The Analyst (49 page)

This ability was almost as frightening as the alternative.

It seemed to him that he had reached the moment where he had to make a choice. Like Odysseus, his screen name, the route lay between Scylla and Charybdis. There were costs and risks with each selection.

Late at night, in his modest rented room in New Hampshire, he spread out on his bed all the notes and connections he had to the man who had forced him to erase himself from his life. Bits and pieces of information, clues and directions that he could follow. Or not. Either he was going to pursue the man who’d done this to him, risking exposure. Or he was going to toss it all and make what life he could out of what he’d already established. He felt a little like some fifteenth-century Spanish explorer, standing unsteadily on the pitching deck of a tiny sailing ship, staring out at the wide expanse of deep green ocean and perhaps a new and uncertain world just beyond the horizon.

In the center of the pile of material were the documents that he’d taken from the old man Tyson on his death bed at the VA Hospital in Pensacola. In the papers were the names of the adoptive parents who had taken the three children in twenty years ago. That, he knew, was his next step.

The decision was: take it-or not.

A part of him insisted he could be happy as Richard Lively, maintenance man. Durham was a pleasant town. His landladies were nice enough folks.

But another part of him saw things differently.

Dr. Frederick Starks did not deserve to die. Not for what he’d done, even if wrong, at a time of his own indecision and doubt. There was no denying that he could have done better for Claire Tyson. He could have reached out and perhaps been the hand that helped her find a life worth living. He couldn’t debate that he’d had that chance and that he had missed it. Rumplestiltskin was right about that. But his punishment far exceeded his complicity.

And this thought infuriated Ricky.

“I didn’t kill her,” he said out loud, but whispering the words.

The room around him was as much a coffin as it was a life raft, he believed.

He wondered if he could ever take a breath of air, without it tasting of doubt. What sort of safety was there in hiding forever? Of always suspecting the person behind every window of being the man who had driven him to anonymity. It was an awful thought, he understood: Rumplestiltskin’s game would never end for him, even if it had ended for the elusive Mr. R. Ricky would not know, never be certain, never really have a moment’s peace, free from questions.

He needed to find an answer.

Alone in his room, Ricky reached for the papers on the bed. He rolled the rubber band that held the adoption documents together off the sheaf so quickly that it snapped.

“All right,” he said quietly, speaking to himself and to any ghosts who might have been listening in, “the game starts up again.”

What Ricky learned swiftly was that social services in New York City had placed the three children into a succession of foster homes for the first six months after their mother died, until they were adopted by a couple who lived in New Jersey. There was a single social worker’s report stating that the children had been difficult placements; that except for their last and unidentified foster home, they had proven to be disruptive, angry, and abusive in each group setting. The social worker had recommended therapy, especially for the oldest. The report was written in plain, bureaucratic cover-your-butt English, without the sort of detail that might have told Ricky something about the child who was to grow into the man who had tormented him. He did learn that the adoption was handled by the Episcopal Diocese of New York, under their charity wing. There was no record of money changing hands, but Ricky suspected some had. There were copies of legal documents relinquishing any claims on the children signed by old man Tyson. There was another document, from Daniel Collins, signed while he was in jail in Texas. Ricky noted the symmetry of that element: Daniel Collins had rejected the three children while in prison. Years later, he is returned to prison under the rough guidance of Rumplestiltskin. Ricky thought that however the man who was once a rejected child managed this feat, it must have given him terrific satisfaction.

The couple who took in the three abandoned children was Howard and Martha Jackson. An address in West Windsor, a semisuburb, semifarmland locale a few miles away from Princeton, was given, but no other detailed information about the parents. They had taken all three children, which interested Ricky. There were questions in how they’d managed to stay together that were as potent as why they weren’t separated. The children were listed, as male child Luke, twelve years; male child Matthew, eleven years; and female child Joanna, nine years. Biblical names, Ricky thought. He doubted that these names had remained connected to the children.

He made several computer sorties, but drew blanks. This surprised him. It seemed to him that there should have been some information available floating around in the Internet. He checked the electronic white pages, found many Jacksons in central New Jersey, but no name that dovetailed with those he had on the meager sheaf of papers.

What he did have was an old address. Which meant that there was a door he could knock on. It seemed his only alternative.

Ricky considered using the priest’s garb and fake leukemia letter, but decided they had served their purpose once, and were best saved for another occasion. He ceased shaving instead, rapidly growing a spotty beard, and ordered a mock identification card from a nonexistent private detective agency over the Internet. Another late-night inspection of the drama department’s wardrobe room provided him with a fake stomach, a pillow-type device that he could strap beneath a T-shirt and which made him appear to be perhaps forty or fifty pounds heavier than his lean figure actually was. To his relief, he also found a brown suit that accommodated the extra girth. In the makeup cases, he also uncovered an extra bit of help. He slipped all the necessary items into a green garbage bag and took it home with him. When he got to his room, he added his semiautomatic pistol and two fully loaded clips to the bag.

He rented a four-year-old car that had seen better days from the local Rent-A-Wreck, which generally provided for students, and seemed more than willing to take his cash with few questions, the clerk dutifully taking down the information from the phony California driver’s license that he provided, and the following Friday evening, when he’d finished his shift in the maintenance department, started driving south toward New Jersey. He let the night surround him, allowed the miles to hum beneath the tires on the rental car, and drove rapidly but steadily, a constant five miles per hour above the posted speed limit. Once he rolled down the window, feeling a breath of warm air slide into the car, and he thought that it was quickly approaching summer once again. If he’d been in the city, he would have begun trying to steer his patients toward some recognition that they could hold on to when his inevitable August vacation rolled around. Sometimes he could manage this, sometimes not. He remembered walking in the city in the late spring and early summer and how the flowers in the park and the burst of greenery coming forth seemed to defeat the canyons of brick and concrete that were Manhattan. It was the best of times, there, he thought, but elusive, replaced quickly by oppressive heat and humidity. It lasted just long enough to be persuasive.

It was well past midnight when he skirted the city, stealing a glance back over his shoulder as he cruised across the George Washington Bridge. Even in the dead of night, the city seemed to glow. The Upper West Side stretched away from him, and he knew that just out of his sight was Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and the clinic where he’d worked so briefly so many years earlier, oblivious to the impact of what he was doing. A curious blend of emotions slapped him, as he swept past the tolls, and arrived in New Jersey. It was as if he was caught in a dream, one of those unsettling, tense series of images and events that occupied the unconscious, that bordered on nightmare, just stepping back from that edge. The city seemed to him to be all about who he was, the car that rattled as he steered it over the highway represented what he’d become, and the darkness ahead, what he might be.

A vacancy sign at an Econo Lodge on Route One beckoned him and he stopped. The night desk was manned by a sad-eyed man from India or Pakistan, who wore a nametag that identified him as Omar, and who seemed a little put out that his half-sleep reverie was interrupted by Ricky’s arrival. He did provide Ricky with a street map of the area, before returning to his chair, some chemistry books, and a thermos of some warm liquid that he cradled in his lap.

In the morning, Ricky spent some time with the actor’s makeup kit in the bathroom of the motel room, giving himself a fake contusion and scar just to the side of his left eye. He gave the addition a purplish-red coloring that was bound to draw the attention of anyone he spoke with. This was fairly elemental psychology, he thought. Just as in Pensacola, what folks would remember there was not who he was, but what he was, here their eyes would be drawn to the facial blemish inexorably, not registering the actual details of his face. The scraggly beard helped conceal his features as well. The fake stomach hung beneath his T-shirt added to the portrait. He’d wished that he’d also gotten some lifts for his shoes, but thought he might try that sometime in the future. After dressing in a cheap suit, he stuck his pistol in one pocket, along with the backup clip of bullets.

The address he was heading to, he believed, was a significant step closer to the man who’d wanted him dead. At least, he hoped it was.

The area he drove through seemed to him to be curiously conflicted. It was mainly flat, green, countryside, crisscrossed with roads that probably had once been rural, quiet, and neglected, but now seemed to carry the burden of upscale development. He passed numerous housing complexes, ranging from the decidedly middle-class, two- and three-bedroom ranch houses, to far more luxurious, mock mansions, with porticoes and columns, bedecked with swimming pools and three-car garages for the inevitable BMW, Range Rover, and Mercedes. Executive housing, he thought. Soulless places for men and women making money and spending money as rapidly as possible and thinking that this was somehow meaningful. The blend of the old and new was disconcerting; it was as if this part of the state couldn’t make up its mind as to what it was and what it wanted to be. He suspected that neither the older farm owners, nor the modern business and brokerage types got along very well.

Sunlight filled his windshield and he rolled down the window. It was, he thought, a perfectly nice day-warm, filled with springtime promise. He could feel the weight of the pistol in his jacket pocket and he thought that he would fill himself with winter thoughts, instead.

He found a mailbox by the side of a back road in the midst of some remaining farmland that corresponded to the address he had. He hesitated, not at all sure as to what to expect. There was a single sign by the driveway: safety first kennels: boarding, grooming, training. breeders of “all natural” security systems. Next to this statement was a picture of a Rottweiler, and Ricky saw a little sense of humor in that. He drove down the driveway, beneath some trees that formed a canopy above him.

When he came out from under the trees, he pulled up a circular drive to a 1950s-styled ranch house, a single story, with a brick facade in the front. The house had been added onto, in several phases, with white clapboard construction that connected to a warren of chain-link enclosures. As soon as he stopped and exited his car, he was immediately greeted by a cacophony of barking dogs. The musty odor of waste matter was everywhere, gaining purchase in the late morning heat and sun. As he stepped forward, the racket grew. He saw a sign on the addition that said office. A second sign, much the same as the one by the driveway entrance, adorned the wall. In the kennel closest to him, a large black Rottweiler, barrel-chested and weighing over a hundred pounds, rose up on its hind legs, mouth open, baring teeth. Of all the dogs in the kennel, and Ricky could see dozens twisting about, racing, measuring the extent of their confinement, this one seemed the only one that was quiet. The dog eyed him carefully, almost as if it was sizing him up, which, he supposed, it was.

He stepped inside the office and saw a middle-aged man sitting behind an old steel desk. The air was stale with the scent of urine. The man was lean, bald, rangy, with thick forearms, which Ricky figured were muscled by handling large animals.

“Be with you in a sec,” the man said. He was punching numbers onto a calculator.

“Take your time,” Ricky replied. He watched a few more keystrokes, then saw the man grimace at the total. The man rose and came toward him.

“How can I help you,” he said. “Jeez, fella, looks like you were in some kind of fight.”

Ricky nodded. “I’m supposed to say, ‘You ought to see the other guy…’ ”

The dog breeder laughed. “And I’m supposed to believe it. So, what can I do for you? But, I would point out, that if you’d had Brutus at your side, there wouldn’t have been a fight. No way.”

“Brutus is the dog in the pen by the door?”

“You guessed it. He discourages debate through loyalty. And he’s sired some pups that will be ready for training in another couple of weeks.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

The dog breeder looked confused.

Ricky pulled out the fake private investigator’s identification card that he’d acquired from the novelty outlet over the Internet. The man stared at it for a minute, then said, “So, Mr. Lazarus, I guess you’re not here looking for a puppy?”

“No.”

“Well, what can I help you with?”

“Some years ago a couple lived here. A Howard and Martha Jackson…”

When he spoke the names, the man stiffened. The welcoming appearance disappeared instantly, replaced by an abrupt suspiciousness, that was underscored by the step back the man took, almost as if the names being spoken out loud had pushed him in the chest. His voice took on a flat, wary tone.