Whistleblower and Never Say Die (41 page)

Together they walked to the door. There they paused and regarded each other, two old friends who’d grown a little grayer and, Victor hoped, a little wiser.

“Somehow it’ll all work out,” said Ollie. “Remember. The system’s there to be beaten.”

“Sounds like the old Stanford radical again.”

“It’s been a long time.” Grinning, Ollie gave Victor a clap on the back. “But we’re still not too old to raise a little hell, hey, Gersh? See you in the morning.”

Victor waved as Ollie walked away into the darkness. Then he closed the door and turned off all the lights.

In the living room he sat beside Cathy and watched her sleep. The glow of a streetlight spilled in through the window onto her tumbled hair.
Ordinary,
she had called herself. Perhaps, if she’d been a stranger he’d merely passed on the street, he might have thought so, too. A chance meeting on a rainy highway in Garberville had made it impossible for him to ever consider this woman ordinary. In her gentleness, her kindness, she was very much like Lily.

In other ways, she was very different.

Though he’d cared about his wife, though they’d never stopped being good friends, he’d found Lily strangely pas
sionless, a pristine, spiritual being trapped by human flesh. Lily had never been comfortable with her own body. She’d undress in the dark, make love—the rare times they did—in the dark. And then, the illness had robbed her of what little desire she had left.

Gazing at Cathy, he couldn’t help wondering what passions might lie harbored in her still form.

He cut short the speculation. What did it matter now? Tomorrow, he’d send her away.
Get rid of her,
he thought brutally. It was necessary. He couldn’t think straight while she was around. He couldn’t stay focused on the business at hand: exposing Viratek. Jerry Martinique had counted on him. Thousands of potential victims counted on him. He was a scientist, a man who prided himself on logic. His attraction to this particular woman was, in the grand scheme of things, clearly unimportant.

That was what the scientist in him said.

That problem finally settled, he decided to get some rest while he could. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out beside her to sleep. The comforter was large enough—they could share it. He climbed beneath it and lay for a moment, not touching her, almost afraid to share her warmth.

She whimpered in her sleep and turned toward him, her silky hair tumbling against his face.

This was more than he could resist. Sighing, he wrapped his arms around her and felt her curl up against his chest. It was their last night together. They might as well spend it keeping each other warm.

That was how he fell asleep, with Cathy in his arms.

Only once during the night did he awaken. He had been dreaming of Lily. They were walking together, in a garden
of pure white flowers. She said absolutely nothing. She simply looked at him with profound sadness, as if to say,
Here I am, Victor. I’ve come back to you. Why doesn’t that make you happy?
He couldn’t answer her. So he simply took her in his arms and held her.

He’d awakened to find he was holding Cathy, instead.

Joy instantly flooded his heart, warmed the darkest corners of his soul. It took him by surprise, that burst of happiness; it also made him feel guilty. But there it was. And the joy was all too short-lived. He remembered that today she’d be going away.

Cathy, Cathy. What a complication you’ve become.

He turned on his side, away from her, mentally building a wall between them.

He concentrated on the dream, trying to remember what had happened. He and Lily had been walking. He tried to picture Lily’s face, her brown eyes, her curly black hair. It was the face of the woman he’d been married to for ten years, a face he should know well.

But the only face he saw when he closed his eyes was that of Catherine Weaver.

It took Nicholas Savitch only two hours to pack his bags and drive down to Palo Alto. The word from Matt Tyrone was that Holland had slipped south to the Stanford area, perhaps to seek out old friends. Holland was, after all, a Stanford man. Maybe not the red-and-white rah-rah Cardinals type, but a Stanford man nonetheless. These old school ties could run deep. It was only a guess on Savitch’s part; he’d never gone beyond high school. His education consisted of what a hungry and ambitious boy could pick
up on Chicago’s south side. Mainly a keen, almost uncanny knack for crawling into another man’s head, for sensing what a particular man would think and do in a given situation. Call it advanced street psychology. Without spending a day in college, Savitch had earned his degree.

Now he was putting it to use.

The
finder,
they called him. He liked that name. He grinned as he drove, his leather-gloved hands expertly handling the wheel. Nicholas Savitch, diviner of human souls, the hunter who could ferret a man out of deepest hiding.

In most cases it was a simple matter of logic. Even while on the run, most people conformed to old patterns. It was the fear that did it. It made them seek out their old comforts, cling to their usual habits. In a strange town, the familiar was precious, even if it was only the sight of those ubiquitous golden arches.

Like every other fugitive, Victor Holland would seek the familiar.

Savitch turned his car onto Palm Drive and pulled up in front of the Stanford Arch. The campus was silent; it was 2:00 a.m. Savitch sat for a moment, regarding the silent buildings, Holland’s alma mater. Here, in his former stomping grounds, Holland would turn to old friends, revisit old haunts. Savitch had already done his homework. He carried, in his briefcase, a list of names he’d culled from the man’s file. In the morning he’d start in on those names, knock on neighbors’ doors, flash his government ID, ask about new faces in the neighborhood.

The only possible complication was Sam Polowski. By last report, the FBI agent was also in town, also on Holland’s trail. Polowski was a dogged operator. It’d be messy business,
taking out a Bureau man. But then, Polowski was only a cog, the way the Weaver woman was only a cog, in a much bigger wheel.

Neither of them would be missed.

I
n the cold, clear hours before dawn, Cathy woke up shaking, still trapped in the threads of a nightmare. She had been walking in a world of concrete and shadow, where doorways gaped and silhouettes huddled on street corners. She drifted among them, one among the faceless, taking refuge in obscurity, instinctively avoiding the light. No one pursued her; no attacker lunged from the alleys. The real terror lay in the unending maze of concrete, the hard echoes of the streets, the frantic search for a safe place.

And the certainty that she would never find it.

For a moment she lay in the darkness, curled up beneath a down comforter on Milo’s living room floor. She barely remembered having crawled under the covers; it must have been sometime after three when she’d fallen asleep. The last she remembered, Ollie and Victor were still huddled in the dining room, discussing the photographs. Now there was only silence. The dining room, like the rest of the house, lay in shadow.

She turned on her back, and her shoulder thumped against something warm and solid. Victor. He stirred, murmuring something she couldn’t understand.

“Are you awake?” she whispered.

He turned toward her and in his drowsiness enfolded her in his arms. She knew it was only instinct that drew him to her, the yearning of one warm body for another. Or perhaps it was the memory of his wife sleeping beside him, in his mind always there, always waiting to be held. For the moment, she let him cling to the dream.
While he’s still half asleep, let him believe I’m Lily,
she thought.
What harm can there be? He needs the memory. And I need the comfort.

She burrowed into his arms, into the safe spot that once had belonged to another. She took it without regard for the consequences, willing to be swept up into the fantasy of being, for this moment, the one woman in the world he loved. How good it felt, how protected and cared for. From the soap-and-sweat smell of his chest to the coarse fabric of his shirt, it was sanctuary. He was breathing warmly into her hair now, whispering words she knew were for another, pressing kisses to the top of her head. Then he trapped her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss so undeniably needy it ignited within her a hunger of her own. Her response was instinctive and filled with all the yearning of a woman too long a stranger to love.

She met his kiss with one just as deep, just as needy.

At once she was lost, whirled away into some grand and glorious vortex. He stroked down her face, her neck. His hands moved to the buttons of her blouse. She arched against him, her breasts suddenly aching to be touched. It had been so long, so long.

She didn’t know how the blouse fell open. She knew only that one moment his fingers were skimming the fabric, and the next moment, they were cupping her flesh. It was that
unexpected contact of skin on forbidden skin, the magic torment of his fingers caressing her nipple, that made any last resistance fall away. How many chances were left to them? How many nights together? She longed for so many more, an eternity, but this might be all they had. She welcomed it, welcomed him, with all the passion of a woman granted one last taste of love.

With a knowing touch, she slid her hands down his shirt, undoing buttons, stroking her way through the dense hair of his chest, to the top of his trousers. There she paused, feeling his startled intake of breath, knowing that he too was past retreat.

Together they fumbled at buttons and zippers, both of them suddenly feverish to be free. It all fell away in a tumult of cotton and lace. And when the last scrap of clothing was shed, when nothing came between them but the velvet darkness, she reached up and pulled him to her, on her.

It was a joyful filling, as if, in that first deep thrust within her, he also reached some long-empty hollow in her soul.

“Please,” she murmured, her voice breaking into a whimper.

He fell instantly still. “Cathy?” he asked, his hands anxiously cupping her face. “What—”

“Please. Don’t stop….”

His soft laughter was all the reassurance she needed. “I have no intention of stopping,” he whispered. “None whatsoever…”

And he didn’t stop. Not until he had taken her with him all the way, higher and further than any man ever could, to a place beyond thought or reason. Only when release came, wave flooding upon wave, did she know how very high and far they had climbed.

A sweet exhaustion claimed them.

Outside, in the grayness of dawn, a bird sang. Inside, the silence was broken only by the sound of their breathing.

She sighed into the warmth of his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He touched her face. “For what?”

“For making me feel…wanted again.”

“Oh, Cathy.”

“It’s been such a long time. Jack and I, we—we stopped making love way before the divorce. It was me, actually. I couldn’t bear having him…” She swallowed. “When you don’t love someone anymore, when they don’t love you, it’s hard to let yourself be…touched.”

He brushed his fingers down her cheek. “Is it still hard? Being touched?”

“Not by you. Being touched by you is like…being touched the very first time.”

By the window’s pale light she saw him smile. “I hope your very first time wasn’t too awful.”

Now she smiled. “I don’t remember it very well. It was such a frantic, ridiculous thing on the floor of a college dorm room.”

He reached out and patted the carpet. “I see you’ve come a long way.”

“Haven’t I?” she laughed. “But floors can be terribly romantic places.”

“Goodness. A carpet connoisseur. How do dorm room and living room floors compare?”

“I couldn’t tell you. It’s been such a long time since I was eighteen.” She paused, hovering on the edge of baring the truth. “In fact,” she admitted, “it’s been a long time since I’ve been with anyone.”

Softly he said, “It’s been a long time for both of us.”

She let that revelation hang for a moment in the semidarkness. “Not—not since Lily?” she finally asked.

“No.” A single word, yet it revealed so much. The three years of loyalty to a dead woman. The grief, the loneliness. How she wanted to fill that womanless chasm for him! To be his savior, and he, hers. Could she make him forget? No, not forget; she couldn’t expect him ever to forget Lily. But she wanted a space in his heart for herself, a very large space designed for a lifetime. A space to which no other woman, dead or alive, could ever lay claim.

“She must have been a very special woman,” she said.

He ran a strand of her hair through his fingers. “She was very wise, very aware. And she was kind. That’s something I don’t always find in a person.”

She’s still part of you, isn’t she? She’s still the one you love.

“It’s the same sort of kindness I find in you,” he said.

His fingers had slid to her face and were now stroking her cheek. She closed her eyes, savoring his touch, his warmth. “You hardly know me,” she whispered.

“But I do. That night, after the accident, I survived purely on the sound of your voice. And the touch of your hand. I’d know them both, anywhere.”

She opened her eyes and gazed at him. “Would you really?”

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Even in my sleep.”

“But I’m not Lily. I could never be Lily.”

“That’s true. You can’t be. No one can.”

“I can’t replace what you lost.”

“What makes you think that’s what I want? Some sort of replacement? She was my wife. And yes, I loved her.” By the way he said it, his answer invited no exploration.

She didn’t try.

From somewhere in the house came the jingle of a telephone. After two rings it stopped. Faintly they heard Milo’s voice murmuring upstairs.

Cathy sat up and reached automatically for her clothes. She dressed in silence, her back turned to Victor. A new modesty had sprung up between them, the shyness of strangers.

“Cathy,” he said. “People do move on.”

“I know.”

“You’ve gotten over Jack.”

She laughed, a small, tired sound. “No woman ever really gets over Jack Zuckerman. Yes, I’m over the worst of it. But every time a woman falls in love, really falls in love, it takes something out of her. Something that can never be put back.”

“It also gives her something.”

“That depends on who you fall in love with, doesn’t it?”

Footsteps thumped down the stairs, creaked across the dining room. A wide-awake Milo stood in the doorway, his uncombed hair standing out like a brush. “Hey, you two!” he hissed. “Get up! Hurry.”

Cathy rose to her feet in alarm. “What is it?”

“That was Ollie on the phone. He called to say some guy’s in the area, asking questions about you. He’s already been down to Bach’s neighborhood.”

“What?” Now Victor was on his feet and hurriedly stuffing his legs into his trousers.

“Ollie figures the guy’ll be knocking around here next. Guess they know who your friends are.”

“Who was asking the questions?”

“Claimed he was FBI.”

“Polowski,” muttered Victor, pulling his shirt on. “Has to be.”

“You know him?”

“The same guy who set me up. The guy who’s been tailing us ever since.”

“How did he know we’re here?” said Cathy. “No one could’ve followed us—”

“No one had to. They have my profile. They know I have friends here.” Victor glanced at Milo. “Sorry, buddy. Hope this doesn’t get you into trouble.”

Milo’s laugh was distinctly tense. “Hey, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong. Just harbored a felon.” The bravado suddenly melted away. He asked, “Exactly what kind of trouble should I expect?”

“Questions,” said Victor, quickly buttoning his shirt. “Lots of ’em. Maybe they’ll even take a look around. Just keep cool, tell ’em you haven’t heard from me. Think you can do it?”

“Sure. But I don’t know about Ma—”

“Your ma’s no problem. Just tell her to stick to Chinese.” Victor grabbed the envelope of photos and glanced at Cathy. “Ready?”

“Let’s get out of here. Please.”

“Back door,” Milo suggested.

They followed him through the kitchen. A glance told them the way was clear. As he opened the door, Milo added, “I almost forgot. Ollie wants to see you this afternoon. Something about those photos.”

“Where?”

“The lake. Behind the boathouse. You know the place.”

They stepped out into the chill dampness of morning.
Fog-borne silence hung in the air.
Will we ever stop running?
thought Cathy.
Will we never stop listening for footsteps?

Victor clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Thanks, Milo. I owe you a big one.”

“And one of these days I plan to collect!” Milo hissed as they slipped away.

Victor held up his hand in farewell. “See you around.”

“Yeah,” Milo muttered into the mist. “Let’s hope not in jail.”

The Chinese man was lying. Though the man betrayed nothing in his voice, no hesitation, no guilty waver, still Savitch knew this Mr. Milo Lum was hiding something. His eyes betrayed him.

He was seated on the living room couch, across from Savitch. Off to the side sat Mrs. Lum in an easy chair, smiling uncomprehendingly. Savitch might be able to use the old biddy; for now, it was the son who held his interest.

“I can’t see why you’d be after him,” said Milo. “Victor’s as clean as they come. At least, he was when I knew him. But that was a long time ago.”

“How far back?” asked Savitch politely.

“Oh, years. Yeah. Haven’t seen him since. No, sir.”

Savitch raised an eyebrow. Milo shifted on the couch, shuffled his feet, glanced pointlessly around the room.

“You and your mother live here alone?” Savitch asked.

“Since my dad died.”

“No tenants? No one else lives here?”

“No. Why?”

“There were reports of a man fitting Holland’s description in the neighborhood.”

“Believe me, if Victor was wanted by the police, he wouldn’t hang around here. You think I’d let a murder suspect in the house? With just me and my old ma?”

Savitch glanced at Mrs. Lum, who merely smiled. The old woman had sharp, all-seeing eyes. A survivor’s eyes.

It was time for Savitch to confirm his hunch. “Excuse me,” he said, rising to his feet. “I had a long drive from the city. May I use your restroom?”

“Uh, sure. Down that hall.”

Savitch headed into the bathroom and closed the door. Within seconds he’d spotted the evidence he was looking for. It was lying on the tiled floor: a long strand of brown hair. Very silky, very fine.

Catherine Weaver’s shade.

It was all the proof he needed to proceed. He reached under his jacket for the shoulder holster and pulled out the semiautomatic. Then he gave his crisp white shirt a regretful pat. Messy business, interrogation. He would have to watch the bloodstains.