionally enough. They took turns practicing handcuffing a resistant suspect, moved on to gun retention, then to moves for countering high and low tackles.
As time passed, it became more and more obvious that Arkin was the vastly superior practitioner, as he repeatedly got the better of the state trooper. The more obvious it became, the more intense the state trooper's expression grew, and the harsher his movements grew.
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