Last Man Standing

by David Baldacci

  “Good for you.” Web cracked his knuckles and looked at her expectantly.

  “You didn’t mention in our initial interview that your stepfather, Raymond Stockton, died from a fall in the house when you were fifteen.”

  “Didn’t I? Huh, I thought I did. But you didn’t take notes, so you have no way of checking, do you?”

  “Trust me, Web, I would’ve remembered that. You also told me you got along with your stepfather, didn’t you?” She looked down at the papers.

  Web felt his heart rate accelerate and his ears burn. Her interrogation technique was classic. She had baselined him and had just now jerked his chain using a five-hundred-pound gorilla for added leverage. “We had some differences, who doesn’t?”

  “There are page after page of assault claims in here. Some filed by neighbors, some by you. All against Raymond Stockton. Is that what you refer to as ‘some differences’?” He flushed angrily and she quickly added, “I’m not being sarcastic, I just want to try and understand your relationship with the man.”

  “There’s nothing to understand because we didn’t have a relationship.”

  Claire consulted her notes again, flipping back and forth, and Web watched every movement with growing anxiety.

  “Is the house that your mother left you the same one where Stockton died?” Web didn’t say anything. “Web? Is it the same—”

  “I heard you!” he snapped. “Yeah, it’s the same one, so what?”

  “I was just asking. So, do you think you’re going to sell it?”

  “Why do you care? Do you do real estate on the side?”

  “I’m just getting a sense that you seem to have issues about the house.”

  “It wasn’t a real nice place to have a childhood.”

  “I understand that completely, but often to get better and move on you must confront your fears head-on.”

  “There’s nothing in that house I need to confront.”

  “Why don’t we talk about it some more?”

  “Look, Claire, this is getting pretty far afield, isn’t it? I came to you because my team got blown away and it’s messed me up. Let’s stick to that! Forget the past. Forget the house and let’s just forget fathers. They’ve got nothing to do with me or who I am.”

  “On the contrary, they have a great deal to do with who you are. Without understanding your past I can’t help with your present or your future. It’s that simple.”

  “Why don’t you give me some damn pills and we’ll call it a day, okay? That way the Bureau’s satisfied that I did my little mind massage and you did your job.”

  Claire shook her head. “I don’t work that way, Web. I want to help you. I think I can help you. But you have to work with me. I can’t compromise on that.”

  “I thought you said I had combat syndrome or something. What does that have to do with my stepfather?”

  “We merely talked about that being one possibility for what happened to you in that alley. I didn’t say that it was the only possibility. We need to thoroughly explore all angles if we’re to really address your issues.”

  “Issues—you make it sound so simple. Like I’m moping about having acne.”

  “We can use another term if you prefer, but it really won’t affect how we approach the problems.”

  Web covered his face with his hands and then spoke through this shield. “What the hell exactly do you want from me?”

  “Honesty, to the extent you can give it. And I think you can, if you really try. You have to trust me, Web.”

  Web removed his hands. “Okay, here’s the truth. Stockton was a creep. Pills and a boozer. He never got past the sixties, apparently. He held some low-level office job where he got to wear a suit to work and fancied himself another Dylan Thomas on his off-hours.”

  “So what you’re telling me is he was some sort of frustrated dreamer, perhaps even a phony?”

  “He wanted to be more of an intellectual and more talented than my mother, and he wasn’t, not by miles. His poetry was for shit; he never got anything published. The only thing he had in common with old Dylan was the fact that he drank too much. I guess he thought the bottle would inspire him.”

  “So he beat your mother?” She tapped the file.

  “Is that what it says in the file?”

  “Actually, what it doesn’t say in the file is even more interesting. Your mother never filed charges against Stockton.”

  “Well, I guess we have to believe the record, then.”

  “Did he beat your mother?” she asked again, and once more Web didn’t answer. “Or did he just beat you?” Web slowly lifted his gaze to her, yet still said nothing. “So just you? And your mother let this occur?”

  “Charlotte wasn’t around a lot. She’d made a mistake in marrying this guy. She knew it, so she avoided it.”

  “I see. I guess divorce wasn’t an option.”

  “She’d done that once. I don’t think she felt like bothering with it again. It was easier just to drive off into the night.”

  “And she left you with a man who she knew abused you? And how did that make you feel?”

  Web said nothing.

  “Did you ever talk to her about it? To let her know how it made you feel?”

  “Wouldn’t have done any good. To her, the guy never existed.”

  “Meaning she repressed the memory?”

  “Meaning whatever the hell you want it to mean. We never talked about it.”

  “Were you home when your stepfather died?”

  “Maybe, I don’t really remember. I’ve sort of repressed it too.”

  “The file just said your stepfather fell. How did he fall?”

  “From the top of the attic stairs. He kept his secret stash of mind goodies up in the attic. He was wigged out, missed a step, cracked his head on the edge of the opening going down and broke his neck when he hit the floor. The police investigated and it was ruled an accidental death.”

  “Was your mother home when it happened, or had she gone out on one of her drives?”

  “What, are you pretending you’re an FBI agent now?”

  “Just trying to understand the situation.”

  “Charlotte was home. She was the one who called the ambulance. But like I said, he was already dead.”

  “Have you always called your mother by her first name?”

  “Seems appropriate.”

  “I imagine you had to feel relief at Stockton’s death.”

  “Let’s put it this way, I didn’t cry at the funeral.”

  Claire leaned forward and spoke in a very low voice. “Web, this next question is going to be very difficult, and if you don’t want to answer it now, fine. But in instances of parental abuse, I have to address it.”

  Web held up both hands. “He never touched my private parts, and he never made me touch his private parts, okay? Nothing like that. They asked back then and I told the truth back then. The guy wasn’t a molester. He was just a cruel, sadistic asshole who made up for a lifetime of insecurities and disappointments by beating the shit out of a boy. If he had messed with me like that, I would’ve found a way to kill him myself.” Web realized what he had just said and hastily added, “But the guy saved everybody the trouble by taking his tumble.”

  Claire sat back and put aside the file. This small measure relieved Web’s anxiety somewhat and he sat up. She said, “You obviously remember your time with your stepfather and loathed it for good reason. Have you thought more about any memories with your natural father?”

  “Fathers are fathers.”

  “Meaning what, you lump your real father and Raymond Stockton together?”

  “Saves the trouble of thinking about it too much, doesn’t it?”

  “The easy way out usually solves nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin, Claire, I really wouldn’t.”

  “All right, let’s go back to the courtyard for a bit. I know it’ll be painful, but let’s go through it again.”

 

; Web did so and it was painful.

  “All right, the first group of people you met, you don’t remember that having any sort of effect on you?”

  “Nothing other than wondering if one of them would try to kill us or tip somebody off, but I knew the snipers had them covered. So other than the potential of instant death, everything was cool.”

  If she was put off by his sarcasm, the woman didn’t show it. That actually impressed Web.

  “All right, in your mind’s eye, picture the little boy. Do you remember any better exactly what he said?”

  “Is that really important?”

  “At this stage we really don’t know what’s important and what’s not.”

  Web sighed heavily and said, “Okay. I saw the kid. He looked at us. He said . . .” Web stopped here because he could see Kevin clearly in his mind. The bullet hole in his cheek, the slash across his forehead, he was a little wreck of a kid who had obviously already lived a long, crappy life. “He said . . . he said, ‘Damn to hell,’ that’s what he said.” He looked at her excitedly. “That’s it. Oh, and then he laughed. I mean, this really weird laugh, like a cackle, really.”

  “At which part did you feel affected?”

  Web thought about this. “I’d have to say when he first spoke. I mean, it was like this fog pushed into my brain.” Web added, “‘Damn to hell,’ that’s exactly what he said. It’s happening again, I can feel my fingers tingling. This is nuts.”

  Claire wrote some notes down and then looked at him. “That’s pretty unusual for a young boy to use that phraseology, especially from the inner city. Certainly ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ would be used, but ‘damn to hell’? I mean, it sounds sort of archaic, like from another era. Maybe Puritanical, fire and brimstone. What do you think about that?”

  “To me it sounds like from the Civil War or around that time, actually,” said Web.

  “It’s all very strange.”

  “Trust me, Claire, the whole night was strange.”

  “Did you feel anything else?”

  Web thought hard. “We were waiting for final orders to hit the target. Then we got them.” He shook his head. “As soon as I heard the orders in my earpiece, I froze. It was immediate. You remember I was telling you about the Taser guns we messed around with at HRT?” She nodded. “Well, it was like I’d been hit with one of those electrified darts. I couldn’t move.”

  “Could someone have actually shot you with a Taser gun in the alley? Could that be why you froze?”

  “Impossible. No one was that close, and the dart wouldn’t have penetrated my Kevlar. And last but not least, the thing would’ve still been sticking in me, right?”

  “Right.” Claire made more notes and said, “Now, you stated before that even though you froze, you were able to actually get up and move into the courtyard.”

  “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, Claire. It was like I weighed two thousand pounds, nothing on me was working right. And it finally won and I just fell and stayed there. And then the guns started up.”

  “When did you start to recover?”

  Web thought about this. “It felt like years where I couldn’t move. But it wasn’t all that long. Right when the guns started firing, I felt everything start to come back. I could move my arms and legs, and they were burning like hell, like when your arm or leg falls asleep and the circulation starts going again? That’s what my limbs felt like. And it wasn’t like I needed them at that point, I pretty much had nowhere to go.”

  “So it just came back on its own? You don’t remember doing something that might have paralyzed you? Maybe a back problem suffered in training? Have you ever had any nerve damage? That could immobilize you too.”

  “Nothing like that. If you’re not in top-notch condition, you don’t go on an operation.”

  “So you heard the guns firing and the feeling started to come back to your body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The kid, I’d seen a million just like him. And yet he seemed different. I couldn’t get him out of my head. It wasn’t just that he’d been shot, I’ve seen kids like that too. I don’t know. While the guns were firing I saw him again. He was crouched down next to the alley. Another step and he’d have been cut in half. I screamed for him to get back. I belly-crawled over to him. I could tell he was scared to death. He heard Hotel Team coming from one end, me from the other, these damn guns firing. And I could tell he was going to run for it, across the courtyard, and that’d be it. I just couldn’t let that happen, Claire. So many people had already died that night. He jumped and I jumped and I caught him, got him calmed down because he was yelling that he hadn’t done anything, and of course when a kid says that you know he’s hiding something.

  “Like I said, I got him calmed down. He asked if my team was dead and I told him yes. I gave him the note and my cap and shot the flare. I knew that was the only way Hotel wouldn’t kill him coming at them in the dark. I just didn’t want him to die, Claire.”

  “It must have been an awful night for you, but, Web, you should feel good about saving him.”

  “Should I? What did I save him for? To go back to the streets? See, this is a special little kid. He’s got a brother named Big F who runs one of the local drug ops. He’s bad news.”

  “So maybe all this could involve some of this Big F person’s enemies?”

  “Maybe.” He paused and decided whether to reveal this or not. “Somebody switched kids. In the alley.”

  “Switched kids? What do you mean?”

  “I mean the Kevin Westbrook that I saved in that alley was not the boy that delivered the note to Hotel Team. And the little boy that disappeared from the crime scene was not the Kevin Westbrook I saved.”

  “Why would somebody do that?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and it’s driving me nuts. What I do know is I saved Kevin Westbrook’s butt in that courtyard and the kid he was switched for told Hotel Team that I was this big coward. Why would he do that?”

  “Sounds like he was almost trying to intentionally discredit you.”

  “A kid I didn’t even know?” Web shook his head. “Somebody was trying to make me look bad, that’s for sure, and must have told the kid just what to say. And then they waltzed right in and waltzed out with the fake kid. He’s probably dead. Hell, Kevin’s probably dead.”

  “Sounds like somebody put a lot of planning into this,” said Claire.

  “And I’d love to know why.”

  “We can only try, Web. I can help you with some of it, but the investigation part is way out of my bailiwick.”

  “It actually may be out of my league too. I haven’t really been doing much detecting over the last eight years.” He played with a ring on his finger. “O’Bannon gave me a little pep talk on combat syndrome when I came into the office this morning.”

  Claire hiked her eyebrows. “Oh, did he? His Vietnam angle?” She seemed to be trying hard not to smile.

  “I didn’t think it was the first time he’d used that line. But is that what you think it is—I mean, despite this other stuff with the kid?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Web, not yet.”

  “See, I know soldiers get that way. Folks shooting at them and they freak. Everybody can understand that.”

  She eyed him closely. “But?”

  He started talking very quickly. “But most soldiers get a little boot camp and then they’re thrown into the firestorm. They know nothing about killing somebody. They know nothing about what it’s like to be in the line of fire for real. Me, I’ve trained most of my adult life to do this job. I’ve had stuff coming at me that you wouldn’t believe, Claire. From machine gun fire to frigging mortar rounds that if they hit me there’d be nothing left of me. I’ve managed to kill men with most of the blood in my body pooling on the floor. And never once, not one damn time, did I ever lose it like I did that night. And there hadn’t even been one damn shot fired at that point. Tell me, how the hell is that possible?”

  “Web, I know that you’re looking for answers. We have to keep plugging. But I can tell you that when we’re dealing with the mind, anything is possible.”

  He stared at her, shaking his head and wondering where the hell he could get off whatever road he was on. “Well, Doc, that’s not a -->