After Death(45)
This was when he began to reconsider his belief that he was the only real person in the world. If Bill Smith was real, then so might be whoever found his body and the police who would investigate the murder. A fifteen-year-old boy like Durand would not be the first suspect in such a case. Nevertheless, he took steps to ensure that he was unlikely to fall under suspicion at all. He pulled off Bill Smith’s khaki shorts and underwear, cut away the primary evidence that the nerd was male, took the severed package deeper into the woods, and dropped it through a vacancy in a rock formation, into the inaccessible cave below. Now the authorities would be searching for some adult pervert with a macabre collection of genitalia in his home freezer or in jars of formaldehyde. A fresh-faced boy visiting from Colorado would excite no interest. Having come into the forest bare-chested, in sneakers and cut-off jeans, he needed to deal with the blood he’d gotten on himself. A stream cut through the trees and fed a swimming hole in its passing. Calaphas bathed in those cool mossy-smelling waters, and sat in a meadow until the sun dried his hair and clothes. In spite of the blow to his philosophy of life that these events had delivered, when he returned to the Victorian house, his grandmother still seemed to be a thinly imagined figure in a lame TV drama.
All these years later, the most recent Bill—Carter Woodbine, Esquire—groans and opens his eyes and rolls his head from side to side on the chaise. His chloroform-abused nose issues a clear, watery discharge. He tries to move, but his zip-tied hands prevent him from sitting up.
Standing over the chaise, Calaphas waits until his captive is awake and giving voice to his outrage in a flood of invective. He focuses Woodbine’s attention by knocking on the man’s forehead as though on a door. “Is anyone at home?”
The frivolous nature of this insolence at last alarms the self-assured attorney, and his contorted expression of indignation fades out as fear fades in. He has never before been at a loss for words either as a servant of the law in a courtroom or as a caring patron providing capital and connections to visionary entrepreneurs in the dark-market pharmaceuticals industry. However, when Woodbine looks into Calaphas’s eyes, he sees something there that silences him and from which he is powerless to look away.
“I have your iPhone. I need the pass code,” Calaphas says.
In fact, he might not need the use of Woodbine’s phone because he can probably find the Bentley by other means than locating the AirTag signal. Being a prudent man, he always likes to have a backup plan in case the sure thing turns out not to be so sure, after all.
Instead of providing a pass code, the attorney says, “Santana?”
“Dead.”
“Harris?”
“Dead.”
“If I give you the code?”
Calaphas has the pleasure of saying, “Dead.”
“Then why should I cooperate?”
They both know the answer. In this otherwise deserted fortress, with its state-of-the-art soundproofing and triple-pane windows retrofitted with a quarter-inch bullet-resistant laminate, the sounds of the world beyond don’t intrude. No volume of screaming arising within these rooms can be sufficient to gain the attention of anyone beyond its walls.
Calaphas says simply, “Do you relish pain to the extent that you would like me to spend the night in the application of it?”
Instead of replying to that question, Woodbine provides the pass code to his phone. When he has answered a few other questions and senses that this brief interrogation has come to an end, his eyes are swimming with what might be bleak and bitter sorrow. The only witness to any weakness he reveals is the man who will murder him, but the attorney bites back any plea for mercy he might be desperate to express. Whatever arrogance had been instilled in him at Harvard Law, he didn’t acquire machismo there. His years of associating with the likes of Santana and Harris have evidently evoked in him the idea that the proper response to impending and inescapable death is austere fortitude, even if he has to fake it. He says only, “I’d like to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“You’re ISA.”
“They pay me, yes.”
“You believe in the New Truth.”
“As I interpret it.” Calaphas reaches under his suit coat and draws a gun from the belt scabbard on his left hip, the weapon with which he shot the men now entering rigor mortis in the kitchen.
The attorney turns his head to the right and gazes at the receding multitude of reclining Carter Woodbines in the mirrored wall. Perhaps he is considering that infinity of selves and is reconsidering his scorn for those who believe in an immortal soul and life eternal. Addressing the reflections of Calaphas, he says, “Well, then we’re allies.”
Calaphas corrects him. “There are no allies in this game.”
“I already offered you the three million.”
Allowing himself a sigh, Calaphas says, “It’s not about the money, though of course I’ll be glad to have it.”
“Not about money? Then what’s it about?”
“The score. It’s about the score.”
Turning his head to face his executioner directly, Woodbine appears to feel imposed upon, as though it’s unfair that, oppressed by dread and despair, he should have to make room in his emotional wheelhouse also for the form of anxiety that is called perplexity. “Score? We met less than half an hour ago. What have I ever done to you? What score do you have to settle with me?”