Shadowfires

For a moment Sharp's marble-hard green eyes fixed on Peake with evident suspicion. Then the deputy director decided to take him at his word, for he relaxed a bit and said, ''Good. I'm glad you feel that way, Peake. This is a nasty business sometimes. It can even make you feel dirty now and then, what you have to do, but it's for the country, and that's what we always have to keep in mind.”

“Yes, sir. I always keep that in mind.”

Sharp nodded and began to pace and grumble again.

But Peake knew that Sharp had enjoyed intimidating and hurting Sarah Kiel and had immensely enjoyed touching her. He knew that Sharp was a sadist and a pedophile, for he had seen those dark aspects of his boss surge clearly to the surface in that hospital room. No matter what lies Sharp told him, Jerry Peake was never going to forget what he had seen. Knowing these things about the deputy director gave Peake an enormous advantage — though, as yet, he had absolutely no idea how to benefit from what he had learned.

He had also learned that Sharp was, at heart, a coward. In spite of his bullying ways and impressive physical appearance, the deputy director would back down in a crunch, even against a smaller man like The Stone, as long as the smaller man stood up to him with conviction. Sharp had no compunctions about violence and would resort to it when he thought he was fully protected by his government position or when his adversary was sufficiently weak and unthreatening, but he would back off if he believed he faced the slightest chance of being hurt himself. Possessing that knowledge, Peake had another big advantage, but he did not yet see a way to use that one, either.

Nevertheless, he was confident he would eventually know how to apply the things he had learned. Making well-considered, fair, and effective use of such insights was precisely what a legend did best.

Unaware of having given Peake two good knives, Sharp paced back and forth with the impatience of a Caesar.

The Stone had demanded half an hour alone with his daughter. When thirty minutes had passed, Sharp began to look at his wristwatch more frequently.

After thirty-five minutes, he walked heavily to the door, put a hand against it, started to push inside, hesitated, and turned away. “Hell, give him another few minutes. Can't be easy getting anything coherent out of that spaced-out little whore.”

Peake murmured agreement.

The looks that Sharp cast at the closed door became increasingly murderous. Finally, forty minutes after they had left the room at The Stone's insistence, Sharp tried to cover his fear of confrontation with the farmer by saying, “I have to make a few important calls. I'll be at the public phones in the lobby.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sharp started away, then looked back. “When the shit-kicker comes out of there, he's just going to have to wait for me no matter how long I take, and I don't give a damn how much that upsets him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It'll do him good to cool his heels awhile,” Sharp said, and he stalked off, head held high, rolling his big shoulders, looking like a very important man, evidently convinced that his dignity was intact.

Jerry Peake leaned against the wall of the corridor and watched the nurses go by, smiling at the pretty ones and engaging them in brief flirtatious conversation when they were not too busy.

Sharp stayed away for twenty minutes, giving The Stone a full hour with Sarah, but when he came back from making his important — probably nonexistent — phone calls, The Stone had still not appeared. Even a coward could explode if pushed too far, and Sharp was furious.

“That lousy dirt-humping hayseed. He can't come in here, reeking of pigshit, and screw up my investigation.”

He turned away from Peake and started toward Sarah's room.

Before Sharp took two steps, The Stone came out.

Peake had wondered whether Felsen Kiel would look as imposing on second encounter as he had appeared when stepping dramatically into Sarah's room and interrupting Anson Sharp in an act of molestation. To Peake's great satisfaction, The Stone was even more imposing than on the previous occasion. That strong, seamed, weathered face. Those oversized hands, work-gnarled knuckles. An air of unshakable self-possession and serenity. Peake watched with a sort of awe as the man crossed the hallway, as if he were a slab of granite come to life.

“Gentlemen, I'm sorry to keep you waitin'. But, as I'm sure you understand, my daughter and I had a lot of catchin' up to do.”

“And as you must understand, this is an urgent national security matter,” Sharp said, though more quietly than he had spoken earlier.

Unperturbed, The Stone said, “My daughter says you want to know if maybe she has some idea where a fella named Leben is hidin' out.”

“That's right,” Sharp said tightly.

“She said somethin' about him bein' a livin' dead man, which I can't quite get clear with her, but maybe that was just the drugs talkin' through her. You think?”

“Just the drugs,” Sharp said.

“Well, she knows of a certain place he might be,” The Stone said. “The fella owns a cabin above Lake Arrowhead, she says. It's a sort of secret retreat for him.” He took a folded paper from his shirt pocket. “I've written down these directions.” He handed the paper to Peake. To Peake, not to Anson Sharp.

Peake glanced at The Stone's precise, clear handwriting, then passed the paper to Sharp.

“You know,” The Stone said, “my Sarah was a good girl up until three years ago, a fine daughter in every way. Then she fell under the spell of a sick person who got her onto drugs, put twisted thoughts in her head. She was only thirteen then, impressionable, vulnerable, easy pickin'.”

“Mr. Kiel, we don't have time—”

The Stone pretended not to hear Sharp, even though he was looking directly at him. “My wife and I tried our best to find out who it was that had her spellbound, figured it had to be an older boy at school, but we could never identify him. Then one day, after a year durin' which hell moved right into our home, Sarah up and disappeared, ran off to California to 'live the good life.' That's what she wrote in the note to us, said she wanted to live the good life and that we were unsophisticated country people who didn't know anythin' about the world, said we were full of funny ideas. Like honesty, sobriety, and self-respect, I suppose. These days, lots of folks think those are funny ideas.”

“Mr. Kiel—”

“Anyway,” The Stone continued, “not long after that, I finally learned who it was corrupted her. A teacher. Can you credit that? A teacher, who's supposed to be a figure of respect. New young history teacher. I demanded the school board investigate him. Most of the other teachers rallied round him to fight any investigation 'cause these days a lot of 'em seem to think we exist just to keep our mouths shut and pay their salaries no matter what garbage they want to pump into our children's heads. Two-thirds of the teachers—”

“Mr. Kiel,” Sharp said more forcefully, “none of this is of any interest to us, and we—”

“Oh, it'll be of interest when you hear the whole story,” The Stone said. “I can assure you.”

Peake knew The Stone was not the kind of man who rambled, knew all of this had some purpose, and he was eager to see where it was going to wind up.

“As I was sayin',” The Stone continued, “two-thirds of the teachers and half the town were agin me, like I was the troublemaker. But in the end they turned up worse stuff about that history teacher, worse than givin' and sellin' drugs to some of his students, and by the time it was over, they were glad to be shed of him. Then, the day after he was canned, he showed up at the farm, wantin' to go man to man. He was a good-sized fella, but he was on somethin' even then, what you call pot-marijuana or maybe even stronger poison, and it wasn't so hard to handle him. I'm sorry to say I broke both his arms, which is worse than I intended.”

Jesus, Peake thought.

“But even that wasn't the end of it, 'cause it turned out he had an uncle was president of the biggest bank in our county, the very same bank has my farm loans. Now, any man who allows personal grudges to interfere with his business judgment is an idiot, but this banker fella was an idiot 'cause he tried to pull a fast one to teach me a lesson, tried to reinterpret one of the clauses in my biggest loan, hopin' to call it due and put me at risk of my land. The wife and I been fightin' back for a year, filed a lawsuit and everythin', and just last week the bank had to back down and settle our suit out of court for enough to pay off half my loans.”