by Dean Koontz
“If Mr. Woolrich never existed... and if Robert and Elizabeth Rand never existed... then who the hell sent me that three hundred thousand dollars?”
“Maybe it came from the people who kidnapped you when you were Lisa Chelgrin. For some reason, they wanted to set you up well in your new identity.”
Amazed, she said, “You’ve got it all backward. Kidnappers are out to get money, not to give it away.”
“These weren’t ordinary kidnappers. They never sent a ransom demand to the senator. Their motives apparently were unique.”
“Yeah? So who were they?”
“Maybe we can find out.” He pointed to the telephone that stood on a rosewood desk in one corner of the living room. “As a start, maybe you should make a call to J. Compton Woolrich.”
“I thought you’d decided he doesn’t exist.”
“There’s a telephone number on his stationery. We’re obliged to try it, even if it won’t get us anywhere. And it won’t. After that, we’ll make a call to the United British-Continental Insurance Association.”
“Will that get us anywhere?”
“No. But I want you to make the call for the same reason that a curious little boy might poke a stick into a hornet’s nest: to see what will happen.”
29
Joanna sat at the small rosewood desk on which stood the telephone. Alex pulled up a chair beside her and sat close enough to hear the other end of the conversation when she turned the receiver half away from her ear.
Midnight Kyoto time was two o’clock in the afternoon in London, and the insurance company’s switchboard operator answered on the second ring. She had a sweet, girlish voice. “May I help you?”
Joanna said, “Is this British-Continental Insurance?”
After a pause the operator said, “Yes.”
“I need to speak to someone in your claims department.”
“Do you know the name of the claims officer you want?”
“No,” Joanna said. “Anyone will do.”
“What sort of policy does the claim involve?”
“Life insurance.”
“One moment, please.”
For a while the line carried nothing but background static: a steady hissing, intermittent sputtering.
The man in the claims department finally came on the line. He clipped his words with crisp efficiency as sharp as any scissors. “Phillips speaking. Something I can help you with?”
Joanna told him the story that she and Alex had concocted: After all these years, the Japanese tax authorities wanted to be certain that the funds with which she had started life in Japan had not, in fact, been earned there either by her or someone else. She needed to prove the provenance of her original capital in order to avoid paying back taxes. Unfortunately, she had thrown away the cover letter that had come with the insurance company’s check.
She felt that she was convincing. Even Alex seemed to think so, for he nodded at her several times to indicate that she was doing a good job.
“Now I was wondering, Mr. Phillips, if you can possibly send me a copy of that letter, so I can satisfy the tax authorities here.”
Phillips said, “When did you receive our check?”
Joanna gave him the date.
“Oh, then I can’t help. Our records don’t go back that far.”
“What happened to them?”
“Threw them out. We’re always short of file space. We’re legally obligated to store them only seven years. In fact, I’m surprised it’s still a worry to you. Don’t they have a statute of limitations in Japan?”
“Not in tax matters,” Joanna said. She hadn’t the slightest idea whether that was true. “With everything on computer these days, I would think nothing ever gets thrown out.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but they’re gone.”
She thought for a moment and then said, “Mr. Phillips, were you working for British-Continental when my claim was paid?”
“No. I’ve been here only eight years.”
“What about other people in your department? Weren’t some of them working there twelve years ago?”
“Oh, yes. Quite a few.”
“Do you think one of them might remember?”
“Remember back twelve years to the payoff on an ordinary life policy?” Phillips asked, incredulous. “Highly unlikely.”
“Just the same, would you ask around for me?”
“You don’t mean now, while you hold long distance from Japan?”
“Oh, no. If you’d just make inquiries when you’ve got the time, I’d appreciate it. And if anyone does remember anything, please write me immediately.”
“A memory isn’t a legal record,” Phillips said doubtfully. “I’m not sure what good someone’s recollections would be to you.”
“Can’t do any harm,” she said.
“I suppose not. All right. I’ll ask.”
Joanna gave Phillips her address, thanked him, and hung up.
“Threw out all the records. Convenient,” Alex said sourly.
“But it doesn’t prove anything.”
“Exactly. It doesn’t prove anything—one way or the other.”
At twenty minutes past midnight, Kyoto time, Joanna reached the number that they had found on J. Compton Woolrich’s impressively heavy vellum stationery.
The woman who answered the phone in London had never heard of a solicitor named Woolrich. She was the owner and manager of an antique shop on Jermyn Street. The number had belonged to her for more than eight years. She didn’t know to whom it might have been assigned prior to the opening of her shop.
Another blank wall.
30
The Moonglow Lounge had closed early, at eleven-thirty, nearly an hour ago, and the staff had gone home by the time Joanna concluded the second call to London. Music no longer drifted up through the floor, and without a background melody, the winter night seemed preternaturally quiet, impossibly dark at the windows.
Joanna switched on the CD player. Bach.
She sat beside Alex on the sofa, and they continued to leaf through the gray-and-green Bonner-Hunter Security Corporation file folders that were stacked on the coffee table.
Suddenly Alex said, “I’ll be damned!” He took a pair of eight-by-ten, black-and-white glossies from one of the folders. “Look at this. Photographic enlargements of Lisa Chelgrin’s thumbprints. We got one from her driver’s license application and lifted the other from the clock radio in her bedroom. I’d forgotten about them.”
“Hard proof,” Joanna said softly, half wishing that the prints did not exist.
“We’ll need an ink pad. And paper with a soft finish... but nothing too absorbent. We want a clear print, not a meaningless blot. And we’ve got to have a magnifying glass.”
“The paper I have,” she said. “And the ink pad. But not the magnifying glass... unless. There’s a paperweight that might do.”
She led him out of the living room, down the narrow stairs, and into her first-floor office.
The paperweight was a clear, two-inch-thick lens, four inches in diameter. It had no frame or handle, and it wasn’t optically flawless. But when Alex held it above the open accounts ledger that was filled with Joanna’s neat handwriting, the letters and figures appeared three to five times larger than they did to the unassisted eye.
“It’ll do,” he said.
Joanna got the ink and paper from the center drawer of her desk. After several tries, she managed to make two smudge-free thumbprints.
Alex placed them beside the photographs. While Joanna scrubbed her inky fingers with paper tissues and spit, he used the lens to compare the prints.
When Joanna had cleaned up as best she could without soap and hot water, Alex passed the magnifying glass to her.
“I don’t know what to look for,” she said.
“Here. I’ll show you.”
“Can we cut to the chase?” she asked impatiently.
“Sure.” He hesitated. “Your prints and Lisa’s are i
dentical.”
31
When at last Mariko returned to the Moonglow Lounge from the hospital where she had been at the bedside of Wayne Kennedy, Joanna and Alex were waiting for her at the table in the kitchen. They had made hot tea and a stack of small sandwiches.
Mariko was exhausted, having slept less than three hours in the past thirty-six. Her face felt grimy, and her eyes burned. Her feet and legs were as leaden and swollen as those of an old woman.
Joanna and Alex wanted a report on Wayne Kennedy, but Mariko had little to tell, other than that she was impressed by his strength and vitality. Kennedy had come out of anesthesia at six forty-five, but he had not been fully coherent until nine o’clock, when he had complained about a dry mouth and gnawing hunger. The nurses gave him chips of ice to suck, but his dinner came from an intravenous-drip bottle even though he demanded eggs and bacon.
“Is he in a lot of pain?” Alex asked.
“A little. But drugs mask most of it.”
When Wayne had been told by Dr. Ito that he would be in the hospital for a month and might need additional surgery, he had not been depressed in the least but had predicted that he’d be out in a week and back at work in two. Mariko had been prepared for the hard job of cheering him up, but he had been in good spirits and, before he had finally fallen asleep, had told her a lot of funny stories about his work with the security agency in Chicago.
“Have the police questioned him?” Alex asked.
“Not yet,” Mariko said. “In the morning. I don’t envy them if they hope to get more out of Wayne than you told him to give, Alex-san. Even in a sickbed, with one leg in traction, he’ll be more than a match for them.”
As she’d told them about Wayne, Mariko had been content to sip tea. Now she was ravenous. She devoured her share of the sandwiches while Joanna and Alex told her about the Chelgrin file, the two calls to London, and the thumbprints.
Although their stunning revelations made Mariko forget her weariness, she was as intrigued by their demeanor as by what they told her. They were relaxed with each other. Joanna regarded Alex with obvious affection, trust—and a certain proprietary concern. For once, he was without his omnipresent jacket and tie, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. He had even kicked off his shoes, although Joanna didn’t maintain the traditional shoeless Japanese house. Mariko didn’t think they’d been to bed together. Not yet. But soon. In their eyes and voices, she could see and hear that special, sweet anticipation.
She wondered how much longer Alex would argue that love did not actually exist.
She smiled, sipped her tea. “Now that you’ve matched the thumbprints, what will you do? Call the senator and tell him?”
“No. Not yet,” Alex said.
“Why not?”
“I have a hunch ... he’s somehow part of this whole thing.”
This was evidently a thought that he had not previously shared with Joanna, because she seemed surprised.
Alex said, “I think the senator knows you’re here in Kyoto, Joanna. I think he’s always known who kidnapped his daughter—and maybe even arranged the whole thing himself.”
“But for God’s sake, why?”
He took hold of Joanna’s hand, and Mariko smiled again. “It’s just a hunch,” he said, “but it explains a few things. Like where you got all that money to start a new life. We know now it didn’t come from the Rand estate or Robert Rand’s life insurance.”
Mariko put down her teacup and patted her lips with a napkin. “Let me get this straight. The senator had his own daughter kidnapped from the vacation house in Jamaica, brainwashed her, then arranged for her to be set up in a new life with an entirely new identity?”
Alex nodded. “I don’t pretend to know why. But where else would all the money come from—if not from Tom Chelgrin?”
Perplexed, Mariko said, “How could any father send his daughter away? How could he ever be happy if he could not see her any more?”
“Here in Japan,” Alex said, “you’re aware of the continuity of generations, you have a strong sense of family. It isn’t always like that where I come from. My own parents were alcoholics. They nearly destroyed me—emotionally and physically.”
“We have a few like that. Human animals.”
“Fewer than we do.”
“Even one is too many. But this thing you say Joanna’s father did... it’s still beyond my comprehension.”
Alex smiled so beautifully that for an instant Mariko wished that she had found him first, before Joanna had ever seen him and before he had seen Joanna.
He said, “It’s beyond your comprehension because you’re so exquisitely civilized, Mariko.”
She blushed and acknowledged the compliment with a slow bow of her head.
“There’s something you haven’t accounted for,” Joanna told Alex. “The senator hired you to find his daughter, spent a small fortune on the search. Why would he do that if he knew where she was?”
Pouring more tea for himself, Alex said, “Misdirection. He was playing the stricken father who’d stop at nothing, spend anything, to get his child back. Who could suspect him of involvement? And he could afford to play expensive games.”
Joanna was grim. “What he did to me—if he did it to me—was not a game. Since you first mentioned Tom Chelgrin on Wednesday, in the taxi, you’ve made it clear you don’t like him or trust him. But why not?”
“He manipulates people.”
“Don’t all politicians?”
“I don’t have to like them for it. And Chelgrin is smoother than most politicians. He’s oily.” Alex picked up another sandwich, hesitated, and put it down again without taking a bite. He seemed to have lost his appetite. “I was around Chelgrin a lot, and I finally figured he had only four facial expressions he put on for the public: a somber, attentive look when he pretended to be listening to the views of a constituent; a fatherly smile that crinkled his whole face but was maybe one micron deep; a stern frown when he wanted to be perceived as a hard-nosed negotiator; and grief for when his wife died, for when his daughter disappeared, for occasions when American soldiers were killed in one far place or another. Masks. He has all these masks. I think he enjoys manipulating people even more than the average politician. For him it’s almost a form of masturbation.”
“Whew!” Joanna said.
“Sorry if I come on a bit strong about him,” Alex said. “But this is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to tell anyone what I really think of the man. He was an important client, so I always hid my true feelings. But in spite of the money he spent to find Lisa and all his weeping about his lost little girl, I never believed he was as devastated about her disappearance as everyone thought. He seemed... hollow. There was a coldness, a deep emptiness about him.”
“Then maybe we should just stop right here.”
“That’s not an option.”
Joanna frowned. “But if the senator is the kind of man you say, if he’s capable of anything... we might all be better off if we forget him. At least now I know a little bit about why I’ve made a loner of myself. Programmed. I don’t really have to know any more. I can live without knowing how it was done or who did it or why.”
Mariko glanced at Alex. He met her eyes, and he was clearly as dismayed as she herself was. “Joanna-san, maybe right now you feel that you can live without knowing, but later you’ll change your mind. You’ll be curious. It’ll eat at you like an acid. Everyone needs to know who he is, where he’s come from. Ignorance isn’t bliss.”
“Besides,” Alex said, taking a less philosophical approach, “it’s too late for us to walk away from this. They won’t let us. We’ve learned too much.”
Joanna looked skeptical. “You think they might try to kill us?”
“Or worse.”
“What’s worse?”
Alex got up, went to the small window, and stood with his back to them, staring at the Gion and the dark city beyond. “Maybe one day we’ll all wake up in other parts of the world wi
th new names, new pasts, new sets of memories, troubled by nightmares but unaware that we were once Joanna Rand, Mariko Inamura, and Alex Hunter.”
Mariko saw Joanna turn sickly white, as if pale moonlight had pierced the window and lit nothing in the room but her face.
“Would they really do it again?” Mariko asked.
Alex turned from the window. “Why not? It’s an effective way of silencing us—without leaving behind any dead bodies to excite the police.”
“No,” Joanna said, and she looked haunted. “Everything that’s happened to me in Japan, everything I am and want to become—all of it wiped out of my mind? No.”
Mariko shuddered at the thought of being erased, remade, so utterly controlled.
“But why?” Joanna demanded. In frustration she slammed one fist onto the table, rattling the teacups and saucers. “Why did all of this happen? It’s insane. It makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense to the people who did it,” Alex said.
“And it would make sense to us too, if we knew what they know,” Mariko added.
Alex nodded. “Right. And we won’t be safe until we do know what they know. As soon as we understand what motivated the Lisa-Joanna switch, we can go public, make headlines. When all the secrets are out in the open, the people behind this won’t have any reason either to kill us or brainwash us.”
“No reason except revenge,” Joanna said.
“There’s that,” he admitted. “But maybe it won’t matter to them once the game is over.”
“All right. Then what’s next?” Joanna asked.
Alex said, “Mariko-san, you have an uncle who’s a psychiatrist. Sometimes does he use hypnotic regression to help his patients?”
“Yes.” For years Mariko had tried to persuade Joanna to see Uncle Omi, but always without success.