Eyes of Darkness (15 page)

Over breakfast he asked her to go with him to the afternoon party at which he was going to corner Judge Kennebeck to ask about the exhumation. But Tina wanted to go back to her place and clean out Danny’s room. She felt up to the challenge now, and she intended to finish the task before she lost her nerve again.

“We’ll see each other tonight, won’t we?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll cook for you again.”

She smiled lasciviously. “In what sense do you mean that?”

She rose out of her chair, leaned across the table, kissed him.

The smell of her, the vibrant blue of her eyes, the feel of her supple skin as he put a hand to her face — those things generated waves of affection and longing within him.

He walked her to her Honda in the driveway and leaned in the window after she was behind the wheel, delaying her for another fifteen minutes while he planned, to her satisfaction, every dish of this evening’s dinner.

When at last she drove away, he watched her car until it turned the corner and disappeared, and when she was gone he knew why he had not wanted to let her go. He’d been trying to postpone her departure because he was afraid that he would never see her again after she drove off.

He had no rational reason to entertain such dark thoughts. Certainly, the unknown person who was harassing Tina might have violent intentions. But Tina herself didn’t think there was any serious danger, and Elliot tended to agree with her. The malicious tormentor wanted her to suffer mental anguish and spiritual pain; but he didn’t want her to die, because that would spoil his fun.

The fear Elliot felt at her departure was purely superstitious. He was convinced that, with her arrival on the scene, he had been granted too much happiness, too fast, too soon, too easily. He had an awful suspicion that fate was setting him up for another hard fall. He was afraid Tina Evans would be taken away from him just as Nancy had been.

Unsuccessfully trying to shrug off the grim premonition, he went into the house.

He spent an hour and a half in his library, paging through legal casebooks, boning up on precedents for the exhumation of a body that, as the court had put it, “was to be disinterred in the absence of a pressing legal need, solely for humane reasons, in consideration of certain survivors of the deceased.” Elliot didn’t think Harold Kennebeck would give him any trouble, and he didn’t expect the judge to request a list of precedents for something as relatively simple and harmless as reopening Danny’s grave, but he intended to be well prepared. In Army Intelligence, Kennebeck had been a fair but always demanding superior officer.

At one o’clock Elliot drove his silver Mercedes S600 sports coupe to the New Year’s Day party on Sunrise Mountain. The sky was cerulean blue and clear, and he wished he had time to take the Cessna up for a few hours. This was perfect weather for flying, one of those crystalline days when being above the earth would make him feel clean and free.

On Sunday, when the exhumation was out of the way, maybe he would fly Tina to Arizona or to Los Angeles for the day.

On Sunrise Mountain most of the big, expensive houses featured natural landscaping — which meant rocks, colored stones, and artfully arranged cacti instead of grass, shrubs, and trees — in acknowledgment that man’s grip on this portion of the desert was new and perhaps tenuous. At night the view of Las Vegas from the mountainside was undeniably spectacular, but Elliot couldn’t understand what other reasons anyone could possibly have for choosing to live here rather than in the city’s older, greener neighborhoods. On hot summer days these barren, sandy slopes seemed godforsaken, and they would not be made lush and green for another ten years at least. On the brown hills, the huge houses thrust like the bleak monuments of an ancient, dead religion. The residents of Sunrise Mountain could expect to share their patios and decks and pool aprons with occasional visiting scorpions, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes. On windy days the dust was as thick as fog, and it pushed its dirty little cat feet under doors, around windows, and through attic vents.

The party was at a large Tuscan-style house, halfway up the slopes. A three-sided, fan-shaped tent had been erected on the back lawn, to one side of the sixty-foot pool, with the open side facing the house. An eighteen-piece orchestra performed at the rear of the gaily striped canvas structure. Approximately two hundred guests danced or milled about behind the house, and another hundred partied within its twenty rooms.

Many of the faces were familiar to Elliot. Half of the guests were attorneys and their wives. Although a judicial purist might have disapproved, prosecutors and public defenders and tax attorneys and criminal lawyers and corporate counsel were mingling and getting pleasantly drunk with the judges before whom they argued cases most every week. Las Vegas had a judicial style and standards of its own.

After twenty minutes of diligent mixing, Elliot found Harold Kennebeck. The judge was a tall, dour-looking man with curly white hair. He greeted Elliot warmly, and they talked about their mutual interests: cooking, flying, and river-rafting.

Elliot didn’t want to ask Kennebeck for a favor within hearing of a dozen lawyers, and today there was nowhere in the house where they could be assured of privacy. They went outside and strolled down the street, past the partygoers’ cars, which ran the gamut from Rolls-Royces to Range Rovers.

Kennebeck listened with interest to Elliot’s unofficial feeler about the chances of getting Danny’s grave reopened. Elliot didn’t tell the judge about the malicious prankster, for that seemed like an unnecessary complication; he still believed that once the fact of Danny’s death was established by the exhumation, the quickest and surest way of dealing with the harassment was to hire a first-rate firm of private investigators to track down the perpetrator. Now, for the judge’s benefit, and to explain why an exhumation had suddenly become such a vital matter, Elliot exaggerated the anguish and confusion that Tina had undergone as a direct consequence of never having seen the body of her child.

Harry Kennebeck had a poker face that also
looked
like a poker — hard and plain, dark — and it was difficult to tell if he had any sympathy whatsoever for Tina’s plight. As he and Elliot ambled along the sun-splashed street, Kennebeck mulled over the problem in silence for almost a minute. At last he said, “What about the father?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”

“Ah,” Kennebeck said.

“The father will protest.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes.”

“On religious grounds?”

“No. There was a bitter divorce shortly before the boy died. Michael Evans hates his ex-wife.”

“Ah. So he’d contest the exhumation for no other reason but to cause her grief?”

“That’s right,” Elliot said. “No other reason. No legitimate reason.”

“Still, I’ve got to consider the father’s wishes.”

“As long as there aren’t any religious objections, the law requires the permission of only one parent in a case like this,” Elliot said.

“Nevertheless, I have a duty to protect everyone’s interests in the matter.”

“If the father has a chance to protest,” Elliot said, “we’ll probably get involved in a knock-down-drag-out legal battle. It’ll tie up a hell of a lot of the court’s time.”

“I wouldn’t like that,” Kennebeck said thoughtfully. “The court’s calendar is overloaded now. We simply don’t have enough judges or enough money. The system’s creaking and groaning.”

“And when the dust finally settled,” Elliot said, “my client would win the right to exhume the body anyway.”

“Probably.”

“Definitely,” Elliot said. “Her husband would be engaged in nothing more than spiteful obstructionism. In the process of trying to hurt his ex-wife, he’d waste several days of the court’s time, and the end result would be exactly the same as if he’d never been given a chance to protest.”

“Ah,” Kennebeck said, frowning slightly.

They stopped at the end of the next block. Kennebeck stood with his eyes closed and his face turned up to the warm winter sun.

At last the judge said, “You’re asking me to cut corners.”

“Not really. Simply issue an exhumation order on the mother’s request. The law allows it.”

“You want the order right away, I assume.”

“Tomorrow morning if possible.”

“And you’ll have the grave reopened by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Saturday at the latest.”

“Before the father can get a restraining order from another judge,” Kennebeck said.

“If there’s no hitch, maybe the father won’t ever find out about the exhumation.”

“Ah.”

“Everyone benefits. The court saves a lot of time and effort. My client is spared a great deal of unnecessary anguish. And her husband saves a bundle in attorney’s fees that he’d just be throwing away in a hopeless attempt to stop us.”

“Ah,” Kennebeck said.

In silence they walked back to the house, where the party was getting louder by the minute.

In the middle of the block, Kennebeck finally said, “I’ll have to chew on it for a while, Elliot.”

“How long?”

“Ah. Will you be here all afternoon?”

“I doubt it. With all these attorneys, it’s sort of a busman’s holiday, don’t you think?”

“Going home from here?” Kennebeck asked.

“Yes.”

“Ah.” He pushed a curly strand of white hair back from his forehead. “Then I’ll call you at home this evening.”

“Can you at least tell me how you’re leaning?”

“In your favor, I suppose.”

“You know I’m right, Harry.”

Kennebeck smiled. “I’ve heard your argument, counselor. Let’s leave it at that for now. I’ll call you this evening, after I’ve had a chance to think about it.”

At least Kennebeck hadn’t refused the request; nevertheless, Elliot had expected a quicker and more satisfying response. He wasn’t asking the judge for much of a favor. Besides, the two of them went back a long way indeed. He knew that Kennebeck was a cautious man, but usually not excessively so. The judge’s hesitation in this relatively simple matter struck Elliot as odd, but he said nothing more. He had no choice but to wait for Kennebeck’s call.

As they approached the house, they talked about the delights of pasta served with a thin, light sauce of olive oil, garlic, and sweet basil.

Elliot remained at the party only two hours. There were too many attorneys and not enough civilians to make the bash interesting. Everywhere he went, he heard talk about torts, writs, briefs, suits, countersuits, motions for continuation, appeals, plea bargaining, and the latest tax shelters. The conversations were like those in which he was involved at work, eight or ten hours a day, five days a week, and he didn’t intend to spend a holiday nattering about the same damned things.

By four o’clock he was home again, working in the kitchen. Tina was supposed to arrive at six. He had a few chores to finish before she came, so they wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time doing galley labor as they had done last night. Standing at the sink, he peeled and chopped a small onion, cleaned six stalks of celery, and peeled several slender carrots. He had just opened a bottle of balsamic vinegar and poured four ounces into a measuring cup when he heard movement behind him.

Turning, he saw a strange man enter the kitchen from the dining room. The guy was about five feet eight with a narrow face and a neatly trimmed blond beard. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie, and he carried a physician’s bag. He was nervous.

“What the hell?” Elliot said.

A second man appeared behind the first. He was considerably more formidable than his associate: tall, rough-edged, with large, big-knuckled, leathery hands — like something that had escaped from a recombinant DNA lab experimenting in the crossbreeding of human beings with bears. In freshly pressed slacks, a crisp blue shirt, a patterned tie, and a gray sports jacket, he might have been a professional hitman uncomfortably gotten up for the baptism of his Mafia don’s grandchild. But he didn’t appear to be nervous at all.

“What is this?” Elliot demanded.

Both intruders stopped near the refrigerator, twelve or fourteen feet from Elliot. The small man fidgeted, and the tall man smiled.

“How’d you get in here?”

“A lock-release gun,” the tall man said, smiling cordially and nodding. “Bob here”—he indicated the smaller man— “has the neatest set of tools. Makes things easier.”

“What the hell is this about?”

“Relax,” said the tall man.

“I don’t keep a lot of money here.”

“No, no,” the tall man said. “It’s not money.”

Bob shook his head in agreement, frowning, as if he was dismayed to think that he could be mistaken for a common thief.

“Just relax,” the tall man repeated.

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Elliot assured them.

“You’re the one, all right.”

“Yes,” Bob said. “You’re the one. There’s no mistake.”

The conversation had the disorienting quality of the off-kilter exchanges between Alice and the scrawny denizens of Wonderland.

Putting down the vinegar bottle and picking up the knife, Elliot said, “Get the fuck out of here.”

“Calm down, Mr. Stryker,” the tall one said.

“Yes,” Bob said. “Please calm down.”

Elliot took a step toward them.

The tall man pulled a silencer-equipped pistol out of a shoulder holster that was concealed under his gray sports jacket. “Easy. Just you take it real nice and easy.”

Elliot backed up against the sink.

“That’s better,” the tall man said.

“Much better,” Bob said.

“Put the knife down, and we’ll all be happy.”

“Let’s keep this happy,” Bob agreed.

“Yeah, nice and happy.”

The Mad Hatter would be along any minute now.