Death Benefits

27

“Listen to this.” Stillman handed the telephone receiver to Walker.

“This is Jim. If you want to leave a message, wait until you hear the beep.” Walker hung up, then looked up at Stillman. “That’s him?”

Stillman shrugged. “He’s the only one who wasn’t home when I called.”

His name was James Scully, and he lived in a town called Coulter, New Hampshire. Walker had not heard the voice before, because when he had shot the man, he had heard nothing but the sound of the gun. He had just finished listening to a ghost. Walker looked at his watch. “It’s three-thirty A.M. We’ve got his name and his address. What do you think? Do we call the police or the FBI?”

Stillman frowned at the wall for a few seconds. “Not just yet.”

Walker watched him. “What do you have against the police? You were a cop once.”

Stillman slowly turned to face Walker. “Who told you about that?”

“The police captain in Miami. The one who asked all the questions,” said Walker.

Stillman looked at the carpet for a moment, then raised his eyes again. “I don’t have anything against the police. Or the FBI, for that matter. But they’re in a slightly different business than we are.”

“What do you mean? What’s different?”

“They’re in the business of arresting and convicting people.”

Walker stood up and walked across the room. “Isn’t that what we want? This isn’t some isolated fraud that’s going to be okay the minute we get the money back. They’re not just stealing money from a company. They’re doing it by taking ordinary people, one at a time, and killing them. Somebody’s got to get arrested.”

“I’m just not sure this is the time,” said Stillman. “Suppose we call the FBI and bring them up here. They’re at Scully’s house by morning. They begin an investigation—go around methodically and thoroughly collecting all the evidence in little plastic bags. The investigation hits on all cylinders, they eventually ferret out every one of the people who were in on this, put them on trial, and convict them of everything they did.”

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

“The trouble is, an investigation like that takes at least two months with a strong wind behind it. If it succeeds, they make arrests. The trials begin six months after that, if the federal attorneys prepare their case with due speed and diligence. All that has got to happen, of course. And since they’re already on the case, we couldn’t get them off it if we wanted to.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“What I just said. The second we make that call and let them actually talk to us without McClaren’s in between, we’re out. The FBI is not going to let us keep poking into everything we have a theory about.”

“Are they wrong?”

“No,” said Stillman. “They’re right. But right now we know who one of these guys was and where he lived. His buddies may or may not know that much. Maybe they know Scully’s dead, but the last time they could have seen him was in Miami, where the police are telling reporters they don’t know who he is. It’s possible that James Scully’s house is just the way he left it. By the time the FBI could get up to speed, it may not be.”

Walker thought for a moment. “What if the Miami police have already figured out who Scully and the other one were? How do we find out at this time of night?”

Stillman shrugged. “The time of night isn’t the problem. If they don’t want to release information, they won’t. If they do, it’ll be in the papers.”

“Serena,” said Walker. “She was reading the Miami Herald today. Maybe it’s late enough for the morning edition.” He dialed the number, and Serena’s voice came on instantly.

“Yes?”

“Hi,” he said. “It’s the usual me. I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but it’s—”

“What hour?”

“It’s three thirty-five here, so it’s twelve thirty-five there, right?”

Her voice was amused. “You didn’t know? This is when we do most of our work, sweetheart. The preteen geeks and stock traders are asleep, the phone lines and networks are clear, so things happen faster. Haven’t you ever noticed that languid, sensuous look I have around the eyes in the daytime?”

“I’ve never seen you during the day,” he said.

“Oh. Well, we’ll have to go have a picnic beside the freeway, or whatever it is people do.”

“I called to see if the Miami police had announced anything about who those two guys were.”

“No,” said Serena. “But they’re still trying. The FBI has been doing tests on the two bodies.”

“We know,” said Walker. “The company has been talking with them.”

“Do you know about the blood tests?”

“No. What about them?”

“The cops type the blood at a shooting scene right away to figure out whose blood got spattered where. These two both had O positive—not unusual, but inconvenient. So the FBI sent samples to a lab in Wisconsin that does DNA tests. That was in the Miami papers, so I hacked into the e-mail at Donnard Laboratories to see what they were saying to each other. Apparently there are at least two kinds of examinations. One takes a month or two, and tells you more than you wanted to know. But while they’re doing it, they get preliminary results that can at least tell one person’s blood from another’s. They told the FBI that the two men were relatives. Not brothers, though, or father and son. Something more distant, like second cousins.”

“Can they tell that?”

“They seemed to think they could, and I don’t know why they’d say so to the FBI if they weren’t sure. I mean, how many customers can a company like that have? And it makes theoretical sense. First cousins would share one-eighth of their genes, so these guys share less than that, but more than two random guys.” She paused. “Are you even listening?”

“Yes,” said Walker. “I’m trying to figure out what it means.”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It’s not going to be a shock to the FBI that criminals sometimes have relatives who are also criminals. Do you have news for me?”

“I guess all I’ve got is questions. We’ve figured out that one of those two guys was named James Scully, and he lived at 117 Birch Street, Coulter, New Hampshire.”

“C-O-L-T-E-R?”

“With a U. C-O-U-L—”

“Got it. Right here on the handy New Hampshire tourism Web page. What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you know.”

“Population, four hundred and twenty-eight—or twenty-seven, now.” She paused. “No pictures of it. Founded in 1753—no big deal. So was everything else around there. It’s not too far from Keene. It’s about an hour northeast of you, on Route 9. That’s marked as a scenic route, so let me see if they say anything about that. Yes. It’s called the Old Concord Road, because eventually it gets to the state capital. It says ‘eventually’ because it winds around a bit. That’s all I can see. Coulter seems to be just one of a few dozen places just like it.”

“Okay. We’ll find it.”

“You stopped using Stillman’s credit card. Where are you calling from?”

“The Days Inn in Keene. The number is—”

“That much I just got, from caller ID. What room?”

“Stillman is 93, and I’m 95.”

“Cozy. Are you going to Coulter now?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“Be careful. Stay close to Stillman and do what he says.” She corrected herself. “I guess staying close to Stillman isn’t being careful. Just remember he’s been doing stupid things a long time, and he’s alive, so pay attention.”

“He’d be flattered.”

“I’m going to drop everything else and find out whatever I can about James Scully.”

“Do you—” But the line was dead.

“I’d be flattered about what?” asked Stillman. Walker turned and saw that he was taking things out of his suitcase, putting some of them into his leather bag, and others into his pockets.

“She pointed out that you’re alive.”

“Smart as a whip, that girl. Presumes very little on your time, too.”

“That hasn’t escaped my attention,” said Walker glumly. “I’ve talked to her about three times in the past two days, and she’s hung up on me every time.” He added, “The police don’t know the names yet.”

“Get your stuff. Wear jeans and hiking boots and a jacket. Try to look like a harmless, respectable guy on vacation. I’ll meet you in the car.”

Five minutes later, Walker found Stillman sitting in the passenger seat of the Explorer studying a map in the light from the open glove compartment. Walker got in and drove out West Street until he saw the sign for Route 9 he had remembered. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. “It’s already almost four. She said it’s about an hour away. Is four forty-five A.M. a good time to arrive in Coulter?”

Stillman said, “It’ll do. We’ll take a look around before they get to look at us.”

“There are four hundred and twenty-eight people.”

“I’ll keep count when I see one,” said Stillman. “What else did she tell you?”

“The FBI apparently hasn’t identified Scully and his friend yet, but they know they were related.”

“What do you mean, related? How?”

“Like second cousins, but not as close as first cousins. They had some company do DNA tests. Don’t ask me to explain more than that. She stole it off some e-mail the company was sending to the FBI. Smart as a whip, as you said.”

Stillman was staring ahead at the road, and his brow was furrowed.

“What?” asked Walker. “Does that mean something?”

“It’s odd,” Stillman mused. “Brothers, I can easily take in stride. Somebody comes up with a way of making big money, tells one of them, and asks if there’s somebody else he can trust to bring in on it. The one he thinks of is his brother. Fine for us, because we can find a brother. But this business of second cousins twice removed or something, how do we use it? Most likely they’d have different last names, and nobody but them would even know they were related. That’s no help.”

“I suppose not,” said Walker. He drove in silence for a while. Stillman’s sharp eyes stared, unblinking, into the dark, until Walker said, “Is there something else wrong?”

“I was thinking about all of them: Ellen Snyder, Fred Teller, the two people who got killed in their swimming pool, the guy in that swamp in Florida.”

“What about them?”

“I was thinking we’re way behind. We still haven’t figured out very much about the way these people are doing this, or what they’ll do next. I’d say that all we can be sure of is that they always move a little faster than we can, and they don’t mind killing people.”

“We know a little more than that. We know about James Scully.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Stillman. “After all this time, we managed to get through all the intentional confusion just once. This time while we were flailing around, we reached in blind and got our hands on a throat. The fellow’s dead, but all we can do is keep squeezing.”