Company Man (8 page)

Nick followed his son upstairs. “We have to have a talk,” he said.

Lucas groaned. “What now?” When he reached the open door to his room, he said, “You been in here?”

“Sit down, Luke.”

Lucas noticed the computer monitor facing the door, and he leaped toward it, spun it away. “I don't want you going in my room.”

“Sit down.”

Lucas sat on the edge of his bed, hunched over with his elbows propped on his knees, his chin resting on his hands, a gesture that Julia had recently started imitating. He stared malevolently.

“You're not allowed to go to porn sites,” Nick said.

Lucas blinked. His angry blue eyes were crystal clear, innocent and pure. He was trying to grow something under his chin, Nick noticed. For a moment Lucas seemed to be debating whether to own up to the evidence so prominently on display. Then he said: “There's nothing there I don't know about, Nick. I'm sixteen.”

“Cut out the ‘Nick' stuff.”

“Okay,
Dad,
” he said with a surly twist. “Hey, at least I'm not going to snuff or torture sites. You should see the shit that's out there.”

“You do that again and your Internet access gets cut off, understand?”

“You can't do that. I need e-mail for school. It's required.”

“Then I'll leave you with just AOL with whatever those controls are.”

“You can't
do
that! I got to do research on the Internet.”

“I'll bet. Where were you this afternoon?”

“Friend's.”

“Sounded like a bar or something.”

Lucas stared as if he weren't going to dignify this with a response.

“What happened to Ziggy?”

“Ziggy's an asshole.”

“He's your best friend.”

“Look, you don't know him, all right?”

“Then who are these new kids you're hanging out with?”

“Just friends.”

“What are their names?”

“Why do you care?”

Nick bit his lip, thought for a moment. “I want you to go back to Underberg.” Lucas had seen a counselor for four months after Laura's death, until he quit, complaining that Underberg was “full of shit.”

“I'm not going back there. No way.”

“You've got to talk to someone. You won't talk to me.”

“About what?”

“For God's sake, Lucas, you've just been through one of the most traumatic things a kid can go through. Of course you're having a hard time. You think it's any easier on your sister, or on me?”

“Forget it,” Lucas said, raising his voice sharply. “Don't even go there.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Lucas shot him a pitying look. “I got homework,” he said, getting up from the bed and walking over to his desk.

 

Nick poured himself a Scotch on the rocks, sat in the family room and watched TV for a while, but nothing held his inter
est. He started feeling a mild, pleasant buzz. Around midnight he went up to his room. Both Julia's and Lucas's lights were off. The newly installed alarm touch pad in his bedroom glowed green, announced
READY
in black letters.
Ready for what?
he thought. The installer had called him and given him the ten-minute lowdown that afternoon. If a door was open somewhere, it would say something like
FAULT
—
LIVING ROOM DOOR
. If someone moved downstairs it would say,
FAULT
—
MOTION SENSOR, FAMILY ROOM
or whatever.

He brushed his teeth, stripped down to his shorts, and climbed into the king-size bed. Next to Laura's side of the bed was the same stack of books that had been there since the night of the accident. Marta dusted them off but knew enough not to put them away. The effect was as if she were away on a business trip and might come back in, keys jingling, at any moment. One of the books, Nick always noticed with a pang, was an old course catalog from St. Thomas More College that had a listing for her art history class. She used to look at it sometimes at night, regretful.

The sheets were cool and smooth. He rolled over something lumpy: one of Julia's Beanie Babies. He smiled, tossed it out of the way. Lately she'd taken to leaving a different Beanie Baby in his bed each night, a little game of hers. He guessed it was her way of sleeping with Daddy, by proxy, since she hadn't been allowed to sleep in the parental bed for some time.

He closed his eyes, but his mind raced. The Scotch hadn't helped at all. A jerky, low-quality movie kept playing in his mind: The cop saying,
Do you have any enemies, Mr. Conover?
Julia's hot, wet tears soaking his shirt by the side of the pool.

Fifteen, twenty minutes later he gave up, switched on the bathroom light, and fished out an Ambien from the brown plastic pharmacy bottle and dry-swallowed it.

He turned on the bedside lamp and read for a while. Nick wasn't a reader, never read fiction, only enjoyed biographies but didn't have time to read anything anymore. He hated
reading those books on business management that so many of his Leadership Team kept on their shelves.

After a while he began feeling drowsy, finally, and turned off the light.

He had no idea how much later it was when he was awakened by a rapid beeping tone. Eddie's installers had set the system to go off only in his bedroom or his study, and not too loud, when he was in the house.

He sat up, his heart pounding, his head filled with sludge. For a moment he didn't know where he was or what that strange insistent beeping was. When he realized where it was coming from, he leaped out of bed and squinted at the green touch pad's LED.

It was flashing:
ALARM
***
PERIMETER
***
ALARM
.

Keeping his footsteps light, in order not to wake the kids, he went downstairs to investigate.

Nick padded barefoot downstairs, the house dark and silent. He glanced at one of the new touch pads at the foot of the stairs. It too was flashing: ***
ALARM
***
PERIMETER
***.

His brain felt viscous and slow. It was an effort to think clearly. Only the rapid beating of his heart, the adrenaline-fueled anxiety, kept him moving forward.

He paused for a moment, considering which way to go.

Then a light came on
inside
the house, flooding him with panic. He walked quickly toward the light—his study?—until he remembered that the software that ran the cameras had been programmed to detect pixel changes, shifts in light or movement. Not only did the cameras start recording when there was a change in light, but the software was connected to a relay that automatically switched on a couple of inside lights, to scare off potential intruders by making them think someone in the house had been awakened, even if no one was home.

He slowed his pace but kept going, trying to think. The motion-sensor software worked by zones. That meant that whoever or whatever was there was on the side of the lawn nearest his study. Eddie's guy had set up the system so that the alarm company wasn't alerted unless the house itself was broken into, since a large animal moving across the
lawn was enough to set off the perimeter alarm. Otherwise there'd be too many false alarms. But if something did cross the lawn, the cameras started and the lights went on.

A deer. Probably that was all it was.

Still, he had to be sure.

He kept going through the family room, down the hall to his study. The lights were on.

He slowed as he entered the study, the sludge in his head starting to clear. No one was here, of course. The only sound was the faint hum from his computer. He looked at the French doors and the darkness beyond. Nothing there; nothing outside. A false alarm.

The room went dark, startling him momentarily, until he remembered that the lights were also programmed to go off after two minutes. He walked through the study, approaching the glass panes of the French doors, staring out.

He could see nothing.

Nothing out there but watery moonlight glinting on the trees and shrubbery.

He glanced back at the illuminated face of his desk clock. Ten minutes after two. The kids were asleep upstairs, Marta presumably back from her night out and asleep in her bedroom in the wing off the kitchen. He glanced back out through the windowpanes, checking again.

After a few seconds he turned to leave the study.

The lawn outside lit up. The floodlights came on, jolting Nick. He spun back around, looked outside, saw a figure approaching from a stand of trees.

He moved closer to the glass, squinted. A man in some kind of trench coat that flapped as he walked. He was crossing the lawn slowly, headed directly toward Nick.

Nick went to the touch pad and deactivated the alarm system. Then he reached for the French doors' lever handle, thought for a moment, and went to his desk. He took the key from the middle drawer and unlocked the bottom one, slid it open, took out the pistol.

He removed it from its oilcloth.

Blood rushed through his head; he could hear it in his ears.

Despite assuring him he'd never have to use the thing, Eddie had left it loaded. Now Nick gripped the weapon, pulled back the slide to chamber the first round, as Eddie had instructed, let the slide go.

He turned slowly, the weapon at his side, careful to keep his finger away from the trigger. With his left hand he turned the handle and opened the French doors. He stepped outside, the soil of the newly seeded lawn cold against his bare feet.

“Stop right there,” he called.

The man kept advancing. Now Nick could make out his heavy black eyeglasses, his ogling eyes, his brush-cut gray hair, his bent figure. The man, his name was Andrew Stadler, walked straight ahead, heedlessly.

Nick raised the gun, barked: “
Freeze!
”

Under the flapping trench coat, Stadler wore white pants, a white shirt. He was muttering to himself, all the while staring at Nick as he came closer and closer.

He's a fucking nutcase, buddy…

The guy kept coming, goggling eyes staring as if he didn't even see the gun, or if he did, he didn't give a shit.

Eddie's words.
A maniac. The guy's been in and out of the locked ward at County Medical.

“Don't you fucking take another step!” Nick shouted.

Now the man's mutterings were starting to become distinct. The man raised his hand, pointed a finger at Nick, his expression malevolent, enraged. “Never safe,” the man croaked. He smiled, his hands fluttering to his sides, to his coat pockets. The smile was like a twitch: it came and disappeared several times in succession, no logic to it.

Stadler was questioned in the possible murder of an entire family that lived across the street.

“One more step, and I shoot!” Nick shouted, raising the weapon with both hands, aiming at the center of the lunatic's body.

“
You're never going to be safe,
” the man in white said, one hand fumbling in his pocket, now
rushing
toward Nick, toward the open door.

Nick squeezed the trigger, and everything seemed to hap
pen all at once. There was a popping sound, loud but not nearly as loud as he'd expected. The pistol bucked in his hands, flew backward at him. An empty shell casing flew off to one side. Nick could smell gunpowder, sulfuric and acrid.

The maniac stumbled, sank to his knees. A dark blotch appeared on his white shirt, a corona of blood. The bullet had entered his upper chest. Nick watched, his pulse racing, still gripping the pistol in both hands, leveling it at the man until he could be sure the man was down.

Suddenly, with surprising agility, the madman sprang to his feet with a throaty growl, shouting, “No!” in an aggrieved, almost offended voice. He propelled himself toward Nick, said, “
Never—safe!
”

The man was less than six feet away now, and Nick fired, aiming higher this time, wild with fear and resolve. He was able to stabilize the weapon better now, felt a spray of powder sting his face, and he saw the man tumble backward and to one side, mouth open, but this time he did not break his fall. He landed on his side, legs splayed at a funny angle, expelling a guttural, animallike sound.

Nick froze, watched in silence for a few seconds.

His ears rang. Gripping the weapon in both hands, he stepped to one side to see the man's face. The lunatic's mouth was gaping, blood seeping over his lips, his chin. The black glasses had fallen off somewhere; now the eyes, much smaller without the magnification of the lenses, stared straight ahead.

The man exhaled with a rattling noise and was silent.

Nick stood, dazed, flooded with adrenaline, even more terrified at this moment than he had been a minute earlier. He pointed the pistol, almost accusingly, at the man and walked slowly up to him. Nick thrust out his right foot, nudged the man's chest, testing.

The man rolled backward, his mouth open, a mouthful of silver fillings glinting, the eyes now staring into the night sky, blood seeping. The high metallic ringing in Nick's ears had begun to subside, and everything was strangely, eerily silent. From very far away, Nick thought he could hear a
faint rustling of leaves. A dog now barked, far in the distance, then stopped.

The man's chest was not moving; he was not breathing. Nick leaned over him, the pistol now dangling in his left hand by his side. He placed his right forefinger on the man's throat and felt no pulse. This was no surprise; the staring eyes had already announced that the maniac lay dead.

He's dead, Nick thought. I've killed him.

I've killed a man.

He was suffused with terror. I killed this guy. Another voice in his head began to plead, defensive and frightened as a little boy.

I had to. I had no choice. I had no fucking choice.

I had to stop him.

Maybe he's just unconscious, Nick thought desperately. He felt the man's throat again, couldn't find the pulse. He grabbed one of the man's rough, dry hands, pressed against the inside of his wrist, felt nothing.

He let go of the hand. It dropped to the ground.

He poked again at the man's chest with his toes, but he knew the truth.

The man was dead.

The crazy man, this stalker, this man who would have dismembered my children the way he butchered my dog, lay dead on the freshly seeded lawn, surrounded by tiny sprouts of grass that poked out sparsely from the moist black earth.

Oh, Jesus God, Nick thought. I've just killed a man.

He stood up but felt his knees give way. He sank to the ground, felt tears running down his cheeks. Tears of relief? Of terror? Not, certainly not, of despair or of sadness.

Oh, please, Jesus, he thought. What do I do now?

What do I do now?

For a minute, maybe two, he remained on his knees, sunken in the soft ground. It was as if he were in a church, a place he hadn't been in decades, praying. That was what it felt like. He was praying on the soft, hydroseeded lawn, his back turned to the crumpled body. For a few seconds he wondered if he was going to lose consciousness, pass out on
the soil. He waited for a sound, the sound of someone in the house, awakened by the gunshots, running out to see what had happened. The kids couldn't see this, mustn't be allowed to see it.

But not a sound. No one had awakened, not even Marta. Gathering his strength, he rose, dropping the weapon to the ground, moving back toward the study as if in a trance. The lights came on: the motion sensor software again.

He could barely stand. He sank into his desk chair, folding his arms on the desk, resting his head on his arms. His mind was racing, but to no purpose; he was not thinking clear thoughts. His brains felt scrambled.

He was terrified.

What do I do now?

Who can help me? Who do I call?

He lifted the handset on his desk phone, pressed the number nine.

Nine-one-one. The police.

No, I can't. Not yet. He hung up.

Must think. What do I tell them? Everything depends on this. Was it self-defense pure and simple?

The police, who despised him so much, would be looking to hang him. Once they showed up, they'd be asking all sorts of questions, and one wrong answer might put him in prison for years. Nick knew that, given how groggy and out of it he was, he might well be railroaded by the cops.

He needed help.

He picked up the handset again, punched the cell number of the one person who would know what to do now.

Dear God,
he thought as the phone rang.

Help me.

Eddie's voice was sleep-thickened, clipped. “Yeah?”

“Eddie, it's Nick.”

“Nick—Jesus, it's fucking—”

“Eddie, I need you to come over to my house. Right now.” He swallowed. A cool breeze swept through the room from the open doors, making him shiver.

“Now? Nick, are you out of your—”

“Now, Eddie. Oh, God. Right now.”

“What the hell is it?”

“The stalker,” Nick said. His mouth was dry, and the words stuck in his throat.

“He's
there
?” For a few seconds, Nick couldn't answer. Eddie went on, “Christ, Nick, what
is
it? My God, don't tell me he got to your
kids
!”

“I—I gotta call nine-one-one, but—I need to know what to
tell
them, and—”

“What the fuck
happened,
Nick?” Eddie barked.

“I killed him,” Nick heard himself say softly. He paused to think of how to explain it, blinked a few times, then fell silent. What was there to say, really? Eddie had to have figured it out.

“
Shit,
Nick—”

“When I call the cops, they're going to—”

“Nick, you listen to me,” Eddie interrupted. “Do
not
pick up the phone again. I'll be there in ten minutes.”

The phone slipped from Nick's hand as if his fingers were greased. He felt a sob welling up.

Please, dear God, Nick thought. Make this go away.