by A. C. Fuller
So, why, Martha, am I sending you this bible? Turn to page 78.
Did you do it?
Alex flipped to the page.
It was John, 12:25.
He felt the air leave his stomach. He brushed at a cobweb he thought he felt in his ear. He didn't need to read it, but his eyes scanned the words.
"He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
He wasn't reading. He was hearing the words in the tinny, distorted voice he'd heard over the phone, two years earlier, when he was covering the trial of Eric Santiago. The voice that had haunted him ever since.
He looked back at the inscription.
In America, those who believe nothing get to decide what we believe. What we are. And this passage is what I've chosen.
D.B.
Alex let his eyes run over the inscription again, but the writing just blurred into blue fog on the page.
A scream caught in this throat as the calls he'd received from his source replayed in his mind. But now he saw Denver Bice making them.
He threw the book across the container, and it struck the metal wall with a loud, echoing thud. He stood quickly, but wobbled and had to steady himself against the wall.
He took two shaky strides out into the twilight before he heard the familiar, sickening voice.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
He spun around, but didn't see anyone. Jumping back instinctively, he hit the container's outer wall as he looked up and saw Denver Bice emerging from the shadow of another storage unit across the walkway.
"You . . . I—" Alex stammered.
"I didn't know what, but I knew there'd be something in there."
Alex glanced from side to side, then lunged across the walkway.
Bice stepped back as a huge bald man appeared and jumped between them.
Alex recognized the man from the conference right away. He spun on his heels to run in the other direction, when another figure materialized there. The man's face was in shadow, but he was as tall as Alex and twice as wide. A flash of red hair told Alex that he was the mulleted man from the conference.
Alex jumped to the side, attempting to get around him, but within seconds, the bald man was bear-hugging him from behind. As Alex struggled to free himself, the redhead stuffed a rag in his mouth.
The last thing he heard before passing out was the quiet voice of Denver Bice. "Get him in the car."
43
Northeast Bainbridge Island, Friday, September 17, 2004
When he awoke, Alex was lying on his side on a cold floor. The space was drafty and smelled of dust and grass. He tried blinking, but his eyes were crusted over. He tried to lift his arms, but they were bound at the wrists behind his back. His shoulder was sore.
After a few minutes, he got his eyes to open all the way, but still, he saw nothing. Complete darkness. His legs were free, and he raised them stiffly, then dropped them, which caused a dull thud that shook the metal walls.
At first, he thought he might be in his parents' storage unit. Scooting himself around, he felt for boxes, stopping occasionally to struggle with the tape around his wrists. But the room seemed to be empty—he bumped into walls too quickly for this to be their container.
He wracked his brain, but had no memory to indicate where he was or how he'd gotten there. The last things he remembered were the rag and then a pain in his shoulder. A tiny prick. A needle maybe.
He thought of screaming, but knew there was a good chance all it would achieve would be alerting Bice that he was awake. While he was trying to decide what to do, he got dizzy, stopped crawling around, and fell into a deep sleep.
The next thing he became aware of was a loud metallic creaking sound. A sliver of daylight.
He blinked furiously, turning toward the brightness, but the first thing he saw was a patch of black. He pressed his feet into the floor and scooched himself upright so that he could lean against the wall. The patch of black was the leather jacket worn by the bald man who stood just outside the doorway to the metal room.
Alex's eyes adjusted to the light as he pressed himself as far into the corner as possible. The cold metal of the wall chilled his back and shoulders. Just behind the man in the leather jacket stood the man with the red mullet.
The bald man pulled the large door open the rest of the way, and the two men stepped to the side. There was a sizeable green lawn stretching as far as Alex could see, and after a few seconds, Denver Bice appeared, strolling across it.
Alex watched him walk into what he was realizing must be a garden shed. The light behind Bice's head was bright and his face shadowed. The heels of his wingtips caused a metallic echo as he moved to within three feet of Alex. His face came into focus.
He looked down at Alex, then nodded to the bald man, who took four large strides into the shed. Alex curled into a ball, shielding his face from the beefy man. Before he knew what was happening, the man had spun him around and cut the duct tape off his wrists with a swift swipe of a pocket knife.
Alex turned, opening his eyes as the man disappeared and closed the door most of the way. A long, triangular sliver of light cut across the floor.
"I've wanted to be alone with you for a long time," Bice said.
Alex rubbed at his wrists but said nothing.
"I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it."
Planting his feet on the floor, Alex slid his back up the wall so that he was sitting up again. "I know you killed my mom and dad."
"I've wanted you to know for a long time."
"And I know you've been calling me. You're my source." Alex felt inside himself, looking for rage, but he felt nothing. All he could manage to say was, "Why?"
Bice reached his right arm behind his waist. When he brought it back in front of him, he was holding a thin, silver-barreled gun. He stared down at it, passing it from hand to hand.
Alex froze. He knew that if Bice wanted him dead, there would have been easier ways to kill him. But still, it was a gun, and Bice was clearly unstable.
"Don't worry," Bice said. "I don't think I'm going to use it."
"Why'd you bring me here?"
"To bring us closer together."
The wind whistled through the slits at the seams of the shed, a gust blew through the crack in the door, and the ceiling shook slightly. The sun was coming up outside and shone through the slight opening at the entryway, illuminating a sparkling spiderweb.
"To bring us together? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He watched Bice closely, trying to figure out whether or not he was a danger to him. He kept telling himself that if Bice wanted him dead, he'd be dead, but the read he was getting on the man was that, above all, he was volatile.
"You mean you haven't figured it out yet? You're not as smart as I thought you were, Alex." Bice stepped into the center of the container, blocking much of the light. He wore the same suit and tie he'd been wearing a few days ago, but his face seemed looser, less controlled. And his eyes were wide and distant.
"Two years ago," Alex said, "the day The Times ran the story about you being ousted as CEO of Standard Media, you called me. I was at a Knicks game with my friends. You led me right to you, fed me the information that brought you down. Confirmed the information about Macintosh Hollinger, John Martin, and Demarcus Downton. You said, 'You were supposed to find him. You were supposed to catch him.'"
Looking up at Bice, Alex saw that he was smiling. Sharp sunlight illuminated his head from behind, giving it a glowing effect. His jaw and cheekbones appeared dark and bony.
Alex caught the scent of smoke from some faraway fire, leaves and cedar branches, a scent he remembered from boyhood. His head spun in a panic, and suddenly the rage he'd been looking for rose up through his chest. "I've found you!" he shouted. "So, now what?"
Bice called through the doorway to the two men, who were standing next to a garden bench about five feet out onto the lawn. "Stay alert." He turned ba
ck to Alex and stepped forward, raising the gun just to the level of Alex's feet. "I've often wondered how this would feel." He said it in a whisper, more to himself than his target.
Alex slumped. "Why did you call me? That first time, during the Santiago trial. Was it guilt, self-hatred?"
Bice lowered the gun to his side. "I've long been conflicted. I killed Mac Hollinger, my old professor, and I was not very happy with myself. A young man was about to be wrongfully convicted. I felt guilty. I always feel guilty."
"But not guilty enough to turn yourself in."
Bice squatted and put the gun on the floor by his feet, then stood.
Alex shot a quick look at the gun, then met Bice's eyes.
"Guiltier than that, Alex. Much guiltier."
Bice moved his foot forward until it touched the handle of the gun.
"What are you doing?" Alex asked.
Inching his foot across the floor, Bice slid the gun until it sat within reach of Alex's right hand.
44
Alex's eyes were glued to the gun, but he knew that Bice was watching him closely.
"I don't recognize the authority of the courts to measure justice," Bice said. "The day I killed Mac, I put a gun to my head. This gun. The same gun my father used to kill himself."
Something struck the shed with a quiet scraping sound—a branch maybe—and Bice glanced to the side.
Alex thought of lunging for the gun, just about two feet away. His body was loosening up and his eyes had fully adjusted, but he didn't feel that he had full control of his limbs. "There were two dozen other reporters covering that trial," he said. "You could have called any of them. You called me because you killed my parents." As he spoke, all his awareness was on the gun. Alex knew he could grab it before Bice would have time to respond, but something stopped him.
"I'm embarrassed about something, Alex. And I need to come clean. I told the front desk people at the hotel that my son might come up to see me. To let him right up."
"I've done the math in my head. If you were with my mother at Tulane in 1971, there's no way you're my father. But maybe you're crazy enough to think that you are."
Bice emitted a high-pitched, thin laugh and kept smiling long after it had ended. "I told them that, thinking you might come up. But instead you sent me the fat nerd."
"Where is he?"
He laughed again.
"Is he alive?"
"You're not my son, Alex, but you should have been." Bice took a long stride toward the door, away from the gun, then spun back around to Alex, who squinted as the sun grew brighter inside the container.
"How'd you do it?" Alex asked. "And why? Why, after all that time?"
"Do you remember your graduation?"
Alex's eyes moved to the gun and Bice followed his glance.
"I was there, in the very back of the auditorium. I came in late. I had actually convinced myself that twenty years was long enough. I had loved watching you grow up, and I'd hated it as well. I went there to say good-bye to you, and to your mother."
"You spoke with her?"
"No, I didn't. I had planned to leave her alone. The good-bye I wanted to say was internal. I was ready to leave her, and you, behind. But halfway through the ceremony, she got up and walked right by me. She was probably just going to the restroom. We locked eyes for a few seconds and . . ."
Bice trailed off, and for a moment, Alex felt relieved. At least now he understood the strange dinner he'd had with his parents. If his mother had seen Bice that day, of course she would have been shocked, possibly terrified.
He wondered why she hadn't gone to the police. Maybe she convinced herself it was just a coincidence, that Bice had been there for someone else. Maybe she had gone to the police then, as well as back in New Orleans, and nothing had come of it. Or maybe she knew that, every day, men like Bice got away with crimes much worse that burning down buildings, and that going to the police could have threatened her life to an even greater extent.
"And what?" Alex asked.
Bice's eyes were soft and unfocused, like he was staring at a blank space a foot in front of him. "And it all came back to me. The love I had for her, the rage, the hatred. I didn't think of myself as a violent person. I read once that all men are filled with the potential to kill. It just takes the right circumstances to bring it out of them. Six hours later, I was on a flight to Washington State with a special friend. One who is good at making cars crash with people trapped inside."
Alex stared at the gun. He was close enough to grab it and fire a shot before Bice could stop him. He took two deep breaths, girding himself to make the lunge.
But again, he stopped himself.
He'd never fired a gun, and he didn't know for sure that it was loaded. Plus, even if he could get a shot off, the two men were still outside on the bench. He slouched back against the cold metal wall.
"I could have killed you many times," Bice said.
"Why didn't you?"
"I loved you. All the goodness, the talent, the ease in this world. The joy. Your mother gave you everything. Everything she took from me."
"And you want to punish me for that?"
"I don't have any children of my own, but I believe I know how parents feel about their children. Proud, excited, determined for them to succeed and be better than they themselves were."
"That's what everyone says," Alex stated.
"But there's another part, too. A part most parents won't admit to. A resentful side. A side that wants to snuff out the unencumbered joy and curiosity. A side that wants the children to have the same miserable life they're having."
Alex just stared at him.
"That's how I feel about you, Alex."
Bice reached into the inside pocket of his suit and pulled out a photograph. Without looking at it, he handed it to Alex.
Leaning slightly forward into the patch of light, Alex tried to get a better view. The photo was about three by five inches, black and white, and a bit ragged around the edges. Bice as a young man stood smiling on a vast green lawn, his arm around the shoulders of a beautiful young woman with a striking smile and long, dark hair.
Alex recognized his mother. She was stunning, and Bice appeared completely different than the man who stood in front of him now. His smile was genuine, the kind that comes from the belly, from a place of relaxation and satisfaction. He looked beyond happy. He looked deeply content.
Alex was still studying the photo when he heard a wingtip step toward him.
"When you hurt someone," Bice said, "you deserve to be punished. Your mother, hurt me, Alex." He reached down and snatched the photo from Alex's hand. "You hurt me with your very existence. You have everything, you've done everything. I want the best for you, and I want to destroy you. And I don't mean kill you. I want you to suffer like I have. I want you to feel the badness of the world. The evil. I want you to know what it's like to feel that the flesh of your body is a mistake. I want you to feel what I feel. That the bad of this world far outweighs the good."
"That's not true."
"When I burned down her apartment, that was my way of saying, 'Martha. Oh, Marthaaaa. You can't just hurt someone and move on like nothing has happened.' I tried to wake her up. But it didn't work, so I killed the woman I loved. Then I killed Mac, the professor I loved. You . . I can't kill you." Bice smiled and blinked rapidly. "I thought that seeing you would solve this for me, but it hasn't."
"What do you plan to do with me?"
"Oh, I'd planned to kill you. I've planned to kill you on multiple occasions. But I can't. You've been asleep for sixteen hours, and I can't tell you how many times I came in here and watched you sleeping, trying to decide what to do."
"Where's James?"
"You know, you're much better than him."
"Where is he?"
"Inside."
Alex peered through the opening in the doorway, and for the first time, noticed the corner of a roof across the lawn. "You live here?"
"From
time to time. And I think I'm going to let you go."
"I thought you wanted to make me suffer."
"I do," Bice said. "At least I did. Now, I can't tell who I want to hurt more. You or myself."
Alex glanced up and met Bice's eyes. Bice held his stare for a moment, then looked down at the gun on the floor and took two long steps back. He was almost at the shed's entrance, about six feet from the gun. His eyes shifted between clarity and a bold form of craziness.
"Why would you let us go?" Alex asked. "We know you killed that hacker. We know about Plutarch Capital. About McGregor. About the election."
"You think I care about the election?"
"You cared enough to try to rig it."
"I did, but that's . . . that was easy, Alex. A day job. Something to keep me busy." Bice stamped his foot on the floor suddenly, causing a metallic echo. "You keep staring at my father's gun."
"Is it loaded?"
"Of course. Why haven't you picked it up?"
"I—"
"You have no idea what it's like to do something hard."
Alex nodded toward the doorway. "And the men outside?"
"If anything happens to me, they are to drive you to the highway and release you."
"And what about James?"
"Him, too."
Alex watched Bice as his fingers inched toward the gun. His body was still weak, but he felt he'd regained most of the control over his limbs. "The bible quote, John 12:25?"
Bice smiled. "He that hateth his life in the world."
"You want me to kill you?"
"I don't know. I honestly don't think I'll know until you grab the gun."
Alex let his eyes drop slowly. His middle finger was touching the cold metal handle.
"Do it!" Bice screamed.
Alex glanced at Bice's men, sitting on the bench, speaking quietly. He didn't believe they would let him leave, or that he had the strength to run away, but he felt his fingers creeping forward until all but his thumb lay on the gun.