by G. H. Ephron
“You’re sure it’s not your child?” Chip asked.
“I don’t want children.” Nick’s words bounced off the cinderblock walls. “I’ve never wanted children. I’ve had a vasectomy.”
“Still, it’s been known to happen,” Chip said.
“I … can’t … have … children,” Nick insisted, his eyes drilling holes into mine. “Find the father.”
I’d hoped to administer a couple more tests while I was there, but given Nick’s level of agitation, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. But he seemed to recover his equilibrium as Chip walked him through some of the legal paperwork that had to be filed. By the time Chip left, Nick seemed to have calmed down.
I got out the cards for the sequencing test. “I’m going to show you some pictures,” I said, laying out the first series of five cartoonlike drawings.
“I’m supposed to tell you what order they go in,” Nick said.
“That’s right. Then I’ll take them away and you’ll tell me what story they tell. You’ve taken the test before?”
“No. But I can see how it works. It’s pretty obvious.”
“Good.”
I didn’t tell Nick that the test was a good one for picking up on paranoia. People who are paranoid tend to sequence the cards based on a microanalysis of details and without factoring in a broader understanding of human nature. In addition, the test takes concentration, sustained attention. You can see when someone has little lapses and floats in and out of consciousness.
Nick glanced over at the window in the door. I couldn’t help myself. I whipped around to see if Bridges was there. When I turned back, Nick was giving me a knowing half smile. “Don’t worry,” he said, “he’s not here anymore.”
I didn’t like it one bit, Nick sitting there smug, sure that he knew exactly what I was going through. I was supposed to be the one holding all the cards, and instead I was being manipulated.
“I went looking for him,” Nick said. “Scary bastard. Know what he said?”
I didn’t respond, but Nick continued anyway. “He was laughing. Said you wouldn’t be much help to me because you’d be too preoccupied dealing with your special-delivery packages.”
“Special-delivery packages.” I repeated the words slowly. Bridges had to brag about it. Had to let me know how clever he was.
“Frankly, after meeting that crazy, I was relieved when they transferred him out of here.” Nick paused and gave a shudder. “Something about that dead stare and maniacal grin.” I’d never seen Ralston Bridges smile. “He’s like a blond Chuckie doll. Good thing my grandmother never met him. He’d have confirmed every nightmare she ever had.” There was a pause. He cleared his throat. “He’s the one who killed your wife, isn’t he?” His tone was gentle, like a finger probing under a Band-Aid.
I didn’t deny it.
Nick went on. “Seemed like he wanted you to know. About the packages. That he was the one.”
I looked up sharply again, thinking I heard a sound at the door.
“Really, he’s gone,” Nick said. “They sent him back to Cedar Junction yesterday.”
“He mention anything else?” I asked.
“I wasn’t eager to prolong the conversation. With a guy like that, you never know what you might say that’ll piss him off.”
It was a very perceptive remark.
“What was it he sent you, anyway?” Nick asked.
“Just something that belonged to me.”
“Must’ve been something you cared a lot about.”
I didn’t answer.
“Bastard like that,” Nick said, “knows just where to stick it and how to twist it.”
I straightened the test cards and picked up my pencil.
“You got a good security system?” Nick asked. I didn’t respond. “I’m an expert, you know.”
“We should get on with the testing,” I said.
“What company you using?”
I gave him a bored look.
“I can tell you if you got a good one or not. Some of them out there are nothing but hacks.”
In spite of myself, I found myself telling him the name of the company I’d called. He shrugged. “They’re okay,” he said. “They installed an alarm?” I nodded. “Keypad?” I nodded again.
“You got wireless? Secured all the access points?”
The installer had gone over the house inch by inch, identifying every possible point of access, including the window through which the intruder had gained entry.
“Motion sensors inside?” he asked.
My mother hadn’t been happy about that. She’d muttered something about having to live under a radio transmission tower.
“Sounds like you got the basics. Still, bypassing that system? Piece of cake. Take a pro a couple of minutes.” Nick sounded supremely confident. It was frightening. Anyone who wanted to invade your life just needed ingenuity and persistence.
“How about CCTV cameras?” he asked.
“Isn’t that going a little overboard?”
“You think that’s the end of your special deliveries? Believe me, you want to know what’s going on when you’re not there. Thermal infrared cameras see in the dark.”
In spite of myself, I was listening. Jotting notes on the test protocol. He continued, giving me detailed specifications of what he thought I needed.
“They can rig it up so the security folks alert you the moment there’s an intrusion. They can hook it up to the Internet. Transmit images to you, no matter where you are. You can even get the alarm relayed to your cell phone. You carry around a beeper, don’t you? They can alert you that way too. And they’ll call the police.”
“Who will maybe get there in time.”
“If he’s psychic and bolts, at least you’ll know what he looks like. You’ll maybe even recognize him when you meet him on the street. You can bet Chuckie’s got people on the outside helping him.”
I stopped writing.
“You want to stay safe, you got to have eyes everywhere,” he said, looking warily around the room. “Eyes every-fuckin-where.”
Nick gave me the name of a security company. He wrote down their phone number on a corner of the test protocol. He knew it by heart. “Tell them I suggested you call. They’re the only company I know that’s anywhere near as thorough as I am. Maybe if you’d had a good security system installed a few years ago, your wife would still be here.”
I felt my face go hot. The worst part was, I’d had that thought myself. After a rash of robberies in the neighborhood, we’d talked about getting the house alarmed. Kate had been the one who’d resisted. She didn’t want to live that way, she’d said, in an armed fortress. Besides, our most valuable possessions were our pottery, and the average burglar didn’t know an Overbeck from his ass. I should have insisted. I knew the pots weren’t what I cared most about.
I had my eyes locked on the test cards. Would an alarm system have made a difference? Don’t go there, I told myself.
I looked at Nick, suppressing the urge to punch his self-satisfied face. “You have a security system in your house, don’t you? How come you didn’t know someone broke in?”
His eyes burned with intensity. “That’s the point,” he said. “Now you begin to get it. It had to be someone who knows a lot about me and about security systems.”
“Don’t you have video monitors down in that office of yours, showing you who’s coming in and out of the house? Couldn’t you see what was happening?”
“I was working. Besides, it was the middle of the night. I didn’t need to watch because I knew they’d be asleep.”
I wondered, were his wife and mother the threats Nick was monitoring?
13
JEFF GRATZENBERG was the employee who’d been caught in January breaking into Cyclops Productions, Babikian’s company. Without any prior run-ins with the law, he’d gotten probation. That evening, I met him at a diner in Brighton, a cramped, old-style greasy spoon with tabletop jukeboxes. I got there first and
took a booth.
He’d readily agreed to talk with me. He was furious about being arrested. Delighted with Nick’s misfortune. Eager to do anything he could to help nail the bastard. I’d been a little vague about which side I was working for. I reminded myself to take whatever he had to say with a grain of salt.
The place smelled great—coffee and bacon. A short-order cook with a dishtowel wrapped around his waist was hard at work at the grill, flipping burgers and frying up a steak and cheese sub. I checked out the menu while I waited for Gratzenberg to show. The section labeled “Deep Fried Foods” confirmed that this place was caught in a time warp.
The waitress was a brunette who reminded me of a girl I’d dated in college, an impression that disappeared the minute she leaned against the counter and shouted to the cook, “Ovah heah! Ovah heah!” The coffee she brought me was fresh brewed.
A dark-haired young man wearing a loose-necked T-shirt under an open, zippered green sweatshirt came into the diner. That’s what Gratzenberg had said he’d be wearing. I waved at him, and he came over to the table.
“Dr. Zak?” he said.
“That’s me.” I stood and offered my hand. His fingers felt cool and liquid, as if there were no bones in them at all.
He slid into the booth. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, moon-faced, his thin dark eyebrows meeting over his nose. He had hair so short that light glinted off his skull. His skin was pale, like the underbelly of a flounder. Your average computer programmer preferred to work all night and sleep all day.
“Order whatever you want,” I told him.
The waitress immediately plunked a cup in front of him and poured. “Thanks, Vick,” he said. “Could I get a cheeseburger and fries?”
“Shuah,” she answered, giving him a wink. He seemed to be a regular.
“Just coffee for me,” I said.
The waitress sashayed off.
Jeff told me he’d had to move back in with his mother since his trial. “It’s humiliating. I thought I was finished living at home. Even when the economy goes south, there’s a billion jobs out there for people with skills like mine. But now I can’t get any real companies to look at me, not with a criminal record. The bastard’s fixed me good.” He added some cream and a pack of sugar to his coffee, picked up a spoon with long, thin fingers, and stirred. He took a sip, grimaced, and added another sugar pack. “What he says I did? I didn’t.”
“I thought they got you on videotape?”
“I worked there! He had tapes of me going in and out of the place every day of the week. And I worked late, sometimes all night. Not such a big deal, you know, to alter a date stamp.”
I must have looked baffled because he explained. “On the surveillance footage. It’s not a difficult thing to alter. Tedious and time-consuming, but doable. And Nick Babikian is one patient son of a bitch.”
“So he framed you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not just fire you if he wanted to get rid of you?”
“Just fire me? A clean kill?” He gave a bitter smile. “Not Nick. He’s into vengeance. You don’t want to get on his shit list, that’s for sure.”
“Why was he so angry at you?”
“Professional jealousy?” Jeff suggested and laughed. “Not.”
The waitress brought the food. Jeff smothered his burger with ketchup and took a bite. He picked at the metal dispenser on the table until a napkin came loose and wiped ketchup from the corner of his mouth.
“How long did you work for him?”
He finished chewing, swallowed, and said, “Four years.” “That’s a long time.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, well, at first he liked my work. Really liked it. Nick’s a genius, you know. His games are fuckin’ amazing. And he’s always been a step ahead of the competition.”
Jeff took another bite. “It was cool, working there on a new game. Felt like we were planning in a war. Everything had to be top secret. He’s built his reputation on surprising his competition. Building on their ideas and going one better. I think it’s fair to say, they all hate him. Admire what he can do, all right, but can’t stand his guts.”
“You liked working there?”
“I grew up on computer games. Getting a job at Cyclops was like a dream come true. You know, a chance to work with the guy who wrote the book on first-person shooter.”
“First what?”
“First-person shooter.” He put down what was left of the burger. “Doom? Quake?” He raised his eyebrows at me, as if the names should be familiar. I put up my hands, helpless. His eyes flicked over me, and I could feel him reassessing my age upward. “It’s a type of game where the player has the perspective of the gunman. It’s like you’re looking out of his eyes. Great concept. I used to be addicted to them.”
“There’s a lot of, uh, first-person shooter games out there?”
Jeff tucked the last bit of the hamburger into his mouth, picked up a fry and gestured with it. “Sure. But he took it to a whole new level. Awesome 3-D. First-person action. Stealth. Running Scared was pretty revolutionary. He made you keep moving, keep moving.” Jeff pulsed his upper body back and forth, like he was on a basketball court in his head. “It was the only way to survive. You could play it a bunch of different ways. Anyway”—he shrugged—“his games don’t get old. I can play for hours without getting bored, and I know where all the tricks are.
“Do you have a copy of the game?”
“Sure. On my computer at home.”
The games I’d played, Pong and Pac-Man, would have seemed like silent movies to this guy. “Any chance you’d take me on a guided tour? I understand it takes years to get really good.”
“Sure. And I’ve got the beta version of the new …” His voice died.
“Hey, you were working on it. Right?” I asked.
He nodded, grateful for the out.
“When did Babikian stop liking your work?”
For the first time, he looked uncomfortable. “Around the time his wife started working at the office. November, maybe.” His eyes shifted to scan the room. “Ask anyone. That’s when a lot of things changed.”
“Like what kind of things?”
“Like he had to control your every move. You had to sign out and sign in, so he’d know where you were all the time. He started keeping the bathroom key in his pocket. You had to ask him if you had to go. It was degrading. And the fridge? He started keeping it locked too.”
Jeff shook his head. “Can you believe, he actually used to go through the trash. He once confronted me about some notes I’d written and then tossed about a game character I was animating. A real baddie.” Jeff smirked. “He thought I was writing about him. I should have guessed the place was wired.”
“And you say these changes started around the time his wife began coming to work?”
“Not around anything. From the minute Lisa starts, he gets crazy. He didn’t like anyone even talking to her. It was like he had a sixth sense about it. You’d say a few words, shoot the shit, and shazam! He’d like, materialize.”
“Did you talk to Lisa?”
“Sure I did. Why not? She was nice.” He paused a few beats. “Lonely.”
“You were friends?”
“I guess.”
“You saw her alone?”
“When? She only went two places. Work and home. And I was never at the guy’s house.”
“Never?”
“Well …” He pushed away the plate with its wilted lettuce, anemic tomato slice, and three french fries. “I was there once. To bring Lisa something she’d left at the office.” He stared at his plate. “Actually, that wasn’t too long before the shit hit the fan.”
“Did you know the Babikian home was bugged too? He had surveillance cameras all over the place.”
He didn’t look surprised. “Figures it wouldn’t just be his office. The guy’s a weirdie.”
“So Lisa starts work and Nick starts giving you a hard time?”
“
All of a sudden like my work sucks. I thought I was going to be fired. Surprised the hell out of me when the cops show up.”
“Couldn’t you prove that the surveillance tapes were tampered with?”
“That wasn’t the only thing he cooked. The police found E-mail on my computer. Supposedly me offering to sell beta code to a competitor.”
“You think Nick planted that too?”
Jeff looked at me. A smile grew on his face. Then he started to laugh. “God, I sound as paranoid as Nick. That’s what happens when you hang around that guy.” His look turned sober. “Sure he planted it. Would’ve been easy.” Jeff rolled a french fry around, drawing curlicues in the ketchup. “Thing is, I didn’t do it. That’s not the way I deal with my problems.”
14
“YOU’RE BEHAVING oddly,” Gloria said when I arrived at the Pearce just in time for the morning meeting.
“Odd how?”
“Well, number one, you didn’t rush right in and pour yourself a cup of coffee.” It was true. I hadn’t needed an extra jolt to wake myself up.
“And number two”—she tilted her head and appraised me—“number two, you look entirely too relaxed for a Monday morning.”
“What can I tell you? I had a nice weekend.” It had been a lovely weekend. Annie and I had spent Saturday night at her place, Sunday night at mine. By Monday, I was feeling extremely relaxed.
“He had a good weekend,” Gloria told Kwan when he arrived.
“He did, did he?” Kwan looked interested. “It’s none of my business, of course, but—”
“That’s right. It’s none of your business,” I said.
“My dear Peter, you know I always have only your very best interests at heart. Just ask and ye shall receive. Which reminds me. I asked around about that psychiatrist, Dr. Teitlebaum. Did a residency here maybe ten years ago. He’s pretty well respected.” From the way Kwan was rocking forward on his toes, I knew there was more to tell. “Left Rhode Island not long after he testified in a murder case.”
“No shit?” I said, stunned.
“The Ely case.”
Even though the Ely murder had taken place in small-town Rhode Island, the story had saturated the Boston media two, maybe three summers ago when the murder took place, then again for the trial. Every semiconscious soul in New England knew the gruesome details. A man beat his wife, then cut her open and impaled her heart on a stake in the backyard. They arrested the guy at an ice cream stand, his infant daughter sound asleep in the car.
