A Passing Curse (2011) (55 page)

She clicked a surveillance icon. The fifteen screens to her left blinked on with an initial flash.

The screen in front of her showed a miniature of the monitors to her left. A virtual toggle switch beneath each screen adjusted scan and focus.

The top monitors showed the driveway to the house and the courtyard. The bottom monitors gathered the castle’s interior. She used the mouse to scan the kitchen. The great hall. The library.

In a large bedroom, a leather bound notebook sat on the night table next to a huge canopy bed. She zoomed in on the notebook. A green Pelikan pen lay on top. Where was the room located? She moved the camera to the square bronze windows and saw the channel islands. Miles of sea. The hazy city. The same view as the office. Next door?

She went past the office and past the room where she had dined with Ajax. She touched the aquamarine button next to the tall blue doors and they shot open with a burst of air. She heard a compressor running far away to refill the air tank.

The bedroom was huge and dark and paneled in walnut burl. The bed itself was eight by eight, covered with a ruby brocade awning. She put the green Pelikan pen in her pocket and picked up the notebook. She read his notebook in the dim light for three minutes before putting it in her pack. The Chief had not found everything.

Back in the surveillance room, she watched a black limousine pass through the gate and progress through various screens until it stopped in front of the grand entrance.

A chauffeur jumped out and smartly opened the rear door for an older gentleman, slightly stooped, wearing a black homburg and a cashmere overcoat against the clearing fog. The old man peered into the camera above the main entrance as if he could see her watching him and spryly stepped through the door she’d just broken into.

She followed his progress up the stairs and into the office. With the toggle switch, she brought his face into close-up. His eyes caught the camera’s movement. He looked into the lens and nodded curtly.

He had deep blue eyes set well into a cleanly lined face. He looked intelligent and tough as a boot. He could have been seventy or eighty.

“And you are?” he said confidently as she walked through the secret door and back into Ajax’s office. He did not seem the least bit afraid or surprised.

“Rusty Webber.”

“Ah. The archeologist.” He did not offer his hand. “I should have known. In a way I was expecting you. You seem to have your fingers into every pie ‘

“I wouldn’t know about that,” she told him. He glanced at the hole in the window, removed his hat and gloves, and set them on the desk. He removed his cashmere overcoat and carefully folded it over the back of the chair in front of the desk, revealing a charcoal pinstripe suit topped off with a red boutonniere.

“Winston Waverly, CFO of Cirrus Industries and executor of Ajax’s estate,” he announced and settled himself into Ajax’s chair as if he were finally home. “I’m the same man who vehemently argued against giving you ten million dollars to chase after Alexander the Great, no doubt a noble task, but fiscally irresponsible.”

“He was serious?” she asked, slightly shocked. “He was giving me the money?”

“I sold five hundred thousand shares of Cirrus stock to cover the expenses. It was hard to do, that much stock, and I had to file with the SEC and explain to our larger investors and fund managers that Ajax’s was not dumping stock because of business concerns. It was his personal money, over twenty million dollars. He’d already lined up bids for roads and an airstrip near the site.”

She shook her head. If Waverly was telling the truth, then what had Ajax been up to? Ajax had been ready to pour millions down what was, for all intents and purposes, a hole in the sand. It made no sense. “And now?”

He smiled. “Don’t kid.”

“You got here fast.”

“I have duties.”

“In other words, you’ve got one big fucking mess to clean up, Winston, and I don’t envy you one bit. In fact, and I’m just guessing here, I think that you’ll need some help.”

“No matter what you saw,” he said, “and I know what you think you saw, Ajax had a heart attack and fell down a long flight of stairs into the cellar. Apparently, the stress of having the governor for dinner was too much for him.”

She laughed. “He almost did have the governor for dinner, so to speak.”

He ignored her. “His bodyguard, Ted Rezonavich, found the body and then committed suicide, prostrate with grief. The poor man had been with him for years.”

“You forgot Sergeant Hernandez.”

“I merely did not mention him,” Waverly quipped. “Sergeant Hernandez drove off one of the area’s many treacherous cliffs. He was decapitated by the windshield. It does happen. Apparently, he was under observation for instability by the Los Angeles Police Department. He also seemed to be operating under the illusion that someone was out to kill Ajax Rasmussen.”

“I killed Ajax,” she said. “You know what happened.”

“The actual circumstance hardly matters, my dear. The death certificate has been signed. Ajax is scheduled for cremation at one o’clock this afternoon.” He checked his slim gold watch. “I won’t be able to attend, of course.”

“I watched him burn.”

Waverly shrugged.

“The others?”

“I’ll deal with those as they come up.” He smiled. His eyes sparkled. “If they come up. Of course, I don’t know that Ajax killed anyone. He lived his life and I lived mine. My only concern is that his death not become a spectacle.”

“Ajax developed a drug that turned people into maniacs.” She explained Reese’s theory about Ajax’s vampire virus. “He planned to use Cirrus to distribute the drug worldwide.”

The laugh from Waverly was more of a bark. “That is totally absurd. Ajax no longer had control of the company. Not for years. He’d been voted off the board. Removed from power. There was a - ”

“He wasn’t CEO?”

This produced another short bark of laughter from Waverly. “God, no. Six years ago, Cirrus Industries, due to debt and a glut in the blood market, came close to going under. Ajax stood before the board of directors and suggested that we contaminate the world’s blood reserve with Hepatitis C, except for the blood Cirrus owned, of course, in an attempt to drive up the price of blood and save the company. He was immediately relieved of his duties.”

“You’re telling me that you knew he was crazy?”

“But I haven’t told you anything. Besides, crazy is such a vulgar term. I prefer to say that his financial reasoning was unsound.”

“Let’s not forget that Mr. Crazy killed a lot of people,” she said. “Keeping that in mind, tell me how old Ajax was. How old you thought he was.”

“Fifty-three, according to People Magazine. His father started the company before the war. When his father died, Ajax truly blossomed. He was responsible for Cirrus’ great success.”

“He told me he was over twelve hundred years old. He was his father. Did you ever see Ajax and his father together? In pictures? At meetings?”

“His father died before I was hired,” Waverly said. He smiled kindly at her, as if she were a bright but slightly challenged child. “Ajax was a brilliant chemist, you know. Just brilliant. Even more so than his father. On the level of Fermi. Below Einstein, but definitely on the level of Fermi. Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for brilliance, there always is. That thin line between brilliance and madness. Twelve hundred years, you say? My God. And a vampire virus to boot?” Waverly chuckled. “He was worse than I thought. Quite a balancing act for him, really.”

“Do you know how many people he killed, or had killed? What price for them?”

“You have no proof he killed anyone,” Waverly said and flicked a piece of lint off the front of his jacket, as if the lint were more troublesome than anyone Ajax might have killed. “But think of all the people he saved, my dear. Think of all the people who would have died without our blood. Millions. We supplied at least 50 percent of the plasma used in Korea and Vietnam.”

“You should have stopped him.”

“Ajax had become such a figurehead of Cirrus and so popular with the stockholders and the public, not to mention several of our Presidents, that we merely couldn’t throw him away. The man was a national icon. Famous. A media figure. I kept my eye on him, of course, but I had no idea he’d gotten this bad. I should have known when he refused to be interviewed by 60 Minutes. Completely out of character. He was such a publicity hound. Pathological.”

“I won’t let you get away with it,” she said and realized that that was exactly what she was going to do. She had no choice. She could not chance making LX public, not chance the gold rush fever of pharmaceutical and global defense combines with a drug like LX. As Reese had warned her, LX was the ultimate Pandora’s box. “I won’t.”

“Ah, but we already have.” Waverly slipped a silver flask from inside his jacket and took a sip. She downed another shot of CC. “Much to your advantage, of course. You see, the Chief wanted to charge you and your partner with three murders last night - Ajax, Ted, and the LA policeman. I talked him out of it.” He slipped the flask back inside his jacket as easily as she imagined he’d handled the Chief. “I want you to know there can be consequences.”

“You aren’t doing us any favors. If the truth ever came out in court, it would cost Cirrus billions. It would cost you your freedom.”

“The truth?” Waverly pointed out the window. “The truth is like the horizon. As you get closer it disappears. It moves further away.” He produced a silk hanky, dabbed at his lips, and chuckled to himself. “You’re a very smart girl, Miss Webber. Do you mind if I ask why you’re here? I would think, given what happened last night, that you and your boyfriend would be long gone.”

“Housecleaning,” she said. “The same as you.”

Waverly’s laugh was less of a bark this time. “As long as you are here then, would you mind giving an old man a hand? We have to make sure things are put into shape for the curious.”

She downed another shot. “I told you you’d need some help. First let’s discuss my fee. I also want money for the victims. Then I’d like to see Ajax’s lab.”

Waverly raised an eyebrow as if he had seen her for the first time and liked what he saw. “I said you were a very smart girl, Miss Webber. I told everyone how smart you were and I am seldom wrong.”

The hospital bed was fully elevated. He could see out the window, a partial view of city and ocean. The thigh bone in his left leg had fractured when the rocks shifted. The cast was already causing his leg to itch.

Three ribs were cracked, his kidneys and liver bruised. He had a mashed spleen from being wedged between the rock and his pistol. He’d already heard all the between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place jokes from the nurses he could stand.

Rusty had been patched up. She’d refused a blood transfusion and left earlier for the castle.

He wished he were with her now, he’d almost gone, but she’d put her foot down, claiming she’d break his other leg if he tried to come. He felt good now, thinking how angry and protective she’d been.

He did not feel good thinking about the current danger if Ajax had been able to distribute any of his virus. He hoped the box he’d thrown out the window was the only box. The delivery guy had checked his electronic notebook and told them this had been the only scheduled pick-up for months. That was good news, but there were other carriers and Ajax had managed to kill four people at Pine Creek.

The Chief poked his head around the corner. “How you doing there?”

“I’ll survive,” he said but did not invite him in. He wondered how much Ajax had paid the Chief over the years. How much the Chief had really known.

“I headed off most of the reporters,” the Chief said happily. “One less thing for you to worry about.”

“You had as much to hide as anyone.”

The Chief frowned. “You ought to thank me for keeping the media off your butt. They’d gotten wind of some incredible story about you killing another vampire. I got two reporters locked up now. The rest went back to LA screaming about their first amendment rights. I’ll let’em out this evening after they get a taste of the jailer’s wife’s apple pan dowdy, serves’em right.”

“The governor?”

“He was never there,” the Chief said. “He’s mourning the loss of a good friend and promising to carry on Ajax’s dream of free blood for everyone.”

“You knew everything.”

The Chief closed the door and walked over to the window and looked out on the town, his dominion. He forced himself to smile, as if everything would be fine as long as he stayed optimistic.

Reese shifted his weight. He scratched at the lip of the cast, groin high. “Ajax was always one step ahead of me. I’m surprised he didn’t kill me with all your help.”

“You survived. Quit griping.”

“No thanks to you.”

“You wanted me to tell Ajax what you were doing. You wanted me to set him up for you. He was never one step ahead of you because you made sure you only told me enough to keep Ajax one step behind you. You used me.”

Reese said nothing.

The Chief finally spoke. “Ajax is dead and nobody is sure what happened. Nobody is sure and nobody is the wiser. All people know is that Ajax was a good man.”

“Don’t wear yourself out trying to convince me what a great guy he was. You knew he was a killer.”

“What are you talking about?” the Chief said. “The man was a saint. According to his prissy executor, he’s leaving the city a couple hundred million. The police department’s getting some of it and I just might get a helicopter and one of those new riot tanks. Eighty or so million to rebuild the mission. Ajax is going to be so popular that he’d be elected mayor if he wasn’t dead. Hell, he still might.”

“What about Thomkins, Cheevy, Father Ramon, and Rupert Amos? You’re still blaming that on Rawlings? And Sergeant Hernandez? The thirteen women that Homer killed?”

“Yesterday’s news. I hate to say that about two fellow officers, but Hernandez should have stayed in LA and poor old Thomkins died doing his sworn duty, a good man. His Mom will get his Medal of Valor, posthumously, she doesn’t want a hero’s sendoff, the 21 gun salute, but there was nothing I could do about that.”