The Puppet Master

opportunity.'

She still wasn't saying anything, so I tried another shot. 'They've decided Aldon was dead before he was shot,' I lied. 'I'd never have figured out how you killed him, if I hadn't heard about the killer bee research. Do you keep some of your tricked up meningitis virus around the house? Maybe you plan to use it on your husband next. He's Aldon's twin, after all.'

That broke it. 'Get out!' she shouted suddenly. 'Get out of this house! Now!'

I shook my head. 'Not without the rest of the virus.'

'All right!' she shouted, 'I'll give it to you!'

And stomped out of the room. For the first time that day I turned my attention to Eldon. He was in a state of shock. In ten seconds Veronica was back. But what she had in her hand was not a flask or vial or petri plate, it was a snub-nosed .32, looking bigger because it was pointed at me. All that saved me getting shot was, she was too damned mad to simply kill me. She was going to blast me with venom first, with words.

Before she got any of them out though, Eldon was between us, facing her. I wished he was taller. 'You . . .  killed . . . Aldon,' he said. 'And . . . you . . . lied . . . about . . . him . . . to . . . father. How . . . could . . . you . . . do . . . that? You . . . said . . . you . . . loved . . . me!'

The steel and the fire went out of Veronica Ashley as if they'd never been. 'I do love you, Eldon,' she said, and watching her, I knew she meant it. 'I love you very much. I've always loved you.'

'No,' he said, and moved toward her on splayed and calloused fingers. 'You . . . can't . . . love . . . me. You . . .  killed . . . Aldon!' Then he launched himself at her, I'm not sure just how, tackling her, scrambling all over her. I ducked out of the room and drew my own gun. She screamed, and hers went off, once, and after a couple of seconds a second time. Crouched and ready, I looked back in.

Veronica sat on the floor against a heavy chair, weeping quietly, her hands on her belly. Her face was already gray. Eldon lay sprawled on the floor, his head a ruin, far worse than Aldon's had been. One way or another she'd been gut-shot, then he'd put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Her eyes moved to me when I stepped back into the room, the hatred gone from them, replaced by shock and something else. Grief.

'Jesus,' I said to her. 'Jesus, Veronica, I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry.' And I meant it.

19

It was all recorded, of course. At the hospital next day, Veronica Ashley told everything, and naturally the papers picked it up. And played hell out of it. They gave Prudential a lot of good publicity and made me sound like Sherlock Holmes. So of course I got promoted. I don't wear junior in front of investigator anymore.

As a matter of policy, I'd phoned Carlos from the Ashleys' right after I'd called the police. When I told him what happened, he said come to the office as soon as I possibly could. He knew what was coming. When I got there, he was waiting with Joe. In my profession it's best not to have your face on the six o'clock news. So Joe gave me a paid vacation as a bonus, and sent me to his place to hide till I could leave town. I phoned Tuuli from there, and she surprised me: She agreed to go with me!

I left Joe's at 4:30 the next morning, picked her up, and we flew to Hemlock Harbor, back in Ojibwa County, Michigan. Where she met my sister Elvi, and my half brother Sulo. Sulo's more than old enough to be my father. Both of them loved Tuuli right away. Now she and I are roughing it in dad's old fishing shack, his hytti, back in the bush on Balsam Lake, where I'm taping this. Elvi said I owe it to my nieces and nephews, and whatever children Tuuli and I might have.

Yep, Tuuli and I got the license the second day there, and got married in Hemlock Harbor's Trinity Lutheran parsonage. She says I'll have to improve my Finnish now, speak it as well as Elvi, or better yet, Sulo. Next week we'll go back to L.A. and find a security building in a good location. One where she can rent an efficiency apartment in the same building we live in, for her consulting office.

And that's all there is to the story, so I'll go split some wood for the stove. I'm not missing L.A. too much yet.

THE PUPPET MASTER

a novel

PART ONE:

Church of the New Gnosis

PROLOG

Actually it was a bedroom in a private home, but it looked like a large, private hospital room in baby blue, with vases of varied, freshly cut flowers adding indigo and white, violet and butter yellow against the delicate green of ferns. The bed was a hospital bed, and a private nurse sat beside it in a chair. Next to her stood a cart, an instrumented, stainless-steel life-support system on wheels, with LEDs displaying the patient's critical biofunctions. A telescoping rod extended upward from it, topped by a pivoting arm that dangled wires and a tube to disappear beneath the bed cover.  

The nurse was reading a paperback novel—one of the New Age novels that were popular then. Just enough daylight filtered through the thick drapes to show it was morning.  

The figure in the bed was male and elderly. He appeared to have a glandular disorder; his face was like raised bread dough, puffy and pale. It was also drawn down on one side by stroke, leaving the wide mouth twisted. Just now the muscles were slack and the eyes closed, their lids thick.  

Given the puffy face, one might have expected a great swollen body. Actually, its bulk beneath the soft cotton sheet was not particularly large, but it seemed to spread, as if its bones were cartilage, not rigid enough to support it.  

The eyes opened. Their blue was faded, their whites yellowish. They shifted to the nurse, not in an invalid's drugged or helpless or apathetic gaze, but coldly. As if feeling the touch, she set the book aside.  

'Ten twenty-six, sir,' she said as if answering a question, and stood up. She pressed two keys on a small control box at the foot of the bed, and slowly the bed took a shape suited to reading. 

Nothing more was said. She didn't ask if he was hungry or wanted an alcohol rub or to relieve