Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper (36 page)

“It’s me,” he said.

“Will! How are you? Where are you?”

“I’m in L.A.”

She sounded concerned. “And?”

“I’ve got the memory stick, but there’ve been some problems.”

“What happened?”

“They got Dane. There was a bit of a dustup.”

“Will, are you hurt?”

“I’m shot. Left thigh. Missed my nuts.”

“Jesus, Will! You’ve got to get to a hospital!”

“Can’t do that. I’m getting on a bus. I’ve got to get to Spence.”

He could tell she was trying to think. He heard the baby stirring. “Let me call the L.A. office,” she said. “The FBI can pick you up.”

“God, don’t! Frazier’ll be all over that. He’ll be monitoring the local chatter. I’m on my own. I’ll make it.”

“You don’t sound good.”

“I’ve got a confession to make.”

“What?”

“I bought a bottle of scotch. Nancy?”

“Yes?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“I’m always mad at you.”

“I mean really mad.”

“Will, I love you.”

“I’ve been nothing but trouble.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I want to be able to take care of you and Philly in 2027.”

“You will, honey. I know you will.”

IF THE ALTERNATOR on the L.A. to Las Vegas Greyhound bus hadn’t given out, the next day might have ended differently. Such was the nature of predestination and fate. One variable influencing another, influencing another in an infinitely complex daisy chain. Instead of leaving L.A. at ten thirty the night before, the bus didn’t pull out of the terminal until four hours later.

Will suckled at his bottle for comfort for most of the six-hour trip through the desert night, dozing when he got numb enough. He had half the rear to himself. Most of his fellow passengers had bailed out for a later bus. There were only a few diehards who had hung in and waited for the repairs, and people who took the bus to Las Vegas in the middle of the night tended to leave each other alone.

Periodically, he visited the restroom to stuff more gauze into the wound and douse it with iodine. But he was still bleeding and getting weaker by the hour.

He awoke in the tinted glare of the morning, in pain, with a dull headache and a dry mouth. He was shivering, and he clutched his jacket to his neck for warmth. The terrain outside the window was flat, brown, and scrubby. He wished the air-conditioning would fail and the temperature would equilibrate to the desert heat. Infection was probably setting in.

The last hour of the journey was an ordeal. He endured nausea and pain and spasms of teeth-chattering chills, which he fought by stiffening his joints in anger. It was going to take sheer determination to finish the job. If he gave in to the advancing infirmity, Frazier would win. He refused to let that happen. He concentrated on Nancy and his son. An image of Philly breast-feeding while she dreamily looked out their apartment window settled into his mind. Then he found himself laughing when the image was replaced by an image of Spence’s huge RV.

“I want that bus,” he cackled out loud.

Through the green-tinted windows, Las Vegas appeared in the distance, rising out of the flat plain, crystalline, like the Emerald City. He pulled himself up for one more bandage change. The fellow who cleaned the restroom bin was going to think there’d been one heck of a situation on board.

Finally, the bus pulled into the Greyhound terminal near the Golden Nugget Casino just off the Strip. Will was last off, the driver watching him suspiciously as he struggled to make his way down the aisle and down the stairs. “You okay there, fellow?”

“Feeling good,” Will mumbled to him. “Feeling lucky.”

He hobbled straight for a taxi. The hot sun made him feel more comfortable. He slowly pulled himself into the back of a cab. “Take me to Henderson. St Croix Street.”

“Fancy neighborhood,” the driver said, giving him the eyeball.

“I’m sure it is. Get me there fast and there’s an extra fifty for you.”

“Sure you wouldn’t rather go to a hospital?”

“I feel better than I look. Turn off the AC, will you?”

His previous time in Las Vegas he’d made a mental note to make it his last. It was more than a year earlier, when he flew out to interview the CEO of Desert Life Insurance Company as part of the Doomsday investigation. It had been one of those right-church, wrong-pew deals. Nelson Elder, the head of the company, had been involved in the case, just not in the way Will ever expected. And his social call to his old roommate, Mark Shackleton, had also been far from a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of experience. The trip had left him queasy about Vegas and, frankly, he’d never been a fan anyway. One way or another, this really was going to be his last time, he swore.

The rush-hour traffic was heading north into Vegas, but going in the opposite direction, they made pretty good time to Henderson. The chocolate mountains of the McCullough Range occupied the windshield as they got closer to MacDonald Highlands, Spence’s exclusive country club community. As Will pressed himself to stay conscious, defiantly balling up his fists, the driver kept checking him out in the rearview mirror.

It was a gated community on the verdant grounds of the Dragon Ridge Country Club, an enclave of ultra-high-end homes, nestled in the hills overlooking the fairways. At the gatehouse, Will lowered his window and told the guard that Will Piper was there to see Henry Spence. Will could hear Spence’s voice through the guard’s phone. The cab was waved through.

At the curb, Will was looking at the biggest house he’d ever seen, a huge Mediterranean-style affair the color of sandstone. He could see Spence at the open front door, sitting on his scooter. Kenyon came bounding down to the curb, waving and calling, then stopped with a start at the sight of Will staggering out of the taxi. He ran forward and circled him with an arm to help him up the path.

“Good Lord! What happened to you?” Kenyon gasped.

Will gritted his teeth. “The watchers. I think they got Dane.”

“We were worried sick,” Kenyon said. “We heard nothing. Come. Come inside.”

Spence backed his scooter up to let the men past. “Alf, put him on the couch in the family room! Christ, he’s bleeding! Will, were you followed?”

“Don’t think so,” he rasped.

The house was nine thousand square feet of opulence, a Vegas-style Taj Mahal built for Spence’s socialite wife. Kenyon dragged Will through the horseshoe-shaped interior to a room with a fireplace, a computer desk, and a large brown sectional facing the backyard pool. Will slumped onto the sofa, and Kenyon carefully lifted his legs to get him recumbent. He was pale and sweaty, breathing rapidly. His pant leg was soaked through with sticky blood, and there was a sickly, ripe aroma in the air. “You need a doctor,” Kenyon said quietly.

“No. Not yet.”

“Henry, do you have a scissors handy?”

Spence wheeled up next to them, his oxygen lines hissing. “In the desk.”

Kenyon found the pair and cut a big square out of Will’s trousers, exposing the bloody bandage. He sliced through it, laid the gauze back and took a look at the wound. During his stint in the Nicaraguan jungle, he had learned rudimentary first aid. “You packed this yourself?”

Will nodded.

“Without painkillers?”

“Afraid so.”

The thigh was beefy and swollen. The gauze had a fruity, fetid odor. “It’s infected.”

Spence said, “I’ve got a whole drugstore in my medicine chest. What do you need?”

Kenyon answered, “Get me some pain pills, codeine, Vicodin, whatever you’ve got, and any antibiotics you have lying around. Is there a first-aid kit somewhere?”

“Trunk of my Mercedes. Germans think of everything.”

Will tried to prop himself up. “I’ve got it,” he said. “It’s in my bag.”

Spence closed his eyes. “Thank God.”

“Let’s sort you out first,” Kenyon insisted.

Kenyon worked quickly, pumping Will full of Percocet and Cipro, then asked him to forgive him as he pulled out the old gauze pack and painfully replaced it with fresh packing. Will groaned and gritted his teeth, and when it was done, he asked for a scotch.

Kenyon didn’t think it was a good idea, but Will persuaded him to pour a stiff one anyway. When he handed back the empty glass, he said, “I’m quitting tomorrow.”

Kenyon sat down beside him, and Spence drew his scooter near. It was then that Will noticed that Spence was all dolled-up, looking his best. His hair and beard were carefully combed. He had on a nice shirt and a tie. “Why’re you dressed up?” Will asked.

Spence smiled. “I don’t have any more birthdays to celebrate. We thought we’d celebrate my death day. Alf’s been a peach. Made me pancakes. Planned the whole day, not that I’m guaranteed to participate in all the activities. Pizza and beer for lunch. We’re going to watch
Citizen Kane
in the media room in the afternoon. Steaks on the grill for supper. Then I’m going to unhook the oxygen and have a cigar on the patio.”

“That’s probably what’ll kill him,” Kenyon said sadly.

“Sorry to interrupt your plans,” Will said. “Hand me my bag.”

He took out his laptop, and while it was booting up, he told them about the retrieval of the memory stick and the deadly encounter with the watchers. He hadn’t seen Frazier, but he sensed his presence. “Let’s finish our business before we watch any movies, okay?” he urged.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Spence said. “Besides, I already know all about Rosebud.”

Will opened Shackleton’s database and unlocked it with the password. He announced he was ready.

Spence took a deep breath and wet his dry lips with his tongue. He wanted to know but the process was going to be agonizing. He spoke the first name. “William Avery Spence. Baltimore, Maryland. He’s my oldest son.”

Will started typing, then, “He’s BTH.”

Spence exhaled and coughed a few times. “Thomas Douglas Spence, New York City.”

BTH.

“Susan Spence Pearson, Wilmington, Delaware, my daughter.”

BTH.

“Good,” he said calmly. “Let’s move on to the grandchildren. I’ve got lots of them.”

All BTH.

There was a list of daughters-in-law and sons-in-law next, his younger brother, a few close cousins.

One of the cousins had a DOD, in seven years’ time. Spence nodded at the news.

He was nearly done now, relaxed and satisfied, his tension melted away.

Then finally, Spence said, “Alf, I want to know about you too.”

“Well I don’t!” Kenyon protested.

“Then leave us alone for a minute. You don’t have to hear it, but you’ve got to grant a dying man’s wish.”

“Christ, Henry, that’s all I’ve been doing for the past two weeks!”

“Your burden is coming to an end. Now get out of here.” The two men gave each other brotherly smiles.

A couple of minutes later, Kenyon came back in with a tray of coffee mugs. He looked at both men and clucked. “I’m not asking, and you’re not telling. I don’t want you messing up my nice, organized relationship with God. I want the Lord to surprise me. The natural way.”

“Suit yourself, Alf,” Spence said. “I’ll take one of those coffees. I’m all done now. Will’s given me a great gift. I can die in peace.”

The narcotics were kicking in, and Will felt himself wanting to sleep. “I need to get online.”

“There’s a wireless network,” Spence said. “It’s called HenryNet.”

Will clicked on it. “It’s looking for a password.”

“Can you guess it?” Spence asked with a twinkle.

“No, I can’t.” He didn’t feel up for games.

“I’ll bet you can.”

Glass shattered.

A mass of hot air rolled off the hillside and blasted through the broken sliding doors.

There were two more men in the room.

Then, from the hall, a third.

Will was looking at a couple of Heckler &Koch machine pistols resting in the hands of heavily breathing, fit young men. Frazier was sporting something lighter, a Glock, like his.

Will didn’t have the strength or the speed to pull his gun from his waistband. One of the watchers plucked it away from him and threw it through the broken glass, splashing it into the swimming pool.

Frazier ordered his man, “Get the computer.”

It was pulled from Will’s weak grasp.

“Where’s the memory stick?”

Will reached into his pants pocket and tossed it onto the floor. There was no point being cute. He’d lost.

“You could’ve knocked, Frazier,” Spence said.

“Yeah, next time. You don’t look so good, Henry.”

“Emphysema.”

“I’m not surprised. You were always a big smoker. You used to break the rules and smoke in the lab, remember?”

“I remember.”

“You’re still breaking the rules.”

“I’m just a retiree who runs a little social club. You might want to join one day. We don’t charge dues.”

Frazier sat down wearily on a chair across from them. “You need to give me the 1527 book and all the materials you recovered from Cantwell Hall. Every piece of it.”

“Why don’t you just leave us alone?” Kenyon protested. “We’re just a couple of old men, and he’s hurt. He needs medical attention.”

“I’m not surprised you’re involved with this, Kenyon. Always palling around with Henry.” He waved his gun toward Will. “He killed two of my men,” Frazier said evenly. “You think I’m going to get him to a doctor? Who do you think you’re talking to? You think I’m going to turn the other cheek?”

“Greater men than you have done it.”

Frazier laughed. “Save it, Alf. You were always one of the weak ones. At least Henry had balls.” He turned his attention back to Spence and Will. “Give me the book and tell me what you found in England. I’ll get it one way or the other.”

“Don’t give him anything, Henry,” Kenyon said indignantly.

Frazier raised an eyebrow, and one of his men swatted the side of Kenyon’s face with the back of his hand. He fell to the floor onto his knees.

“Leave him alone!” Will shouted.

“What are you going to do about it?” Frazier spat. “Squirt blood at me?”

“Go to hell.”

Frazier ignored him and spoke to Spence. “You know what’s gone into keeping the Library a secret all these years, Henry. Do you think we’re not going to pull out all the stops to find out everything there is to know about the missing book? This is more important than any of us. We’re just little pawns. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”