Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  “But perhaps I can be of assistance,” he says. “It’s true that the various police departments involved in the case-particularly the Michigan department-are ready to have both you and Mr. Turner arrested. I, however, do not share their enthusiasm.”

  “Get to it, Doctor.”

  “I think perhaps we can help each other, Mr. Cole. If you will agree to help me in a limited capacity, I think I could have both Bureau and police pressure removed from your life.”

  “What kind of capacity?”

  “I want the master client list, of course. Can you get it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Damn this guy. “Why take that as a no?”

  “If you had a copy of your own, you would have destroyed it by now. And you no longer have access to the accounting database, which you would need to get a new copy.”

  How does he know that?

  “However, you still have something I want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your thoughts.”

  “What?”

  And then he tells me. How long he has been planning this, I don’t know. Maybe this was the whole point of putting pressure on Drewe. Of not throwing me to the Michigan police. Because Lenz wants exactly what they want. To fly me up to Washington so he can question me with no one else around. He says something about “an informal version of his standard criminal-profiling technique,” but I don’t really listen. We both know the bottom line. If I want the pressure taken off, I’ve got to play his game.

  “How soon do you want to do this?”

  “I’ll have a ticket for you waiting in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s ten-fifty. Can you get to the airport by noon?”

  “Noon today?”

  “Of course.”

  If I drop everything and walk out the front door without a toothbrush. Then I remember Drewe’s voice, tight with anxiety. “Yeah, I can get there. You think there’s a flight?”

  “If there isn’t a direct flight, you’ll find a connecting ticket. Ask for messages at the American Airlines desk.”

  “Okay. I’d better get going.”

  “Just a moment. At the meeting in New Orleans, you mentioned that EROS is patronized by many celebrities.”

  “I can’t tell you any names.”

  “Fine, fine. But what level of celebrities are we talking about?”

  “Well… Karin Wheat was pretty famous.”

  “Yes, but authors don’t get the kind of adulation that Hollywood stars or sports figures do.”

  “Not many sports figures on EROS, Doctor. The IQ level tends to run a little higher than that.”

  “So what level of star are we talking about?”

  “The top of the business. And not just actors. Directors, producers, agents, the works.”

  He digests this in silence.

  “Aren’t you any different from the paparazzi, Doctor? I thought you were trying to solve these murders, not root up juicy tidbits about Hollywood.”

  “In all honesty, I find the whole concept of EROS fascinating. However, there is a point to my questions. Jan Krislov refuses to reveal anything about her clients. Thanks to you, I realize she is not grandstanding but prudently shielding people who have a great vested interest in protecting their public images. People who would not hesitate to sue Ms. Krislov and have the funds to pursue such a lawsuit to its bitter end.”

  “No doubt about it. Hell, there are celebrity lawyers on that master client list. Jan Krislov is a lot of things, but she’s no fool.”

  “Do you have any more EROS session printouts?” Lenz asks.

  “No more of the murder victims or Strobekker.”

  “I’ll take anything you have. I’m following a rather twisted trail, and I’d like all the signposts I can get.”

  “I’ll bring you what I have.”

  “Excellent.” Lenz says he’ll fax me directions to his office in case I miss the FBI agents he plans to have waiting at the Washington airport. Then he says, “May I give you some unsolicited advice, Mr. Cole?”

  “People do it all the time.”

  “You’re an experienced futures trader. However, if I were you, I’d clear my current positions. Dump all contracts until this mess is resolved.”

  “You’re not me.”

  “Quite. Well… I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  While Lenz’s fax comes through, I call Drewe in Jackson and explain what I’m about to do and why. She warns me to be careful, then goes back to her patients.

  I pack a briefcase with a toothbrush, five hundred dollars in cash, and a few EROS folders from my file cabinet. Before I leave the office, I almost pick up the phone and follow Lenz’s advice. Getting out of the market now would cost me money, but that’s not what keeps me from doing it. The truth is, I feel a simple bullheaded resistance to letting Arthur Lenz tell me what to do. If I lose a few thousand bucks because I’m in a daze, so be it. It’s happened before.

  I am almost to the Explorer when I remember Lenz’s fax. Running back inside to get it, I hear the phone. It’s my office line. I debate whether or not to answer, then pick up.

  “Hello?”

  “Moneypenny? This is Bond. James Bond.”

  “What is it, Miles? I’m in a hurry.”

  “Brahma went back on-line five minutes ago.”

  “Have they traced the call?”

  “Yes and no. They took a chance and started at the second Jersey line they wound up at last time. AT amp;T long line. Anyway, the connection twisted all around the country, but they finally tracked it to Wyoming.”

  “Wyoming?”

  “Yeah. Place called Lake Champion. It’s a tiny little nothing of a town.”

  I feel my heart pumping. “So? Are they going to arrest him or what?”

  “Not that easy, I’m afraid. You’re not going to believe this. Lake Champion, Wyoming, is one of the last towns in America with electromechanical phone switching. It’s like the Dark Ages. They actually have these complicated metal gizmos that spin around making physical connections, and there are rows and rows of them stacked on top of each other, from floor to ceiling.”

  “What does that mean as far as tracing Brahma?”

  Miles chuckles softly. “It means it takes an actual human being running up and down the aisles between those switches to trace the connections. With digital tracing, you can move through twenty states in a couple of minutes without getting permission from anybody. But to authorize an actual human being to chase down mechanical connections in one of these little towns, you have to have a court order.”

  “What?”

  Miles is laughing harder. “Here’s the brilliant part. To get that court order, you have to prove that a crime is being committed in the state where that town is. It’s one hell of a buffer system, and Brahma knows it. Rather than going higher and higher tech-which is what most hackers do and which is ultimately a no-win game-he goes to the simplest possible solution. He goes analog. It’s exactly what I’d do, man.”

  Exactly what I’d do…. “So what happens now?”

  “Baxter is strong-arming a Wyoming judge as we speak, trying to get permission for a local yokel phone guy to do the trace.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Hel-lo.” Miles sighs with almost sexual satisfaction. “Your question just became academic. The Strobekker account just went dead. Brahma’s history.” Miles’s voice rises to the exaggerated bellow of a game show announcer: “The switches in Wyoming are no longer connected!”

  I picture blue-suited FBI agents in the EROS office staring at Miles with murder in their eyes. “What alias was he using?”

  “Kali this time. I haven’t seen that one before.”

  “C-A-L–I?”

  “No.K — A-L–I.”

  “Who’s Kali?”

  “The Hindu mother goddess, consort of Shiva, which is one of his other aliases. Kali’s an ugly black bitch. Wears a belt of skulls, carries a seve
red head and a knife, has six arms. She’s the betrayer, the terrible one of many names. Weird that he’d log on with a female alias.”

  “Severed head? Christ. Are you an expert in this Eastern stuff or what?”

  “I’ve dabbled. Read the Vedas, the Upanishads, some other things. They make a lot more sense than the chickenshit dualism of Christianity. You know, you really should-”

  “I don’t have time for it, Miles.”

  “Neither do I. Someone just told me the Wise and Wonderful Oz wants me on another line.”

  “Oz?”

  “Arthur Lenz. He’s the man behind the curtain on this thing, isn’t he?”

  “I guess. I’ve got to run, Miles. Keep me posted. But use my answering machine, not e-mail.”

  “Don’t sweat it. Nobody reads my e-mail if I don’t want them to. Not even God.”

  I tear off Lenz’s fax and run for the Explorer. I believe nobody reads Miles’s e-mail if he doesn’t want them to, but what I’m thinking as I crank the engine is this:

  Maybe somebody should.

  CHAPTER 15

  I am crossing the Washington Beltway in a yellow taxi driven by a black lay preacher. Lenz told me I would be met at Dulles Airport by FBI agents, but none showed, so I took the cab. The driver tries to make conversation-he still knows a lot of people from “down home,” meaning the South-but I am too absorbed in the object of my journey to keep up my end of the exchange.

  Lenz’s private office is supposed to be in McLean, Virginia. All I know is that my lay preacher is leading me deep into upscale suburbia. Old money suburbia. Colonial homes, Mercedeses, Beemers (700 series), matched Lexi, tasteful retail and office space. The driver pulls into the redbrick courtyard of a three-story building and stops. You could probably buy five acres of Delta farmland for the monthly rent on Lenz’s office.

  The first floor of the building is deserted but for ferns, its walls covered with abstract paintings that look purchased by the square yard. A bronze-lettered notice board directs me to the third floor. When the elevator door opens on three, I am facing a short corridor with a door at the end. No letters on the door.

  Beyond the door I find a small, well-appointed waiting room. There’s a lot of indirect light, but the only window faces the billing office. A dark-skinned receptionist sits behind the window. I am not looking at her. I’m looking at a pale, gangly, longhaired young man folded oddly across a wing chair and ottoman. He is snoring.

  “Miles?” I say softly.

  He does not stir. A Hewlett-Packard notebook computer and a cellular telephone lie on the floor beside him. The computer screen swirls with a psychedelic screen-saver program.

  “Miles.”

  The snoring stops. Miles Turner flips the hair out of his eyes and looks up at me without surprise. His eyes are the same distant blue they have always been.

  “Hello, snitch,” he says. “What’s in the briefcase? The names of everybody who works at EROS?”

  “Fresh underwear. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, I guess. The mad doctor wants to pry open my skull, see what he can find. I hope he’s in the mood for drama. I certainly am.”

  “I can’t believe you agreed to come.”

  A fleeting smile touches his lips. “Didn’t have any choice, did I? I’ve got an old drug charge hanging over my head. All Lenz has to do is tell his sidekick-Baxter-to push the button, and I go to jail. Do not pass GO, et cetera.”

  “Jesus.”

  Miles leans his angular head back with a theatrical flourish and tries to catch the eye of the receptionist. I take the opportunity to study him more closely. It’s been four years since I saw him in the flesh. Miles long ago vowed never to set foot in Mississippi again. When I saw him last, in New Orleans, he had short hair and wore fairly conservative clothes. No Polo or khakis, of course, but your basic Gap in basic black. He’s wearing black again today, but his hair hangs over his shoulders, his sweater is not only torn but looks cheap, and he is dirty. I don’t smell him-yet-but he plainly hasn’t bathed for at least a couple of days.

  “Staring is rude,” he says, his eyes still on the window to my left. “Don’t you read your Amy Vanderbilt? Or is it Gloria Vanderbilt?”

  “Miles, what the hell is going on? You look terrible. What’s happening with the case?”

  He smiles conspiratorially and brings a warning finger to his lips. His eyebrows shimmy up and down as he says in a stage whisper: “Shhhh. The walls have ears.”

  When I stare blankly, he adds, “But then their ears have walls, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you telling me you think this waiting room is bugged?”

  “Why not? Lenz works for the FBI. They could bug this room in the time it took you to wake me up.”

  “How do you know how long that took?”

  “Touche.”

  “What’s the computer for?”

  “Keeping up with developments, of course. Baxter just got the court order to do the trace in Wyoming. He must have blackmailed the judge. I think it’s a standard FBI tactic.”

  “Has Brahma logged on again?”

  “Once, about an hour ago, but Baxter didn’t have the court order then. He was only on for a couple minutes. They did manage to trace digitally back to the Wyoming phone company again. Lake Champion.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Miles smiles with satisfaction, then replies in a vintage Hollywood Nazi accent: “I haf my sources, Herr Cole.”

  “What about the kidnapping? Rosalind May. Anything on that?”

  “Nada. By the way, I didn’t know you had a mole among my faithful.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He smiles again. “How else could the FBI have found out about Rosalind May?”

  “Don’t you care about these women, Miles?”

  “I care about all women.” Suddenly he is whispering so that I can barely hear. I sit beside him.

  “They’re going to call one of us in there soon,” he says. “Why don’t we make a little deal right now? I say nothing to Lenz about you, you say nothing about me.”

  This shocks me more than anything I’ve seen or heard yet. “You think you have to spell it out like that? You think I’d tell these people anything about you?”

  His lips narrow in a shadow of the smile Jesus must have given Peter when he prophesied the disciple’s betrayal. “Humans do strange things under stress, Harper. Why don’t we just shake hands on it?”

  I look down at the proffered hand and surprise myself by taking it.

  “You want to grab a bite to eat after this?” he asks lightly. “Tie on the old feed bag, as they say back home?”

  “Sure. I want to find out what the hell’s going on with this manhunt.”

  “Whoever goes first waits for the other. Cool?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr. Turner?”

  The receptionist has slid open her window, but she is seated, and I see only a tight black bun atop her head.

  “Dr. Lenz will see you first,” she says in a husky, almost luminous voice. “Go through the door and down the corridor. The doctor is waiting.”

  Miles stands slowly, looks through the billing window, and says, “You have spooky eyes.” Then he picks up his computer and his cellular phone and disappears through the door like a tall and undernourished White Rabbit.

  CHAPTER 16

  When the receptionist finally calls my name, Miles has not yet reappeared. Perhaps Lenz wants to talk to us together. As I get up and move toward the door that bars the office proper, I turn to get a closer look at the receptionist.

  She is no longer there.

  The door leads into a short hallway carpeted in royal blue. To my left is the empty receptionist’s cubicle, at the end of the hall another door. I open it without knocking.

  Arthur Lenz is seated behind a cherry desk in a worn leather chair much like the one my father used in his medical office. But Lenz smells of cigaret
tes, not cigars. And his office is spartan compared to the Dickensian clutter of my father’s sanctum sanctorum.

  My first thought when Lenz looks up is that I pegged him wrong in New Orleans. There he seemed a handsomer version of William F. Buckley Jr. Now, seated silently behind the ornate desk with his iron gray hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, he seems to have morphed into a more sinister character-Donald Sutherland in one of his heavier roles. Lenz gives me a perfunctory smile and motions me toward a sleek black couch that reminds me of an orthodontist’s chair.

  “Did you transport Miles to an alternate dimension?” I ask.

  He looks puzzled. “Here are your printouts,” I say quickly, dumping the contents of my briefcase on the center of his desk.

  Lenz gives the laser-printed pages a quick scan, then slips them into a desk drawer. “I was about to have some tea sent in,” he says. “Care for some?”

  So this is how he means to play it: two supercivilized males sitting here sipping tea. “Got any Tabs?”

  “Tabs?”

  “You know, the drink.Tab. Tasted shitty in the seventies, now it’s just palatable. That’s what I drink.”

  The psychiatrist’s mouth crinkles with distaste. “There’s a vending machine in the building next door. I suppose I could send my receptionist over for some.”

  “Fine. Normally, I’d be gracious, but since you’re the one picking my brain, I insist. I need some caffeine.”

  “Tea has caffeine.”

  “But it ain’t got fizz.”

  Lenz pushes a button on a desk intercom and makes the request. It reminds me of the old Bob Newhart Show. I almost laugh at the memory.

  “What’s funny, Mr. Cole?”

  “Nothing. Everything. You’re wasting time talking to me. Your UNSUB could be out there killing another woman right this second.”

  “Yes, he could. But you don’t seem to grasp the fact that you and Mr. Turner are the only direct lines into this case. And as for wasting time, I frequently spend hours interviewing janitors or postmen whose only connection to a case may be that they walked past the crime scene.”

  I don’t respond to this.

  Lenz smiles like he’s my favorite uncle or something. “I know the couch seems camp. But it does tend to concentrate the mind.” He takes a pencil from the pocket of his pinpoint cotton shirt and taps the eraser on a blank notepad in front of him. “Lie back and relax, Mr. Cole.”