Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver

already knew my name. He might as well see my face. He was a dead man. We both knew it.

* * *

'You were thinking of holding me for ransom, right?'

I stood at the window and looked out. Another cop car went past and there were more flashing lights bouncing off the low clouds and off the face of the Lookout, right over our heads.

Weller had a thin face and short hair, cut real neat. He looked like every ass-kissing businessman I ever met. His eyes were dark and calm like his voice and it made me even madder he wasn't shook up looking at that big bloodstain on the rug and floor.

'No,' I told him.

He looked at the pile of all the stuff I'd taken from his wallet and kept going like I hadn't said anything. 'It won't work. A kidnapping. I don't have a lot of money and if you saw my business card and're thinking I'm an executive at the company, they have about five hundred vice presidents. They won't pay diddly for me. And you see those kids in the picture? It was taken twelve years ago. They're both in college now. I'm paying major tuition.'

'Where,' I asked, sneering. 'Harvard?'

'One's at Harvard,' he said, like he was snapping at me. 'And one's at Northwestern. So the house's mortgaged to the hilt. Besides, kidnapping somebody by yourself? No, you couldn't bring that off.'

He saw the way I looked at him and he said, 'I don't mean you personally, Jack. I mean somebody by himself. You'd need partners.'

And I figured he was right.

That silence again. Nobody saying nothing and it was like the room was filling up with cold water. I walked to the window and the floors creaked under my feet and that only made things worse. I remember one time my dad said that a house had a voice of its own and some houses were laughing houses and some were forlorn. Well, this was a forlorn house. Yeah, it was modern and clean and the National Geographics were all in order but it was still forlorn.

Just when I felt like shouting because of the tension Weller said, 'I don't want you to kill me.'

'Who said I was going to kill you?'

He gave me his funny little smile. 'I've been a salesman for twenty-five years. I've sold pets and Cadillacs and typesetters and lately I've been selling mainframe computers. I know when I'm being handed a line. You're going to kill me. It was the first thing you thought of when you heard him' — nodding toward Toth — 'say your name.'

I just laughed at him. 'Well, that's a damn handy thing to be, sorta a walking lie detector,' I said and I was being sarcastic.

But he just said, 'Damn handy,' like he was agreeing with me.

'I don't want to kill you.'

'Oh, I know you don't want to. You didn't want your friend to kill anybody back there at the drugstore either. I could see that. But people got killed and that ups the stakes. Right?'

And those eyes of his, they just dug into me and I couldn't say anything.

'But,' he said, 'I'm going to talk you out of it.'

He sounded real certain and that made me feel better. 'Cause I'd rather kill a cocky son of a bitch than a pathetic one. And so I laughed. 'Talk me out of it?'

'I'm going to try.'

'Yeah? How you gonna do that?'

Weller cleared his throat a little. 'First, let's get everything on the table. I've seen your face and I know your name. Jack Prescot. Right? You're, what? About five-nine, a hundred fifty pounds, black hair. So you've got to assume I can identify you. I'm not going to play any games and say I didn't see you clearly or hear who you were. Or anything like that. We all squared away on that, Jack?'

I nodded, rolling my eyes like this was all a load of crap. But I gotta admit I was kinda curious what he had to say.

'My promise,' he said, 'is that I won't turn you in. Not under any circumstances. The police'll never learn your name from me. Or your description. I'll never testify against you.'

Sounding honest as a priest. Real slick delivery. Well, he was a salesman and I wasn't going to buy it. But he didn't know I was on to him. Let him give me his pitch, let him think I was going along. When it came down to it, after we'd got away and were somewhere in the woods upstate, I'd want him relaxed. No screaming, no hassles. Just a couple fast cuts or shots and that'd be it.

'You understand what I'm saying?'

I tried to look serious and said, 'Sure. You're thinking you can talk me out of killing you. You've got reasons why I shouldn't?'

'Oh, I've got reasons, you bet. One in particular. One that you can't argue with.'

'Yeah? What's that?'

'I'll get to it in a minute. Let me tell you some of the practical reasons you should let me go. First, you think you've got to kill me because I know who you are, right? Well, how long you think your identity's going to be a secret? Your buddy shot a cop back there. I don't know police stuff except what I see in the movies. But they're going to be looking at tire tracks and witnesses who saw plates and makes of cars and gas stations you might've stopped at on the way here.'

He was just blowing smoke. The Buick was stolen. I mean, I'm not stupid.

But he went on, looking at me real coy. 'Even if your car was stolen they're going to check down every lead. Every shoe print around where you or your friend stole it, talk to everybody in the area around the time it vanished.'

I kept smiling like it was nuts what he was saying. But this was true, the shooting-the-cop part. You do that and you're in big trouble. Trouble that sticks with you. They don't stop looking till they find you.

'And when they identify your buddy,' he nodded toward the couch where Toth's body was lying, 'they're going to make some connection to you.'

'I don't know him that good. We just hung around together the past few months.'

Weller jumped on this. 'Where? A bar? A restaurant? Anybody ever see you in public?'

I got mad and I shouted, 'So? What're you saying? They gonna bust me anyway then I'll just take you out with me. How's that for an argument?'

Calm as could be he said, 'I'm simply telling you that one of the reasons you want to kill me doesn't make sense. And think about this — the shooting at the drugstore? It wasn't premeditated. It was, what do they call it? Heat of passion. But you kill me, that'll be first-degree. You'll get the death penalty when they find you.'

When they find you. Right, I laughed to myself. Oh, what he said made sense but the fact is, killing isn't a making-sense kind of thing. Hell, it never makes sense but sometimes you just have to do it. But I was kind of having fun now. I wanted to argue back. 'Yeah, well, I killed Toth. That wasn't heat of passion. I'm going to get the needle anyway for that.'

'But nobody gives a damn about him,' he came right back. 'They don't care if he killed himself or got hit by a car. You can take that piece of garbage out of the equation altogether. They care if you kill me. I'm the Innocent Bystander' in the headlines. I'm the 'Father of Two.' You kill me you're as good as dead.'

I started to say something but he kept going.

'Now here's another reason I'm not going to say anything about you. Because you know my name and you know where I live. You know I have a family and you know how important they are to me. If I turn you in you could come after us. I'd never jeopardize my family that way. Now, let me ask you something. What's the worst thing that could happen to you?'

'Keep listening to you spout on and on.'

Weller laughed at that. I could see he was surprised I had a sense of humor. After a minute he said, 'Seriously. The worst thing.'

'I don't know. I never thought about it.'

'Lose a leg? Go deaf? Lose all your money? Go blind?… Hey, that looked like it hit a nerve. Going blind?'