by Dean Koontz
“How soon can we be on the road again?” Spencer asked as they parked in front of their unit.
“Forty-five minutes tops, probably half an hour,” she promised.
“We’re miles from where we took the pickup, but I have a bad feeling about hanging around here too long.”
“You aren’t the only one.”
She couldn’t help but notice the decor of the room even as she took Spencer’s laptop computer out of the duffel bag, put it on the desk next to an arrangement of accessible plugs and phone jacks, and concentrated on getting it ready for business. Blue-and-black-speckled carpet. Blue-and-yellow-striped draperies. Green-and-blue-checkered bedspread. Blue and gold and silver wallpaper in a pale ameboid pattern. It looked like army camouflage for an alien planet.
“While you’re working on that,” Spencer said, “I’ll take Rocky out to do his business. He must be ready to burst.”
“Doesn’t seem in distress.”
“He’d be too embarrassed to let on.” At the door, he turned to her again and said, “I saw fast-food places across the street. I’ll walk over there and get us some burgers and stuff too, if that sounds like it would hit the spot.”
“Just buy plenty,” she said.
While Spencer and the pooch were gone, Ellie accessed the AT&T central computer, which she had penetrated a long time ago and had explored in depth. Through AT&T’s nationwide linkages, she had been able, in the past, to finesse her way into the computers of several regional phone companies at all ends of the country, although she’d never before tried to slide into the Colorado system. For a hacker as for a concert pianist or an Olympic gymnast, however, training and practice were the keys to success, and she was extremely well trained and well practiced.
When Spencer and Rocky returned after only twenty-five minutes, Ellie was already deep inside the regional system, scrolling rapidly down a dauntingly long list of pay-phone numbers with corresponding addresses that were arranged county by county. She settled on a phone at a service station in Montrose, Colorado, sixty-six miles south of Grand Junction.
Manipulating the main switching system in the regional phone company, she rang the Grand Junction Police while routing the call from their motel room through the service-station pay phone down in Montrose. She called the emergency number, rather than the main police number, just to be sure that the source address would appear onscreen in front of the operator.
“Grand Junction Police.”
Ellie began without any preamble: “We hijacked a Bell JetRanger helicopter in Cedar City, Utah, earlier today—” When the police operator attempted to interrupt with questions that would encourage a standard-format report, Ellie shouted the woman down: “Shut up, shut up! I’m only going to say this once, so you better listen, or people will die!” She grinned at Spencer, who was opening bags of wonderfully fragrant food on the dinette table. “The chopper is now on the ground in the Colorado National Monument, with the crew aboard. They’re unhurt but tied up. If they have to spend the night out there, they’ll freeze to death. I’ll describe the landing site just once, and you better get the details right if you want to save their lives.”
She gave succinct directions and disconnected.
Two things had been achieved. The three men in the JetRanger would be found soon. And the Grand Junction Police Department had an address in Montrose, sixty-six miles to the south, from which the emergency call had been made, indicating that Ellie and Spencer were either about to flee east on Federal Highway 50, toward Pueblo, or continue south on Federal Highway 550 toward Durango. Several state routes branched off those main arteries as well, providing enough possibilities to keep agency search teams fully occupied. Meanwhile, she and Spencer and Mr. Rocky Dog would be headed to Denver on Interstate 70.
Dr. Sabrina Palma was being difficult, which was no surprise to Roy. Before arriving at the prison, he had expected objections to his plans, based on medical, security, and political grounds. The moment he had seen her office, he had known that vital financial considerations would weigh more heavily against him than all the genuinely ethical arguments that she might have pursued.
“I can’t conceive of any circumstances, related to the threat against the President, that would require Steven Ackblom’s removal from this facility,” she said crisply. Though she had returned to the formidable leather chair, she no longer relaxed in it but sat forward on the edge, arms on her crescent desk. Her manicured hands were alternately fisted on her blotter or busy with various pieces of Lalique crystal—small animals, colorful fishes—that were arranged to one side of her blotter. “He’s an extremely dangerous individual, an arrogant and utterly selfish man who would never cooperate with you even if there was something he could do to help you find his son—though I can’t imagine what that would be.”
As pleasant as he ever was, Roy said, “Dr. Palma, with all due respect, it isn’t for you to imagine or be told how he could help us or how we expect to win his cooperation. This is an urgent matter of national security. I am not permitted to share any details with you, regardless of how much I might want to.”
“This man is evil, Mr. Cotter.”
“Yes, I’m aware of his history.”
“You aren’t understanding me—”
Roy gently interrupted, pointing to one of the documents on her desk. “You have read the judicial order, signed by a justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, conveying Steven Ackblom into my temporary custody.”
“Yes, but—”
“I assume that when you left the room to make telephone calls, one of them was to confirm that signature?”
“Yes, and it’s legitimate. He was still in his office, and he confirmed it personally.”
In fact, it was a real signature. That particular justice lived in the agency’s pocket.
Sabrina Palma was not satisfied. “But what does your judge know about evil like this? What experience does he have with this particular man?”
Pointing to another document on the desk, Roy said, “And may I assume that you’ve confirmed the genuineness of the letter from my boss, the secretary of the Treasury? You called Washington?”
“I didn’t speak with him, no, of course not.”
“He’s a busy man. But there must have been an assistant….”
“Yes,” the doctor admitted grudgingly. “I spoke with one of his assistants, who verified the request.”
The signature of the secretary of the Treasury had been forged. The assistant, one of a swarm of minions, was an agency sympathizer. He was no doubt still standing by in the secretary’s office, after hours, to field another call on the private number that Roy had given to Sabrina Palma, just in case she called again.
Pointing to a third document on her desk, Roy said, “And this request from the first deputy attorney general?”
“Yes, I called him.”
“I understand you’ve actually met Mr. Summerton.”
“Yes, at a conference on the insanity plea and its effect on the health of the judicial system. About six months ago.”
“I trust Mr. Summerton was persuasive.”
“Quite. Look, Mr. Cotter, I have a call in to the governor’s office, and if we can just wait until—”
“I’m afraid we’ve no time to wait. As I’ve told you, the life of the President of the United States is at stake.”
“This is a prisoner of exceptional—”
“Dr. Palma,” Roy said. His voice now had a steely edge, though he continued to smile. “You do not have to worry about losing your golden goose. I swear to you that he will be back in your care within twenty-four hours.”
Her green eyes fixed him with an angry stare, but she did not respond.
“I hadn’t heard that Steven Ackblom has continued to paint since his incarceration,” Roy said.
Dr. Palma’s gaze flicked to the two men at the door, who were in convincingly rigid Secret Service postures, then returned to Roy. “He produces a little work, yes. Not much. Two o
r three pieces a year.”
“Worth millions at the current rate.”
“There is nothing unethical going on here, Mr. Cotter.”
“I didn’t imagine there was,” Roy said innocently.
“Of his own free will, without coercion of any sort, Mr. Ackblom assigns all rights to each of his new paintings to this institution—after he tires of it hanging in his cell. The proceeds from their sale are used entirely to supplement the funds that are budgeted to us by the State of Colorado. And these days, in this economy, the state generally underfunds prison operations of all kinds, as if the institutionalized don’t deserve adequate care.”
Roy slid one hand lightly, appreciatively, lovingly along the glass-smooth, radius edge of the forty-thousand-dollar desk. “Yes, I’m sure that without the lagniappe of Ackblom’s art, things here would be grim indeed.”
She was silent again.
“Tell me, Doctor, in addition to the two or three major pieces that Ackblom produces each year, as he just sort of dabbles in his art to pass his entombed days, are there perhaps sketches, pencil studies, scraps of scrawlings that aren’t worth the bother for him to assign to this institution? You know what I mean: insignificant doodlings, preliminaries, worth hardly ten or twenty thousand each, which one might take home to hang on one’s bathroom walls? Or even simply incinerate along with the rest of the garbage?”
Her hatred for him was so intense that he would not have been surprised if the blush that rose in her face had been hot enough to make her cotton-white skin explode into flames, as if it were not skin at all but magicians’ flashpaper.
“I adore your watch,” he said, indicating the Piaget on her slender wrist. The rim of the face was enhanced by alternating diamonds and emeralds.
The fourth document on the desk was a transferral order that acknowledged Roy’s legal authority—by direction of the Colorado Supreme Court—to receive Ackblom into his temporary custody. Roy had already signed it in the limousine. Now Dr. Palma signed it too.
Delighted, Roy said, “Is Ackblom on any medications, any antipsychotics, that we should continue to give him?”
She met his eyes again, and her anger was watered down with concern. “No antipsychotics. He doesn’t need them. He isn’t psychotic by any current psychological definition of the term. Mr. Cotter, I’m trying my best to make you understand this man exhibits none of the classic signs of psychosis. He is that most imprecisely defined creature—a sociopath, yes. But a sociopath by his actions only, by what we know him to have done, not by anything that he says or can be shown to believe. Administer any psychological test you want, and he comes through with flying colors, a perfectly normal guy, well adjusted, balanced, not even markedly neurotic—”
“I understand he’s been a model prisoner these sixteen years.”
“That means nothing. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Look, I’m a medical doctor and a psychiatrist. But over the years, from observation and experience, I’ve lost all faith in psychiatry. Freud and Jung—they were both full of shit.” That crude word had shocking power, coming from a woman as elegant as she. “Their theories of how the human mind works are worthless, exercises in self-justification, philosophies devised only to excuse their own desires. No one knows how the mind works. Even when we can administer a drug and correct a mental condition, we only know that the drug is effective, not why. And in Ackblom’s case, his behavior isn’t based in a physiological problem any more than it is in a psychological problem.”
“You have no compassion for him?”
She leaned across her desk, focusing intently on him. “I tell you, Mr. Cotter, there is evil in the world. Evil that exists without cause, without rationalization. Evil that doesn’t arise from trauma or abuse or deprivation. Steven Ackblom is, in my judgment, a prime example of evil. He is sane, utterly sane. He clearly knows the difference between right and wrong. He chose to do monstrous things, knowing they were monstrous, and even though he felt no psychological compulsion to do them.”
“You have no compassion for your patient?” Roy asked again.
“He isn’t my patient, Mr. Cotter. He’s my prisoner.”
“However you choose to look at him, doesn’t he deserve some compassion—a man who’s fallen from such heights?”
“He deserves to be shot in the head and buried in an unmarked grave,” she said bluntly. She was not attractive anymore. She looked like a witch, raven-haired and pale, with eyes as green as those of certain cats. “But because Mr. Ackblom entered a guilty plea, and because it was easiest to commit him to this facility, the state supported the fiction that he was a sick man.”
Of all the people Roy had met in his busy life, he had disliked few and had hated fewer still. For nearly everyone that he had ever met, he had found compassion in his heart, regardless of their shortcomings or personalities. But he flatly despised Dr. Sabrina Palma.
When he found time in his busy schedule, he would give her a comeuppance that would make what he’d done to Harris Descoteaux seem merciful.
“Even if you can’t find some compassion for the Steven Ackblom who killed those people,” Roy said, rising from his chair, “I would think you could find some for the Steven Ackblom who has been so generous to you.”
“He is evil.” She was unrelenting. “He deserves no compassion. Just use him however you must, then return him.”
“Well, maybe you do know a thing or two about evil, Doctor.”
“The advantage I’ve taken of the arrangement here,” she said coolly, “is a sin, Mr. Cotter. I know that. And one way or another, I’ll pay for the sin. But there’s a difference between a sinful act, which springs from weakness, and one that’s pure evil. I am able to recognize that difference.”
“How handy for you,” he said, and began to gather up the papers from her desk.
They sat on the motel bed, chowing down on Burger King burgers, french fries, and chocolate-chip cookies. Rocky ate off a torn paper bag on the floor.
That morning in the desert, now hardly twelve hours behind them, seemed to be an eternity in the past. Ellie and Spencer had learned so much about each other that they could eat in silence, enjoying the food, without feeling the least awkward together.
He surprised her, however, when, toward the end of their hurried meal, he expressed the desire to stop at the ranch outside Vail, on their way to Denver. And “surprised” was not the word for it when he told her that he still owned the place.
“Maybe I’ve always known that I’d have to go back eventually,” he said, unable to look at her.
He put the last of his dinner aside, appetite lost. Sitting lotus-fashion on the bed, he folded his hands on his right knee and stared at them as if they were more mysterious than artifacts from lost Atlantis.
“In the beginning,” he continued, “my grandparents held on to the place because they didn’t want anyone to buy it and maybe make some god-awful tourist attraction out of it. Or let the news media into those underground rooms for more morbid stories. The bodies had been removed, everything cleaned out, but it was still the place, could still attract media interest. After I went into therapy, which I stayed with for about a year, the therapist felt we should keep the property until I was ready to go back.”
“Why?” Ellie wondered. “Why ever go back?”
He hesitated. Then: “Because part of that night is a blank to me. I’ve never been able to remember what happened toward the end, after I shot him….”
“What do you mean? You shot him, and you ran for help, and that was the end of it.”
“No.”
“What?”
He shook his head. Still staring at his hands. Very still hands. Like hands of carved marble, resting on his knee.
Finally he said, “That’s what I’ve got to find out. I’ve got to go back there, back down there, and find out. Because if I don’t, I’m never going to be…right with myself…or any good for you.”
“You can’t go back there, not with th
e agency after you.”
“They wouldn’t look for us there. They can’t have found out who I was. Who I really am. Michael. They can’t know that.”
“They might,” she said.
She went to the duffel bag and got the envelope of photographs that she had found on the deck of the JetRanger, half under her seat. She presented them to him.
“They found these in a shoe box in my cabin,” he said. “They probably just took them for reference. You wouldn’t recognize…my father. No one would. Not from this shot.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“Anyway, I don’t own the property under any identity they would associate with me, even if somehow they got into sealed court records and found out I’d changed my name from Ackblom. I hold it through an offshore corporation.”
“The agency is damned resourceful, Spencer.”
Looking up from his hands, he met her eyes. “All right, I’m willing to believe they’re resourceful enough to uncover all of it—given enough time. But surely not this quickly. That just means I’ve got more reason than ever to go there tonight. When am I going to have a chance again, after we go to Denver and to wherever we’ll go after that? By the time I can return to Vail again, maybe they will have discovered I still own the ranch. Then I’ll never be able to go back and finish this. We pass right by Vail on the way to Denver. It’s off Interstate Seventy.”
“I know,” she said shakily, remembering that moment in the helicopter, somewhere over Utah, when she had sensed that he might not live through the night to share the morning with her.
He said, “If you don’t want to go there with me, we can work that out too. But…even if I could be sure the agency would never learn about the place, I’d have to go back tonight. Ellie, if I don’t go back now, when I have the guts to face it, I might never work up the courage later. It’s taken sixteen years this time.”