Death Benefits_ A Novel Part 21

"It's a complicated question," said Stillman. "My heart starts beating fast, I sweat a little, get a dry mouth. But after that's happened enough times for enough unrelated reasons, you begin to get used to it. Fear isn't some kind of disease, you know. It's a survival mechanism. The purpose of that shot of adrenaline is to get your body ready to put out its maximum effort-greatest speed, greatest strength, greatest intake of oxygen. It makes your mind work better too, if you let it. You just have to keep it off the subject of how scared you are, and get it involved in what you're going to do about it-like when you remembered the keys. It's still fear, I guess. But it's not the same feeling that you used to have."

"I don't know," said Walker. "It still feels about the same to me."

"You're most of the way there already," said Stillman. "All that's left is to get to the point where you give yourself credit for it." He smiled. "Of course, when things get ugly, all I really care about is how you act. I don't give a s.h.i.t how you feel."

They walked into his room and he popped the videotape out of the camera and put it into the VCR. While the television set buzzed and crackled on an empty channel, he handed Walker the pad and pen from the desk. "Make notes while we eliminate people." Then he started the videotape.

Walker watched the tape of Linda Asheransky's entry, then the next, and the next. Whenever they reached a male name, Stillman froze the tape and they examined it closely. More than half were women. Only about a third of the male customers had ever made an order that included tinted lenses, and only half were green-tinted. The rest were blue, brown, gray, or photosensitive.

When they reached David Holler, Walker counted the names he had written down. "I've still got fifty-six names."

Stillman began to rewind the tape. "What do you want to look at this time?"

"How about frames?"

"All right. Cross off everybody but the ones with gold frames."

The second time through, they eliminated all but thirty-two men. As Stillman rewound the tape again, he said, "We've got thirty-two males who bought gold frames and green-tinted lenses that aren't photosensitive. What else is there about them?"

Walker stared at the first entry again. "What's a diopter?"

"A unit of refraction. The more of them, the stronger the lens. Our guy didn't think he needed gla.s.ses to shoot us, so we have to a.s.sume he could see pretty well. But I don't know how many diopters that is. Let's stick to the easy stuff."

"The lenses are plastic, not gla.s.s."

This time they eliminated only five men. Stillman said, "Twenty-seven is still a lot of guys." He stared at the screen for a moment. "Let's take another look at the gla.s.ses." Walker went into his room and came back with them. Stillman held them up to the light and stared through the lenses.

"Okay," said Stillman. "The guy was just a bit nearsighted. He didn't need bifocals. This time, check the prescriptions. There will be two entries, one marked R and the other L. If there are two for each eye, it's bifocals."

When they had gone through the tape again, Stillman looked at Walker's list, then stood up and began to pace. "We're down to twenty-one. All of them have male names, green-tinted nonphotosensitive lenses in gold frames without bifocal prescriptions."

Walker stared at the entries as they began to go past again. He froze the tape and pointed. "What's this number: fifty-three by twenty, forty-six by twenty?"

"I don't know. My knowledge of optometry is starting to get used up." He stared at it for a few seconds. "It's by the frame order, so it must be a size."

"Then what's this-one hundred and fifteen?"

"That I understand. It's millimeters: the length of the arms that go from the lens to your ears. Probably the other is the size of the circular part that holds the lens."

Walker s.n.a.t.c.hed up the dead man's sungla.s.ses and studied the frames. "Fifty-nine by twenty. One forty-five." He went back up the list in reverse, writing down the numbers beside each name.

When they had gone back to Linda Asheransky, Stillman picked up the notepad and the pen, and began to cross off names. When he had finished, he said, "Our man could be Donald Ross, James Scully, Paul Stratton, or Michael Tyler." He began to speed through the tape again, stopped at Michael Tyler, and began to write.

"What did you find?" asked Walker.

"Phone numbers."

"You're just going to call them up?"

"It's probable I'm going to bother three harmless guys with a nuisance call in the middle of the night. The fourth is the only one I'd worry about making suspicious, but I don't have much chance of reaching him. He's dead."

27.

"Listen to this." Stillman handed the telephone receiver to Walker.

"This is Jim. If you want to leave a message, wait until you hear the beep." Walker hung up, then looked up at Stillman. "That's him?"

Stillman shrugged. "He's the only one who wasn't home when I called."

His name was James Scully, and he lived in a town called Coulter, New Hampshire. Walker had not heard the voice before, because when he had shot the man, he had heard nothing but the sound of the gun. He had just finished listening to a ghost. Walker looked at his watch. "It's three-thirty A.M. A.M. We've got his name and his address. What do you think? Do we call the police or the FBI?" We've got his name and his address. What do you think? Do we call the police or the FBI?"

Stillman frowned at the wall for a few seconds. "Not just yet."

Walker watched him. "What do you have against the police? You were a cop once."

Stillman slowly turned to face Walker. "Who told you about that?"

"The police captain in Miami. The one who asked all the questions," said Walker.

Stillman looked at the carpet for a moment, then raised his eyes again. "I don't have anything against the police. Or the FBI, for that matter. But they're in a slightly different business than we are."

"What do you mean? What's different?"

"They're in the business of arresting and convicting people."

Walker stood up and walked across the room. "Isn't that what we want? This isn't some isolated fraud that's going to be okay the minute we get the money back. They're not just stealing money from a company. They're doing it by taking ordinary people, one at a time, and killing them. Somebody's got to get arrested."

"I'm just not sure this is the time," said Stillman. "Suppose we call the FBI and bring them up here. They're at Scully's house by morning. They begin an investigation-go around methodically and thoroughly collecting all the evidence in little plastic bags. The investigation hits on all cylinders, they eventually ferret out every one of the people who were in on this, put them on trial, and convict them of everything they did."

"Yeah. Let's do it."

"The trouble is, an investigation like that takes at least two months with a strong wind behind it. If it succeeds, they make arrests. The trials begin six months after that, if the federal attorneys prepare their case with due speed and diligence. All that has got to happen, of course. And since they're already on the case, we couldn't get them off it if we wanted to."

"So what's the problem?"

"What I just said. The second we make that call and let them actually talk to us without McClaren's in between, we're out. The FBI is not going to let us keep poking into everything we have a theory about."

"Are they wrong?"

"No," said Stillman. "They're right. But right now we know who one of these guys was and where he lived. His buddies may or may not know that much. Maybe they know Scully's dead, but the last time they could have seen him was in Miami, where the police are telling reporters they don't know who he is. It's possible that James Scully's house is just the way he left it. By the time the FBI could get up to speed, it may not be."

Walker thought for a moment. "What if the Miami police have already figured out who Scully and the other one were? How do we find out at this time of night?"

Stillman shrugged. "The time of night isn't the problem. If they don't want to release information, they won't. If they do, it'll be in the papers."

"Serena," said Walker. "She was reading the Miami Herald Miami Herald today. Maybe it's late enough for the morning edition." He dialed the number, and Serena's voice came on instantly. today. Maybe it's late enough for the morning edition." He dialed the number, and Serena's voice came on instantly.

"Yes?"

"Hi," he said. "It's the usual me. I'm sorry to call you at this hour, but it's-"

"What hour?"

"It's three thirty-five here, so it's twelve thirty-five there, right?"

Her voice was amused. "You didn't know? This is when we do most of our work, sweetheart. The preteen geeks and stock traders are asleep, the phone lines and networks are clear, so things happen faster. Haven't you ever noticed that languid, sensuous look I have around the eyes in the daytime?"

"I've never seen you during the day," he said.

"Oh. Well, we'll have to go have a picnic beside the freeway, or whatever it is people do."

"I called to see if the Miami police had announced anything about who those two guys were."

"No," said Serena. "But they're still trying. The FBI has been doing tests on the two bodies."

"We know," said Walker. "The company has been talking with them."

"Do you know about the blood tests?"

"No. What about them?"

"The cops type the blood at a shooting scene right away to figure out whose blood got spattered where. These two both had O positive-not unusual, but inconvenient. So the FBI sent samples to a lab in Wisconsin that does DNA tests. That was in the Miami papers, so I hacked into the e-mail at Donnard Laboratories to see what they were saying to each other. Apparently there are at least two kinds of examinations. One takes a month or two, and tells you more than you wanted to know. But while they're doing it, they get preliminary results that can at least tell one person's blood from another's. They told the FBI that the two men were relatives. Not brothers, though, or father and son. Something more distant, like second cousins."

"Can they tell that?"

"They seemed to think they could, and I don't know why they'd say so to the FBI if they weren't sure. I mean, how many customers can a company like that have? And it makes theoretical sense. First cousins would share one-eighth of their genes, so these guys share less than that, but more than two random guys." She paused. "Are you even listening?"

"Yes," said Walker. "I'm trying to figure out what it means."

"I don't know," she answered. "It's not going to be a shock to the FBI that criminals sometimes have relatives who are also criminals. Do you have news for me?"

"I guess all I've got is questions. We've figured out that one of those two guys was named James Scully, and he lived at 117 Birch Street, Coulter, New Hampshire."

"C-O-L-T-E-R?"

"With a U. C-O-U-L-"

"Got it. Right here on the handy New Hampshire tourism Web page. What do you want to know?"

"Whatever you know."

"Population, four hundred and twenty-eight-or twenty-seven, now." She paused. "No pictures of it. Founded in 1753-no big deal. So was everything else around there. It's not too far from Keene. It's about an hour northeast of you, on Route 9. That's marked as a scenic route, so let me see if they say anything about that. Yes. It's called the Old Concord Road, because eventually it gets to the state capital. It says 'eventually' because it winds around a bit. That's all I can see. Coulter seems to be just one of a few dozen places just like it."

"Okay. We'll find it."

"You stopped using Stillman's credit card. Where are you calling from?"

"The Days Inn in Keene. The number is-"

"That much I just got, from caller ID. What room?"

"Stillman is 93, and I'm 95."

"Cozy. Are you going to Coulter now?"

"I guess so," he said.

"Be careful. Stay close to Stillman and do what he says." She corrected herself. "I guess staying close to Stillman isn't being careful. Just remember he's been doing stupid things a long time, and he's alive, so pay attention."

"He'd be flattered."

"I'm going to drop everything else and find out whatever I can about James Scully."

"Do you-" But the line was dead.

"I'd be flattered about what?" asked Stillman. Walker turned and saw that he was taking things out of his suitcase, putting some of them into his leather bag, and others into his pockets.

"She pointed out that you're alive."

"Smart as a whip, that girl. Presumes very little on your time, too."

"That hasn't escaped my attention," said Walker glumly. "I've talked to her about three times in the past two days, and she's hung up on me every time." He added, "The police don't know the names yet."

"Get your stuff. Wear jeans and hiking boots and a jacket. Try to look like a harmless, respectable guy on vacation. I'll meet you in the car."

Five minutes later, Walker found Stillman sitting in the pa.s.senger seat of the Explorer studying a map in the light from the open glove compartment. Walker got in and drove out West Street until he saw the sign for Route 9 he had remembered. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. "It's already almost four. She said it's about an hour away. Is four forty-five A.M. A.M. a good time to arrive in Coulter?" a good time to arrive in Coulter?"

Stillman said, "It'll do. We'll take a look around before they get to look at us."

"There are four hundred and twenty-eight people."

"I'll keep count when I see one," said Stillman. "What else did she tell you?"

"The FBI apparently hasn't identified Scully and his friend yet, but they know they were related."

"What do you mean, related? How?"

"Like second cousins, but not as close as first cousins. They had some company do DNA tests. Don't ask me to explain more than that. She stole it off some e-mail the company was sending to the FBI. Smart as a whip, as you said."

Stillman was staring ahead at the road, and his brow was furrowed.

"What?" asked Walker. "Does that mean something?"