and for the wining and dining? Shouldn't the man take care of that, at least? No self respect. This sums up all the men she's been going out with: no self respect."
"What did he say?"
"He denied he was seeing her. They all do. But I had the phone bill with me and showed him the number she called, his phone number. She called it a hundred times on that bill alone. Guess who had to pay for that, too? And that jerk had the nerve to say she only called him about a weight set he was selling. A hundred times? Ever heard such bullshit? She admitted the affair later to me and to the police, of course." He fell silent for a moment, then said, "I'm tired. I'm very tired."
Doc Minus Two got up and touched him on his shoulder. "We won't trouble you anymore. I think we got what we needed."
Patrick burst into tears. Doc Minus Two turned around and walked towards the door. I felt I had to say something, even if it would not sound professional coming from an ATF agent. "I believe you."
He kept on sobbing and did not respond. I lingered another moment, then turned and followed Doc Minus Two out the door. I closed it after me. I do not think Patrick bothered to lock it after we left.
We sat in the Jeep. "Poor guy," I said. "That's a real tragedy. Those people ruined so many lives; not just the sixty six they've killed."
"That they did," he replied dryly. "But not this man's."
"How do you mean?"
"He did it."
I turned to him with a swift motion, almost jumping out of my seat. "How can you say that? You were there with me. You heard him."
"I heard him. I heard him all too well. He was lying like a drunk on a park bench."
"This makes no sense. Did he really strike you as stupid as that, to keep the mask and the jacket, to approach a stranger about disposing of a hot gun? And why would he kill only Lasbrant and not his wife and the other men?"
"No, he didn't strike me as stupid. Granted, he's a smart guy. He's someone who'd exercise good judgment. But let me ask you, all those people who get into accidents driving drunk, do they all lack judgment? No, they have good judgment, but only when sober. Robert Patrick may be of sound mind when he is himself, but he was not himself that night when he shot Lasbrant."
"I still don't get it."
"Lasbrant was shot outside a bar. Both men met there, so that means Patrick was likely drunk. Also, while his wife cheated on him with other men before, in Lasbrant's case the cheating was only part of the humiliation. Lasbrant had Patrick's wife pay for everything, which meant Patrick had to foot the bill. The police report says it came to tens of thousands of dollars." He reached inside his pocket but could not find a cigar and then became visibly annoyed and started speaking faster. "So he went to talk to Lasbrant, but that son of a bitch told Patrick he wasn't going to stop and that if Patrick had a problem with that, he should take it with his wife. From everything I gathered, not a nice guy, Lasbrant. Now Patrick flew off the handle and he went home and got a gun he must have bought in the black market long before that day, and he put a mask on and went back to the bar and shot Lasbrant as he was leaving. But a person doing this is not himself. Unless you're born a homicidal maniac, you're never yourself when you do something like this. He was in shock. He was fully under the control of his own rage, and he was drunk, too, let's not forget. That means he did not think straight. He was even careless enough to ask his mechanic's assistant — a pretty shady character if the police report is to be believed — to dispose of the gun for him. But the next morning he got a grip and decided to destroy it himself. At that point he was sober enough to try and hide some of the damning evidence, but may not have attached too much importance to his jacket — maybe even confused it with another jacket he believed he was wearing the night before — and completely forgot about the mask, which he had shoved in a drawer when he came back home from the murder."
"That's just a theory."
"That it may be, but the traces they found on his jacket aren't just any gunpowder; it is the same exact type of gunpowder used in the crime. They found lots of it on the victim; he was shot at point blank. Also, the man we just talked to sounds guilty as hell. Defensive, touchy, and talks just enough to allow us to know what went through his head when he pulled the trigger: 'Do you know how it feels when you have to pay for it?' He did it alright."
I scratched my head. "But if he did it, that means they did not. This is the one passenger they didn't get."
"Didn't have to. But it would still be very interesting to talk to the parents. To the father, at least. The mother is in no condition to talk about her son."
I felt bad about disturbing a man who had lost a son and went through an attempted suicide by his wife. It seemed to me that he had suffered enough. "What do you expect to get out of the father?"
He looked away from me as he spoke, as if afraid that I would break his concentration were our eyes to meet. "I have a hunch. It may be nothing but it may also be a major breakthrough. I need to talk to him. You don't have to come."
"I'd like to."
"I'd rather you didn't," he said harshly. "With this person, I want it to be a one on one. It's easier to reveal your soul to one person."
I laughed. "What do you know about revealing your soul? I don't know the first thing about you."
He sighed. "To be successful in my profession, you must know how to make other people reveal their soul to you, not the other way around. Besides, there is not much to know about me."
"Oh, I disagree. You're an interesting case. An army doctor, living on the outskirts of society, only a step closer to civilization than Nat. I bet there's a lot to know about you. Have you ever been married?"
"I'm still married."
My tone was skeptical. "Where is she? You live alone."
"Better this way. We haven’t had a fight in years."
"Do you ever talk?"
"We do."
"When did you last see her in person?"
"Yesterday, on the way here."
"You're shitting me."
He shook his head, then took out a paper napkin from one of his pockets and began to polish the Jeep's speedometer. It was not something he would normally do, and so I knew that this topic of conversation made him uncomfortable. I liked it. "Just to make sure," I said. "It's a human wife we're talking about here, not a bear or an inflatable doll?"
"More human than you, this much I can tell you."
"I don't believe you. Can I meet her someday you think?"
He put the dirty napkin back in his pocket and started the Jeep. I knew I had milked it as far as it could go, and so changed the subject. "How did you lose your fingers?"
"In the old days I used to physically shut up idiots with my bare hands. One of them had sharp teeth. Since then I kicked the habit, but if you push me I'll pick it up again."
That was my queue to shut up. We drove on for a few more minutes and then he dropped me off at a movie theater so he could go talk to the old man alone. "I'll return in three hours," he said. "Make sure you're waiting for me right here. I don't have time to go looking for you."
It took him exactly three hours to come back. I waited the last half hour of these in the parking lot. The weather was nice, not cold like in Boston. I had happily left my parka in the Jeep and now rolled up my shirt sleeves. I was mulling over what to tell K. I wanted to go to Crete. I had to go to Crete. I had to convince her to help me. It was important to find out who was after me, but even more so to know what they were protecting in that cave. By the time Doc's Jeep pulled next to me my mind was made up. I planned to talk to him about it right away. "Listen," I wanted to say, and then take over the conversation and not let go until I had gotten what I wanted out of it. But he seemed to be somewhere else, deprived of his usual focus, and so I only said, "What happened?"
"I talked to the old man like I planned."
"And?"
"He also thinks it's Robert Patrick. Patrick threatened his son, he says. He admits his son was no angel, that he mooched off Patrick's wif
e and enjoyed seeing Patrick lose it when he told him he wouldn't stop. Lasbrant never worked a day in his life and never planned to. Saw himself as a playboy. His father had a lot of arguments with him, even threatened to kick him out of the house. Only the mother kept him from doing it. She lived in denial he says."
"So Patrick did do it. But you already knew that. Why do you look so dumbfounded?"
Doc Minus Two turned off the engine just as I was climbing into the Jeep. "I expected to confirm that. What I was more surprised to find out was that Dominique Lasbrant was never on that flight."
"That doesn't make any sense. He was on the list."
He nodded. "That he was. But the old man said he never flew. Anywhere. Ever."
"Maybe he doesn't know about it?"
"He lived with them the entire time. That would be hard for Lasbrant to hide. Besides, it sounded like he suffered from it and kept planning a vacation with Patrick's wife. On Patrick's dime, of course. He was excited about it, too; kept talking about looking forward to his first time on a plane."
"That is very strange."
"That it is. Those killers of yours, they've been so thorough so far. How could they make a colossal mistake like this?"
"Suppose we have the wrong Dominique Lasbrant?"
"That's what I thought at first, but after I left there I ran a search. There is no other Dominique Lasbrant. Not in the US, and not anywhere else I could find."
"Maybe it was a typo on the list?"
"Could be, but I doubt it. These things are