More Deaths Than One Read online

  “Sure, why not?” Bob followed Don to the table.

  “Hey, everybody, this is—” Don glanced at Bob.

  “Herb,” Bob said.

  Don sat down, shoving trays of dirty dishes out of his way, and motioned for Bob to do the same. Don finished the introductions, then said, “Herb’s the new guy in Marketing.”

  A bony young woman named Julia snickered. “Marketing, huh? Good luck.”

  Bob turned to look at her. “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t listen to her,” said John, a young man with the hopeful shadow of a goatee. “She thinks the Marketing Department is cursed.”

  “Well, it is,” Julia insisted.

  “Really?” Bob asked.

  “Yes,” Julia answered.

  “No way,” John said at the same time.

  Bob looked at Don, who shrugged. “It’s not cursed, of course, but some weird things have happened to the people in Marketing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that guy who disappeared,” chubby, blond Heather said.

  “Who disappeared?” John demanded. “I never heard about anyone disappearing.”

  Julia bobbed her head. “Yes, you did. Remem-ber Will Turnow?”

  “Oh, him.” John waved a hand dismissively.

  “How did he disappear?” Bob asked.

  “No one knows,” redheaded Andy responded. “He went to Boston for a seminar, attended a few meetings, and no one ever saw him again.”

  “He acted like a jerk, anyway,” John said.

  Julia looked at him with a puzzled expression in her chocolate brown eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  John stared back at her. “It has everything to do with it. I mean, like, who cares?”

  Julia held up a finger. “There was also that guy who got killed.”

  “Are you talking about Doug Roybal? He died in a rock climbing accident.”

  “But he still worked in Marketing. And there were those two guys who claimed to have been beamed aboard a space ship, and what about that guy who had terrible temper tantrums. What’s his name?”

  “Jerold Hancock,” Don answered.

  “Who’s he?” Heather asked.

  Julia spread her hands. “You know, that tall, good-looking guy in Marketing? The one who says hello to everyone?”

  “But he’s so nice.” Heather glanced around the table at the others. “I don’t get it.”

  John rolled his eyes. “There’s nothing to get. Jerold is a valuable employee who had a vicious temper, so human resources sent him to a clinic in Boston where he learned how to control it. I don’t know why you guys have to make such a big deal out of everything.”

  “What clinic?” Bob asked.

  John stared at him. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Hey, chill out, man,” Don said. “What’s with you?”

  Heather giggled. “Maybe John needs to go to that clinic.”

  John glared at her, then turned back to Bob. “Well?”

  Bob shrugged. “Just curious.”

  “It’s at the Rosewood Research Institute,” Andy said. “I know a few people who were sent there for treatment of personality disorders and came back completely cured. Those doctors have developed a program that works fast—usually takes a couple of weeks. It’s miraculous.”

  “They are also involved in some of the most promising cancer research,” Heather put in. She flushed when the others stared at her in astonishment. “I read that somewhere, okay?”

  Julia tapped a finger on her chin. “Now that I think about it, the company sent those guys who saw the UFO to Boston for examination. I guess Issy wanted to make sure they weren’t crazy.”

  John snorted. “They should have been sent to a mental hospital. Anyone who sees UFOs is obviously nuts.”

  “That one poor guy did go nuts,” Andy said softly.

  “No surprise there.” John sniffed. “He was always unbalanced.”

  Heather sighed. “I wish I’d seen a UFO.”

  “Are you crazy?” Julia shrieked.

  “No.” Heather sounded wistful. “I’ve always wanted to be on television, and Michael Mortimer is on TV all the time talking about his experiences.”

  “What if you turned out like Herb Townsend instead?” John asked.

  Bob remained still, though Townsend’s nametag seemed to burn through his shirt.

  “I wouldn’t turn out like him.” Heather shook her curls. “You said Herb was unbalanced, and I’m not.”

  “That’s what you think,” John said.

  Heather lifted her chin. “Well, if I did go crazy, I wouldn’t wear that ugly aluminum thing on my head. It’s so . . . so . . . you know, ugly.”

  Julia giggled. “Herb never did dress well. I mean, really—plaid jackets? And that hair!”

  “It’s surprising he managed to get so many women interested in him,” Don said. “He acted sort of crude, but he still seemed to be always having affairs.”

  John snorted. “Goes to show how desperate women are.”

  “You want to know why women liked him?” Julia glared at John. “He was charming, which is something you will never be.”

  John laughed. “I love it when you unsheath your claws.”

  She lowered her head, cheeks flaming.

  He put a forefinger under her chin, raised her head, and gently touched his lips to hers. Giggling, she jumped up from the table and ran off, glancing behind as if to make sure he followed.

  Heather watched John and Julia duck behind some bushes. “I don’t get it. I mean, they don’t even like each other.”

  “I’m not sure liking has much to do with love or lust.” Andy stood. “Time for me to get back to work.” He gathered his lunch tray and the ones John and Julia had left behind. He nodded at Bob. “Nice meeting you, Herb.”

  He walked off, balancing the three trays.

  “Hey! Wait for me.” Heather grabbed her tray and hurried after him.

  Don took a squashed sandwich out of one pocket and an apple out of another. He smiled at Bob. “My six-year-old daughter makes my lunch for me. It’s always something weird like peanut butter and banana with chocolate chips. I could never hurt her feelings by not eating it, but I get tired of the sarcastic remarks John makes when he sees it, so I wait until he’s gone before I eat. I do leave the Barbie doll lunch box in the car. If I toted that into the office, I’d never hear the end of it.”

  He unwrapped the sandwich and offered Bob half.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Do you have children, Herb?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Bob inclined his head, but remained silent.

  While Don ate, he talked with glowing pride about his family: his brilliant wife, feisty daughter, and mischievous son.

  When he finished, he said, “Feel free to come eat lunch with us anytime. We’re always glad of a new audience.” Laughing, he hopped on his skateboard and shoved off.

  Bob looked around and noticed a small, dark-haired, tense young woman sitting at the next picnic table. She shot surreptitious glances at him. Yesterday he’d also caught her staring. Who was she? One of his hunters? He was debating whether to confront her when she looked at her watch, jumped up, and sped into one of the buildings.

  Chapter 11

  Like a well-oiled machine, Bob did one smoothly flowing push-up after another until his arms quivered with exhaustion. Giving himself no time to rest, he rolled onto his back and began to do sit-ups, completely relaxed except for the abdominal muscles pulling him up then setting him back down. When his muscles rebelled, he arose and went outside for a run, covering mile after endless mile in an easy lope.

  A shower, a shave, and a leisurely breakfast, then he returned to ISI.

  He had learned that admittance to some of the buildings required a card key and retina scan, but most had minimal security. He slipped into one of these buildings in the midst of a stream of people and looked around.
Bright colors and a profusion of plants could not offset the depressing sight of so many humans encaged in tiny cubicles, staring vacantly at flickering computer screens while their fingers flitted spas-modically over the keyboards. He hurried back outside to the fresh air and the infinite blue sky.

  As he moved about the campus, the conversations he heard filtered through his mind like plankton through the mouth of a whale.

  Sue Ellen delivered her baby, finally. Neil Jr. starred in the school play. They fired Kathy. Brewster got his promotion. Joe quit. The computers are down again. Sara is on the verge of a nervous collapse. Alice, that bitch, is sleeping her way to the top. Well, at least she’s not sleeping her way to the bottom, ha, ha. Robert Stark is starting to piss me off.

  Bob froze, then stealthily stepped around a bush. Sitting at a picnic table twenty feet away, were the very men who hunted him.

  He stood absolutely still, watching, listening.

  “Starting to piss you off?” hooted the man with the deep voice. “Ever since he gave us the slip at the airport, you’ve been acting like a grizzly who found a hornet’s nest when he went poking about for a honeycomb.”

  “The fuck you talking about, Sam?”

  Sam laughed. “I forgot how much you hate being compared to a bear . . . Teddy.”

  Baritone glared at him.

  Sam laughed again. “Lighten up, Ted.”

  “Asshole.”

  Except for an inch or two difference in their height, Sam and Ted seemed remarkably similar. They were both about thirty-five, well over six feet tall, broad across the shoulders, lean-hipped, flat-bellied, hard-eyed. Brown hair tumbled down their foreheads, giving them an utterly deceptive appearance of vulnerability.

  “I don’t get it,” Ted grumbled. “Evans says Stark’s been under surveillance on and off for sixteen years. He says Stark’s retarded—never understood even the simplest joke. He also says Stark is a limp dick. All he does in a whorehouse is sit and drink tea. The guy was a waiter, for cripes sake. So how does this pathetic nothing, this wimp, manage to elude us—us!—for six weeks?”

  “I don’t know who Evans got his information from,” Sam said, “but it doesn’t add up. Stark acts like a professional. Not many people would walk away from everything they own on a moment’s notice.”

  “He didn’t own much and what he did own looked like junk.” Ted shivered. “Those paintings sure gave me the creeps.”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s junk. The less people have, the more they need to hold on to it.”

  Two men approached and sat across from Sam and Ted. One was black and the other white, but they too were a matched set. Both had the beefy, over-developed look of men who spend too much time in the gym, and both had the arrogant bearing of people who thought they were special. They would have been handsome, each in his own way, but for the identical smirks marring their faces.

  The white man chortled. “I hear you two are in trouble.”

  “Yeah,” the other said. “Not looking in the hem of the drapes for the papers. What amateurs.”

  “Evans’s wonder boys aren’t so wonderful after all.”

  The two newcomers high-fived and laughed uproariously.

  “Assholes,” Ted muttered.

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “Weren’t you the two staking out the boardinghouse when our little fugitive snuck back in?”

  The laughter stopped abruptly.

  The dark-skinned man pointed to his partner. “Grimes here—”

  Grimes interrupted. “Don’t blame it on me, Clayton, you know it was the cops—”

  Sam overrode them both. “I don’t care who did what or why. The point is that Stark is making us all look bad.”

  The other three nodded in agreement.

  “I hate that fucker,” Ted said. “When I get my hands on him, he’s going to be one sorry son of a bitch.”

  Grimes stared at Ted in surprise, then turned to Sam. “What’s with him?”

  Sam shrugged. “PMS.” When no one laughed, he continued, “We’ve been looking for this guy for six weeks, and he’s always a half step ahead of us. Ted has never had to deal with failure before.”

  “I’m gonna kill him first chance I get.” Ted slammed his fist on the table. “No one, and I mean no one, gets the better of me.”

  “The thing is,” Sam said, “it’s like he’s taunting us. He doesn’t bother to hide—a lot of people have seen him, but we still don’t know what he looks like.”

  Clayton smirked. “We do.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “We went around to all the stores in Bear Valley where he used his traveler’s checks. We got a good description from one girl.”

  “What does he look like?” Ted demanded.

  “He’s really, really short, and he’s got like this gray hair and he’s like really, really old.” Clayton spoke in a singsong voice as if mimicking someone.

  Sam roared with laughter. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope, direct quote,” Clayton said.

  “Who was she? A six-foot-tall teenager wearing high heels?”

  Clayton looked surprised. “How did you know?”

  “Because the one thing we know for certain is that he’s average,” Sam said. “Average height, average weight. And he’s in his late thirties.”

  Grimes poked his partner in the ribs. “Told you.”

  Clayton glared at him.

  “We have a lot of pictures taken in Southeast Asia,” Sam said, “but the guy in the photos looks like a Thai peasant or a Chinese waiter. I’m not even sure it’s Stark. But I am certain no one who looks like that got off the plane at Stapleton when we were there.” Sam rubbed his forehead. “Supposedly our Stark resembles the one you’re now tailing, but it’s hard to tell from the pictures.”

  “I thought you guys got a more recent picture,” Grimes said.

  Ted snorted. “So did we. That bitch.”

  “The old woman who owns the boardinghouse where Stark lives agreed to work with a sketch artist,” Sam said. “She even swore the finished picture looked exactly like Stark.”

  “What’s the problem?” Grimes asked. “How come we don’t have a copy of the picture?”

  Sam laughed humorlessly. “I take it you haven’t seen it.”

  “No,” Grimes and Clayton said simultaneously.

  Sam turned to Ted. “Do you still have a copy?”

  “Yeah.” Ted dug a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Clayton.

  Clayton unfolded it with great ceremony. He stared down at the picture, then up at Sam. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “‘Fraid not.”

  “Let me see.” Grimes tried to snatch the piece of paper out of Clayton’s hand.

  Clayton held it out of reach. “Gimme a second.”

  He studied the picture, shaking his head, then handed it to his partner.

  “What the hell is this?” Grimes asked, scowling. “Why’re you showing us a picture of Charles Manson?”

  “That’s how the old woman described Stark,” Sam said. “Wild, crazy eyes, masses of filthy hair, and all.” He took the picture from Grimes and looked at it. “Makes you wonder what he did to her. We asked, but she wouldn’t get specific. Just went on and on about knives.”

  “Knives?” Grimes questioned.

  Sam nodded.

  “Who is this guy?” Clayton demanded.

  “Dead meat,” Ted said.

  Sam refolded the picture and returned it to Ted. “No one knows except Evans, and he’s not telling.”

  “What I don’t get is if Evans wants this Manson-type Stark,” Clayton said, “why are we staking out a completely different Robert Stark?”

  Sam shrugged. “Evans thinks our Stark will try to contact your Stark. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.”

  “Are they cousins?” Grimes asked. “A lot of times cousins have the same name, you know.”

  “I said I don’t know,” Sam repeated harshl
y.

  ***

  After the hunters had dispersed, Bob returned to himself, though he remained in the protective embrace of the bushes for several minutes longer.

  The words “sixteen years” kept going around and around in his head, like the refrain of a song too terrible to forget.

  He tried to concentrate on who could have been watching him the entire time he had lived in Bangkok, and why. He even tried to focus on Ted’s overt and Sam’s covert hatred. But all he could think about was that someone had been watching him on and off for sixteen years.

  Sixteen years.

  Chapter 12

  “I know you.” Kerry held the door open. “Won’t you come in?”

  The light danced in her eyes, but Bob detected a slight distance in her manner. Or perhaps the distance lay in him. Like an automaton, he’d retrieved his gym bag from the locker at ISI and climbed aboard a bus. He hadn’t even known he was coming to see her until he disembarked at the stop closest to her friend’s house.

  He gave a vague look around the living room as if it had been weeks since he’d seen it instead of a few days.

  “Is your friend here?”

  “She’s at her office, but she’ll be home soon.”

  “Oh.” He felt himself swaying from exhaustion.

  She herded him toward a chair and pointed at it. “Sit.”

  He sat.

  “Would you like something to drink? Hot chocolate? I think there’s also some of your green tea left.”

  “Green tea, please.” He preferred that beverage, but he ordered hot chocolate when eating out because Denver restaurants usually served insipid herbal blends and pekoes.