“Big,” Duvall confirmed.
“Where’d it come from? I mean, I know the father was famous….”
“After the old man pleaded guilty to all those murders, you know what happened to him?”
“Tell me.”
“He accepted a sentence of life imprisonment in an institution for the criminally insane. No possibility of parole. He made no arguments, no appeals. The guy was absolutely serene from the moment he was arrested, all the way through the final proceeding. Not one outburst, no expressions of regret.”
“No point. He knew he didn’t have any defense. He wasn’t crazy.”
“He wasn’t?” Duvall said, surprised.
“Well, not irrational, not babbling or raving or anything like that. He knew he couldn’t get off. He was just being realistic.”
“I guess so. Anyway, then the grandparents moved to have the son declared the legal owner of Ackblom’s assets. In fact, at the Porths’ request, the court ultimately divided the liquidated assets—minus the ranch—between the boy and the immediate families of the victims, in those cases where any spouses or children survived them. Want to guess how much they split?”
“No,” Roy said. He glanced out the porthole and saw a pair of local cops walking alongside the aircraft, looking it over.
Duvall didn’t even hesitate at Roy’s “no,” but poured out more details: “Well, the money came from selling paintings from Ackblom’s personal collection of other artists’ work, but mainly from the sale of some of his own paintings that he’d never been willing to put on the market. It totaled a little more than twenty-nine million dollars.”
“After taxes?”
“See, the value of his paintings soared with the notoriety. Seems funny, doesn’t it, that anyone would want to hang his work in their homes, knowing what the artist did. You’d think the value of his stuff would just collapse. But there was a frenzy in the art market. Values went through the roof.”
Roy remembered the color plates of Ackblom’s work that he had studied as a boy, at the time the story broke, and he couldn’t quite understand Duvall’s point. Ackblom’s art was exquisite. If Roy could have afforded to buy them, he would have decorated his own home with dozens of the artist’s canvases.
Duvall said, “Prices have continued to climb all these years, though more slowly than in the first year after. The family would have been better off holding onto some of the art. Anyway, the boy ended up with fourteen and a half million after taxes. Unless he lives high on the hog, that ought to have grown into an even more substantial fortune over all these years.”
Roy thought of the cabin in Malibu, the cheap furniture and walls without any artwork. “No high living.”
“Really? Well, you know, his old man didn’t live nearly as high as he could have, either. He refused to have a bigger house, didn’t want any live-in servants. Just a day maid and a property foreman who went home at five o’clock. Ackblom said he needed to keep his life as simple as possible to preserve his creative energy.” Gary Duvall laughed. “Of course he really just didn’t want anyone around at night to catch him at his games under the barn.”
Wandering back along the side of the chopper again, the Mormon cops looked up at Roy, where he was watching them from the porthole.
He waved.
They waved and smiled.
“Still,” Duvall said, “it’s a wonder the wife didn’t tumble to it sooner. He’d been experimenting with his ‘performance’ art for four years before she got wise.”
“She wasn’t an artist.”
“What?”
“She didn’t have the vision to anticipate. Without the vision to anticipate…she wouldn’t become suspicious without good reason.”
“Can’t say I follow you. Four years, for heaven’s sake.”
Then six more until the boy had found out. Ten years, forty-two victims, slightly more than four a year.
The numbers, Roy decided, weren’t particularly impressive. The factors that made Steven Ackblom one for the record books were his fame before his secret life was discovered, his position of respect in his community, his status as a family man (most classic serial killers were loners), and his desire to apply his exceptional talent to the art of torture in order to help his subjects achieve a moment of perfect beauty.
“But why,” Roy wondered again, “would the son want to hold on to that property? With all its associations. He wanted to change his name. Why not rid himself of the ranch too?”
“Strange, huh?”
“And if not the son, why not the grandparents? Why didn’t they sell it off when they were his legal guardians, make that decision for him? After their daughter was killed there…why would they want to have anything to do with the place?”
“There’s something there,” Duvall said.
“What do you mean?”
“Some explanation. Some reason. Whatever it is, it’s weird.”
“This caretaker couple—”
“Paul and Anita Dresmund.”
“—did they say whether Grant ever comes around?”
“He doesn’t. At least, they’ve never seen anybody with a scar like he’s got.”
“So who oversees them?”
“Until a year and a half ago, they only ever saw two people related to the Vail Memorial Trust. This lawyer, Lingerhold, or one of his partners would come by twice a year, just to check that the ranch was being maintained, that the Dresmunds were earning their salary and spending the upkeep fund on genuinely needed maintenance.”
“And for the past year and a half?”
“Since Vanishment International has owned the place, nobody’s come around at all,” Duvall said. “God, I’d love to find out how much he’s got stashed away in Amelia Earhart Enterprises, but you know we’re never going to pry that out of the Swiss.”
In recent years, Switzerland had grown alarmed by the large number of cases in which U.S. authorities had sought to seize the Swiss accounts of American citizens by invoking asset-forfeiture statutes without proof of criminal activity. The Swiss increasingly viewed such laws as blunt tools of political repression. Every month they retreated further from their traditional cooperation in criminal cases.
“What’s the other taco?” Roy asked.
“Huh?”
“The second taco. You said you had two tacos to feed me.”
“Enchiladas,” Duvall said. “Two enchiladas of information.”
“Well, I’m hungry,” Roy said pleasantly. He was proud of his patience, after all the tests to which the Mormon cops had put it. “So why don’t you heat up that second enchilada?”
Gary Duvall served it to him, and it was as tasty as promised.
The moment he hung up on Duvall, Roy called the Vegas office and spoke to Ken Hyckman, who would soon conclude his shift as the morning duty officer. “Ken, where’s that JetRanger?”
“Ten minutes from you.”
“I’m going to send it back with most of the men here.”
“You’re giving up?”
“You know we’ve lost radar contact on them.”
“Right.”
“They’re gone, and we’re not going to reconnect with them that way. But I have another lead, a good one, and I’m jumping on it. I need a jet.”
“Jesus.”
“I didn’t say I needed to hear a little profanity.”
“Sorry.”
“What about the Lear I came in on Friday night?”
“It’s still here. Serviced and ready.”
“Is there anywhere in my vicinity it can land, any military base where I could meet it?”
“Let me check,” Hyckman said, and he put Roy on hold.
While he waited, Roy thought about Eve Jammer. He would not be able to return to Las Vegas that evening. He wondered what his blond sweetness would do to remember him and to keep him in her heart. She had said that it would be something special. He assumed she would practice new positions, if there were any, and try out e
rotic aids that she had never used before, in order to prepare an experience for him that, a night or two hence, would leave him shuddering and breathless as never before. When he attempted to imagine what those erotic aids might be, his mind spun. And his mouth went as dry as sand—which was perfect.
Ken Hyckman came back on the line. “We can put the Lear down right there in Cedar City.”
“This burg can take a Lear?”
“Brian Head is just twenty-nine miles east of there.”
“Who?”
“Not who. What. First-rate ski resort, lots of pricey homes up on the mountain. Lots of rich people and corporations own condos in Brian Head, bring their jets in to Cedar City and drive up from there. It doesn’t have anything like O’Hare or LAX, no bars and newsstands and baggage carousels, but the airfield can handle long landing requirements.”
“Is a crew standing by with the Lear?”
“Absolutely. We can get them out of McCarran and to you by one o’clock.”
“Terrific. I’ll ask one of the grinning gendarmes to drive me to the airfield.”
“Who?”
“One of the courteous constables,” Roy said. He was in a fine mood again.
“I’m not sure this scrambler is giving me what you’re saying.”
“One of the Mormon marshals.”
Either getting the point or deciding that he didn’t need to understand, Hyckman said, “They’ll have to file a flight plan here. Where are you going from Cedar City?”
“Denver,” Roy said.
Slumped in the last seat in the starboard aisle, Ellie dozed on and off for a couple of hours. In fourteen months as a fugitive, she had learned to put aside her fears and worries, sleeping whenever she had a chance.
Shortly after she woke, while she was stretching and yawning, Spencer returned from an extended visit with the two-man crew. He sat across from her.
As Rocky curled up in the aisle at his feet, Spencer said, “More good news. According to the boys, this is an extensively customized eggbeater. For one thing, they have jumped-up engines on this baby, so we can carry an extra-heavy load, which allows them to saddle her with big auxiliary fuel tanks. She’s got a lot more range than the standard model. They’re sure they can get us all the way across the border and past Grand Junction before there’s any danger of the tanks running dry, if we want to go that far.”
“The farther the better,” she said. “But not right in or around Grand Junction. We don’t want to be seen by a lot of curious people. Better out somewhere, but not so far out that we can’t find wheels nearby.”
“We won’t make it to the Grand Junction area until half an hour or so before twilight. Right now it’s only ten past two o’clock. Well, three o’clock in the Mountain Time Zone. Still plenty of time to look at a map and pick a general area to put down.”
She pointed to the canvas duffel bag on the seat in front of hers. “Listen, about your fifty thousand dollars—”
He held up one hand to silence her. “I was just startled that you found it, that’s all. You had every right and reason to search my luggage after you located me in the desert. You didn’t know why the hell I was trying to track you down. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you still weren’t entirely clear on that.”
“You always carry that kind of pocket change?”
“About a year and a half ago,” he said, “I started salting cash and gold coins in safe-deposit boxes in California, Nevada, Arizona. Also opened savings accounts in various cities, under false names and Social Security numbers. Shifted everything else out of the country.”
“Why?”
“So I could move fast.”
“You expected to be on the run like this?”
“No. I just didn’t like what I saw happening on that computer-crime task force. They taught me all about computers, including that access to information is the essence of freedom. And yet what they ultimately wanted to do was restrict that access in as many instances as possible and to the greatest extent possible.”
Playing devil’s advocate, Ellie said, “I thought the idea was just to prevent criminal hackers from using computers to steal and maybe to stop them from vandalizing data banks.”
“And I’m all for that kind of crime control. But they want to keep a thumb on everybody. Most authorities these days…they violate privacy all the time, fishing both openly and secretly in data banks. Everyone from the IRS to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Even the Bureau of Land Management, for God’s sake. They were all helping to fund this regional task force with grants, and they all gave me the creeps.”
“You see a new world coming—”
“—like a runaway freight train—”
“—and you don’t like the shape of it—”
“—don’t think I want to be a part of it.”
“Do you see yourself as a cyberpunk, an on-line outlaw?”
“No. Just a survivor.”
“Is that why you’ve been erasing yourself from public record—a little survival insurance?”
No shadow fell across him, but his features seemed to darken. He had looked haggard to begin with, which was understandable after the ordeal of the past few days. But now he was sunken-eyed, gaunt, and older than his years.
He said, “At first I was just…getting ready to go away.” He sighed and wiped a hand across his face. “This sounds strange maybe. But changing my name from Michael Ackblom to Spencer Grant wasn’t enough. Moving from Colorado, starting a new life…none of it was ever enough. I couldn’t forget who I was…whose son I was. So I decided to wipe myself out of existence, painstakingly, methodically, until there was no record in the world that I existed under any name. What I’d been learning about computers gave me that power.”
“And then? When you were erased?”
“That’s what I could never figure out. And then? What next? Wipe myself out for real? Suicide?”
“That’s not you.” She found her heart sinking at the thought.
“No, not me,” he agreed. “I never brooded about eating a shotgun barrel or anything like that. And I had an obligation to Rocky, to be here for him.”
Sprawled on the deck, the dog raised his head at the sound of his name. He swished his tail.
“Then, after a while,” he continued, “even though I didn’t know what I was going to do, I decided there was still virtue in becoming invisible. Just because, as you say, of this new world coming, this brave new high-tech world with all its blessings—and curses.”
“Why did you leave your DMV file and your military records partly intact? You could’ve wiped them out completely, long ago.”
He smiled. “Being too clever, maybe. I thought I’d just change my address on them, a few salient details, so they weren’t much use to anyone. But by leaving them in place, I could always go back to look at them and see if somebody was searching for me.”
“You booby-trapped them?”
“Sort of, yeah. I buried little programs in those computers, very deep, very subtle. Each time anyone goes into my DMV or military files without using a little code I implanted, the system adds one asterisk to the end of the last sentence in the file. The idea was that I’d check once or twice a week, and if I saw asterisks, saw that someone was investigating me…well, then maybe it would be time to walk away from the cabin in Malibu and just move on.”
“Move on where?”
“Anywhere. Just move on and keep moving.”
“Paranoid,” she said.
“Damned paranoid.”
She laughed quietly. So did he.
He said, “By the time I left that task force, I knew that the way the world’s changing, everybody’s going to have somebody looking for him sooner or later. And most people, most of the time, are going to wish they hadn’t been findable.”
Ellie checked her wristwatch. “Maybe we should take a look at that map now.”
“They have a slew of maps up front,” he said.
She
watched him walk forward to the cockpit door. His shoulders were slumped. He moved with evident weariness, and he still appeared to be somewhat stiff from his days of immobility.
Suddenly Ellie was chilled by a feeling that Spencer Grant was not going to make it through this with her, that he was going to die somewhere in the night ahead. The foreboding was perhaps not strong enough to be called an explicit premonition, but it was more powerful than a mere hunch.
The possibility of losing him left her half sick with dread. She knew then that she cared for him even more than she had been able to admit.
When he returned with the map, he said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just tired,” she lied. “And starved.”
“I can do something about the starved part.” As he sat in the seat across the aisle again, he produced four candy bars from the pockets of his fleece-lined denim jacket.
“Where’d you get these?”
“The boys up front have a snack box. They were happy to share. They’re really a couple of swell guys.”
“Especially with a gun to their heads.”
“Especially then,” he agreed.
Rocky sat up and cocked his good ear with keen interest when he smelled the candy bars.
“Ours,” Spencer said firmly. “When we’re out of the air and on the road again, we’ll stop and get some real food for you, something healthier than this.”
The dog licked his chops.
“Look, pal,” Spencer said, “I didn’t stop in the supermarket to graze on the wreckage, like you did. I need every bite of these, or I’ll collapse on my face. Now you just lie down and forget it. Okay?”
Rocky yawned, looked around with pretended disinterest, and stretched out on the deck again.
“You two have an incredible rapport,” she said.
“Yeah, we’re Siamese twins, separated at birth. You couldn’t know that, of course, because he’s had a lot of plastic surgery.”
She could not take her eyes off his face. More than weariness was visible in it. She could see the certain shadow of death.
Disconcertingly perceptive and alert to her mood, Spencer said, “What?”