Nameless Night (29 page)

“Why?” Ken asked. “Why the whole . . .” He searched for a word. “Why the whole rigmarole of a new Wes and all that?”

“That’s the question, now, isn’t it?” Randy said.

“She never finds out? It’s not in the diary?”

“Nope.”

“What about you?” Ken asked.

“I’ve thought about it,” Randy said. “Carrying off the charade removes the possibility of the kind of investigation we were just watching on the TV. That way nobody has to explain what happened to Wes.”

Ken was nodding.

“Secondly, they’ve got a guy way inside a very secretive project. Somebody who can keep them in the project loop.”

“Why would that be important to them?”

He shrugged. “All I can think of is some kind of internal power struggle maybe. Something like that.” He made serious eye contact with both of them. “I don’t want to be this Adrian Hope guy.”

“I don’t blame you,” Ken said.

“I’m not looking for that much attention.”

“You can’t . . .” Helen sputtered. She frowned. “Can you?”

“I think maybe you can,” he said. “I was Paul Hardy for seven years and there wasn’t a problem. I spent the past week as Randy James and that worked.” He spread his hands. “Why can’t I be whoever I want to be?”

“Every reporter in the country is looking for you,” Ken threw in.

“Exactly,” Randy said. “I mean . . . I wouldn’t mind being Adrian Hope. He sounds like an interesting guy . . . if I could go back to being an astronaut . . . if I could remember any of the accomplishments that got me there . . . but I can’t . . . I haven’t got a history. If I knew what the reporters want to know, I’d call a press conference and tell ’em . . . but I don’t . . . I don’t have any idea what happened on the night Wes Howard disappeared, and as long as I don’t, I’m a pariah . . . some kind of curiosity . . . some kind of . . .”

“The assistant district attorney,” Helen began. “The one who ran your fingerprints through the FBI system.”

He winced. “What about her?”

“She knows who you are. She knows about Paul Hardy.”

“They’re going to figure it out,” Ken said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

40

You want to call who?”

“The person who gave me the glass,” Kirsten said.

“Why?”

“Because . . .”—Kirsten had to think about it—“because I feel like the fingerprints were given to me in confidence.”

“How can evidence be in confidence?” Gill wanted to know “Evidence of what? You said it yourself. There’s nothing filed or pending. There’s no crime involved here.”

“And they weren’t given to you. They were given to this office.”

“No, Bruce . . . they were given to me.”

“And you work for me.”

He was getting angry. Kirsten worked on staying calm. “You’ve got a press conference scheduled,” she said. “I understand you want to have a nice big juicy bone to throw the press. I understand all that. The problem is that giving you the name is going to seriously disrupt the life of the person who gave them to me. The national media is going to descend like locusts. Life as these people know it is going to be over.”

“Comes with the territory,” Gill snapped. “If this person didn’t want—” “And what about Adrian Hope?”

“What about him?”

“What about his privacy?”

“He forfeited his privacy when he put himself in the public eye.”

“You sound like a paparazzi.”

“Make the call. You feel like you have to make the call, then make it.” He waved a finger. “. . . but I want the damn name and I want it now.”

“I’ll call,” Kirsten said. “But I’m not promising anything.”

Bruce Gill threw her his most baleful stare, the one he used to intimidate juries, and then turned and left the room without another word.

Kirsten sat still and rigid behind her desk as she watched him stalk down the corridor toward his office. He stopped to say a few words to Gene Connor, his private secretary, and then resumed his “I’m pissed off and you better get out of my way” stomp toward the closed door at the end of the hall.

“I SHOULD NEVER have come back here,” he said. “I just didn’t know where else to go. This is the only place I actually remember.”

“It’s all just so . . . bizarre,” Helen said.

“I see that stuff on TV about how I came from someplace in Wisconsin. I saw a woman this morning who said she’s my aunt. She was talking about how I went to this college and that college . . . none of which I remember. It all sounds like somebody else’s life to me.”

“It’s still you, isn’t it?”

“How can you feel good about something you don’t remember?”

“What choice do you have?”

“The way I see it, I can live my life as Adrian Hope, go into seclusion and live like a hermit, or I can become somebody else and lead something like a regular life.”

“Maybe it will all come back to you one of these days.”

“And maybe it won’t,” he countered. “I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for something that may not happen.”

She put her face in her hands. “Maybe you should go back to Wisconsin, see if maybe being there doesn’t bring something up for you,” she said.

He pointed at himself. “With this face?”

“You’ve got a point.”

“I’d be a freak, a curiosity. The guy who used to be . . .”

“Who would you like to be?” she asked.

The question stumped him. “I . . . I really haven’t had time to think about it. Just some Joe, I suppose. Somebody nobody ever heard of . . . you know . . . living a regular life maybe, something like that.”

The phone rang. Helen crossed the room and picked it up. She’d lost weight since the last time he’d seen her. “Yes,” she said into the receiver, and then she listened and then listened some more. “I understand,” she said finally. “Yes. Thank you for calling. No, really, I understand.” She hung up.

She turned and looked at him. The news wasn’t good. That much was plain.

“That was the assistant district attorney.”

“The one who ran the prints for you?”

“Yes. Her name is Kirsten Kane.”

“What’d she want?”

“She has a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Her boss . . . the district attorney . . .”

“Bruce Gill?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve seen him on TV a bunch of times. He always looks like he’s enjoying the whole thing.”

“He’s demanding she tell him where the fingerprints came from.”

“And?”

“And she’s refusing . . .”

“But?”

“But she’s not sure how long she can keep it up. She works for him, after all. Sooner or later she’s going to have to give it to him.”

“That gets out and you’re going to have a thousand reporters clawing at your door.”

“That concerns me.”

“That makes two of us.”

Ken came around the corner and into the kitchen. “I gotta run down south,” he announced. “One of my crews has run into some trouble. I’ll give you guys a ride home on the way.”

Helen trotted upstairs to get her things. Randy pulled his jacket off the back of the chair, stuffed the diary back into his bag, and got to his feet.

Ken pointed at the diary. “That’s a bestseller, you know.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely. That’s big-time Oprah material right there.”

“She didn’t know anything.”

“Does it matter?” he said. “Helpless woman, living a lie for the sake of her daughters.” He leered at Randy. “Bestseller stuff, I’m telling you.”

“WHAT CAN I DO for you gentlemen?” Kirsten asked. FBI. Three of them. Two young. One older.

“Adrian Hope,” the older one said.

“What about him?”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, I don’t.”

The older guy looked her over, searching her for any sense that she might be lying to him. “You’re sure?”

She raised her hand like she was taking an oath. “I have no idea as to the present whereabouts of Adrian Hope.”

“Where did the fingerprints come from?” the younger agent on the right asked.

“A confidential source,” Kirsten answered.

“We’re going to need the name,” said the other younger guy.

“There are other considerations,” Kirsten said.

“Such as?”

“Such as the privacy of the people involved.”

“This is an ongoing federal investigation.”

“Is there a crime involved?”

The young guys looked to their leader. Kirsten felt a chill run down her spine. The older guy seemed to be having a discussion with himself.

“You’re aware of the investigation taking place in Florida.”

“The family disappearance.”

“Indeed.”

“Then it shouldn’t be any surprise to you that we want to know the source of the fingerprints.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, is there a crime in here somewhere?”

“Our technicians have been going over the house,” the older one said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Somebody went to a great deal of trouble to remove what appears to be a rather substantial collection of bloodstains from the master bedroom.”

Kirsten’s stomach felt as if she’d swallowed a shoe.

“You’re sure.”

“A single blood type.”

“And?”

“The profile matches Wesley Howard’s NASA profile.”

Kirsten rubbed her temple with the fingers of her right hand.

“So what you’re saying is that the man of the house . . . this Wesley Howard, was probably killed in the bedroom.”

“Exactly.”

“And the wife and daughters?”

“Gone.”

“How is all of this related to Adrian Hope?” she asked. They exchanged glances again. The older guy took the lead. “In the course of searching the premises, our agents made an interesting discovery.”

“What was that?”

“A bomb shelter.”

“Really?”

“The original owners had it built along with the house.”

“And?”

“And Mr. Adrian Hope’s fingerprints are all over it.”

41

For once, the weatherman was right. Randy was standing at Helen Willis’s picture window watching a hell of a storm roll their way. Ken had called to say he was going to be a while and not to expect him for dinner. Helen and Mrs. Forbes were running all over the house making sure everybody had a flashlight and nobody had any candles.

Out over the rooftops, the sky was boiling, running over at the edges. Three miles distant, out over the bay, a gossamer curtain of rain danced along in front of the storm, anointing everything in its path. The trees in the backyard were beginning to sway; buffeted by the offshore wind, the tops seemed to be moving in all directions at once. He’d never seen a sky quite like it before, almost like a Florida hurricane, purple at the center, running to a deep gray at the edges. A trident of lightning flashed on the horizon and then another higher in the sky as the storm rumbled his way.

He watched as the moving wall of turbulence swallowed the waterfront whole and began creeping up the hill in his direction. He checked the clock over the sink. Just before three in the afternoon and it was getting black as night. The trees were beginning to sway in earnest now. Anything loose became a prisoner of the wind. The lights flickered but stayed on. The slide of the elevator door announced Helen’s arrival.

“You’re all the rage downstairs.”

“They know I’m here?”

“Mrs. Dahlberg. We’re right over her room. She may be stone blind but she can identify a person’s footsteps. She told everybody you were up here.”

“Shit,” Randy said.

“You know what Carman calls you?”

“What?”

“She calls you ‘New Face Paul.’ ” A volley of raindrops drummed the window, pulling both of their heads toward the noise. Dime-size hail bounced off the glass like bird shot. The front of the storm was no more than half a mile down the hill, swirling everything in its path as it worked its way inland. The intercom buzzed. Helen walked over to the call box.

“Yes?”

“There’s a lady here.” Eunice’s voice.

“Would you ask her for a name, please?”

Pause.

Another buzz. “She says her name is Kirsten Kane.”

Helen looked over at Randy.

Buzz. “She says it’s important.”

“She already knows the story,” Helen said.

“But she doesn’t know what I look like.”

“I’ll go downstairs.”

“No,” he said. “Tell Eunice to send her up.”

“You sure?”

“She’s the only ally we have,” he said.

They stood in silence until the elevator door slid open. She was tall for a woman. Somewhere right around six feet, he guessed. Beautiful face. Dark hair cut straight across the front. Sensible shoes. Soaking wet. Helen took her sopping raincoat and carried it to the bathroom. Her eyes searched the room before coming to rest on him.

She gave him a wan smile. “The weather’s terrible,” she said.

“And about to get worse,” he added.

“Are you . . .”

“Yes.”

Helen returned.

“Have you . . .”

“We’ve sort of introduced ourselves,” he said. Kirsten gathered herself. “I’m sorry to barge in like this,” she said.

“But I thought I owed it to you.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For the double dose of bad news I’m about to deliver.” She looked as if she was going to cry. “My boss . . .”

“Bruce Gill,” Helen said.

“Mr. Gill . . .” She shook her head in disgust and then looked over at Helen. “The second I got off the phone with you, he had his secretary pull my phone logs. He knows the number I called. He’s got a couple of researchers working on it right now. Within an hour he’s going to know everything I know.” She looked back at Randy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never dreamed he’d sink that low.” She slapped the side of her head. “I should have called from an outside phone.”

He told her not to worry. Spilt milk and all that. She went on.

“I spent the past hour dodging questions from the FBI. By the time I get back to the office, they’ll have a federal material witness warrant for your arrest.”

“Witness to what?” he asked.

“They want to question you regarding the disappearance of a family in Florida.”

“The Howards.”