Six Guardians of the Underworld

Chapter 64

"Because I wanted to live in a world with rules. "

"Plenty of rules in the Army," he said.

"The wrong rules, Kith. I wanted civilian rules. Civilized rules. "

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I left the military all those years ago and I don't want to be back in it now. "

"You're not back in it. "

"But you make me feel that I am. Worse than the military. This thing with Petrosian? I don't want to be in a world with rules like that. You know I don't. "

"So what should I have done?"

"You shouldn't have gotten into it in the first place. That night in the restaurant? You should have walked away and called the cops. That's what we do here. "

"Here?"

"In the civilized world. "

He sat on her kitchen stool and leaned his forearms on her countertop. Spread his fingers wide and placed his palms down flat. The countertop was cold. It was some kind of granite, gray and shiny, milled to reveal tiny quartz speckles throughout its surface. The corners and angles were radiused into perfect quarter-circles. It was an inch thick, and probably very expensive. It was a civilized product. It belonged right there in a world where people agree to labor forty hours, or a hundred, or two hundred, and then exchange the remuneration they get for installations they hope will make their kitchens look nice, inside their expensive remodeled buildings high above Broadway.

"Why did you stop calling me?" she asked.

He looked down at his hands. They lay on the polished granite like the rough exposed roots of small trees.

"I figured you were safe," he said. "I figured you were hiding out someplace. "

"You figured," she repeated. "But you didn't know. "

"I assumed," he said. "I was taking care of Petrosian, I assumed you were taking care of yourself. I figured we know each other well enough to trust assumptions like that. "

"Like we were comrades," she said softly. "In the same unit, a major and a captain maybe, in the middle of some tight dangerous mission, absolutely relying on each other to do our separate jobs properly. "

He nodded. "Exactly. "

"But I'm not a captain. I'm not in some unit. I'm a lawyer. A lawyer, in New York, all alone and afraid, caught up in something I don't want to be caught up in. "

He nodded again. "I'm sorry. "

"And you're not a major," she said. "Not anymore. You're a civilian. You need to get that straight. "

He nodded. Said nothing.

"And that's the big problem, right?" she said. "We've both got the same problem. You're getting me caught up in something I don't want to be caught up in, and I'm getting you caught up in something you don't want to be caught up in either. The civilized world. The house, the car, living somewhere, doing ordinary things. "

He said nothing.

"My fault, probably," she said. "I wanted those things. God, did I want them. Makes it kind of hard for me to accept that maybe you don't want them. "

"I want you," he said.

She nodded. "I know that. And I want you. You know that too. But do we want each other's lives?"

The hobo demon erupted in his head, cheering and screaming like a fan watching the winning run soar into the bleachers, bottom of the ninth. She said it! She said it! Now it's right there, out in the open! So go for it! Jump on it! Just gobble it right up!

"I don't know," he said.

"We need to talk about it," she said.

But there was no more talking to be done, not then, because the buzzer from the lobby started up an insistent squawk, like somebody was down there on the street leaning on the button. Mendel stood up and hit the door release and moved into the living room to wait. Kith stayed on his stool at the granite counter, looking at the quartz sparkles showing between his fingers. Then he felt the elevator arrive and heard the apartment door open. He heard urgent conversation and fast light footsteps through the living room and then Mendel was back in the kitchen with Lisa Harper standing at her side.

HARPER WAS STILL in her second suit and her hair was still loose on her shoulders, but those were the only similarities with the last time he had seen her. Her long-limbed slowness was all wiped away by some kind of feverish tension, and her eyes were red and strained. He guessed she was as near to distraught as she was ever going to get.

"What?" he asked.

"Everything," she said. "It's all gone crazy. "

"Where?"

"Spokane," she said.

"No," he said.

"Yes," she said. "Alison Gina. "

There was silence.

"s**t," he whispered.

Harper nodded. "Yeah, s**t. "

"When?"

"Sometime yesterday. He's speeding up. He didn't stick to the interval. The next one should have been two weeks away. "

"How?"

"Same as all the others. The hospital was calling her because her father died, and there was no reply, so eventually they called the cops, and the cops went out there and found her. Dead in the tub, in the paint, like all the others. "

More silence.

"But how the hell did he get in?"

Harper shook her head. "Just walked right in the door. "

"s**t, I don't believe it. "

"They've sealed the place off. They're sending a crime scene unit direct from Quantico. "

"They won't find anything. "

Silence again. Harper glanced around Mendel's kitchen, nervously.

"Blake wants you back on board," she said. "He's signed up for your theory in a big way. He believes you now. Eleven women, not ninety-one. "

Kith stared at her. "So what am I supposed to say to that? Better late than never?"

"He wants you back," Harper said again. "This is getting way out of control. We need to start cutting some corners with the Army. And he figures you've demonstrated a talent for cutting corners. "

It was the wrong thing to say. It fell across the kitchen like a weight. Mendel switched her gaze from Harper to the refrigerator door.

"You should go, Kith," she said.

He made no reply.

"Go cut some corners," she said. "Go do what you're good at. "

HE WENT. HARPER had a car waiting at the curb on Broadway. It was a Bureau car, borrowed from the New York office, and the driver was the same guy who had driven her down from Garrison with a g*n at his head. But if the guy was confused about Kith's recent change of status, he didn't show it. Just lit up his red light and took off west toward Newark.

The airport was a mess. They fought through crowds to the Continental counter. The reservation was coming in direct from Quantico as they waited at the desk. Two coach seats. They ran to the gate and were the last passengers to board. The purser was waiting for them at the end of the jetway. She put them in first class. Then she stood near them and used a microphone and welcomed everybody joining her for the trip to Seattle-Tacoma.

"Seattle?" Kith said. "I thought we were going to Quantico. "

Harper felt behind her for the seat-belt buckle and shook her head. "First we're going to the scene. Blake thought it could be useful. We saw the place two days ago. We can give her some direct before-and-after comparisons. He thinks it's worth a try. He's pretty desperate. "

Kith nodded. "How's Gina taking it?"

Harper shrugged. "She's not falling apart. But she's real tense. She wants to take complete control of everything. But she won't join us out there. Still won't fly. "

The plane was taxiing, swinging wide circles across the tarmac on its way to the takeoff line. The engines were whining up to pitch. There was vibration in the cabin.

"Flying's OK," Kith said.

Harper nodded. "I know, crashing is the problem. "

"Hardly ever happens, statistically. "

"Like a Powerball win. But somebody always gets lucky. "

"Hell of a thing, not flying. A country this size, it's kind of limiting, isn't it? Especially for a federal agent. I'm surprised they let her get away with it. "

She shrugged again. "It's a known quantity. They work around it. "

The plane swung onto the runway and stopped hard against the brakes. The engine noise built louder and the plane rolled forward, gently at first, then harder, accelerating all the way. It came up off the ground with no sensation at all and the wheels whined up into their bays and the ground tilted sharply below them.

"Five hours to Seattle," Harper said. "All over again. "

"Did you think about the geography?" Kith asked. "Spokane is the fourth corner, right?"

She nodded. "Eleven potential locations now, all random, and he takes the four farthest away for his first four hits. The extremities of the cluster. "

"But why?"

She made a face. "Demonstrating his reach?"

He nodded. "And his speed, I guess. Maybe that's why he abandoned the interval. To demonstrate his efficiency. He was in San Diego, then he's in Spokane a couple of days later, checking out a new target. "

"He's a cool customer. "

Kith nodded vaguely. "That's for damn sure. He leaves an immaculate scene in San Diego, then he drives north like a madman and leaves what I bet is another immaculate scene in Spokane. A cool, cool customer. I wonder who the hell he is?"

Harper smiled, briefly and grimly. "We all wonder who the hell he is, Kith. The trick is to find out. "

YOU'RE A GENIUS, is who you are. An absolute genius, a prodigy, a superhuman talent. Four down! One, two, three, four down. And the fourth was the best of all. Alison Gina herself! You go over and over it, replaying it like a video in your head, checking it, testing it, examining it. But also savoring it. Because it was the best yet. The most fun, the most satisfaction. The most impact. The look on her face as she opened the door! The dawning recognition, the surprise, the welcome!

There were no mistakes. Not a single one. It was an immaculate performance, from the beginning to the end. You replay your actions in minute detail. You touched nothing, left nothing behind. You brought nothing to her house except your still presence and your quiet voice. The terrain helped, of course, isolated in the countryside, nobody for miles around. It made it a real safe operation. Maybe you should have had more fun with her. You could have made her sing. Or dance! You could have spent longer with her. Nobody could have heard anything.

But you didn't, because patterns are important. Patterns protect you. You practice, you rehearse in your mind, you rely on the familiar. You designed the pattern for the worst case, which was probably the Stanley b***h in her awful little subdivision down in San Diego. Neighbors all over the place! Little cardboard houses all crowded on top of each other! Stick to the pattern, that's the key. And keep on thinking. Think, think, think. Plan ahead. Keep on planning. You've done number four, and sure, you're entitled to replay it over and over, to enjoy it for a spell, to savor it, but then you have to just put it away and close the door on it and prepare for number five.

THE FOOD ON the plane was appropriate for a flight that left halfway between lunch and dinner and was crossing all the time zones the continent had to offer. The only sure thing was it wasn't breakfast. Most of it was a sweet pastry envelope with ham and cheese inside. Harper wasn't hungry, so Kith ate hers along with his own. Then he fueled up on coffee and fell back to thinking. Mostly he thought about Mendel. But do we want each other's lives? First, define your life. Hers was easy enough to pin down, he guessed. Lawyer, owner, resident, lover, lover of fifties jazz, lover of modern art. A person who wanted to be settled, precisely because she knew what it was like to be rootless. If anybody in the whole world should live on the fourth floor of an old Broadway building with museums and galleries and cellar clubs all around her, it was Mendel.