The Naked Edge

by David Morrell

Numbed, Cavanaugh didn't react for a moment. He got out of bed, ignored the cold air on his bare legs, and went over to her. She indicated the bottom of a page.

  Cavanaugh read the passage and felt colder. “The police report says Carl found the body in the morning. Since he knew for certain how his father died, why did he tell me it was liver failure?”

  Jamie looked up. “You think Carl finally got tired of his father picking on him? He might have told you the cause of death was liver disease because that was an easy explanation. But bleeding to death from a knife wound . . . Knowing Carl's obsession with knives, you might have started wondering. How old were you when he made that phone call?”

  “I was still in high school. My senior year.”

  “Young to start to be a killer.”

  “If his father was his first,” Cavanaugh said.

  The room became silent.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thinking about those days, I suddenly remember things. But I'm seeing them in an entirely different way.”

  “What things?”

  “Our neighbor had an Irish setter named Toby. My stepfather was too buttoned down to allow a pet in the house, but the neighbor didn't mind if I played with Toby, so I sort of had a dog. The summer before my senior year, the dog ran away. The neighbor phoned the pet shelter. No sign of the dog. Nobody ever found him. A couple of neighborhood cats ran away that summer, also.”

  “Didn't anybody think there might be a pattern?”

  “If anybody did, I never heard about it. Anyway, there was a lot going on that summer. Carl's dad was fired. In August, the family needed to move. Meanwhile, I was excited about beginning my senior year at West High, and to tell the truth, Carl demanded I spend so much time with him that I was relieved to see him go.”

  “So he practiced killing animals before he graduated to killing his father?”

  “Or maybe . . .”

  “What are you thinking?” Jamie asked.

  “Do you suppose Carl killed other people before he mustered enough rage to go after his father?”

  7

  “Nashville, Tennessee?” Rutherford asked.

  “That's where Carl's father took the family after losing his stock broker's job in Iowa City,” Cavanaugh explained. “Can you arrange for someone to investigate a rash of missing animals or stabbings while Carl was there?”

  They sat at a corner table at a truck stop near Alexandria, Virginia. Cavanaugh and Rutherford drank coffee while Jamie dug into a cheese-and-ham omelet with hash browns.

  “Stabbings?” Rutherford frowned.

  “Homeless people. Drifters. Back-alley drunks. The sort of victims who wouldn't be missed and didn't look like they could defend themselves.”

  “This guy sounds scarier and scarier,” Rutherford said.

  “Maybe you should check Iowa City, too.” Jamie looked up from her omelet. “And any other place Carl lived.”

  “And where he was stationed in the military,” Rutherford decided.

  “What about Ali Karim?” Cavanaugh asked. “Did you find anything?”

  “Still seems squeaky clean. But Global Protective Services lost another operator last night.”

  Jamie set down her fork.

  “Frank Tamblyn,” Rutherford said.

  “I know him.” Cavanaugh's voice was stark. “A former Army Ranger. Eight years with GPS. Wife. Two children. Dependable, always ready to be the first operator out the door to check if it's okay for a client to leave a building.”

  “Apparently, he loved to bowl.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “Last night, he got in his car to drive to a bowling tournament. Afterward, around midnight, he returned to his car. He probably checked it for explosives. Not that it matters. When he got behind the steering wheel, a spring-loaded knife burst from under the dash and hit him in the groin. There weren't any trip wires, so he wouldn't have spotted the device. It was rigged to a vibration switch. Death was so rapid, the blade must have been coated with poison.”

  8

  Greenwich Village, New York.

  Kim Lee stepped out of a martial-arts studio and turned left on Bleecker Street. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes intense after two hours of practicing aikido. She wore jeans and a blue sweater, and carried a gym bag. Around the corner, she came to a café that, on this not-yet-chilly October evening, still had tables on the sidewalk, although most of the customers were inside. She sat, ordered tea, removed a magazine from her bag, and settled back to read.

  But she seemed more interested in her surroundings than in her magazine. The tea came. She tasted a few sips, looked around again, reached under the table, detached something, concealed it within her magazine, and put the magazine in her bag. She paid for the tea and continued down the street, glancing behind her as she turned a corner. No one followed, and she soon fell into a comfortable pace, her cheeks no longer flushed.

  At her brownstone, she took the elevator to the third floor, unlocked her apartment, stepped in, closed the door, locked it, flicked the light switch, and turned toward the living room, only to freeze at the sight of Cavanaugh and Jamie.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Picked the lock,” Cavanaugh said. “Maybe you're like a physician who forgets to have a yearly medical exam or an accountant who's too busy to balance her own check book.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “For someone who works at a security company, you don't pay much attention to your personal security,” Cavanaugh said. “You should phone GPS and order a technician to install an intruder-detection system.”

  “Right. I'll do that just as soon as I call the police.” Kim picked up the phone.

  “Good idea,” Jamie said. “I'm sure they'll want to know what's in your gym bag.”

  “Gym bag?”

  “Black-market prescription drugs. Probably OxyContin.”

  Kim stared.

  “At the café, they were taped under the table you used,” Jamie said.

  “This isn't funny.” Kim scratched her arms.

  “With so many operators getting killed, aren't you worried about walking around in the open?”

  “Maybe if I were an operator. But there doesn't seem to be a bounty on computer specialists.” Kim set down the phone. She picked up the gym bag and headed toward the bathroom.

  “Time for another pill?” Jamie asked.

  Kim didn't answer.

  “I'm told getting off Oxy is a nightmare,” Cavanaugh said. “Or maintaining your addiction when you can't find any more doctors to write prescriptions for you and you need to turn to dealers.”

  Cavanaugh gestured toward the living room, which was sparsely furnished, only a lamp, a canvas chair, and a small television, not even a rug.

  “Been selling things to feed your habit?”

  “Since we're being so candid, why don't I stop the charade of going into the bathroom?” The pupils of Kim's eyes were pinpoints.

  She opened the gym bag and took out a plastic bag that contained a fist-sized quantity of white pills. With a look of defiance, she put two in her mouth and chewed.

  Jamie frowned. “Why do you—”

  “The pills have a time-release coating so the body absorbs the painkiller over twelve hours,” Cavanaugh explained. “If you just swallow them, you can't get a rush. You have to pulverize them and snort them.”

  “Or chew them,” Kim said. “What the hell do you want?”

  “GPS's assignment records,” Cavanaugh said.

  Kim looked baffled.

  “You still haven't sold the computer in your bedroom,” Cavanaugh told her, “so why don't you crank it up and get me some information I need?”

  “That's what this is all about? For God's sake, why didn't you just come to the office to do this?”

  “The last time I went to the office, I almost didn't leave it alive.”

  “I could have given you the information over the phone.”

 
“Sure. But this way, I know the information hasn't been edited.”

  “You still believe someone at GPS can't be trusted? Me?”

  “Distrust a drug addict? Perish the thought,” Jamie said.

  “You know, lady,” Kim said, “I don't need to take crap from the boss's wife.” She turned toward Cavanaugh. “You want to fire me? Do it.”

  “Just get into the GPS assignment records,” Cavanaugh told her.

  Kim's cheeks looked flushed again. She went to the bedroom and turned on its light, revealing that there was only a mattress on the floor but that a lavish computer set-up occupied a desk in a corner. Cavanaugh went over to the window and closed the draperies against the thickening darkness.

  When Kim touched a button on the keyboard, the monitor came out of sleep mode. Jamie stood behind her while Kim sank into a chair, wincing slightly.

  “If you're in that much pain, maybe you need to ease off on your martial arts,” Jamie suggested.

  “Can't give them up.”

  “Just like Oxy,” Jamie said.

  “You don't know. I tried detoxing. Last spring.” Kim glanced toward Cavanaugh. “Supposedly, I was in the Caribbean on vacation. But I was right here. I vomited for a week. My bones ached. My heart raced. Hot and cold sweats. Wobbly legs. Twitching. And that was the fun part.”

  “You tried it on your own?”

  “Had to. Would anybody at GPS have relied on me if word got out I'd checked myself into a detox clinic?”

  “Go ahead and check yourself into one now,” Cavanaugh said. “Take advantage of our great medical plan.”

  Kim avoided the subject, turning toward Jamie. “You know anything about computers?”

  “A little,” Jamie lied. “I know the difference between a Big Mac and a Mac Apple.”

  “Always thinking about food,” Cavanaugh said.

  “You need to step away while I type in the security codes,” Kim told her.

  “Don't think so. I co-own the company. I get to see everything.”

  Kim looked questioningly at Cavanaugh.

  “I just made her vice-CEO,” Cavanaugh explained.

  “Let's see those security codes,” Jamie told her.

  Kim's fingers flew across the keyboard, an elegant blur that made Jamie nod in wonder as she watched information flash across the monitor.

  “This is brilliant.” Jamie leaned forward, seeing security code after security code. “I never could have hacked this.”

  “I hope to God not.” Kim's fingers kept working the keyboard.

  “As you looked for more OxyContin,” Cavanaugh said, “I don't suppose people ever offered you unlimited quantities in exchange for showing them the codes.”

  “No.”

  “Cross your heart?”

  “I guarantee it.”

  “Hard to guarantee.”

  “Not really.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “If I had unlimited quantities of Oxy in exchange for giving the bad guys information . . .” Kim's fingers kept flying.

  “Yes?”

  “Would I be forced to humiliate myself by paying a cheesy drug dealer to stick that plastic bag to the bottom of that table? A lousy hundred pills? I can go through those in a week.”

  “She has a point,” Jamie said.

  “Or maybe that's part of her cover story.”

  “I'm into the files. Tell me what you need,” Kim said.

  “All the GPS assignments Carl Duran was on.” He watched Kim intently, checking for a hesitation, a slight narrowing of her eyes, anything that might indicate that the name meant something to her. “He was fired three years ago.”

  “Does the first name have a C or a K?”

  “C.”

  Cavanaugh still detected nothing to suggest that the name was important to her. No pursing of the lips. No tightening of the cheek muscles. In his experience, most dopers couldn't repress telltales when they were under stress.

  “Sorry,” Kim said. “Carl Duran doesn't have a file.”

  “Doesn't . . .? You must have made a mistake.”

  “When it involves computers, I don't make mistakes.”

  “But GPS always keeps records about former employees.”

  Kim tapped more keys. “Nope. No assignment list. No photograph. Nothing.”

  “Duran must have deleted it,” Jamie said.

  “Couldn't have. At least, not on his own. Only three people know the codes to get that far into the system. Gerald, Ali, and—”

  “You,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Another nasty mark against me, right? But before you get judgmental again, watch this.” Kim tapped more keys. “The purging was so thorough, I can't retrieve Duran's file. But I can search every assignment we've ever had and tell the computer to isolate any that Duran worked on.” Kim touched a final key. “And here you are.”

  The printer came to life, flipping out pages.

  “Plenty of trouble at GPS,” Kim remarked.

  “Yes,” Cavanaugh agreed. “Frank Tamblyn's the latest casualty.”

  “I mean new trouble.”

  The phone rang.

  “And I'm afraid,” Kim said, “that this'll be more.”

  9

  The agent made sure his weapons were in place before leaving his house: his .45 semiautomatic on his hip under his suit coat, his 9 millimeter subcompact in his ankle holster, his tactical folding knife clipped to a pocket concealed by his suit coat, and another knife on a breakaway chain around his neck under his shirt.

  Uneasy, he glanced back toward his wife whose eyes were filled with equal unease as she held their baby boy.

  “Meg, believe me, I'll be careful.”

  “But what about us? I don't mean to make it seem like the risk you're taking doesn't matter. But . . .” The baby squirmed under Meg's left arm. He had a slight fever. “What if whoever's doing this starts attacking . . .”

  “Not just operators but their families?”

  “I couldn't bear it if something happened to the baby.”

  “Stay inside. Keep the doors locked.”

  “I need to take Bobby to the doctor.”

  “There's a gun on the top shelf in the closet.”

  “Right. I'm going to hold the baby and blast away like in that John Woo movie you watched last night where the hero's in a nursery in a hospital with kids in his arms and guns in his hands. I kind of doubt it.”

  “Why don't you go to your mother's? I'm off this assignment in a week. When I get back from New Orleans, we'll take a vacation, someplace we feel safe.”

  “Wherever that is.”

  “Maybe I should take a pay cut and get a less dangerous job.”

  “If it was just the two of us . . .”

  “What a joke. I'm a security specialist, but I can't make my wife feel secure.”

  Outside, a car beeped.

  “The taxi. Listen, the client's got his jet waiting. He's obsessive about maintaining a schedule. I'll call you en route to the airport. We'll try to figure a way to handle this.”

  Meg nodded, unconvinced.

  “Love you,” he said.

  “Love you.”

  As the taxi drove away, the agent glanced back at his house. He felt encumbered by his numerous weapons, but he knew agents who'd responded to the recent attacks by carrying three guns instead of his two.

  He pulled out his cell phone and called headquarters for updates. While the phone on the other end buzzed, he continued gazing through the taxi's rear window toward the third house from the corner, the one with the bright flower boxes.

  A huge fireball roared, chunks of walls, floors, windows, furniture, and bodies spewing from the churning core. The neighboring houses burst apart from the force of the blast, flaming debris hurtling across the street.

  The taxi wavered to a stop. A brick struck the window, bursting through, but all the agent cared about was shoving the door open, lurching onto the street.

  “Meg!” he shouted, running. “Bob
by!” He felt the heat of the blaze but ignored it, charging closer. “No!” His shriek threatened to tear his vocal cords. “Nooo!”

  10

  Kim's knuckles whitened as she clutched the phone. All the while she listened, the shocked look on her face made Cavanaugh and Jamie remain absolutely still.

  “Yes, Ali,” she said. “Yes, I understand.” She took a breath. “Nothing will help him, of course, but you're right—we need to do what we can.”

  She set down the phone.

  “Another agent's been killed?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “His family,” Kim answered.

  “His family?” Jamie looked stunned.

  “Jim Driscoll. Word about what happened to his wife and child got around fast. Now our agents are calling their duty officers to say they're sick. We hear the same thing's happening with the U.S. Marshals, the Secret Service, and the Diplomatic Security Service. Only a few so far, but the trend's not hard to predict. Why should agents protect strangers when they themselves are the targets? And their loved ones. Those reporting for duty are either unmarried or else insisting on protection for their families while they're not home. They also want twice the operators they normally have on an assignment. The system's falling apart.”

  Kim nervously scratched her arms. Her brow glistened with sweat. Through the open bedroom door, she saw her gym bag on the living room floor. The bag of white pills was on it.

  For a moment, Cavanaugh thought Kim would move toward it. His own move was toward the Global Protective Services information that she'd printed.

  Continuing to stare toward the bag of pills, Kim asked, “You think this Carl Duran has something to do with what's happening?”

  Cavanaugh took the pages from the printer's tray. He tried not to allow his emotions to tighten his voice. “At the moment, he's the only lead we have.”

  “Well, if you're willing to allow a doper to help—” Kim turned from staring at the pills. “—we'll all see if we notice anything.”

  They slid to the floor in the nearly bare room, their backs to a wall, reading the material: all of Carl Duran's assignments.