“I’m not talking, Ken. Not now. Get dressed, get out, call me in a couple of days, and then we’ll talk.” She took her robe from the hook on the back of the door and shrugged into it. “I’m going to the kitchen. You don’t go in there. You go straight out the front door when you’re ready.”
She left him there. She made herself tea and drank it slowly, still furious with Rothwell, yet simultaneously concerned for him. Maybe he really was under more stress than she knew, and was falling to pieces. It was no excuse, but it was a reason. Even that made her angry, but this time with herself. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d been exasperated with women in abusive relationships who just wouldn’t leave the bastard.
C’mon, sister, you’ve got to cut those ties. He’s never going to get any better.
Was that what she was doing? Rationalizing a mitigation for him so she didn’t kick him to the curb like she ought to? She’d always thought of herself as strong, never the willing victim.
She glared at her cup of tea as if it were to blame. Late at night was not a good time to be trying to think things through. She remembered a Russian proverb she’d happened across in her reading: “The morning is wiser than the evening.” She’d sleep on it. Maybe ask … she wasn’t sure who to talk to. Carter, maybe. He was an ex-cop. Cops have seen it all. Fuck. She heard the front door quietly open and close. After a minute, she heard his car pull away. She looked at the tea and realized she hadn’t used the decaf. Fuck.
* * *
Carter had driven up again to speak with the bank directly about Alfred Hill’s account, and dropped by at the store afterward. It started with general morning greetings and then, by means and diversions, Lovecraft turned the conversation as she wanted it to go and Carter fulfilled her hopes by—without explicitly being told—suddenly raising a cautioning hand to stop the talk, and said, “Am I understanding you properly? Are you telling me Kenneth Rothwell forced himself on you last night?”
Lovecraft liked the olde worlde charm of “forced himself.” It was a phrase alive with the sound of ripping bodices.
“
Tried
to,” she corrected him.
Carter was stuck for the next adumbration. Giving up on diplomacy, he leaned closer over the counter and mouthed,
Anally?
She contented herself with just looking at him. Certain questions may be answered not by an affirmative, but by the absence of a negative.
“The fuck,” said Carter with quiet venom.
“So, I don’t know what to think. He’s never done anything like that. Always been the gentleman. Do I put this down to a one-off moment of freakiness that will never be repeated, or do I drop the bar on him right now before he gets out the gimp suit and tells me to put the lotion in the basket?”
“When did I get to be your gay friend who helps you with your relationship problems?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re gay?”
“No, but it’s usually part of the job description. You’re asking the wrong man, Emily. I didn’t like him on sight. I don’t like him, or his silver spoon, or his sense of entitlement. I’m bound to say you should dump him, because I think he’s the sort of man who deserves to die alone, hugging his money.”
“Wow. Thank you, Dear Prudence.”
Carter shrugged. “But if you want to know my professional opinion, it’s that there’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll do it again. If it’s in him to do that once, then sometime he’s going to be drunk, angry, or both, and he’ll take it out on you. There you go. That’s my view.”
Lovecraft was only half listening. “You know what? Him suddenly getting heavy like that wasn’t even the weirdest thing about his behavior. He was all kind of distracted and
off
and then, pretty much the last thing he said was ‘I’m going to win the election.’ He said it like a death sentence.”
“It would be for Rhode Island if he got in.” Carter was still not in the mood for kindness. “He’s delusional. He’s not winning this election. It’s hardly a week away and he’s dying in the polls. Surprised his minders are letting him out of their sight, it being so close.”
“He’s gotten good at shaking them off. I’m kind of surprised I’m still on his arm, to be honest. I know his people have been telling him to dump me since the campaign started. I always kind of thought this was a dry run for him anyway, just to put his face about. Like he needs to. Then he’d dump me, get some blond girl with nice teeth whose ancestors came over on the
Mayflower
, and do it for real the next time. Now he’s saying he’s going to win. Dan, I’ve got to tell you, that’s really out of character for him. He’s been going around in public saying he’s going to be a senator, but in private he’s never said a thing about what he’ll do when that happens. He’s just been talking as if he won’t win, and he expects not to win. What the hell changed?”
Carter realized, way too late in the day for it to be any use, that perhaps he should have mentioned earlier that Colt had followed them that day when Rothwell came to pick her up. But now he told her, and she was predictably pissed with him.
“Colt
followed
us?”
“I tried to call you to warn you. I texted you.”
“The fuck you did!” But she got out her phone and checked it. “There’s nothing here.”
Carter checked his own phone. “Look at my call log. And…” He showed her the text telling her to watch her back because Colt was following them.
She read the display, and looked at Carter. She seemed scared. “How can that happen?”
“Just a glitch in the cell network. That kind of thing happens all the time.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She shook her head. Her phone lay in her hand, a small traitor. “No, it doesn’t.”
The next day Carter spent almost two hours aimlessly walking the streets, thinking through the possible consequences of what he was about to do. Finally convincing himself that it was impossible to predict and that he should brace himself for some bitter hindsight, he made the call.
It rang three times before he was answered. “Hello,” said the male voice at the other end. “Who is this?”
“This has to stop.”
There was a pause. Carter couldn’t tell if it was surprise, shock, realization, but there was a pause. Then the voice on the phone said, “Hello, Dan.” If he was surprised, he hid it well. “This is big of you to call me. Is this a man-to-man chat? Are you telling me to stop or you’ll stop me with your bare hands, or something?”
“You’re in danger. We all are. Every time you do what you do, things get broken a little bit more.”
The voice laughed. “That’s it? You’re calling because of your personal concern for me? That’s sweet. Thanks. Let me ask you something. It’s for my mental health, so you’ll be helping me if you tell me the answer. I know you’re all about helping people, Dan. I’m just a hotbed of anxiety over this, you’ll really be helping. Just tell me. How did you get out of my house?”
Carter said nothing.
Perhaps provoked by the silence, the voice said, “The place was as tight as a drum. Tighter. Not a fly could get out, not a microbe, not a molecule of air. You’re bigger than all of those, Dan. How did you do it?”
“You can’t expect me to tell you,” said Carter, avoiding the truth of his own ignorance.
“No. No, I can’t. I must admit, it’s nice to have an archenemy. You’re the hero, of course. I’m Moriarty. No Reichenbach Falls this time, though. The villain wins.”
“You think of yourself as the villain?”
“Yes. Oh, Dan, the things I have done, none of which I’ll discuss on an open phone line. The … options I have. I don’t think you’ll be able to pull a stunt next time like you did in my house. I won’t give you the opportunity.”
“If I’m such a pain in your ass, why did you pull me into this?”
Another pause. “Are you fishing, Dan? I’m not sure what you’re fishing for if you are.”
“The call I got from Belasco’s phone. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t need to pretend. I was nowhere near.”
“You arranged it.”
“You’re delusional.”
Carter laughed, a harsh, derisive bark. “
I’m
delusional? I’m not the one who thinks he’s some sort of criminal mastermind.”
“Just a mastermind. The criminality is collateral, and soon to be moot.”
“
Moot
. Listen to you, like the bad guy in a cheap James Bond knockoff. I’ll say it again. You have to stop. You’re not as in control as you think you are. You’re not even the first to be doing what you’re doing.”
Abrupt, guardedly curious: “What do you mean?”
“I’m saying what you’re doing—The Twist, the Perceptual Twist, is that what you call it?—has been done before, and not so long ago. It didn’t end well.”
“You’re flailing, Dan. That’s pretty weak tea.”
“Martin Suydam. You hear of him? The Child-Catcher, yeah? I saw it there on his wall, the same pattern mapped out.”
“Suydam?”
“He saw what you saw, and committed suicide by cop to get away from it.”
“Suydam.” The voice turned the name over. “Impossible.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is your uniqueness fraying? Yes, you and a child killer have a lot in common. That must make you feel really good in yourself.”
“I don’t know what you saw, but it has nothing to do with what I’m doing.”
“Denial. That’s sweet. Tell you what, why don’t you tell me where you are, and I’ll arrange to have some cop friends of mine come around and help you with
your
suicide, because that’s where this is all heading.”
“How’s your little friend in the bookstore?”
“She’s fine. She’s also irrelevant to you and me. Keep her out of things.”
“Oh, you’re a protective one, Dan. And her with such a big important boyfriend, too. Is he treating her well? I hope so. He seemed okay when I spoke to him. A very sensible guy. Typical politician. Cunning rather than intelligent.”
Carter’s face tightened, but he kept any new emotion from his voice. “You spoke to him?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll be shocked to hear this, Dan, but when I showed him what I could do for his campaign, he was very, very impressed. He thinks I’m working for him now, but he’s got that the wrong way around, hasn’t he? Who would have thought it? A corruptible politician? I don’t think that can ever have happened before in the long history of American politics, do you, Dan?”
Noise on the line.
“What?” said Carter.
“I said, there’s corruption, and then there’s
corruption
, of course.”
A click, and the call ended.
* * *
Harrelson entered the not-cop bar, went to the rear, and paused when he saw Carter was not alone. He sat down beside Lovecraft, regarding her with open suspicion.
“You didn’t say anything about any third parties,” he said to Carter.
“Detective Harrelson, this is Emily Lovecraft, my business partner.”
Harrelson frowned. “What? Like the writer guy?”
Lovecraft nodded. “Just like the writer guy. You didn’t get me mixed up with Linda Lovelace, so kudos to you, Detective.”
“I saw that
Re-Animator
movie. That was crazy.”
“I didn’t write it.”
“But you’ve seen it?”
“Yes.”
Harrelson nodded judgmentally. “That was crazy.”
Carter had had enough of the impromptu film critics’ evening. “We know who killed Belasco.”
“Yeah, the guy you told me about, William Colt. I know. The name kept turning up when I was interviewing. I checked his bank records and he was in Atlantic City not long before the pit boss died. What’s his name? Hayesman. Had a run-in with a guy who sounds a lot like Colt. So, yeah, if Belasco and Hayesman had been shot or poisoned or something a judge might recognize as murder, I’d be all over Colt like a rash. But they died like something out of a story a tabloid editor would blue pencil. Hard to make a case when no law’s been broken.”
“The law’s been broken, Harrelson, believe me,” said Carter. “Just in new ways. And it’s going to get worse. Colt’s making a move into politics.”
Harrelson looked askance at Carter. “He’s what?”
“He has a Senate hopeful in his pocket.”
“Ken Rothwell,” said Lovecraft with some reluctance.
Harrelson laughed. “You got to be kidding? Rothwell won’t get within a mile of the Senate. ‘Hopeful’ is all he’s ever going to be.”
“Yeah, I’d have agreed, until Colt got involved,” said Carter. “But him, I wouldn’t bet against anything Colt wants to influence. He has a way of rigging the game.”
Harrelson grunted, thinking about what one of the floor staff at the Oceanic had said about the slot machines in their statement. “Holy fuck. Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“There’s no point in using any phrase that includes the words ‘there’s no chance’ where Colt is involved. This is a man who, pretty much the first thing he did when he got this…”
“Power?” offered Harrelson.
“Ability. Pretty much the first thing he did was kill his professor for pissing him off a bit. He’s already raising his sights. I don’t want to know what the upper limit of what he will do is. I don’t even want to give him the chance to find out. I think…” He looked at Lovecraft, then Harrelson. “… we’re going to have to deal with this ourselves.”
“Whoa.” Harrelson raised his hands as if to shield himself from the implication. “No, no, no. I ain’t going off the reservation for something like this.”
“For something like this?” Carter was incredulous. “Then what—”
“No, the man has a point,” said Lovecraft. She was looking unhappily at her empty glass. “It’s just a guy who can do real magic, and he wants to control the country, and he kills people for next to no reason. It’s not like it’s a big deal. Can I get a drink? That went too quickly.”
“No such thing as magic,” said Harrelson.
“Like fuck, there isn’t. The guy’s breaking mathematical laws, the very laws that govern creation. If that isn’t magic … Well, it is. It’s magic. That’s what magic is. And Voldemort in a button-down collar is going to get his way unless we stop him now, while he’s still an amateur.”
Harrelson looked at her coldly. “You say ‘stop,’ but that ain’t what you mean.”