Bodily Harm (17 page)

Eva rubbed her face with both hands, mumbling. “Oh my God. Oh my God. This is a nightmare. This is such a nightmare.” She looked at Sloane, wringing her hands. “You think the same thing happened to Austin, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.”

“The symptoms are remarkably similar. If the same toy was in the house . . .”

She raised her voice, upset. “Why haven’t we heard anything about this before? Why wasn’t it on the news?”

“The father works for Kendall. He was afraid of losing his job. The attorney they hired settled the matter out of court, without litigation.”

“Can he do that? Isn’t there some obligation to let someone know about it?”

“Only a moral one, I’m afraid.”

She stood abruptly, turning away, one hand at the small of her back, the other alternately rubbing her forehead and the back of her neck.

“I’m sorry, Eva. I know this is hard.”

“I thought this was over. I thought maybe we could . . .” She choked back tears. “At least try to have some semblance of a normal life, if not for Mike and me, then for the kids.”

“If I’m right, Eva, Dr. Douvalidis is not responsible for Austin’s death.”

She closed her eyes, softly uttering, “God damn it. God damn it!”

Sloane couldn’t think of any easy way to say what had to be said. “There’s really only one way to find out for cert—”

“No!” She opened her eyes and put up her hands a foot apart, just below her chin, staring him down, emphasizing each word. “No. Do not even suggest it.”

“Eva, it’s not just about Dr. Douvalidis. The other children in that focus group had the same reaction to the toy as Mathew. They loved it. It’s already in production. Millions will be in stores . . .”

She shook her head as Sloane spoke. “No. No, no, no.”

“ . . . for the holiday season, and those toys will be brought home to houses with children as young or younger than Austin—”

“No!” she yelled, cutting him off. Tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving a black trail of mascara. Her hands, clenched claws, looked as if she were strangling someone. “You can’t ask me to do this. You can’t ask me to dig up my son and have someone cut him open. I won’t do that. I won’t do that to him.”

“I know it’s difficult—”

“Don’t you dare sit there and presume to know how I feel. Don’t you do it! Do you know how many people have presumed to know how I feel? How many have offered their condolences and then left my house and gone right back to their lives? They don’t know how I feel. They don’t have a clue. They get to go home every day and see their babies sit across from them at the dinner table instead of an empty chair. They help them with their homework, see their naked little bodies get into their pajamas at night, kiss them, hear their soft little voices, angels.” She wiped the moisture from her cheeks on her jeans. “Get out.”

Sloane gathered his things. “I’m sorry,” he said.

He got to the doorway leading to the hall before she spoke again.

“Could you?”

The question stopped him, but Sloane did not look back.

“Could you do what you’re asking me to do?”

GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

THE BROWN SIGN with white lettering hidden amid the tree branches and foliage indicated he was nearing the George Bush Center for Intelligence. That sign had not existed the last time Charles Jenkins had been to the facility, George Bush Sr. having not yet been president. Jenkins suspected that more than one late-night comedian had recently used the words on that sign as the punch line to a joke.

Jenkins turned off the main road and soon thereafter approached a guard booth with a yellow metal gate extended across the road. In case a visitor still missed the point, a sign warned that he was entering a restricted government facility and overhead bubbles recorded every car coming and going. He slowed and lowered the window to speak into a box.

“Can I help you?” a male voice asked.

“I’m here to see Curley Wade?” Jenkins was about to correct himself; Wade’s real name was Edward, but Jenkins had never known anyone to use it. Neither, apparently, did the faceless voice.

“Your name?”

“Charles Jenkins.”

“Stand by for a second.”

After a minute the voice directed Jenkins to drive through strategically placed barricades designed to prevent a vehicle from getting up a head of steam as it approached the entrance. He parked next to a white concrete barrier, and proceeded to a nearby building to obtain a visitor’s pass.

Inside the building, uniformed guards sat behind what Jenkins
assumed to be bulletproof glass. Jenkins provided his name and the nature of his business. One of the guards instructed that no photographs were to be taken on the property and directed Jenkins to lock his cell phone in a small locker in the lobby. That was also not a requirement the last time he had been at the facility, since cell phones were still only seen on the
Star Trek
television series. He clipped a visitor’s pass to the lapel of his navy blue sport coat, and the guard advised him to take a seat in the waiting area for Wade’s assistant to escort him onto the facility. At least that hadn’t changed. Employees parked in lots a safe distance from the building and were shuttled to the campus.

Jenkins listened to the hum of vending machines while considering the assortment of magazines on the coffee table, and it struck him that he could have been waiting in any dentist’s office in America instead of one of the government’s most highly classified facilities. It served as a further reminder that much had changed in the thirty years he had been away.

AFTER RETURNING HOME from his tour in Nam, Jenkins had spent much of the next couple of months sleeping late, drinking beer with neighborhood friends, and ignoring his mother’s inquiries about when he might find a job. When he got bored he put on his green army jacket and walked the streets or frequented questionable bars, hoping someone would say something derogatory. No one did. The military had transformed his body from soft body fat to ropelike muscle. At six five and 250 pounds with a scowl and an attitude, no one with a brain even looked in his direction.

One afternoon a knock on the front door awoke him from a nap on the couch, and Jenkins found two men in dark suits with crew cuts standing on the porch.

“Wasting your time, fellas, I don’t believe in God.”

The men shot each other a sideways glance. The shorter of the two did the talking. “We’d like to talk to you about being of further service to your country.”

Military recruiters.

Jenkins started to laugh. “I was stupid enough to enlist once. I’m not stupid enough to do it again.”

But they had not come to ask him to reenlist. They had another proposition for him, and it was quickly apparent they had already combed through his background.

“I don’t think so,” Jenkins said.

“Is that because you have so many other job offers rolling in?”

Jenkins stepped out onto the porch, sat in one of the wicker chairs, and lit up a cigarette, another bad habit he picked up in Nam. He blew smoke in the air and considered the Ford parked at the curb. “I’m on sabbatical.”

“How long have you been home?”

“Not long enough.”

“So are you going to just keep going out looking for fights in bars the rest of your life until someone puts a knife or bullet in you?”

Jenkins shrugged. “Just spent thirteen months in the jungle asking myself that same question. How come you weren’t interested then?”

The stocky man nudged his partner. “Forget it. Davidson was wrong.” The two men started from the porch.

Jenkins stood. “Major Davidson?”

Major Davidson had shown up in the jungle with Jenkins’s Special Forces outfit. Everyone knew Davidson was CIA, though he never admitted it, and in between killing time and mosquitoes, Davidson and Jenkins had talked about things like what Jenkins intended to do when he left the jungle. Jenkins hadn’t given it much thought, seeing no point, since he didn’t believe he would leave,
not alive anyway. Davidson had seemed particularly interested in the fact that Jenkins spoke fluent Spanish, but then he disappeared.

“I thought he was dead.”

The stockier man handed Jenkins a business card, just a name and a phone number. “When you’re ready to stop doing the poor veteran act and feeling sorry for yourself, call that number.”

Jenkins threw the card in the waste can and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, but later he retrieved it and taped it to the mirror in his bathroom. For a solid week he considered it each day and night. He figured they wanted him for Cuba. With his dark complexion, wiry hair, and a little work on the dialect, he could pass as a native.

“MR. JENKINS?”

Curley Wade’s assistant was an attractive brunette. She took him by shuttle to the front of the building, which, with its cement overhang and absolutely no redeeming architectural qualities, had also not changed.

Like it or not, Jenkins was back.

KENDALL TOYS’ CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS
RENTON, WASHINGTON

DURING THE WEEKS since leaving the hospital, Sloane had forced himself to keep busy. He moved from one task to the next, trying his best to keep his mind occupied, and had been seeing a physical therapist to strengthen his leg and shoulder. The woman damn near killed him in the first visits, but he had worked hard to rebuild his strength and stamina. He’d need both when the time came.

Back inside the car, he turned his focus from reality to perception; what people perceived to be true was often more important than the truth. Malcolm Fitzgerald and Kendall Toys would not know that the McFarlands had refused Sloane’s request, and like Sloane, they could not guarantee what a court would do with the Gallegos settlement. If Sloane was going to bluff and try to get Kendall to react, there was no time like the present.

As anticipated, Malcolm Fitzgerald’s assistant was curt and protective on the phone. “What is this about?” she had asked.

“Tell Mr. Fitzgerald it’s about Metamorphis,” Sloane said and, after leaving his cell phone number, hung up.

The woman had called him back within minutes to advise that Fitzgerald would meet with him immediately.

Sloane had expected a high-rise facade of glass and steel, but Kendall’s corporate headquarters resembled an industrial complex. As with the factory in Mossylog, the first thing Sloane encountered was a gated entrance with a guard shack. Because the guard did not find Sloane’s name on an approved list of visitors he had to make a telephone call to confirm the appointment. Hanging up the phone, he asked to see Sloane’s driver’s license, wrote down the license plate of the car, provided Sloane a parking pass for the windshield, and directed him where to park. As Sloane drove through he saw a white placard attached to the fence in his rearview mirror urging departing employees to

KEEP KENDALL SECRETS SECRET

AND KENDALL’S TOYS

WILL REMAIN KENDALL’S

Inside a marbled lobby, near the bank of elevators, another guard sat behind a console and again requested Sloane’s driver’s license. Though he was tempted to say something like “I’m here to kidnap Sergeant Smash,” Sloane had the impression it would provoke
the same result as yelling “I have a gun in my bag” when passing through airport security.

The guard typed Sloane’s name into a computer and handed him a visitor’s badge, which Sloane peeled and stuck to his shirt pocket as the guard made a call. Hanging up, the guard advised that someone would be down to escort him into the building.

The wait would do Sloane good. He could feel the adrenaline pulsing through his body from the anticipated encounter with Malcolm Fitzgerald and he told himself that he could not lose his temper. Any chance of success depended upon Fitzgerald buying into Sloane’s bluff. He walked about the lobby, a museum depicting the history of the company and its more famous toys. Inside a thick Plexiglas case stood an original eleven-inch-tall Captain Courageous action figure. The accompanying placard explained that Kendall first introduced Captain Courageous in 1934, well before Sloane’s time, but since he recognized the name, it was likely one of the “It” toys Dee Stroud had talked about. Other versions of the doll, taller, more muscular, some dressed in camouflage, others in Hawaiian shirts and shorts, documented Captain Courageous’s evolution through the years. In the glass case beside the toy, a similar display documented the evolution of Sergeant Smash from his introduction in 1966 during the height of the Vietnam War, to the present day.

Moving along, Sloane read placards mounted on the wall next to blown-up photographs of Constantine and Aristotle Kendall. The placards told the story of how the two brothers had immigrated to the United States with less than fifty cents, but with a love of toys. A grainy black-and-white photograph showed them at work in their toy booth in downtown Seattle, and others documented the subsequent moves to new buildings as well as the ascension of the son, Sebastian Kendall Senior, and grandson, Sebastian Junior. Junior had reigned the longest as chairman of the board and CEO. The date of the end of his reign had not even
been engraved on his placard, but next to his picture hung the smiling portrait of his successor, Malcolm Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had boyish features and sandy blond hair, but his sideburns, two blocks of gray, indicated he was in his midforties.

Though Sloane had seen pictures of the man while researching the company, something about the portrait, hung in the lobby of a heavily guarded building, made Sloane’s hands clench in fists. In a dark blue jacket, white shirt, and light blue tie, Fitzgerald looked like a cocky and arrogant executive, someone who believed himself to be omnipotent, bulletproof.

That was about to change.

Sloane took a deep breath and again told himself that he had to play this out, that he couldn’t allow his anger to cloud his judgment. If he did, Tina would have died in vain. He wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Mr. Sloane?”

The young woman who escorted him to the elevator bank either had very little personality or had been instructed not to say much. Either way her reluctance to speak made for a silent elevator ride. Stepping from the car, the woman used an electronic card to access closed and locked doors as she led Sloane through several hallways. On their journey Sloane noticed two large vaults with television cameras mounted overhead. Glancing into open offices, he noted the same dark tinted glass as in the lobby, and shredders atop garbage cans. The precautions made him recall Dee Stroud’s admonition about the prevalent threat of ideas being stolen. Kendall obviously took that threat very seriously.