The Best Revenge

by Stephen White

  “These?” The man’s voice was oddly hollow behind the dark visor. “Growing a little wary, Tom? Paranoia setting in? These are just supplies I need for the lessons. The fear lessons.”

  “ ’ear lessons.” He stepped back a solitary step. After looking over his shoulder to see how close he was to the chain-link, he stepped back once more. “I know a’out ’ear. No ’ore lessons. ’lease.”

  “Drink, Tom. It’s just water in the bottle, I promise. If you don’t want it, just throw it back over. I don’t want to litter.”

  Tom leaned down and lifted the bottle from the dust. He examined the bottle to make certain the seal was intact.

  The man made atsk, tsk, tsk sound behind the dark visor. “You going to drink it or send it out for a lab analysis?”

  Tom unscrewed the cap. He smelled the contents before he raised it to his lips. He drained the entire bottle. He wanted more.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The man tossed a sealed foil bag over the fence. Tom examined it without lifting it. He had no idea what it was. As soon as he was done with the examination he returned his eyes to the two canvas sacks.

  The man said, “It’s high-energy food, Tom. A new thing called energy gel. High in carbs and proteins. Rip a corner off the bag and just suck it down. Don’t worry, it goes down good.”

  Tom read the small print on the bag for a few seconds, then did as his captor instructed.

  “I need you hydrated and nourished,” the man explained. “The lessons aren’t over. There’s always more to learn about fear.”

  “Girls,” Tom said.

  “Yes,” the man agreed. “Girls. Specifically, a girl.”

  Just then Tom thought he began to get it.

  “Oh shit,” he said. His adrenals cramped and squeezed and dumped their remaining bounty, and within seconds Tom knew all over again exactly what fear was.

  “Is it Joan?” he whimpered. The question roared in his head but little sound escaped his swollen lips.

  “What?” the man said. “I can’t hear you, Tom.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Kelda opened her mouth with so much reluctance that for a moment I felt not like a psychologist but like a dentist brandishing a gleaming hypodermic full of Novocain. She said, “Jones’s journal? The one I told you about that was with the things we picked up in Maui?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “A few years ago, I got a chance to read it.”

  “Yes,” I said. I thought,I bet it wasn’t pretty .

  “Someone was after her. That’s really why she went to Hawaii. To get away from him.”

  A pan-phobic woman writing in her diary about someone being after her,I thought.Now there’s a surprise. My frustration was only exceeded by my fatigue and hunger. I waited about ten seconds before I said, “The Cliffs Notes version won’t suffice, Kelda. I need to know what’s going on before I can decide how to help you.”

  She looked away, then back at me. “Okay. A guy she started dating after I left for Australia threatened her. And then he followed her to Hawaii when she moved. According to her journal his name was Tom Clone.”

  Oh boy.

  “She had just started seeing him when the news media began to link him with the murder of Ivy Campbell.”

  I thought,I bet that’s when she got spooked. Really spooked.

  Kelda continued. “For whatever reason, Jones was convinced that she was going to be his next victim. She felt . . . threatened. A week or two later, she got the offer to go join the co-op in Paia, and she went. For her to do that—to get on a plane by herself and go to Hawaii—she must have been seriously frightened.”

  “But he found her there?”

  “Yes. She wasn’t sure how he found her. But he did. He followed her over to Maui.”

  “This is all in her journal?”

  “Yes, it is. And he told her that she made him want to dance.”

  Tom had used the phrase with me once, describing Ivy. Or had it been describing Kelda? I wasn’t sure, though I was sure it wasn’t a coincidence that I was hearing it now from her. I said, “He did? That’s important?”

  “To me it is.”

  “Go on.”

  “What?”

  I waited. Godot never came.

  Finally, I said, “And you think that he killed her? That Tom Clone pushed Jones off that cliff?”

  “I go back and forth on that, actually. Some nights, I’m lying awake and I think he literally pushed her. Other nights, I think he just went there and scared her to death. That he figuratively pushed her. Either way . . .”

  Some reality testing seemed in order. Gently, I asked, “Why, Kelda? Why would he do that?”

  “She broke up with him. She left him. Just like what happened with Ivy Campbell.”

  I thought that it had been Tom who had broken up with Ivy, not the other way around. But I knew that arguing the facts with Kelda wasn’t the correct therapeutic move. This conversation wasn’t about facts. I said, “That’s it? She broke up with him?” I wanted Kelda to hear the fragility of the motive for murder she was proposing.

  “Yes.”

  “And you think he went to Hawaii to . . . ?” I let my uncasted hand float to express the lethal void at the end of the sentence. “And . . . you hold him responsible for her death?”

  “That’s not important.”

  It’s not?But I nodded, processing her denial.

  “It is quite a coincidence,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That all these years later, you turn out to be instrumental in getting him off death row for the first murder. The same guy who threatened your friend.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. Her eyes never wavered from mine. “It is quite a coincidence.”

  “Where do I come in?” I suspected that the answer was that I was supposed to be willing to be played for the fool. One of the many nice things about my friend Sam Purdy was that Sam never pretended to be squeezing my ass while he tried to pick my pocket. He just went right for my wallet.

  Kelda wasn’t being quite so straightforward. She was enticing me with the story about Tom Clone and Jones’s diary. That was hot breath in my ear. All she actually wanted to do was to rifle my files.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You referred Tom to me, Kelda. Why? If you hold him responsible for your friend’s death, why would you do that?”

  “I was half asleep when he asked for a name. I’ve regretted it ever since. I regret it right now, I guarantee you that.”

  “And you think it’s that simple? You were half asleep so you gave him my name?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her tone had become defiant. My impression was that she wasn’t particularly eager to entertain any alternative hypotheses, although I had come up with two or three without breaking a sweat.

  I tried a gentle confrontation. “I think you wanted me in the middle of this, whatever it is.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I’m not always wise enough to do that.

  “You want to know how you come in now, Alan? You can tell me whether you know where I can find him. That’s where you come in.”

  “Is he in danger?” I asked. If she told me he was, and I decided the threat was serious and imminent, all the rules about confidentiality changed. I assumed that Kelda, a law enforcement officer—albeit a federal one—knew that. I was eager to hear her response to my question, but tried not to show it.

  “Let’s just say I’m worried about him. Very worried. Will that suffice?”

  “Worried personally or professionally?”

  “Let’s just say . . . worried.”

  For the first time in days I felt a dull ache in my humerus. I curled my fingers around the end of the cast, but that didn’t change the pain.

  She shook her head in frustration and said, “You’re not going to tell me, are you? I’m just wasting my time here.”

  “You’re assuming I know somet
hing, Kelda. All this visit has assured me of is that I know much less than just about everybody else.”

  “That’s what this is about? You’re upset because everybody hasn’t shared their secrets with you? How petty.”

  Was that what it was all about?I hoped not. I said, “I’m sorry if you see it that way.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. I watched the muscles tighten in her jaw. Wearily, she demanded, “Just tell me. Where is he?”

  Almost involuntarily I shook my head. I asked, “How’s your pain right now, Kelda?”

  She said, “Fuck you,” and stood to leave.

  CHAPTER 39

  Kelda stood on the sidewalk outside Dr. Gregory’s office for a moment, feeling disoriented. She didn’t immediately recognize the keys that she held in her hand; she couldn’t even remember what kind of car she was driving.

  Her dead end had just become a brick wall.

  “Something else,” she said aloud. “Something else. What is my ‘something else’?”

  Behind her she heard someone say her name.

  With a name like Kelda, she didn’t even entertain the possibility that the person might be talking to someone besides her.

  CHAPTER 40

  I sat immobile on my chair, staring at the door she’d left open, half expecting her to return.

  She didn’t.

  I walked out to the waiting room and stood at the front window, my good hand in my trousers pocket, my casted arm hanging at its constantly useless angle. Kelda was standing on the sidewalk. A man in a gray business suit was walking toward her. His lips were moving.

  Concerned that she would spot me spying on her, I stepped back from the window. I sat at my desk for a few seconds, stood right back up, walked to the rear window, and immediately returned to the desk. I picked up the phone and punched in Sam Purdy’s number at the police department, expecting to hear the greeting from his voicemail. Instead, I listened as he said, “This is Purdy.”

  “Sam, it’s Alan. Hi.”

  “Hi, Alan.”

  “Listen, I only have a minute between patients, but I was wondering something. Have you found Tom Clone?”

  “No,” he said. I thought that there was some incongruous levity attached to the solitary word.

  “No sign of the Vespa?”

  Again Sam’s voice carried a little lilt as he said, “Turns out that there’re Vespas all over town. Did you know that? Some new trendoid thing that’s going on in Boulder. I see them all the time now that I know what they are. I just didn’t know what those whiny little things were called.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard they’re getting popular. But any sign of the grandfather’s Vespa in particular? The red one?”

  “No. No sign of it. Don’t get me wrong, we’re looking, but finding Tom Clone and the Vespa are not the most important things the Boulder Police Department is doing right now. Basically, that case is an unsolved assault on the elderly. It’s not a nice thing, but it’s not the end of the world from a law enforcement perspective. You know what I mean? We have rapes, we have unsolved murders, we have—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I understand. Life goes on.”

  After a few seconds of silence, my friend asked, “Have you heard from Tom Clone, Alan?”

  “Sorry, Sam.”

  “Sorry you can’t tell me? Or sorry you haven’t heard from him?”

  “Take your pick. I’m sorry about a lot of things these days.”

  “You know, you don’t sound too good.” His voice had softened. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Nothing . . . nothing. I was just curious about your progress with the investigation. Thought I’d call and see how everything was going.”

  “Middle of the afternoon and you just have this undeniable urge to know where Clone is? You really want to think your public servants are goofy enough to believe that? That’s what I’m supposed to believe?”

  “Yes, Sam. That’s exactly what I would like you to believe.”

  I heard him sigh before he said, “You know, I might actually be tempted to go along with you if you were the first person to call me this afternoon trying to find Tom Clone. But since you aren’t, I’m a little more suspicious than usual.”

  “Who else called?”

  He laughed. “You think I’m going to tell you that? Though it probably doesn’t matter whether I do or I don’t. I think you already know the answer.”

  Kelda,I thought.God, she called Sam trying to find Tom. What the hell is going on?

  Sam said, “If you have another minute or two before your next victim shows up, maybe we could talk a little more about that Fed you never seem to want to talk about. Remember her? The one I told you about who alibied Clone? We could do that. After we have that conversation, I fervently believe that both of us would feel better.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Alan, you still there? I don’t hear you. Are we breaking up? Are you on a cell phone or something?”

  “I’m, uh . . . I’m, uh . . . Oh shit, Sam. I don’t know what the hell I am.”

  He chuckled. “Why don’t you call me sometime when you’re in a better mood,” he said, and he hung up the phone.

  I wanted to hit redial and tell Sam about Jones and Paia and Kelda and the fact that everybody seemed to want to know where Tom Clone was.

  I wanted to but I couldn’t.

  Right at that moment I hated the work I did.

  CHAPTER 41

  Politically, Colorado is a bastion of western conservatism. As a result, the vast majority of Coloradans view the decidedly less-than-conservative city of Boulder either as an amusing curiosity or, less benignly, as an irritating oddity. For many of the state’s residents, Boulder is too idiosyncratic, too idealistic, too liberal, too pretty, too different, and too weird.

  And, ironically enough, that is almost exactly how the majority of Boulder residents view the little town of Ward.

  Although it is within the high western boundary of Boulder County—barely, some would point out—Ward, Colorado, attracts a different breed of residents than most of the county’s mountain towns. Many people have been lured to Ward over the years by its laissez-faire reputation, its spectacular but isolated location high in the eastern shadows of the Continental Divide, and by its defiant municipal independence. Although many have been lured to attempt to live in Ward, the process of natural selection routinely whittles down the population to a manageable number. The rigors associated with spending Rocky Mountain winters in an infrastructurally challenged, socioeconomically marginal community at an elevation well in excess of nine thousand feet rapidly separate the hardy from the foolhardy.

  The combination of isolation and altitude ensures that for nine months a year life isn’t easy in Ward, but its residents tend to be the kind of people who would find life intolerable almost anyplace else.

  Founded in 1860 by Calvin Ward, who was drawn to the area by its rich veins of minerals, the town has endured the collapse of its mining backbone, the evaporation of its brief status as a tourist mecca, the departure of its only railroad, and two devastating fires, which some locals still argue were actually arsons instigated by envious folk from down the road in Central City. The Ward that has survived these trials is an anachronistic village that is still housed in many of the frame or stone buildings that somehow escaped the last of the big fires at the end of the nineteenth century.

  Remove a few of the newer structures, cut down some utility poles, and cart away the rusting hulks of a few hundred abandoned motorized vehicles of all descriptions, and it wouldn’t take much else to make Ward appear something as it did a hundred years earlier. The mine tailings that sit above town look just as they did in photos from the 1890s, a series of unbroken rust-colored waves frozen in ominous time above the village.

  Ward is a town where self-sufficiency and independence are prized and a generous dose of tolerance isn’t questioned; it’s assumed.

  If the town of Ward were the type of place
that cared to have a motto—which it isn’t—its motto might well be “Leave Us Fucking Alone.”

  Living in Park County fifty miles due south of Boulder County, Fred Prehost was accustomed to mountain people, but after five minutes in Ward he knew he wasn’t in Park County anymore. The few people who were walking the town’s streets appeared to consist primarily of refugees from the original Woodstock or extras from some postapocalyptic movie that nobody ever saw twice. Human resi-dents seemed to be outnumbered by canine residents by at least two to one, and the canines appeared to be much better fed than theHomo sapiens .

  As his car was circled by a pack of four dogs, Prehost was thinking that, apparently, in Ward, obeying leash laws was considered optional.

  “Hey, Hoppy,” he said. “Any ideas?”

  The two friends were sitting in the front seat of Prehost’s old Suburban, which, other than being a bit too well cared for, actually looked right at home on the streets of Ward.

  “We need to talk to some people, I guess, find that car I saw them in. My best advice would be for us to forget that we’re cops. One, this isn’t our county. Two, I figure the folks that I’m looking at around here”—Hoppy gestured with a nod at an obese, bald man with a snake tattoo curling up around his ear and an old poncho over his shoulders—“are dispositionally more likely to be fond of strangers than they are to be fond of strangers who are cops.”

  Prehost snorted. “You think Boulder County has ever sent a building inspector to this place? I mean, like, ever? Look at these buildings. That one there is half 1950s Greyhound bus, half God-knows-what. I don’t think there’s a section in the building code that covers that.”

  “Got me, Fred.”

  “But this is where you lost Clone, you’re sure? Right here? You know that much?”

  “Yeah, the guy in the green Pathfinder flagged him down on North Broadway in Boulder. They talked for a few minutes and then they came right up here in the Pathfinder without stopping.”

  “And they took Left Hand Canyon, not Boulder Canyon?” Fred Prehost knew all this already but he had the detective disease that made him want to hear everything two or three times, even when he was talking to another detective.