my caliber."
I smirked. He did not take notice. "Thanks to me they were shaken to their foundation. The kidnapping — Jane and Josh and Aaron. They never saw it coming. Josh thought he was running things; all of a sudden he was a prisoner and I was in control. It terrified him. He didn't even know who I was. This is where they began to make mistakes."
"How did they find out who you were, anyway? You never introduced yourself to them."
"Ah. Another rare act of stupidity on my part, I'm afraid. I let Josh use my phone to make a call to his family, remember? I thought him safe, being a friend of your family. So now he had my phone number and could find out who I was. Next they tried to plant surveillance equipment in my house, to see what I was up to. They were running scared and felt they had to know what was going on and why you were not at the cave yet. They disguised it as a burglary, but I had my own cameras there and saw what they did. This and the fact that the victims we investigated were not on that flight told me we were on the wrong path. I did some research and found out that the pilot was killed for gambling debts just as the police thought. I discovered who it was, too: one of the goons who worked for a local loan shark had a thing for bird watching. Remember the magazine up in the tree? I informed the police and they picked him up a week ago and now they believe he was the triggerman."
"So now you knew they didn't kill the pilot."
"Exactly. So much for the hit list. There were too many inconsistencies for an organization that was supposed to be all powerful, all knowing. By the time you thought I disappeared I already knew the flight manifest was bullshit and the murders unrelated, and that the solution was in the cave. I talked to my wife and we found out who Josh was and what kind of a family he came from. I had a pretty good idea what this was all about at that point but still needed proof. The best proof was catching one of them as they went to retrieve the trigger from the cave, convinced you had died.
"And that's how we got Peterson."
"Jack Banes, to be exact."
"Who did you ask Rodriguez to call back then, after we caught him?"
"At that point we just needed to round up the rest of the family. But for Josh, I knew that would be more difficult: we also wanted to prove that he was trying to poison Jane. As I said, because we were dealing with carcinogens and not just any conventional poison, you have to catch them in the act, delivering the drinks. Hence the little drama you've just witnessed in Jane's room."
"Jane," I said. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, concern was taking its place. "Will she be okay?"
"She has what could easily develop into malignant tumors. But with the stimulant out of the picture and with good care, she might be able to avoid a worst-case scenario."
"How did you manage to get a wine glass from her house?"
"I didn't. Your son did. I talked to him and said we needed to make sure no one was trying to poison the entire family — meaning the crazy organization his father was talking about — and he got me a sample."
I rubbed my nose. "So, the organization was the Banes gang, and the only people marked for death were Jane and myself. But what would have happened to Aaron? If Jane and I were dead he might have had a claim to the five million."
Doc Minus Two shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? The husband controls the estate after the wife's death, so Josh might have planned to squander it all away without leaving Aaron a penny when he reached eighteen. He probably would not have had to kill him, but Aaron could certainly not expect any help or money from the Baneses. He would have had a hard life."
There was anger in my voice. "I wish I could deal with them myself."
"You're no match for them, kid. They'd insert a stick up your ass and use you for a broom. The legal system is in place to protect wusses like you, so let them do their job." We reached the exit and he walked on and left the hospital without saying another word; without asking if there was anything else I wanted to know. I stayed inside the building and collapsed into a bench and slept until morning, when they told me Jane had already checked out.
XIX.
The prosecutor won a conviction on all counts against the Banes family. Josh received a life sentence, as had Jack, Alex and Edna. Michael received twenty years for his part.
Jane did develop cancer a few months later. She is undergoing treatment and we hope for the best. I come to visit often. We are not back together, but I'm closer to Aaron now. Jane says she will never date again because she distrusts all men except me, and me she detests.
Doc Minus Two disappeared from my life except for two occasions: one when he sent me a final bill that had stripped me of the remainder of my 401K and any other money I had ever put away. The other was when he called the other day. He did not ask me how I was doing or even how Jane was. He just said that he had heard of an opening for a "wuss archeologist" somewhere in Boston, and thought I might be a good fit for it. The job turned out to be an archivist in the Department of Historic Resources and Archaeology in a New England organization. I applied and got it immediately. I don't know if he or someone he knew had put in a good word for me. I did not much care, to be honest. I finally had a job and a way to get back on my feet, and that was enough for me.
I printed out the map of the Labyrinth Cave — the fake one — and hung it in the living room in my new apartment, which I rented shortly after starting at my new job. Some would think me insane for staring at such bad memories every evening when I come back home from work. I don’t see it that way. I think every person must have something he or she are willing to die for, otherwise they are no more than purposeless chunks of meat doomed to wander this world aimlessly for the rest of their days. For me, that was the thing I was willing to die for, and whenever I look at it I know that despite everything Doc Minus Two had said about me, I am not a wuss.
——
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