he didn’t. Which leaves one person. You.”
He looked alarmed. He started to push himself up, saw my face, stopped. “Jack, you’ve got to believe me.”
“No. I don’t have to believe anything from a guy who leaves a hospital when we’ve just seen a guy gunned down in front of our eyes. Who checks out of his hotel and disappears.”
“I had to, Jack. There’s…People have been following me. Someone had been in my hotel room.”
“For God’s sake, Gary. Go back to your therapist and take it seriously this time.”
“There’s nothing wrong with—”
“Really? So how come you told me you were still working for your company, when it turns out you’re on enforced leave?”
“How do you know that?”
“What exactly are these ‘personal’ reasons, Gary? What the fuck is up with you? Actually, you know what? I don’t care. I’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
“No you haven’t,” he said. “There’s nothing bigger than this.”
I looked down at the man lying on a hotel carpet and wondered how on earth my life had come to this. How we’d somehow gotten from a high-school running track to here.
“Whatever,” I said. “I don’t care about Anderson, Cranfield, or any of this crap. I want you to tell me anything else you know that pertains to Amy, and then fuck off out of my life.”
“Jack,” he said, “I’ve kept things from you. I admit that. But I had to. Please, just let me explain.”
I should’ve started walking toward the door. The gun felt too good in my hand. But I didn’t know where else I could go except to see Todd Crane, and I knew that would be a bad idea. I was being drawn toward easy solutions. I wanted someone to hurt.
“Please,” he said. “Give me five minutes.”
“For what? More bullshit?”
“Look in the briefcase.”
I glanced at the briefcase lying open on the chair. “Why?”
“Just look. I’ll stay right here. On the floor.”
I went and looked. Photocopies of contracts, reference books. A Bible, dog-eared, marked with Post-it notes. “What, Gary?”
“In the side pocket.”
I pulled out a small, hard rectangle. A Mini DV videotape. “Is Amy on here?”
“No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that.”
“Then I don’t care.”
“Please, Jack. Literally, five minutes. And then I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Does what you know affect anything I care about?”
“Yes.”
I tossed the tape down onto his chest.
I sat in the chair, still holding my gun, and watched Fisher get off the floor. He took the camcorder out of the briefcase, along with a thin black cable. Went around the back of the room’s television to plug one end in and stuck the other in the side of a camcorder. Put the mini-tape into it.
“I’m going to have to find the right place.”
“Fine,” I said. “The time that takes is included in the five minutes.”
He stood hunched in front of the set, doing something to the camcorder. I couldn’t see the screen from where I sat. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “We’re set.” He stepped out of the way. The television screen was still black. He went to the window and pulled the drapes.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because what’s on the tape is pretty dark.”
He sat on the edge of the sofa. The room was now murky enough so you could tell that the television was on, from the slight warmth on the screen. Fisher pressed a button on a tiny remote.
The screen was suddenly bright with picture. A park, on a cold afternoon. Grass, trees still with leaves, a couple of joggers in the distance, the sound of someone walking on gravel nearby.
The camera swerved and zoomed in to show a child, a baby girl, tottering along a path, holding a stick and waving it insistently at nothing in particular.
“Beth?” said a voice. Gary’s voice. “Bethany?”
The child turned, after a pause, evidently still having to remember that the sound her father had just made related to her in some specific way. She grinned up at the camera and made a babbling noise, flapping the hand not holding the stick.
“Look,” Gary’s voice said. “What’s that?”
The camera panned left to show a large dog ambling up the path toward the girl, whose face lit up.
“Ooof-ooof!” she said. “Ooof-ooof.”
“That’s right, honey. It’s a dog. Woof-woof.”
The child moved confidently toward the animal, hand held out conspicuously flat, as she’d evidently been taught. The dog had brought with it an elderly couple.
“It’s okay,” the woman said. “He’s quite safe.”
The little girl glanced up at her for moment, then at her husband. She raised her hand and pointed.
“Granna,” she said firmly. “Granna.”
Gary laughed as the camera dropped to her level. “Granddad? Well, no, honey.” He then added, not to his daughter, “She thinks everyone, who…well, you know.”
The man smiled down affably. “Has gray hair. I know. And hell, I am a granddad. Five times over.” He bent carefully toward Bethany as she patted the dog’s back. “What’s your name, honey?”
She didn’t say anything. Gary spoke. “Bethany, what’s your name?”
“Batne?” the girl said.
Then she patted the dog one more time, a little too hard, and went running away up the path.
The video froze abruptly, then went to black.
“Very fucking sweet,” I said. “But—”
“Wait a second,” Gary interrupted. “You had to see that. But this is the thing.”
The image on the television’s screen changed again, flipping from pure black to a kind of mottled purple. Some kind of view in very low lighting conditions.
As my eyes got used to the dim light, I figured out that the glow came from a bedside night-light and that a collection of paler dots in the middle of the frame was a mobile, dangling animal shapes twisting slowly. I was looking into a child’s bedroom, in the dark.
“What the—”
“Please just watch,” Gary said.
The camera remained motionless for a while, evidently positioned in a hallway outside the room. I realized I could hear the sound of its operator breathing, trying to do so as quietly as possible.
Then the camera moved in a series of slow steps, as the person holding it stepped into the bedroom and then back and to the side. There was a quiet swishing sound and then a click. The image got even darker.
The camera panned slowly and unsteadily around the room. A faint, cold light through drapes showed shadowy, grainy images of a jungle mural on the wall, a baby-size chair and table, an orderly collection of toys stowed in a shelving unit. The view turned in a complete circle to pass the door, now closed, and ended back on the area made lighter by the clock. Looking down into a child’s bed.
The bed had bars on all sides, a crib designed for someone not yet old enough to be allowed to traverse the world under his or her own steam. You could make out the shape of the sleeping child within. Hear it, too, the slow rise and fall of its breathing.
Nothing happened for a couple of minutes. You could tell that the camera was still capturing the scene in real time, however, because of the quiet sounds of two people breathing and the noise of the image as the camera tried to cope with the near darkness.
This wasn’t anywhere enough to hold my attention. I was just about to get up when I heard something very quiet out of the television speakers.
