Flashback

important than that to Val’s grandfather? Or to Nick?

“Go now,” whispered Leonard. “Go look at the phone now.” More loudly, he said, “Dr. Tak will help me get dressed and ready to travel, won’t you, sir?”

Tak frowned again. “You should not travel for some time, Professor Fox. You need to rest. Days of rest.”

“Yes, yes,” said Leonard. “But you’ll help me get dressed, won’t you? While Nick goes to tend to some things? Not being part of the Really Surprised Four Percent, I need to get on with what’s left of my life.”

Dr. Tak continued frowning but nodded.

“I’ll be back for you in a few minutes, Leonard,” said Nick. He took Dr. Tak aside and squeezed all the remaining big bills he had from the Nakamura old-bucks advance into the old Thai doctor’s gnarled hand. It left him with about thirty bucks in small bills with none left on his NICC card, but that didn’t matter.

“This is too much money,” said Dr. Tak.

Nick shook his head. “You’ve helped me before when I couldn’t pay enough. And you can put it toward whatever pills Leonard needs for the immediate future. Anyway, if I keep this cash, I’ll just blow it on wine, women, and song.” He again squeezed the old medic’s hands shut around the little wad of bills.

“Thank you, Dr. Tak.”

Gunny G. was waiting in the hall and eager to show Nick Val’s escape route. Since it appeared to be on the way to his cubie, more or less, Nick followed along as the stocky ex-marine sprinted up the unmoving escalator like a boot at Parris Island. Nick followed more stiffly, favoring his tightly taped ribs.

“My kid did that?” said Nick as he stood on the mezzanine and looked out at the cable—beyond his own reach or jumping ability, he was sure—and then up at the shattered skylight glass forty feet above.

“He did,” said Gunny G., not hiding his own admiration. “With about twenty pounds of climbing rope, pitons, and carabiners hitched over his shoulder. When I showed him and the old man into the place earlier, I sorta thought that the boy was a bit of a runt for the sixteen-year-old described on the DHS all-points-bulletin.”

Nick was going to let that pass but heard himself saying, “Not a bad jump and climb for a runt.”

Gunny G. keyed in the access code and they went up the stairs to the roof. Once at the skylight, Nick paused for a second to look down through the missing glass pane at the long drop to the glass-shard-littered soil of the dirt-filled fountain far below. Then he followed spatters of blood to the southwest corner of the roof.

“I pulled the rope up and coiled it,” said Gunny, “but left it anchored here.”

Nick was disturbed by the amount of blood. It was obvious that his son had slashed himself pretty badly during the climb.

Gunny was pointing down the south wall of the parking garage. “The video cam down there caught just a blur when your son shinnied down past it, then picked him up when he walked over to the bridge there.”

“What did he do there?”

The security man shrugged. “My guess is that he had a weapon hidden there, but he was wearing a jacket so it was hard to say for sure. Your boy stayed over there on the other side of the bridge for a while and then walked off—limped off, really—to the west. I was busy getting your father-in-law to Dr. Tak, but when I had time later I went out and checked the bridge and saw where the kid had bled quite a bit.”

“Bad?” said Nick. He heard the concerned edge in his own voice. A little late to play the concerned daddy, isn’t it, asshole? demanded a more honest voice in his head.

“It’ll probably need some stitches and tending,” said Gunny. “But he’s not going to bleed out or anything. I’ve had Lennie and Dorrie watch the external cams extra close this afternoon, but there’s been no sign of Val watching from across the street or coming back to the bridge.”

“Okay,” said Nick. “Thanks.” He headed back to the stairway, trying not to stare at the blood trail. It was true that he’d seen much worse.

Suddenly there flowed in the unbidden memory of his youngest attacker, wounded and begging for his life in the predawn dimness of the Huntington Botanical Gardens the previous Monday. That young man had been three or four years older than Val, at least, and had almost certainly spent his night with his older pals shooting at unarmed civilians as if they were deer in the woods—it was just his bad luck that Nick hadn’t been unarmed—but who was going to be the merciless older man aiming the muzzle of his Glock at Val’s forehead and shielding his face from spatter if this crap kept up?

Knock it off, shithead. It doesn’t help.

“Whaddya wanta do with the climbing rope, Mr. B.?” called Gunny from the corner of the roof.

“I’ll get it later,” lied Nick.

His cubie was a total mess. Not only had it been tossed, clothes strewn everywhere, the contents of his dresser drawers dumped out and then the drawers themselves thrown around, but there was the usual paramedic mess of discarded plastic and paper wrappings from where Dr. Tak had done his initial work on Leonard.

Nick ignored the mess. All he could focus on was the scatter of colored dossiers.

Did Val read the grand jury stuff?

Of course he had.

Nick brushed the pile of folders off his desk with a furious sweep of his forearm. Would Val believe that I tried to kill his mother?

Of course he would. Nick was, after all, the same man who’d dumped his son with an elderly grandfather in Los Angeles and never come to visit him… who never found enough money to fly the son home to Denver for a visit… who only phoned a few times a year and who totally forgot that son’s sixteenth birthday. Why wouldn’t a so- called father like that conspire to kill a wife who’d been unfaithful to him?

Nick sat on the chair with his elbows on his knees, his hands gripping the sweaty sides of his head, and concentrated on trying to breathe.

For 4 percent of people with this problem, the first noticeable symptom is sudden death.

Yeah, and ain’t that a great practical joke on the 4 percent? Nick’s father had been careless to get himself killed when Nick was pretty young, but at least he’d paid attention to Nick when he was still alive and had the time. With no shade of melodrama whatsoever, Nick realized that he would never be able to make things up to Val, no matter how much time the two might have in the rest of their lives.

Almost certainly less than eight hours for me, thought Nick.

This flood of certainty washed over Nick again as a mere fact, no melodrama. If he couldn’t escape with Val and Leonard, if he couldn’t live in real life that lovely dream he’d had that morning just before waking, he was certain that the meeting with Mr. Nakamura would not end well for a certain ex-cop named Nick Bottom. It was as if he could already smell the decomposing stench of his own death…

“Shit,” said Nick. Slamming his cubie door shut, he stripped naked, throwing everything he’d been wearing, down to his boxer shorts, into the far corner of the room. Then he went into the bathroom and showered fast but hard, scrubbing until his skin almost bled. Even then, Nick could still detect the death stench of Denver Municipal Landfill Number Nine.

The remembered NCAR smell was more subtle—a faint hint of chlorine and other chemicals, as when lying near a well-tended swimming pool—but just as terrifying.

Nick dressed quickly and carelessly—clean underwear, clean socks, a blue-plaid flannel shirt washed so many times that it was almost obscenely soft, clean chinos that weren’t as tight on him as they’d been two weeks earlier. He clipped the holster and Glock on his belt on the left side and velcroed the little holster with its tiny .32 on his right ankle.

Then he looked for Dara’s phone. It wasn’t there on the desk or bed.

Someone’s stolen it. The neighbors or some other residents came in and took it while Gunny G. and Dr. Tak were parading back and forth, the place unlocked and unwatched. Or maybe Val had taken it with him or come back to get it…

Nick forced himself to calm down. He’d have to borrow some of Dr. Tak’s tranquilizers from Leonard’s doggie bag if he kept flirting with hysteria this way.