More Deaths Than One

by Pat Bertram

  “‘Rutledge hoped that one day you would become a chameleon again. To that end, he had someone from ISI keeping track of you all these years. He is no longer interested in waiting, however. He thinks he knows a way of inducing the return of your abilities so he can find out if your talent for near invisibility is physiological or if it’s a form of mass hypnosis where you don’t in fact disappear but somehow make people think you do. He went on at great length about how much you were going to contribute to the field of psychology. He wants to find out how the imposed memories shaped your life and personality. Have you, in truth, become Robert Stark or have you retained a vestige of the person you once were?

  “‘After a while, Rutledge’s enthusiasm for his experiments, both past and future, made me sick, and I could not bear to spend even one more minute in his presence. Pleading illness—no lie. I really did feel sick—I staggered to my feet and somehow managed to drag myself out to my rental car.

  “‘Rutledge followed me, urging me to stay. He said he had an empty hospital bed I could use. I got the impression he wanted to physically detain me, but in the end, he stood and watched me leave.

  “‘I have a very bad feeling about all this. I’m sure it’s a symptom of my flu, but I am consumed with a feeling of impending doom. For you? For me? For a world that harbors such men as the good Dr. Rutledge? I don’t know.

  “‘If I were able to concentrate, maybe I could figure out what we could do, but I’m losing focus.

  “‘So very, very tired.

  “‘Have to finish this letter.

  “‘Put it away where they can’t find it . . .

  “‘I nodded off for a minute there, but I’m trying to hold myself together long enough to finish this.

  “‘I honestly don’t know what to say, Bob. That I’m sorry? That if I could undo what they did to you, even if it took everything I have, I would?

  “‘Words. Just words.

  “‘Keep in mind that however phony those other memories are, you have forged new memories, ones that are true.

  “‘Hsiang-li loves you like a father.

  “‘I love you like a brother.

  “‘We are your real family, as you are ours.’”

  Tears were trickling down Kerry’s cheeks when she set the letter aside. “It must have pained him deeply to find out what Rutledge did to you.”

  Bob took her in his arms and kissed the tears away. He understood her grief and Harrison’s, but felt only silence within himself.

  ***

  “Where are we going?” Kerry asked the next morning as they got dressed to leave.

  “Chalcedony.”

  “So that’s it? Rutledge and the people at ISI are going to get away with what they did to you and Harrison and all those others?”

  “I might not be emotional about what they did, but I never said I wouldn’t do something about it.” He flexed his fingers and a feeling he couldn’t identify stirred deep within him.

  “Then why are we going to Chalcedony?”

  “I’m going to drop you off, make sure you’re safe, then I have some things I need to do.”

  “You don’t have to go all the way to Chalcedony. I can call one of my brothers to come pick me up.” An uncertain look crossed her face. “What about Sam and Ted? Won’t they be able to track me there?”

  Bob’s jaw tightened. “They won’t bother you. I promise.”

  She took off the money-belt encircling her waist. “You should probably have this.”

  “You keep it.” He handed her two envelopes. “You’ll need these also. One is a letter to Harrison’s lawyer naming you beneficiary in my will, and the other is a letter to my bank in Thailand giving you access to my account. If anything goes wrong, I need to know you’re taken care of.”

  “I’d rather have you.”

  “I know. I’ll do everything in my power to come back to you.”

  She hugged him tightly. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Epilogue

  Alex Evans surveyed his surroundings with deep satisfaction.

  The day was perfect, as only an October day in Colorado could be. Newly fallen snow powdered the mountains, but not a single flake had visited the lower elevations. The skies were clear, and the sun shone brightly on the beautiful people gathered on the broad lawn.

  Evans breathed deeply, savoring the bouquet of expensive perfumes and after-shaves wafting toward him on a cool breeze. He smiled to himself. Everything he had ever dreamed of lay within his grasp.

  He had a lovely home set on five lushly land-scaped acres halfway between Broomfield and Boulder.

  His children had been a disappointment, but they were grown now, with families of their own. He smiled fondly at the thought of his grandchildren. Delightful tots, all of them.

  Catching sight of his still stunningly beautiful wife, he congratulated himself for having won her even though, back then, he’d been able to offer nothing but an overweening ambition. She had been the perfect helpmate, never complaining about his long days at the office or his frequent business trips. Ever the diplomat, she had made friends with the husbands of important women as easily as she had made friends with the wives of important men.

  This party celebrated her triumph as well as his.

  He looked around, pleased to see the governor standing at the buffet table talking to a state senator and a United States congresswoman. At the bar, some of Denver’s old money socialites condescended to drink with a group of recently rich.

  This is merely the beginning, Evans gloated.

  Berquist’s prostate cancer, which had been so slow-growing it had been practically benign, had suddenly taken on a life of its own, courtesy of Dr. Reed. In a very few days Berquist would be dead.

  Evans grinned. As new Director of Research and Development, he would be a very powerful man. And rich.

  His grin spread as he thought of all the money he had tucked away in a bank in the Cayman Islands. He also knew Berquist’s Cayman account number. He should; he set it up. As soon as his boss died, he would be doubly rich.

  Blood rushed to his head as he thought of the single thorn marring the perfection of his rosy future.

  It seemed inconceivable he was being bested by that lab rat, that skinny nothing, that freak with the sec-ondhand memory.

  Until Stark had come to Denver, Ted Kowalski had been the man Evans most relied on to get things done, the man he had chosen to take over his job when he took over Berquist’s. Ted had been a natural born leader, whose charm and utter ruthlessness had given him an aura of great power. Then Ted had started acting like a raving lunatic, spewing hatred and vowing vengeance.

  Ted’s partner, Sam Jacobson had once been the voice of reason, keeping the more volatile Ted in check; then Sam too had gone off the deep end.

  Evans banged his fists against his thighs. Damn that Stark!

  It should have been a simple, mindless courier task.

  When he had received word from the computer department that the target was on the move, on his way to Denver, no less, he had sent Ted and Sam to the airport to pick up Stark and escort him to Boston where an eager Dr. Rutledge waited. They were also to have relieved Stark of William Harrison’s papers, which were still unaccounted for.

  Normally, he would not have sent Ted and Sam on such a trivial assignment, but he had chosen his best men so nothing would go wrong.

  That was ten weeks ago.

  Stark was still at large.

  And Ted and Sam were dead.

  Somehow, someone had managed to snap both Ted’s and Sam’s necks in sight of hundreds of ISI’s employees, on ISI’s own grounds.

  Not one person had seen it happen. Unless, of course, you counted the two obviously demented individuals who had insisted a bush reached out and killed them. According to both witnesses, the bush had first killed Sam while Ted, sitting next to him, had obliviously munched a sandwich. Then the bush had killed Ted. All in a matter of seconds.

  Evans made a mental note to
send both witnesses to Boston for an attitude adjustment. He blew out a breath when he remembered Rutledge was also dead. The doctor had been found in his backyard with a broken neck. No witnesses.

  Dr. Reed and a voluptuous young lab assistant had been found dead in a sleezy motel room, still en-twined in a macabre parody of the sex act. Both their necks had been broken, too.

  Evans gritted his teeth. All three deserved it. If he hadn’t needed them, he would have killed them himself when he found out about William Harrison’s death.

  Why hadn’t they followed the plan? It had been foolproof. His operatives in New York had been waiting for the right moment to give Harrison the cancer. Later, posing as emergency medical tech-nicians, they would have taken him to Boston for “treatment.”

  Instead, when Harrison had visited the Rose-wood Research Institute, those idiots had taken it upon themselves to do the job. The lab assistant had shot Harrison with the bio-innoculator, while Reed had readied his lab for his guinea pig. It had been Rutledge’s job to keep Harrison occupied until the super-fast-acting cancer could render him helpless.

  A pained expression tightened Evans’s face. Rutledge had not bothered with such benign topics as weather and sports. Oh, no. He had entertained Harrison with stories of his own exploits. Even worse, the doctor had let him walk away, giving Harrison plenty of time to commit the confession to paper before he died.

  When Harrison landed in a New York hospital, Reed had finally told Evans what they had done and demanded that Evans retrieve his guinea pig. They had tried, but Evans’s men had been unable to wrest Harrison from the hospital.

  A genteel burst of laughter by the buffet table reminded Evans he was neglecting his guests.

  Looking around, he noticed his wife Lucille coming toward him with a young man in tow. Lucy chattered animatedly, a look of fatuous adoration on her face. The young man stared at Evans.

  Evans winced in distaste.

  Lucy had recently decided she had the soul of an artist. Instead of taking up painting, however, she had taken up painters. A steady stream of impoverished and sexually ambiguous young men, such as this one, had been parading through the house for weeks now, delighting Lucy, but making him uneasy.

  He felt proud he kept in such good shape for a man of fifty. He had a small roll of fat around his middle no amount of exercise could melt, but otherwise he was as lean and trim as he had always been. He even liked the sprinkling of silver in his full head of thick brown hair and the faint crinkling around his gray eyes, thinking they made him look distinguished.

  What he did not like was the way some of Lucy’s young men ogled him with unconcealed desire.

  As Evans watched Lucy and her new protégé approach, he noticed no lust or even admiration in the young man’s gaze. Just a bland, almost cold regard.

  Though unimposing, the young man moved with the suppressed power and fluid grace of a panther padding silently through the jungle. He had none of the languid affectations that usually characterized Lucy’s artist friends, but carried himself with the easy manner of a man at peace with himself and in tune with his environment.

  “This is Mr. Noone,” Lucy announced. “He says he’s been looking for you. He knows you.”

  Evans studied Noone. The man did look familiar, but he could not place him.

  Lucy giggled, sounding like a lovesick adolescent. “He says his name is pronounced like noon but is spelled with an e like no one.”

  “Mrs. Evans!” One of the caterer’s assistants hurried toward them. “Mrs. Evans,” he called out again.

  Lucy sighed. “Excuse me, Mr. Noone. I must go see what he wants. Promise me you won’t leave without saying goodbye?”

  Noone held out a hand. When Lucy placed her fingers on his, he lifted her hand and kissed it lightly.

  “Oh, puh-leese,” Evans said, rolling his eyes. He couldn’t believe Lucy actually had fallen for the man’s phony act.

  After one last lingering look into Noone’s eyes, Lucy left to deal with the latest catering catastrophe.

  “She’s a lovely lady,” Noone said.

  “You keep your mitts off her.” Evans glared at him. “What do you want? Come on, come on. I don’t have all day.”

  “I’ve come for that golf game you always wanted.”

  “What golf game? As you can see, I’m busy right now.”

  “We’re a long way from Thailand, but I hear Denver has some nice golf courses, too.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Evans snapped. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

  Noone gazed steadily at him. “That is the question, isn’t it? Who the hell am I anyway?”

  Evans frowned at Noone for a moment, then his face lit with a triumphant smile. Robert Stark! The very man he wanted to see.

  He cocked his head to study his elusive prey.

  No wonder he hadn’t recognized him. This confident, sleekly muscled, youthful man with the burnished copper highlights in his brown hair and the flash of amber in his brown eyes bore little resemblance to the humble, middle-aged man he had known in Bangkok.

  “I can see why some of my men think you’re a chameleon,” Evans said.

  “You don’t agree?”

  Evans hooted derisively. “You’re kidding, right? Despite what that idiot Rutledge claimed, there is no such thing as a human chameleon. I admit, when you lived in Thailand you did look Asian, but that doesn’t mean you’re a chameleon. There are such things as hair dyes and dark contact lenses and makeup, though why you’d go through all that trouble to look like a slant-eye is beyond me.”

  When Bob remained silent, Evans added, “It was probably a pathetic attempt to fit in, but someone like you will never fit in anywhere.”

  “Someone like me?” Bob questioned, sounding more amused than affronted.

  “A loser.”

  Bob’s smile sent chills up Evans’s spine. He shifted his feet, reassured by the feel of the pistol nestled in his ankle holster.

  “A loser,” he repeated. “The problem is you have no ambition, no goals. You’re content to drift through life doing as little as possible.”

  “You think I should be more like you and Dr. Rutledge?”

  “At least we have goals. We’re making some-thing of our lives. Doing something worthwhile.”

  “Like using mind control to turn people with personality quirks into ideal employees?”

  “It’s for the greater good. But that’s not all we do.”

  “You also commit murder. Why did you have to kill Harrison? He didn’t pose any threat to you.”

  Evans shrugged. “He got too close to the truth. It’s a shame. I liked the guy.”

  “What about Doug Roybal?”

  “My, my. You have been busy, haven’t you? Little Dougie poked around in things that were none of his business, just like your friend Harrison.”

  “And Dr. Albion?”

  “Who’s Dr. Albion?”

  “The doctor at the VA hospital who requested Stark’s service record.”

  “Oh, him. We couldn’t have him putting two and two together, now, could we?” Evans stared at Bob through slitted eyes. “I thought we were friends—I sure wasted enough time on you—yet you didn’t call when you returned to Denver after The Lotus Room closed. And how did you find me? I never told you my real name, and the phone number on the business cards I gave you was for an answering service that cannot be connected to me in any way.”

  “I saw you at ISI and followed you home. Since the letters in your mailbox were addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Evans, it wasn’t too hard to figure out who you are.”

  “What were you doing at ISI?”

  Evans bent over to tie a shoelace that didn’t need tying. When he stood, gun in hand, he saw Lucy, accompanied by the senator’s wife, headed his way. But he didn’t see Bob.

  “Where’s that nice young man?” Lucy asked. “Janet wants to meet him.” Her eyes widened. “Alex! What are you doing with that gun? Put it awa
y before someone sees it.”

  Evans spoke through clenched teeth. “Shut up, Lucy. Shut up. There’s an emergency. Go to the front gate, find Grimes and Clayton and whoever else is around, and tell them to get their asses over here immediately.”

  “But—”

  “Now!” Evans barked. “Do it now.”

  Lucy trotted off, trailed by Janet. Evans edged around a lilac bush that had yet to lose its leaves. Since it was the one large plant in the vicinity, he was certain that’s where he would find Stark.

  Chameleon, my ass. He had recognized the man’s clothes—the brown pants and the mottled green, gold, and brown sweater—for makeshift camouflage.

  If the man wanted to play games, that was okay with him. He had the home-court advantage, and back-up was on the way. Stark or Noone or whatever he called himself would not escape this time.

  He rounded the bush with his arms outstretched, pointing his pistol.

  “Freeze, asshole!”

  Even as he screamed the words, he realized he had made the unforgivable, fatal mistake of under-estimating his opponent. Then the bush’s cold steely fingers tightened around his neck.

  ***

  By the time his men arrived on the scene, Alex Evans was dead. They found no trace of the perpetrator.