“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?”
The Ursine escapee from the island of Dr. Moreau was no longer merely impatient; he was angry. “Listen, you stupid fuck, I’m not gonna humor you any longer. I’m not gonna answer any more questions, but I
am
gonna put a bullet in your crotch if you don’t move over to the table and sit down.”
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.”
“If you’re working for a government intelligence agency, then go away and come back with the legal papers,” Elliot said. “Show me search warrants and subpoenas.”
“You know better than that,” Vince said harshly.
“The agency we work for doesn’t officially exist,” Bob said. “So how can an agency that doesn’t exist go to court for a subpoena? Get serious, Mr. Stryker.”
“If I do submit to the drug, what happens to me after you’ve got your answers?” Elliot asked.
“Nothing,” Vince said.
“Nothing at all,” Bob said.
“How can I be sure?”
At this indication of imminent surrender, the tall man relaxed slightly, although his lumpish face was still flushed with anger. “I told you. When we’ve got what we want, we’ll leave. We just have to find out exactly why the Evans woman wants the grave reopened. We have to know if someone’s ratted to her. If someone has, then we gotta spike his ass to a barn door. But we don’t have anything against you. Not personally, you know. After we find out what we want to know, we’ll leave.”
“And let me go to the police?” Elliot asked.
“Cops don’t scare us,” Vince said arrogantly. “Hell, you won’t be able to tell them who we were or where they can start looking for us. They won’t get anywhere. Nowhere. Zip. And if they
do
pick up our trail somehow, we can put pressure on them to drop it fast. This is national security business, pal, the biggest of the big time. The government is allowed to bend the rules if it wants. After all, it makes them.”
“That’s not quite the way they explained the system in law school,” Elliot said.
“Yeah, well, that’s ivory tower stuff,” Bob said, nervously straightening his tie.
“Right,” Vince said. “And this is real life. Now sit down at the table like a good boy.”
“Please, Mr. Stryker,” Bob said.
“No.”
When they got their answers, they would kill him. If they had intended to let him live, they wouldn’t have used their real names in front of him. And they wouldn’t have wasted so much time coaxing him to cooperate; they would have used force without hesitation. They wanted to gain his cooperation without violence because they were reluctant to mark him; their intention was that his death should appear to be an accident or a suicide. The scenario was obvious. Probably a suicide. While he was still under the influence of the drug, they might be able to make him write a suicide note and sign it in a legible, identifiable script. Then they would carry him out to the garage, prop him up in his little Mercedes, put the seat belt snugly around him, and start the engine without opening the garage door. He would be too drugged to move, and the carbon monoxide would do the rest. In a day or two someone would find him out there, his face blue-green-gray, his tongue dark and lolling, his eyes bulging in their sockets as he stared through the windshield as if on a drive to Hell. If there were no unusual marks on his body, no injuries incompatible with the coroner’s determination of suicide, the police would be quickly satisfied.
“No,” he said again, louder this time. “If you bastards want me to sit down at that table, you’re going to have to drag me there.”
16
TINA RESOLUTELY CLEANED UP THE MESS IN Danny’s room and packed his belongings. She intended to donate everything to Goodwill Industries.
Several times she was on the verge of tears as the sight of one object or another released a flood of memories. She gritted her teeth, however, and restrained the urge to leave the room with the job uncompleted.
Not much remained to be done: The contents of three cartons in the back of the deep closet had to be sorted. She tried to lift one of them, but it was too heavy. She dragged it into the bedroom, across the carpet, into the shafts of reddish-gold afternoon sunlight that filtered through the sheltering trees outside and then through the dust-filmed window.
When she opened the carton, she saw that it contained part of Danny’s collection of comic books and graphic novels. They were mostly horror comics.
She’d never been able to understand this morbid streak in him. Monster movies. Horror comics. Vampire novels. Scary stories of every kind, in every medium. Initially his growing fascination with the macabre had not seemed entirely healthy to her, but she had never denied him the freedom to pursue it. Most of his friends had shared his avid interest in ghosts and ghouls; besides, the grotesque hadn’t been his
only
interest, so she had decided not to worry about it.
In the carton were two stacks of comic books, and the two issues on top sported gruesome, full-color covers. On the first, a black carriage, drawn by four black horses with evil glaring eyes, rushed along a night highway, beneath a gibbous moon, and a headless man held the reins, urging the frenzied horses forward. Bright blood streamed from the ragged stump of the coachman’s neck, and gelatinous clots of blood clung to his white, ruffled shirt. His grisly head stood on the driver’s seat beside him, grinning fiendishly, filled with malevolent life even though it had been brutally severed from his body.
Tina grimaced. If this was what Danny had read before going to bed at night, how had he been able to sleep so well? He’d always been a deep, unmoving sleeper, never troubled by bad dreams.
She dragged another carton out of the closet. It was as heavy as the first, and she figured it contained more comic books, but she opened it to be sure.