She air-kissed him and called for Carter to bring around the car.

5

5.1. Calder Farris

Calder was parked down the street from the house. He checked his watch again: 10:15. On cue, an expensive-looking black van appeared in his rearview mirror. The van glided smoothly to a stop and shut off its lights.

The street was residential, an upper-class neighborhood littered with Southern Colonials. Other than a few stray lights in windows, the inhabitants were already asleep. Farris got out of his car and into the van.

“Lieutenant Farris,” the largest of the three men saluted him. “Nice to work with you again.”

“Lieutenant Hinkle.”

Hinkle was a slab of meat who looked like he ought to speak like Lennie in Of Mice and Men, so his rich, formal voice was always incongruous. Hinkle and his companions were dressed, like Farris, in black civilian clothes.

“These are Sergeants Troy and Owen,” Hinkle made the introductions.

The men saluted him and Calder made a preemptory return. They looked fine: both Caucasian, buzz cuts, square jaws, eyes that showed nothing. Hinkle was dependable that way.

Hinkle motioned for Troy and Owen to get out, and Calder slid into the abandoned driver’s seat. His face was lit by the fluorescent streetlights outside. Hinkle looked away, his expression uneasy. Fucking Hinkle. Even he couldn’t look Calder in the eye. For a moment, Calder had a tightening sensation that threatened an oncoming rage. Hinkle spoke.

“So what’s the story?”

“B and E, document recovery.” Calder’s words were tight and hard. “It’s an old man, a professor, widower, lives alone. I’ve met with him several times. He refused to cooperate.” Calder looked at the house down the street, his temper cooling slowly. “I followed him home from the university at about fifteen hundred. He hasn’t left, but the lights never came on.”

“Maybe he’s napping.”

“Maybe. There’s a study at the back of the house. Clean out his files, hard drive, everything. If he is home, tell him his work is being confiscated. Don’t tell him who you are—he’ll know. Give him a few bruises if he tries to stop you, but go easy; he’s an old man. On your way out, advise him to reconsider his options.”

Hinkle absorbed his orders, not looking into Calder’s eyes. He watched Hinkle’s meaty face and wished again that he hadn’t had to bring him in. Information was better when willingly conferred. But there were people in this world determined to make life difficult, people who refused to do their patriotic duty.

Calder could have strong-armed the subject himself, but that would make it difficult to go back in later and play good cop, and Calder wanted very much to be the one to whom the old man capitulated. Hence Hinkle.

“Questions?” Calder asked.

“What’s the subject’s name? Or is that classified?”

“It’s Ansel, Dr. Henry Ansel.”

Calder waited in the van. While he waited he couldn’t stop thinking about Mark Avery. His ex-partner had been very interested in Dr. Ansel. Avery’s funeral had been last week. Calder managed to be out of town.

He’d been in Oklahoma and had spent three hours at a shooting range that day, the hours Mark was buried. That night he hadn’t slept at all. He’d had nightmares about his father, first time in years. Avery’s death had stirred all of that up again. Calder was not a happy camper.

He and his father… shit, they were mortal enemies even when Calder was small. It took Calder a while to figure it out is all. His mother, so he was told, was a whore who ran away, leaving him in his father’s care. They lived on Army bases where his father hired the least appropriate people he could find to take care of Calder during the day—from a schizophrenic German lady, to a chain-smoking teenage pothead, to a woman who could barely get out of a chair.

When Capt. John Farris II came home at night he would wring every last detail of his son’s misbehavior from the caretaker du jour and mete out Calder’s punishment like an appetizer before supper. He had a strict and precise set of rules. A cussword got three strikes with the belt; a broken dish, four; talking back, five. Sexual misconduct, such as touching himself, however briefly, brought down the almighty wrath of God. And always, always, the fucking bitches who watched him during the day would chat up every single thing he’d done, even after Calder told them he’d be beaten for it. Even when they knew.

No. That wasn’t a hundred percent true. The pothead wouldn’t tell. She didn’t rat him out. But after a couple of weeks John Farris got wise and replaced her with a woman with loose lips. There were plenty of those. It was in the breed.

When Calder got a bit older he found he had a talent for dishing it out as well as taking it. Hell, he was a prodigy at intimidating other kids, even ones larger than himself. It gave him a sense of power and triumph when they cringed and sobbed and ran away, a sense of control when he hit and they cowered.

Didn’t solve his problem with his old man, though. When Calder was seventeen he bought a derelict car with money he’d earned at a fast-food place. His own fucking money. John Farris hated that car, hated that Calder could get into it and escape anytime he goddamn well pleased. So when Calder got a speeding ticket, it was a no-brainer that John Farris was going to make it an issue and take the car away.

That night, that argument, was lividly burned into Calder’s memory, every corrosive word. Calder wasn’t going to let his father take the keys, would have died before he’d allowed it—just lain down in front of a steamroller if that had been the only alternative. So when his father had taken off his belt something inside Calder snapped.

He’d almost beaten his father to death that night. And then he ran—never saw the old man again. Years later, Capt. John Farris II had died and there had been one less prick in the world. End of story. Except for some reason Mark Avery’s death had made those memories come rising to the top like a bloated corpse in a lake. Fuck if he knew why. Calder had gotten over his old man years ago.

And as soon as he discovered the Next Big Thing and got promoted to major, he would have bested John Farris II at the only thing he ever cared about—the military—and exorcised the jerk-off completely.

There was a knock on the window—it was Troy. Calder rolled it down an inch.

“Lieutenant Farris, you’d better come inside.”

Inside the house, the sergeant motioned toward the stairs. Calder took them two at a time. He found Hinkle in the master bedroom, standing over a figure on the bed. It was Ansel—a very dead Ansel.

“Suicide.” Hinkle held up a prescription bottle. “No label. Not sure what it was.”