Thr3e (7 page)

He shuffled through papers and knocked a hermeneutics textbook off the desk. He’d left it right here on top; he could swear it! Maybe he should just call Milton. Where was that number!

Slow down, Kevin. Gather yourself. This is a thinking game, not a race. No, a race too. A thinking race.

He took a deep breath and put his hand to his face.
I can’t call the cops. Slater will hear the call. He’s got the house bugged or something. Okay. He wants me to call Samantha. This is about her too. I need Samantha. Only two minutes have passed. Twenty-eight left. Plenty of time. First thing, find Sam’s number. Think. You wrote it down on a white piece of paper. You used it to call her last week and you put the paper somewhere safe because it was important to you.

Under the phone.

He lifted the desk phone and saw the white slip. Thank God! He grabbed the receiver and punched in the number with an unsteady hand. It rang. It rang again.

“Please, please pick up—”

“Hello?”

“Hello, Sam?”

“Who’s calling?”

“It’s me.”

“Kevin? What’s wrong? You sound—”

“I have a problem, Sam. Oh dear God, I’ve got a problem! Did you hear about the bomb that went off down here today?”

“A bomb? You’re kidding, right? No, I didn’t hear of a bomb; I have this week off, unpacking from the move. What happened?”

“Some guy who calls himself Slater blew up my car.”

Silence.

“Sam?” Kevin’s voice trembled. He suddenly thought he might start to cry. His vision swam. “Sam, please, I need your help.”

“Someone named Slater blew up your car,” she repeated slowly. “Tell me more.”

“He called me on my cell phone and gave me three minutes to confess a sin, which he said I would know by a riddle.
What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls?
I managed to get the car into a ditch by a Wal-Mart and it blew up.”

“Holy . . . You’re serious? Was anyone hurt?”

“No. I just—”

“Is the FBI investigating? Good night, you’re right—I just turned on the television. It’s all over the news up here.”

“Samantha, listen! I just got another call from this guy. He says I have thirty minutes to solve another riddle or he’s going to blow up another bomb.”

Sam seemed to switch into another mode immediately. “Riddles. You’ve got to be kidding. How long ago?”

He glanced at his watch. “Five minutes.”

“You’ve already reported it?”

“No. He said I can’t tell the cops.”

“Nonsense! Call the detective in charge right now. Get off the phone with me and call them, you hear me, Kevin? You can’t let this guy play his game. Take his game away from him.”

“He said that this bomb will kill my best friend, Sam. And I know he can hear me. This guy seems to know everything. For all I know he’s watching me right now!”

“Okay, calm down. Slow down.” She paused, reconsidering. “Okay, don’t call the cops. Who’s Slater talking about? Who are your friends down there?”

“I . . . That’s the problem. I really don’t have any.”

“Sure you do. Just give me three people you would consider friends and I’ll get the local authorities on them. Come on, let’s go.”

“Well, there’s the dean at the school, Dr. John Francis. The priest at my parish—Bill Strong.” He searched his mind for another, but nothing came. He had plenty of acquaintances, but really no one he’d call a true friend, much less a best friend.

“Okay. Good enough. Hold on a second.”

She put the phone down.

Kevin lifted his T-shirt and wiped the sweat from his face.
4:24
. He had until
4:45
.
Come on, Samantha!
He stood and paced.
In life he’s your friend, but death is the end
.
What—

“Kevin?”

“Here.”

“Okay, I put in an anonymous call to the Long Beach police warning that Francis and Strong could be in immediate danger. Enough to get them moved from wherever they are, which is all we can do.”

“You talked to Milton?”

“He’s the lead? No, but I’m sure he’ll get the message. How sure are you that this guy will come unglued if you talk to the authorities?”

“He’s already unglued! He said I could only speak when spoken to and he’s doing this because I said something.”

“Okay. You’ll probably get a call any minute from the police, checking on this threat I’ve just reported. You have call waiting?”

“Yes.”

“Ignore the beep. If you talk to the police when they call, Slater will know. What’s the riddle?”

“There’s something else, Sam. Slater knows you. In fact, he suggested I call you. I . . . I think he might be someone we both know.”

The phone sounded hollow for a few breaths.

“He knows me. What’s the sin he wants you to confess?”

“I don’t know!”

“Okay, we can cover this later. We’re running out of time. What’s the riddle?”

“In life he’s your friend, but death is the end.”

“Opposites.”

“Opposites?”

“
What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls?
Answer: Night and day. What in life is your friend, but death is the end, I don’t know. But they’re both opposites. Any ideas?”

“No. I don’t have a clue.” Night falls, day breaks. Clever. “This is
crazy!”
He ground the last word out between his teeth.

She was quiet for a moment. “If we knew the sin, we could infer the riddle. What sin are you hiding, Kevin?”

He stopped pacing. “None. Lots! What do you want me to do, spill my whole life of sins to the world? That seems to be what he wants.”

“But there must be something you did that sent this guy to the moon. Think of that and think of this riddle. Anything connect?”

Kevin thought about the boy. But there was no connection between the riddles and the boy. Couldn’t be him. Nothing else came to mind.

“No.”

“Then let’s go back to your best friend.”

“You’re my best friend, Sam.”

“Sweet. But this guy wanted you to call me, right? He knows I would be warned, and if he knows me, he also knows that I have the capability of escaping his threat. I think I’m safe for now. There’s another best friend you’re missing. Something more obvious—”

“Wait! What if it’s not a person?”
That’s it!
He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes to go. Barely enough time to get there. Call waiting sounded in his ear. That would be the police.

“Ignore it,” Sam said. “Such as—”

“I’ll call you back, Sam. I don’t have time to explain.”

“I’m coming down. I’ll be there in five hours.”

“You . . . you are?”

“I’m on leave, remember?”

Kevin felt a surge of gratitude. “I have to go.”

He hung up, nerves buzzing, stomach in knots. If he was right, it meant going back to the house. He hated going back to his aunt’s house. He stood in the office, fists clenched by his sides. But he had to go back. Slater had blown up the car, and now he was going to do worse unless Kevin stopped him.

Slater was forcing him back to the house. Back to the past. Back to the house and back to the boy.

Kevin’s watch read
4:39
when he passed the park at the end of Baker Street and pointed the car toward the white house. The faint sound of children playing on the swing sets faded. Then silence except for the purr of the Taurus. He blinked.

A row of twenty elms lined the left side of the dead-end avenue, one in the front yard of each house, casting a dark shadow over the entire length. Behind the homes, a narrow greenway fed into the park he’d just passed. To his right, warehouses backed up to train tracks. The street had been freshly paved, the lawns were all neatly manicured, the houses modest but clean. By all appearances it was the perfect little street on the edge of town.

He had not visited in over a year, and even then he’d refused to go inside. He needed Balinda’s signature for the seminary application. After four failed attempts to secure it through the mail, he finally dragged himself to the front porch and rang the doorbell. She appeared after several minutes, and he addressed her without making eye contact and told her that he had some evidence in his old bedroom that would interest the authorities and would make the police station his next stop if she refused to sign. It was a lie, of course. She turned up her nose and scribbled her signature.

The last time he’d seen the inside of the house was five years ago, the day he’d finally worked up the courage to leave.

Rolling down the blacktop under the canopy of elms wasn’t so different from driving through a tunnel. One that led to a past he had no desire to visit.

He passed the houses slowly—the green one, the yellow one, another green one, a beige one—all old, all unique in their own way despite the obvious similarities that came from having a common builder. Same gutters, same windows, same shingle roofs. Kevin locked his eyes on the white house, the fifteenth of the twenty on Baker Street.

Here resides Balinda and Eugene Parson with their thirty-six-year-old retarded son, Bob. Here is the childhood home of one Kevin Parson, adopted son, formerly known as Kevin Little until his mommy and daddy went to heaven.

Five minutes.
Okay, Kevin, time’s running out.

He parked the car across the street. A two-foot picket fence ran around the front yard and then rose to six feet for its run around the back. Here the fence was painted brilliant white, but once you stepped past that gate to the right, it wasn’t painted at all, except by years of black ash. A flower bed ran the length of the front porch. Fake flowers, pretty and maintenance-free. Balinda replaced them every year— her idea of gardening.

A gray stone statue of some Greek goddess stood on a pedestal to the right of the Parsons’ elm. The front yard was immaculate, the neatest on the street, always had been. Even the beige ’
59
Plymouth in the driveway had been recently polished so that you could actually see a reflection of the elm in its rear quarter panel. It hadn’t been moved in years. When the Parsons had reason to leave the house, they favored the ancient blue Datsun parked in the garage.

The shades were drawn and the door had no windows, making it impossible to see inside, but Kevin knew the inside better than he knew his own house. Three doors down stood the smaller brown house that had once belonged to a cop named Rick Sheer, who had a daughter named Samantha. Her family had moved back to San Francisco when Sam went off to college.

Kevin wiped his palms on his jeans and climbed out. The sound of his door slamming sounded obscenely loud on the quiet street. The shade on the front window separated momentarily, and then closed.
Good. Come on out, Auntie.

Suddenly the whole notion of coming felt absurd. Slater obviously knew his facts, but how would he have knowledge of Bob’s dog? Or that the dog had indeed been Kevin’s best friend until Samantha had come along? Maybe Slater was after Dr. Francis or the priest. Sam had made the call. Smart.

Kevin paused on the sidewalk and stared at the house. What now? Walk up and tell Balinda that someone was about to blow up the dog? He closed his eyes.
God, give me strength. You know how I hate this.
Maybe he should just leave. If Balinda had a phone, he would have called instead. Maybe he could call the neighbors and—

The door opened and Bob stepped out, grinning from ear to ear. “Hello, Kevin.”

Bob wore a lopsided crew cut, undoubtedly Balinda’s doing. His beige slacks hung a full six inches above a pair of shiny black leather wing tips. His shirt was a dirty white and sported large lapels reminiscent of the seventies.

Kevin grinned. “Hello, Bob. Can I see Damon?”

Bob lit up. “Damon wants to see you, Kevin. He’s been waiting to see you.”

“Is that so? Good, then. Let’s—”

“Bobby, baby!” Balinda’s shrill voice cut through the front door. “You get back in here!” She appeared out of the shadows wearing red high heels and white pantyhose patched up with streaks of clear fingernail polish. Her white dress was lined with age-stained lace embedded haphazardly with a couple dozen fake pearls, the surviving remnant of what had once been hundreds. A large sun hat perched on jet-black hair that looked freshly dyed. A string of gaudy jewels hung around her neck. But it was the white makeup she applied to her sagging face and her bright ruby red lipstick that planted Balinda firmly in the category of the walking dead.

She glared past heavily shadowed lids, studied Kevin for a moment, and then turned up her nose.

“Did I say you could go out? Get in. In, in, in!”

“It’s Kevin, Mama.”

“I don’t care if it’s Jesus Christ, pumpkin.” She reached forward and straightened his collar. “You know how easily you catch cold, baby.”

She ushered Bob toward the door.

“He wants to see—”

“Be nice for Princess.” She gave him a little shove. “In.”

God bless her soul, Balinda really did intend good for that boy. She was misguided and foolish, certainly, but she loved Bob.

Kevin swallowed and glanced at his watch. Two minutes. He cut for the gate while her back was still turned.