by Greg Iles
“You should spend more time on your legs,” the pathologist added. “Weight lifters are obsessed with their upper bodies, but underdeveloped legs ruin the whole effect. Symmetry is the thing, Andrew. Balance.”
“I’ll remember that,” the lawyer said with a trace of bitterness. Rusk knew he had skinny legs, but they had been good enough in college. Besides, he had more to worry about every day than working out. And who the hell was Tarver to talk? The guy was big, sure, but what kind of tone did he have? Rusk suspected that underneath the unseasonable flannel shirt was a jellied wall of beer fat.
“Get dressed,” Dr. Tarver said. “You look like a turtle without its shell.”
Rusk pulled on his shorts and pants, then sat down to put on his shoes. “The last time we were here,” he said, “you told me you hated the woods.”
The doctor chuckled softly. “Sometimes I do.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know so little about me, Andrew. Even if I told you…my experience is wholly outside your frame of reference.”
Rusk tried to read this as arrogance, but it hadn’t been intended that way. Tarver seemed to be saying, You’re from a different tribe than I am—perhaps even a different species. And this was true. However Dr. Tarver felt about the woods, he was certainly no stranger to them. On that last trip—five years ago now—he had come to Chickamauga as the guest of an orthopedic surgeon from Jackson. For two days he had killed nothing, to the increasing amusement of the other members, who were killing record numbers of deer that year, albeit mostly does, and on the smallish side. But all anyone talked about that weekend was the Ghost, a wise and scarred old twelve-point buck who’d managed to evade the best hunters in the camp for almost ten years. After two seasons of invisibility, the Ghost had been sighted the previous week, and everyone was gunning for him, man and boy alike. Each night, Tarver had listened in silence as the members told Ghost stories by firelight—some true, others apocryphal—and each morning he’d vanished into the woods before dawn.
On the third day—a Sunday, Rusk recalled—Eldon Tarver had marched back into camp carrying the 220-pound carcass of the Ghost across his shoulders. He upset quite a few club members by killing their near-mythical beast, but what could they say? Tarver hadn’t shot the Ghost from a tree stand, the way most of them hunted now, waiting in relative comfort for a deer to walk right under them—a tactic that regularly allowed eight-year-olds to bag a deer their first time out. Dr. Tarver had gone out and stalked the Ghost in the old way: the Indian way. He stalked the big buck for three days across the length and breadth of the camp, a damned tough slog through thick underbrush and rainy-autumn mud. Tarver had never revealed more than that (he seemed to cling to the ancient superstition that telling a thing lessened its power), but eventually the members had pieced together a legend. Those hunting from tree stands reported hearing odd sounds just after dawn on the day of the kill—mating calls, fighting grunts—sounds that could only have been mimicked by a master hunter. Then had come a single rifle blast, a perfect spine shot that would have dropped the Ghost right where he stood. It was as close to a painless death as the big buck could ever have hoped for—no running miles through the brush with half his heart blown out or his stomach filling up with blood—just instant paralysis and death.
Late that afternoon, Rusk had found himself gutting his own trophy buck outside. As though sent by fate, Eldon Tarver had walked up and offered to show him some time-saving tricks for dressing a deer. After Rusk gave over his skinning knife, he witnessed a demonstration of manual dexterity and anatomical knowledge that left him in wordless awe. He’d barely followed Tarver’s words, so fascinated was he by the man’s deft knife-work. And that part of his brain not wholly occupied with the bloody spectacle before his eyes was turning over an idea that had been born some years ago in the dark recesses of his soul, an idea born from need but unrealized due to moral scruple and a lack of opportunity. But the more years he practiced law, the more those scruples had eroded. And morality, Rusk had known even then, was not a component of Eldon Tarver’s personality.
“Two problems,” Tarver said, taking a slice of tenderloin from the skillet and dropping it into his mouth. “That’s what you said.”
“Yes. And they might be related.”
Tarver chewed slowly, like a man accustomed to making his supplies last as long as possible. “Does anyone know who I am, Andrew?”
“No.”
“Does anyone know that you and I are connected in any way?”
“No.”
“Does anyone know what you are doing?”
“No.”
“Does anyone suspect it?”
Rusk licked his lips and tried to appear calm. “I can’t rule that out. Not with a hundred percent certainty.”
“Who?”
“An FBI agent.”
Tarver stuck out his bottom lip. “Who is he?”
“It’s a girl. Grace Fennell’s sister. Her name is Alexandra Morse.”
A strange smile touched Tarver’s lips. “Ahh. Well, we knew she was a risk. Why is this girl suspicious of you?”
“Bill Fennell thinks his wife may have said something to Morse just before she died. Morse was very upset by her sister’s death, remember? She kidnapped Fennell’s son.”
“But she returned him before the funeral, yes?”
“Right. They’d had a lot of trauma in that family even before we stepped in. The father was shot during a robbery. The mother is dying now, ovarian cancer. Morse was almost terminated from the Bureau a couple of months after her father’s death, for getting a fellow agent killed.”
“Has she talked to you directly?”
“No.”
Dr. Tarver’s eyes bored into Rusk’s with relentless intensity. “The question, Andrew, is how does she even know you exist?”
“I don’t know that.”
“Would Fennell have told her anything about you?”
“He could have…but would he? I don’t think so. He’s not stupid.”
“Is he fucking her?”
“I don’t think so,” Rusk replied, asking himself this question for the first time, which was pretty sloppy in a divorce lawyer, he realized. “I mean, not that I know of.”
This answer obviously did not satisfy Tarver.
“She’d never screw Bill Fennell,” Rusk said more confidently. “She’s too goody-goody for him. Too hot, too.”
“She has a vagina, doesn’t she?”
“Point taken.”
“Why isn’t she his type?”
“You remember the file on the Fennells, don’t you? He’s a snake, basically.”
“You malign that creature by your comparison,” Tarver said with strange severity.
Nonplussed, Rusk blinked a few times, then continued. “I checked Morse out before the operation, remember? She’s a by-the-book agent, always plays by the rules. Or did, anyway. That’s why she joined the FBI and not the CIA.”
“But you know nothing about her deeper psychology.”
“I guess not, when you put it that way.”
“It could be the business connection,” Tarver said thoughtfully. “The real estate deal between you and Fennell.”
“Yes.”
“You should have stuck to diamonds.”
“This deal is better than diamonds, Eldon. Way better.”
“Not if it kills you.”
Rusk instantly noted two highly disturbing things: first, Dr. Tarver’s use of the singular pronoun; second, he had not said anything about prison—he had gone straight to death. Do not pass go, do not collect two million dollars.
Tarver was watching Rusk with fresh interest. “What has Agent Morse done to upset you so? You’re obviously worried.”
“I think I might be being followed.” The understatement of the year. No mention of the Crown Vic or the chase along the Pearl River…nothing to trigger Eldon Tarver’s overdeveloped instinct for self-preservation—
Ta
rver had gone still. “You might be? Or you are?”
“It’s possible. I’m not sure.”
“Who do you think is following you? The FBI?”
“Honestly, I don’t think so.”
“Leave out the adverbs, Andrew. Give me facts.”
Rusk resisted the urge to cuss the pathologist. “If Alex Morse is digging into her sister’s death, she has to be doing it on her own time. Morse is already in deep shit with her superiors. Why would the FBI investigate Grace Fennell’s death? It’s a state crime.”
“You’re the lawyer. Look into it.”
“I will.”
“What else has Morse done?”
Here goes…“She may have broken into my office.”
Tarver stared without blinking. “Are you certain of anything, Andrew? Or are you simply afraid to tell me the truth?”
“I’m not afraid,” he said, which was the height of absurdity. “Even if she did break in, there’s nothing in my office to find. Nothing incriminating, I mean.”
“There’s always something. I know your type, compulsive about writing things down. Come on…”
“If she got into my computer, she might be able to trace some business relationships. Nothing illegal, though. Everything’s aboveboard.”
“But the connections,” Tarver said softly. “Connections to other corpses. Spouses of corpses.”
“Only the earliest jobs,” Rusk said. “The latest three years ago.”
“If you discount Grace Fennell,” Tarver reminded him.
“Right.”
Tarver dropped several more slices of raw meat into the skillet. Rusk considered using this silence to tell Tarver about EX NIHILO, but somehow the time wasn’t quite right.
“I’ve still only heard about one threat,” murmured Dr. Tarver.
“The second is more direct, but also more manageable.”
“Continue.”
“It’s one of our former clients. William Braid.”
“The barge-company owner in Vicksburg?”
“That’s the guy.”
“What about him?”
“He’s having a nervous breakdown. I kid you not, Eldon. It’s from the guilt, from watching his wife die. He’s hallucinating, seeing his dead wife in crowds, all kinds of crazy shit. It took her so long to die, you know? He just couldn’t stand it. I’m afraid of what he might do. Who he might talk to. His pastor? A shrink? The police, even.”
“Braid called you?”
“He stopped me at the goddamn golf course! He drove by my fucking house yesterday! Lisa just about freaked out.”
Dr. Tarver’s face drew taut. “Was he seen?”
“Only by Lisa, and I played that off.”
“What did Braid tell you at the golf course?”
“He’s thinking of killing himself.”
“What’s he waiting for?”
Rusk forced a laugh, but he was too worried about his own skin to indulge in levity.
“Why tell you that he’s suicidal?” Dr. Tarver reasoned aloud. “Why not just go ahead and do it?”
“Exactly. I don’t think he’s the suicidal type. Too much self-regard. I think at the end of the day, he’ll lay the blame on us and confess to the police.”
Tarver stared at Rusk awhile, then shrugged philosophically. “This was bound to happen sooner or later. Inevitable, really.”
“What should we do?”
“Braid has children?”
“Three.”
“You think he forgot your warning? He forgot what happened to his wife?”
“I don’t think he cares anymore, Eldon. He’s that far gone.”
“These people,” Tarver said with almost tangible disgust. “So weak. They’re like children themselves, really. No wonder women despise men nowadays.”
Rusk said nothing.
“Where was Mr. Braid’s precious conscience while he was paying us to murder the old frump?”
The lawyer shrugged. “He’s a Southern Baptist.”
Tarver looked puzzled for a moment. Then he laughed. “You mean Saturday night is a lot different from Sunday.”
“Worlds apart, my man.”
Tarver scooped the rest of the meat from the crackling skillet and laid it on one of the stones around the fire. “I used to know people like that.”
“What do you think we should do?”
The doctor smiled. “We? Is there something you can do to get us out of this?”
Rusk almost blushed. “Well…I meant—”
“You meant, what am I going to do to save your ass.”
This is going to cost me, Rusk suddenly realized. Big-time.
Dr. Tarver stood erect and stretched his long frame. Rusk could hear tendons popping. Tarver looked like that gray-bearded guy who was always shilling for starving children on late-night TV. Except for the birthmark. That fucking thing was hideous. Get plastic surgery, for Christ’s sake, he thought. It’s the twenty-first century, and you are a fucking doctor. Of course, he knew quite a few doctors with bad teeth, come to think of it.
“I’ll take care of Mr. Braid,” Tarver said in an offhand voice.
Rusk nodded cautiously. He wanted to know when the doctor meant to act, but he didn’t want to anger him by asking.
“Will Braid be home tonight?” Tarver asked.
“Yes. I told him I might drive over to talk to him.”
“Moron. What if he told his mistress that?”
“She left him ten days ago. Nobody talks to him now. His kids have been staying with their grandparents for the last two weeks.”
“All right.”
Rusk was breathing easier. No mention of money so far.
“Two hundred fifty thousand,” Tarver said suddenly, as though reading his mind.
Rusk crumpled inside. “That seems like a lot,” he ventured. “I mean, he’s a threat to both of us, right?”
All humanity went out of Dr. Tarver’s face. “Does Braid know my name?”
“No.”
“Does he know my face?”
“Of course not.”
“Then he’s no threat to me. You are the only conceivable threat to me, Andrew. And I advise you not to make me dwell on that.”
“How do you want the money?”
“The safe way. We’ll make the transfer here, sometime next week.”
Rusk nodded. A quarter of a million dollars…just like that. All to shut the mouth of one guilt-ridden client. He had to start screening better. But how? It was tough to predict who had the intestinal fortitude to watch someone they’d once loved reduced to a hollowed-out shell before they checked out. Shooting someone was a lot quicker, and loads easier to deal with. One trigger pull, and the source of your temporary madness was lying in the morgue. Three days later she was prettied up for her final appearance in the casket, and then poof—gone forever. That was fine in the old days, of course, the days of Perry fucking Mason. But this was the modern age. You couldn’t shoot anyone you knew and get away with it. Nor could you strangle them, poison them, or push them off a hotel balcony. Just about any way you could kill somebody was traceable and provable in a court of law; and spouses and family members were automatically prime suspects in every murder. It was axiomatic: the first thing a homicide detective learned.
No, if you wanted to kill your spouse and get away with it, you had to do something truly ingenious: something that wouldn’t even be perceived as murder. And that was the service that Andrew Rusk had found a way to provide. Like any quality product, it did not come cheap. Nor did it come quickly. And perhaps most important of all—as William Braid was proving—it was not for those with weak constitutions. Demand was high, of course, but few people were truly suitable clients. It took a deep-rooted hatred to watch your spouse die in agony, knowing that you had brought about that pain. But on the other hand, Rusk reflected, some people bore up remarkably well under the strain. Some people, in fact, seemed almost ideally suited for the role. They stretched their dramatic wi
ngs, donning a suit of martyrdom that they enjoyed all the more for its being unfamiliar. Rusk tried not to judge anybody. That was not his function. His job was to facilitate an outcome that a great number of people desired, but only an elite few could afford.
“If the money bothers you,” Dr. Tarver said, “think about being gang-raped in Parchman prison for twenty-five years. Or think about sticking your hand inside that bag.” Tarver gestured at the blue Nike bag at his feet. “Because I could make a strong argument for that. There’s no risk to me, and it absolutely guarantees my safety.”
“It would also deprive you of your future income,” Rusk said bravely.
Tarver smiled. “I’m already rich, Andrew.”
Rusk said nothing, but he was on surer ground here. Dr. Tarver had earned millions from their association, but the pathologist had already spent much of his money. His private research work ate up capital at a staggering rate. Rusk wasn’t sure what he was working on, but whatever it was, Rusk couldn’t see the point—unless it had nothing to do with money. He knew that Tarver had once been fired by a pharmaceutical company for some sexual impropriety, and this had deprived him of the fruits of whatever research he had done for them. Maybe Tarver’s goal was to prove to those people that they’d made the worst mistake of their lives. All this went though Rusk’s mind in a matter of seconds, and only at a shallowest level of thought, for the core of his mind was focused on the question What’s in that Nike bag? He had been watching the bag for twenty seconds now, and he was almost positive that it was moving.
“Do you want to see?” Tarver asked.
Rusk shook his head. With Eldon Tarver, there was no telling what was in the bag. A poisonous snake? A fucking Gila monster? God only knew. “We need to talk about something else.”
“What’s that, Andrew?”
“My safety.”
A new watchfulness came into Tarver’s eyes. “Yes?”
“I knew today would upset you. Especially the stuff about Morse.”
“And?”
“Because of that, I felt I had to take steps to protect myself.”
The doctor’s eyelids dropped like those of some South American lizard sunning itself on a stucco wall. “What did you do, Andrew?”