by Unknown
Talk about the inmates running the asylum.
Vail didn't believe a word of it. And he was prevented from discussing Aaron's remark after the trial by the rules of confidentiality.
A few minutes later, Max entered with Vulpes. He was still smiling, but his joviality had been replaced with a subtle caution.
'Anybody care for something to drink?' Max asked pleasantly.
'I'll have a Coke,' Vulpes said. He was standing on the opposite side of the table facing Vail.
'Evian for me,' Woodward said.
'Coke sounds good,' Vail said. They sat down, Vail and Vulpes facing each other and Woodward at one end of the table, like the moderator on a talk show.
Vail did not know what to say. Congratulations on your new persona? Welcome to the world, Raymond? Whatever he said would be hypocritical at best.
'Well, you wanted to meet Raymond. Here he is,' Woodward said proudly.
'You'll have to forgive me, Raymond,' Vail said, 'I'm a bit overwhelmed by miracles of science.'
The smile faded from Woodward's face. Vulpes did not react at all. There was still a hint of the smile on his lips. His eyes bored into Vail.
'Most are,' Vulpes said. 'The doc is doing a book on me. Could win him a Pulitzer Prize, right, Sam?'
'Well, we'll see about that,' Woodward said, feigning modesty.
'It seems strange to me,' Vail said. 'For instance, you just appeared. Don't you ever wonder who your mother was?'
Without hesitation Vulpes said, 'My mother was Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the nine muses.' Then he chuckled.
Woodward laughed. 'Raymond has a wonderful sense of humour,' he said, as if Vulpes was not in the room.
Vail said, 'And you simply got rid of Roy?'
'Let's just say he had enough,' Vulpes said. 'He retired.'
'So what did you learn from Roy and Aaron?'
'Well, Roy wasn't as intelligent as Aaron, but he was a hell of a lot smarter.'
'You mean street-smart?'
'I mean he wasn't naive.'
'And Aaron was?'
'You know that.'
'Do I?'
'The way you ambushed that prosecutor, what was her name?'
'Is that what Roy said? That I ambushed her?' Vail said without answering the question. Vulpes knew damn well what her name was.
'That's what I say.'
'Really.'
'I've read the trial transcripts. And Roy told me you played it just right. Started to ask about the symbols, then backed off. No wonder they called you a brilliant strategist.'
'Did Aaron and Roy ever talk about killing the old preacher… uh, I can't think of his name, its been ten years.'
'Shackles.'
'Shackles, right.'
'Roy bragged about that one, all right. They really hated that old man.'
'That's an understatement,' Vail said.
Vulpes almost smiled and nodded. 'Guess you're right about that. He was their first, you know.'
'So I heard.'
'Why, hell, Mr Vail, you probably know more about the two of them than I do.'
'Oh, I think not.'
Their eyes met for just a second. Nothing. Not a blink, not a flinch. It's the eyes, Vail thought. His eyes don't laugh when the rest of his face does. They never change. Ice-cold blue.
'How about the others? Did he talk about them?'
'You mean his brother and Aaron's old girlfriend, Mary Lafferty?'
'I'd forgotten her name, too,' Vail said.
Vulpes looked him directly in the eye. 'Lafferty,' he repeated. 'Mary Lafferty.'
'Oh yes,' Vail said.
'Actually, Roy also talked about Peter Holloway and Billy Jordan,' Vulpes said. 'The Altar Boys.'
Vail stared into Vulpes's barren eyes, devoid of everything but hate. Bile soured his throat as his mind darted back ten years to the night he had found the devastated remains of the two young men. The flashback was a collage of horrors: the dark, ominous, two-storey lodge framed by the moon's reflection rippling on the lake; fingers of light probing an enormous den in the basement, a sweeping fireplace separating it into two rooms; a large raccoon racing past Vail followed by the rats, flushed by the light, squealing from behind a sofa; a hand rising up from behind the sofa, its fingers bent as if clawing the air, the flesh dark blue, almost black; the rest of the arm, a petrified limb stretched straight up, and then the naked, bloated torso; the face, or what was left of it, swollen beyond recognition, the eyes mere sockets, the cheeks, lips, and jaw gnawed and torn by furry night predators, the gaping mouth, a dark tunnel in an obscene facsimile of something once human; the throat sliced from side to side, further mutilated by the creatures that had feasted upon it, and the stabs, cuts, and incisions and the vast sea of petrified blood, black as tar, and the butchered groin. And the fossilized corpse next to it - a smaller version of the same.
I am responsible for this human ghoul, he thought. It took a moment for him to regain his composure and go on with the confrontation.
'So you discussed the Altar Boys,' he said finally.
'Of course, that's what it was all about, right?'
'It was all about a lot of things. How about Alex, did they discuss Alex with you?'
'Alex?'
'Lincoln. Alex Lincoln?'
'Lincoln.' Not a glimmer when he spoke Lincoln's name. 'You mean the other Altar Boy? I don't recall Roy ever said much about Lincoln.'
If the eyes are a window to the soul, Vail thought, Raymond has no soul. Aaron may have passed on his IQ and his fantastic memory to Raymond Vulpes, and all that sweetness and light, but he hadn't passed on his soul because Aaron had had no soul to pass on.
'How about Linda? Did anyone talk about her?'
Vulpes stared out the window for a moment, then said, 'Gellerman. Her name was Linda Gellerman. Aaron had a warm spot for her, even though she ran out on him.'
'He said that, that she ran out on him.'
'Perhaps I'm paraphrasing,' Vulpes said.
'Did Roy ever tell you the last thing he said to me?'
Vulpes stared at him blankly, then slowly shook his head. 'I don't think he ever mentioned it. What was it about?'
'Nothing, really. An aimless remark. Kind of a joke.'
'I'm always up for a good laugh.'
'Some other time, maybe.'
Vulpes's jaw tightened and he sat a little straighter. 'Must've been pretty good for you to remember it after ten years.'
'You know how it is, some things stick in your mind.'
Woodward sensed the animosity growing between the two. 'Raymond, tell Martin about your first trip downtown,' he said.
This time it was Vail's jaw that tightened. He stared across the table at Vulpes and their eyes locked.
'You've been outside?' Vail asked, trying to sound indifferent.
'Just three times,' Woodward interjected. 'Under close supervision.'
'When was this?'
'During the last two weeks,' Vulpes said. His eyes were as expressionless as a snake's. 'You don't know what it's like, to walk into an ice cream store and have your choice of twenty-eight different flavours and hot fudge covered with… with those little chocolate things.'
What was wrong with that statement? Vail thought. Then he realized there had been no joy in his tone. No excitement, no animation. Vulpes was emotionless, making words, doing his best to create the perfect conundrum, a man so calm his equanimity invoked thoughts of the nightmare sleepwalker in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Control. Raymond Vulpes had perfected control.
'Sprinkles,' Vail said.
'Sprinkles,' Vulpes repeated.
'That's what excited you about your first day of freedom in ten years, an ice cream with sprinkles?' Vail asked.
'Metaphorically. It's having the choice,' Vulpes answered. 'Here, it's chocolate or vanilla.'
'Another metaphor,' Vail said. 'Black and white, like most choices in life when you carve away all the bullshit.'
Their ey
es never strayed. They sat three feet apart, their gazes locked in a hardball game of flinch. Black and white choices, Vail thought, and his mind leapt back to the last day of the trial. There was a clear black and white choice. Vail and his team had spent weeks struggling to prove that Aaron Stampler was really two personalities in one body: Aaron, the sweet kid from Crikside, Kentucky, who had suffered every imaginable kind of abuse; and Roy, the evil alter ego with an insatiable lust for murder and revenge. Vail had won for Stampler, rescued him from almost certain death in the electric chair or from a needle filled with terminal sleep. Venable, realizing she was beat, had agreed to the plea bargain: Aaron Stampler would be sent to Daisyland until such time as he was deemed cured and his evil psychological twin, Roy, was purged.
Vail had been elated with his victory. Then, on the way out of the courthouse, Stampler had turned to him, leering, and whispered: 'Suppose there never was an Aaron.' And laughed as they had led him away.
He wants me to know. He wants me to know but not be able to do anything about it. Just like that day after the trial. It was not enough that he had created the nightmare, he wanted to haunt me with it, knowing there was nothing I could do about it, nobody I could tell.
It had been their dark secret for ten years, a cruel umbilical that, even at this moment, bound them together.
Stampler had an insatiable ego. Vail understood that now. That was the game. The dare.
Stop me if you can. Catch me if you can.
Vail did not break the stare. 'And what else did you do beside get a hot fudge sundae?' he asked.
'Went to a record store and bought a couple of CDs. Then we went to Data City, checked out the latest CD-ROMs We went to Belk's and I bought a pair of jeans. My own choice, the colour I wanted, the style I wanted. Two hours of freedom that first day, except, of course, Max was in my shadow all the time. And the next time and the next. Day before yesterday we went to the movies. It was astounding. That enormous screen. Digital sound. Instead of that tiny postage stamp of an image on my eleven-inch screen. Quite an experience.'
'I'll bet,' Vail said. Vail didn't ask what picture he saw although he knew Vulpes was dying to tell him. He was making conversation. He already knew what he had come to find out. The sooner he got out of there, the better.
'Where'd you get the money?' Vail asked, hoping to nick Vulpes's pride, to humiliate him just a little.
'I earned it,' Vulpes answered calmly.
'Earned it?'
'Raymond has become a remarkably proficient electronics repairman. VCRs, TVs, computers…'
'Telephones?' Vail said, raising his eyebrows.
What passed for a smile toyed with Vulpes's lips. 'The telephone company takes care of their own communications,' he answered.
'Raymond earns seventy-five cents an hour repairing all our electronics equipment. So we let him branch out,
'I repair equipment for people on the outside. They bring the stuff to the front desk - '
'I've got nine thousand and change in the bank,' Vulpes interrupted in his silky tone. 'The doc deposits it for me. They keep me busy.'
'He's the best in the area. It's almost like a full-time job,' Woodward said proudly.
And then Vulpes said, 'Soon will be.'
The comment froze Vail. Nothing in Vulpes's face changed, but the eyes twinkled for a moment.
'I don't understand,' Vail said.
'Well, that's the real news,' said Woodward. 'In three more days, Raymond's on furlough.'
'Furlough?' said Vail.
'Six weeks. He's got a job in an electronics repair place on Western -'
'He's coming to Chicago?' Vail interrupted.
'We have a halfway house there,' said Woodward. 'Full-time supervision, ten o'clock curfew, some group therapy - we think Raymond's ready for that now, right?'
'I'm sure I can handle it.'
Vail felt as if an enormous hand were squeezing his chest. He modulated his breathing so as not to indicate it had suddenly become stifled. His hands became cold and he was sure the colour had drained from his face. He took a sip of Coke.
'I'll bet you can,' he finally managed to say.
'If it works out, I mean, if he makes it through those first weeks without incident, the board has elected to release him for good.'
'Well, I guess congratulations are in order,' Vail said.
'Maybe we can have lunch one day,' said Vulpes. 'After all, you are responsible for my… well, for my very existence, aren't you?'
'Sounds like a splendid idea,' Woodward chimed in.
'Maybe so.'
'Well, what do you think, Mr… Martin?' Woodward asked. 'Does the news give you renewed belief in redemption and resurrection?'
'Resurrection?'
'Raymond, here, resurrected from the ashes, so to speak.' Woodward said it with such anomalous pride that Vail was chilled again, not by Vulpes, this time by the egocentric doctor, a man so obviously dazzled by his own brilliance that he was blind to Vulpes's true nature. But then, ten years before, Vail had been just as pleased with himself for having saved Aaron Stampler from certain death.
Vail hardly heard the rest of the conversation. It was unimportant. He was just biding time until he could diplomatically get out of there.
'Well, I think that should be it for the day,' Vail heard Woodward say. 'I'm sure we all need to get back to work.'
'Yes,' Vail said, managing a meagre smile.
Woodward went to the door and called out to Max. Vail got up and walked around the table until he was behind Vulpes. He leaned over and said, ever so softly, 'Raymond?'
Vulpes didn't turn around. He stared straight ahead. 'Yes?'
'Supposing there never was an Aaron?'
Raymond continued to look at the wall on the opposite side of the room. He smiled, but Vail could not see it.
He knows. He knows and there's not a thing he can do about it. I'm a free man and he can't stop that because nobody would believe him.
Half a minute passed before Vulpes turned around. He stood up, his face inches from Vail's. He was smiling, but suddenly, for just an instant, his eyes turned to stone. Hatred glittered in them and the irises turned bloodred.
Like the chill he had felt when he entered the repair room, it came and went in the blink of an eye, but it was enough to send an icicle straight into Vail's heart.
Venable was right. Now he had seen it. It was like looking into the mind of - whomever? Aaron, Roy, Raymond - and realizing that he was no different, no less malevolent and invidious, no less capable of anything than the youth Vail had saved from death ten years before. The only difference was, now he was older, more dangerous, and about to go free.
'There'll always be an Aaron in my heart,' Vulpes said softly, tapping his chest. 'Just as there will always be a Martin in there. I owe everything I am to the two of you.' He said in his silken voice, smiling his sincerest smile, 'Thank you.'
Vulpes stood at the window and watched them walk back across the wide courtyard, Vail striding resolutely towards the entrance. He could guess what Vail was saying. He could almost hear his protest.
But he was wrong. Vail knew there was no percentage in arguing with Woodward. It was, as they say, a done deal and he was powerless to stop it.
'The press will have a field day with this,' he told Woodward.
'The press won't know anything about it. The release order has been signed by a local judge who is very sympathetic to our work. Raymond Vulpes will be released. The press knows Aaron Stampler. They don't even know Raymond Vulpes exists.'
For one fleeting moment, Vail toyed with the notion of bringing up the murders of Linda Balfour and Alex Lincoln, but he decided against it. It was only a matter of time before that news would come out. But Raymond had the perfect alibi. They would be chalked up as copycat killings.
Perfect. Vulpes had thought of everything. He hadn't missed a note.
'I assume you'll honour the confidentiality of this meeting,' Woodward said.
&nb
sp; 'Confidentiality?'
'Well, legally speaking, you're still his attorney.'
Vail shook his head. 'Conflict of interest,' he answered sardonically. 'As a prosecutor, I'd have to resign the job.'
'Give the boy a chance,' Woodward asked.
'He's not a boy anymore, Woodward,' Vail said.
They shook hands and Vail walked to car, where Tony waited beside the open door.
Tony drove him back to the football field and the pilot cranked up the chopper as he got out of the Cadillac and ran towards it. Vail ducked down under the blades, slid into the seat beside him, and snapped on his seat belt.
'Christ,' the pilot said, 'you look like you saw a ghost.'
'I did,' Vail said. 'Let's get the hell out of here.'
Twenty-Five
ARE YOU THERE, HYDRA?
YES FOX.
YOU HAVE DONE EXCEPTIONALLY WELL. BEYOND EXPECTATIONS.
THANK YOU, FOX.
YOU HAVE STUDIED THE PLAN?
YES, FOX, THE BEAUTIFUL PLAN.
AND ARE YOU PREPARED?
YES, YES.
AND DO YOU HAVE THE MESSAGE?
YES FOX.
EXCELLENT. ARE YOU EXCITED?
ALWAYS.
IT IS TIME, AGAIN.
THANK YOU. I DON'T LIKE WAITING.
HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
I FEEL EXCEPTIONALLY ANXIOUS.
GOOD. YOU MUST BE MORE CAUTIOUS THAN EVER.
DOES HE KNOW?
YES. DO NOT CONCERN YOURSELF. IT IS AS WE EXPECTED.
I WILL BE CAUTIOUS.
GOOD.
SOON, HYDRA.
YES, YES, YES!
UNTIL THEN…
Twenty-Six
Parver came into the office as dusk was ending. The last thin shafts of daylight pierced the windows, casting crimson streaks through the gloom of the office. It was empty except for Vail, who was sitting alone in his office. He was slumped in his chair, his legs stretched out stiffly in front of him, his elbows on the arms of his chair, the fingers of both hands entwined and resting on his chest. His desk lamp was the only illumination on the entire floor and he had pulled the expensive black, cantilevered light down so its beam was swallowed up by the dark wood of his table. He was staring into space.