The Program

by Stephen White

  WHILE HE’D BEEN waiting for Gregory to arrive home, Krist had spent his time accomplishing two tasks. He’d cut the cable that carried the phone company signal to Dr. Gregory’s house and to the nearby neighbor’s house. And he’d destroyed the latch that held one of the basement windows locked. With Gregory home and the alarm deactivated, Krist made his next move, sliding the window open and poking his head through the opening into the house’s garden-level basement.

  He didn’t see or hear any signs that anyone had come down the stairs, so he pulled his body through the window and waited just inside, listening specifically for sounds of the dog descending the stairs to eat him. While he listened he held his handgun at the ready, the barrel pointed at the foot of the stairs.

  Nothing.

  From the furnishings in the room, Krist surmised he was in a guest suite of some kind.

  Above his head he heard footsteps crossing the floor and he heard muted voices. He edged silently across the room to the base of the stairs and waited while he tried to ascertain whom he was about to meet when he climbed upstairs.

  Somewhere close by at the top of the stairs, a woman called, “Emily? You want to go for a walk?”

  Krist listened as the dog’s feet scratched maniacally at the wood floor in a desperate effort to get to the door before the woman changed her mind about the excursion. The woman said, “Good girl. Good girl,” before she adjusted her tone and yelled, “Alan, we won’t be gone too long, maybe a half-hour. I bet we’ll be back before Adrienne gets home. See you guys soon.”

  Guys, Krist thought. She’d said “We.” She’d said “Guys.” Then he wondered, Who the hell is Adrienne?

  The front door opened, then closed.

  Krist assessed the situation. The good news was that the damn dog was gone. The bad news was that someone—an unknown someone—had stayed behind with Dr. Gregory.

  Krist didn’t hesitate. According to what Dr. Gregory’s wife had said as she walked out the door, Krist had only about thirty minutes to convince Dr. Gregory to divulge Kirsten Lord’s current location. By the end of those thirty minutes, the wife would be back from her walk with the devil dog and someone named Adrienne would arrive to complicate Krist’s life even further.

  Jeremiah Krist knew that by the end of those thirty minutes Dr. Gregory would have revealed Kirsten Lord’s secrets. And Jeremiah Krist knew that Dr. Gregory would be dead.

  Krist edged slowly up the stairs.

  The upper landing was near the front entryway of the house. Gun at the ready, Krist paused and looked toward the big glass windows to the west. He spotted the pool table he’d spied earlier from outside, and he saw the deck where he’d been standing when he was scared half to death by the bear dog.

  He didn’t see any people.

  The first doorway on his left led to a modern kitchen—granite countertops and brand-new appliances. Krist poked his head far enough into the room to assure himself that no one was there. The big room by the windows was empty of occupants, too. A hallway on the far side of the big room led, Krist assumed, to the bedrooms. The house had to have bedrooms.

  That’s where he expected he’d find Gregory.

  Which left one person unaccounted for. His wife had said, “See you guys soon.”

  Guys. That meant someone besides Gregory.

  Krist padded silently across the floor to position himself while he waited for Gregory, and that someone else, to emerge from the bedrooms. Krist had chosen to wait in a corner behind the pool table. He’d be behind Gregory as the doctor emerged from the bedroom.

  Two steps before Krist had reached his goal in the corner, he heard Dr. Gregory call out, “You want something cold to drink? Would that feel good on your throat? But I don’t know if we have any ginger ale in the house. You want orange juice?”

  Krist spun and faced the opening to the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

  In two seconds Gregory emerged from the doorway. He didn’t see Krist standing in the corner. Gregory didn’t show any hesitation at all; he walked purposefully toward the sofa on the other side of the room.

  Krist’s eyes followed. That’s when he saw that there was a person lying under a blanket on the sofa.

  Does Gregory have kids I don’t know about? Krist wondered. Is Prowler’s intelligence that faulty?

  A little girl sat up from under the blanket and faced Gregory. She looked past him, saw Krist.

  Krist felt it physically as the little girl pointed at him and said, “Is that the bad man, Dr. Gregory? I thought he was supposed to be big.”

  5

  After a few minutes Lauren came back outside carrying Anvil in her arms. They were preceded by the big dog, Emily, who had extended the cord on her retractable leash as far as it would go. The dog looked strong enough to tow a car.

  Carl took Anvil from Lauren’s arms and clipped a leash to his collar. The poodle pranced at Carl’s feet, his tail erect and wagging and his long nose in the air. “I know you two need to talk about the legal stuff,” Carl said to me. “I’ll hang back behind a little bit, if you don’t mind. Out of listening range. Anvil and me could use the exercise. The walk will do us good, and he has to do his business.”

  Carl was asking me whether or not it was acceptable with me that he come along as my bodyguard. I said, “Thank you, Carl.”

  Lauren narrowed her eyes slightly at our interaction. I thought she nodded just the slightest bit, too, but I wasn’t sure. Suddenly she moved one hand to her protruding belly. “Oooh,” she said with a high voice, “I just got whacked.”

  Carl looked away, trying to pretend that he hadn’t heard what she’d said.

  I, too, paused in reaction to Lauren’s choice of words and swallowed before I exhaled. To mask my discomfort I unwrapped a DumDum and placed it on the center of my tongue. This one was apple. Not my favorite flavor. I offered a lollipop to Lauren and Carl, but apparently neither shared my addiction.

  Impatient to begin her walk, Emily led us all down the lane.

  Although we were moving along in the final sharp rays of a late-day sun, the skies to the north of us were as gray as wet ash, and lightning bolts were etching shock cords of fire in the clouds. Vertical pinstripes of virga marked the boundaries of the storm like an aerial picket fence. “Is that storm coming this way?” I asked.

  “No,” Lauren said. “It will head either north or east. They rarely come south from there. We’re not in any real danger.”

  I almost laughed at the naivete.

  With high clouds to the west and the massive storm shadowing the plains to the north, the imminent sunset was choreographed to be magnificent.

  CARL AND ANVIL kept their distance, allowing Lauren and me to gain thirty or forty yards on them.

  I asked Lauren how she was feeling.

  She smiled at me and said, “The pregnancy? Fine. Good. You know—you’ve been there. I get tired and my back hurts a lot of the time. I can’t get half my shoes onto my feet. I’m good and ready to deliver the baby, but the baby’s not quite ready to be delivered.” The dog suddenly lunged forward so forcefully that I was afraid it was going to separate Lauren’s shoulder from its socket. She didn’t seem to mind. “Listen,” she continued, “I’m still waiting to hear from Jack Tarpin but in the meantime, my law student? His name is Arturo Mota. I told you I had him checking public records on Pat Lieber.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The football coach.” I realized that I was reading hope into her tone.

  “Arturo is as sharp as coral. Best law student I’ve ever had. Anyway, in one hour on the computer he managed to get everything I’m about to tell you. What appears to be most important about what Arturo learned is that Lieber’s wife has a younger brother. Current age is thirty-six, thirty-seven, something like that.”

  “Same as me. Same as Khalid.”

  “Yes. The same as Khalid.”

  We walked a half dozen more steps before she continued. “The wife’s brother’s name is Princely Carter. He’s currently re
siding in the state prison system in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He’s been there since 1995. And, conservatively, he’s expected to be there until at least 2007.”

  “I bet he doesn’t call himself Princely inside.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to make a joke about it, but I did.

  She said, “I think that’s a safe bet. He’s in for armed robbery. Hit a combination convenience store/gas station in Richmond in the spring of 1995. Turned out he made the mistake of hitting the place right at shift change. The clerk’s husband was a Richmond cop who was just showing up at the store to give his wife a ride home from work. Didn’t much like Mr. Carter pointing a gun at her.”

  “I hate it when that happens.”

  “No doubt Princely felt the same way.”

  “No doubt.”

  As her story progressed, my pulse was outpacing my feet and I was lagging behind Lauren because the big dog was pulling her along like a propeller at full throttle. We’d just reached an intersection with another dirt and gravel lane. I followed Lauren as she tried to keep up with a determined Emily bulling around the bend onto the new road. At the turn, I looked back and saw Carl and Anvil keeping pace a few dozen yards behind us. Anvil kept a showy, perfect stride on Carl’s left side.

  At that moment it was difficult for me to see why science was convinced that the poodle and the Bouvier shared membership in the same species.

  A hundred yards or so down the road, Emily stopped in her tracks and started sniffing the left side of the dusty roadbed. It gave Lauren a welcome chance to relax her arms.

  I caught up with her after a few steps. “You probably see where I’m heading with my story about Princely,” she said.

  “I can guess. The day of the murders, the day Khalid was arrested? If the phone call to Mickey Redondo happened the way we think it happened, this brother-in-law, Princely, may have been the offender in the homicides in Sarasota. Pat Lieber somehow knew about the murders—if that’s the case, I assume he heard about it from Princely. He called Mickey, and suggested to Mickey that he would be rewarded handsomely if Mickey were able to keep his wife’s brother’s name out of it. As a theory it covers most of the bases.”

  “I see it almost the same way. But I doubt that Lieber gave up his brother-in-law’s name on the phone that day. My guess is that Lieber asked enough questions of Mickey to find out that there was a suspect that Mickey liked for the murders. From there he just encouraged Mickey to make sure the case stuck against Khalid.”

  “You’re probably right. A couple of big questions remain. Can we put this Princely Carter guy in Sarasota that day? And can we find some evidence of the payoff Mickey received from Lieber?”

  “Arturo’s looking, trying to see if Carter has any priors anywhere in South Florida, especially in Sarasota County. Also checking previous addresses. Knowing Arturo, I bet he has something for me tomorrow.”

  “Have Mr. Mota check Manatee County and Charlotte County as well. There should also be some record of the quid pro quo. Mickey had to get something out of this. Money can be traced.”

  “Maybe. But my experience here is that it’s much harder to do that kind of checking without subpoenas. I don’t think we’ll see any evidence of a money trail unless we can prove some of these other things first. You know, first we have to get a judge to see it our way.”

  “Wait, Lauren. You said this Carter was picked up in Virginia for an armed robbery, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “At a convenience store?”

  “Mm hmmm.”

  My breathing grew shallow. I felt the same way I had when I’d first moved to Boulder and the altitude had stunned me when I tried to jog—there wasn’t enough oxygen available to feed my lungs. “He used a gun?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I waited for her to look over at me. A few seconds later my silence drew her gaze like a magnet draws steel. Her eyes were arresting, a deep violet that glimmered almost as black as the light off her sable hair. I said, “At the beginning of the robbery did he shoot out the lens of the surveillance camera?”

  Emily started off again, yanking Lauren down the road. She lunged to keep her balance. Over her shoulder, she said, “Took him two shots, but yes. Now how did you know that?”

  I was startled as Carl suddenly appeared right next to me. Anvil brushed against my leg like a cat.

  Carl asked Lauren, “You know this car?” A big green sports utility vehicle was parked off the side of the road. The car was partially concealed by a shoulder-high mound of dry dirt.

  “No, I’ve never seen it before. Emily and I do this walk almost every day. We never see cars parked around here.” Her voice lacked alarm. She hadn’t spent enough time swimming with whales, I thought. Lauren pointed up the hill. “There’s no reason for anyone to park here. The closest house to where we’re standing is ours.”

  Carl handed me Anvil’s leash and shaded his eyes while he peered through the smoked glass on the passenger side of the car. “It’s a rental, there’s a map on the seat,” he said. “And the back is full of surveyor’s shit. That doesn’t wash.” He looked around. “Where’s the damn surveyor and why’s he using a rental?” He wasn’t really talking to Lauren or to me. He was talking out loud to himself.

  While we all stood watching Carl further examine the interior of the car, the big dog, Emily, moved off the road into the tall grasses that led up a gentle slope toward the house that Lauren shared with her husband, my doctor. The dog almost disappeared. She was visible in the hay the way an alligator is visible in the water.

  Lauren saw me watching the dog and explained, “She follows the fox trails up there sometimes. The red foxes make her crazy.”

  Carl stepped away from the car. “I don’t like what I’m seeing here. I’m going back. I want you both to stay away from the house, you understand? Till I tell you it’s okay, you stay away from that house.”

  He was talking mostly to me.

  I asked, “What are you thinking, Carl?”

  “The car is bothering me. I don’t like that the girl’s up there.” He pointed at the house. He was talking about Landon.

  I said, “Do you think—”

  Lauren interrupted. “You think someone’s here? At my house?” She was incredulous, not yet terrified.

  Carl centered himself between us and looked at me. “You don’t go up there. No matter what, right? Till I say it’s okay?”

  I couldn’t respond. My soul had suddenly begun to ache as though it were convulsing. I was swimming in the roughest of seas and I was being buffeted by the swells of at least a dozen whales.

  A chorus in my ears shunted out every other sound. All I heard was Ernesto Castro’s promise. Every precious thing I lose, you will lose two.

  “Landon,” I said. I’d intended to scream her name but I wasn’t able. It was as if I suddenly didn’t know how.

  “Alan,” Lauren said. “Oh my God! Should I go to a neighbor’s house and call the police?”

  Carl looked at me, then back at Lauren. “Probably wouldn’t be the best thing, given the circumstances. Me being here. Her being here. You got a gun up there in the house?”

  I was “her.”

  Carl was surprised, almost shocked, when Lauren answered his question about the gun by saying, “Yes.”

  “What is it and where?”

  “It’s a little Beretta. A .9mm. I have a carry permit for it, but I don’t bring it into the house when there are kids there. I left it in the car because of Landon. It’s locked in the glove box of my car.”

  “It’s loaded?”

  “Of course.”

  “You got a car key with you?”

  “No.”

  He said, “Take care my dog,” and took off onto the fox trail into the sea of grasses.

  As defiantly as I could, I called after him, “I can’t leave Landon there, Carl. I’m coming with you.”

  He stopped on the trail and froze me with a stare I’d hoped never to see from him. “Pay att
ention to me. You paying attention to me?” His eyes narrowed. “Good. If I’m right about what I’m thinking and someone’s here, then they’re here for you. Once they get you, all bets are off. Anybody else who happens to be in the vicinity is as good as dead. Your kid, your doctor, your lawyer, anybody else. You want to save some lives, you stay away from the damn house.”

  He lowered his head and ducked down, his arms swinging out to the side as he lumbered up the hill.

  Lauren said, “He looks like a soldier.”

  “Or a gorilla,” I murmured, almost involuntarily.

  “What?” Lauren said.

  Every precious thing.

  Every precious thing.

  6

  For a bad man, Krist wasn’t big.

  In the sensible Mephisto walking shoes he had chosen to wear for what he now hoped would be the conclusion to this adventure, Krist topped out at around five foot four. In his entire life he’d never weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds. Nature’s inclination toward irony had dictated that he be compensated for his diminutive stature by being granted an oversized head and ears that could catch enough air to sail a dinghy on a still day.

  Only thirty-four years old, his once blond hair had already turned the gray of tarnished silver.

  DR. GREGORY DIDN’T immediately comprehend Landon’s question about the “bad man.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked her.

  Landon pointed. “That man behind you. I thought the bad man would be bigger. Didn’t you?”

  Krist said, “Turn slowly, Doctor. See for yourself.”

  Alan Gregory held his hands out from his sides and rotated ninety degrees. He did it slowly, as directed. He turned his neck the rest of the way so he could spot the man standing in the corner behind the pool table. The man held a handgun, an automatic. Gregory noted the elongated barrel and thought, silencer.

  Gregory said, “What do you want?”

  “Her mother. I want her mother.” Krist was still celebrating the presence of the little girl in Gregory’s living room. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. He’d come here as a long-shot way of finding his target. Now he figured he would be on his way out of Colorado within hours.