The Heaven Trilogy (27 page)

The man's smile left him. He blinked again. For a few seconds the agent held him in a thoughtful stare, as if that last volley had done the trick—shown Pinhead here who he was really up against.

“You are a bright one. I'll give you that. But we know more than you realize, Kent.”

Kent shook his head. “Not possible. Unless you know more than I do about me, which is rather absurd, isn't it?”

The man smiled again. He shifted his seat back, preparing to leave. Thank goodness.

He dipped his head politely and offered Kent one last morsel to chew on. “I want you to consider something, Kent. I want you to remember that eventually everything will be found out. You are indeed a brilliant man, but we are not so slow ourselves. Watch your back. Be careful whose advice you take.”

With that, the agent stood and strode away. He put his hands deep into his pockets, rounded a bookcase ten yards away, and vanished.

Kent sat for a long time, calming his heart, trying to make sense of the exchange. The man's words nagged him like a burrowed tick, digging at his skull. An image of the man, sitting there with his slicked hair and cheesy grin, swallowed his mind.

Ten minutes later he left the bookstore without buying the books he'd come for.

CHAPTER TWENTY

KENT SAT in the big tan leather lounger facing the tube Monday night taking stock of things. The Forty Niners led the Broncos sixteen to ten, and Denver had the ball at the fifty yard line, but Kent barely knew it. The roar of the crowd provided little more than background static for the images roaring through his mind.

He was taking stock of things. Getting right down in the face of the facts and drawing conclusions that would stay with him until he croaked.

At least that's how his self-analysis session had started out, back when Denver led six to three. Back before he had gotten started early on his nightcap. Actually he had dispensed with the nightcap routine at the first quarter whistle and settled for the bottle instead. No use kidding around. These were serious matters here.

At the top of his list of deliberations was that cop who had interrupted his reading at Barnes and Noble. The pinhead was on the case. Granted, not
the
case, but the man was onto
him,
and he was the case. Kent took a nip of liquor. Tequila gold. It burned going down, and he sucked at his teeth.

Now what exactly did that mean,
on the case?
It meant that Kent would be a fool to go through with any robbery attempt while Detective Pinhead was around. That's what it meant. Kent took another small taste from the bottle in his hand. A roar blared through the room; someone had scored.

But then, how could anyone know anything about anything other than what had already happened? Not a soul could possibly know about his plans—he'd told no one. He had started the fine-tuning of ROOSTER, but no one else had access to the program. Certainly not some pinhead cop who probably didn't know computer code from alphabet soup.

“We know more than you think we do, Kent.”

“We do? And who's we? Well I think you're wrong, Pinhead. I think you know zero. And if you know ten times that much it's still a big fat whoppin' goose egg, isn't it?”

The simple fact was, unless Pinhead could read his mind or was employing some psychic who could read minds, he knew nothing about the planned robbery. He was bluffing. But why? Why would the cop even suspect enough to merit a bluff ? Regardless of why or how, the notion of continuing, considering this latest development, rang of madness. Like a resounding gong.
Bong, bong, bong! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Get your butt back to Stupid Street, fool.

But he could plan. And he should plan, because who was to say that Pinhead would hang around? For that matter, even with the man on the case, Kent's plan was foolproof, wasn't it? What difference would an investigation make? And there
would
be an investigation, regardless. Oh yeah, there would be one heck of an investigation, all right. You don't just kill someone and expect a round of applause. But that was just it. There would be an investigation, no matter what he did. Pinhead or no pinhead. So it really made no difference whether the cop stayed on the case or not.

An episode of
Forensics
Kent had watched on Saturday replayed through his mind. It featured a case in which some idiot had plotted the perfect murder but had one problem. He'd killed the wrong man. In the end he had attempted the murder again, this time on the right person. He had failed. He was rotting in some prison now.

That was the problem with having the cops already breathing down your neck; they would be more likely to stumble onto some misplaced tidbit that nailed you. To be done right, most crimes had to come out of the blue. Certainly not under the watchful nose of some pinhead who was stalking you.

But this was not most crimes. This was
the
perfect crime. The one all the shows could not showcase because no one knew it had even occurred.

Kent lifted the bottle and noted that it was half empty.

And the cop was not the only one breathing down his neck. Cliff, the mighty snowboarder-turned-programmer, was annoying Kent with his intrusive style of
Let's check your code, Kent.
What if Boy Wonder actually stumbled onto ROOSTER? It would be the end, of course. The whole plan rested squarely on the shoulders of ROOSTER's secrecy. If the security program was discovered, the plot would blow up. And if anybody could find it, Cliff could. Not as a result of his brilliance as much as his dogged tenacity. There was a single link buried in AFPS that led to ROOS-TER: an extra “m” in the word “extremmely,” itself buried in a routine not yet active. If the “m” were deleted by some spelling-bee wizard intent on setting things straight, the link automatically shifted to the second “e” in the same word. Only someone with way too much time on their hands could possibly uncover the hook.

Someone like Cliff.

Kent went for a chug on the bottle and closed his eyes to the throat burn. The game was in its second half. He'd missed the big showdown at the end of the first. Didn't matter.

“Be real,” he mumbled. “Nobody's gonna find no link. No way this side of Hades.”

And he knew he was right.

An image of Lacy drifted through the fog in his mind. Now,
there
was a solution to this whole mess. He could discuss the fine points of committing a federal felony with Lacy. Cut her in. An anemic little chuckle escaped his lips at the thought. It sounded more like the burp that followed it.

Fact was, even if he wanted a relationship with a woman, it was simply not feasible. Not with mistress ROOSTER in his life. It wasn't that they wouldn't both share him. It was that they
couldn't.
Assuming they wanted to. Which was yet one more problem: He was thinking of ROOSTER as if it were a real person that possessed a will worth considering. ROOSTER was a link, for heaven's sake! A plan. A program.

Either way, he still could not cohabit with both ROOSTER and any living soul. Period. ROOSTER demanded it. The plan would fall apart.

So then, what on earth did he think he was doing with Lacy?

Good question. He should cut her off.

Cut her off from what? It wasn't as if he had a relationship with her. One freak roadside encounter with a stranger and a phone call hardly made a relationship.

On the other hand, Lacy was no stranger. She stood there by her car in Kent's mind, like a ghost stepping from the pages of his past.

Still, he had no desire for a relationship that could be characterized as anything but platonic. There was Gloria to think of—in the dirt nearly three months. That long? Goodness. And mistress ROOSTER.

Get a grip, Kent. You're losing it.

He lifted the bottle, sipped at the burning liquid, and scratched his chin. Sweat wet the skin beneath two days of stubble. He looked at his shirt. It was the same Super Bowl T-shirt he'd slept in for a week. Not a problem. Now that he was doing his own laundry, changing clothes had lost its appeal. Except for underwear, of course. But he could just throw the underwear in the machine once every other week and stuff them in a drawer without all the folding and sorting mess. Which reminded him; he needed another dozen. The machine could easily hold a month's worth. Once a month was clearly better than once every two weeks.

Kent looked at the tube. The game was nearing an end. Outside, the night was pitch black. He licked the bottle and thought about Pinhead again. A needle of anxiety pricked his skin. It was madness.
When you're ready, just call me,
she'd said in the voice echoing from the past. Lacy.

He made the decision then, impulsively, with two minutes to play and the Broncos now leading twenty-one to nineteen.

He climbed out of the lounger and picked up the phone, his heart suddenly stomping through his chest. Which was absurd because he certainly had no emotions for Lacy that would set off its pounding. Except that he did want to see her. That much he could not deny. The realization only added energy to his heart's antics as he dialed her number.

LACY HAD just slipped on her bathrobe when the phone began its ringing. The caller ID showed only that the call was “out of area,” and she decided to pick it up on the remote chance it was a call she actually wanted to take.

“Hello.”

“Hello. Lacy?”

Kent!
Her heart leapt. She would know that voice anywhere.

“Yes?”

“Hi, Lacy. Is it too late?”

“And you are . . . ?”

“Oh, I'm sorry. It's Kent. Geez, I'm sorry. Pretty stupid, huh? Call up and ask if it's too late without introducing myself. I didn't mean to sound . . .”

“What do you want, Kent?”

The phone returned only silence for a few moments. Now why had she come off so curt? And why was her breathing tight?
God, help me.

“Maybe I should call back at a better time,” Kent said.

“No. No, I'm sorry. You just took me by surprise. It's only ten. You're fine.”

He chuckled on the phone, and she thought he sounded like a boy. “Actually, I was wondering if I could talk to you,” he said.

“Sure. Go ahead.” Lacy settled onto a chair by the dinette.

“I mean come up there and talk to you.”

Now her pulse spiked. “Up here? When?”

“Well . . . tonight.”

Lacy rose to her feet. “Tonight!? You want to come up here tonight?”

“I know it's a bit late, but I really need someone to talk to right now.”

It was her turn to freeze in silence.

“Lacy?”

What was she to say to this?
Come on up, Lover Boy.

His voice came again, softer. “Okay, well, maybe it's not such a good idea . . .”

“No, it's okay.” It was? It was nothing of the kind.

“You sure? Maybe we could meet at the Village Inn.”

“Sure.”

“In an hour?”

The sum of this matter began to spread through Lacy's mind like icy waters. Kent was coming to Boulder tonight. He wanted to talk to her.

“Sure,” she said.

“Good. I'll see you in an hour, then.”

“Sure.”

Silence filled the receiver again, and Lacy suddenly felt like a high school girl being asked out by the captain of the football team. “So, what do you want to talk about?” she asked. It struck her that the question was at once both perfectly legitimate and absurd. On one hand, their relationship should remain strictly platonic, for obvious reasons. Reasons that droned through her head like World War II bombers threatening to unload at the first sign of flak. Reasons like, this man had dropped her once before and if it had hurt then, it might kill her now. Reasons like, he had just lost his wife. He was no doubt rebounding like the world's tightest-wound super-ball.

On the other hand, since when did reasoning direct the heart?

“Nothing,” he said.

It was the wrong answer, she thought. Because in matters of the heart, “nothing” was much more than “something.”

“Okay, I'll see you there,” she said and hung up the phone with a trembling hand.

IT TOOK Lacy forty-five of the sixty minutes to prepare herself, which was in itself nonsense because other than changing clothes she had not yet
unprepared
herself from the day's preparedness, which had taken her less than fifteen minutes just this morning. Nevertheless, it took her forty-five, due in part to the fact that the blouse she thought would best suit the occasion needed ironing. Not that this was an occasion as such.

Kent was there, at the Village Inn, sitting in a corner booth nursing a cup of coffee when she arrived. He glanced up as she slid onto the bench opposite him. His eyes brightened, which was a good thing because they appeared a bit red and blurry, as if he'd been crying in the last hour. His breath smelled strongly of mints.

“Hi, Kent.”

He smiled wide and extended a hand. “Hi.”

She took it hesitantly. Goodness. What was he thinking? This was not a business deal that required a handshake.

Looking at him now under the lights Lacy saw that Kent had seen some abuse lately. Dark circles cupped his eyes, which were indeed rather lethargic looking. The lines defining his smile seemed to have deepened. His hair was as blond as it had been the day he'd told her to take a hike years ago, but now it was disheveled. It was Monday—surely he had not gone to work like this. Something had been pummeling him, she thought, but then she already knew that. He had walked through the valley of death. You always got pummeled in the valley of death.

They sipped at their coffees and talked small talk for half an hour—the weather, the new stadium, the Broncos—all in all, things that neither seemed to have any interest in. Without going into their past, they really didn't have much to talk about. But it hardly mattered; just sitting there across from each other after so many years held its own power, however awkward or halting it might be.