Devoted, page 31
Shacket.
Dorian said. “You didn’t have a need to know. And how did you find out?”
“Yesterday, Mr. Ninety-three was a bad boy. You know how often he was a bad boy?”
“Twice,” Dorian said, referring to the murders of Painton Spader and the Klineman woman.
“Twice yesterday afternoon. But what you evidently don’t know is then he went to her house, made a scene, had to be restrained, but that didn’t work, and now he’s been bad twice again.”
Dorian pushed aside what remained of his breakfast. “Her house? Her who? Can we stop being too cute about this?”
“I don’t feel cute, actually.”
“No one can be listening, and if anyone is, he can’t know who the fuck we are.”
Still being half-cute, Haskell said, “You remember the guy who wanted to shit all over your archaea business?”
Jason Bookman.
“I remember.”
“His widow is in that town. Ninety-three has a thing for her. On the way to her house, he’s bad twice. Then he makes a try for her, ends up in bracelets, so he’s bad twice again and loose.”
“Why don’t I know about more than the first two he did? We own that jerkwater through our friendly AG. We’re supposed to be kept informed. This is supposed to be quashed, like it never happened.”
“That jerkwater isn’t Mayberry RFD, and apparently this particular khaki-ass bastard is a bad piece of work, wants to make himself a lawman star.”
A sludge of vitamin pills rose in Dorian’s throat. He swallowed hard and washed the resurgent wad down with a kale smoothie.
He said, “I’ll break that fucker down to dogcatcher. But I still don’t get how our two problems are one.”
“Our pest-control friends, the ones who aren’t in business anymore, they tracked the hacker to source. The widow.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Somehow she got the Gordius ID and your Tragedy password, and she’s putting together a case.”
“The ungrateful bitch,” Dorian said.
“Maybe you should have let her have that block of shares.”
“By my calculations the option wasn’t vested yet. I’m not fucking Santa Claus. What’s holding you up from finishing the job?”
“The future dogcatcher is providing her with protection in case your bad boy comes back. Six men. They need to stand down, go away and eat some doughnuts.”
“I’ll get right on it. And what about Mr. Ninety-three?”
“He beheaded some hapless sonofabitch, jacked his pickup, a fancy hot-rod truck, easy to spot. So now they figure he’s long gone from that area, although they don’t want to take a chance with the widow. Something totally X-Files is going on with this guy. You have any idea what?”
Staring at the congealing eggs and avocados and crabmeat on his breakfast plate, Dorian said, “No. I don’t. Not a clue.”
104
Sheriff Hayden Eckman retreated to his residence on Sierra Way, the nicest street in Pinehaven.
The house provided ample space for a single man, was pleasantly furnished, included all the latest appliances, but the sheriff was not proud of it. Because he’d known that one day he would live in a much larger, much grander home, this place embarrassed him, not for any inadequacy in it, but because when eventually he achieved the status he deserved, he would not be able to say that he’d always lived at such a pinnacle, had always been among the elite. To a degree roots could be faked, the past papered over with lies, but some people would remember it was here that the great man had once lived, when he’d worn a uniform and been far too close to common.
Now he had to cope with the recognition that perhaps this was the grandest residence he would ever know. Which was so unfair. He had done everything right. He used his law degree to promote himself into the role of sheriff and salted the department with loyalists who were supposed to make sure everything occurring in Pinehaven County law enforcement would redound to his credit, even to his glory. He networked assiduously with leaders in adjacent counties and in Sacramento. He used far less campaign funds for personal expenses than he would have liked. He had $300,000 in cash, taken from Shacket’s Dodge Demon, when he could have been greedy and taken the other $100,000 that he had left in the car. And in spite of doing everything right, he now stood on the brink of disaster, ruin.
His deal with Tio Barbizon required him to keep the attorney general informed about any developments in the case. But he had agreed to that condition and passed the Spader-Klineman murder investigation to Sacramento only because he thought that the killer was long gone from Pinehaven County, that there would be no further developments in Hayden’s jurisdiction.
Then chaos. Event by violent event, until the disaster at the hospital, the sheriff believed he could control the situation to his benefit. He intended to craft a brilliant statement to the press, taking sole credit for the capture of the crazed fugitive—who was not just a homicidal psychopath but also the former CEO of Refine, responsible for the catastrophe in Springville! At that public briefing, Hayden planned to turn the fiend over to the attorney general, whom he would inform only moments before making his statement to the press, to ensure that Tio didn’t hog the credit.
But now. Oh, now. Now, two more were dead and Shacket was loose and the sheriff failed to keep the attorney general informed. The shit hadn’t hit the fan; it was far worse than that. A cannonade of shit was about to erupt, a long barrage of it, and Hayden Eckman would be the sole target.
He had come home ostensibly to write a statement for the press. He couldn’t do it because it would be tantamount to a suicide note.
In truth, he had come home because, with Lee Shacket loose, he didn’t feel safe anywhere else in Pinehaven. He had a first-class security system. He had a handgun secreted in every room, and he was still in uniform with a pistol on his hip. He closed all the blinds and draperies.
As an attorney representing charlatans who were willing to fake their injuries or fantastically exaggerate the effects of genuine injuries, the most dangerous clients he had faced were those quick to seek redress in court or through arbitration when they discovered he had in one way or another skimmed more from their settlements than the terms of his basic agreement allowed. As if everyone didn’t do it. None of them had ever tried to kill him.
Having made such a show of overseeing Shacket’s arrival at the hospital and the man’s commitment to the psychiatric ward, with Rita Carrickton using their smartphones to film key moments, the sheriff now felt that perhaps he had unwittingly made himself the focus of the madman’s rage. He had only been an officer of the law, doing his job. But who knew what irrational resentment might have formed in the mind of a homicidal maniac like Shacket?
Thad Fenton’s brain had been missing.
Eric Norseman’s head had been taken away. Shacket’s lunch pail.
Restlessly, the sheriff prowled his house, upstairs and down, again and again, half-convinced that he was not alone. With all the window coverings drawn shut, he needed to turn on lamps everywhere, and yet the rooms were infested with shadows that sometimes appeared to move in his peripheral vision, so that he pivoted with a start, hand on the grip of his pistol.
Every sound the wind wrenched from the house, every creak and pop and rattle, seemed not to be the structure protesting the storm, but instead suggested to Hayden that a stealthy stalker was but a room or two away.
He was terrified of turning a corner and encountering Shacket with a grin full of bloody teeth. He told himself that this was not a realistic fear, that he needed to calm himself. But was it really unrealistic to expect this particular fugitive to accomplish what was thought impossible? If Shacket had been able to escape from inescapable psych-ward restraints and exit by a third-floor window as if capable of flight, who was to say he couldn’t get into a locked, alarmed, fully secured house as easily as an ant entering through a keyhole?
Although the sheriff wasn’t much of a drinker, his anxiety grew until he began to treat it with Macallan Scotch, first on the rocks but then neat because he didn’t like the way he couldn’t stop the ice from rattling in the glass. He might have been concerned about insobriety compromising his senses and making him more vulnerable to attack, but fear accelerated his metabolism to such an extent that whisky seemed to have no effect on him.
Slotted on his utility belt along with his department-issued phone, his personal smartphone rang as he was circling the kitchen island to no purpose. His five closest deputies had personal phones of their own, provided by the sheriff, and had been instructed to call him on his private line in some circumstances, to ensure that certain sensitive subjects did not become part of the official—public—record. The screen said No Caller Id, which meant this wasn’t one of those deputies.
He was tempted not to answer it, but he intuited who must be trying to reach him. He knew that to dodge this caller would only increase the amount of shit he had to endure when the crap cannon began to fire.
He put down his drink and backed up against the refrigerator and slid down to sit on the floor. He didn’t think he could handle this on his feet.
Intuition proved reliable: The caller was Tio Barbizon, though he didn’t identify himself. He knew that Shacket had been captured and had escaped. He knew about the two additional murders. He was not the same Tio as he had been before. He no longer treated the sheriff as an equal, but as an inferior, and he was furious.
“You understand how totally you screwed yourself?” Tio asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you think you have a way out?”
“No.”
“Because right now there is no way out for you.”
“I understand.”
“We had a deal. You pissed on it. You decided to grandstand, be the glory boy, and you let him get away. You haven’t just fucked me over. There’s an interested party you don’t know about, someone who could crush you like an ant and enjoy doing it. You’ve fucked him over, too. If the worst that happens to you is you wake up some morning to find your balls have been cut off, you should spend the rest of your life thanking God nothing worse was done to your sorry ass. But because something is needed from you, there is one hard way out, only one way.”
Tears welled in Hayden Eckman’s eyes. “Tell me.”
“Some men from my office will be coming to see you at six o’clock this evening. You will turn over to them all evidence, including the bodies of the victims.”
“Yes, of course.”
“They’ll have a long statement for you to sign, explaining all that happened. The names Nathan Palmer and Lee Shacket won’t be anywhere in the statement. The perpetrator will be identified as a drug-addled MS-13 gang member.”
“What MS-13 gang member?”
“We’ll produce a likely candidate later. Not your concern.”
“But Shacket’s still out there.”
“We’ll find him. Anyway, he’ll self-destruct.”
“I don’t think he’ll kill himself,” said the sheriff.
“I didn’t say he would. I said he’ll self-destruct. He won’t be able to stop it. Now do you want to take this one chance, or are you determined to blow up your life?”
As fat, warm tears rolled down Hayden Eckman’s face, he said, “Will I be allowed to continue being the sheriff?”
“As long as you understand I own you, the interested party I mentioned owns you, everybody owns you.”
“All right,” the sheriff said without hesitation. He was no longer sitting on the floor. He was lying on his side, in the fetal position. “Would it be possible . . . Will I be allowed eventually to run for higher office?”
“Allowed? Hell, you’ll be required to run. Once you’re owned by the right people and you acknowledge being owned, that you’re in the game just to do what you’re told, you’re an ideal candidate. There’s one more thing you have to do to earn all this.”
“Tell me.”
“Those six deputies providing protection. Pull them off that duty. Send them home. They aren’t needed anymore.”
“But what if . . .”
“They aren’t needed anymore.”
“What if Shacket . . . What if this MS-13 gangbanger goes back there?”
“Nothing bad is going to happen. Nothing that will cast blame on you. There are elegant ways to deal with these things. Now are you owned or are you not? It’s comfortable being owned, Hayden. It makes everything so much easier. You’ll become a valuable asset and be well taken care of. Your progress will be assured.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It is nice.”
“Well, if they aren’t needed anymore . . .”
“They aren’t.”
“I’ll pull them off that duty.”
“Welcome home, Hayden.”
“That sounds nice, too.”
“It is nice,” Tio said and terminated the call.
Sheriff Hayden Eckman continued lying on his kitchen floor, in the fetal position, for perhaps another quarter of an hour. He felt as if he were descending through a narrow passage, forced forward by contractions through a birth canal, toward a new life. These weren’t contractions of his conscience, for his conscience wasn’t muscular enough to get the job done. These were contractions of desire, the same desire for status and power that had driven him as long as he could remember. If the exalted status he might one day achieve was unearned, conferred on him because of his obedience to the biases and preferences of the ruling class . . . well, he could revel in the prestige of his position nonetheless. He wouldn’t be alone; probably three-quarters of those who enjoyed acclaim and high renown had achieved nothing to warrant it, other than to follow slavishly the ideology currently required of the anointed. And if the power that he acquired was not real power, if he was only doing to others what he was told to do to them, it was far better to be the whip that the powerful used than to be one of those lashed by it.
I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.
Furthermore, he was well suited for the new life Tio Barbizon offered him because he was a superb liar. He was such a convincing deceiver, he often found that in time he came to believe that the truth he invented was the truth in fact, and could occasionally be surprised to discover that he had even deceived himself. Once his new masters had lifted him up several rungs of the ladder, he might well believe that his power was his own, real and earned. If one believed something with all one’s heart, that made it enough of a truth on which to base a life, at least one day at a time.
Finally he got up from the kitchen floor, born fully clothed, with no messy afterbirth.
He finished the Scotch in the glass he’d left on the island.
Then he used his personal phone to call the personal phone of one of the deputies at the Bookman residence, and he ordered an end to the protection he had provided for the widow and her child.
105
At 12:46 p.m., as a recently awakened Rosa Leon was assisting Megan in the kitchen, the deputies stationed in an SUV at the west end of the yard, near the forest, and those in another SUV near the back porch drove away into the wind.
Megan doubted that Shacket had been apprehended. Her experience and Carson Conroy’s assessment of Hayden Eckman convinced her that the Pinehaven County sheriff’s department was corrupt. The very fact that no one informed Megan that her protection was being withdrawn suggested that someone working on Dorian Purcell’s behalf had gotten to Eckman. She was being left vulnerable to Lee Shacket but also to whoever might be coming from Tragedy, the Dark Web operation.
Rosa said, “I should wake Mr. Hawkins.”
“Let him sleep a while longer, Rosa. He said that when and if our protection was withdrawn, the men from Tragedy won’t come right away. That would be too obvious. We’ve got a few hours. But go see about Woody and Kipp. If they’re sleeping, wake them and bring them down here. Let’s keep them near us.”
As if it were just another culinary tool, her 9 mm Heckler & Koch lay on a nearby cutting board.
As Rosa hurried upstairs, Megan picked up her phone and keyed in Carson Conroy’s number. He would be waiting in Harry Borsello’s Fleetwood Southwind in the former trailer park that had never become a wind-power plant.
Carson answered on the second ring, and Megan said, “All the uniforms are gone. No one to see you. Are you ready?”
“Be there in fifteen,” he promised.
106
Dorian Purcell in the transit station on the roof of the Nob Hill building. At a window, staring impatiently at a helicopter landing pad. Waiting for his air taxi.
The two bodyguards, one at the elevator and one beside Dorian, would not be making this trip with him. His destination was secure.
In addition to the large apartment at Parable headquarters in Sunnyvale and the larger estate in Palo Alto and the still larger two-floor penthouse here in the heart of San Francisco, Dorian had an additional property in his Bay Area residential real-estate portfolio. His house in Tiburon, on the north shore of San Francisco Bay, encompassed forty thousand square feet and stood on five prime acres. The mansion provided a south-southwest view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the fabled city, which lay at an aesthetically pleasing distance, across almost five miles of water, a dazzling sight in its nightdress, and at all times inoffensive to the sense of smell.
