A Perfect Life

by Mike Stewart

  Scott wondered briefly whether the two teens would get to keep his twenty.

  He reached over to make sure the passenger door was locked, checked his gas gauge, and pointed the headlights toward Cambridge.

  CHAPTER 18

  Charles Hunter's ten-year-old daughter, Sarah, dangled her feet from a plastic chair in one of the hundreds of identical, impersonal waiting areas at Logan International Airport. She wore jeans and an Old Navy sweatshirt. On the empty chair to her left lay a folded, light blue topcoat with a faux fur collar. The coat was her favorite.

  Sarah watched everything. CNN rattled out of a television monitor over her head. Outside, on the other side of huge sheets of plate glass, men in ear protectors and dirty coats waved at jumbo jets with orange-capped flashlights; tiny wagon trains of luggage wound through a crisscross maze of yellow lights that cut the tarmac into vague geometric shapes. Across from her, a fat man with a beard drooled in his sleep, which struck Sarah as kind of funny and disgusting at the same time.

  Sarah loved “people watching”—that's what her mother, her real mother, Jennie, had called it. She loved it, but now her stomach hurt from missing lunch. Sarah couldn't move, though. It was her job to guard the bags. Kate had made that clear. It was Sarah's job to make sure nothing happened to their bags. I can eat when Kate gets back. It was becoming a silent mantra. I can eat when Kate gets back.

  Kate Billings had picked up Sarah from school at noon. Kate never ate lunch, and it had never occurred to her to ask whether Sarah was hungry; Kate had too much to do to think of such things. The call from Charles—the one she'd been waiting for, the one telling her to come to the island and be a small part of the architect's new life—had come just the night before.

  At the hospital that morning, Kate had turned in her resignation and taken accumulated leave to cover the required two weeks' notice. Now she stood at an open phone booth, trying to reach Scott Thomas for the fourth time that afternoon. Kate needed to say good-bye so things wouldn't get strange. She had left a message on his machine, telling him that she was leaving, that Mrs. Hunter's death was just too upsetting. But that wasn't enough. Their good-byes should have been in person. That was impossible now.

  Kate dropped the receiver into its chrome cradle and counted to ten. As she started punching in numbers again, somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if Sarah was old enough to be left alone in an airport like that. A busy signal beeped through the earpiece, interrupting her thoughts. Kate slammed down the receiver, hard. A triangle of plastic flew off the front of the pay phone, and people began to stare at the beautiful woman having a mini-tantrum.

  As Kate navigated the jumbled mass of hurried travelers on her way to find Sarah, it occurred to her that she needed to eat something. Kate hesitated outside a Wall Street Deli and almost went in, then the thought entered her mind that maybe Sarah was hungry, too.

  Kate sighed and walked to the gate to collect Charles's little girl for dinner. Thinking of Sarah's needs was something she was going to have to get used to.

  Cambridge looked like a place imagined after the trip through south Boston. Smooth streets, clipped hedges, and rows of well-kept houses. Scott turned into the drive on Welder Avenue, parked in back, and stepped out onto herringbone-pattern brick that shone wet in the moonlight.

  The fog of his breath preceded him up the wooden steps to his front door. Inside, he flipped on the overhead light. His apartment was trashed. He knew it had been trashed. He knew he hadn't made much of an effort to set it straight; yet still he was shocked, the way you can be shocked by a dying friend's appearance even if you think you're prepared.

  He glanced at his watch. Just past eight. Too early for bed. He tugged off his coat, tossed it onto the shredded sofa, and bent down to pick up a mangled copy of Civilization and Its Discontents—one of the last books Freud wrote before his death, it was an exploration of the conflict between the egotistical individual and society's pressure to inhibit instinctual drives. Nothing but a cheap paperback—its spine torn—now permanently opened to page eleven. Scott let his finger trace an underlined quotation Freud had lifted from Hannibal: “We cannot fall out of this world.”

  The door creaked open behind him. “Scott?”

  Scott spun to face the door.

  “Whoa.” His landlord, Steve Ashton, held up both palms. “It's just me.” A physically distinguished man, Ashton always looked like he'd just stepped out of the clubhouse at Augusta National. Now worry creased his deep snow tan. He surveyed the room with a landlord's eye. “What's happened here?”

  “Couple of guys broke in the other night.”

  The older man nodded. He knew about the break-in. “They do all this?”

  Scott nodded.

  Ashton stepped farther into the room. “We can't have this, Scott.”

  It had been a long day. Scott said, “You think I'm happy about it?”

  The older man's eyes flashed. “I think you should begin looking for another apartment.” Scott started to speak, and Ashton held up a palm. He said one more word before leaving. “Tomorrow.”

  It was just past noon when Scott parked against the curb outside Budzik's warehouse. In daylight, the neighborhood was a different place. Transfer trucks rumbled up and down pockmarked pavement, occasionally pausing to back into a loading dock or stop at curbside to be loaded by workers in knit caps and down coats.

  Scott stepped out and circled around to the warehouse entrance, where he picked a buzzer and pressed. The door buzzed open, and he pushed through.

  When the elevator door opened onto Budzik's white foyer, the metal door was already open. An attractive twenty-something woman stood in the doorway.

  “Is Budzik in?”

  She smiled a welcoming, Junior League smile. “Of course. Are you Mr. Thomas?”

  He nodded. “Scott.”

  “Wonderful.” She beamed. “Please come in.”

  Scott walked through the door and stopped.

  His hostess carefully closed the heavy door and then walked over to offer her hand. “I'm Cindy Travers. I live here with Peter.”

  Scott shook the tiny hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Cindy stood looking at her guest, as if she expected something from him. Scott looked back. Finally she said, “Peter is busy in his lab. You can go up if you'd like.”

  “Okay.”

  She led the way to a set of stairs. “One flight up.” She paused. “Oh. I'm sorry. Can I offer you anything? I've just put on a pot of tea.”

  “No. Thank you. I really just need to talk to Peter.”

  “Of course. Well, just call out if you need anything.”

  Budzik's lab occupied the entire fourth floor of the warehouse. Here, there were no movable panels. Just bare brick walls, a dozen stainless steel tables with black rubber mats, and, everywhere, computers and computer screens, printers and keyboards. Scattered among the recognizable components were various metal boxes with gauges and knobs.

  Budzik sat in a designer chair, his narrow shoulders hunched over a keyboard, his huge glasses reflecting lines of code from the computer screen before him.

  Scott cleared his throat. “Find anything useful?”

  Budzik glanced back. “Interesting stuff.”

  Scott shrugged. “The porn on that disk isn't mine. I tried to tell you—”

  “Screw the porn. I don't care about that. I'm talking about you murdering your whole family when you were ten. I mean, I may be a bad guy, but you were a frigging prodigy.”

  “My family died in a house fire. It wasn't anybody's fault.” It was a practiced line that rang false even to his ears.

  Budzik spun in his chair to face the screen. He closed the coding program and opened a web page. “This is your very own page on a site called ‘The Ones Who Got Away dot com.'” He pointed to a school photo of a young boy. “You were a nice-looking kid. No wonder they let you go.”

  Scott tried again. “It was a fire . . .”

  Budzik's voice tu
rned shrill. “I know it was a fire, you moron! Everybody knows it was a fire. What we're discussing is who set the frigging fire.” Budzik was breathing hard; Scott was hardly breathing at all. Without looking up, the hacker said, “Better sit down. You look like shit.”

  The world floated by as Scott moved across the room. His hand found the back of a gray chair on casters. He pulled it near Budzik and sat. His eyes moved to the computer screen. “Who would do something like this?”

  Budzik shrugged. “That would be somebody who, one, needed a hobby and, two, decided to ruin your life.”

  “But it's not true.”

  The hacker pushed away from the computer. He laced his fingers behind his head and crossed his legs. He smiled. “I know.”

  Scott was in sensory overload. It took a few seconds to process the words. “What? You said you know it's not true?”

  Nervous, happy energy wiggled the hacker's foot. “I should clarify. For all I know, you fried your parents and younger brother . . . What was his name, by the way?”

  Scott glared at the hacker. “Bobby.” He spoke the name like a challenge. “My brother was named Bobby.”

  “Well, for all I know you burned Mom, Dad, and little Bobby alive and enjoyed every second of it. I don't know about that. What I do know”—he pointed to the screen—“is that this site is bullshit. Most of it cobbled together from other web sites about killers and capital punishment, stuff like that. Only your page is original to the web-site designer.”

  “How can you . . . ?”

  “Shut your hole and listen.”

  Scott leaned back and tried to control growing irritation. “I'm listening.”

  “How kind of you. Try not to interrupt again.” The geek was bullying the jock, and enjoying every second of it. He continued. “Reconstituting your hard drive took ten minutes. This”—he motioned at the web page—“turned up a few seconds later. What took a little time was downloading the page and checking the code. I also had to run some searches to find where most of this came from. But the bottom line, as far as you're concerned, is that someone is defecating heavily onto your life.” He motioned at the screen again with his free hand. “This is all brand new, by the way. Put together in just the last few days. Also, in case you didn't know it, you are a dues-paying member of some of the nastiest porno sites on the Web.”

  Scott stood. Budzik glared at him. “Sit back down.”

  He'd had enough. “No.” Scott motioned at the screen. “If I pay you, can you wipe all this out and keep it from coming back?”

  The little man shook his head. “Wipe it out? Yes. Keep it from coming back? Nobody can do that. Well, if you can get to the web designer who did it—and to whoever hired the designer—then, yeah, you could stop it.”

  Scott reread the account of how he allegedly torched his family. “So, can you tell me who put the site together? Can you run some kind of trace or something?”

  Budzik smiled. “Cost you five grand.”

  Scott hesitated to do some mental math. “I could give you two.”

  Now Budzik laughed. “I can give you the man or woman who's ruining your life, and you're trying to get a bargain? Fuck off. I don't need the aggravation.”

  Scott forced his eyes away from the screen. “Okay. Five thousand dollars.”

  “Uh-uh. Too late. You irritated me. Now it's fifty-five hundred.”

  He studied the little bald hacker—a pencil-necked geek who liked to talk tough, who needed desperately to feel like more of a man than he believed himself to be. The price would rise until Budzik convinced himself that he'd completely dominated the Harvard jock.

  Scott nodded. “Done. When will you have the name?”

  “It won't take long, not for me. Tell you what. Give me twenty-four hours. Put the money in my hand tomorrow night, and you'll get the name of the web designer. Probably can get the street address, too. Whatever you need.”

  Scott started for the door. “I'll bring the money tomorrow.”

  “Hold on a minute.” Budzik stood. “How'd you like my girlfriend?”

  “She seemed very nice.”

  “Too nice for me, huh?”

  Scott could tell he was expected to agree. “Yes. She is.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, Scott. That little girl is the sister of my student who killed herself.”

  Scott glared at the hacker. “You mean the one you drove to suicide?”

  Budzik smiled. “That's the one. And that little lady downstairs—who knows all about what I did to her sister—will happily do anything I tell her to. Anything.”

  “What's your point?”

  “There are no good people, Scott.” He motioned at a window, as if to indicate everyone except the two of them. “They're all just walking meat sticks with competing neuroses.”

  Scott studied Budzik's smiling face. He said, “Bullshit,” then descended the steps and left the building.

  Lieutenant Cedris, along with two uniformed officers, secured the country house while three other policemen hooked a chain to the downed pine blocking the driveway. A motor roared. Minutes later, the sound of chains being stowed rattled in the afternoon air, and two patrol cars crunched onto frozen ground at the front of the house. Swirling red and blue lights washed the winter landscape.

  Cedris mounted the front porch. “Thomas! Scott Thomas! This is the police. We have a warrant to search this residence.” The lieutenant stood to one side and nodded at a policeman who held a thick, four-foot length of cast iron by rubber handles. The officer approached the door, took a practice swing for momentum, then smashed the door open.

  Cedris and another officer rushed into the dark house.

  The gray afternoon exploded with yellow light. Flames erupted out of the roof and flowed down the sides of the house like syrup over pancakes. Men screamed and rushed inside to save others, only to be pushed back out by the flames. A window shattered. Cedris and the other policemen dove out onto frozen ground, where they rolled and scrambled clear of the heat and flames.

  All the while—standing inside the cover of thick timber a hundred yards away—a man in a stocking cap stood and watched. Even at that distance, yellow flames highlighted shiny skin drawn tight across misshapen features.

  The young man stood silently for several minutes; then he picked up an empty gas can, turned his back on the screaming police officers, and walked into the woods.

  CHAPTER 19

  Lights burned inside the Ashton home when Scott turned into the driveway. As he rounded the main house, a jumbled stack of pasteboard boxes blocked his path. He cut the engine and stepped out, leaving the headlights on to illuminate the makeshift blockade.

  The boxes were labeled in black marker. SCOTT THOMAS—BOOKS. All bore his name. One read LINENS, others COMPUTER, STEREO, and CLOTHES. He stopped to look at the Ashtons' big house, then mounted the wooden steps to what had been his garage apartment. An envelope was taped to the door; a new brass dead bolt shone in the moonlight. Scott pulled the envelope free and angled the folded paper to read by the moon's reflection.

  Mrs. Ashton had used the security deposit to rent a storage unit in his name. A van would pick up the boxes the next morning.

  Nice people. Thoughtful.

  Scott descended the steps—his legs aching, his thoughts quietened by a soft buzz that filled his head. He walked down the driveway, cut across the front lawn, and stepped onto the Ashtons' portico. A television deep inside the house scattered muffled voices into the early evening.

  He rang the bell. No one answered. Scott wanted to apologize for upsetting his landlords' lives, but no one wanted to hear it.

  He walked back to the boxes, tossed the ones marked CLOTHES and COMPUTER into his Land Cruiser, and then rummaged until he found his answering machine, which he dropped into a box with his computer.

  The four-by-four cranked. He backed out onto Welder Avenue, yanked the gearshift into first, and pulled away.

  With a stomach full of free “continental breakf
ast”—grapes, stale cinnamon rolls, and coffee—Scott returned to the bleak motel room where he had tossed all night. He spent the better part of an hour unpacking and then hooked up his computer. He opened Microsoft Outlook, found the number of his trust officer in Birmingham, and grabbed a grimy pastel phone. Seconds later, a secretary passed him through to John Pastings.

  “Scott?”

  “Mr. Pastings? Yes. Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Scott. Haven't heard from you in months. How are things up there at Harvard? Uh, doing well, I'm sure.”

  “Not that well, to tell you the truth. That's why I'm calling. I need to know how much I have in my trust account.”

  The banker let the earpiece fill with static before answering. “Of course. You're over twenty-one now, Scott. The money's all yours to do with as you please. But if I could . . .”

  “I need a total, Mr. Pastings.”

  “Right. I'm pulling that up now.” The patter of computer keys sounded in the background. “Market's not the best it's ever been, Scott. Would have been more a few years ago.”

  “Mr. Pastings . . .”

  “Right. Okay. Here it is. As of close of business yesterday, your balance stood at twenty-nine thousand, three hundred eleven dollars, and eighty-two cents.”

  “It should be twice that.”

  “Like I said, the market . . .” The old banker stumbled. “Well, look here. We're showing thirty thousand withdrawn last week. Like I said, you're over twenty-one and the money's yours, but—”

  “I'm twenty-five, Mr. Pastings, and I haven't withdrawn any money.”

  “I'm sorry. What?”

  “I didn't withdraw any money last week.”

  “Well, ah, ah, ah. Here it is. A computer withdrawal of thirty thousand dollars a week ago today. Hold on.” The tapping of computer keys sounded in Scott's earpiece. “I have a bank routing code and an account number here.” The old man rattled off the numbers as Scott jotted them on motel stationery.