The Glass House (25 page)

She shook herself free of the thought and walked right to the middle of the huge space. She stopped and allowed herself to turn slowly, taking in every detail, cataloguing them as she turned. Halfway through her turn she saw it: a set of iron stairs leading up to a catwalk. There was something wrong with it; as she approached she saw what it was. The area beneath the stairs had been walled in and painted to look exactly like the wall behind it. Why would someone bother to do that? She banged her hand against the drywall. Hollow. It took her several minutes before she found the hidden latch. She opened the door and was confronted by video monitors on every wall, now unplugged, and what seemed to be a master console in the middle of the room.

Everywhere the most modern of modern electronics—except to one side was a record player, a turntable. She hadn't seen one in years, and she guessed that this one was quite expensive. She hit the power switch and the platter rotated silently. A quick search turned up four albums. All by Yo-Yo Ma.

“Yo-Yo Ma—cello concerts,” she said aloud.

There was a simple hard chair to one side—not an office chair at all. Attached to the front left leg was a flat wooden board with holes in it. Beside it were several long strands of hair. As she leaned down to pick one up, Emerson said, “Horsehair, expensive but necessary if you want to get the full sound from a classic cello.”

She turned and saw him holding the Yo-Yo Ma records. She wanted to ask him why the hell he kept on sneaking up on her, but her cell phone buzzed—Homeland.

She listened and then began to run.

Emerson caught up to her. “What?”

“They got a positive ID.”

“Where?”

“The Coronado Hotel, San Diego.”

THE GUESTS AT THE SWANKY
hotel, which featured an outdoor skating rink despite the eighty-degree temperature, were stunned when they were ordered, “Stay exactly where you are until you are told that you can move.”

Forty Homeland Security agents circulated WJ's photo to the annoyed and often annoying guests. Small bits of information began to flow to Yslan's command centre in the front lobby. The man in the photo had arrived two days ago but had left. He'd taken an entire floor of the hotel. Had a hospital bed moved in. A sleeping young man was brought in on a gurney. And a doctor arrived.

“Who was the doctor?”

The hotel manager had no idea.

“Surveillance videos?”

The manager hesitated. Yslan turned to the nearest Homeland Security agent and announced loudly, “Arrest this man.”

Before the agent had his cuffs out the manager had “managed” to find the surveillance videos.

While Emerson oversaw the viewing of the tapes, Yslan went up to the room where the boy on the gurney had been kept. The gurney was still there, but of course there was no boy. Rosin dust by one of the chairs suggested that the cello player had been here. And then there was the tiny pencil drawing by the mirror above
the sink in the bathroom, so faint it was almost invisible, of the same tree she'd seen drawn in pen in Seth's room at the Wellness Dream Clinic. She leaned down and ran her fingers over the pencil lines. “What does this mean, Seth?”

Her BlackBerry buzzed. “Yeah?”

It was Emerson. “We found the doctor.”

• • •

There was no doctor in the small desert town. The best that WJ could find was an EMT who came to the motel and administered a huge dose of steroids to Seth. Then he hooked up the boy's morphine drip and gave Seth the button. “You know how to administer this?” he asked.

Seth nodded slowly and injected himself with a long hit of morphine.

At the door the EMT pocketed WJ's money, then said, “This boy needs a real doctor and a real hospital.”

WJ held out more money. The EMT took it and left the shabby room.

Moments later, Seth's back arched and he vomited onto the bedspread.

WJ pulled the thing off and threw it out the motel room door, then sat at the foot of the bed and said, “Hold on. The steroids will kick in soon and we'll continue our little journey.”

Seth didn't reply—he'd already retreated into sleep.

• • •

Viola awoke with a start. She pulled her shawl around her tiny shoulders and stared out the window. “What lake is that?”

“Superior,” Martin Armistaad said as he negotiated a tight turn on the two-lane Trans-Canada Highway.

“Cold,” she said.

“You're cold?”

“Yes, but that lake is cold—and so deep, so black, so cold.”

They both knew it was cold like death, but neither said as much as the deep night of northern Ontario came in quickly and surrounded them.

• • •

Without warning or warrant Yslan and Emerson burst into the posh offices of Dr. Henry Kristoff in the Hillcrest district of San Diego. Emerson shoved the receptionist out of the way, and Yslan threw open the door to the good doctor's office. The man was in the midst of a conference call, his speakerphone alive with voices. Yslan strode quickly to the large reclaimed wood desk and hit the disconnect button.

A few moments of bluster and who-do-you-think-you-ares were followed by a surprising contrition and willingness to be of assistance.

“And you didn't think it odd to be called to the Coronado Hotel rather than a hospital for someone that sick?”

“Not actually. I have a very wealthy clientele, and the really rich seem to resent death, as if it were only meant for lesser beings. So I've been summoned to various places on short notice. I was once flown by private plane to an island in the Caribbean to treat a man's dying wife.”

Yslan waited.

“And, yes, she died.”

“As we all must,” Emerson chimed in.

The doctor nodded.

“The Coronado Hotel?” Yslan prompted.

“Two days ago. A very young, very sick man.”

“Name?”

“I didn't ask.”

“Who called for you?”

“It came through my service.” He quickly gave them the service name, and a tech was on it.

“You said the boy was very sick. How sick?”

“Dying. If he had two weeks I'd be surprised.”

“Cancer?”

“Badly treated cancer. There is no reason to die from bladder cancer of his sort.”

“But he was dying?”

“Most definitely.”

“So what did you do for him?”

“Everything possible, then I hooked him up to a strong morphine pump for the pain.”

“Was he in much pain?”

“Excruciating, I would think. I filled him up with steroids and a cocktail of supports that might, if he's lucky, extend his life.”

Yslan thought about that and finally said, “But not for long?”

The doctor nodded. “The body is a magnificent machine, but just a machine, and it must be treated properly when it malfunctions.”

“And it wasn't this time?”

Again the doctor nodded.

Emerson took out the photo of WJ and put it in front of the doctor.

The doctor put on a pair of reading glasses and glanced at the picture. “Yes. That is the boy's father.”

Emerson looked at Yslan.

“Did that man say anything to you?”

“Just ‘Do what you can for my boy.' ”

“That was it?”

“Not another word.”

Yslan thought about that, then said, “What about the boy?”

“What about him?”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“At first nothing. He was asleep, which was odd.”

“Why odd?”

“Well, as I said, he had to be in tremendous pain. And . . .”

“And what?”

“He was asleep with his eyes open—and his eyes were in constant motion.”

“REM cycles?” Emerson asked.

“That would be my guess.”

“Fine,” Yslan said, “but did he say anything, anything at all?”

“He was in pain and on elaborate medication.”

“Yes, but did he say anything?”

“Nothing important—”

“What did he say?”

“The tree, the lamp, the tree, the lamp.”

“What?”

“Over and over again he said something about going to the tree, to the lamp, meet me at the tree, meet me at the lamp.”

Back in the car, while Emerson was wrapping up, Yslan took out the book she'd found in Seth's room at the Wellness Dream Clinic and read the poem at the end again, slowly:

Story.

With my dad

At the Park.

Hot.

He sat beneath the great Tree.

I wanted to explore.

He said okay.

As I ran down the hill he shouted.

“I'm here beneath the tree.”

I looked.

He was sitting on the ground beneath a street lamp.

Old street lamp—gaslight?

He spoke again.

“I'll always be here beneath the tree waiting for you.

“Whatever happens I'll be here—waiting for you.”

Yslan looked at the page and saw the tearstains on it and knew that to find the boy she'd have to find the father. And to find the father she'd have to get hold of Crazy Eddie—in the Junction.

THE PHONE BURRED ON EDDIE'S
desk and he glanced at it. A phone number he didn't recognize. He quickly punched the number into his ID RECON program and got the message
Federal Restriction.

Well, he only knew one fed of any sort, so he punched receive and said, “Couldn't stand to be away from me a moment longer, Special Agent Yslan Hicks?”

“Not exactly.”

“Too bad,” Eddie said, lighting a bomber and hitting disconnect on his phone all in one motion.

His phone buzzed again. “Pizza, Pizza, would you like anchovies on your NSA special or just the usual crap?”

“Eddie, I need to find Decker.”

“He's beneath the radar, off the grid, on his own, dross in the wind.”

“Eddie!”

“I don't know where he is. And that's the way he wanted it. So unless you have something else on your mind—”

“Seth's in trouble.”

Eddie spat the bomber from his lips into the can beside his chair.

“I know you care about the boy.”

“Because you've bugged—”

“Yeah. But I know you care about that boy, and I think he cares about you, and I
know
that he's in great danger.”

“What does that have to do with finding Decker?”

“I think Seth's been leaving clues about where he's going, but only Decker can decipher them.”

“Tell me.”

And she did. The tree drawing in the San Francisco Wellness Dream Clinic, the same image in pencil in the Coronado Hotel, the doctor's claim that Seth kept saying “At the tree, at the lamp post.” Finally, she read him the poem.

Eddie was on his feet, pacing quickly with his awkward stride, his foot lifter clacking with every step.

“What's wrong?”

Eddie turned and saw Marina in the door of his study, clearly frightened.

“Nothing, honey. Everything's okay.”

“It's not!”

“Who's that?” Yslan demanded.

“My daughter. Where did you track Decker last?”

She told him Namibia.

“Okay. He's no genius when it comes to hiding. I'll find him.”

“And tell us where he is?”

“I don't know about that.” He snapped off the connection and turned the ringer off. She could call as much as she liked, but he wouldn't pick up until he knew what was what with Seth.

He sat heavily back in his desk chair. Much to his surprise, Marina came over, climbed up on his lap and said, without speaking,
You'll find Mr. Decker. You will.

Fifty-five minutes later he got his first hit. Decker had traded Visa cards, using his old one to get a new one under a false name—one that Eddie had seen before, long ago, when they were kids in school.

He quickly found out that Decker had loaded the card with a seven-thousand-dollar advanced payment. The first charge was a rental car fee from Windhoek's Avis office. He hacked into their site and found the exact vehicle, then he got the vehicle's GPS code and hacked into that. He got its current coordinates, then went to Google Maps and punched those in: Solitaire, Namibia.

His friend—or at least his rental car—was in Solitaire, Namibia, right at the junction of Highways 1 and 6.

He picked up his phone, thought for a moment, then dialed.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah, he's in Namibia.”

“I know that, but the country's bigger than France.”

“He's at the junction of Highways Six and One.”

“Does the place have a name, Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Solitaire—Solitaire, Namibia.”

ON THE AIR FORCE JET
, Emerson had been oddly quiet for some time. Finally, as the jet banked for its descent to Windhoek's military airport, he said, “I thought we were after Harrison's poisoner.”

“We are,” Yslan replied. “We find Seth, we find WJ.”

Emerson nodded.

Yslan stared at him. “You knew that. Why did—”

Before she could finish her question, he turned to her. He didn't look good, which was so pronounced because of his usual beauty. “Yeah, I knew that,” he said.

“You okay?” Yslan asked.

But he turned his head away from her and stared out the window at the quickly approaching Namibian desert.

A man lost in thought,
Yslan assumed, then she corrected herself:
A lost man.

He turned to her and said, “You realize you spoke those thoughts out loud?”