The Last Goodbye (31 page)

Ralston smiled wanly. “Such a troubled young man.”

“He was looking for a way to get close to her.”

Ralston nodded. “Horizn meant nothing to him. Michele was the true obsession. The company was connected to her, so he explored it in the same way he explored everything about her life. He had only one real talent, and he used it.” Ralston looked at me. “But what to do with this tragic little figure? Too talented to destroy, too dangerous to ignore. So we did the logical thing. We made him one of us.”

“You forced him to hack Grayton for you in exchange for access to Michele?”

“Force wasn't necessary, Mr. Hammond. In exchange for five minutes with my wife, he would gladly have cut off one of his own fingers.”

I winced. “It's repellent.”

“Ah. The romantic point of view again.”

“You used your own wife.”

“She knew nothing about it. As far as Michele was concerned, Doug was as he appeared, nothing more. You have three minutes left.”

“Did you have anything to do with what happened to Lipitran AX?”

“Your question is vague.”

“Did you kill the eight patients on the Lipitran test?”

“No. You should think of us as passionately interested observers.”

“Now you're being vague.”

Ralston smiled. “All right, Jack. Let me put it this way: with the help of your friend, we were able to learn how far along Grayton was in their process. Not very, as it turned out.”

“Then you knew the test was going to fail.”

“Yes.”

The next sentence calculated the difference between the two of us as clearly as anything could. “If you knew that, then you knew those people were going to die.”

He shrugged. “You see the dilemma. There was no way to come forward without revealing how we obtained the information. To intervene was impossible.”

“Not impossible,” I said. “Just difficult.”

Ralston's face was implacable. “Do you know what I despise, Jack? What I abhor above all things?”

“No.”

“Alack of thoroughness. Imprecision. Shoddy work.” He glared, for the first time showing real passion. “You want to find a way to blame me for those tragic deaths. But I did not kill those people. The truth is that if Thomas Robinson was a competent doctor, those people would be alive today. To observe a death is not to cause it. You have one minute.”

If there was a confession hidden in his words, it was impenetrable. I was running out of time, and I changed tack. “Do you know how Doug Townsend died?”

“I'm told he died of a drug overdose.”

“Are you saying you had nothing to do with that?”

“I not only wouldn't have killed Doug Townsend, I would have gladly paid for a security detail to protect him. Grayton is only one of our competitors, Jack. Your friend's talents were of immense value. I would gladly have extended our relationship indefinitely.”

“Then who did kill him?”

“I have no idea. But I'd give a million dollars to find out. Time's up.” We stood facing each other in the silence. The only sound was the faint whir of the air conditioning system. “So tell me, Jack. Am I the beast you feared?”

I stood watching him a moment, not moving. “One more question,” I said.

Ralston let a thin smile form on his lips. “You're time's up, Jack. But all right. One more.”

“You say Doug Townsend was valuable to you.”

“Immensely.”

“So if you knew those patients were going to die, why did you let him participate in the Lipitran test?”

There was a moment's stilted silence, and Ralston's face drained. The implacable serenity on his face began to disintegrate, decomposing into what looked like anxious, barely contained fear. He took a few moments to compose himself, but he wasn't successful. He spoke in a dry whisper. “What did you say?”

“I said that Doug was taking Lipitran AX. He had completed two courses.”

Ralston walked woodenly to his desk and pushed a button.
He didn't know. My God, he didn't know.
The door behind me slid quietly open. Ralston looked up at me with unblinking eyes. “Goodbye, Mr. Hammond.”

I walked rapidly across the Horizn parking lot, thinking about what Ralston's bombshell meant.
He didn't know. Charles Ralston may run his little world, but at least one thing happened that he didn't control. And it scared the crap out of him.
I was dialing Robinson as soon as I cleared Horizn security. If there was one man on earth who could tell me what Ralston's fear meant, it was he. I got his machine, the predisaster, cheerful message, now dripping with irony. I left a terse message on his phone, telling him to call me back as soon as possible. I drove south down Highway 400 toward I- 285, heading back toward town. I tried Robinson again about four miles later, hoping to connect. And got his jaunty machine again. I nearly pitched the phone out of the window in frustration. Which is why I nearly missed my turn onto 285. Which is why I had to rip across three lanes of traffic to make the on-ramp. Which is why, worried about what kind of chaos my last-minute move had caused, I glanced back in my rearview mirror. Which is why I saw a white Econoline van leaning hard on its tall tires, trying to make the same sudden move. Which is the moment I realized I was being tailed.

I slowed as I pulled up onto I-285, just to be sure; the van dropped back and pulled over a lane, trying to stay inconspicuous. I sped up to about I-80, and the van picked up speed, matching my pace. I could make out a driver and passenger, although it was possible there were others in the cargo area.
Mayday. Not good.
I tried to calm myself with the fact that even if they were from Horizn, that didn't mean I was in danger. Ralston might be a criminal, but I doubted he had special-ops killers hanging out in the parking lot just in case he suddenly needed somebody capped. More likely, they were sent to observe me, keep tabs on my activities. They probably didn't even know why.

Fine. Then I'll keep things simple. Life as usual, until I figure out who these clowns are.
I continued toward my office, letting the van shadow me all the way down I-285 and onto my exit without problems. They kept their distance, staying back about sixty yards. I pulled onto Cleveland, the mostly residential street leading to my office, the van following.
Unless
, I thought,
they were the guys who broke into my office and stole Doug's computer. Which meant they know exactly what they're doing.
I looked in my mirror; the van was six inches from my rear bumper.
Shit.

I floored the gas pedal, the old V-8 pulling hard. I hammered down Cleveland, trying to look several blocks ahead. The street was mostly empty of traffic, although there were a variety of parked cars looming like an obstacle course. I tried for my phone, only to watch it slide off my passenger seat onto the floorboard. Which probably saved my life, because it's impossible to drive flat out down a city street while making a phone call anyway.

The heavy van was handicapped compared with my sedan, and I was able to put some distance between us. But any turn that took me toward a crowded intersection, or even a car pulling out ahead of me, would end the chase. I looked back again; the van was about three blocks behind, following hard. I only had seconds before I would run out of road. Then a late-model Chevy Caprice pulled out in front of me from two blocks ahead. He was gunning it down the middle of the road, making it impossible to pass.
Damn, there's two of them. I missed this guy watching the van.
The Chevy ahead of me started slowing; apparently, the plan was to trap me in between the two cars. The Chevy's brake lights were glowing, and I was coming up fast. I had no ideas, and no time to think. I slammed on the brakes, bracing myself for impact from behind. The van was racing toward me, filling my rearview mirror. The Chevy locked tires, sliding right a couple of feet under heavy braking. On impulse, I whipped my car hard to the left and floored it, ripping off my outside mirror against the Chevy's. The van was farther back, but was too wide for the same maneuver. He touched the Chevy on the left tip of the bumper, spinning it out of control. I accelerated toward the end of the street, slammed on the brakes, turned left, hauled ass one block to Pine, turned left again—going the wrong way on a one-way street—turned right again a block later, and ran hard away from the two cars. After several blocks I turned left, putting more distance between us. I looked around; both the van and the Chevy were gone, for the moment. I pulled onto Fairburn, turned right, and floored it.

Okay. I'm okay.
A good five miles away, I pulled into a grocery store parking lot to catch my breath and calm down.
Shit, this is getting serious.
I sat for a minute, breathing heavily. I leaned down to the floorboard to get my phone, sat back up, and saw the van screech to a stop parallel to me in a cloud of gravel dust, two feet from my driver's door. The man in the passenger seat was calmly aiming a gun through his open window at my head.

Guns clarify the mind. In the face of their compact, efficient ability to hurl death, nothing else matters. The man motioned for me to lower my window. I complied, and he spoke. “Don't move. Is your door unlocked?”

“Yes.”

“Turn off the ignition. Then stay still. Don't even blink.”

The driver of the van got out and opened my door. “Scoot over,” he said. He entered the car, the gun barrel pointed at my torso. As soon as he was seated, he pushed the gun into my crotch. “We're gonna take a ride,” he said gruffly. “Stay quiet, and keep your head facing forward.”

The man in the van moved across to the driver's seat and drove slowly away. When it was about twenty yards off, the man in my car pressed the barrel down hard, making me wince. “Just take it easy. Don't try to be a hero.”

We followed. We drove north about ten minutes, eventually turning west on I-20 toward Birmingham. We drove another twenty minutes or so, the man not speaking. Eventually, the van pulled into an underground parking garage, on top of which was a fairly run-down, six-story office building. The man in the van punched in a code for the lot, and a mechanical arm raised. We followed in before the gate closed.

We pulled into the garage and parked by a fire door. My driver took my arm in a vise grip and said, “I'm going to follow you out your door. Move slowly, and don't make any noise. Do as you're told, and you live.” I nodded, and we moved together across the bench seat through the passenger door. Once outside, the man pressed the gun into my back. “Nice and easy.”

We walked the short distance to the fire escape door. The other man opened it, and we began to ascend the metal stairway. Three floors up, the man opened the door to the floor. He motioned for us to follow. By the time we exited the fire escape, he had unlocked the door of an office directly across the hall. The man behind me pushed me through, and closed the door behind me.

“What's this all about?” I asked. The men said nothing, but one of them pushed me through the first room into another room located behind it. The room was nearly empty, with just a couple of metal chairs huddled alone in a corner. One of the men crossed the room and opened a closet door. He went inside and brought out a roll of gray duct tape. He walked to me and growled, “Stay still. Do not move.” He pulled off a large swath, and cut it off with his teeth. He pulled it tightly around me head, covering my mouth. He pulled off another swath and circled my head again, this time covering my eyes. Then he roughly pulled my hands behind my back. He taped my hands together so tight the pain was like scalding water. Then he rolled me onto my stomach and pulled my legs backward and up, forcing my spine into an agonizing arc. He taped my ankles to my wrists, sealing me in a contortionist's pose. Then—still, without saying a word—he pushed me into the closet. I rolled onto my face against the back wall. I heard the door close. There was a click, and the door locked.

THE SHAPE OF PAIN
changes over time. In the beginning, it's all jagged edges and serrated knives. After a while—hours, in my case—it gives way to great, encircling waves, crushing you under its weight. Then the nausea begins, pushing you out to sea, farther, farther, with no chance of swimming against its angry tide. Eventually—God knows how long later, because by now time has lost its meaning—it shifts again, turning into towering, unscalable mountains of ice. But all the shapes are angry. For the first few hours, the mind tries running from the pain, seeking relief in distant corners of semiconsciousness. For a few precious moments, the mind can detach, going to a Zen place beyond the moment. Ground to anguish by the relentless, searing agony, you long for shock, where the mind detaches. It becomes a heavenly vision, a drop of water in a desert.
Just let me pass out. I'm begging you, just let me go away.
But this particular pain—the agony of arms and legs made bloodless by a backward supine position and torture-tight binding—did not evaporate into a dreamless coma. Instead, it simply grew, and grew, and grew, until it was a monster demanding my every thought. I could feel every agonized sinew, every stretched connective tissue, every muscle screaming for release. I played my mind games, trying to find a hollow place in my mind to run to, only to be thrust back by a body pushed into positions it simply does not go.

To fight pain like that, your weapons must be of equal terror. And I learned that day the only thing on earth that can definitively conquer pain is its hungry cousin:
fear
. Because even in the greatest agony, fear can still be felt, separate and distinct. In the blinding light of pain there came a black dot, at first small, then growing, finally finding its name. I was afraid that if I did fall unconscious—which I greatly desired—I would lose my hands, or at least several fingers, to necrosis, or even that I could stay in the closet so long I would die of thirst.