“Well, I’ll be sure to turn over my findings if they seem to shed any light on the fire. But unless Bentley and company are somehow implicated in the fire, I don’t see how the two cases tie in.”
“Yes, you’re probably right.” The detective downed his coffee dregs and looked out the window. “Which leaves us pretty much where we started.”
Kent watched him for a moment. By the sounds of it, Pinhead was not turning out to be such a threat after all. Which made sense when you thought about it. The theft had been perfectly planned. There was no way that anyone, including Detective Pinhead here, could even suspect the truth of the matter. A small chill of victory ran up Kent’s spine.
He smiled for the first time, confident now. “And where would that be? Tell me, where did we start? I’m a bit lost.”
“With a crime that simply does not fit the players involved. If Bentley and Borst don’t fit, then nothing fits. Because, you see, if you knew the man, you would know that Kent Anthony was not the kind of man who would leave a door unlocked for a pistol-toting thief. He was not nearly so stupid. At least not according to his friends.”
“Friends?” The question slipped out before Kent could hold it back.
“Friends. I talked to his girlfriend up in Boulder. She had some interesting things to say about the man.”
The heat was suddenly flashing though Kent’s skull. “Anybody can make a simple mistake,” he said, knowing it sounded weak. He certainly could not defend a man he supposedly did not know. “In my experience the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. You have a body; you have slugs. He may have been an Einstein, but he’s still dead.”
Pinhead chuckled. “You’re right. Dead is dead.” He mulled that over. “Unless Kent is not dead. Now, maybe that would make more sense.” The man drilled Kent with those green eyes. “You know, not everything is what it seems, Bob. In fact I am not what I seem. I’m not just some dumb, lucky cop.”
Kent’s face flushed red; he felt panic-stricken. His chest seemed to clog. And all the while Pinhead was looking directly at him. He was suddenly having a hard time forming thoughts, much less piecing together a response. The cop removed his gaze.
“My case and your case could be connected, Bob. Maybe we’re looking for the wrong guy. Maybe your high-tech phantom and my dead guy are really the same person! A bit far-fetched but possible, don’t you think?”
“No. That’s not possible!”
“No? And why is that not possible?”
“Because I already know who did it!”
The cop arched a brow. “Who?”
“Bentley and Borst. I’m putting the finishing touches on the evidence, but within a week I can assure you, fraud charges will be filed.”
“So quickly? Excellent work, Bob! But I really think you ought to rethink the matter. With my theory in mind, of course. It would be something, wouldn’t it? Kent alive and kicking with a dead man in his grave?” He dismissed the theory with his hand. “Ah, but you’re probably right. The two cases are probably not connected. Just turning over every stone, you know.”
At the moment Kent felt like taking one of Jeremy’s stones and shoving it down the detective’s throat.
Try that for a theory, Pinhead!
But he could hardly breathe, much less reach over there and wrestle the man’s mouth open.
“Well, I surely do appreciate your time, Bob. Maybe we will meet again. Soon.” The detective smiled.
With that he stood and left, leaving Kent soaking under the arms and frozen to his seat.
This was a problem. Not just a little challenge or a bump in the road, but the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it kind of problem. Coming here had been a mistake. Coming back to this
country
had been a mistake. Going to the bank—that had been idiotic!
Still, there was no evidence, was there? No, no evidence. It was Pinhead’s theory. A stupid theory at that.
Then a simple little picture popped into his mind and crushed what little hope he had left. It was a picture of Lacy, sitting on her couch, hands folded, knees together, facing Pinhead. She was talking. She was telling her little secret.
Kent dropped his head into his hands and tried to still his breathing.
KENT STOOD by the pillar just outside Macy’s in a Boulder mall on Monday evening and stared at the woman, his heart beating like a kettle drum, his palms wet with balls of sweat.
Sometime on Saturday, he’d come to a new realization about life. It was a notion so profound that most people never understood it properly. It was the kind of truth one encounters only in moments when he is stretched beyond all limits, as Kent had been after that little encounter with Pinhead. And it was simply this: When you really got right down to it, life sucked.
The problem with most people was that they never really got right down to it. They lived their lives
thinking
of getting right down to it, but did they ever actually get right down to it? No.
“Next year, Martha, I promise, next year we’re gonna sell this rattrap, buy that yacht, and sail around the world. Yes sir.”
People’s dreams acted as a sort of barrier between life and death. Take them away—let people actually live those dreams—and you would be mopping up the suicides by the dumpster full. Just look at those few who did live their dreams, like movie stars or rock stars—the ones who really have the money to get right down to it—and you’ll find a trail of brokenhearted people. Brokenhearted because they’d discovered what Kent was discovering: When you really got right down to it, life sucked.
That fact had delivered Kent to this impossible place, standing by the pillar just outside Macy’s Monday evening and staring at a woman, his heart beating like a kettle drum, his palms wet with balls of sweat.
Lacy sighed, obviously unsatisfied with the discount rack’s selection. She walked toward him. Kent caught his breath and turned slowly away, straining for nonchalance. In the hour that he had been tailing her, she had not recognized him, but then she had not studied him either. Twice she’d caught his eye and twice he had brushed on as though uncaring. But each time his heart had bolted to his throat, and now it was doing the same.
He bent for a
Shopper’s Guide
on a bench and feigned interest in its cover. She walked by him, not three feet away. The sweet scent of lilac drifted by his nostrils, and he closed his eyes. It was all insanity, of course, this stalking. Not just because someone might notice the sweating man staring at the beautiful single woman and call security, but because he was indeed
stalking
. Like some kind of crazed loony, breathing heavily over a woman’s shoulder, waiting for his chance.
He had driven to Boulder that afternoon, parked his car a hundred yards from Lacy’s apartment, and waited. She had returned from work at six, and he had spent a good hour chewing at his nails, contemplating walking up to her door. Thing of it was, Gloria kept traipsing through his mind. For some reason not quite clear to him, he was feeling a strange guilt about Gloria. More so now, it seemed, than when he had spent time with Lacy before the robbery. Perhaps because then he had had no real intentions of pursuing Lacy. Now, though, faced with this crazy loneliness, he was not so sure.
She’d left the condo and driven here. His greatest regret in stalking her was the decision to leave the bottle of tequila in the car. He could have excused himself to the bathroom a dozen times for nips. But returning to retrieve the bottle from the car would take far too long; she might disappear on him, a thought suddenly more unnerving than staying dry for a few hours.
He twisted his head and watched her from the corner of his eye. Lacy wore blue jeans. She seemed to float along the shiny marble floor, her white running shoes gliding along the surface, her thighs firm beside her swinging brown purse. The lime-green sweater was perhaps a cardigan, resting loosely over her shoulders, its collar obscured by her blonde hair. Her lips seemed to pout, smiling on occasion; her hazel eyes darted over the selections; her fingers walked through the clothing carefully.
Kent watched her walk toward the food court. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and stepped cautiously after her. She wandered past shiny windows, casually glancing at their displays without bothering to enter. Kent stepped into a sports store, grabbed a beige flannel shirt from the sale rack, and hurriedly purchased it. He went straight to the shop’s dressing room and changed into the new shirt before hurrying past a confused salesclerk to catch Lacy. The red shirt he’d worn went in the nearest trash bin.
You see, Lacy, I’ve learned a few tricks. Yes, sir, I’m a regular sneaky guy. You gotta be sneaky to steal twenty million, you know.
He found her in the food court. She sat cross-legged, slowly eating an ice cream cone. He watched it all while peeking around a mannequin in Gart Brothers Sporting Goods across the lobby. There was nothing sexual in his desire—nothing perverse or strange or obsessive. Maybe obsessive. Yes, actually it was obsessive, wasn’t it? He blinked at the thought and removed his eyes from her. How else could you characterize stalking a woman? This was no date.
Goodness, you’re losing it, Kent.
A wave of heat washed down Kent’s back, and he left the mall then, feeling small and puny and dirty for having driven there. For having peeked at her from the shadows. What was he thinking? He could never tell her the truth, could he? She would be compelled to turn him in. It would be over—all of it.
And Gloria! What would Gloria say to this?
She’s
dead,
bozo!
He drove back to Denver, wondering why he should not take his own life. Twice he crossed overpasses wondering what a plunge through the rail might feel like. Like an amusement ride, falling weightlessly for a moment, and then a wrenching crash. The grave. The end. Like Bono had said, in the end it’s all for the grave anyway.
Kent shook his head and squeezed his eyes against the mist blurring his vision. He grunted to clear his throat of its knot. On the other hand, he wasn’t in the grave yet. He had money, more than he could possibly spend; he had freedom from any encumbrances whatsoever. No wife, no children, no debt, no nothing. That was worth a smile at least, wasn’t it? Kent smiled, but the image staring back at him from the rearview mirror looked more like a jack-o’-lantern than the face of a contented man. He lost the charade and slouched in his seat.
The evening took a turn for the better near midnight, two pints of tequila later. He lounged with glass in hand on the black-leather recliner facing a black television screen in the sleek apartment. The memory of his little stalking trip to Boulder sat like an absurd little joke on his brain.
Because of some obsession. Some pearls of wisdom from a Greek named Bono. Yes indeed, life sucked.
Well, it would be the last time he stalked anyone, he thought wryly. He would drive off one of those overpasses at a hundred miles per hour in the Lincoln before doing anything so foolish again. He had the world at his fingertips, for Pete’s sake! Only an absolute loser would slink back for another peek.
“Peekaboo, I see you. My name’s Kent, and I’m filthy rich. Would you like to share my life? Oh, yes, one small nugget for the hopper—my life really sucks, but not to worry, we will soon be in the grave anyway.”
Kent passed out on the leather recliner sometime before the sun rose.
LACY SAT alone in Wong Foo’s Chinese Cuisine Thursday evening, nibbling at the noodles on her plate. Indirect lighting cast a dim orange glow across her table. A dozen heavy wooden carvings of dragons stared down from the low-hung ceilings. Cellulose walls lent an aura of privacy to the room. Glasses clinked with iced drinks, and voices murmured softly all about her, behind those paper partitions; somewhere a man spoke rapidly in Chinese. The smell of oriental spices circulated slowly.
A man sat alone in a booth ten meters to her right, reading the paper and sipping at noodle soup. They had noticed each other shortly after he had been seated not ten minutes earlier, and his bright blue eyes reminded her of Kent at first sight. He’d smiled politely, and she’d diverted her gaze. Freaks were everywhere these days.
You don’t know that, Lacy. He may be a regular Clark Kent.
Actually, all men were pretty much looking like freaks these days.
Lacy dipped her spoon into the hot-and-sour soup and sipped at the liquid. She was having some difficulty shaking Kent’s image.
Why
she could not shake his image, she could not fully understand. The first week was understandable, of course. The second, maybe even the third as well. But he had been gone for over a month now, for heaven’s sake. And still he left tracks all through her thoughts every day. It was nonsense. Perhaps it was the thought of him living like a king after having the audacity to rub his plans in her face.
She peered at the man reading the newspaper and found him looking at her again. Goodness. She shot him a contemptuous grin this time.
Not too bold there, Lacy. He might get the wrong idea.
Looked like a decent-enough fellow. Blue eyes like Kent’s—
See, now, there I go again
—and a face that reminded her of Kevin Costner. Not bad looking actually.
He had his head buried in that paper again, and Lacy steered her mind back to the plate in front of her. She had not heard from the detective again, and neither had she made any attempt to call him, because as the days passed, the notion began to sound somewhat misguided. She certainly had found no absolute collaborating evidence suggesting Kent’s theft. And even if she had, she’d made a promise to him. Not that she
should
be bound by any promise after what he had done. There had been four incidents of mismatched bank statements, but no one seemed to give them any mind. Printer error or something. Whatever it was, it had corrected itself.
Yes indeed. The only thing that had not self-corrected was her mind. And she was beginning to think it might need some professional examination. Lacy lifted her fork and savored a bite of gingered chicken. The dragons glared down at her with glassy yellow eyes, as if they knew something she did not.