The Program Read online

For a moment, Carl didn’t say a word. Then he said, “Not in front of the kid. Never, ever, talk in front of the kid.”

  Landon said, “That’s not fair. That’s the e-fit-o-me of not fair.” I thought that her words were perilously close to a whine.

  Carl momentarily ignored me and spoke to Landon as though she were his favorite niece or granddaughter. He said, “You know what I missed doing last night? I missed having someone like you to throw a baseball around with. You like to play catch?”

  Landon said, “I’d rather play soccer. You’re pretty good for…”

  She was going to say “an old guy” or something like that and caught herself. But her words just hung there; she didn’t know how to end her sentence.

  Carl smiled at her before he looked at me and slowly closed his eyes.

  I felt a chill and a deep ache in my chest and gut. My mouth opened in a silent scream and every bit of color in the flamboyantly decorated teahouse disappeared and turned to khaki.

  THERE’S A LITTLE park that runs between Thirteenth Street and Broadway across from the teahouse. I pushed Landon’s wheelchair down the walkway so that she could look at the ancient locomotive, passenger car, and caboose that are on display in the park, and then I walked away from her so that I could talk privately with Carl. I found it amazing that Landon was so intent on staying in character that she would stay put in the chair.

  When we were about a hundred feet away, she yelled, “Hey, you’re not going to just leave me here, are you?”

  Everyone within shouting distance stared first at her, then at Carl and me. I felt about as inconspicuous as if I were wearing a WITSEC sweatshirt.

  Or a bull’s-eye.

  CARL SAT ME down on a bench above the banks of Boulder Creek and waited a good twenty seconds for me to say something. Below us the snowmelt-swollen creek flowed hard and fast through thick brush. The setting was so serene it almost distracted me. I was pretty sure that Carl was expecting me to launch into an attack and vilify him for the murder at the motel. But getting out of the crowded teahouse and sitting by the creek had pacified me somewhat. I was willing to listen.

  I glanced up to check on Landon. She was precisely where I’d left her. All I said to Carl was, “Go on.”

  He shrugged. Opened his hands. Closed them. “The woman with the camera yesterday? The one I said was following you? She was a pro. You know what I’m talking about?”

  He looked at me, fixed his eyes on mine. I shook my head.

  “She was working for a man she called Prowler, in Georgia, near Atlanta. Like I said, she was a pro. There’s a hit out on you. She was here in town to clip you. She didn’t know the client.” He picked up a twig from the bench and twirled it between his fingers. “I didn’t go there to whack her—I’d feel better if you believed me on that—but if I let her live, you were going to die today, Peyton.”

  I was barely surprised. My lips were stuck together. I had to separate them with my tongue. I said, “Of course there’s a hit out on me. And Ernesto Castro’s the client. He hired her.” My voice couldn’t carry all the despair I was feeling. Castro had found me already. So quickly, so easily. There was no hiding from him.

  “Don’t think so,” Carl said.

  “Why?”

  “Two reasons. First, like I said, she was a pro. People like this Prowler and this woman, Barbara Turner, wouldn’t come cheap. We’re talking major bucks. Your guy doesn’t have that kind of cash. Am I right?” I nodded. “If it was him ordering a hit, he’d use a hoodlum, somebody he knows from inside the can or somebody from the drug world. Like he did when he tried that botched thing with your daughter in … where was that you were living again?”

  “Slaughter. Louisiana.”

  “Yeah, like that f—, excuse me, screw-up.”

  “But Robert was killed by a pro.”

  “He was, yeah. Maybe your guy still had grease then, right? Or somebody owed him a favor? He’d been making a lot of cash moving dope. Probably had a stash he was dipping into. But later on? After he was in the state prison? And you were, you know, in Slaughter. That work in Slaughter was amateurs. What Castro tried there shows that whatever well he was dipping his bucket in was dry a long time ago. It isn’t him who hired this guy Prowler in Georgia.”

  I considered the argument. “Did you learn anything from the woman about this guy Prowler?”

  “Got his phone number and e-mail address. Won’t help for long, though. The trail from Barbara Turner to Prowler will be cold already. Nonexistent soon. You can bet on it. Anyway, given my peculiar circumstances, I can’t exactly expect much help from the cops about Prowler.”

  I remembered that I had, until very recently, been an officer of the court myself. A friend of the cops I was now avoiding. “You said there were two reasons you were sure Ernesto Castro wasn’t Prowler’s client. What was the other?”

  “Because Prowler’s client wanted some other people hit same time as you. People somewhere else. He told this Barbara Turner you had to be done at the same time. Who else would Castro want hit? Nobody. He’s out to punish you. Just you.”

  What Carl was saying didn’t make sense. I asked, “Then what others were supposed to be killed?”

  “The business doesn’t work that way. Barbara Turner wouldn’t know that side of it. She’d only know her assignment.”

  I tried to make sense of what Carl was saying. Who else could Ernesto Castro want to kill besides me? And if not Castro, who else could a renegade WITSEC marshal want to kill besides me?

  I said, “The man last night at my town house? The one who attacked me? He was with her? He was working with Barbara Turner?”

  “No.”

  I jerked my head to the side and glared at Carl. I lowered my voice as I said, “What?”

  “She said no.”

  “And you believe her?”

  He made sure I was still looking at his face before he said, “I was being pretty persuasive.”

  I shuddered and felt gooseflesh cover my body. “Who was the man at my house then?”

  Carl shook his head.

  I was lost. I tried to be deliberate in my thinking, to question my assumptions. But I stayed lost. The pieces didn’t seem to fit. Almost offhandedly I asked, “How was she going to kill me?”

  “There was a gun in her room. A .22 pistol. It’s a killer’s gun. I imagine you were going to get it like your husband got it.”

  “And a silencer?”

  “Yeah, I found a suppressor, too. A good one. Sleek. Made by someone who knew what he was doing.”

  “Was she going to kill Landon?”

  “You know, I didn’t ask.” He grimaced. “That’s important. I’m sorry. I should have asked. It’s not like me.”

  “If there’s a next time don’t forget to ask,” I said and stood to rejoin Landon by the old locomotive.

  I was halfway back to my wheelchair-bound daughter when I saw the other pieces as clearly as if they were clouds against the blue sky that framed the foothills of the Rockies. I yelled back over my shoulder at Carl, “I think this might be about Khalid. I need to find a pay phone. Fast.”

  I didn’t know what it meant when Carl responded, “You know, I think I need one too.”

  As I ran back toward the teahouse I heard my daughter yell out, “Don’t you two even think about leaving me here!”

  2

  Prowler’s phone rang about eleven-thirty Atlanta time. He guessed that Krist was calling with an update or a confirmation about the two jobs he was doing in Florida. Prowler pressed a button to answer the call. Into the microphone of his headset he said, “Prowler.”

  A voice Prowler didn’t recognize responded. “Prowler, good. Listen. You don’t know me, but I thought you’d want to know that your friend Barbara Turner’s dead. I’m telling you since apparently you’re like her closest thing to next of kin or whatever. Be apprised that I have her stuff. All her stuff. Well, all her important stuff, anyway.”

  Prowler flicked a switch that
would distort his voice for the duration of the call. Apprised? He said, “Who are you?”

  The man said, “Not important. Let’s just say I’m someone who doesn’t like what you’re up to.”

  Pause. Prowler said, “And you think I’m up to what?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Prowler. I know who Barbara was. I know what she did for a living. I know who she was after out here. I know your name and I know where you do your business.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s what I don’t want that should concern you. I don’t want my friend bothered again. I definitely don’t want the pleasure of meeting Barbara Barbara Turner’s replacement. I don’t want any more of your people around here. If I do, the result will be the same. Then I’ll come looking for you because you’ve been uncooperative. Is that understood?”

  Prowler said nothing.

  The voice said, “Good.”

  Click. Dial tone.

  Prowler rocked back on his chair and curled the microphone of his headset away from his lips. He flicked the switch to mute the voice distortion. To no one in particular he said, “Damn.”

  He reached a quick decision: he had to raise Krist and postpone the Florida action until he’d spoken with his client and received fresh instructions.

  Briefly, he pondered his own vulnerability as a result of the apparent debacle in Boulder. What could this guy have taken from Barbara? Her camera? After the download she would have cleansed the disk. Barbara was savvy and reliable. She would not have forgotten the protocol. Her computer? Without the correct password, the hard drive would self-format after the second try at unauthorized entry. Any attempt to open the case? Same result. Anyway, she was too smart to leave incriminating data on her hard drive. Her weapons? No concern there. Neither the gun nor the silencer was traceable. Her cell phone? A clone.

  Fortunately for Prowler, other than knowing that he was somewhere in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area, Barbara Turner had no idea where Prowler’s business was physically located. But the guy on the phone had obviously managed to get Barbara to divulge Prowler’s phone number. Barbara, Prowler knew, was someone who would be quite reluctant to part with the number. Prowler assumed that meant that the man on the phone was someone willing to use torture as a motivational tool.

  Which meant that the man was someone like himself, thought Prowler.

  Once more he said, “Damn.”

  OVER THE NEXT five minutes Prowler scoured the web for news on Barbara Turner’s death. The Boulder Daily Camera website provided almost all the information he needed to know about her murder.

  He pondered the situation for an additional minute before he took action. Prowler assumed that if the U.S. marshals had any idea what Barbara Turner was up to, then they had probably already moved Peyton Francis someplace new and that she and her kid would have new identities before they saw the next sunrise.

  He’d have to start his search for them all over again.

  There was no conceivable way he could coordinate the three contracts under these circumstances.

  He had to call off the two hits scheduled for that morning. He paged Krist.

  Krist didn’t respond.

  He paged him again.

  Prowler waited.

  3

  Andrea’s phone rang only once before her secretary answered. She told me that Andrea hadn’t come into work that morning.

  I felt a tidal change immediately. A whale was surfacing so close by that I could feel its spray on my face.

  I identified myself as an old friend of Andrea’s and asked, “Did she call in sick today?”

  “No, but last night when she left she said she wasn’t feeling well. I’m guessing that she’s home in bed.”

  “What kind of not well?”

  “Sore throat. Achy. You know.”

  “Have you tried her at home?”

  “No. I assumed she was resting.”

  I USED MY 7-Eleven phone card to try Andrea’s home number. Three rings. Four, five …

  Seven … eight.

  Andrea was one of those people who set their answering machine to pick up after an almost interminable number of rings. “Cuts down on messages from the impatient,” she’d explained.

  Nine.

  I steeled myself for her eventual message, wondering if she’d changed it since the one she’d recorded using the Julio Iglesias background music. I hoped so; I hated cute answering-machine messages.

  “Hello,” she said, finally.

  The sound of her hoarse voice brought a huge smile to my face. I wanted to hug her over the phone. “Andrea? It’s Kirsten.” I stumbled over my own name.

  “Kirsten? Hi. I mean, Peyton.”

  “You don’t sound good.”

  “I’m sick. I think I have the flu. Or some viral knockoff that’s undistinguishable from the real thing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Could be worse.”

  It’s about to be, I thought. The whale hadn’t left my bay. I saw it breach nearby. “Listen, honey, this is going to sound weird, okay? What I’m about to tell you? Try and keep an open mind as you hear it.”

  She coughed.

  “There’s somebody after me here, you know, where I’m living. Somebody new, if you can believe it. Not the same people.”

  “What? Somebody new is trying to kill you?”

  Hearing her say it out loud made it seem even more real. I hugged myself with my free arm. “The woman didn’t actually get a chance to try—she’s dead now. That part’s a long story. The important part is that she wasn’t after me because Ernesto Castro sent her. You with me so far?”

  “I’m trying. Are you and your baby okay?”

  “So far, we’re fine. Fine. The point I’m trying to make is that I think she might have been after me because of Khalid. Because of the letter Dave got and the phone calls that you and Dave have been making about the problems with the investigation. You still follow?”

  I thought I could feel her voice quiver, but I detected almost no hoarseness as she said, “Yes.”

  “Before she … died, this woman who came to Boulder to kill me said that I was supposed to be killed at the same time as some … others.”

  “She told you this?”

  “No, not me. Someone’s been … helping me. She told him about it after some … coercion.”

  “And what? You think it was Dave and me? We were supposed to be the other ones?”

  I judged her voice to be only mildly disbelieving.

  “I do believe that. Yes. At least I think it’s possible. I’m really, really afraid that it’s possible.”

  “I should call Dave.”

  “Yes, you should. I’ll call you back in five minutes to hear what he has to say. Is that all right?”

  She coughed.

  ON THE ADJACENT phone, Carl had already completed his call. He waited for me to hang up and said, “I called this guy Prowler. Warned him off. Probably won’t do any good, but I wanted him to know that I got his woman to talk. That’s important for him to know. Might create some doubt. Some hesitation. At least he has to wonder what it is I know.”

  I tilted my head toward the pay phone I’d just used and said, “That was my friend Andrea in Florida. I think she might be one of the ones who was supposed to be killed first. She’s calling a friend of ours, a man we both think might be the other one. I’ll call her back in a minute to see what he has to say.”

  Carl’s expression was dubious. He said, “You’ll explain all this to me later, of course?”

  “Of course.”

  He fought a yawn. “I think I’ll go see Landon over there while you make your other call.”

  Aware at some level that I was sending a hit man to babysit my daughter, who was currently pretending to be crippled, I said, “Thanks, I’m sure she’s getting antsy over there all by herself.”

  I COULDN’T WAIT five minu
tes, I called Andrea back after three. Her line was busy. I tried again at five minutes. Still busy.

  Eight minutes, same result.

  Finally at eleven minutes and twenty seconds, my call went through.

  Andrea answered in tears. She said, “Kirsten?”

  “Yes?”

  “Dave’s dead. What do I do now?”

  FROM WHAT I could glean from Andrea, who’d just heard the whole story from Dave’s almost hysterical wife Vicki, Dave Curtiss had started his day with the before-work routine that had marked a few thousand mornings before it and should have marked at least a few thousand after. Up at six forty-five. First cup of coffee standing in the kitchen in his boxers. Shower, shave. Shirt fresh from the laundry. Suit that probably should have already gone to the dry cleaners. Discarded three ties before he found one that wasn’t stained. Kissed his wife. Teased his oldest daughter about the latest boy who was calling her morning, noon, and night. Second cup of coffee with some toast and butter and a glance at the Wall Street Journal. Didn’t touch the fresh fruit cup that Vicki had prepared for him.

  The Today show played in the background. Dave probably didn’t hear a single word that Katie said.

  By eight o’clock Dave Curtiss had gathered his briefcase, searched half the house for his car keys, and said good-bye to his family in the kitchen. He walked through the small mudroom and down two concrete steps to enter the garage for a ten-minute drive to his office.

  That’s where Vicki found him about nine-fifteen when she went to run her first errand of the day. Dave was slumped sideways on the front seat of his Lexus, most of his big body bent over the center console.

  At first she thought he was just trying to find something that he’d dropped on the floor of the car.

  I TURNED TO go find Carl and Landon after I hung up the phone.

  I had to cross Thirteenth Street to get back to the park. I didn’t remember seeing any cars coming, but I’m not sure I really would have noticed. By the time I was halfway to the old locomotive Carl hurried across the lawn to meet me.

  I was fighting hyperventilation. I managed to say, “He’s dead. My friend Dave Curtiss is dead. It’s a long story, but I think everything has to do with an old murder case we prosecuted together back in Florida.”