Mortal Fear

by Greg Iles

  “That’s what I wanted to know, Doctor. I appreciate it.”

  “I hope he’s dead, Cole. I couldn’t have said that a week ago. But I mean it now.”

  “I hope so too. Good-bye.”

  As I set down the phone, the effect of Lenz’s words flows through me like electric current. Though it will make me even later, I find the Jackson yellow pages and open them to the Realtors’ section. Picking the biggest ad for Ridgeland, I dial the number. It’s nearly sevenforty, but I doubt the place is completely empty. After about twenty rings, a curt female voice answers. When I tell her I’m looking for a house to rent, not buy, the coolness becomes frigidity. Then I say the magic words.

  “Money is not a consideration.”

  She adopts a guardedly warmer tone. “A lot of people say that until they hear the prices out there. There’s really nothing to rent.”

  “There’s always something for the right price.”

  “Well . . . there is one place for sale; the owners got tired of waiting and moved to Idaho. But they wouldn’t rent for less than . . . four thousand. A month. And you couldn’t have a lease.”

  “You’ll have a check for twelve grand in your hand tomorrow. But you don’t tramp any buyers through there for the next three months. Deal?”

  I can almost hear her cursing herself for not asking more. After she takes my name, I race out to the Explorer with my keys in one hand and my pistol in the other.

  Drewe is waiting outside her parents’ house with her bag. She doesn’t seem angry that I’m late. As I get out to open her door, someone opens the great front door of the Anderson house. It’s Patrick. He’s standing inside with Holly in his arms.

  “Uncle Harp!”

  The three-year-old begins squirming, leaving Patrick no choice but to let her down. She flies off the steps like a brunette cannonball and races to me. My eyes still on Patrick, I kneel and stop her at arm’s length, trying to keep my smile natural. While she squeezes closer, I glance to my left, at Drewe, but she looks away quickly and walks over to Patrick.

  I lift Holly into my arms and hug her tight. She digs her face into my neck and folds her arms between us, as if to go to sleep on my shoulder.

  “How you doin’, punkin?” I ask softly.

  She shakes her head.

  “What is it?”

  “I miss Mommy.”

  I close my eyes against the sting of tears, but it’s no use. Holly leans back, round-eyed and concerned. She touches the drops on my cheek. “You miss her too?”

  “I miss her too, punkin.”

  Her lower lip puffs out in a mixture of sadness and strength that I saw on Erin’s face many times.

  “I’m okay, punkin. Thanks to you.”

  “PawPaw and Daddy say Mommy’s in heaven,” she whispers. “Watching over us. Is that right? I can’t see her up there.”

  “You listen to your Daddy,” I whisper back, wishing I had Patrick’s blind faith in God and all the rest.

  “We’ve got to go, sweetie,” Drewe says, suddenly beside us.

  She pulls Holly away, walks to the steps, and deposits her in Patrick’s arms. The symbolic nature of this act is inescapable. Patrick gives me a blank wave, then turns and goes back into the house. Holly watches me over his shoulder as they go.

  Taking a deep breath, I climb back into the Explorer. Drewe is already inside, facing sternly forward. The first fifteen minutes of the drive pass in awkward silence. The stripped cotton fields look barren as battlefields, and the hope I felt so recently wavers in the face of them.

  “I got us a house,” I say finally, almost in defense.

  “What?”

  “I got us a house. In Ridgeland. We can move in this week. If it’s not ready by tomorrow, we can get a hotel.”

  Her glance is brief, but I see gratitude in it.

  “Drewe—”

  “It’s okay to talk about it,” she says too loudly. “The worst thing we could do is keep it hidden, like a piece of broken crystal. The first time we had to touch it, we’d both get cut.”

  “Does Patrick know anything yet?”

  She faces forward again, as though watching for our driveway, which we could both find blindfolded if necessary. “No.”

  “Erin wanted to tell him the truth, Drewe. That’s what she told me the day she died. She was planning to tell him that night. And she wanted me to tell you.”

  She brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Don’t you think she was going to tell because she felt she had no option? That if she didn’t, Patrick would leave her?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Erin seemed different that day. Like she’d grown into a different person. It made me ashamed of myself, really. She was totally committed to her decision.”

  “Don’t tell me this, Harper.”

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to know the whole truth.”

  She turns to me, her green eyes burning. “The truth? I’ll tell you what the truth is. Patrick is a good man. A good father. Even during the craziness of the past few weeks, he hasn’t let Holly see anything. With Erin gone, his obsession is going to fade. You should see him. He’s latched onto that child like a life raft. I think he realizes how stupid he was to have wasted time badgering Erin about the past. Because now she’s gone. I don’t think he’ll waste any more.”

  “So you’re saying—”

  “I’m saying Patrick will never know about you and Erin. Neither will Holly. It will be harder on you than anybody, watching her grow up without knowing what you really are to her. But it has to be that way. You understand?”

  I nod silently.

  “For a while they’ll be close to us, to my parents. But Patrick will eventually remarry and they’ll drift away. It will hurt you. It will even hurt me. But that’s the way life is. And somewhere out in the world, a little piece of Erin and you will be alive. Long after we’re dead even.” Drewe looks away abruptly, and I realize she is hiding tears. “She’ll be okay, though. She comes from good people. Don’t miss the damned drive.”

  I hit the brakes and wheel onto the gravel. As I pull around Drewe’s Acura and park, she says, “It’s settled, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Let’s pack the essentials and go.”

  I am packing in my office when I notice the e-mail icon blinking beneath Nefertiti’s slowly turning head on the EROS computer. Dropping a can of shaving gel into my dopp kit, I stare at the icon. The sounds of Drewe packing in her bedroom echo up the hallway. Willing myself to be calm, I walk over and click the mouse on the icon. At the top of the message I see this:SENDER: SYSOP/Edward Berkmann, M.D.

  Chapter 46

  Waiting for Miles to answer his cellular phone, I try desperately to remember whether my e-mail icon was blinking last night, whether I could possibly have missed it in the insanity of viewing Erin’s body or mopping up the blood. I don’t think so. Nor was it blinking this afternoon. This message arrived in the past hour, as its time stamp indicates. Still, with my breath coming shallow, I pray that Berkmann somehow planted the message for delayed delivery while in the house yesterday.

  “Turner here.”

  A cacophony of road noise threatens to drown Miles’s voice. He is obviously walking or riding down a street somewhere.

  “It’s Harper. Berkmann may be alive.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I just got an e-mail message from him, via EROS.”

  “Time-stamped?”

  “Thirty minutes ago.”

  “What does it say?”

  “How did you like my little documentary? I’d love to hear your comments. I’ll be waiting for you in the Blue Room.”

  There’s a pause. “He could have sent that from his plane. Before it went down. What’s the alias?”

  “None. It’s from SYSOP 1.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “Man, are you in denial or what?”

  “Look, Berkmann got that last e-mail message into the system through an o
ld toll access line on a backup server. I found it and closed it off. Maybe this is one of my assistants. Fucking with us for a joke.”

  “Where’s Baxter, Miles? Can you contact him?”

  “He’s still in Connecticut. The state police are canvassing homes in the area of the airstrip Berkmann used, looking for the killing house. You at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call Baxter, call you right back.”

  I don’t move a foot from the phone while I wait. From the noise coming up the hallway, Drewe is still wading through her drawers and closet. In less than two minutes Miles is back on the line.

  “You’re right,” he says, his voice strangely muted.

  “Berkmann’s in the system right now. The son of a bitch is alive.”

  “Jesus. I knew it.”

  “The night he stole the master client list, he must have put a back door into the system. But he never used it. He knew the logs would catch him.”

  “Never used it until now, you mean.”

  “Right.”

  “Can you trace him, Miles?”

  “No. The FBI pulled their equipment off our switching system when we closed to clients, and the phone company won’t help me without the FBI.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Log in to the Blue Room and see what he wants.”

  “Hell no!”

  “Baxter agrees, Harper. Keep him online long enough to check for typos. If there aren’t any, at least we know he’s back on his voice-recognition system. Back in New York.”

  “How could he have gotten back to New York?”

  “Same way I got to Mississippi from Manhattan. Paying cash for air tickets. Hell, he could have ridden a Trailways up here by now. He could have stolen a plane down there. I’ll get Baxter to start checking that stuff.”

  “I think he’s still down here, Miles.”

  “Why?”

  I relate the story of the sunglasses in Erin’s grave, but Miles puts about as much stock in it as Sheriff Buckner did.

  “Just talk to him long enough to look for typos,” he says. “If he’s back in New York, we’ll have him.” His voice drops in volume. “Baxter’s wasting his time in Connecticut. The killing house is here, Harper. Somewhere close to the medical school. I’ve already found people who’ve seen Berkmann before. Washington Heights people. I’m on 169th Street right now.”

  I hesitate. “Dr. Lenz said Drewe and I should split. Get somewhere safe.”

  “Yeah? Where’s that?”

  When I don’t answer, Miles says, “Safe for us is a function of Edward Berkmann no longer breathing. At some level you know that.”

  “Okay . . . damn.”

  Not giving myself time for second thoughts, I hang up and log in to the system as HARPER/SYSOP 2, then click into the Blue Room. It’s empty. I type a quick query—Where are you?—route it to SYSOP 1, then activate the voice-recognition program.

  Almost immediately, “BERKMANN/SYSOP 1” appears in the top left corner of my screen under “WHO’S HERE?” Then, like a voice from the grave, the nowchilling digital baritone fills the office as letters appear on my screen.

  BERKMANN> Hello, Harper. How did you like my little film?

  This final proof that Berkmann is alive starts my heart pumping like a fist clenching and unclenching in my chest. Fighting fear, I pull on the headset and begin speaking—not as Erin this time, but as myself.

  HARPER> Not as well as the FBI did.

  BERKMANN> Don’t lie, little ankle biter. You didn’t show that tape to anyone.

  HARPER> Where are you, Doctor?

  BERKMANN> South of the border, north of the Antarctic. I’m quite safe, as I told you I would be. That’s why I’m not worried about being traced.

  HARPER> A lot of people thought you died in a plane crash.

  BERKMANN> Very gratifying. It took a bit of effort to create that illusion.

  HARPER> Why bother creating an illusion? Why not use the plane to run?

  BERKMANN> Obviously Daniel Baxter told you to keep me on the line. I’ll oblige. You deserve a little entertainment before the remainder of your pathetic life turns to shit.

  HARPER> What does that mean?

  BERKMANN> The mills of the Gods, remember? When I left your house, I managed to reach the plane all right, and get airborne. But the plane developed engine trouble. I considered ditching in the river, but my nerve failed. I ended up setting down on a spur levee. I’d heard of a Venezuelan crew that landed a 727 on a levee near New Orleans in an emergency. It was simple enough. The difficult part was taxiing down the slope and into the water. Amazing that the plane turned up, though. Very dramatic. The Lord taketh away my engine but giveth confusion unto mine enemies.

  HARPER> You don’t believe in God.

  BERKMANN> You are not qualified to discuss the concept of God with me.

  I’ve yet to see a single typo in Berkmann’s words, but I want to be absolutely sure I’ve given him enough time.

  HARPER> I’ve asked Baxter to let me view your execution. He said he’d do all he could, but there’s a long waiting list. It’s the gas chamber here in Mississippi, you know.

  BERKMANN> Empty words. I honestly can’t believe you fooled me for a minute. But you did, didn’t you? You and your Southern charm. It turned out to be as hollow as Southern honor.

  The sudden ring of the telephone jars me. Hitting the space bar to mute the mike, I answer it.

  “Well?” says Miles, as Berkmann’s voice continues from the speakers.

  “I’m on with him now.”

  “Any typos?”

  “None yet. Two screens worth of text.”

  “He’s back in New York!”

  “He says he’s outside the country, Miles. Sounds like maybe South America.”

  “Out of the country? Shit. How could he get out?”

  “Same way he could get back to New York.”

  “Keep him on as long as you can.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him!”

  “Please, Harper. I’m getting close to him. I can feel it.”

  Berkmann’s voice shocks me back to reality.

  BERKMANN> Having a nice chat with Daniel Baxter?

  HARPER> My mother-in-law was trying to come into the office. I had to get her out.

  BERKMANN> Another lie. She wouldn’t be speaking to you at all. Not after you got her daughter killed.

  The ringing sibilance of water rushing through pipes breaks my concentration. Drewe is taking a shower. I guess I can put up with Berkmann’s crap for a few minutes in the hope that Miles could be right about the killing house.

  HARPER> Did you really try to save Erin?

  BERKMANN> Yes. There was no need for her to die. Were it not for you, she would be alive tonight.

  HARPER> Turn yourself in, Doctor. This game’s over. They know who you are. It’s just a matter of time.

  BERKMANN> No, no, no. I still have much to do.

  HARPER> Such as?

  BERKMANN> I am smiling, Harper. Smiling with cosmic humor at fate’s great joke. You lured me to your house to capture me and instead led me to the threshold of my apotheosis.

  HARPER> I don’t understand.

  BERKMANN> How could you? You are a polyp of fetid protoplasm in the cesspool of the herd. I speak to you for only one reason. You have something I want. And very soon I shall have it.

  Lenz’s warnings echo in my head like the shouts of an unheeded prophet.

  HARPER> What do you want?

  BERKMANN> Don’t you know? I want Drewe.

  I have to squeeze my hands together to stop them shaking.

  HARPER> What connection do you think you have with Drewe?

  BERKMANN> What connection do we not have? Erin was an illusion. A Caucasian Kali, expanded into symbol by your imagination. But Drewe is real. Everything that has happened, each apparent mistake, every seeming obstacle was but a waypoint on the road to Drewe. She is my mother and my father together. She is Apollonian wo
man, pale and proud, Aryan, brilliant, uncontaminated by your corrupt seed because she is incorruptible. She is a vessel full yet waiting to be filled. She is OMPHALOS, a navel of the world. Through her loins I SHALL CONQUER TIME. For years she has waited, uncertain why. But soon she will know. And she will come to me like the moth to the flame.

  HARPER> She’ll laugh in your face. Or spit in it.

  BERKMANN> You tremble at every word I speak. You KNOW she is a seed you have not brought to flower. Because you are unequal to her. How she must have dreaded your clumsy carnal attentions. It SICKENS me.

  HARPER> How do you plan to bring her to flower?

  BERKMANN> By separating her from you.

  HARPER> How can you do that?

  BERKMANN> With the truth. We are broken from within, remember? Your life holds the key to its own destruction. You are a liar and a coward. The truth of your betrayal with Erin, and her child, will separate you from Drewe as certainly as prison walls. When she delivers my issue from her pure womb, you will feel pain as of nails being driven through your skull.

  From a whirlwind of fear, a lifeline of hope. The sword Berkmann thinks he holds over my head hangs over his own. But there’s no reason to let him know that.

  HARPER> You’ll never get close to her, you piece of shit.

  BERKMANN> Do I need to? What is truth but information? And that is the easiest thing in the world to move.

  HARPER> She’d kill herself before she’d let you touch her.

  BERKMANN> Keep telling yourself that. By tonight she will be trying to reach me.

  HARPER> You’re amazing. You’re a fucking parasite. A second-rate quack who spent his life stealing other people’s research and dreaming about his dead whore of a mother.

  This finally stops Berkmann. At length, as if he has regained his composure, he replies:

  BERKMANN> I AM to you as the SUN to a GRAIN OF SAND. As the EAGLE to the WORM. I had your friend Turner like a WOMAN. I swam in Eros like a shark in a tidal pool, feeding on what I chose. I delivered Lenz’s wife to the knife, and it was a MERCY KILLING. I am the WILL TO POWER made FLESH upon the EARTH. I AM AN ARROW TEARING THROUGH THE VEIL OF TIME.