The Consultant (42 page)

“Are they showing it on the news?” he asked.  

“Every channel.”  

“You didn’t let Dylan—”  

“No, he’s in his bedroom, playing with his computer.”  

“I was outside when it happened,” he told her. He’d said all this over the phone, but he repeated it anyway. “Phil and I just missed the guy. He was walking in while we were walking out. I thought it was weird that he had a bag over his head, and when I turned around to look…” His voice trailed off. “How many victims are they saying?”  

“Six dead and three injured.”  

“That’s what they said on the radio, too.”  

“It’s stayed pretty stable for a while, so hopefully that’s it.”  

“No names yet?”  

She shook her head.  

Craig held his hand out in front of him. He was shaking more now than when he’d actually been on the scene. A delayed reaction, he assumed.  

“Do you think—?” she began.  

He knew what she was asking without hearing the rest of the question. “I don’t know,” he told her.  

But he did.  

He did.  

THIRTY SIX  

He missed Lupe.

Craig had known he would—she’d been his secretary since he’d started working at CompWare—but the loss was on a much deeper level than expected. He could complain to Phil about work when he saw him, could talk to Angie when he got home, but he and Lupe had been in the same place at the same time, and it was that minute-by-minute dissection and discussion of events as they occurred that had forged such a strong bond between them. He had no one he could immediately bounce ideas off of anymore, and he missed that solid sounding board far more than he thought he would.  

He remained in contact with Lupe’s parents, her brother, and even her sleazy ex-boyfriend, but no one had heard from her. She was officially a missing person, but Craig had not told the police his real suspicions. He hoped they would discover evidence of foul play on their own, evidence that would lead to BFG, but, coming from him, it would sound too crazy and unbelievable.  

And it might put him in jeopardy.  

He saw Patoff in the middle of the day, glad-handing his way through the floor, greeting everyone by name. The vibe was different than it would have been a few weeks ago, however, and those he greeted responded nervously, carefully, while others scurried out of his way, not wanting to be stopped and singled out. Craig was out of his office, looking through Lupe’s desk for a stapler, and the consultant smiled at him as he passed by. “Are
you
still here?” he asked, and laughed.  

Later, at lunch, sitting alone at what had become their usual table in the cafeteria while Phil went back for seconds, Craig was startled when Patoff sat down across from him. He hadn’t seen the consultant walk up—the man had just appeared—and his sudden presence caused Craig to jump. The consultant laughed. “Nervous, are we?”  

Craig faced him head on. “No. Why should I be?”  

Patoff smiled. “I don’t know. Why should you be?”  

There was something going on here below the surface, a reason for this conversation that Craig didn’t understand. The consultant never did anything without a purpose.  

He took a bite of his salad, intending to ignore the man, but looking into that soulless face, he put down his fork and said, “Why?”  

“Why what?” the consultant asked innocently.  

“Why me? Why were you at my son’s school and my wife’s work?”  

An expression of sympathy, perfectly composed and utterly fake, crossed the man’s features. “I was sorry to hear that she quit. She was a very competent and dedicated employee.”  

“Why?” Craig pressed.  

Patoff shrugged. “I was hired to consult. I do the jobs I am hired to do.”  

“And it’s a complete coincidence that you were hired by my son’s school and my wife’s medical group?”  

“Apparently.”  

He gestured around the crowded cafeteria. “What about other people here? Are you at their spouse’s workplaces, too?”  

“BFG is very busy,” Patoff conceded with a smile.  

Phil returned with a veggie panini and a refilled coffee. He looked from the consultant to Craig, then sat down in a chair at the side of the small table.  

“Phil!” Patoff said. “How goes it?”  

“All right.” Phil casually picked up his sandwich as though this was the most ordinary thing in the world. “To what do we owe the honor?”  

“We’re just having a little informal lunchtime chat. Life’s not all work and no play. Sometimes it’s nice to relax and…socialize.”  

“Didn’t you specifically tell us that we were
not
to socialize with BFG consultants? Right after you fired my watcher, John?” Phil took a bite of his sandwich, chewing slowly as he waited for a response.  

“Exactly so, Phil. But that phase of the study is over.”  

“And now we’re all friends?”  

“I would very much like to be,” Patoff said, smiling. Again, the proper form of the smile was in place, all of the elements warm and friendly, but the sentiments beneath were ice cold and hard.  

Neither Craig nor Phil said a word, and the three of them sat for several minutes in uncomfortable silence, Phil eating his sandwich, Craig finishing off his salad, Patoff watching them and smiling.  

“Well,” the consultant said finally, putting both hands on the table to push away his chair, “I guess I’d better get back to work.” He stood, started to turn away, then paused and looked at Craig. “Speaking of work, I suspect that your lovely wife will have a somewhat difficult time securing employment—since the fucking bitch is a lying quitter.” Patoff’s normally placid face was contorted, the rage in his voice audible. For the second time, Craig thought he saw something he wasn’t supposed to see, the skull beneath the skin, a glimpse of something not at all human and very, very old.  

The consultant turned, striding through the cafeteria toward the exit, and Craig realized that the revelation had been entirely inadvertent. Patoff never did anything unintentionally, but his anger had been exposed, and he’d left quickly so as not to reveal more of himself. Angie quitting had obviously left him furious. Her spur-of-the-moment decision had been completely unpredictable, something for which he had not prepared, and she had upset his plans enough that he had made a special trip out here today to confront Craig.  

Sort of.  

Because nothing had really happened. A rude remark, a vaguely threatening manner…these were nothing. The consultant could have done much worse. But why hadn’t he? Why, Craig wondered, was he still alive? And why hadn’t Angie been attacked? Others had fallen victim to accidents, had committed suicide, had died in unnatural, implausible ways. Why had the two of them been spared?  

For the first time, he thought that there might be rules to this game, lines that the consultant couldn’t cross. He had no idea what they were or why they should inhibit the consultant, but he was beginning to suspect that the man wasn’t free to do whatever he wanted.  

Perhaps the consultant could kill only those people his study had deemed unnecessary to the viability of the company, the people the company no longer needed or wanted, the ones who had been slated for—  

termination
 

—and anyone else was off limits. As crazy as it might be, perhaps Patoff could only harm people on the list. The idea seemed plausible to him, and Craig couldn’t wait to tell his theory to Phil.  

But that was going to have to wait. The cafeteria was a hotbed of surveillance, as was the entire building, and there was no way for the two of them to get off campus without arousing suspicion until after the workday ended at five.  

Phil watched Patoff leave. “That was fun,” he said drily.  

Craig laughed. It was a tension-relieving laugh, Phil’s comment only funny because of the circumstances, like a lame joke told in church, but it lightened Craig’s mood, as did his newfound hunch about the limits of Patoff’s authority.  

He returned to the sixth floor feeling oddly good, and the afternoon was very productive. He even managed to get ahead of schedule and assemble a skeleton team for a new as-yet-unspecified first-person shooter game. Unfortunately, Phil was nowhere to be found after work, though his car remained in the parking lot, and when Craig tried his cell, the call went directly to voicemail. He considered hanging out, either waiting by his friend’s car or sitting in his own car and listening to the radio until Phil showed up, but there were security cameras trained on the parking lot, too, and he thought it would probably be more prudent to leave.  

At home, Angie was putting together what looked like a pretty spectacular Mexican meal, while Dylan had finished his homework and was playing on his computer. Craig told Angie about his lunch and his suspicion that the consultant was not free to act entirely as he wanted. “He was really pissed that you’d quit, you could tell that he was thrown by it, and while he wanted to punish me, he couldn’t. I’m…protected, I think. You are, too, because you no longer work at the Urgent Care. My guess is that you’re the only reason he took that job to begin with, and now that you’re gone, he’s stuck with it.”  

“What about Dylan?” Angie said worriedly. “It doesn’t seem like he’s safe.”  

“Isn’t he? No one’s touched him. He’s been scared, yes. We’ve
all
been scared. But no physical harm has come to him. Or any of us. And, believe me, that’s not true for everyone.”  

“I know,” Angie said softly, and he knew she was thinking of Pam.  

He held her shoulders, looked into her eyes. “I think we’re going to get through this.”  

Angie breathed deeply. “I hope so.”  

Craig got himself a can of Coke out of the refrigerator and went out to find Dylan. He tried giving his son a big hug, but the boy squirmed out of his grip. “Leave me alone, Daddy!” he objected, eyes on his computer screen. “I’m about to be eaten!”  

Smiling, Craig sat down on the bed and watched Dylan play until Angie called them for dinner.  

Halfway through the meal, the phone rang. Angie didn’t want him to answer, but he had to, just in case. “Hello?”  

It was Phil.  

Craig was relieved it wasn’t Patoff, but he knew his friend wouldn’t be calling just to chat, so it was with a sense of trepidation that he said. “What’s up?”  

Phil spoke carefully, obviously worried that someone was listening in to their conversation. “I was wondering if you could come over for a few minutes. We just got a new flat screen for the bedroom, and I need some help installing it.”  

That was a lie. Phil
had
talked about buying a new TV, but he was far handier than Craig, and even if he had just purchased a new flat screen, he’d need no help hooking it up. As for mounting the set on the wall, his wife Josie, a fitness freak, was twice as strong as Craig and would be of much more assistance.  

No, Phil wanted to talk.  

About CompWare.  

“Sure,” Craig said. “I’ll be over after we finish dinner.”  

“Thanks.”  

“See you soon.”  

“Okay. Bye.”  

The cadence of their conversation was stilted, and anyone listening in would know that something was off, but if they were being monitored by a computer using word-recognition software, nothing would appear amiss, and the call would not be red-flagged.  

“You need to read to me!” Dylan said when he put the phone down.  

“I will,” Craig told him. “And don’t worry. I won’t leave until you’re in bed asleep.”  

“Will you check on me when you come back?”  

“I always do.”  

Dylan happily dug into his enchiladas. Angie shot Craig a worried look, and he tried to smile reassuringly, but he could tell that she was still concerned. “I don’t know what it is,” he told her honestly.  

“Do you have to go over there?”  

“I’ll make it quick.”  

An hour later, Dylan was in bed, and Craig was off. Phil lived a good fifteen minutes away, but there was no traffic on the freeway, and on the street he hit a string of green lights, so he made it there in ten. His friend had obviously been watching for him because Craig had not even knocked on the door or rang the bell when Phil called out, “Come on in! It’s open!”  

In the center of the living room floor was an unopened box containing a 60-inch plasma TV. Phil sat on the rug before the box, an X-Acto knife in his hand. He had not started cutting open the box, and he glanced up as Craig entered.  

The house was still and silent. “Where’s Josie?” Craig asked.  

“I sent her out. Told her to have a girl’s night with her friends. She’s a civilian. I don’t want her involved.”  

Craig would have talked everything over with Angie even if BFG hadn’t consulted for the Urgent Care, but he understood that Phil and Josie had a different sort of relationship. He nodded.  

Phil took a deep breath. “Something’s been bugging me. For a long time now.”  

Craig smiled. “Only one thing?”  

“His name. It never seemed right to me, never seemed real. It was familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t seem to place it.”  

“It sounds like it might have a Russian origin.”  

“It’s not his name,” Phil said quietly.  

“Regus or Patoff?”  

“Both.”  

“How do you—”  

Phil pointed, his finger touching cardboard.  

Craig looked closely at the side of the box, at the small words beneath the name of the product that indicated it was registered with the U.S. Patent Office: Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.  

Regus Patoff
 

He suddenly felt cold.  

Who the hell was this guy?  

What
was this guy? That’s what he really wanted to know, and he looked over at Phil, who was nodding grimly. “I saw that when I was getting ready to open the box.”  

Craig said aloud what, until this point, he had only thought. “I don’t think he’s human.”  

It should have sounded absurd, laughable dialogue from a bad horror movie. But in this place, at this time, with everything that had happened, it sounded eminently reasonable and frighteningly true.  

The house around them suddenly seemed too dark, a perception that Phil obviously shared because he stood and started turning on lights, moving from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen to the hall. “How hasn’t this come up before?” Phil wondered aloud as he returned. “BFG’s consulted for companies far bigger than CompWare.
Name
corporations. Are you telling me that none of them did their due diligence and conducted a thorough background check? This is something that should have come up.” He shook his head, exhaled deeply. “Jesus.”