The Crooked Staircase

  During their time in the first market, she hadn’t trusted her ability both to appear relaxed and to react quickly if a threat materialized. Her mind was fuzzy. Her reflexes weren’t what they should be. There was a real possibility that if she had to go for her gun, she might fumble with the sport coat.

  Consequently, during the drive between markets, she had taken the Colt Pony .380 from the low-ride belt-fixed rig on her hip and put it in her purse.

  The purse was now propped in the small fold-down basket that overhung the larger part of the grocery cart. The zipper was open, the pistol grip awaiting her hand, tucked between her wallet and a packet of Kleenex.

  Even with the weapon better positioned for a quick draw and though everything had gone smoothly thus far, Jessie worried about Travis. They had hardly begun their tour through the second market, but already they’d been away ninety minutes. They wouldn’t get back to the house for at least another hour, which would be half an hour later than they had promised.

  34

  Immediately after spotting the suspects, Jergen and Dubose hurry to the back of the market, where deliveries are made. The door is unlocked. They step inside and stand blinking in the cool air as their eyes adjust to the low light.

  This is the warehousing space behind the sales floor, and it is smaller than Jergen expected. You can’t call the market a mom-and-pop operation, but neither does it deserve the prefix super.

  Here are three men in black slacks and white shirts, two of them wearing white aprons with the market logo on the breast. The one without an apron is cutting away the shrink-wrap from three pallets of recently delivered goods. The other two are transferring five-pound bags of sugar from one of the pallets to metal storage shelves.

  The guy scissoring the shrink-wrap straightens up from his work. He has close-cropped hair, a scrubbed look, no face jewelry, no visible tattoos, neatly pressed pants, and shoes with a high shine. His just-so appearance suggests he might be a Mormon, which is a plus, as Mormons are people who are raised to be helpful. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

  “We need to speak with the manager,” Dubose says.

  “Well, now, that would be me. Oren Luckman. What can I do for you?”

  Jergen says, “IRS.” He looks at the other men, who are too interested in whatever little drama might play out here. “We’d prefer to keep this discreet.”

  Oren Luckman’s office is in a corner of the warehouse space. Piles of invoices cover the desk, weighed down by a variety of colorful polished stones.

  Indicating a red stone with black veining, Dubose says, “That’s a nice specimen of rhodonite.” He points to another. “And that’s an exceptional cabochon of chrysocolla.”

  “You know stones.” Luckman’s face shines with the delight of a collector meeting someone who doesn’t think his peculiar enthusiasm makes him a class-A dweeb.

  “It’s long been a hobby of mine,” Dubose reveals. “Oh, now, that’s a spectacular chunk of quartz-embedded rhodochrosite. A real beauty.”

  “That’s from the Sweet Home Mine in Colorado,” says Luckman with an annoying note of pride.

  This is the first Jergen has ever heard of Dubose’s hobby. Not to be outdone, he points to a stone. “Magnificent turquoise.”

  Luckman and Dubose regard him with something like pity, and the manager says, “That’s stained howlite.”

  “People who don’t know any better,” Dubose says, “buy howlite jewelry and pay a turquoise price.” Putting an end to stone talk, he withdraws his ID wallet from an inner coat pocket and flashes his National Security Agency credentials.

  As Jergen produces his ID as well, Luckman is confused. “But you said Internal Revenue Service.”

  “For the benefit of your two assistants back there,” Jergen explains. “We don’t want them talking about NSA agents to other employees on the sales floor right now.”

  “We’ve spotted two suspects that just came into your store,” Dubose says. “If they are who we think, we’ll have to arrest them.”

  “Oh, my,” says Luckman. “Nothing like this ever happens here.”

  Jergen points to a large wall-mounted monitor on which is a view of what appears to be the area just inside the front door of the market. “How many security cams can you show us?”

  With almost as much pride as when reacting to Dubose’s admiring words about the quartz-embedded whatever, Luckman says, “One at a time or four in quad-screen format.”

  “And how many cameras altogether?”

  “Eight.”

  “Just eight?” Jergen asks.

  “Two exterior, six in the store.”

  “Just six,” Dubose laments. “Should be at least twenty-four.”

  “Surely not for a place this size,” Luckman says. “Not around these parts.”

  With Luckman using a remote, they need maybe two minutes to find the black couple. The manager is able to zoom in on them for a satisfying close-up.

  Standing directly in front of the monitor, Dubose and Jergen study the faces, the attitudes, the way the woman moves.

  “It’s them,” Dubose declares, and Jergen agrees.

  They can wait until the Washingtons are leaving the store and pushing a cart full of grocery bags, draw down on them outside. But these two will be cautious exiting, alert for anything amiss. Going through a door, the husband will have his hand under his coat, on his weapon.

  They will be somewhat more relaxed in the parking lot, on the way to their wheels. However, the parking lot is sizeable, and there aren’t many vehicles in it on this Sunday afternoon. The moment they see Jergen and Dubose moving toward them, the Washingtons will read the situation right, and there could be a firefight.

  A firefight isn’t a risk worth taking, not when this situation allows Jergen and Dubose the element of surprise.

  One stone fancier to another, Dubose tells Luckman what they need to do and what help they require from him. The manager pales, but although he surely would have been slower to concede assistance to Jergen, he is taken with Dubose’s folksy manner and agrees to the strategy.

  35

  When the Washingtons had their shopping cart fully laden and were nearly finished, one of its wheels developed a stutter and wanted to pull a different direction from the other three.

  “Let me wrestle with it,” Gavin said.

  “No, we’re almost done,” Jessie said, patting her purse in the fold-down basket. “Let’s just finish it according to plan.”

  Maybe three minutes later, when they reached the front of the store and were approaching the cashier stations, a man working on a display of Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero noticed the mountain of groceries they were pushing. His shirt tag said his name was Oren and that he was a manager. “You folks best go to checkout three. Eddie there, he’s our fastest checker. He’ll have you out the door in no time.”

  Eddie was a thirtysomething guy with blond hair and blue eyes. He looked a little like a shorter Robert Redford from the days when Redford was doing movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He had a smarmy smile that Gavin didn’t like, the kind of smile a bigot wore when he was pretending to like black people.

  Gavin went ahead of the cart to unload it as Jessie pushed it into the checkout lane, and he sensed something besides Eddie’s smile that was wrong with the man. His shirt. Eddie was wearing a market apron over a patterned short-sleeve sport shirt. Hadn’t all the other employees been wearing white shirts?

  And the name tag. It said EDUARDO. Not Eddie. Eduardo suggested Hispanic. This guy was about as Hispanic as the queen of England.

  Gavin felt his right hand, powered by intuition, wanting to go under his coat for the Springfield Armory pistol. He glanced back toward the manager and saw him fading away from the Coke display, around the corner into an aisle, looking back with something like alarm.

 
He glanced at Jessie, and her expression said, What?

  Taking a large bag of corn chips off the top of the stuff in the shopping cart, Gavin contrived to drop it on the floor. “Oops.”

  If this was it, there was only one way out. The people who arrested them would not be operating according to the law. They would be Arcadians, and there would be no future for him or for Jessie that didn’t involve a control mechanism. Slavery.

  He stooped, ostensibly to pick up the bag of corn chips, though in fact to draw the .45 before Eddie saw him making the move. As he slid his hand under his coat and pulled the pistol, he looked at Jessie again and thought, Oh, God, how much I love you, thought it so hard that he hoped she’d actually hear him telepathically.

  36

  Maybe ten seconds before Washington and wife will be exactly where they are wanted, ten seconds before Jergen and Dubose would have pulled their peacemakers and shouted Police, the man seems to block the cart from coming in farther, and he drops a bag of corn chips. Jergen does not like the way the dude drops the corn chips.

  His pistol is on a shelf under the cash register. As he reaches for it, Washington is coming back up from his stoop, and—shit—he’s got a cannon in his hand.

  Just then Dubose, who’s been crouched behind the magazine rack, comes out into the open and doesn’t bother to shout Police, like it would matter even if he did, and just rushes forward, squeezing off two shots, one of which takes Washington in the head. In a death reflex, Washington fires a round that misses Jergen but point-blanks the cash register, and even as the register responds with noises of electronic distress, the woman is so quick that she’s drawn a small gun designed for concealed carry and is emptying it not at Jergen, who is much closer to her, but at Dubose, who is forced to drop and scramble. The expression on the bitch’s face is the most frightening thing that Jergen has ever seen, such horror and hatred and fury and indomitable intent that she seems supernatural, like some creature risen out of an infernal bottomless darkness to collect souls and tie them, wriggling, to her belt. His first shot takes her in the shoulder, staggers her, and his second shot knocks her down.

  Customers and market employees are screaming and running for the doors, and Dubose is shouting—“Police! Police! Police!”—just in case some witness has a license for concealed carry and, in an unfortunate misunderstanding of the situation, might open fire on the legitimate authorities. In the wake of the gunshots, all that noise echoes hollowly in Jergen’s ears, as though it’s issuing out of a deep well.

  Jergen opens a waist-high gate and exits cashier’s station number three, stepping into the lane for station two. Staying low, pistol in a two-hand grip, heart knocking so hard that his vision pulses, he rounds the display of candy and gum and copies of the National Enquirer. There on the floor behind the full shopping cart is the woman, on her back, head turned toward him, still alive. She seems unable to get up, maybe paralyzed, but with her left hand she is reaching for the dropped pistol.

  He moves toward her and kicks the weapon out of her reach and looks down as blood bubbles on her lips. Her eyes are fierce, one brown and one a dazzling green, and if a stare could kill, he would be as dead as her husband. Jergen’s hearing remains temporarily impaired because of all the gunfire, and though the woman’s voice must be weak, it comes to him with piercing clarity. “I’m not done with you,” she says, and then she dies.

  Her eyes are fixed on Jergen, as if she can still see him from some far shore.

  At first he backs away from her corpse. But then in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he suddenly wonders if they have made a mistake, if perhaps these aren’t the Washingtons, after all, but some innocent couple of similar appearance and with a legitimate reason to be armed. This is a big mess, any way you look at it, but if they aren’t the Washingtons, it’s an even bigger mess, a career-ending mess. As agents of the revolution, a failure this epic will not earn them early retirement; the only way careers like theirs are ended is two bullets in the back of the head or nanoweb enslavement.

  He goes to the corpse and squats beside it and, after a brief hesitation, pulls up one leg of the khakis, revealing the Ottobock. Relief floods through him as he looks into her dead eyes and says, “Try to run a ten-K now, bitch.”

  1

  The frozen sky lay invisible behind the numberless flakes that scaled from it and crystaled the air in their silent white descent.

  By two o’clock, they had traveled U.S. Highway 50 west and then south. They exited onto a county road, and from there made their way to an unpaved track that, according to Booth Hendrickson, had been carved out and was maintained by the forest service. The single lane, with periodic lay-bys, had been plowed during the current storm, though probably not during the past hour. With four-wheel drive and tire chains, Jane felt confident that she could navigate it.

  The fabled lake lay to the west, a quarter mile from this rough track and still far below, screened from sight as much by forest as by the quiet storm. Lodgepole pine, red fir, white pine, juniper, and mountain hemlock received the snow. In spite of the urgency of this mission, there was a timeless quality to the scene and a sense that all the works of humanity and all the dramas of Jane’s life were but a dream from which she had awakened into this.

  Booth had been her captive for well over twenty-four hours. The longer he remained missing, the more effort would be expended in the search for him and the wider the net the Arcadians would cast.

  Those in charge of the search didn’t know about the crooked staircase, about what a profound impact it had had on his life and what thing of great value waited for Jane at the bottom of that fearsome descent. Other than Booth and the couple who maintained the estate in the absence of its owner, only his mother, Anabel, and brother were aware that the vertical passage existed. Simon hadn’t been admitted to the Arcadian conspiracy; he knew nothing of the brain implants. And Anabel might not credit the possibility that her elder son would speak about this place where his abject humiliation and formation occurred—unless she knew that Jane possessed ampules of the control mechanism and might have injected mama’s best boy.

  Booth hadn’t known of the ampules, however, so perhaps no one else knew, either. And if the most elite of the conspirators did know, it was only Anabel who also knew about the crooked staircase, only Anabel who might in time realize why Jane would go there if she learned of it.

  A second track branched off the first, likewise white-mantled but plowed recently enough that it was passable, and she switched to it at Booth’s direction. The way grew steeper. The trees crowded closer. She was just minutes from her destination.

  For centuries, for thousands of years, the lake, as well as the forests and alpine meadows surrounding it, had enchanted those who journeyed there. For some, the effect was greater than enchantment; this place had a mystical aura and evoked a feeling that the truth and meaning of the world lay behind fewer veils here than elsewhere.

  Only the Great Lakes were larger than Tahoe, but Tahoe was far deeper, shaped by glaciers a million years ago and plunging 1,645 feet at its deepest. The clarity of the water provided visibility to surprising depth, and the coloration under a summer sun transformed it into a vast display of emeralds and sapphires.

  The lake never froze, but its cold temperatures greatly slowed decomposition at extreme depth. Seventeen years after he drowned, a diver was found three hundred feet below the surface, his body all but perfectly preserved.

  “Stop here,” Booth said, and pointed.

  She pulled into a lay-by and put the Explorer in park.

  “We walk from here,” he said.

  She wished they had stopped somewhere to buy insulated jackets and boots. However, the forecast had called for only a fraction as much snow as had fallen, and outfitting herself and this man, in his condition, had seemed a daunting task fraught with risk.

  As if privy to her th
oughts, he said, “It’s a short walk.”

  2

  The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department maintains a major substation in Borrego Springs, which means deputies are on scene at the market almost before the last echoes of the gunfire fade away. They are well-trained, professional, efficient—and a pain in the ass, as far as Carter Jergen is concerned.

  He and Dubose are NSA agents, among other things, and these guys are nothing but generic fuzz, plain-vanilla cops. Nevertheless, they want to have a role in the investigation of the shootings because this is their turf, their town; these are their neighbors.

  There is no damn role for them. This is ostensibly a national security matter, far above their pay grade. None of them possesses the necessary security clearance to work the investigation. Not one of their precious neighbors has so much as suffered a paper cut in the course of the event. The only significant damage to property is the bullet-drilled cash register. Otherwise, losses involve only a small quantity of candy bars, gum, and tabloid newspapers spattered with blood and brain tissue; no big deal.

  Yet here they are, frustrating Jergen and Dubose, taking photos of the so-called crime scene and busily collecting the names of those witnesses who haven’t fled.

  Dubose puts in a call for backup. There will be other agents on scene as soon as they can be choppered in. Greater numbers will help push the hometown boys out of the picture.

  But then the watch captain from the substation shows up, a guy named Foursquare, if it can be believed. He has a bulldog jaw and the steely eyes of a Vegas pit boss who would call his own mother a cheat and throw her out of the game if she won more than forty bucks at blackjack. He wants to know who the decedents are, and he’s not satisfied to be told only that they are foreign agents. He wants to check their ID, but Jergen heatedly argues against disturbing the cadavers, even though there’s no ID to find; he and Dubose had the foresight to take the wallets from the bodies of Washington and his wife before the local gendarmes arrived. They have also found a key to a Honda in one of the dead man’s sport-coat pockets.