Chapter Twelve

 

 

Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California

 

Rene gazed moodily at the Los Angeles air traffic control tower. It sat across the tarmac in the sparkling California sun, looking like a silly robot spider from a B-grade horror movie. He was stuck again, waiting for his flight to be called, and he was trapped again into thoughts about his father.

Jacques Dubois never hated the actor who became President, Ronald Reagan. Perhaps Rene, his son, fixated on Reagan because he was visible. It didn’t matter, ultimately. McCarthy was long dead, most of the committee members were faceless. But Reagan testified before Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. He testified out of principle, Rene had read, not out of a desire to save his career. Reagan genuinely hated communism and the American communists who were so obviously run by the Soviet Union. His principled actions, his all-American attitude, his good looks, gave gloss and meaning to McCarthy’s witch hunt. And he was visible. Always on television or in the movies, always smiling, playing the hero.

Reagan was long gone into politics when Jacques Dubois was blackballed in Hollywood, but Rene became convinced the actor was ultimately responsible for the destruction of his beloved father. Six year old Rene hated Ronald Reagan. He hated him with a child’s uncomplicated purity.

Rene at eighteen was working at a wine shop in Paris when he was recruited, abruptly, into a branch of the Russian Mafia. His father was near death with the lung cancer that was stealing his life away. Rene carried tons of boxes of liquor and wine and spent the money on heroin to help kill his father’s pain. The Russians that were going to enforce protection money for the shop were in the midst of administering a beating to the shop owner when Rene came out of the stock room.

Rene had very little memory of the fight. He remembered the taste of his own blood in his mouth, and the feel of pain in a broken finger. But the rest was a blur of ecstasy. Every untutored blow was joy, the joy of released anger that had festered inside him for so long it was like a monster finally let free of its chains. One man later died of his injuries, and the other never walked again. Rene thought he would be targeted for assassination and was, instead, issued an invitation to join. His father died without ever knowing how Rene could suddenly afford the finest heroin and hashish. At that point, he didn’t notice much. Rene cared, though, that his father was as comfortable as possible in his final miserable year of life.

When Ronald Reagan was elected President, Rene was incandescent with fury and rage. He was an assassin, although a novice one. He was beginning to plan his own attempt when John Hinckley, Junior, stepped out of a Washington crowd and shot the American President. Rene had a copy of the tape showing the shooting. He’d played it until it wore out, then he had it digitized so it would never wear out again.

He liked watching Reagan get shot, which was undeniable. But he also watched the fully automatic weapons appear magically, as though conjured, by Secret Service agents. He studied other attempts, successful and failed: Oswald’s assassination of Kennedy, Squeaky Fromme’s attempt on Ford, even the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Ultimately he decided he couldn’t kill the President without being caught. He thought about other options. He’d recently finished a contract assassination. He kidnapped a Taiwanese diplomat’s mistress, a young thing with a pout much like little Iris in Taxi Driver, John Hinckley’s favorite movie. The diplomat, madly in love with the girl, had driven right into Rene’s hands while trying to save her. He and the girl were together now, forever, at the bottom of an oil barrel filled with cement. Even at the end he was trying to protect her, trying to cover her body with his as Rene filled the barrel with liquid cement.

Rene thought about Reagan’s children, his wife, his former wife. All of them had potential, but none called to him. Obsession, after all, was an arcane and elegant thing. It had to be satisfied in its own way.

Rene stirred in his lounge chair and blinked sleepily at the air traffic control tower. Why did Reagan’s missile defense system call to him so powerfully? Why did it beg to be destroyed? He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter. Killing scientists, just because they worked in missile defense, turned out to be terrific fun. He was still a contract assassin but took time out at least once a year to indulge in his hobby. Quietly, always masked as a suicide or an accident, but always the most brilliant, the most far-reaching scientists and engineers. After a while it became a game he couldn’t stop playing. Reagan was long gone now, Dubois was getting old, but he couldn’t stop. Every death filled him with a joy that was curdled like old milk, sour and sweet at the same time…

“Sir?” The touch brought him upright with a jerk and he winced at the sharp, hot pain in his neck. He’d been sound asleep and his neck was stiff.

“Yes?”

“Your flight, sir, I noticed you were sleeping. Your flight is being called.” The airline attendant was square and blocky, an unattractive woman, but attentive. The VIP lounge was always well staffed.

“Thank you,” he said, searching for his case. He was fuzzy-headed with exhaustion. He needed a good night’s sleep before they headed into Wyoming. Ken would be waiting, a mere three hours away, and he would have information, and there would be food, and finally, bed.

The flight was called again and Rene boarded the plane, feeling the anticipation tingle pleasantly in his belly. Time to kill.

 

 

 

 

The Reed Ranch

 

“I can see why you call him Bob,” Howard Magnus said, cigar in hand. Jimmy Arnold sat in the leather armchair with a glass of soda pop in his hand, looking at the skull with the first expression Eileen had seen on his face. He looked interested.

The crystal skull sat back on the dressmaker’s dummy, swiveling to follow the conversation, glowing like a lamp. Eileen had protested, but Joe and Lucy had pleaded. They knew Bob was lonely in the safe. Jorie and Beryl avoided the ranch when the boisterous hunters were there, so the chance of being discovered playing with Bob were slim.

“We’ll keep him out for a little while,” Paul said, with an affectionate look at Eileen. “Then we’ll put him back.” Hank was in bed, after racing around with Zilla for an afternoon where absolutely nothing happened. Lucy’s husband Ted was coming into the Rapid City, South Dakota airport tomorrow morning and Lucy, at least, was humming with pleased anticipation.

Eileen rolled Joe’s engagement ring slowly back and forth on her finger and wished desperately that she was married, too, and could take Joe to bed tonight. Particularly after the way that Jorie wench had flipped her hair and pouted after him. She wondered if Joe had seen her jealousy. She hoped not. It was embarrassing to be jealous, and it was the first time it had ever happened to her. The emotion was hateful and ugly, like feeling a spider crawl on her. Worst of all, there was nothing she could do to brush it away. She was jealous.

Joe sat right next to her, his thigh pressed to hers, warm and solid and reassuring, making her feel simultaneously ashamed of her jealousy and mad with desire for him.

“Well, I’m going to bed,” Tracy said, standing up and stretching. “You hunting types would do well to hit the sack early, too. Paul has an big trip planned tomorrow and you’ll need the rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mark Plutt said, already glassy-eyed and yawning. “I’ve never been so tired. Or slept so well, actually. I have trouble sleeping back home. Running a big company, you know, there’s always problems. So many worries and I can’t get them out of my head. But not on this trip.”

“That’s what I told you,” Howie said with a grin, savoring his cigar. “Wait until hunting season this fall. Every smell, every sight will be sharper and clearer than you’ve ever felt in your life. Then that trophy elk will step into the clearing and you’ll feel like your heart is going to leap out of your chest.”

“Howie?” Lucy asked, after taking a deep breath. Bob, who had been following Howie’s words, moved gently around to face her. That afternoon Joe and Eileen had contacted Marcia Fowler again and discussed the skull’s curious behavior. Marcia was thrilled. She told them she’d read of crystal gazing, or scrying. Evidently rock crystal had a particular vibration, and if the skull had been carved precisely it could vibrate to human voices and thus seem to follow them. This was comforting but nothing about Bob, so far, seemed frightening to Eileen. He was a happy skull. No one felt nervous under his rippling crystal gaze.

“You’re going to ask me about hunting, aren’t you?” Howie asked. Lucy jumped a little.

“Yes, I was,” she said. “I don’t understand hunting.”

“Do you like to cook?” Howie asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“When you cook a really fine meal, like a fancy dinner or a Thanksgiving feast, don’t you just feel great? Tired, maybe, but fulfilled and happy and satisfied?”

“Yes, I do,” Lucy said. “Is that what hunting makes you feel like?”

“It’s a start, but there’s more than that,” Howie said thoughtfully. “If Mark decides to go hunting and shoots a trophy bull next year he’ll be putting delicious meat on his family table, and that’s very satisfying. And he’ll get a beautiful antler rack to hang on his wall, if that’s what he wants. But when you bring down a game animal there’s a satisfaction that is almost impossible to describe. We’ve been hunters, providers, for a million years. That’s what we’re meant to do, we men.”

Eileen looked at Tracy, who hadn’t left for bed. She looked at them both, deliberately, and shook her head a tiny fraction. Not that, either, her shake said. Eileen was determined now to pin down her mother and find out what she thought men were for.

Howie was continuing, however, his cigar sending up an obnoxious ribbon of smoke, his beautiful voice like rough music. “Trophy elk, the big bulls, usually don’t make it through their seventh winter. By the time our hunting season starts they’ve already fought and mated. Lots of the herd bulls have used their reserves to keep and impregnate a harem of elk cows. They don’t have enough stamina to make it through the winter anyway.”

“So you take them out before they starve?” Mark asked. He didn’t sound convinced, and Lucy remembered that he wasn’t a hunter.

“Or before the wolves get them,” Howie said. He put the cigar in his teeth and grinned. “I consider death by Howie’s arrows a bit better than being hamstrung and devoured by wolves.”

Mark looked unconvinced, still, and Eileen thought about Mark Plutt driving a ceremonial Aztec knife into the chest of Dr. Jon McBride. Ridiculous. Mark was uneasy about shooting a game animal. Surely Mark couldn’t be the killer.

“Howie’s arrows?” Lucy said. “But I thought—”

“We’re archers, Lucy,” Eileen said, surprised. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m sorry. It just slipped my mind, I guess.”

“We always carry side arms, of course,” Paul said. “But that’s for protection, not to hunt. It’s tough to hunt an animal with a rifle, but that’s nothing compared to hunting it with a bow and arrow. Did you want something, dear?”

Tracy, who was sitting next to Paul, smiled and pressed her hand on his.

“Thanks. I was just going to ask Eileen if she would mind going into Hulett and getting a gallon of ice cream for us. We’re getting low what with the midnight forays and all, and I could use a gallon before Doug comes with his truck.”

“Doug?” Lucy asked.

“The Schwan’s man,” Eileen said. “Sure, mom. Any special flavor?”

“Whatever looks good,” Tracy said.

“I’ll take you,” Joe said. “I’ve got ’Berto’s Mustang. We’ll be back before we left.”

“Don’t go that fast,” Lucy said with a smile. “You don’t want to get a ticket from Sheriff King.”

“Heavens, no,” Joe said with a groan. “Come on, babe. Let’s take a drive.”

“Don’t call me babe,” Eileen said. She was suddenly thrilled. The day was as hot and breathless as every other day had been, but with the close of daylight the air was beginning to cool and freshen. Driving in ’Berto’s mustang with the top down would be heaven.

“I’ll put Bob away,” Lucy offered. “You two kids go have fun.”

“And we’ll toddle off to bed,” Howie said. “After we talk more boring hunting talk, while I finish this fine cigar.”

Eileen didn’t hear any more. She was flying up the stairs like a teenager, to grab her purse and comb her hair and change from her jeans into a light summer skirt and a fresh new tank top that clung to her breasts and showed off the soft skin of her shoulders. She couldn’t wear her ankle holster with the skirt but her SIG-Sauer fit nicely in a clamshell holster at the small of her back. She tied a light cotton sweater around her waist to hide the bulge of the gun and grimaced at her reflection. What she wouldn’t give for a glittery golden mop like Jorie’s, right now, instead of her dark red.

“You look ravishing,” Tracy said from the doorway. She was smiling. “Take your time, punkin. If you know what I mean.”

“Oh, Mom,” Eileen said, feeling her face grow red in an instant. “Am I that obvious?”

“Only to your mother, maybe,” Tracy said. “I’m off to bed. We’re going to start interviewing in August for a new family for the cooking and cleaning job. I’m probably going to hire the first ones who answer the ad, I’m so tired.” She shrugged and held out her arms. “You and Lucy have been lifesavers, you know. Hug me, dear. Then run a comb through your hair and find your man.”