Fear itself: a novel (19 page)

“Yeah, tell me about it,” muttered Nelson. Just then the front doorbell rang, throwing him into an agony of indecision. There was no chance he’d be opening the door, of course—he didn’t have many friends, but the few he did have would have known better than to show up at his doorstep without calling first. Nelson’s dilemma, rather, was whether to get up and look through the Securit-Eye peephole or simply hole up in the living room with Dr. Phil and wait for whoever it was to go away.

Both options had their downsides. On the one hand, the prospect of peering through the peephole at an unannounced visitor was an intimidating one for a man with as overactive an imagination as Nelson Carpenter’s. On the other hand, it might be important—a police officer going door to door to warn residents about a chemical spill or an escaped convict, for instance. But on the other, other hand, it might be the convict himself.

Nelson understood from years of behavioral therapy that what he needed to do at this point was evaluate the prospective threats. It was probably only a Witness or a kid selling magazine subscriptions—in which case there was nothing to be afraid of. And of the other possibilities, the prospect of a toxic cloud from a refinery fire was more realistic than the possibility of finding an escaped convict on the doorstep.

So Nelson gathered up his courage (and it would be a mistake to think that severe phobics are lacking in courage: it took more nerve for Nelson to leave his house once a week than it would for most of us to bungee-jump off the Golden Gate Bridge), muted the television, tiptoed over to the door, and put his eye to the peephole.

Oh, Mama! He gasped and drew his head back sharply. Toxic clouds, escaped convicts? Bring ’em on—there was nothing Nelson wouldn’t rather have seen through the fish-eye lens than what he saw, no monster that wouldn’t have been more welcome at his door than the one standing there now. He tried to tell himself he might have been mistaken—after all, he hadn’t seen his childhood companion since the sixties—but in his bones, and by the fluttering of his heart and the tightening of his scrotum, Nelson knew better.
This
was it,
this
was what he’d
really
been afraid of all these years,
this
was the worst-case scenario.

“Open the door, Nellie,” called Simon, when he saw the peephole darken. “Open the door, ol’ buddy.”

“Go away.”

“Is that any way to treat an old friend?” Nice and calm, Simon told himself—you owned the boy, you own the man.

“We had a deal.”

“Circumstances have changed.”

“I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them about your grandfather—I’ll tell them everything.”

“Yesterday’s news.”

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

Manslaughter,
thought Simon—then it occurred to him he could turn Nelson’s misconception to his own advantage. “There’s no bail, either—perhaps they’ll let us share a cell.”

Simon waited for the click of a lock or the snick of a bolt, and was faintly surprised not to hear one. That should have done it, he thought; and maybe it had—although it had been quite a few years since he’d last seen Nelson paralyzed by fear, Simon had never forgotten what a moving sight it was.

“Nellie…? Nellie, we both know you’re going to open this door; let’s just get it—”

And for the first time in thirty years, the childhood friends were face-to-face. The pale young gentleman had aged, but his hair was still the same shade of washed-out blond, still too long—he’d always been afraid of barbers. “How did you find me?” he asked dully.

“My spies are everywhere,” said Simon, slipping past him into the house. He glanced around disapprovingly at the avocado walls and beige carpeting, track lighting, built-in knickknack crannies, faux-white-brick facing on the fireplace; Julia Morgan would have puked. “We’ll catch up later—right now we need to get my car out of your driveway before anybody notices it.”

“There’s no room in the garage.”

“Make room.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Nelson locked the front door behind him.

Simon slipped his arm around Nelson companionably. “Buddy, I’m in all
kinds
of trouble.”

“If I help you, will you leave me alone?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Nellie,” Simon whispered into his ear; his breath was warm and moist, his tone unbearably intimate. “Not for you and me.”

Emergency rooms, with their gurneys, sparsely furnished cubicles, rolling carts, folding screens, and curtained-off beds, had always seemed to Pender to have a sort of makeshift feel about them, as if they were temporary, and not very well suited, accommodations to be utilized until permanent quarters were ready. He couldn’t wait to get out; as soon as his cast was dry and his arm in a sling, he went searching for Dorie.

She wasn’t hard to find—a uniformed cop was stationed on a folding chair outside the door of her cubicle. He recognized Pender, tipped him a little salute, then leaned over without getting up, and opened the door for him.

“Helluva job,” said the cop.

“Sure is,” Pender replied pleasantly.

“No, I mean
you
did a helluva job.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Pender was slightly taken aback—locals weren’t usually all that appreciative of federal help. Still, it
was
a good job, he thought, closing the door behind him. And there before him was the proof, sitting up in bed, her dark hair fanned out across the pillow, looking surprisingly good for a woman with a broken nose and two black eyes.

Dorie was equally glad to see Pender. There had been times, sitting next to him in the basement, or upstairs, wrapped in a blanket, waiting for the ambulance, or in the ER before they were wheeled off to separate cubicles, when she’d wanted to express her gratitude to this man who hadn’t given up on her, who’d risked his life to save hers. But every time she looked at him, the feelings just welled up inside, threatening to overwhelm her. And above all, Dorie did not want to be overwhelmed by anything right now; she was having a hard enough time holding it together as it was.

Now she looked up shyly. “How’s the arm?”

“Good as new in six weeks. I had ’em put the cast on with my elbow in putting position. How about you?”

Dorie shrugged. “They tried to talk me into a nose job, till I told them I didn’t have any insurance. They still want to keep me overnight—somebody came by from admissions to ask me if I had a credit card with me. I told her the guy who kidnapped me forgot to bring my purse along.”

“Have they taken your statement?”

“Repeatedly,” said Dorie. “Berkeley cops, your FBI guys, detectives from San Francisco—I even talked to Wayne’s uncle. He sounded, I don’t know, almost
relieved
Wayne had been murdered, instead of having killed himself.”

“I’ve seen that before.
Are
you staying overnight?”

“Not if I have a choice.”

“Think you can drive?”

“Absolutely.”

“Wanna blow this pop stand?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

After the initial shock had worn off, Nelson Carpenter was pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it was to surrender, and how simple it made his life. Instead of being afraid of everything, he only had to be afraid of Simon Childs, and instead of being ruled by the scrupulous and demanding (his shrink said obsessive-compulsive) daily routine he had developed to keep fear at bay, all he had to do was play Simon Says; everybody knows how to play Simon Says.

Of course, not having to worry about darkness or intruders anymore, or fire or food poisoning or spiders or spooks, would have come as more of a relief to Nelson had it not been for the nagging certainty that Simon planned to kill him as soon as he was done with him. Dead man walking, he whispered to himself; dead man whispering to himself.

Fortunately, Simon had neither demanded nor welcomed conversation at first. Once they had the Mercedes safely stowed in the garage (there was plenty of room, Simon had pointed out: it was only a matter of clearing out Nelson’s junk), Simon announced that he was famished. Nelson cooked dinner—boned chicken breasts, broccoli, and Rice-A-Roni—while Simon brooded at the kitchen table; they ate in the dining room. Click of silverware, the unpleasant sounds of mastication, intensified by the ambient suburban silence.

Simon cleaned his plate, then pushed it away. “My compliments to the chef. Love that Rice-A-Roni.”

“It’s the San Francisco treat,” said Nelson—what else was there to say about Rice-A-Roni?

“What time do you have?” Simon had left his wristwatch back in the basement of 2500—he’d taken it off to bathe Dorie.

Nelson glanced at his Rolex, which was the only timepiece in the house. Chronomentrophobia—fear of clocks. “Almost six.”

“Time for the news.”

“I never watch the news.”

“That’s all right, just come keep me company,” replied Simon pleasantly. It was easy for him to be pleasant about the matter under discussion—he’d never had any intention of allowing Nelson to watch the news in the first place. It was going to be hard enough to keep his old pal from flipping out prematurely—Simon certainly didn’t want him finding out how far the fear game had advanced since the comparatively innocent days of the Horror Club, at least not until Simon was good and ready for him to find out.

“But how will I—”

“Nellie,” Simon said quietly. That was his warning tone; after all these years Nelson still recognized it.

“Yes, Simon?”

“Trust me.”

“Yes, Simon.”

Twenty-five hundred Grizzly Rock Road had been transformed into a crime scene. Floodlit, yellow-taped, crawling with cops, besieged by reporters and mobile uplink news vans, the grand old dame was being accorded no more privacy than the corpse of a murder victim when Pender and Dorie arrived from the hospital in the back of a squad car, accompanied by a preppy-looking Berkeley homicide detective.

Special Agent Eddie Erickson, from the San Francisco field office, offered them a walk-through. Dorie, dressed in a set of borrowed pink scrubs, declined with a shudder, preferring to wait for Pender in his rented Toyota, which was still parked on the street near the bottom of the steep driveway, where he’d left it only—it hardly seemed possible—six hours earlier.

Every inch of the basement was brightly illuminated; Erickson led Pender through the maze to a chamber where a tech from the Evidence Response Team was using what looked like an alien-technology metal detector to sweep the smooth, level cement floor, which was higher by several inches than the rest of the basement, while another tech monitored a computer readout—they were employing state-of-the-art infrared heat-sensing technology to look for bodies.

“What’s the count so far?” asked Erickson.

“Just the one—but the wet cement’s throwing off my calibration—and of course if a skeleton’s clean enough, it won’t put out enough heat for us to pick it up.” The second tech turned to Pender. “The top layer of cement was put down pretty recently. It’s only about two centimeters thick except over in that corner, where it goes down almost two meters. I have a hunch that once we take ’er down to there, we’re gonna be in business.”

After a quick stop-off in a chamber that housed a jackhammer, kidney belt, protective eyewear, shovel, spade, and several bags of lime and Quik-Dry cement, Erickson led Pender back upstairs. The living room was still being dusted for prints; up in the master bedroom, Special Agent Ben Wing, from the San Jose resident agency, was seated at Childs’s computer terminal.

“Any luck?” Erickson asked him.

“Yes, sir,” said Wing. “All bad. One of the local yokels—” He glanced at the Berkeley detective trailing along behind Erickson and Pender. “Whoops, sorry. I mean, one of the indigenous experts up here tried to access it without checking for booby traps. The first key he pressed trashed the hard drive—what I’m doing now is the cyber equivalent of sifting through the ashes.”

“Could Childs have rigged it himself?”

“He’d almost have had to. Or hired some gunslinger—no reputable security consultant would install a fail-safe device to nuke the client’s system in the event of a breach.”

“That gunslinger idea—that might be worth following up,” suggested Pender.

“You think?” said Wing, archly.

“Us local yokels are already on it,” explained the detective, as Wing turned back to the machine. “By tomorrow we’ll have his bank records, and take it from there.”

Pender followed Agent Erickson back downstairs. “Looks like you guys are all over it,” he said—he felt as if he were expected to say
something.

“Yeah—yeah, I think our chances are pretty good. It’s not like he has much experience, rich fucker on the run. Take good care of Miss Bell, though—if there’s any trouble with the warrant, I at least want to be able to put him away for kidnapping with special circumstances and bodily harm.”

“Don’t forget assault,” Pender reminded Erickson, nodding toward his broken right arm, which had begun to throb as the anesthetic started to wear off.
“With
intent,” he added—after all, if Childs’s blow had been an inch or two to the right, there would have been three more bodies under two meters of Quik-Dry cement in that last chamber: his, Dorie’s, and Nurse Apple’s.

Simon, sitting in the comfy chair, had watched the news. Nelson, lying at Simon’s feet with his back to the TV, head pillowed on his arms and his ears stuffed with cotton balls, had watched Simon—for fifty-five boring, soul-deadening minutes, though it had been obvious that Simon had stopped paying any attention after the lead story.

Around seven o’clock, Nelson tried clearing his throat—no reaction. He sat up, half expecting a blow or a kick, but Simon didn’t seem to notice. He removed the cotton from his ears, then took the remote from Simon’s unresisting fingers, pointed it behind him, and switched off the TV without turning around. (Nelson’s viewing was always carefully planned, and he
never
surfed: sometimes it seemed to him as if there were an unwritten rule that in any given time slot, there had to be at least one channel showing a program about deadly snakes.)