Deadlock (3 page)

He said, “Of course, they'd turned the lights on and even flashed a light under the bridge. Whenever they did, Logan would squeeze himself into a corner.”

“Oooh,” Laura said.

“His rump was red for a while, I'll tell you,” Hutch said. “But worse, as far as he was concerned, we didn't come back for six months.”

“No more hiding?”

“You gotta hide when you're here. Only not for three hours.”

“So,” she said, shifting in her chair, sizing him up, “where are they, Logan and Macie? Not your week?”

“It is, actually. Janet will bring them to the house this evening. You know I've always wanted the two of you to meet them. I think Dillon and Logan will have a blast together. When you see him, ask to see his grill.”

“His what?”

“His braces. Not really what the rap kids consider grillz, but close enough for a twelve-year-old suburbanite.”

She shook her head. “I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that you're not the Grizzly Adams guy I met in Canada. Of course, I knew you lived in Denver, but I can't shake the thought that you belong in the woods, in some cabin you built yourself. Instead of stalking lynx through the wilderness, you write newspaper columns. Now you tell me your son talks like a . . . whaddaya call 'em . . . gangsta?”

They laughed.

“Something like that,” Hutch said. He tried to remember if he'd ever seen her smile in those few weeks he'd spent in Canada while the authorities up there conducted their investigation. Probably she had, if only forcing it for Dillon's sake, but he couldn't recall.

Laura said, “How is it, having them back?”

Hutch nodded. He wished he could say,
We went camping last week and saw a bear!
Or,
You should have seen Macie in the school play. Eight-year- olds everywhere gave up their dreams of stardom, what with her talent sucking up all the accolades.
But truth was he'd won joint custody, and it hadn't gone much further than his kids bouncing from Janet's home to his every week.

He hadn't done all the things with them he'd thought he would. No bike rides or circuses. No taking Logan to the skate park or fishing with Macie. Going out to the movies or the ice-cream parlor—events he'd imaged as everyday occurrences—had become rare. He sometimes wondered, when his mind paused long enough to consider it, whether
getting
time with them had been more important to him than spending time with them.

But instead of addressing it aloud, he said, “Both Janet and I come from broken homes. When we got married, we promised ourselves we'd break that cycle. Guess that didn't work so well.”

A spotlight illuminated a stage beside the waterfall, about halfway up. A cowboy spun a six-shooter and spoke into a microphone: “Well, howdy, folks. I'm sheriff of these parts, and I'm looking for Black Bart. Anybody seen that varmint?”

A chorus of kid voices yelled that the evildoer was
right there
, sneaking up on the sheriff from behind the waterfall. He was a cowboy bad guy: black hat, bandolier, and Snidely Whiplash mustache.

Laura said, “I thought Black Bart was a pirate.”

Hutch shrugged. “Depends on the context, or what costumes are handy, I guess.” He sat up in his chair and saw Dillon run up to a rope barrier on the other side of the lagoon. Hutch waved, but the boy's eyes were too full of the show. He said, “I bet he's never seen anything like this before.”

“I never have,” Laura said. She touched his arm. “Don't feel that you have to, you know, show us the sights. That's not why we came.”

“Oh, come on. Skiing. The Rockies. Mile High Stadium, I mean, Invesco Field. My dad still calls it
Bears
Stadium, and that goes back to '68. Let's see, what else . . . ?”

“John Hutchinson,” she said. “You, that's what we came for. I'm just happy you could make time for us.”

He nodded. “Got a couple columns banked, so readers won't miss their thrice-weekly dose of the Spirit of Colorado.”

His column, which ran in the
Denver Post
, profiled Coloradoans who had triumphed over adversity. Everyone had made a big deal over his entering the ranks of these victors by surviving in Canada. In fact, the story had been picked up by the national media.

Before he had realized what was happening, they'd dubbed him a hero. The story of Declan, the scion of the Page fortune, gone bad and the man who'd stopped him had made it to the pages of
People
magazine and
Reader's Digest.
Heck, even
60 Minutes
had given the drama a twelve-minute segment. Three publishing houses had contacted him about writing a book, but they wanted a “hero's tale,” and that didn't interest him.

He simply couldn't take credit, when all he had done was live through it, and when so much tragedy had resulted despite his best efforts. Besides, he was flat broke and couldn't find time for his kids. What kind of hero let his life crumble like that?

“Dillon was hoping the two of you could do a little archery,” Laura said. “He's become a regular Robin Hood.”

“I hope not the part about—”

The James Bond-like opening of Led Zeppelin's “Kashmir” emanated from his breast pocket. He pulled out the mobile phone.

“—robbing from the rich to give to the poor,” he finished. The call was coming from a pay phone. “Hello?”

“John Hutchinson?”

He didn't recognize the voice, strained, rushed.

“Speaking.”

“Don't say my name.”

“That would be a little difficult, since I don't know—”

The voice said, “It adds up to a dime or more.”

Nichols. Dr. Dorian Nichols.

Hutch stood so quickly, his chair toppled backward. “I thought you were . . .” He started to turn away, remembered where he was, and held an index finger up to Laura. She had stopped his bottle from toppling over when his legs had hit the table. He turned away from her concern.

Hutch said, “The cops . . .
everyone
is looking for you. Your family . . .”

“They slaughtered them, all of them.” Nichols's voice broke on
slaughtered
, rose in pitch.

“They? Who?”

“Don't use any names!”

“You think what? My line's bugged? Yours? You're calling from a pay phone.”

“Yours, absolutely, but they probably have entire area codes covered for me by now. They use a keyword program. It can monitor millions of conversations without anyone having to listen. That's how they do it now.”

A señorita brushed past, leading a family to a nearby table. Hutch picked up his chair and stepped around it. He faced a lava-rock wall, lowered his voice.

“You keep saying
they
.”

“You have to ask?”

“The news said—”

“I know, that I killed them. That's what they made it look like. Would you expect anything different?”

“Where are you? Why are you calling me? You need to go to . . .”

The man jumped into Hutch's hesitation. “To who? I can't go to anyone. As soon as I do, they'll lock me up. Then Page . . .” The man pulled in air, as if trying to take back the word. “Put me in a cell and I won't come out—they'll get me for sure. The only chance I have to . . . to expose who did this is to blow it wide open.”

“I don't understand.” But Hutch was beginning to. “Why don't you go to the media? I mean, the big guys? They'd—”

“They'd think I went crazy, like they're already saying. First they'd turn me in, then they'd write a story about how they helped apprehend me.”

Hutch closed his eyes. Nichols was right. Hutch had beaten his own head against enough brick walls this past year to know. The man Nichols was talking about—Brendan Page—had insulated himself so thoroughly, was so adept at using his money and influence, that he was nearly untouchable. And
nearly
was Hutch's hope only adding words. If Page had gone after Nichols as ruthlessly as he apparently had done, the doctor must possess exactly what Hutch's investigation needed.

God help me
, Hutch thought.
Thinking like this. The man's
family
. Still . . .

“What do you have?” Hutch said.

Silence. Finally, Nichols said,
“X. não . . . Genjuros.
”

“What? Wait . . . spell that.” Hutch patted his pockets for a pen.

Nichols said, “Do your research. I'll be in touch.”

“Hold on. Where are you? I can—”

A clicking sound came through, as though he could hear the quarters Nichols had used dropping through the phone.

“Hello? Doc—” He stopped himself. Bugged?
His
phone? He looked at it, as if some evidence of it would show. The screen told him the call had been lost. He slapped it shut and dropped it into his pocket. He turned to the table, picked up his sunglasses.

“We have to go,” he told Laura.

“What is it? Is everything all right?”

Hutch flagged down their server and handed her a credit card. He turned back to Laura. “I'm sorry, it's just . . . Everything's okay. That was a guy I'd been trying to reach. He'd always avoided me, like everyone else. Now he's in trouble and wants to talk. I think he knows something, what I've been looking for.”

“About Declan's father?” she asked.

Hutch had always believed the billionaire military industrialist had something to do with the atrocities his son had committed in Canada. The Canadian and U.S. justice departments had ultimately disagreed. Hutch had been digging for dirt—futilely—since returning to Denver a year ago.

He said, “I think so, yeah.” He waved at Dillon, still watching the show from the far side of the lagoon. “Dillon!”

Black Bart pushed the sheriff off the stage. The lawman plunged twenty feet into the water. Everyone booed. Black Bart laughed maniacally.

“Dillon!”

The boy glanced over. He grinned and waved.

Hutch beckoned him. The server returned with his card and the bill to sign. Hutch scrawled the odd words Nichols had told him on a napkin and shoved it into his pocket. He said, “He wants me to research something. Said he'd get back to me.”

Laura said, “Hey, at least he had the courtesy to call after we ate, huh?”

Dillon ran over. “Can we get more of those roll things?”

“Not this time, honey.” Laura pulled his coat off the back of a chair.

“We're
leaving
?”

“I'm sorry, Dillon,” Hutch said. He tried to corral his stampeding thoughts. “We'll come back, I promise.”

The boy slipped into his coat. He looked around, frowning at all the places he didn't get to explore.

Hutch patted him on the back. “I promise.” He slipped around him and headed for the exit. He'd already started the list of things he had to do when he got home, the computer searches, the phone calls.

FOUR

Brendan Page moved through the building like a big cat through a jungle. At fifty-eight he was as fit and agile as most of the twenty­somethings his company sent into the world's hottest war zones.

Staying that way wasn't easy. He worked with a nutritionist to calibrate his diet, a physical trainer to mastermind the perfect combination of aerobic and strength exercises, a dancer to help him stay in tune with his body and movements, and experts in the fields of intelligence and memory, because what good was a powerful body without the mind to guide it? To Page, by the time that good night came, it was too late. Dylan Thomas had it right: it was not death but old age at which you should “burn and rave.”

Now, maneuvering through the corridors, he felt everything, sensed everything: the rubber soles pressing lightly on linoleum before receiving his entire weight; the way the lights cast his shadow behind him . . . under him . . . ahead of him as he passed them; the hint of aftershave lingering from his prey's having been there. A few minutes ago, at most. Without looking, he gently, almost absently, tried each door handle he passed: always locked. He checked his Steyr Tactical Machine Pistol—or TMP—an Outis favorite for its firepower, dependability, and compact size. It was chambered and ready, set to full auto.

He detected a high-pitched whine coming through his headphones, so quiet he could have imagined it. He raised his weapon and tapped it against the helmet. The noise stopped. Remembering the flickering image one of his soldiers had recently experienced, he gave his faceplate a hard crack with the weapon. There—a flash of static across his heads-up display.

One of Page's companies had developed the helmet. Earlier versions, less laden with technological goodies, had worked perfectly. In fact, thousands of units continued to function well for his soldiers all over the world. But it seemed that each new feature he requested rendered the helmets less reliable.

He didn't know all that much about how the technology worked; he only knew what he wanted and demanded that his engineers figure out how to pull it off. To Page, war was a business: it had clear objectives; it required certain tools and skills and people to use them effectively. His strengths lay in innovating new tools and skill sets, in conveying his vision and making it contagious, so the smartest minds in the world would rally to make it a reality.

When the tools and skill sets failed, it often resulted in disastrous consequences like those he'd witnessed the other night. But he knew the score: push a technology, a strategy, a human to just beyond the breaking point, then build the infrastructure that supported the improved version. It was the only way he knew to keep advancing.

He continued to move along the hallway, stopping short of a four-way junction. On the map in his heads-up display, the left corridor flashed. He turned left. The direction might prove to be wrong, but the computer was making calculations based on data Page either did not know or could not keep in his head while maintaining a stealthy pursuit. The system had analyzed video and debriefing reports from many of his opponent's previous battles. It also took into account what Outis knew of the man's training and experience. In this case, his opponent was a lifelong military commander. He would have been taught, and seen the advantage of, left-hand turns when pursued on foot.