Upon A Pale Horse (22 page)

“Be hard to do, Kaycee. He passed on. So have some respect for the dead,” Sam chided, his voice low.

She blinked twice, as though not registering the words, and then shook her head. “I’m sorry. Obviously, I didn’t know. But I have to insist on you winding this up. He really isn’t in any shape for a lengthy interrogation.”

“Nonsense. We’re sitting on the porch having a drink. There isn’t even any booze in it. How much harm can it do?” Sam grumbled.

“The doctor said you weren’t to exert yourself.”

“I’m seated, not pole dancing,” Sam said.

Jeffrey regarded them both. “Sam…Kaycee. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to meddle or disrupt anything here. I’m just looking for answers, and hoping to learn why my brother was so obsessed with the same topic that interested your grandfather years ago. Sam, if you’ve told me everything, I won’t keep you any longer.” He pushed back on his seat and rose, regarding the professor with resignation. “Then that’s the entirety of what you two discussed? Your theory about the livestock mutilation?”

Kaycee’s mouth hardened into a determined line, and she took a step toward him. “That’s what you’re talking about?” she asked.

“Don’t go off half-cocked, Kaycee. I don’t mind. It’s just a question, only words.” Sam turned his attention back to Jeffrey. “I wish I could remember anything more about that afternoon, but it was so soon after the fall, and I was on a lot of meds. I think that’s everything we covered. He seemed quite attentive about the detail – he was a very bright young fellow.”

“Then he’s told you everything,” Kaycee said, obviously hoping to end the conversation. “There’s nothing more for you here.”

Jeffrey nodded, and after a split second of internal battle, extended his hand to Sam, who was still seated, rocking slightly in his chair. “It was a real pleasure meeting you, Sam. Thanks for taking the time with me.” His brow furrowed. “Is there any way to get in touch with you if any more questions occur to me?”

Sam scowled. “Don’t have a phone. No T.V., either. Don’t need ’em. Waste of money, if you ask me. Had a cell phone, but the service expired last month and I haven’t gotten around to paying for more. Unnecessary with Kaycee here. But on my to-do list…”

Jeffrey turned to Kaycee, half afraid she was going to slap him. “Would it be possible to get your number?”

She exhaled with exasperation, then turned and hopped from the porch to the ground, ignoring the stairs. “I’ll give it to you on the way to the car,” she called over her shoulder as she started down the path toward the gate. “You coming?”

Jeffrey gave Sam a parting salute and followed after her. “What did I do that’s got you so angry? Whatever it is, I apologize,” he said.

“You came here and interrupted an old man’s convalescence to stir up a painful past that just about destroyed him, and you want to know why I’m upset? He cries out in the middle of the night sometimes, did you know that? No. How could you? He’s had a very rough time of it for as long as I’ve been alive – my mother told me all about it once I was old enough to understand. He went from being a respected academic to an outcast, an intellectual forced to earn his living with his hands. Everyone he was close to either shunned him, or is dead – my mother, my grandmother, his supposed friends that wanted nothing to do with him once he was no longer the campus golden boy…I’m sorry about your brother, by the way. I never met him. But I’m still sorry.”

“I…I didn’t realize. I’m sorry too, Kaycee. Really.”

They walked along in silence, the treetops quivering from a light breeze, budding with the promise of spring, and Jeffrey tried a different tack.

“What were you doing before you moved out here?”

“I’m a translator. I took a sabbatical to look after him for ninety days, and I’ve been doing freelance work in the meantime. I’ll return to my job in another month, back in New York, and then he’ll be alone again, out here in the middle of God’s ass crack.”

“A translator. That’s interesting. What language?”

She stopped and turned to face him.

“Look. Jeffrey, right? I’m sure you’re a nice guy, and you mean well, but I’m not in a great mood right now, and I’ve never been good with chitty chat. Don’t take it the wrong way, but we’re not going to go get a cup of coffee somewhere while I tell you all about my hopes and dreams. You came, you got what you wanted, and now you’re leaving. That’s all the contact we’ll ever have. So it doesn’t really matter what I do or what you do, does it? I’m just the rude chick who almost shot you today – it’s probably best if we leave it at that.”

He returned her gaze, several responses on the tip of his tongue, then he thought better of it and offered a smile. “Thankfully, almost being shot’s like almost being pregnant. That would have seriously ruined my day. I guess I owe you one for not blowing my head off.”

Her expression softened, and he noticed that she had tiny flecks of gold in her hazel irises that caught the sun when the light hit them just right. “Around here, I think they actually offer a reward for every lawyer you shoot,” she said.

“I knew I liked the place for a reason.”

They resumed walking down the path, startling a squirrel that scampered up a nearby tree, and Jeffrey was struck by how idyllic the setting was.

“It’s beautiful out here,” he said, and she nodded.

“I know. It is. And I’m sorry if I’m wound up. It’s just that it’s been such a struggle for him to get better, and each one of these episodes takes more out of him than you know. He’ll be up for days now, replaying things in his head, and it’ll just make things more difficult for us all. He’s not a young man, in case you didn’t notice, and for all his brave front, he almost died when he fell – he was all alone, and he easily could have. He lay on the floor for hours before he was able to crawl to the phone.” She paused as they neared the bend in the drive. “That’s why I’m here.”

“What are you going to do once you have to go back to work?”

“That’s one of my problems. I don’t know. He needs someone around, but I’m all he’s got. I figure I’ll tackle that in another month. Of course he says he’s fine, and that he’ll do okay by himself, but we’ve already seen how that turned out. A repeat performance, and he wouldn’t be so lucky…”

“No. I can see how he wouldn’t be.”

They arrived at the gate and Jeffrey offered her his hand. She took it, shaking it with a surprisingly strong grip, her shoulders square beneath the sweater as she studied him.

“I thought you wanted my number.”

“I do. Just tell me. I’ll remember it.”

“You sure you will?”

“I’m good with things like that. I will.”

She gave him a 212 area code number and he repeated it back to her.

“There. It’s now locked away in my memory banks, never to be forgotten. Kaycee and Sam. Have gun, will travel.”

She laughed lightly and spun, leaving him to slip out the same way he had come in. “Take care, lawyer man.”

“You too,” he said, and for a reason he couldn’t have explained, he felt like something important had just happened, something essential to his being that he didn’t understand but that was as tangible as a punch to the gut. Then his inner voice came to the rescue, chastising him for having improper thoughts about Kaycee when he was in a hot and heavy relationship with Monica – the new love of his life. That was unlike him. He was usually as ethical as they came. And yet the stirring in him that Kaycee had caused was undeniable.

He watched as she made her way back up the drive, and when she disappeared into the grove of trees he felt unaccountably empty, as though a part of him had been taken with her as she returned to an old man on a rustic porch who was waiting for dusk, as, ultimately, were they all.

TWENTY-FIVE

Suspicions Allayed

Jeffrey flipped the sun visor down as he approached Washington’s outskirts, mulling over the professor’s disclosures, a dark idea beginning to form. Was there something to his hypothesis that the government had been involved in covert testing of bio-warfare agents forty years ago? And even if so, why would it matter now? That was ancient history – hardly the sort of thing that got planes blown up, even if you were the hardest-boiled conspiracy theorist on Earth.

And yet Keith had chosen to send Jeffrey on a quest to talk to the ex-academic, and had obviously believed that his story was an important enough aspect of whatever he’d been researching to warrant making the trip a priority. He replayed the discussion over and over, but didn’t see anything he might have overlooked the first time – and his memory couldn’t expunge the image of Kaycee standing in the sun, holding a gun on him, blond mop shimmering like an angry lion’s, her eyes radiating an allure that was as undeniable as it was powerful.

No matter how he sliced the professor’s account, at the end of the day it was nothing more than a theory about sins of the past that had no bearing on the present that he could see. A tragic tale of abuse of power, no question, and if true, evidence that the government had been dirty, but that was hardly front page news even on a slow day. Try as he might there was no smoking gun, and as he pulled to the curb near Jakes’ office, he was no closer to a hoped-for breakthrough than when he’d started in the morning. Although something had shifted in his perspective, and he was no longer thinking his brother had been crazy: Something about the professor’s tale had resonated with Jeffrey, and by the end of their discussion he’d been left feeling that his brother had been sane, but pulling at a dangerous thread – and one worth killing over.

He slipped the keys through the mail slot as instructed, forgoing the note since the car was in plain view, and then walked to the corner and flagged down a taxi at the intersection. The driver dropped him off a hundred yards from the storage facility, and he saw with relief that he still had time to rummage through his things so he could bring a box of belongings back with him to the condo, satisfying any prying eyes.

Jeffrey spent a half hour in his locked area and got more clothes, as well as some photographs and personal items, and packed them all into a large carton that would just fit in his trunk. He carefully clasped the padlock and carried his carton past the desk clerk getting ready to shut down and then out to his car. He’d guessed correctly on the box’s size, and soon was winding his way back home, glad to be rid of the Taurus and feeling like he’d need to take a long shower to get the vehicle’s stink off his skin.

There was a parking space near his building, and after some juggling of keys he manhandled the container to the condo and pushed his way through the front door. His phone rang as he was stepping into the foyer, and he muttered a curse as he dropped the carton in the entry hall and felt for his cell.

“Hey. I tried calling you earlier, but you didn’t pick up,” Monica said.

“What? Oh, shit. I forgot my phone in the car. No wonder. Where are you?”

He peered into the darkened living room and flipped on the lights. “I just got home.”

“Perfect. You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Want to hit Caruzzo’s? I could go for their veal…”

“That sounds great. You want to meet me here or at the restaurant?” Jeffrey asked.

“I’ll come by. Say, twenty minutes?”

“That will give me just enough time to rinse the dust off and slip into something more comfortable.”

“Okay. See you then,” she said, and hung up.

He hoisted the box and lugged it into the spare bedroom, then undressed as he moved through the rooms, finishing by hopping on one leg as he wrestled his pants off, narrowly avoiding falling face first on the floor before he threw the bathroom door open and cranked the water on. Ten minutes later he was standing naked in his bedroom, debating which shirt to wear, when the street buzzer echoed through the condo, sounding like the wrong answer on a television game show. He grabbed the green polo shirt directly in front of him and pulled it over his head as he hurried to the intercom, held down the black button for a few moments, and jogged back to the bedroom for pants.

When the knock came at the door he was standing near it, barefoot, brushing his fingers through his damp hair. He twisted it open, and Monica stepped through, moving directly to him and planting a long kiss on his lips.

“Hmm. I missed you,” she purred.

“Me too,” he said, a twinge of guilt accompanying the words as a vision of Kaycee popped into his consciousness, immediately followed by Jakes’ craggy countenance.

“You planning to go out like that? Do the hippie barefoot thing? I’m cool with it if you are, although I think the restaurants generally insist on shoes for service,” she teased, looking down at his feet. “You’re not in San Francisco anymore.”

“I’ll be ready in no time. You’re early,” he said, kissing her forehead.

“Traffic was nonexistent coming here.”

“That’s lucky,” he said, and detached from her and headed back to the bedroom. “Give me two minutes,” he called over his shoulder, disappearing through the doorway.

She set her purse on the dining room table and walked to the refrigerator. “We need to go to the grocery store tomorrow. All you have is water, beer, and wine.”