Chronic fear f-2

by Scott Nicholson

  “More importantly, I can help you,” Gundersson said, glancing at Wendy to exploit Roland’s protective streak. “Both of you. Give me what you know, and the official word goes around that you know nothing.”

  “Why should we believe that anybody trusts the official word?”

  “Because it will be one of those secrets that people are allowed to discover. You know, the secret that nobody’s supposed to know but it’s hiding right there in plain sight.”

  “Boy, DC is an even bigger clusterfuck than I figured. The only way they’ll accept the truth is if you disguise it as a lie.”

  Wendy was dabbing violet paint around the gash in the canvas, using it as a foundational feature. She worked with savage strokes, using bold straight lines with a geometric precision. “Secret messages,” she said, her back to them, not pausing in her work. “All you have to do is add more layers, change things around. Illusion is your friend.”

  “No, honey,” Roland said. “Illusion is your lover. Reality is your husband.”

  She turned, letting the brush splash acrylic on the rough pine planks. Roland looked at the Rorschach pattern on the porch and decided it was Sebastian Briggs kneeling between his wife’s naked thighs.

  Then again, he read that image into everything.

  What a bargain. Wendy gets lost in Halcyon while Seethe makes me obsess over every memory. God, if ever you feel the need to let me accept the things I cannot change…

  Gundersson cleared his throat to break the tension in the air, but the clumsy guttural noise only heightened it. “Mr. Doyle, I doubt aiding the government inspires you, but you have my personal guarantee that you’ll come to no harm. I am under orders to protect you until this situation is all clear.”

  “And just when would that be? It looks like the only way to clear it would be to find your precious drugs and then kill us both.”

  “There are powerful elements-”

  Roland swept the. 38 into his hand and banged its butt on the table. “I’m a powerful goddamned element. I can take care of us.”

  “No offense, Mr. Doyle, but I saw you shoot at the fox yesterday. Four rounds at twenty paces and you didn’t come close.”

  Roland’s gaze dropped to the gun. “It was beautiful. I couldn’t…”

  “What makes you think your aim would be better if the fox is shooting back?”

  “He’s no killer,” Wendy said, storming her painting, applying a second swollen breast. “A woman knows.”

  Keep on loving the illusion, honey. That’s all you get of me anyway.

  “One question,” Roland said to Gundersson. “If it wasn’t the CIA that sent the e-mails, then who did?”

  “National Clandestine Service. One of those new federal agencies gone a little rogue. The great bait-and-switch was that they were created to monitor overseas threats, but we all know how that goes, right?”

  “The enemy within,” Roland said. “That’s the one that gets you.”

  He pulled Gundersson’s gun out of his waistband, where it had been digging into his skin. He slid it across the table. “Your move.”

  Gundersson left the gun lying there between them. “Tell me what you know.”

  Roland sighed. The truth-at least, the truth as Seethe remembered it-had haunted him like those shadowy figures in Wendy’s paintings. Maybe if he exorcised it, he could sleep at night without lying next to his wife and imagining squeezing her throat until the images went away.

  “I’ll tell you both what I remember,” Roland said. “But I’m not sure I know anything.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Wallace Forsyth entered the abandoned youth correctional facility an hour before dusk, using the gravel service road he’d scouted earlier in the day.

  In better economic times, the center might have been renovated into a different type of institution. But Butner already housed two prisons, and the town’s population wasn’t big enough to support an extra school. Apparently the guards and nurses weren’t breeding fast enough to expand the tax base.

  As it was, the center had taken on a seedy, neglected look despite only recently being mothballed. Forsyth welcomed the seclusion. Mark Morgan was removed from the influence of CRO’s bottomless pockets and deaf to whispers of money, and therefore he was unpredictable. Forsyth hadn’t survived so long in Washington by doing business with unpredictable people.

  Scagnelli’s rental sedan was parked beside a holly hedge that a warden had once planted to imitate the landscaping of a real residence. The little house was of the same brick and small, white-framed windows as the main barracks, the kitchen, and the wing where young offenders likely sat through group therapy while plotting to smuggle in drugs or alcohol or sexually abuse their weaker peers. Forsyth was willing to bet that 90 percent of the hooligans had since graduated to the federal or state penitentiaries down the road.

  Forsyth pulled his car beside Scagnelli’s. Despite having no official government employment at the moment, he was sure he could talk his way past any local cops that suspected trespassing. Given the small size of the town and its high inmate population, and the fact that inmates with nowhere to go often stayed where the jail doors had last opened to eject them, the police were probably understaffed and overworked, too busy to worry about decaying state property.

  Forsyth had one call to make before he confronted Mark. He reached Burchfield on the third ring.

  “They’re asking about you at the arts gala,” Burchfield said, with a string quartet and laughter in the background. “Apparently you’re considered a great friend of the Winston-Salem Community Arts Project.”

  “They’ve been hitting the moonshine jug, then,” Forsyth said. “But since you ain’t announced your running mate yet, the media doesn’t give a pig whistle about my whereabouts.”

  “You wouldn’t believe what I’m doing right now.”

  “Drinking lemonade and grinning like a turtle eating saw briars?”

  “I have my hand up a puppet’s ass, and I’m making it dance.”

  “Good practice for handling your secretary of state.”

  “I can only hold this grin and this puppet for so long before this lovely lady at the podium demands a speech.”

  “Give ’em the old ‘Arts are the foundation of a good community’ line. They might conveniently forget to look at your voting record.”

  “I have maybe ten seconds before I seem rude.”

  “Furrow your eyebrows, Daniel. This call will seem critical to national security.”

  “This is critical. Where are we on this thing?”

  “We’re about to hog-tie it and make some bacon.”

  “I’ll assume that’s good news.”

  “That’s the only kind you’ll hear.”

  “Good. Thanks for that ‘community’ line. All politics is local.”

  So is sin. Forsyth hit END, slipped the phone into his jacket pocket, and walked across the unkempt lawn. The sky was low and the gray was gathering, promising a coming storm.

  And a storm shall come to pass.

  Unlike the Doomsday opportunists who sought to cash in on predictions of the Lord’s return, Forsyth had never believed there was a single firm date for the end. The way he saw it, “End Times” were plural and might be well underway already. He felt no apocalyptic zeal, however, nor any particular urgency. All he could do was today’s service and hope it would be enough.

  The door was unlocked, just as he’d instructed Scagnelli. He entered, instinctively trying the light switch before realizing the power had been turned off long ago. Sunlight leaked through the partially drawn blinds, casting a serrated yellow path across the living room.

  “You here?” Forsyth called into the gloom.

  “In the back,” Scagnelli said in a monotone.

  Forsyth locked the door and headed for the narrow hallway. The small house couldn’t have held more than two bedrooms, and Scagnelli’s voice had come from the room on the right. Forsyth found a closed door as he entered the
hallway.

  He braced himself to confront Mark Morgan again. The man was a sinner, but his worst offense had been abandoning CRO, Burchfield, and the opportunity to serve a higher purpose by delivering Seethe and Halcyon. Satan walked the world not in a supernatural shape but in the troubled hearts of the selfish and the morally weak.

  Forsyth entered the room, startled by its darkness. He’d been right to be suspicious of Scagnelli, who’d already proven he’d betray anyone at the first light knock of opportunity. Forsyth had ordered Scagnelli to have Morgan ready for interrogation, not to play hide-and-seek. But he suppressed his anger as he called out. “Where is he?”

  “Right here,” Mark said. “Right where you want me to be.”

  Forsyth pulled his Blackberry from his pocket and opened it, casting the room in greenish light. Mark was standing, while Dominic Scagnelli was sitting on what appeared to be a metal bed frame that had no mattress. Forsyth blinked and made out the weak glint of gray in Mark’s hand. A gun.

  As his eyes adjusted, he saw that Scagnelli’s hands were bound to the bed frame with a short electrical cord. A surge of rage rolled through Forsyth, but he suppressed it, knowing Mark had the advantage.

  For the moment.

  “Hello, Mark,” he said. “I’m glad you honored my request to meet.”

  “It would feel really good to kill you right now,” Mark said. The coldness in his tone projected its chill into Forsyth’s heart.

  “I understand. I felt the effects of Seethe myself, remember?”

  “Yeah. I remember. That’s the problem.”

  Forsyth glanced at Scagnelli, whose shoulders slumped in defeat. “I see you met the protection we assigned to you,” Forsyth said to Mark.

  “I don’t need no fucking bodyguard. I can take care of myself.”

  Forsyth calculated a couple of options, deciding diplomacy still had a chance. And diplomacy worked best as a tool to get fools to lower their guard. “Obviously,” he said. “But it’s your wife you should be concerned about.”

  Mark emerged from the shadows of the corner of the room. His eyes were wild and his gun hand was quivering, the scar on his mouth imitating a reckless grin. “What about her?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Anita Molkesky is dead. An apparent suicide, but you know how things work when corporate assets are at stake.”

  “Anita?” Mark wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “She was…it was just a matter a time.”

  “It’s a matter of time for all of us, Mark,” Forsyth said in the soothing tone he’d once used to win over witnesses for the prosecution and voters for the moderate conservatism he’d projected. “But CRO doesn’t give up easily when millions are at stake.”

  “They said they were done with Seethe and Halcyon. We all agreed-”

  “CRO never agreed to anything. We live in a corporate police state, Mark. The government was stolen from the Christians and given to the corporations. And all of us are bottle caps on their checkerboard. You, me, Senator Burchfield, your wife, Dominic there-”

  “I tried to tell him,” Scagnelli said, causing Mark to swing the barrel of the gun in his direction.

  “Shut up,” Mark said. To Forsyth, “What about Alexis?”

  “CRO got to her. They have her working on Halcyon. She’s their new Sebastian Briggs.”

  “Bullshit. I would have known. I live with her. I sleep with her.”

  Forsyth gave a sad shake of his head. “But ain’t you wondered why you don’t feel right? Feeling a little unsteady, blacking out, getting eat up by sudden rages? And it’s getting worse, ain’t it?”

  “I–I’m fine.” The gun lowered a little.

  “It’s Seethe. Your wife has been using you as her guinea pig. It was too risky for a full-scale trial, after what happened in the Monkey House. But there were still refinements to be made. And once you left CRO-”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Ah, the shadow of a doubt. A liar’s best friend.

  But Mark was unstable, so the diplomacy game could turn in the blink of an eye. Or in the time it took him to squeeze the trigger.

  “That’s what I’ve been looking into,” Scagnelli said, and Mark didn’t swing the gun at him this time. “Burchfield had to distance himself from the whole deal. Once you run for president, you can’t go near the dirt. We hacked your wife’s research records and found out Halcyon was still in play.”

  Forsyth picked up the narrative thread, pleased that Scagnelli had caught on to the con game. Despite Scagnelli having botched the snatch of Mark, Forsyth might yet have to give the man a bonus, assuming they survived this encounter. Of course, right after the bonus, he’d probably have to fire him. Or silence him another way. Scagnelli was good, but there were dozens of Scagnellis out there, and all of them would be only too happy to eliminate their failed predecessor as on-the-job training.

  “Senator Burchfield obviously wants to tear down the Monkey House once and for all,” Forsyth said.

  “I know, and he wanted to bury us monkeys along with it,” Mark said.

  “He’s none too happy that CRO started this back up again,” Forsyth continued, deliberately overlooking the senator’s threats to kill the trial subjects a year ago. “And he’s worried that CRO will back one of the other candidates. He may lose his health-committee chair if he gets the nomination, and they’ll be looking for stronger allies who’ll introduce their legislation.”

  “I used to write that legislation, remember?” Mark said. “You don’t have to preach to me about the corporations running the country. I don’t trust CRO and I don’t trust you.”

  Apparently Seethe had infected him with a special brand of paranoia. Forsyth still vividly recalled his own journey through hell after exposure to the drug. It had left him on his knees and praying for deliverance, certain he was in Satan’s grip. And he had a calling to inflict that hell on others.

  “None of us can afford to let the word get out,” Forsyth said. “Especially your wife.”

  Mark gripped his forehead as if fighting off a migraine or mild seizure. If Forsyth were a man of action, he would have taken the opportunity to dive for the gun. But Forsyth was sixty-five, and he trusted his brains more than his muscles.

  “If you kill us, there will be a major investigation,” Forsyth said. “Your wife and I served on the president’s bioethics council together, and you and I are both connected to CRO. It wouldn’t take long for enough of the truth to come out. And you know what your wife did.”

  “She didn’t kill anybody!” Mark’s outburst echoed through the empty house.

  “Of course not,” Forsyth said. “But we know easily they can fabricate evidence.”

  “And she isn’t developing Halcyon and Seethe for CRO. She’s not like Briggs.”

  Forsyth had come to believe Briggs and Dr. Morgan were very much alike, because he understood the ambitions of each. But they both shared the moral weakness of serving science instead of the Lord, and so were destined to fail. But Satan’s work could inflict a lot of suffering before the final redemption.

  The trick was in making the Archangel’s sword look like the devil’s tool.

  “We want to protect her from CRO, Mark,” Forsyth said. “And we want to protect you from her.”

  “I don’t need any protection.”

  Scagnelli made a feeble attempt to rise, but Mark stabbed the gun toward him. “For the record, I don’t like cheese on my pizza.”

  He stormed past Forsyth, bumping into his shoulder hard enough to hurt.

  “They’re watching you, Mark,” Forsyth called after him. “We can help.”

  After the front door slammed, Scagnelli lifted one hand, dangling the electrical cord he had worked free. “I could have jumped him and wrung his scrawny little neck,” Scagnelli said. “But I figured you need him alive.”

  “For now,” Forsyth said. “Only for now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When Alexis found the house empty, her first realization was t
hat she had nowhere to turn.

  The wall of secrecy she’d built, and the fear of failure, had isolated her more than she’d let herself believe. She’d carried on with her regular research work and her teaching duties, but she’d become so obsessed with cracking Seethe and saving Mark that she’d created yet another Monkey House.

  And it was the house in which she was standing, the one she shared with her husband. The relics of a past life that decorated the living room-degrees, awards, golfing trophies, photographs of happier times-served to mock her now. She couldn’t go to the police, she couldn’t trust the government, and she couldn’t even count on the one person she’d vowed to keep no secrets from.

  Because their life together was a lie.

  She didn’t bother trying his cell phone, because it was on the couch, the silent TV flickering with last night’s sports highlights. The BLET car he’d taken was still in the driveway, and she wondered if he’d been arrested for taking the college’s property.

  No. Someone would have called.

  Maybe the same person who threatened to kill me.

  When her own cell launched into its “We Can Work It Out” ringtone, she fumbled it from her purse with held breath. The number was blocked, but that didn’t matter. “Mark?”

  There was no answer for a moment, and Alexis paced the living room, ruminating on places Mark might have walked, or who might have picked him up. But she couldn’t imagine him leaving his phone while they were both under surveillance.

  “Mark?” she repeated, going to the living room closet.

  “Lex?”

  She couldn’t place the voice at first, and images flickered through her mind-Sebastian looking down at the hole in his chest, Mark’s bloody sneer, Roland holding a gun-before her whisper seemed to fill the house. “Wendy?”

  “We’re in trouble.”

  Alexis opened the closet and felt along the top shelf. No gun. “I know,” she said, but she didn’t know how many people the “we” included.

  “They’re listening.”

  Of course they are. That’s what they do. It doesn’t matter if you e-mail, phone, or send by postal carrier, they get you whenever they want.