The Heaven Trilogy (23 page)

The ideas came like weeds, sprouting in his mind as though some mad scientist had spilled super-growth formula on them. It didn’t even occur to him until the end of the first week that the twisting and turning up there did not stop when he fell asleep. In fact, his best ideas seemed to sneak their way into his mind then, when he tossed in fitful sleep. In his dreams.

Just as the vagrant had flashed his tongue about and told Kent just what he thought of the situation, other voices seemed to be suggesting other opinions. He could never quite remember their precise words or even the overall context of their suggestions, but he seemed to wake each day with an eagerness to explore a vague notion. And regardless of why his mind seemed to favor the night, Kent did not complain. It was the stuff of genius, he thought.

The meeting with Lacy nagged at him occasionally, but the growing prospects of his new life overshadowed the strange encounter. Several times he pulled her card out, intending to call. But he found things confusing once he attempted to clarify his reason for contacting her.
Oh hi, Lacy. How about a nice romantic dinner tonight? Did I tell you that my wife and son just died? Because that’s important. I’m a free man, Lacy.
Gag! He was certainly in no mood for a relationship.

On the other hand, he was starving for friendship. And friendship was relationship, so in that sense he was growing slowly desperate for a relationship. Maybe even someone to tell . . . Someone to share this growing secret with. But that would be insane. Secrecy was his friend here.

Life at the office began to take on its own rhythm, not so different from the one that had once marched him through the days before his world had turned upside down. And the nights. It was the night routine that Kent began to methodically add to his work regimen. He needed his coworkers to be thoroughly accustomed to his late nights at the office again. His whole plan depended on it.

It was impossible to lock or unlock the building without triggering a signal that notified the alarm company of the event. The entries were posted on the branch manager’s monitors each morning. So Kent made a point of entering and leaving through the backdoor, creating a consistent record of his work habits, and then offhandedly reporting the progress he’d made the previous night to Borst.

What they could not know was that the debugging he accomplished in those late hours while they slept took only a fraction of the time indicated. He could produce more clean code in one hour than any of the others could in a day. He not only possessed twice the gray matter any of them did, but he was working on his own code.

Not his own code as in AFPS, but his own program as in refining ROOSTER and the way ROOSTER was going to wreak its havoc on the world.

Cliff made a habit of poking his head in each day, but Kent did his best to minimize their interaction. Which simply meant knowing at all times what the zany snowboarder was working on and staying clear of his routines.

“You seem awfully well adjusted for having just gone through such loss,” Cliff stated at the end of Kent’s first week back.

Kent scrambled for a plausible explanation. “Denial,” he said, turning away. “That’s what they say, anyway.”

“Who says that?”

He had not been to a shrink. “The pastor,” Kent lied.

“You’re kidding! I had no idea you went to church. I do too!”

Kent began to regret his lie immediately.

“So how long have you been a Christian?”

“Well, actually I’m really not that well connected.”

“Sure, I can understand that. They say 80 percent of churchgoers are disconnected beyond Sunday services. So I hear that your wife was a strong believer.”

Kent looked up. “Really? And who told you that?”

“I just picked it up somewhere.”

“Somewhere like where? I didn’t know it was common knowledge around here.”

Cliff shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, from Helen, actually.”

“Helen? My mother-in-law’s been talking to you?”

“No. Relax, Kent. We talked once when she called in.”

“And you just happened to talk about me and my wife? Well that’s real sweet of you— ‘Poor Kent, let’s gossip about his faith, why don’t we? Or should we say, his lack thereof.’”

“We’re Christians, Kent. Some things are not as sacred as others. Don’t worry, it goes no further than me.”

Kent turned away, angry without knowing exactly why. Helen had her rights. Gloria was, after all, her daughter. He began to avoid Cliff then, at the end of his first week back to work. Although getting away from the pineapple-eating grinner was easier said than done.

It took Borst most of two weeks to buy into Kent’s reformed attitude. But a daily dose of soothing accolades administered by Kent greased the wheels to the man’s mind easily enough. Kent had to hold his nose while smearing the stuff on, but even that became easier as the days passed.

Borst asked him about the schedule once after Kent had handed him the fix to a bug that Borst himself had attempted and failed to remedy. It had taken Kent exactly twenty-nine minutes the previous night to locate the misplaced modifier responsible.

“You got it, huh? Gotta hand it to you, Anthony. You sure can crank this stuff out.” He lifted his greasy head. “You seem to work best at night these days, don’t you?”

A flare hissed white-hot in Kent’s mind. His heart flinched in his chest, and he hoped desperately that Borst was not catching any of his reaction. “I’ve always worked best at night, Markus.” He’d discovered that Borst liked to be called Markus by his friends. He lowered his eyes. “But since the deaths, I’m not crazy about being alone at night with nothing to do, you know?”

“Yeah, sure. I understand.” He waved the pages in the air. “You did all of this last night, huh?”

Kent nodded.

“What time you pull out of here?”

Kent shrugged. “I came back at, oh, maybe eight or so, and left at midnight.”

Borst smiled. “Four hours? Like I said, you’re good. You keep working like this, and the rest of us will run out of things to do.” He chuckled. “Good work.” He’d winked then, and Kent swallowed an urge to poke his eye out.

Instead he smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

The
sir
brought a flare of pride to Borst’s nostrils, and Kent left, determined to use the expression more frequently.

He resumed his friendship with Will Thompson within the first few days. As before, their shallow talk led to nothing of substance, which was fine by Kent.

“I just can’t believe you’re back after what they put you through,” Will told him, walking to lunch the third day. Taking time for lunch sat rancid in Kent’s gut, but he was on a mission to appear as ordinary as possible, and the occasional lunch would fit the image well.

“You know, if Spencer had not passed away, I don’t think I would be here. But when you lose the ones you love the most, things change, Will. Your perspectives change. I just need to work now, that’s all.” He looked across the street to Antonio’s Italian Cuisine. “Who knows? Maybe once things have settled I’ll move on. But now I need stability.”

Will nodded. “Makes sense.”

Touché, Will. Indeed it makes sense. Everything needs to make sense. You remember that when they question you about me.

Betty Smythe became just another office fixture again, smacking her lips at the front desk, handling all of Borst’s important calls and constantly scanning her little world with the peeled eyes of a hawk. It made little difference to Kent, who simply closed his door. But when the poop hit the fan, hers would be the most active mouth, flapping nonstop, no doubt. He wanted her gabbing to favor him, not cast suspicion his way. So he began the distasteful task of working his way into her corner.

A bouquet of roses, for all of her support, started him off on the right foot. The fact that she had not lifted a single finger in support of him didn’t seem to temper her appreciation. Then again, judging by the amount of acrylic hanging off the end of her fingers, lifting them would be no easy task.

“Oh, Kent! You shouldn’t have!”

He had always wondered if women who carried on with wide eyes about flowers really did find them as stimulating as they let on. He could see a cow slobbering over vegetation, but women were hardly cows. Well, most women weren’t. Betty came pretty close, which probably explained why she had just rolled her eyes back as if she were dying and going to heaven over the red blossoms on this particular arrangement of vegetation.

“But I should have,” he replied with as much sincerity as he could muster. “I just wanted you to know how much your support has helped me.”

A quick flicker in her eyes made him wonder if he had gone too far. If so, she quickly adapted. “You’re so kind. It was nothing, really. Anybody would have done the same.” She smiled and smelled the roses.

Kent had no idea what she could possibly be referring to, but it no longer mattered. “Well, thank you again, Betty. I owe you.”
Gag!

“Thank you, Kent.” Somehow one of the petals had loosed itself and stuck on her upper lip. It looked ridiculous. She didn’t seem to notice. Kent didn’t bother to tell her. He smiled genuinely and turned for his office.

Todd and Mary were like two peas in a pod—both eager to please Borst and fully cognitive of the fact that they needed Kent to do it. They both trotted in and out of his office like regular pack rats. “Kent, how would you do this?” Or, “Kent, I’ve done such and such but it’s not working quite right.” Not that he particularly minded. At times it even made him feel as though nothing had really changed— he had always been at the center of their world.

It was the way they straightened when Borst walked by that brought Kent back to earth. In the end, their allegiance was for Bossman.

Todd actually apologized for his behavior at one point. “I’m sorry for . . . well, you know.” He sat in Kent’s office and crossed his legs, suddenly a tinge redder in the face. He pushed up his black-rimmed glasses.

“For what, Todd?”

“You know, for the way I acted that first day.”

Kent did not respond. Let the boy squirm a little.

“It’s hard being caught in the middle of office politics, you know. And technically speaking, Borst
is
our boss, so we don’t want to cross him. Besides, he was right. It’s really his thing, you know?”

A dozen voices screamed foul in Kent’s head. He wanted to launch out and turn this boy. Slap some sense into him. And he could’ve pulled it off, too. But he only bit his lip and nodded slowly.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Todd grinned sheepishly. “It’s okay, Kent. Borst promised to take care of us.”

Todd obviously told Mary about the conversation, because the next time she sat her chunky self in his guest chair, she wore a grin that balled her cheeks. She dove right into a question without referring to the incident, but Kent knew they had talked. Knew it like he knew both she and Todd were, spineless, Twinkie-eating propeller-heads.

During his second week back, Kent began leaving for lunch through the front lobby. Despite his aversion to doing so, he’d done it before so he would do it now. He walked nonchalantly, avoiding eye contact but responding to the occasional call of greeting with as much enthusiasm as he could stomach.

They were all there, like windup dolls, playing their parts. The tellers whispered about their fanciful relationships and counted the money. Zak the security guard paced and nodded and occasionally swung his stick like he’d learned from some Hollywood movie. Twice Kent saw Sidney Beech, the assistant vice president, clicking across the floor when he entered the lobby, and each time he pretended not to see her. Once he saw Porky—that would be Price Bentley—walk across the marble floor, and he immediately cut for the bathrooms. If the bank president saw him, he did not indicate so. Kent chose to believe he had not.

By the end of the second week, the routines had been reestablished and Kent’s most recent altercations with the bank all but forgotten. Or so he hoped. Everything settled into a comfortable rhythm, just like the old days.

Or so they thought.

In reality, with the passing of each day, Kent’s nerves wound tighter and tighter, like one of those spring-operated toys in the hands of an overeager child. At any moment the spring would break and he would snap, berserk.

But the plan was taking shape, like a beautiful woman walking out of the fog. Step by step, curves began to define themselves, and flesh took on form. The emerging image was Kent’s link to sanity. It kept him from going mad during the long hours of pretending. It gave him a lover to fondle in the dark creases of his mind. It became . . . everything.

He was setting them up for one major backstab.

He was going to rob them blind.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Week Nine

DAWN HAD come to Denver with a flare of red in the East. Bill Madison knew because he had watched the sun rise. From gray to red to just plain blue with a little smog thrown in to remind him where he lived.

Helen had called the previous evening and asked him to join her in the morning. They had talked twice on the phone since his last meeting with her, and each time Helen’s words had rung in his mind for a good hour or two after the final click of the receiver. The prospect of seeing her again had brought a knot to his gut, but not a bad knot, he thought. More like the twisting you might expect just before the first big drop on a roller coaster.

“And why, precisely, am I joining you?” he’d asked good-naturedly.

“We’ve got some talking to do,” she said. “Some walking and talking and praying. Bring your walking shoes. You won’t be disappointed, Pastor.” And he knew he wouldn’t be. Although he doubted they would really be doing much walking. Not with her bad knees.

He stepped up to her porch at 6 A.M. feeling just a tad foolish with the tennis shoes on. Helen opened the door on his first ring and walked right past him and into the street without uttering a word.

Bill closed the door and scrambled after her. “Hold up, Helen. Good night! What’s gotten into you?” He said it chuckling. If he didn’t know her, he might guess she’d suddenly become a spring chicken by the way she moved her legs.