Rough Draft (18 page)

“Yeah, well, my son is no conniver.”

“That's exactly what my mother thought, bless her heart.”

She looked at him for a moment, then glanced around the wide and empty lawn.

“So, is anybody home?”

“Not that I've seen.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Couple of minutes.”

The front porch was bare, the lawn was shaggy. In several of the windows the Venetian blinds were in disarray, slats broken or twisted as if a recent storm had blown through the old place and left chaos in its wake.

“Anybody from work know you're here? What you're up to?”

“You mean like do we have backup?”

“Something like that.”

Frank shook his head.

“You worry too much, Hannah. Even in the unlikely event that Fielding's here, the old guy would be close to seventy. Two trained law-enforcement types like us, that shouldn't be a problem.”

“At least tell me you're armed.”

He reached behind him and patted the small of his back.

Through a stand of Australian pines that ran down the east perimeter of the property, Hannah could see a lawn-service company at work. Men in yellow shirts mowing and weed-eating. But otherwise there was no sign of life anywhere around.

“I was wondering,” Sheffield said. “You ever been in a kayak?”

She peered at him as if he'd spoken in tongues.

“A kayak,” he said. “Long and slender like a canoe.”

“I know what a kayak is, Frank.”

“Well, I have two of them. One's a two-man, the other's one-man. I was wondering if you and Randall might want to come out, take a little tour across the flats. Around sunset you see lots of interesting stuff. Rays, sharks, crabs. A few
inches of water, that's all you need, you skim across the surface like a water bug. It's very tranquil. Or if you wanted to leave Randall somewhere, a baby-sitter or something, it could be just you and me in the two-man kayak. That would work too. Either way is fine. I like kids. They usually respond to me.”

“I bet they do.”

“So, you want to come out?”

“What're you thinking, Frank? We're about to walk in a house where the killer of my parents may be hiding out and you're asking me for a date?”

“A kayak tour is what I was thinking. I guess you could call it a date. But that seems a little more formal than what I had in mind.”

She shook her head and sighed. Truth be known, it was the best offer she'd had in a while.

“Listen, Frank. I appreciate the gesture, but we need to take care of this little problem before we talk about kayaking. Okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “Okay, fine:'

“So how do you suggest we proceed?”

“Ring the bell or break down the door. What's your preference?”

Frank was smiling at her, not taking this seriously. Only reason he was here was because she'd bullied him into it. What he wanted was to go kayaking. Skim across the surface. Be a water bug.

“Are you on the clock now, Frank? Or is this off time for you?”

The humor leaked out of his smile.

“Hannah, I'm at the stage in my career where that distinction has totally lost meaning.”

“So you're not holding a search warrant?”

“We find something worth bothering a judge about, we can have a warrant in an hour.”

“Meanwhile we violate the hell out of this guy's rights, give him a free pass out of jail.”

“I truly doubt it will come to that.”

She turned and marched across the pitted driveway and mounted the steep front steps. Red Cuban tile covered the stairs and ran the length of the porch. Perched on the railing near a rusty mailbox was a large gray squirrel. He eyed Hannah, unimpressed, and continued to munch on a seedpod.

The front door was a couple of inches ajar.

Frank was beside her. He reached out and nudged the door inward. Its rusty hinges creaked. Calling out a halfhearted hello, Frank Sheffield stepped over the threshold.

She followed him into a large high-ceilinged room, shadowy and dense with the mustiness of disuse. There was no furniture in the room. Simply a wide fireplace of quarried coral topped with an ornately carved mahogany mantel. The floors were dark, wide planks, probably old heart of pine from the days when such wood still grew in abundance throughout the state. There were dark, heavy beams stretching across the ceiling, and two wrought-iron light fixtures hung at either end of the big room, as round and large as wagon wheels with half the glass globes missing.

Frank called out another hello but his voice was swallowed up by the dark airless space.

“Looks like the banquet hall for a Viking warrior,” he said. “Big and dreary. And decidedly vacant.”

“We've just walked in the door, Frank. You want to give up already?”

She stepped over to the fireplace and ran her hand across its slick surface. The coral was etched with thousands of tiny squiggles, the unreadable hieroglyphs of its ancient biology.

She could hear the lawn mowers roaring next door, and the low drone of traffic from out on Bayshore Drive. And there was something else. Something on the lower register of her hearing. She made a quick tour of the two other rooms. A parlor with another small fireplace and a wall of built-in bookshelves, all bare. Then a large white kitchen with what looked an icebox from the previous century, and cupboards that ran from eye level to the fifteen-foot ceiling. The shelves barren, the refrigerator empty, electricity switched off.

Frank stood in the doorway and watched her prowl the room. Watched her open drawers and cabinets, peering in the cracks.

“I bet you were a good cop.”

“I was okay,” she said.

Wedged in a back corner of one of the tile counters was a white business card. Hannah turned her back to Sheffield and palmed the card, stepped away from the counter and slipped it into her hip pocket. It wasn't that she didn't trust Sheffield. Only that his passion for this enterprise fell so short of hers that she felt a need to safeguard any stray evidence. No telling if or when Frank would get around to analyzing them on his own.

“This is the kind of place,” Frank said, rapping on a countertop with his knuckles, “everything's built so well, it makes you sad thinking about the plywood bullshit we live with nowadays.”

“Let's try upstairs,” she said.

“Right behind you.”

It was a curved staircase, more white coral worn smooth by years of leather footsteps. The railing was an intricate wrought-iron filigree, a floral pattern, hibiscus blooms and a tangled vine. When she reached the landing, she heard that same noise coming from further down the corridor. And recognized it now, a quiet voice.

She dug her hand in her purse, came out with the Smith.

“Whoa,” he whispered, and laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. “You're a civilian, remember?”

He'd drawn his nine-millimeter, a bluish Glock.

She followed two steps behind him down the narrow hallway past one empty bedroom, then another, until they came to a closed door at the end of the corridor.

Frank put his left hand on the knob, back to the door, pistol by his cheek. He looked at her and winked, gave her a quick wag of his pistol, signaling her to stand clear, then he laid his shoulder against the dark wood and shoved it open.

He entered in a rush. Hannah lost sight of him briefly,
then she brushed the door aside and charged forward into the unlit chamber, stumbling to a sudden stop.

Heavy curtains were drawn against the light on two sets of windows. For a moment her eyes were dazzled by the sudden darkness, then a second or two later she began to make out the blue shimmer of a large-screen television.

“Jesus,” Frank said. He was beside her now, a hand on her back.

For a moment Hannah saw only the fuzzy snow of faulty reception, then the image gradually resolved into slightly better focus. A desiccated man in a white nightgown was propped up in what looked like a hospital bed. Beside him several plastic IV bags dangled from a chrome rack and an array of tubes ran from the bottle to his forearm and chest.

The picture was grainy and had a halting slow-motion feel, and though she had only seen his face in a handful of photographs, there was no doubt that the withered man in the bed was J. J. Fielding. He had a long, narrow face, grown gaunt in the last five years. His hair was extravagantly full, a bright silver, and he wore it swept back on the sides and pomaded into place, as crudely out of style as the hairdo of some oafish Russian diplomat. He had a deep crease in his chin and the fleshy lips of a sybarite and deep-set eyes that seemed both cold and anxious to please as if this were a man who took no great pleasure in the cruelties his appetites required him to commit.

Beside him, wearing a blue surgical gown, was a tall, potbellied gentleman with windblown Einstein hair. He was scribbling with a ballpoint pen, paging through sheets clamped to a metal clipboard.

The television was a new model, a Sony. It sat up on a metal rack, the kind with rollers that you might find in the visual ed room of a high school.

When Fielding spoke, his lips seemed to be a second out of synch with the amplified voice that filled the room.

“So at this point, I'm told there's nothing further they can do,” he said. “Nothing but painkillers, morphine, Demerol.
They're letting me self-administer the drugs, but I'm trying not to use too much because I want to stay clear-headed as long as possible. The good news and the bad news are the same. Pancreatic cancer is quick. Dr. Mau tells me I've only got a few days left. When I heard that, I decided I couldn't wait any longer. I needed to do this. To let you hear from me. There are so many things I need to explain.”

The old man's voice was a squeaky tenor, a warped violin, badly out of tune.

Hannah stepped closer to the television. The picture was framed with the familiar white border she saw every day on her own computer screen. Hannah touched the edge of the screen, running a finger along the cool glass as if to make certain it was real.

“This is the Internet,” she said. “The guy is broadcasting over the goddamn Internet. See? Right there, that line—
www.Deathwatch.com
.
A Web address and everything. Can you believe this shit?”

On the screen, Fielding took a sip of clear liquid from a tall glass and handed the glass back to his doctor.

Then he craned forward in the bed and peered into the camera.

“I've sent you something, Hannah. I sent something to you. A secret message. I believe you've received it by now and that you're watching me. I want you to come to me. I need to see you, to talk to you in person. Please, Hannah, I have something terrible to confess. It's about your parents. The terrible things I've done. Please come, Hannah. Right away. There isn't much time left. Look at the message I've left for you and do what it says. Please, Hannah. Please, I beg you.”

“That Bastard,” Hannah said. “That goddamn worthless son of a bitch. He wants to confess. He wants absolution. The big come-from-behind finish. Well, screw him.”

They were on the front porch. Frank glancing around the empty lawn. Before Fielding drifted off to sleep, he'd repeated his plea to Hannah twice more. The same speech verbatim, as if he were giving it over and over, not knowing exactly when she might show up before the screen. When finally Fielding began to snore, Hannah stalked from the room and Sheffield followed her outside.

“So what're you going to do, Frank?”

“I'm going back to the office, get busy on this.”

“You have computer people, right? They can track down his Web address, locate him.”

“We have computer people, yes. I'm not sure what they can and can't do. Or how quickly. But we'll see.”

“And what about me?”

“What about you?”

“Where do you see me fitting in?”

“Where do you want to fit in, Hannah?”

“I want to be involved, of course.”

“Then I won't try to stop you.”

“Don't you want the book? You heard him. It's got more code. More messages.”

Frank glanced away, stared out at the traffic. He shook his head.

“You hold onto it for the time being. Read it over, see if it
makes any sense. I'll run this by Rosie Jackson, the SAC, maybe he'll want to put some of our crypto people on it.”

“But there's something wrong. What is it, Frank? Level with me.”

He flinched and looked away.

“You still don't believe this, do you? What do you think, this whole thing is some kind of fabrication, something I invented?”

“No, I don't think that,” Frank said.

Hannah looked out at the lawn where three white ibis with long orange beaks were poking in the grass.

“But you're just going to send me off with the book? Is that FBI procedure now? Let civilians handle evidence?”

“I think of you as more than a civilian, Hannah.”

“But still …”

“If you'd like me to confiscate the book, I will. Is that what you want?”

“I didn't say that. But I don't understand your reaction. You're being so blasé.”

“Hey, I'm an easygoing guy. I think we've already established that. And anyway, you broke the first code, you can probably handle this one just fine.”

“Okay, if that's the way you want it.”

Frank said, “All you have to do is promise you'll stay in close touch. You figure out anything, you're going to let me know. A lead, no matter how slight it might look, you call me. Can you live with that, Hannah?”

“I know about teamwork, Frank. I keep you informed, you keep me informed. It flows both ways.”

“And, Hannah, I don't want you poking your nose in something, drawing your weapon, any of that.”

“This isn't about embezzlement anymore,” she said. “You understand that, don't you, Frank? Fielding wants to make a deathbed confession. Like I'm the one he thinks can pardon him.”