“But how?”
“That's part of what we'll have to find out. I called UCI and got in touch with Dr. Easton Solberg, whose work on aging is mentioned in Leben's articles. Turns out Leben knew Solberg, looked up to him as a mentor, and for a while they were fairly close. Solberg has great praise for Leben, says he isn't the least surprised that Leben made a fortune out of DNA research, but Solberg also says there was a dark side to Eric Leben. And he's willing to talk about it.”
“What dark side?”
“He wouldn't say on the phone. But we have an appointment with him at UC1 at one o'clock.”
As Julio pushed his chair back and got up, Reese said, “How can we keep digging into this and stay out of trouble with Nick Folbeck?”
“Sick leave,” Julio said. “As long as I'm on sick leave, I'm not officially investigating anything. Call it personal curiosity.”
“That won't hold up if we're caught at it. Cops aren't supposed to
“No, but if I'm on sick leave, Folbeck's not going to be worrying about what I'm doing. It's less likely that anyone'll be looking over my shoulder. In fact, I sort of implied that I wanted nothing to do with anything this hot. Told Folbeck that, given the heat on this, it might be best for me to get away for a few days, in case the media pick up on it and want me to answer questions. He agreed.”
Reese got to his feet. “I better call in sick, too.”
“I already did it for you,” Julio said.
“Oh. Okay, then, let's go.”
“I mean, I thought it would be all right. But if you don't want to get involved in this—”
“Julio, I'm in.”
“Only if you're sure.”
“I'm
And he thought but did not say: You saved my Esther, my little girl, went right after those guys in the Chevy van and got her out of there alive, you were like a man possessed, they must've thought it was a demon on their tail, you put your own life on the line and saved Esther, and I loved you before that because you were my partner and a good one, but after that I
In spite of his natural difficulty expressing his most profound feelings, Reese wanted to say all of that to Julio, but he kept silent because Julio did not want effusive gratitude and would be embarrassed by it. All Julio wanted was the commitment of a friend and partner. Undying gratitude would, if openly expressed, impose a barrier between them by obviously placing Julio in a superior position, and ever afterward they would be awkward with each other.
In their daily working relationship, Julio always had been in the superior position, of course, deciding how to proceed at nearly every step of a homicide investigation, but his control was never blatant or obvious, which made all the difference. Reese would not have cared if Julio's dominance had been obvious; he did not mind deferring to Julio because in some ways Julio was the quicker and smarter of the two.
But Julio, having been born and raised in Mexico, having come to the States and made good, had a reverence and a passion for democracy, not only for democracy in the political arena but for democracy in all things, even in one-to-one relationships. He could assume the mantle of leadership and dominance if it were conveyed by mutual unspoken consent; but if his role were made overt, he would not be able to fulfill it, and the partnership would suffer.
“I'm in,” Reese repeated, rinsing their coffee cups in the sink. “We're just two cops on sick leave. So let's go recuperate together.”
21
ARROWHEAD
The sporting-goods store was near the lake. It was built in the form of a large log cabin, and a rustic wooden sign advertised bait, tackle, boat rentals, sporting goods. A Coors sign was in one window, a Miller Lite sign in another. Three cars, two pickup trucks, and one Jeep stood in the sunny part of the parking lot, the early-afternoon sun glinting off their chrome and silvering their windows.
“Guns,” Ben said when he saw the place. “They might sell guns.”
“We have guns,” Rachael said.
Ben drove to the back of the lot, off the macadamed area, onto gravel that crunched under the tires, then through a thick carpet of pine needles, finally parking in the concealing shade of one of the massive evergreens that encircled the property. He saw a slice of the lake beyond the trees, a few boats on the sun-dappled water, and a far shore rising up into steep wooded slopes.
“Your thirty-two isn't exactly a peashooter, but it's not particularly formidable, either,” Ben told her as he switched off the engine. “The.357 I took off Baresco is better, next thing to a cannon, in fact, but a shotgun would be perfect.”
“Shotgun? Sounds like overkill.”
“I always prefer to go for overkill when I'm tracking down a walking dead man,” Ben said, trying to make a joke of it but failing. Rachael's already haunted eyes were touched by a new bleak tint, and she shivered.
“Hey,” he said, “it'll be all right.”
They got out of the rental car and stood for a moment, breathing in the clean, sweet mountain air. The day was warm and undisturbed by even the mildest breeze. The trees stood motionless and silent, as if their boughs had turned to stone. No cars passed on the road, and no other people were in sight. No birds flew or sang. The stillness was deep, perfect, preternatural.
Ben sensed something ominous in the stillness. It almost seemed to be an omen, a warning to turn back from the high vastness of the mountains and retreat to more civilized places, where there was noise and movement and other people to turn to for help in an emergency.
Apparently stricken by the same uneasy feeling that gripped Ben, Rachael said, “Maybe this is nuts. Maybe we should just get out of here, go away somewhere.”
“And wait for Eric to recover from his injuries?”
“Maybe he won't recover enough to function well.”
“But if he does, he'll come looking for you.”
She sighed, nodded.
They crossed the parking lot and went into the store, hoping to buy a shotgun and some ammunition.
Something strange was happening to Eric, stranger even than his return from the dead. It started as another headache, one of the many intense migraines that had come and gone since his resurrection, and he did not immediately realize there was a difference about this one, a weirdness. He just squinted his eyes to block out some of the light that irritated him, and refused to succumb to the unrelenting and debilitating throbbing that filled his skull.
He pulled an armchair in front of the living-room window and took up a vigil, looking down through the sloping forest, along the dirt road that led up from the more heavily populated foothills nearer the lake. If enemies came for him, they would follow the lane at least part of the way up the slope before sneaking into the woods. As soon as he saw where they left the road, he would slip out of the cabin by the back door, move around through the trees, creep in behind the intruders, and take them by surprise.
He had hoped that the pounding in his head would subside a bit when he sat down and leaned back in the big comfortable chair. But it was getting much worse than anything he had experienced previously. He felt almost as if his skull were… soft as clay… and as if it were being hammered into a new shape by every fierce throb. He clenched his jaws tighter, determined to weather this new adversity.
Perhaps the headache was made worse by the concentration required to study the tree-shadowed road for
