“How handy for you,” he said, and began to gather up the papers from her desk.
They sat on the motel bed, chowing down on Burger King burgers, french fries, and chocolate-chip cookies. Rocky ate off a torn paper bag on the floor.
That morning in the desert, now hardly twelve hours behind them, seemed to be an eternity in the past. Ellie and Spencer had learned so much about each other that they could eat in silence, enjoying the food, without feeling the least awkward together.
He surprised her, however, when, toward the end of their hurried meal, he expressed the desire to stop at the ranch outside Vail, on their way to Denver. And “surprised” was not the word for it when he told her that he still owned the place.
“Maybe I’ve always known that I’d have to go back eventually,” he said, unable to look at her.
He put the last of his dinner aside, appetite lost. Sitting lotus-fashion on the bed, he folded his hands on his right knee and stared at them as if they were more mysterious than artifacts from lost Atlantis.
“In the beginning,” he continued, “my grandparents held on to the place because they didn’t want anyone to buy it and maybe make some god-awful tourist attraction out of it. Or let the news media into those underground rooms for more morbid stories. The bodies had been removed, everything cleaned out, but it was still the
“Why?” Ellie wondered. “Why ever go back?”
He hesitated. Then: “Because part of that night is a blank to me. I’ve never been able to remember what happened toward the end, after I shot him….”
“What do you mean? You shot him, and you ran for help, and that was the end of it.”
“No.”
“What?”
He shook his head. Still staring at his hands. Very still hands. Like hands of carved marble, resting on his knee.
Finally he said, “That’s what I’ve got to find out. I’ve got to go back there, back down there, and find out. Because if I don’t, I’m never going to be…right with myself…or any good for you.”
“You can’t go back there, not with the agency after you.”
“They wouldn’t look for us there. They can’t have found out who I was. Who I really am. Michael. They can’t know that.”
“They might,” she said.
She went to the duffel bag and got the envelope of photographs that she had found on the deck of the JetRanger, half under her seat. She presented them to him.
“They found these in a shoe box in my cabin,” he said. “They probably just took them for reference. You wouldn’t recognize…my father. No one would. Not from this shot.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“Anyway, I don’t own the property under any identity they would associate with me, even if somehow they got into sealed court records and found out I’d changed my name from Ackblom. I hold it through an offshore corporation.”
“The agency is damned resourceful, Spencer.”
Looking up from his hands, he met her eyes. “All right, I’m willing to believe they’re resourceful enough to uncover all of it — given enough time. But surely not this quickly. That just means I’ve got more reason than ever to go there tonight. When am I going to have a chance again, after we go to Denver and to wherever we’ll go after that? By the time I can return to Vail again, maybe they
“I know,” she said shakily, remembering that moment in the helicopter, somewhere over Utah, when she had sensed that he might not live through the night to share the morning with her.
He said, “If you don’t want to go there with me, we can work that out too. But…even if I could be sure the agency would never learn about the place, I’d have to go back tonight. Ellie, if I don’t go back now, when I have the guts to face it, I might never work up the courage later. It’s taken sixteen years this time.”
She sat for a while, staring at her own hands. Then she got up and went to the laptop, which was still plugged in and connected to the modem. She switched it on.
He followed her to the desk. “What’re you doing?”
“What’s the address of the ranch?” she asked.
It was a rural address, rather than a street number. He gave it to her, then again after she asked him to repeat it. “But why? What’s this about?”
“What’s the name of the offshore company?”
“Vanishment International.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“And that’s the name on the deed now — Vanishment International? That’s how it would show on the tax records?”
“Yeah.” Spencer pulled up another chair beside hers and sat on it as Rocky came sniffing around to see if they had more food. “Ellie, will you open up?”
“I’m going to try to crack into public land records out there,” she said. “I need to call up a parcel map if I can get one. I’ve got to figure out the exact geographic coordinates of the place.”
“Is all that supposed to mean something?”
“By God, if we’re going in there, if we’re taking a risk like that, then we’re going to be as heavily armed as possible.” She was talking to herself more than to him. “We’re going to be ready to defend ourselves against anything.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Too complicated. Later. Now I need some silence.”
Her quick hands worked magic on the keyboard. Spencer watched the screen as Ellie moved from Grand Junction to the courthouse computer in Vail. Then she peeled the county’s data-system onion one layer at a time.
Wearing a slightly large suit of clothes provided by the agency and a topcoat identical to those of his three companions, in shackles and handcuffs, the famous and infamous Steven Ackblom sat beside Roy in the back of the limousine.
The artist was fifty-three but appeared to be only a few years older than when he had been on the front pages of newspapers, where the sensation mongers had variously dubbed him the Vampire of Vail, the Madman of the Mountains, and the Psycho Michelangelo. Although a trace of gray had appeared at his temples, his hair was otherwise black and glossy and not in the least receding. His handsome face was remarkably smooth and youthful, and his brow was unmarked. A soft smile line curved downward from the outer flare of each nostril, and fans of fine crinkles spread at the outer corners of his eyes: None of that aged him whatsoever; in fact, it gave the impression that he suffered few troubles but enjoyed many sources of amusement.
As in the photograph that Roy had found in the Malibu cabin and as in all the pictures that had appeared in newspapers and magazines sixteen years ago, Steven Ackblom’s eyes were his most commanding feature. Nevertheless, the arrogance that Roy had perceived even in the shadowy publicity still was not there now, if it ever had been; in its place was a quiet self-confidence. Likewise, the menace that could be read into any photograph, when one knew the accomplishments of the man, was not in the least visible in person. His gaze was direct and clear, but not threatening. Roy had been surprised and not displeased to discover an uncommon gentleness in Ackblom’s eyes, and a poignant empathy as well, from which it was easy to infer that he was a person of considerable wisdom, whose understanding of the human condition was deep, complete.
Even in the limousine’s odd and inadequate illumination, which came from the recessed lights under the heel-kicks of the car seats and from the low-wattage sconces in the doorposts, Ackblom was a presence to be reckoned with — although in no way that the press, in its sensation seeking, had begun to touch upon. He was
