What did that matter if Seth could be helped? he asked himself angrily. Nothing else mattered! He must get help, call a doctor—
But he knew he was too late. His experience with death was too thorough to allow him to believe that anything could be done for Seth. Still, he fumbled for the control button on the bed that turned on the lights and pressed it. In their stark brightness, his hope faltered. With a trembling hand, he raised the lids of Seth’s eyes. There was no pupil response to the light.
“Seth,” he said again, but now it was a sound of loss. He heard himself make a low, animal cry, and for a time was aware of nothing other than the boy lying still and cold and alone in the bed, and the crushing weight of his failure to protect him.
“Forgive me,” he said again and again. “Forgive me.”
He gradually became aware that he was weeping and grew angry with himself for it. Wiping his face, he forced himself to observe the room as a professional. The small harness device used to operate the computer had been removed from Seth’s arm. The call button for the nurse was on the floor beneath the bed. Near it, he found a pillow — he glanced at the other bed and saw that the pillow had been taken from it. The pillow had been torn near the center — perhaps bitten. He also saw bruising on Seth’s arms and marks near his nose and mouth.
He felt a white-hot anger burn through him, a desire for vengeance unlike any he had ever known before.
He heard voices in the hall. He hurriedly turned off the lights and moved to the closed door. The so-called guard was chatting with a nurse. “Need some help with that?” he heard the guard say to her. There was the scrape of the guard’s chair as he stood, the sound of his footsteps moving away.
Lefebvre quietly moved out of the room and out to the patio door. He used it to escape down the stairwell, just as the killer had escaped him the night before. Sickened that he had not caught him then, he made his way to the car.
He looked back toward the window of Seth’s room, saw it was still darkened, and with a sense of emptiness unlike any he had ever known, he drove away.
9
Friday, June 22, 8:45 P.M.
An Apartment Not Far from the Las Piernas Police Department
He stared at the pencil lead, placed it on the page, and then lifted it again. How to rate today’s performance?
At times, he had achieved nothing less than an eight. At others, he barely merited a one. Those hours, for example, when he had lost track of Lefebvre. Terrible, though hardly his fault.
He decided that he would need to patiently await the final outcome before giving himself a rating. Waiting patiently would add points; jumping to conclusions would lower his score.
He never doubted the importance and necessity of his work, but that did not mean that he was pleased with every aspect of it or even took joy in it. He was quite critical of himself. Knowing that his special calling would always be a lonely business, he not only had to keep his triumphs to himself, but there was no one with whom he could share his disappointments.
In truth, the entire Dane episode had been a disappointment. Had his plans succeeded as intended, a great deal of trouble would have been spared. God was indeed in the details — one small element out of place could ruin the most elaborate plans.
The watch. If the boy had fought instead of hiding on the yacht, he would have been dead long before he heard the watch. If he had not recognized the sound of the watch yesterday afternoon, he would have been allowed to live. And Lefebvre! Such a brilliant career, and it would end in shame. Because of a watch.
He shook his head and sighed deeply, genuinely sad about Lefebvre.
To console himself, he carefully turned to the first page of the notebook and began reading.
As always, it cheered him.
10
Friday, June 22, 9:36 P.M.
Above the San Bernardino Mountains
Lefebvre flew above the dense fog that blanketed the mountains on that moonless summer night. Solo in the Cessna, with a cloud carpet below, a canopy of starlight above — on another night he would have been calmed by the view, lulled by the droning of the engine. Not tonight.
Tonight he was distracted from the night sky by memories of Seth, lying cold and still in the hospital bed. He had thought himself accustomed to seeing the dead, until he had seen the body of the young man.
Not a young man, really. Not yet. Not ever.
The boy, he amended. The boy who had trusted him.
Against such thoughts, the drone of the plane’s engine became a drill, burrowing into his mind, looking for secrets. He needed to get away from talk and noise and pursuers.
The engine coughed and caught, coughed and caught — once, twice, three times. And then, with a horrifying suddenness, the drone was gone.
Without another cough or sputter or miss, the Cessna’s engine died.
At first, he was disbelieving. He was an experienced pilot. This couldn’t be happening to him. Not tonight. Not tonight of all nights.
He feathered the propeller to reduce drag on the plane, tried to restart the engine. Nothing. Tried switching fuel tanks. Nothing.
What was wrong?
Had he missed some problem in preflight? Tonight he had found some comfort in the rituals of preflight, rituals he performed religiously. But he could not deny that he had been upset, distracted. He kept seeing the boy, dead — kept wondering if the others had found the body yet and how much lead time he would have before they came
