“That Bastard,” Hannah said. “That goddamn worthless son of a bitch. He wants to confess. He wants absolution. The big come-from-behind finish. Well, screw him.”
They were on the front porch. Frank glancing around the empty lawn. Before Fielding drifted off to sleep, he’d repeated his plea to Hannah twice more. The same speech verbatim, as if he were giving it over and over, not knowing exactly when she might show up before the screen. When finally Fielding began to snore, Hannah stalked from the room and Sheffield followed her outside.
“So what’re you going to do, Frank?”
“I’m going back to the office, get busy on this.”
“You have computer people, right? They can track down his Web address, locate him.”
“We have computer people, yes. I’m not sure what they can and can’t do. Or how quickly. But we’ll see.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Where do you see me fitting in?”
“Where do you want to fit in, Hannah?”
“I want to be involved, of course.”
“Then I won’t try to stop you.”
“Don’t you want the book? You heard him. It’s got more code. More messages.”
Frank glanced away, stared out at the traffic. He shook his head.
“You hold onto it for the time being. Read it over, see if it makes any sense. I’ll run this by Rosie Jackson, the SAC, maybe he’ll want to put some of our crypto people on it.”
“But there’s something wrong. What is it, Frank? Level with me.”
He flinched and looked away.
“You still don’t believe this, do you? What do you think, this whole thing is some kind of fabrication, something I invented?”
“No, I don’t think that,” Frank said.
Hannah looked out at the lawn where three white ibis with long orange beaks were poking in the grass.
“But you’re just going to send me off with the book? Is that FBI procedure now? Let civilians handle evidence?”
“I think of you as more than a civilian, Hannah.”
“But still …”
“If you’d like me to confiscate the book, I will. Is that what you want?”
“I didn’t say that. But I don’t understand your reaction. You’re being so blasé.”
“Hey, I’m an easygoing guy. I think we’ve already established that. And anyway, you broke the first code, you can probably handle this one just fine.”
“Okay, if that’s the way you want it.”
Frank said, “All you have to do is promise you’ll stay in close touch. You figure out anything, you’re going to let me know. A lead, no matter how slight it might look, you call me. Can you live with that, Hannah?”
“I know about teamwork, Frank. I keep you informed, you keep me informed. It flows both ways.”
“And, Hannah, I don’t want you poking your nose in something, drawing your weapon, any of that.”
“This isn’t about embezzlement anymore,” she said. “You understand that, don’t you, Frank? Fielding wants to make a deathbed confession. Like I’m the one he thinks can pardon him.”
He took a small swallow. Eyes scanning the open yard. Looking for something out there, something he didn’t see.
“I’ll give you my cell number,” he said. “You’ve got to promise me you’ll call if anything develops.”
“Like old times. Me pestering you every hour of the day.”
“Yeah, like old times.”
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew it all along. That bastard killed my parents.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It appears that way.”
The dense bed of gray clouds had burned away and Frank was squinting through the glare.
“Appears, Frank? You heard him, the guy wants to spill his guts.”
He nodded. Something going on behind his eyes she couldn’t read.
“I’ll write down that cell number.”
He walked back to his car and got a pad and scribbled his number and brought it back.
“And listen, Frank. I don’t care if the son of a bitch has only five minutes to live. If he killed Mother and Dad, I want him in jail. He can die on a goddamn prison cot. He might be looking for forgiveness, but I’ll be damned if he’s getting it from me.”
“I know,” Frank said. “I know.”
Men were mowing the lawn. There were four of them in yellow shirts. Their company was called He-Man Lawn Service. They didn’t look like he-men or bodybuilders. They were smoking and they had earrings and tattoos. They mowed the lawn quickly with fast sit-down machines.
Hal Bonner stood in the shadows of the Australian pines holding a weed-eater he’d taken from the back of the lawn truck. He ran the weed-eater back and forth along the fence line and watched Hannah Keller and the FBI agent leave the large empty house. A few feet away in the pines he’d parked his dirt bike. A brand-new Kawasaki he’d picked up after he arrived in Miami. He had a rental car and now he had the bike. Using one, then the other when it suited him, stashing his clothes and traveling gear in the trunk of the car. Leaving the car in a shopping-center parking lot across the street from where he’d bought his motorcycle.
He’d used some of Randy Gianetti’s money to buy the bike. Randy would’ve liked it. It was a flashy red and it was fast and had knobby tires. It could go from zero to sixty in less than five seconds. He’d bought a red helmet too. A black sunshield. He liked the way he looked. Like a space warrior.
Hal used the weed-eater on the thick grass and watched the FBI agent stoop down next to Hannah Keller’s car, talking to her through the window. He was in love with her. Hal could see this from the way he stood. He could see it in the way he hung around and watched her car as it drove down the steep hill. He could tell that this man wanted to have sex with Hannah Keller. Wanted to marry her and give her children.
Hal watched the FBI agent get into his small green sports car and start it. He watched him drive away. He stood there in the shadows and watched the house. This was not where J. J. Fielding was hiding. He didn’t need to go inside to be sure of that. He could see what was happening on his palmtop computer. He watched the computer and he used the weed-eater, then he watched the computer some more. The old man he was seeking was in a hospital somewhere. He was sending Hannah Keller on a chase. From one place to another. To make sure she wasn’t followed.
Hal wasn’t stupid.
Once when he was young, his IQ had been measured, and on the morning when he was sent to the guidance counselor, the woman looked across her desk at him and then looked down at the sheet and then looked at him again and shook her head sadly like she couldn’t bring herself to say the number out loud. She just kept shaking her head.
Finally Hal stood up and told the woman that it didn’t matter whether the number was high or low. All that mattered was that Hal could kill the woman with his bare hands if he chose. He could strangle her right there, right then, and she was helpless to prevent it. That’s all that mattered in the world, not numbers on a sheet of paper, whether they were high or low. He told her that. And she sat frozen behind her desk, staring up at him.
That night a social worker came to talk to his foster parents. A big black man who brought along two uniformed cops. The next morning Hal was put on a Greyhound bus and shipped to another small town in Indiana. Only because of some words he spoke to a woman across a desk.
This was before he had killed anyone. This was before he had used his hands the way he’d learned. He had only imagined killing at the time. He pictured it and with time the pictures grew clearer. They became so clear that finally he knew how to do the thing even though he had not done it yet. He could see it perfectly in his mind. And then he was doing it in real life. Seeing it in his mind and doing it exactly as he’d pictured.
He stood in the shadow of the pines and watched the house for another moment. Then he dropped the weed-eater and walked over to his motorcycle, and climbed on it. He kick-started it and rode through the dense stand of pines down to the road. He could see Hannah Keller’s car up ahead. She was stopped at a traffic light.
The old man in the hospital bed was clever. He was playing a game. Being careful so Hannah could find him but no one else could. He was sending her secret messages, telling her what to do next. Hal could try to intercept one of the messages and go where it told him to go, get there before Hannah Keller, or he could simply continue to follow her. He had decided to follow her. That was his decision. Track her till she led him to the man who had stolen four hundred and sixty-three million dollars of his employers’ money. His employers were impatient with Hal. They were giving him this one last chance to find Fielding, then they would fire him and hire someone else to do it. Hal had been searching for Fielding off and on for five years but with no success. This was as close as he’d come. The man sending messages to Hannah Keller, playing some kind of game.
Hal Bonner didn’t play games. He never had. Not board games or sports, none of it. It was a waste of time. All that mattered was eating food and drinking water and staying strong so you could kill when it was necessary. Everything else was a waste of time.
People played games to have fun. He wasn’t dumb, he understood that. Over the years he’d tried to figure out what fun was. He’d asked a lot of different people. Tell me what fun is. And they’d say things like, fishing is fun. Lying in bed, reading a good book on a rainy afternoon is fun. Sex is a lot of fun. But that didn’t mean anything to Hal. He didn’t believe there was such a thing as fun. He’d tried to watch games on television, but he usually fell asleep. Maybe he would ask Misty about fun. Hal believed it was a lie, one of the things people told themselves so they could keep on living. Like God. Like those things they told you in school. If you work hard, you will succeed. But it was a lie. Some people worked very hard. They shoveled coal or they welded, but they didn’t succeed like the people who sat around in offices not working hard. It was a lie. Like God. Like fun. Like love. He’d ask Misty about it. She would know. At least she’d have something to say about it. She was a talker.
Misty was sticking in his head. The way her face looked. The way her voice sounded. Sassy and blunt, the way she hated her father for leaving her and she hated Hannah Keller for living the life she was supposed to live. The way she tried to talk Hal out of killing her, giving him reasons, one, two, three.
Hal was on his dirt bike riding down the street two blocks back of Hannah Keller’s car and he was thinking of Misty Fielding. Seeing her in his head. A girl, her face, her body. It was the first time that had happened to him. First time he’d felt the thing in his chest, something burrowing down inside him, digging a hole, a small narrow den where it would curl up and be safe.
Hal was zipping through traffic. A red helmet, a red bike, black sun visor. And something small and warm nesting in his chest.