The Best Revenge Page 24

  Tom tried to remember what he’d read you were supposed to do if you confronted a snake.

  Run or not run?

  Stay still or back away?

  Act big or act small?

  He couldn’t remember. At that moment he wasn’t sure he could remember how to tie his shoes. If he had shoes. “Hel’ ’e,” he whispered. “Oh God, ’ease hel’ ’e.”

  He wondered if he could use the electricity in the fence against the snakes. But how?

  The second of the two vipers to exit the box began making up for lost time. Edging forward, it overtook the first snake and seemed to be on a direct line for where Tom stood in the corner. He took two sideways steps toward the west.

  The physician in Tom Clone noticed that he wasn’t sweating at all, and he began to wonder about heatstroke. He was oddly comforted by a sudden thought: Growing delirious from heatstroke might be preferable to whatever these snakes might do to him.

  That’s what he was thinking about when he heard the rattle.

  He growled, “Rattlesnakes! These are rattlesnakes! I thought you said they were ’i’ers!”

  The amplified voice responded,“Most people don’t know that rattle-snakes are part of the viper family. But they are. Technically, these two are western diamondback rattlesnakes. Native to this region, but never seen at this altitude unless someone like me gives them a lift. One real cold night up here and these guys will be toast. Or ice, as the case may be. But I didn’t actually mislead you, rest assured that these are indeed vipers.” He paused.“Would you have preferred a pair of puff adders or a couple of copperheads instead? I can oblige, I assure you.”

  Tom couldn’t take his eyes off the black-brown ropes slithering in his direction. He cried, “They’ll kill ’e!”

  “Well, obviously we’ll have to wait and see about that. They’re certainly capable of it. These western diamondbacks aren’t the most aggressive of the vipers, but neither are they the most docile. They’re quite venomous, though; you absolutely wouldn’t want to be bitten by one. They have fangs from hell—a true marvel of bioengineering. Bye now, Tom.”

  “No! No!”

  “I’ll check back in a while and see how things turned out. Remember the lesson: It’s all about fear.”

  A cell door slammed in the distance.

  Tom felt his stomach roil. He doubled over in dry heaves.

  CHAPTER 35

  Ira lived in a tract home half a mile from the Boulder Turnpike in the nondescript suburban landscape where Arvada became Westminster became Broomfield. In the years that they had known each other, Kelda had never asked him in which town he actually lived, because she couldn’t see how it really mattered to anyone but the mailman, the tax collector, and maybe the guy who drove the UPS truck. For everybody else, “Denver’s western suburbs” sufficed.

  Given that almost all the streets around Ira’s house had the exact same name—Dudley—distinguished only by different suffixes: Parkway, Lane, Way, Street, Place, Circle—Kelda found it amazing that anyone ever found a specific address in Ira’s neighborhood. She knew how to get there. That was all that was important to her.

  The ride to Ira’s house took her fifteen minutes after she dropped Maria off at work on North Federal. Ira’s home was the one on the cul-de-sac with the siding that was painted the darkest shade of putty permitted by the covenants of the homeowners’ association. The distinctive waffle-batter-with-too-much-vanilla color—as opposed to the predominant sky-on-a-hazy-day color—was the only way Kelda was able to identify Ira’s dwelling from a distance. Once she was close enough to the house, she could confirm it was indeed Ira’s by spotting the menagerie of animal sculptures that he’d hidden amongst the shrubs and bushes of the otherwise association-approved landscaping. Her favorite statue was the brass baboon that peeked out from behind the rose of Sharon by the front door.

  Ira had told her once that if any of his neighbors complained, he would be forced to remove the sculptures. Apparently, they were a violation of an association covenant that was intended to protect the burg against an invasion of lawn jockeys and pink flamingos. She’d had to break the news to him that not even the FBI could do anything about the covenant.

  During her rare evening visits to Ira’s house—they both preferred her place in the disappearing open country around Lafayette—she usually saw children playing on the wide asphalt course at the fat end of the cul-de-sac. But on that scorching weekday afternoon the neighborhood looked more like a modern ghost town. Not a single car was parked along the curb, not even an air-conditioning repair truck or a plumber unplugging a stopped-up drain. The lawn sprinklers were all off, the garage doors were all closed, and the miniblinds and curtains were all pulled to ward off the summer sun. The kids, she figured, must all be away at camp. The lawn service companies must have been busy on another block.

  She pulled into Ira’s driveway and walked to his door as though she were expected. She didn’t bother to knock. Instead, she slipped her key into the lock and let herself inside. The air-conditioning in the house was off and the air inside was still and warm.

  “Ira,” she called in a sardonic honey-I’m-home voice. “Ira, it’s Kelda. Are you here?”

  She knew he wasn’t.

  She continued to the back of the house. The kitchen had the model-home quality of a room that wasn’t accustomed to use. She couldn’t recall ever seeing Ira prepare food there. In the center of the island counter was a tape recorder. On it was a yellow sticky note that read “Kelda.”

  She sat on a stool adjacent to the island and hit the button marked “play.” As she touched the button, she said, “Hi, Ira,” and was almost surprised at how pleasant her greeting sounded.

  She wondered how he would word it, what tone he would take.

  She didn’t wonder what the message was going to say.

  Ira’s voice was as casual as it always was.“Hi, babe,” he started.“Knowing you, I’m guessing that it didn’t take long for you to figure out what was going on and that it’s Wednesday morning that you’re listening to this. It doesn’t really matter. Maybe you were even quicker than I thought you’d be. It doesn’t make any difference. If you’re listening to this, I’m gone, and if I’m gone, you won’t find me until I’m done. Don’t even waste your energy looking.”

  Kelda said, “Actually, I’m a little slow catching up with you, Ira. I think maybe it’s the drugs.”

  Ira didn’t wait for her to finish her thought.“I don’t know whether it’s fair or not—even whether it’s warranted or not—but I’ve lost faith in your commitment to our . . . plan. I’ve been keeping an eye on you since our boy got free, and it seems that you’ve been keeping some things from me. Sooo, I’ve decided to accelerate things a bit. Okay, I’ve accelerated things a lot. You and I never exactly agreed about the delay you wanted before we got things started. . . . Hey, what can I say? I changed the plans. Your doubts aren’t my doubts.”

  Kelda heard the sound of a ringing phone emerge from the recorder. Ira responded by saying “Damn” and shutting off the machine.

  A second or two later the recording continued and he said,“Where was I? Oh yeah.

  “Anyway, babe, I’m off on our adventure and obviously I’m . . . flying solo. I won’t muck it up, I promise. Look around, everything’s been sanitized. And this wayyourhands stay clean. That’s good, right? You know that I love you, Kelda. Go ice your legs, babe, put on a fresh patch, and pray for the monsoons.”

  She hit “stop,” then “rewind,” and a few moments later, “eject.” She plucked the tape from the machine, placed it in her purse, poured some water into the ficus by the back door, checked to make sure the parakeets, Oliver and Lee, had seeds and water, and headed back toward the front of the house. She stopped just before she reached the door, and stepped into the tiny room by the entryway that the developer of the neighborhood generously referred to in his marketing materials as “an executive study.” The two big aquariums inside the room were empty. She bent
at the waist so that she could be sure that the snakes hadn’t burrowed deep beneath the shredded newspaper in their glass homes.

  They hadn’t.

  No surprise.

  She ran down the stairs to the unfinished basement. It was as empty as it had been the day Ira had moved in. All the equipment was gone.

  As she climbed the stairs back up to the first floor, she realized that her feet were on fire. The sharp needles she usually walked on by this time of almost every day had become so fiery hot they felt as if they were glowing. The pain of their sharpness was indistinguishable from the pain of their heat. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the pain.

  It didn’t help.

  She locked the front door of Ira’s house with the key when she left. Once in the car she phoned Tom Clone’s grandfather’s number again. She didn’t expect an answer and she didn’t get one.

  She was at a loss.

  Gary Cross, her first supervising agent in the Denver Field Office, had told her that there was only one thing to do when she reached a dead end during an investigation.

  “What?” she’d asked.

  “Something else,” he’d replied.

  She stared at Maria’s cell phone and tried to decide what exactly that something else might be. In the meantime, she searched her shoulder bag for her stash of Percocet.

  CHAPTER 36

  Lunch for psychotherapists is a moveable feast. What that means in reality is that it is usually moved until midafternoon.

  Midday appointments are a coveted commodity for most clinical mental health professionals. Few working people are able to steal forty-five minutes from their workday once or twice a week for an appointment with a therapist, so “meeting over lunch” is a common solution to the dilemma. On some days those “lunch” appointments begin as early as eleven and end as late as two.

  That’s why I was walking out the door of my building at a few minutes after two o’clock to get something to eat.

  I was halfway down Walnut to Ninth when I heard a female voice call my name. Not “Dr. Gregory,” but “Alan, Alan.” I looked over at the sound.

  The woman in the car who was calling for me was Kelda James. She lowered her sunglasses and leaned toward the open window so that I could see her face. “Do you have a second?” she asked.

  “Do we have an appointment?” I replied, suddenly flustered by the possibility that I really wasn’t actually free for lunch, but that I had another scheduled appointment that I’d forgotten to record.

  “No, no. But can we talk for a second?”

  I was almost broadsided by a young man—he definitely wasn’t a kid—on a skateboard who zoomed past me before he disappeared around the corner onto Ninth. I stepped off the sidewalk onto the street and leaned down toward the window of Kelda’s car.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Is this an emergency?” I asked. Translation:Is this more important than me eating lunch?

  She nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m not sure I know how to ask this but . . . I need to know if you know where I can find Tom Clone.”

  I pressed my tongue against my teeth for a moment before I untangled my mouth enough to say, “What?” I admit that my first thought was to uncomplicate my afternoon and simply say, “No.”

  Kelda repeated, “Do you know where I can find Tom Clone?”

  If I said I couldn’t respond, I would be acknowledging that Tom was my patient. That was the trap that Sam Purdy had set for me with the exact same question. If I said I didn’t know where he was, I was coming perilously close to flouting Tom’s confidentiality.

  “Kelda, I’m . . .” I watched a huge tractor-trailer fail to complete the turn from Ninth onto Walnut. Traffic in both directions was totally blockaded by the truck’s trailer, which extended across the width of Ninth. “What are you asking me? You want to know if I know where someone you referred to me for psychotherapy is right now?”

  “This isn’t just my curiosity, Alan. This is an emergency. A serious emergency.”

  I shaded my eyes against the afternoon sun. “Are you asking this question as my patient or as an FBI agent?” Unlike Kelda, Iwas just being curious with my question. It made no difference to me whether Kelda was acting personally or professionally. My hands were tied with the same ethical twine regardless of the hat she was wearing while she asked the question.

  “I don’t know.”

  I thought she looked quite despairing.

  “But it’s serious?”

  She nodded.

  “Then go ahead and park your car. I’ll meet you back at my office in a minute or two.”

  She sighed—I interpreted it as frustration, not relief—and said, “Thank you.”

  It’s a long story,” she said. She hadn’t even settled onto the chair. Her shoulder bag was still clutched in her hand. I suspected that she wasn’t convinced that I was really going to insist that she explain what was going on.

  I sat and crossed my legs. “I have another patient at three,” I replied evenly. “You should probably get started telling your long story.”

  My curiosity and my concern for Tom Clone had almost eclipsed my hunger. Almost.

  “I shouldn’t spend the time”—I could tell she almost said “waste the time”—“telling you all this. I wish you would trust me that it would be better for Tom if you would just tell me what I need to know. Then I could go do whatever it is I can do to . . . help him.”

  “Sorry, Kelda, but we’re going to have to do this my way. Why don’t you sit down? There are very limited circumstances that permit me to divulge privileged information.”

  She fell heavily onto the chair. The shoulder bag clunked to the floor as though it were stuffed with a shot put. The fingertips of her left hand almost immediately began kneading her quad. “I think Tom’s in danger,” she said.

  “Go on,” I said. I was thinking that my cast felt heavy.

  CHAPTER 37

  Tom? Where did the snakes go?”The voice blew out of the speaker with an uncertain timbre.

  “O’er there.” Tom’s heart didn’t even leap at the sound of his captor’s voice. He pointed in the direction of the line of lodgepole pines south of the enclosure. He was standing within six inches of the fence on the north side of his prison. “I think they got hot. They needed the shade.”

  “That happens with snakes. They’re too hot; they’re too cold. Who knows, they may be back, right? Tonight for instance. Who knows? It may be too cold in there for them, and they’ll have to come looking for warmth. Like from you, or from your sleeping bag. Or—maybe—you in your sleeping bag.”

  “Yes,” Tom agreed. In the hour or so since the man had first opened the box and the two vipers had edged through the diamond links of the fence, Tom had decided that he was much more worried about the snakes than he was about the bees. Much more worried.

  “When you fall asleep tonight I may just throw a few lame mice in there with you. They like mice. The vipers do. I don’t want them to get too hungry.”

  “ ’i’ers. ’ice,” Tom repeated numbly. “ ’lease don’t. No la’e ’ice. I think I already know all a’out ’ear.”

  “You do? That’s terrific. I’d love to hear, so please tell me what you know about fear. No, no, no. Instead tell me why . . . tell me why it’s important that you know all about fear.”

  Tom didn’t know. “ ’Cause it’s i’ortant.”

  “Duh. Good guess. Why is it important?”

  “ ’Cause . . . ’cause . . . uh . . .”

  “Think about girls you’ve known, Tom? Does that help?”

  “Huh?”

  “Dingdong. Ring a bell, Tom? Girls, girls, girls. Hello.”

  Tom was tired. He was hot. He was dehydrated. His brain was almost fried from fear. His adrenals were parched from depositing gallons of hormones into his bloodstream. He had enough histamines in his system from the bee stings to thwart the effects of a
tanker-truckload of Benadryl. No matter how hard he was trying, he couldn’t manage to fire the synapses that were necessary to help him figure out why the hell some guy was imprisoning him in the mountains and what some girl from his past had to do with the bees and the vipers.

  “Girls? Girls I dated?”

  “Think, Tom. Think about girls you’ve dated. Any blond girls? Real pretty, beautiful even. Why are we here today, Tom?”

  “To learn a’out ’ear.”

  “Very good.”

  Tom said, “Girls. ’ear. They go together.” He wasn’t sure where the thought had come from, but he knew it was right. He suddenly felt like an A student.

  “Oh yes, some girls know about fear. Some girls know about fear the way that bees know about honey.”

  “ ’ees,” Tom said. His pulse raced at the word.

  The man suddenly appeared through the trees from the west. Once again he was wearing the motorcycle helmet with the visor. On this approach he was dragging a huge canvas bundle behind him through the forest. The bundle was so heavy that the man needed both hands to get it over the rough spots on the forest floor.

  “What is that?” Tom asked. He waited for the big sack to move on its own and for a mountain lion or a black bear to pop out of the bag like a crazed stripper emerging from a cake at some old-time bachelor party.

  The man didn’t answer. He let go of the bundle and disappeared back into the woods. A minute or so later, he returned, dragging another canvas bundle. He left it beside the first and immediately took long strides toward the fence. Once again he threw a half-liter bottle of water over the fence. Tom hopped out of the way, not even trying to catch it.

  He shifted his eyes from the bottle to the canvas sacks and back again. “What’s in those ’ags?” A tremor caused his voice to twang.