Then he took from the freezer the cyanide-carrying compounds he had ordered through a St. Louis pharmaceutical firm. He had ordered them through a dummy address, using the Bruce Prior identity. Extracting a stable dilute solution of cyanide in water was tedious, requiring care. The Chemical Handbook, The Merck Manual, and a college text told him just how to do it. The work calmed him, set him square with the world. Once he had it done, he felt better. The Lord’s peace descended upon him.
But a sudden impulse drew him back to Karen. The hot moments between them. Fragments of sentences. Shards of memory.
Lomax. Vitality Corporation. The itch in his mind would not go away.
No listing for Lomax, even in the unlisted directory he could access through Pacific Telesis.
There were many ways to trace a man, but most left a trail. No one must remember George, or be able to trace his telephone line equipment number. Money would insulate Lomax. The rich and famous had their Maginot lines; George remembered trying to call Billy Graham once.
Boutique International gave him a Ms. Neal in accounting. He used a well-rehearsed accent. “This is Walter Davidson of Shea and Davidson, Ms. Neal. I’m having to clean up after a regrettable loss which occurred in the accounting of one of our clients, Mr. Alberto Lomax.”
“I see. Shea and Davidson?”
She was probably looking in a directory. She would find that Shea and Davidson did indeed handle most of Lomax’s financial management, and they had offices in Orange. George had gotten all that from the letterhead on a note to Karen. If Ms. Neal was shrewd, she would hang up and call back, using the number from the yellow pages.
But she was merely cautious. “I see. We usually work with a Ms.—”
“Karen Bocelin, yes. She passed away, and I—”
“Oh yes, I read about that. Terrible, to be just thrown away like, like…”
George wondered why it made any difference to this woman where a body was found. He said brusquely, “It has created difficulties for Mr. Lomax, in that his files are in disarray. I am calling to find his present credit balance with your firm.”
“I suppose you want the exact amount. It is nine hundred fifty-six dollars, thirty-three cents.”
“Thank you. Could I have your billing address on that?”
“We send bills to the trust department, Wells Fargo, Santa Ana office.”
He thanked her and within a minute was speaking to a frosty-voiced young man, Mr. Hamblin, who said “trust department” as though it were the Vatican. George had worked with such people before, the precise, cool, and withdrawn personalities who could be entrusted with vast assets.
“Mr. Hamblin, I am Mr. Fitzhugh of the Saddlery. I am forced by extraordinary difficulties to trace back on a billing to Mr. Alberto Lomax’s account. We show a balance of nine hundred fifty-six thirty-three. Could you verify that please?”
“Hold, please.”
George could see in his mind’s eye the neat, circumspect man calling up confidential files on a video terminal. Personal services through a bank’s trust department ensured privacy and care. The bank totaled it all at year’s end, took a percentage charge, and forwarded the entire ledger to Mr. Lomax’s tax people. Among other conveniences, it was a smooth way to make personal expenses look like investment costs.
“I check that, Mr. Fitzhugh. We settle accounts the final working day of each month, so—”
“Oh, I am certainly not calling to ask payment of Mr. Lomax’s account. No no.” He hoped he had the right tone of prissy pretension, subservient yet proud. “He is one of our most valued customers. No, I’m afraid I have to confess that the problem lies with us. A clerk who is no longer with us, if you get what I mean, took a special tailoring order from Mr. Lomax. But somehow this person did not note down which address to send the garment. Now it has come in, and I know Mr. Lomax wanted it right away. I could simply send it to his business address, but I know he wanted it for a special function, and I was just wondering, perhaps you would know which address would be speedier. If necessary, we will hand deliver.”
Mr. Hamblin paused a few seconds. George could imagine the war between the desire to serve and the instinctive caution in Mr. Hamblin. Service won. “Our most recent communication shows that Mr. Lomax is currently at the Tustin estate, I believe.”
“Oh, this dreadful computer. We’ve got this new kind, they say it’s really the best, but I can never seem to call up what I want. I think we have that number, let me see…”
“It’s 1421 Meadowlark Drive.”
“Oh yes, we often send things there. Wonderful.”
“Will that be another billing to this account? I can just add it in now.”
“Oh no, that is very kind, but please don’t bother. The paperwork will be along.” They were buddies of the budget now, the unsung elves who made the world work. Might as well use it a little more. “But he will be there long enough to receive a delivery?”
“I think so, Mr. Fitzhugh. By the way, Mr. Lomax does not normally use it, but he is actually Dr. Lomax.”
“Oh. Well, many thanks.”
He had used the formal, exact voice he had practiced for years. It took a few minutes to come out of that cast of mind.
He burned the papers from Karen’s, a yellow pyre in his bathtub. Said a prayer over them. Breathed in the hellfire fumes, which liberated him from that mistake. Set him free.
Detective Stern might find out where he really lived, after all. Stern was smart and would come here with a technical team. Detweiler would swagger through and see nothing. They would scour the apartment, George’s car, even his clothes. He was a logical suspect, especially if they penetrated his Goff persona. But they would find nothing here.
He got back into the telephone net and used some log-in account information. He had gotten the Orange County property record codes from that real estate agent, Miller. They had both made some fast, big bucks from George’s scams. Miller had been pathetically grateful. He had given the password for the county’s blueprint files to George, in the Goff persona, for free.
He slipped in easily. With the Meadowlark Drive address he got everything the county had. His laser printer spat out the plans of the Lomax estate. Grounds, landscaping, rooms, basement, sewer lines, the works. It looked like a fortress.
Still, he felt the constriction of time’s sliding moments.
Lomax. Blanks. Why would they not go away?
The digital clock on his computer screen winked at him, seconds spooling by.
He had to keep track of the chiller people, look for their hidden weaknesses. And now this Lomax thing, pulling at him. So much.
Time’s steady tightening. He had to act.
16
KATHRYN
One of the signs of how Alex was working his way into her life was his habit of noticing personalized license plates. She had picked it up. On the way to the memorial service for Susan she saw a Cadillac sporting UP YRS, an XDORMAT that promised an interesting story, NICEGOY, X RATED, ACTU LEE, RM 4U OT. At first she thought A24KLDY might be a two-fork lady, then decided was another brag—a twenty-four-carat lady. That morning she had seen BANKRPT on a new Mercedes, SX CEE driven by a woman who looked like a typical suburban housewife, and HONK4ME, which luckily nobody did.
She wondered if the jerko in front of her now was going to the same place. He had a personalized plate that said god is and drove as though he were paying more attention to his rearview mirror than the road in front. There was a tight look to his movements, and though she could not get a good look at his face, she recognized something about him. At least she could be sure he wasn’t one of her old boyfriends, she thought. They were burned into her memory. Maybe he’s a cop, she thought, alarmed. Doing some savvy forward tail? She wasn’t out of the woods yet with the sheriff’s office, she knew. Well, let him stick to me. I’ll bore him to death. The man turned off when she reached Laguna Beach, though, and she lost track of him.
She met Alex outside the church. He
had been out getting some exercise, he said, with the phone off the hook. “I’m getting an unlisted number,” he said grimly.
“Did Silky Thighs get through?”
He brightened. “Yeah, just as I was going out the door. I tried to call you back.”
“I had some news.” She smiled demurely and told him that she had signed up with I2. The quick waves that flashed across his face—surprise, delight, wonder, and then warm affection—made up for Ray Constantine’s tongue-tied performance. He gave her a deep, moist kiss, serious enough to provoke polite coughs from others outside the church. Kathryn patted her hair, pleased, and they went in.
She held his hand throughout the service. The Episcopal verities had a classic, King James Bible roll to them, and she let the words wash over her without questioning. She had only been to one other funeral service since her mother’s, and that had been for Aunt Henny, the bearer of the all-swallowing cape that had given her nightmares for years. Aunt Henny’s service had verged on nightmare itself. She had been a Baptist, and the funeral featured wails and sobs from the audience, loud enough to make her suspect they were encouraged. Her relatives had carried on about the wondrous things done to Aunt Henny, including a final wash and set, extensive “cosmetizing,” even a new pair of shiny black shoes that laced up the back.
They got through it all fairly well. There were many cryonicists, UCI faculty, and several of Susan’s family from the east coast. Three photographers stood at the back and took pictures until a vestryman shooed them out.
There had been no time for sorrow when Susan died. The suspension team had repressed it. Now she saw on the faces of Ray Constantine and Bob Skinner and the others their delayed reactions. And felt it herself. She caught her own tears in her handkerchief and watched Alex brushing away his, mouth unsteady and eyes fixed on infinity.
At the reception afterward, Kathryn and Alex passed through the receiving line and Kathryn was surprised to learn that Susan had been a regular churchgoer here. “Why, yes,” the solemn-faced minister said, “she was a devoted parishioner. She worked with the homeless and was here every Saturday, helping make lunch for them. Her specialty was the soup—wonderful soups. Especially the split pea.”
As she shared some pound cake and coffee with Alex, she said, “Funny, huh? I never knew she believed in religion.”
Alex was an unbeliever and looked edgy here. “Neither did I.”
“I’m going to talk to that minister.”
Before Alex could catch her arm, she marched over to the big man in his tasteful robes and asked, “Did you ever talk to Susan about… her interests?”
The minister gave her a sad-eyed smile. “Cryonics, you mean?”
When Kathryn nodded, acutely conscious of Susan’s family members a short distance away, he said, “Of course. She wanted to be very sure that she was not violating the charge of Scripture.”
“And she convinced you that she wasn’t?”
He chuckled. “I convinced her. She came to me with misgivings. Especially after Roger, her husband, died.”
“Susan? Misgivings?”
His eyes crinkled with amusement. “Surprised? She was troubled by the usual misunderstandings of Scripture. It is difficult to avoid them.”
“Well, sir, after all the biblical quotations this fellow Montana has been throwing at us—”
“Try Matthew ten-eight on him. Christ commanded his disciples to ‘Heal the sick, raise the lepers, raise the dead’ in no uncertain terms.”
Kathryn blinked. “Susan never mentioned any of this.”
“She saw no need to, I’m sure. She knew that God is the Physician of Physicians.”
“You supported her?”
“I support all the activities of my flock that are Christian in spirit.” Something devilish made her say, “You don’t mind, then, that her body is… missing?”
“Her body is unimportant. If you people extend the human lifetime a century, even a thousand years, I do not doubt that even such a span is but a moment in the totality of God’s plan.”
In wonder Kathryn mused, “She never said a word.”
“The Bible promises resurrection, whether in the body, or in the grave, or in a frozen casket.”
“Then you actually support cryonics?”
“I did not say that.”
“Well, what do you think?”
He gave her a shrewd look, eyes pouched with weighty experience. “I think the idea will never work. It is a complete waste of time.”
“You, uh, trust in the—hereafter?”
His eyes flicked almost shyly downward. “Terribly old-fashioned of me, but yes—though I don’t venture to define precisely what that is.”
“And Susan?”
“With God’s grace, she somehow managed to trust in both.”
“There may not be a contradiction.”
“True. I always wonder about the fear of death, the lack of symmetry.”
Kathryn frowned. “Symmetry?”
“We fear a day when we will be no more. A future time. There was a vast expanse of time like that already—before we were born. Yet we feel no emotions at all about that.”
Kathryn blinked and had no idea of what to say.
17
GEORGE
The ample estate of Alberto Lomax crowned a rugged hill. Dry gullies gave the hillside the look of a weary, lined face. Chaparral thronged the lower reaches.
George puffed as he worked his way through the raw land cut by erosion. He wore goggles that amplified night vision, bought that day from a surplus store. Barely used, the clerk had said, left over from the Iraq war.
The enhanced night was eerie, a shimmering land of pale greens and blue-tinged shadows. The cooling soil bristled with detail. Working his way here on foot, he had watched a neighborhood dog marking its turf, leaving a faint lime artist’s signature with each lift of its leg.
Ahead he could see clearly the glowing blank wall that ringed Lomax’s estate. Massive, ten feet tall and rimmed with broken glass. He had studied it through binoculars, planned, and bought the equipment he needed this afternoon. Time was running against him now, with Stern and Detweiler looming in the background, and his own skittering urgency driving him on.
The chiller people had all flocked to their memorial service for the Hagerty woman. He had watched them walk right straight into a church with the bald-faced gall of heretics. They would probably be consoling each other tonight. Maybe they held their own chiller rites or something foul like that. Anyway, tonight they’d give him no lead on what they had done with the Hagerty body.
So that left the Lomax problem. Pulling at him.
Ten minutes before, he had seen a heavy delivery truck admitted through the wrought-iron gates to the Lomax estate. That might provide a diversion, a loosening of security. Time to move.
He angled up the hillside, watching for electronic trip wires. They were unlikely this far out, but as sin spreads, bringing the inevitable worsening of crime, the rich grow ever more cautious. He chose a spot by the wall that was shaded by the tall eucalyptus and oak. As he stood next to the wall, it looked immense.
He unwound his climbing rope and checked the grappler hooks. He had done this once on a church outing, learning to secure lines and wear a harness, rappelling down sheer cliffs in the desert. This would be easier, maybe, but he had to avoid noise.
The night goggles trapped his sweat, fogging the night. They seemed to make the air itself glow with a smoldering radiance, as though visited by angelic hosts. He had to stop and mop his face, let the mist leave the lenses. Carefully he listened, standing in the moonless gloom. A rustle of a field mouse, maybe, over to the right. Distant hum of traffic. Nothing else nearby.
The wall was concrete faced in stucco. A thick lip jutted out at the top, making it hard for anyone climbing up.
He uncoiled the loops and swung the rope. One heave sent the hooks flying over the wall. He tugged. Hooks scraped. He felt them catch, then come free. The
rope flopped back down.
A second toss. Again the rope came thumping back to earth. This time he heard a tinkle, a glassy clink.
His third throw caught. He hauled back on the rope and heard the tink of breaking glass again.
So the wall was rounded off on the inside and thick with glass. Very professional. Dr. Lomax looked after himself.
He worked along the wall until he was near the big shadowy oak that dominated this area. The best tree to throw into, sure, but whoever designed the security setup would know that, too. He would have to be careful of the top of the wall. There might be razor wire, set low into the concrete and impossible to see from a distance. He had run into some long ago, during one of his teenage night forays, cut his hand on it bad.
He swung the rope around his head, getting speed, and threw the grappler far up into the air. It came down through the oak foliage, making small thunks, then stopped. George put all his weight on the line. It gave about a foot, then held.
He looked around, edgy, sure that someone must see him in the bright emerald noonday glare given by his goggles. Distant houses smoldered in their lime-green heat, but they were hundreds of yards away, on other hillsides.
No point in delaying. He put his full weight on the line. It held. He put a tennis shoe against the wall, pulled himself up. The line bit into his hands as he walked up the wall. Halfway up, he thought about the line sawing across the embedded broken glass above. That made him hurry. Getting over the top lip was tricky, but his long legs helped. Cautiously he stepped onto the broad flat top, keeping the line tight, feeling his way with his shoes.
Razor wire. He stepped between the shiny gleaming lines. There was room among the sharp glass teeth to stand. Fine. God is with me. The dry night held him in loving, divine hands.
Holding the line for balance, he tried to look through the oak tree. He could see only a dim glow of windows in the house itself. At least that meant they couldn’t see him, either.
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