by Dean Koontz
Any authority to whom Jane dared turn with this suspicion would brand her with the word paranoid as surely as Hester Prynne, in Hawthorne’s novel, had been made to wear the scarlet letter.
Yet she could not help but suspect that the attorneys general in the nation’s two largest states were engaged in the suppression of evidence related to the surge in suicides among people who were unlikely candidates for self-destruction.
At whose direction were they so engaged? How much might they know about the reason for this recent plague?
If a private-sector biotech company and the government were involved in a project that sent suicide rates soaring, what might be their purpose?
Were the suicides an unexpected side effect…or perhaps an intended consequence of whatever they were doing?
The chill that stippled her skin with gooseflesh didn’t pass, but worked its way deeper into her.
She went to the bathroom, where the motel provided a mug, foil packets of instant coffee, and a cheap appliance to boil water. She stirred up a full mug with two packets. She paced the room, drinking the brew as hot as she could tolerate, but the chill was stubborn.
4
* * *
JANE HAD NOT YET found a brain dissection in the autopsy files. She was keen to discover a reference to some unnatural structure in the gray matter of a suicide.
When the coffee hardly warmed her, however, she decided to take a break from the medical-examiner reports and see what had been provided regarding the do-gooder, David James Michael. He sat on both the board of the Gernsback Institute, which produced the annual What If Conference, and the Seedling Fund, where he had served with a wealthy man, T. Quinn Eubanks, who was one of the suicides.
The report on David Michael appeared so complete that Jimmy Radburn would have deserved a prime position in the Hackers Hall of Fame if there had been one.
David Michael, forty-four, was the sole heir to a fortune made generations earlier in railroads, swelled by investments in oil, real estate, and everything else that provided a high return during the past century. Although he had inherited his wealth, he proved a first-rate steward of it, funding a venture-capital firm to back high-technology startups. His eye for new firms with big prospects was so sharp that eighty percent of the time he picked winners.
Three years earlier, he’d moved from Virginia hunt country to an estate in Palo Alto, to be near the many Silicon Valley companies in which he had an interest.
There were photographs of him. David might have come from starched and pinstriped stock, but he favored a free-spirit style. His blond hair appeared to have been shorn haphazardly and combed with nothing but his fingers, though Jane recognized the work of a five-hundred-dollar-per-cut hairdresser. He was known for attending important business meetings in sneakers and jeans, his shirttail untucked, but in several photos he wore different watches that were said to be from his collection of expensive timepieces that ranged in price from fifty thousand to eighty thousand dollars each.
In numerous publications, he had been cited for his generous philanthropy, his commitment to all kinds of public-spirited causes, from the San Francisco Symphony to wetland preservation, and he had made no secret of his progressive politics.
Jane knew his type. Everything he said and did for public consumption was carefully crafted. Everyone admired a young rebel billionaire who appeared distressed by his wealth and dispensed sums that seemed to risk impoverishing him. In fact, what he gave away amounted to one percent of his fortune. What parts of his public persona were genuine, if any, would be known only to him, his wife, and his image consultant—and possibly not to his wife.
Among the companies that thrived with his venture capital were Shenneck Technology and more recently, to a greater extent, Far Horizons. Shenneck and David Michael were partners in Far Horizons.
If she hadn’t found the locus of the conspiracy, she had found one nexus: Bertold Shenneck, David James Michael, and Far Horizons.
The problem would be getting close enough to either man to get him in a nutcracker grip and encourage dialogue. The billionaire would have layers of security, bodyguards of the highest caliber.
And though Shenneck had far less wealth than his primary investor, if they were in fact involved in this conspiracy through Far Horizons, he possessed information that would severely damage or destroy both men. Therefore, he would be insulated from everything but the most considered and stealthy approach.
At the end of Jimmy’s report, Jane discovered what might prove to be a back door to Shenneck. The last item consisted of only one sentence with inadequate details: Bertold Shenneck appears to have a deeply concealed interest in a Dark Web operation that might or might not be a weird brothel.
She knew what she needed to do next.
It would be dangerous.
As if that mattered. Everything was dangerous these days. Just driving to work in Philadelphia could be a death ticket.
5
* * *
SINCE EIGHT O’CLOCK, the motel maids speaking softly in Spanish and the clink-and-clatter of their equipment carts had penetrated the room, growing louder as the morning matured. It was almost ten, and Jane didn’t want to delay until eleven, when in spite of the DO NOT DISTURB sign, there might come a knock at the door and a polite inquiry about maid service. The less interaction she had with the staff, the less likely they were to remember her.
Besides, she had stayed there two nights, her maximum for any location. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object too long at rest tends to have her throat slit.
She loaded her bags into the Ford and dropped the room key at the office, where she asked the address of the nearest library.
At a nearby McDonald’s, she bought coffee and two breakfast sandwiches, threw away half the bread, and ate in the car. The food was better than it looked. The coffee was worse than it smelled. She fished a tiny pill from a bottle of acid-reduction medication.
At the library, she used a computer to search for the nearest stores selling art supplies, laboratory equipment, and janitorial supplies. None of that would bring her to the attention of the people who were looking for her.
By one o’clock, she’d acquired bottles of acetone, a container of bleaching powder, what minimal laboratory vessels she required, and a couple of items from a drugstore.
In Tarzana, she located an acceptable motel, where she chose to stay because she’d never before been in that town and would be a stranger to everyone.
She used a different forged ID from the one she had presented at the previous motel, and she paid cash in advance.
The king-size bed reflected in the mirrored rolling doors of the closet. She stowed the trash bag. Before putting the suitcases with it, she retrieved binoculars, a LockAid lock-release gun sold only to law-enforcement agencies but acquired illegally from the same people who had remade her Ford Escape, and finally a sound suppressor threaded to fit the barrel of her Heckler & Koch .45.
By five o’clock, working in the bathroom, wearing a surgical face mask and nitrile gloves, she derived a quantity of chloroform from the acetone by the reaction of chloride of lime, which was the bleaching powder. She filled a six-ounce spray bottle purchased at the beauty-supply store, set it aside, and cleaned up the mess.
When she stepped outside, the late-afternoon sun marinated the suburban sprawl in a sour light. The warm air smelled of vehicle exhaust that had been rinsed by catalytic converters into harmless compounds but nonetheless soiled the air with an unpleasant scent.
In a restaurant across the street from the motel, she enjoyed a dinner of filet mignon, more than once assuring herself that it was not her last meal in this world.
6
* * *
EARLIER IN THE DAY, shortly before four o’clock Eastern time, Section Chief Nathan Silverman had been in his office at the Academy in Quantico when he received a heads-up call from the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office, informing him that the SAC
would be sending him a report regarding an incident the previous day, in Santa Monica, involving either an imposter passing herself off as Special Agent Jane Hawk of the Critical Incident Response Group or Special Agent Hawk herself.
The incident was strange, the SAC said, but seemed to involve no crime other than the possible impersonation of a Bureau agent. As his field office was one of the busiest in the nation, he had little time to waste on something as seemingly small-potatoes as this. The five Behavioral Analysis Units had provided considerable assistance to the L.A. office in recent high-profile cases, however; and the SAC respected Silverman and his people. The report would be finished and transmitted by nine o’clock East Coast time.
At 7:30 that evening, Silverman sat down to dinner with his wife of thirty years, Rishona, in their house on the outskirts of Alexandria, about twenty-five miles from Quantico. They sat catercorner to each other at the dining room table.
The children were through college and off on their own. He and Rishona could have eaten in the kitchen with much less fuss, but she insisted on the more elegant atmosphere of the dining room.
When she cooked, which was more nights than not, she made an event of dinner, with good china and sterling silver and crystal, damask napkins held in rings from her collection, and candlelight.
He thought himself among the luckiest of men, that his wife should be both lovely and his best friend, with whom he could share anything and trust in her discretion.
Over a Caesar salad with romaine of exceptional crispness, followed by thick fillets of braised swordfish, he spoke of his day.
Following the terrorist strike in Philadelphia on Monday, Investigations and Operations Support as well as Behavioral Analysis Units 1 and 5—all in the Critical Incident Response Group—had been overwhelmed with requests for assistance, and today, Thursday, was the first evening he’d gotten home before eight o’clock. He had much to tell her, but inevitably, Jane and the call from the Los Angeles field office featured prominently in their conversation.
With his finest people, Nathan Silverman managed to have both a disciplined professional relationship and a social one that was not common in the Bureau. Rishona knew Jane well and thought of her and Nick as extended family. She had grieved for Nick, no less for Jane, and regularly asked after her.
“I didn’t chase her for the ID,” Nathan said. “I thought I knew her well enough to be sure she’d be back to work in two months, even six weeks.”
“She doesn’t have a heart of stone,” Rishona chided.
“No, but she’s got the heart of a lion, that one. Nothing sets her back for long. Two months ago, when she surprised me by filing for a leave extension, you may remember she called.”
“Yes, she was going to travel around the country with Travis. It might be good for the little guy. He so adored Nick.”
“Well, she gave me a new phone number where I could reach her, but she hoped I would, as she put it, give her space. I had both her house and cell numbers, so I assumed this was just a new smartphone. Same area code.”
He paused to savor the swordfish, but his wife, well aware of his subtle use of silences to add drama to his stories—it pleased him to make even the most mundane news entertaining for her—grew impatient after five seconds. “Don’t make the scene Shakespearean, Nate. What about the phone?”
“Well, I’ve given her the space she wanted. But when this bit came in from L.A., I almost rang her up. I don’t know why, I really don’t, but instead I asked one of our younger computer whizzes to backdoor an address for the phone, just as a personal favor not as a Bureau matter. After all, no crime is involved. Turns out the number isn’t a smartphone. It’s just a cheap burner.”
“Disposable?”
“Bought at Walmart in Alexandria and activated the day I last talked to her. None of the minutes on it have been used.”
Announced by neither lightning nor thunder, a sudden hard rain roared down the night and drummed the roof, so that both he and Rishona looked at the ceiling in surprise.
She said, “We’ll see now if that gutter repair works.”
“And when it does, I will have saved us four hundred dollars.”
“I sincerely hope so, dear. You can’t know how I suffer for you when you’re embarrassed by a do-it-yourself catastrophe.”
“Isn’t catastrophe a bit too strong a word?”
“I was thinking of the guest-bathroom toilet.”
After a silence, he said, “Even then, the word disaster is more accurate.”
“You’re right. I exaggerate. It was merely a disaster. Now, why would Jane buy a disposable phone for you to call?”
“I don’t know why, I really don’t, but on the way home, I took a side trip into Springfield to drive by her house. It’s not there.”
“What’s not there?”
“Springfield’s there, but not the house. It’s been torn down. Attached to the construction fence is an architect’s rendering of how the new place will look, and it’s labeled THE CHEN RESIDENCE. No work has begun yet, no construction crew on site. They’re no doubt still in the permitting stage. I’ll talk to someone tomorrow.”
Rishona was a portrait of skepticism. “Jane wouldn’t sell, move, not give you a current address. It’s a violation of rules.”
The Silverman house was stoutly built, with snug masoncraft and tight joinery, but somehow the sudden storm pressed a vague draft through the dining room. In the crystal cups, the smooth and steady candle flames elongated and fluttered like serpent tongues.
Nathan said, “It would also be a violation of the rules if she changed her name to Chen and didn’t tell us. And whatever’s about to come in from Los Angeles…it’s not going to be good, Rishona.”
“Now, Nate, Jane is the last person I know who might break bad. Other than you.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Nathan said as the hard rain fell even harder, as saving four hundred bucks with a do-it-yourself repair seemed less wise by the minute. “Although I’m probably wrong, I think she might be in some kind of trouble not of her making, so bad she can’t bring it even to me.”
7
* * *
SHERMAN OAKS had a higher percentage of citizens over the age of sixty-five than most of the communities in Los Angeles County. The average household size—two—was among the lowest in Southern California. It was in general a quiet town, especially in the streets of pricy homes in the hills.
The stately house was brick with cast-work window surrounds and pediments. A pair of proud stone lions flanked the front steps, as if this were a library or courthouse, although the resident had no interest in libraries and imagined himself too clever ever to be standing before a judge in a courthouse.
Low pathway lanterns flanked the front walk. A carriage lamp by the door cast a welcoming glow across the porch. Light warmed the downstairs windows, but the upstairs was dark.
Two years earlier, at the age of fifty-four and fifty-three respectively, Richard and Berniece Branwick, who still owned the residence, had taken early retirement and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. They had worked hard, but their extended time in the sun came courtesy of their only child, Robert, who was a great success in his chosen profession.
Jane parked across the street from the house and two doors uphill. She used the binoculars to pull the residence close, and for a while she studied the place.
No one would be stationed outside of the house. This wasn’t an area where armed security was common. If neighbors were to see a man lurking in the shadows, they would call the police. The LAPD served Sherman Oaks out of the Van Nuys Station on Sylmar Avenue; they wouldn’t be dismissive about such a report from this neighborhood.
Anyway, Robert Branwick didn’t think he needed security here, except for the standard home-alarm system to foil burglars.
If he suspected she knew this address and name, he wouldn’t be here. Not now. Not ever.
He might even be home alone, though probably not. Being alone usuall
y made his type restless. Solitude risked self-reflection.
Two doors uphill, a house stood with no faintest glow at any window. Evidently the residents were away or out for the evening.
After putting on the black-and-silver gloves, Jane crossed the street and went to the back of the dark house, alert for a dog.
Beyond the patio lay a deep backyard. Privacy walls separated the flanking properties, but no fence defined the end of the lawn, where a woodlet rose at the brink of a shallow ravine.
The inky trees silvered with moonlight were like a forest dreamed into existence by an artist with etching needles, a black-wax ground board, and an eye for the eerie.
The property downhill of the first had a wall all the way around, concrete blocks clothed in stucco. With a small flashlight, she found her way between the stucco and trees, past a plank gate, to the wall behind the Branwick house, where she switched it off.
Here no gate offered entrance, but the wall was only seven feet high, easily scaled. At the top, she sat on the cast-concrete cap for a minute, studying the night-veiled yard and the swimming pool where the flotsam of a broken moon floated on rippling black water.
She dropped to the lawn. Circled the pool.
Pale window light fanned onto the covered patio, and through those panes, Jane could see a kitchen and breakfast area at the west end of the house. No one in either space.
At the east end lay a family room. Beyond a pair of sliding glass doors, facing away from the patio, a couple sat in a large gray sectional, watching a car-chase scene on a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. The roar of supercharged engines and pounding music penetrated the windows.
Jane ventured to the kitchen door and tried it. Locked.
The movie boomed, but in the house’s open floor plan, the kitchen lay too close to the people in the family room. If the car chase ended and a moment of silence followed just as she pulled the trigger of the LockAid, the snap of its spring and the click of the lock’s pin tumblers might catch their attention.