Keener, and that he has absolute proof to that effect.”
“Okay,” says Jack. “But what makes you believe him? Gut reaction or facts on the ground?”
“That’s what I’m trying to determine,” she says. “We know the following about Taylor Gatling, Jr. He was pushing to have Professor Keener investigated by a legitimate agency, and when that failed he took it upon himself to put Keener under surveillance. Because he has reason to want revenge on Randall Shane, we assume that he was complicit in planting evidence that made Shane the prime suspect in the professor’s murder. That’s an assumption not yet established as fact. On the other hand, it’s a virtual certainty that Gatling’s men took Shane and subjected him to enhanced interrogation. But why? If they knew Shane to be innocent, what could they possibly learn from him? And if the purpose is to frame him, why not leave him to be arrested, why complicate the situation with an airborne abduction in broad daylight?”
“So you’re saying you don’t think Gatling had Joey abducted?”
Let her try and ignore that one. She can’t, and she doesn’t.
“No, I’m not saying that” she says, leveling her eyes at me. “Gatling is a seeker of power. It’s highly probable that he had the boy kidnapped in Hong Kong and brought here, to give him some sort of leverage. I just don’t know for what purpose, precisely.”
“Maybe it started out as a plot to implicate the great Randall Shane in a kidnapping,” I suggest. “Turn the hero into a villain, make it look like his whole life was a lie. And then the professor gets killed and framing Shane for the murder is an extra.”
“I’ll buy that,” Jack offers.
“Then you are both ignoring facts in contravention of the premise,” Naomi says. “Evidence was planted in Shane’s motel room in advance of him discovering Keener’s body. That can only have occurred if the plot to frame him was under way before Keener was executed.”
“Maybe the facts are wrong.”
“Facts are facts, Alice,” she reminds me. “Inconvenient as they may sometimes be.”
“Well, somebody famous said facts are the hobgoblin of little minds,” I retort.
“Ralph Waldo Emerson. And what he said referred to a foolish consistency, not facts.”
“Okay. So maybe we’re being foolishly consistent.”
“Emerson’s idea was that we should all avoid conformity and find our own way. He was urging us to be self- reliant.”
“Know-it-all,” I say.
“I wish I did know it all,” Naomi says, sounding plaintive. “If I knew it all, we wouldn’t have been trying to shake the suspect’s cage, and Joey Keener would already be safe and sound.”
Not another word from her, all the way home.
Chapter Forty-Eight
By the time Gatling arrives in Prides Crossing he’s in a full-blown rage. His anger is directed not only at the man called Kidder, but at himself for hiring the screwup in the first place. He’d known Kidder since they’d both served in special ops, and he’d been an oddball even then, but it was a useful kind of strange. The man simply had no compunction about breaking the law when ordered to do so, which had come in handy on more than one occasion. But Gatling sees that it had been a mistake to take him on as a civilian freelancer. Whatever competence Kidder had in the military has diminished over the past few years, along with any sense of discipline. He no longer follows orders, has no respect for the chain of command. He thinks he knows better, he makes threats, and now, finally, a screwup so huge that it’s beyond mind-boggling, and might actually put Gatling and his entire organization at risk, despite all his connections, all his precautions.
Gatling screeches the van to a halt, jams it in Park and turns off the motor. Kidder meets him in the driveway, shambling out of the open bay of the garage like some oversize garden gnome wearing, absurdly, a black wool watch cap pulled down over his ears. Plus his eyes look wrong.
“Woo!” Kidder huffs, clapping his hands together. “That didn’t take long. When was it I called you? Last week?”
Gatling speaks through clenched teeth. “Less than an hour ago, you moron. What the hell happened?”
“Ha! Wish I knew!” Kidder grins. There are flecks of blood on his teeth. “There was beautiful music and then I saw God.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Kidder sidles up close. His breath is putrid, powerfully bad. “You know who God looks like? He looks like you in a bad mood. Are you in a bad mood, Junior? Huh?”
Gatling grabs Kidder’s right arm and squeezes. Sees the pain light up the man’s eyes. “What did you do? Speak, or so help me God.”
Kidder smiles that weird smile, that’s his only outward physical reaction to Gatling’s pincerlike grip on his forearm, which has to hurt like hell. “Didn’t I just say you were God? So what’s your problem? You’re all-powerful, right? You can fix things.”
“What do I have to fix? What happened here? And why are you wearing that stupid hat?”
In answer Kidder peels up a corner of the hat, using his left hand, awkwardly. Revealing a mass of clotted blood and hair. “You tell me,” he says. “I really want to know.”
Kidder leads him through the garage, into the cottage and down into the basement lockup. He points at the floor, where a pool of blood has coagulated into a dark mess. “That’s where I woke up. Last thing I remember, I was watching the ball game. Pedroia got a single, he’s on first. I’m thinking the little bastard always gets on base, how does he do it? And then I wake up with my head stuck to the floor. I mean it was like my skull was welded to the floor. It made this really scary sound when I tore myself loose. Like my brains had leaked out or something.”
Staring at the floor, feeling sickened by the loss of control, Gatling snaps, “That’s blood, not brains, you idiot. Your brains, such as they are, are still in your skull. You were hit from behind with that piece of two-by-four,” he adds, pointing.
Kidder giggles horribly. “I knew you were God. The all-seeing, the all-knowing. So what happened next? Your humble servant tore himself loose from the floor. Then what?”
“Are you crazy? I can’t play this game. We haven’t got time for this.”
Kidder fumbles at him, pawing, his expression strangely gleeful. “Your humble servant crawled up the stairs and out into the yard. There were stars in the sky. They say that stars are like the sun, only farther away, but I never believed that. Stars are where God poked pinholes in the night. And the light that shines through, the little twinkles? That’s you. God himself.”
“You’re insane.”
“You made me. Whatever I am, that’s on you.”
“Don’t touch me,” Gatling says, jerking away.
“This is my confession, God. I crawled up the stairs and went out into the shiny night and I found him. The boy. He was in one corner of the yard and when he saw me he started waving, that’s how I noticed him. Hard to see with all the blood in my eyes, you know? That’s how it is for us humans, we don’t see in the dark too good when our brains have been spot-welded to the floor. So the little brat makes it easy for me to find him. Isn’t that odd? He can’t get away because of the fence, but still you’d think he’d try to hide.”
“What are you talking about? What fence? And where’s the woman?”
“Just a little old electrified fence. Why would you notice? Stuff like that is beneath God’s interest. It was supposed to be powered from a twelve-volt battery, like a cattle fence, but I did a little rewiring, hooked it up to the household current with a hundred-amp breaker. That’s enough to kill us normal humans, but somehow she must have got around it. The breaker was tripped. She got away. Left the kid behind and took off. Told me all about it, the little brat.”
Gatling is incredulous. “If this was last night she could be on her way back here with the cops any moment.
