More Deaths Than One (13 page)

“What clinic?” Bob asked.

John stared at him. “Why do you want to
know?”

“Hey, chill out, man,” Don said. “What’s with
you?”

Heather giggled. “Maybe John needs to go to
that clinic.”

John glared at her, then turned back to Bob.
“Well?”

Bob shrugged. “Just curious.”

“It’s at the Rosewood Research Institute,”
Andy said. “I know a few people who were sent there for treatment
of personality disorders and came back completely cured. Those
doctors have developed a program that works fast—usually takes a
couple of weeks. It’s miraculous.”

“They are also involved in some of the most
promising cancer research,” Heather put in. She flushed when the
others stared at her in astonishment. “I read that somewhere,
okay?”

Julia tapped a finger on her chin. “Now that
I think about it, the company sent those guys who saw the UFO to
Boston for examination. I guess Issy wanted to make sure they
weren’t crazy.”

John snorted. “They should have been sent to
a mental hospital. Anyone who sees UFOs is obviously nuts.”

“That one poor guy did go nuts,” Andy said
softly.

“No surprise there.” John sniffed. “He was
always unbalanced.”

Heather sighed. “I wish I’d seen a UFO.”

“Are you crazy?” Julia shrieked.

“No.” Heather sounded wistful. “I’ve always
wanted to be on television, and Michael Mortimer is on TV all the
time talking about his experiences.”

“What if you turned out like Herb Townsend
instead?” John asked.

Bob remained still, though Townsend’s nametag
seemed to burn through his shirt.

“I wouldn’t turn out like him.” Heather shook
her curls. “You said Herb was unbalanced, and I’m not.”

“That’s what you think,” John said.

Heather lifted her chin. “Well, if I did go
crazy, I wouldn’t wear that ugly aluminum thing on my head. It’s so
. . . so . . . you know, ugly.”

Julia giggled. “Herb never did dress well. I
mean, really—plaid jackets? And that hair!”

“It’s surprising he managed to get so many
women interested in him,” Don said. “He acted sort of crude, but he
still seemed to be always having affairs.”

John snorted. “Goes to show how desperate
women are.”

“You want to know why women liked him?” Julia
glared at John. “He was charming, which is something you will never
be.”

John laughed. “I love it when you unsheath
your claws.”

She lowered her head, cheeks flaming.

He put a forefinger under her chin, raised
her head, and gently touched his lips to hers. Giggling, she jumped
up from the table and ran off, glancing behind as if to make sure
he followed.

Heather watched John and Julia duck behind
some bushes. “I don’t get it. I mean, they don’t even like each
other.”

“I’m not sure liking has much to do with love
or lust.” Andy stood. “Time for me to get back to work.” He
gathered his lunch tray and the ones John and Julia had left
behind. He nodded at Bob. “Nice meeting you, Herb.”

He walked off, balancing the three trays.

“Hey! Wait for me.” Heather grabbed her tray
and hurried after him.

Don took a squashed sandwich out of one
pocket and an apple out of another. He smiled at Bob. “My
six-year-old daughter makes my lunch for me. It’s always something
weird like peanut butter and banana with chocolate chips. I could
never hurt her feelings by not eating it, but I get tired of the
sarcastic remarks John makes when he sees it, so I wait until he’s
gone before I eat. I do leave the Barbie doll lunch box in the car.
If I toted that into the office, I’d never hear the end of it.”

He unwrapped the sandwich and offered Bob
half.

“No, thanks.”

“Do you have children, Herb?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

Bob inclined his head, but remained
silent.

While Don ate, he talked with glowing pride
about his family: his brilliant wife, feisty daughter, and
mischievous son.

When he finished, he said, “Feel free to come
eat lunch with us anytime. We’re always glad of a new audience.”
Laughing, he hopped on his skateboard and shoved off.

Bob looked around and noticed a small,
dark-haired, tense young woman sitting at the next picnic table.
She shot surreptitious glances at him. Yesterday he’d also caught
her staring. Who was she? One of his hunters? He was debating
whether to confront her when she looked at her watch, jumped up,
and sped into one of the buildings.

Chapter 11

Like a well-oiled machine, Bob did one
smoothly flowing push-up after another until his arms quivered with
exhaustion. Giving himself no time to rest, he rolled onto his back
and began to do sit-ups, completely relaxed except for the
abdominal muscles pulling him up then setting him back down. When
his muscles rebelled, he arose and went outside for a run, covering
mile after endless mile in an easy lope.

A shower, a shave, and a leisurely breakfast,
then he returned to ISI.

He had learned that admittance to some of the
buildings required a card key and retina scan, but most had minimal
security. He slipped into one of these buildings in the midst of a
stream of people and looked around. Bright colors and a profusion
of plants could not offset the depressing sight of so many humans
encaged in tiny cubicles, staring vacantly at flickering computer
screens while their fingers flitted spas-modically over the
keyboards. He hurried back outside to the fresh air and the
infinite blue sky.

As he moved about the campus, the
conversations he heard filtered through his mind like plankton
through the mouth of a whale.

Sue Ellen delivered her baby, finally. Neil
Jr. starred in the school play. They fired Kathy. Brewster got his
promotion. Joe quit. The computers are down again. Sara is on the
verge of a nervous collapse. Alice, that bitch, is sleeping her way
to the top. Well, at least she’s not sleeping her way to the
bottom, ha, ha. Robert Stark is starting to piss me off.

Bob froze, then stealthily stepped around a
bush. Sitting at a picnic table twenty feet away, were the very men
who hunted him.

He stood absolutely still, watching,
listening.

“Starting to piss you off?” hooted the man
with the deep voice. “Ever since he gave us the slip at the
airport, you’ve been acting like a grizzly who found a hornet’s
nest when he went poking about for a honeycomb.”

“The fuck you talking about, Sam?”

Sam laughed. “I forgot how much you hate
being compared to a bear . . . Teddy.”

Baritone glared at him.

Sam laughed again. “Lighten up, Ted.”

“Asshole.”

Except for an inch or two difference in their
height, Sam and Ted seemed remarkably similar. They were both about
thirty-five, well over six feet tall, broad across the shoulders,
lean-hipped, flat-bellied, hard-eyed. Brown hair tumbled down their
foreheads, giving them an utterly deceptive appearance of
vulnerability.

“I don’t get it,” Ted grumbled. “Evans says
Stark’s been under surveillance on and off for sixteen years. He
says Stark’s retarded—never understood even the simplest joke. He
also says Stark is a limp dick. All he does in a whorehouse is sit
and drink tea. The guy was a waiter, for cripes sake. So how does
this pathetic nothing, this wimp, manage to elude us—us!—for six
weeks?”

“I don’t know who Evans got his information
from,” Sam said, “but it doesn’t add up. Stark acts like a
professional. Not many people would walk away from everything they
own on a moment’s notice.”

“He didn’t own much and what he did own
looked like junk.” Ted shivered. “Those paintings sure gave me the
creeps.”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s junk. The less people
have, the more they need to hold on to it.”

Two men approached and sat across from Sam
and Ted. One was black and the other white, but they too were a
matched set. Both had the beefy, over-developed look of men who
spend too much time in the gym, and both had the arrogant bearing
of people who thought they were special. They would have been
handsome, each in his own way, but for the identical smirks marring
their faces.

The white man chortled. “I hear you two are
in trouble.”

“Yeah,” the other said. “Not looking in the
hem of the drapes for the papers. What amateurs.”

“Evans’s wonder boys aren’t so wonderful
after all.”

The two newcomers high-fived and laughed
uproariously.

“Assholes,” Ted muttered.

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Weren’t you the two
staking out the boardinghouse when our little fugitive snuck back
in?”

The laughter stopped abruptly.

The dark-skinned man pointed to his partner.
“Grimes here—”

Grimes interrupted. “Don’t blame it on me,
Clayton, you know it was the cops—”

Sam overrode them both. “I don’t care who did
what or why. The point is that Stark is making us all look
bad.”

The other three nodded in agreement.

“I hate that fucker,” Ted said. “When I get
my hands on him, he’s going to be one sorry son of a bitch.”

Grimes stared at Ted in surprise, then turned
to Sam. “What’s with him?”

Sam shrugged. “PMS.” When no one laughed, he
continued, “We’ve been looking for this guy for six weeks, and he’s
always a half step ahead of us. Ted has never had to deal with
failure before.”

“I’m gonna kill him first chance I get.” Ted
slammed his fist on the table. “No one, and I mean no one, gets the
better of me.”

“The thing is,” Sam said, “it’s like he’s
taunting us. He doesn’t bother to hide—a lot of people have seen
him, but we still don’t know what he looks like.”

Clayton smirked. “We do.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“We went around to all the stores in Bear
Valley where he used his traveler’s checks. We got a good
description from one girl.”

“What does he look like?” Ted demanded.

“He’s really, really short, and he’s got like
this gray hair and he’s like really, really old.” Clayton spoke in
a singsong voice as if mimicking someone.

Sam roared with laughter. “You’re kidding,
right?”

“Nope, direct quote,” Clayton said.

“Who was she? A six-foot-tall teenager
wearing high heels?”

Clayton looked surprised. “How did you
know?”

“Because the one thing we know for certain is
that he’s average,” Sam said. “Average height, average weight. And
he’s in his late thirties.”

Grimes poked his partner in the ribs. “Told
you.”

Clayton glared at him.

“We have a lot of pictures taken in Southeast
Asia,” Sam said, “but the guy in the photos looks like a Thai
peasant or a Chinese waiter. I’m not even sure it’s Stark. But I am
certain no one who looks like that got off the plane at Stapleton
when we were there.” Sam rubbed his forehead. “Supposedly our Stark
resembles the one you’re now tailing, but it’s hard to tell from
the pictures.”

“I thought you guys got a more recent
picture,” Grimes said.

Ted snorted. “So did we. That bitch.”

“The old woman who owns the boardinghouse
where Stark lives agreed to work with a sketch artist,” Sam said.
“She even swore the finished picture looked exactly like
Stark.”

“What’s the problem?” Grimes asked. “How come
we don’t have a copy of the picture?”

Sam laughed humorlessly. “I take it you
haven’t seen it.”

“No,” Grimes and Clayton said
simultaneously.

Sam turned to Ted. “Do you still have a
copy?”

“Yeah.” Ted dug a piece of paper out of his
pocket and handed it to Clayton.

Clayton unfolded it with great ceremony. He
stared down at the picture, then up at Sam. “Is this some kind of
joke?”

“‘Fraid not.”

“Let me see.” Grimes tried to snatch the
piece of paper out of Clayton’s hand.

Clayton held it out of reach. “Gimme a
second.”

He studied the picture, shaking his head,
then handed it to his partner.

“What the hell is this?” Grimes asked,
scowling. “Why’re you showing us a picture of Charles Manson?”

“That’s how the old woman described Stark,”
Sam said. “Wild, crazy eyes, masses of filthy hair, and all.” He
took the picture from Grimes and looked at it. “Makes you wonder
what he did to her. We asked, but she wouldn’t get specific. Just
went on and on about knives.”

“Knives?” Grimes questioned.

Sam nodded.

“Who is this guy?” Clayton demanded.

“Dead meat,” Ted said.

Sam refolded the picture and returned it to
Ted. “No one knows except Evans, and he’s not telling.”

“What I don’t get is if Evans wants this
Manson-type Stark,” Clayton said, “why are we staking out a
completely different Robert Stark?”

Sam shrugged. “Evans thinks our Stark will
try to contact your Stark. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t
know.”

“Are they cousins?” Grimes asked. “A lot of
times cousins have the same name, you know.”

“I said I don’t know,” Sam repeated
harshly.

***

After the hunters had dispersed, Bob returned
to himself, though he remained in the protective embrace of the
bushes for several minutes longer.

The words “sixteen years” kept going around
and around in his head, like the refrain of a song too terrible to
forget.

He tried to concentrate on who could have
been watching him the entire time he had lived in Bangkok, and why.
He even tried to focus on Ted’s overt and Sam’s covert hatred. But
all he could think about was that someone had been watching him on
and off for sixteen years.

Sixteen years.

Chapter 12

“I know you.” Kerry held the door open.
“Won’t you come in?”

The light danced in her eyes, but Bob
detected a slight distance in her manner. Or perhaps the distance
lay in him. Like an automaton, he’d retrieved his gym bag from the
locker at ISI and climbed aboard a bus. He hadn’t even known he was
coming to see her until he disembarked at the stop closest to her
friend’s house.