Fidelity

33

Hobart had finished digging the grave. It was well over six feet deep, so the barrow of dirt on each side above his head was at least a yard high when he had hit rock. He liked working in the dark. He liked the feel of the night outside the city, the sounds and the smells. Hobart had done this kind of digging a few times before, and he had strong opinions about it. A deep grave was still the best way to hide a body because the police were never so overfunded or underworked that they could afford to dig to bedrock over a large area.

He would normally have used the shovel to dig a narrow incline to walk his way up out of the grave, but this time he didn’t want to do that. It would ruin the squared-off, gravelike appearance. He stuck the shovel in the mound to his left, then placed both hands on the flat ground just beyond the edge, jumped, and pulled himself up at the head of the grave.

Hobart had spent a lot of time on Emily Kramer. He had stalked her, considered her in moments of absolute terror that would have reduced some women to hysteria or unconsciousness, but she seemed to maintain a shaky alertness. He respected people who clung to life that way, but he needed to finish this whole Emily Kramer business tonight. He was probably going to have to kill her and drive up to meet Theodore Forrest and collect his two hundred thousand.

Hobart left the shovel and walked through the field toward the house, feeling a kind of pride in his own workmanship. There was not a sliver of light coming from any window, although he had left the bathroom light on. There was a skill to being an outlaw. The only people who knew and respected it were the people who had it and the people who made a living chasing them down, but a man who did things right lasted a little longer.

He walked along, and suddenly felt the vibration of his cell phone against his thigh. He reached into his pocket, pulled it out and opened it. “Yes?”

The voice he heard was one he had not expected exactly, but dreaded. “Hi. Can you talk for a second?” Theodore Forrest.

Hobart said quietly, “I can, but I’d rather not.”

“I mean are you alone?”

“For now.”

“I’ve been afraid you had gotten into a mess of some kind. I had expected to hear from you.”

“I told you about a day ago that I would call you after it’s taken care of. I think I told you that I didn’t want you calling me.”

“I know, I know. But there were special circumstances. It was before I burned down the house and the office. And now I think I’m going to need you for something else.”

Hobart’s mind seemed to darken, and then flash wildly from one step to the next, changing each of the topics that had occupied him for the past few days. “You set those fires?”

“Yes, I did. Kramer had some things that I couldn’t leave lying around much longer. They had to be in his house or the office.”

“I told you I would handle everything here.”

“It was a totally separate issue. You’re handling Emily Kramer for me. I had to prepare for what happens next. After she’s dead, the police would have searched her house and her husband’s office completely. I couldn’t have my name connected with the Kramers or the agency. So I took care of it.”

Hobart could hear the pride in Forrest’s voice. Forrest was enjoying telling him in this casual tone that he had taken care of his problem himself. Hobart stopped walking and stood in the dark field a hundred yards from the house. He turned to look at the road in the distance. He could see it, but only because a car came along, the bright cone in front of its headlights illuminating a stretch at a time. He said, “I’m surprised you would do something like that yourself. I hope you managed to accomplish it without getting noticed.”

“I’m positive I did. That’s not really why I called. I have another situation up here that I’d like to have you handle for me. When can you finish what you’re doing down there?”

“As it happens, I’m sort of in the middle of it right now. I just finished digging the grave.”

“Great! Wonderful. As soon as it’s over, come up here.”

“I was planning to, anyway. That was our deal. Have you got my pay ready?”

“Of course.”

“All right, then. She’ll be dead and buried in a half hour or so. This other thing you want me to do. What is it?”

“Just the same kind of job.”

“Same pay.”

“This one’s much, much easier. I’ve already got her locked up. There’s no hunting or stalking involved.”

“The hard part isn’t that stuff, it’s keeping anyone from figuring out why. That’s what the money buys you: never having to take the blame. I’ll be up to get my pay for what I’m doing now. I’ll probably be there tomorrow evening. If you want me to do anything else, fine. The pay will be the same. If you decide you don’t, that will be fine, too. Are we set?”

“Yes. I’ll have the money for both jobs here.”

“As I said, the second one’s up to you. From here on, let me be the one to call you. And after tomorrow, you’ll want to throw away that cell phone.”

“I will. See you tomorrow.”

Hobart put his telephone away. The call from Forrest was not merely a shock, it was a contravention of the rules of the universe. He could accept the idea that Theodore Forrest would think burning the house and the office might be to his advantage. But he had not imagined that Forrest would drive all the way down here and set the fires himself, or that he could accomplish the job and drive back without getting caught.

Hobart had acted on the axiom that Theodore Forrest would never do anything risky himself, particularly when there was no guarantee that the evidence would be destroyed. Hobart had assumed that the ones who had set the fires had to be Emily Kramer and her boyfriend, the detective from the agency. Hobart had interpreted the fires as a sign that they had already found the evidence and wanted to throw him off.

Forrest’s call changed everything.

It was entirely possible that Emily Kramer had never found anything, and that Theodore Forrest had succeeded in destroying the evidence himself, just by striking two matches. Hobart had spent all this time and effort to get his turn in line for the big money. He could have dropped the hammer on Emily Kramer on the first day, but he hadn’t. He had taken risks, shown his face all over town, rented cars and hotel rooms. Now he was back at zero. While Hobart had been screwing around trying to find proof of whatever the hell Theodore Forrest had done, he had given Forrest time to burn it.

He hated Theodore Forrest. He had done something, all right. He had almost said it on the phone. He had done something so shameful that he would come all the way down here alone and take the chance of getting caught committing arson to hide it. What could he have done that rated this kind of risk? It had to involve killing somebody, at least. Knowing that made Hobart feel worse. He could have made Forrest pay millions to keep that hidden, but Forrest had beaten him.

Hobart thought about Emily Kramer and got angrier. He was going to have to put her in that grave and shovel the dirt on top of her tonight. He resumed his walk through the weeds toward the house. He had begun to like Emily Kramer. He knew that her looks affected him, but it wasn’t her fault. She was not the sort of woman who was beautiful enough to have a lifetime of special treatment behind her. She had married a loser of a private detective instead of some billionaire. But she was appealing to him. He hated the fact that she was going to die so soon. He and Emily Kramer were both getting screwed by Theodore Forrest.

Hobart went to the SW and took out the ski mask and the gun. He pulled the mask over his head and adjusted it so he could see through the eyeholes, slipped the gun into his belt, and walked back to the farmhouse. He stepped up on the porch, and when he was up there on the sloping boards, his head nearly brushed the overhanging roof. Most old farmhouses in places like this were small, like cottages. The farmer would build a little structure for his wife and himself, and if the marriage lasted and the crops came in, they would add rooms to the building for children. This farm must have been one where the marriage had soured. He walked across the bare parlor, hearing the boards creak under his weight, unlocked the bathroom door and opened it.

She was sitting where he had left her hours ago, her forearm resting on the sink so there was slack in the handcuff that held her to the bar. “Hello, Mrs. Kramer,” he said.

“Hello.” She held her head straight toward him. He could tell she had taken aside the tape over her eyes so she could see, and had pushed it back only when she had heard him step up on the porch. He reached to the corner she had pushed back. When he touched her, she pulled back and gave a startled cry.

“I’m taking your tape off.”

“Please don’t.”

“Why not?”

“If I don’t see your face, you can still let me go. And if you don’t let me go, I don’t need to see what’s coming.”

Hobart studied her for a moment. “I’m wearing the mask.” He reached to her face and peeled back the part of the tape that was already stuck only lightly, then gave a quick tug to pull off the rest.

“Ow!” Her eyes remained shut for a couple of seconds, then squinted and blinked in the light.

Hobart reached into his pocket for the key, then unlocked the handcuffs from the steel bar. “Stand up.”

She stood. He spun her around, took her free hand behind her back, and closed the handcuff on it. Then he stepped back, but the sight of him in the ski mask seemed to paralyze her.

“Come on.” He took her arm and conducted her toward the door. She didn’t resist, and it made him wonder. He expected her to ask where they were going, but as he pulled her through the house and opened the front door, she said nothing. She seemed to have realized that what she said would not dissuade him from whatever he intended to do, so she just walked. Later she would try to fight. She had her hands cuffed behind her, she was unarmed against a much bigger, stronger, armed opponent, but she would fight.

Hobart led her down the porch steps to the dry, dusty ground in front of the house, and then into the overgrown field. He heard the weeds whipping the fabric of their pants as they walked. He could smell the broken stems in the dark night air.

When they had gone a hundred yards, he could tell she saw the grave. Her breath caught, and she went rigid for a second. Then she walked a bit unsteadily for a couple of steps, but tried to hide it, until she began to cry.

EMILY WAS GOING to die. The earth, the calm, warm night air, the complex smell of the pollens and roots of the weeds and the juicy smell from the broken shafts all seemed vivid. She felt as though it was probably appropriate to cry, but she managed to stop. Crying was bleeding her of strength.

She said quietly, “I really didn’t burn down my own house. I’ve been telling you the truth.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Doesn’t it matter to you?”

“Matter? Sure it does. I didn’t set those fires, and you didn’t. He did-the man the evidence is about. He got there while I was wasting my time on you. Bad luck for both of us.”

“So you’re going to kill me and bury me in a hole in the middle of the night. My fam-my friends-will never know what happened to me.”

“That’s the plan.”

`But that won’t help you, it will just help him. If I’m gone, then there won’t be anybody who knows he killed my husband to hide some crime. There won’t be anybody left who knows he had anything to do with us.”

“I gave it my best effort. If I had the evidence, then he wouldn’t get away with any crimes. I searched for it, I held you up for it, I broke into your husband’s office. I scared you into trying to find it. The time is up, and I still don’t have it-my time and your time.”

“It’s not up. We can still keep trying.”

“He’s already destroyed it. He’s in control now. All I can do is kill you and collect my money.”

Emily considered telling him. She knew where the evidence was. She knew it had not been destroyed. She knew what the box looked like, and approximately what it contained. But she knew that the idea of trading the evidence for her life was an illusion. If she told this man, he would kill her. And then he would kill Sam Bowen to get the box. She had to get that idea out of her mind. There was no giving in, no surrender.

There was nothing left to do but try to fight him. She would try to butt her forehead into his face. She would take advantage of his momentary shock and pain and kick him, trying to push him into the grave. Then, whether she succeeded or not, she would run toward the highway. Immediately she noticed that having a plan, no matter how foolish, made her feel stronger.

As she walked, she worked out various details. She would have to make her move a surprise when she was at the grave. When she ran, she would have to sprint as fast as she could for a minute or two with her hands behind her. It would be difficult to keep from falling with her hands cuffed like that. She hoped that walking this way would be enough practice to help her do it. In any case, this was all the preparation she would get. She concentrated on hating him, visualizing her head smashing into his face.

He said, “If you can tell me where the evidence is, then I’ll leave you alive. I’ll get in my car and drive off. It will take you an hour or so to walk to town and wake somebody up or flag down a car on the road. That’s all the time I’ll need. I’ll leave you alone.”

Emily made herself the perfect liar. She had no doubt that he intended to kill her, and that telling him about the box would only get other people killed. “If I had found it, I would have given it to you. I haven’t found it. At this point, I’m wondering if this evidence even exists. Maybe if Phil said he had it, he was bluffing. I don’t know. In a few minutes, it’s not going to matter-at least to me. I’ll be dead, won’t I?”

The man in the mask kept her walking toward the grave, and Emily could make out its exact shape and contours. The hole looked deep and dark. There were two high piles of dirt-one on each of the long sides-but the head and foot were clear. She walked toward what she felt was the head, hoping he would come, too, and he did.

There were three more steps. Two. One. She whirled and used her legs to spring into him to butt his face, but he seemed to have become smoke. He wasn’t there. He was already to the side of where he had been. He tripped her and pushed so she fell full length on her belly beside the grave. In an instant, he was straddling her. She felt the gun muzzle pressed against her cheek.

He said, “That wasn’t a very effective move.”

She was trembling a little, waiting. She wondered if she would hear the shot.

Then she felt the gun move away from her cheek. He seemed to be putting it out of her reach somewhere. So that was it. He was going to rape her before he killed her. She felt his weight shift downward so his body was above her thighs. She prepared herself for her clothes to come off.

He was fiddling with her handcuffs. There was a click, then another. The handcuffs came away from her wrists.

He said, “I can’t let you walk a road like that with handcuffs on. If the wrong car comes along, you’re liable to end up dead, anyway.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“You don’t have what I want.”

“But the grave. I thought-“

“I need to have a half hour or so before anybody comes after me. It’ll take you that long to dig your way out. Get up.”

Emily stood. He took her hand and lowered her into the grave. She looked up, and it disturbed her to see the sky as a dim rectangle of light with the man in the ski mask framed in it. All he had to do was pull out the gun, shoot her, and push the dirt in on top of her.

He said, “I’m sorry I put you through all that for nothing, especially making you strip that night and everything. I thought you had what I needed.”

She said nothing.

He turned away, and for a moment she heard the sound of him walking through the weeds.

She stepped backward to the wall of dirt at the foot of the grave. She was not a tall woman, and the opening looked far above her head. She waited for the sound of the man’s footsteps to come back, but she didn’t hear any. The earth smelled wet and loamy, even though it hadn’t rained for months. She imagined there were worms and bugs, but the grave felt like a refuge now.

After what seemed like a long time, she heard a car engine, and then the sound of tires on gravel, with the ticking of stones kicked up against the steel undercarriage. Then she heard the deeper sound of the engine accelerating. She couldn’t tell which direction it was going from down here, and she knew she was going to regret not having better hearing. The sound faded.

Emily allowed herself to feel a tentative sense of relief, and then as though she had opened a window in a flood, the joy roared in to engulf her. She took a breath of air and it seemed to keep coming, her lungs filling to strain her rib cage. She let the air out in a long, low “Oooooh-hooo.” But her voice still sounded scared. “I’m alive,” she said aloud. Then she put her head in her hands and allowed herself to cry. After a time, she seemed to run out of tears, and she took off her jacket and dried her tears on her sleeve.

Emily looked around her. She would have to dig her way out with her hands, just as he had said. She tried to jump up and pull some of the dirt down into the hole, but she couldn’t reach high enough. She tried three more times, but with each jump she was farther from succeeding. She tried digging a set of footholds into the earth wall at the end of the grave, like the rungs of a ladder. It took a long time, and it hurt her fingers. She couldn’t seem to make the holes deep enough to hold her weight, and each time she tried to climb, her foothold would break and she would fall back down. Finally she measured a spot on the wall that was as high as she could raise her foot, and concentrated on gouging one big hole in the wall at that spot.

When it was as deep as she could make it, she placed her right foot in it, raised her body up, and placed both her hands at the rim of the grave. She tangled her hands in the thick weeds, pushed off with her foot, and got her chest up to the surface. She used her hands to grasp other clumps of weeds as they came within her reach, dug her toes into the earth, and pulled herself out onto the ground. She lay there for a time, recovering her strength and her wind. Then she lifted her head to look around her slowly and carefully.

She could see the little house where she had spent the day and night handcuffed and in terror. It seemed harmless and empty now. She rose to her knees and took a long and careful look in every direction for some sign that the man had come back. She got to her feet and looked again, and then began to walk toward the distant road.

After a few minutes, Emily heard the sound of car engines in the distance, then saw a row of headlights coming up the dark road. She walked toward it, then began to trot, then broke into a run. As the lights approached, she could see that they were all too close together, too regularly spaced to be normal traffic. They were coming at a very high speed. When the cars reached the entrance to the long gravel road into the farm, they all pulled to the shoulder of the highway. Two men jumped out of the lead car in the glare of the headlights behind them, and she could see their car was a police car. The two men opened a metal gate, running with it to make it swing out of the way. The other cars all moved around the lead car. Four of them kept going, accelerating along the road past the farm, but the others all made the turn onto the gravel road.

Searchlights on the police cars swept across the weedy fields. When they crossed the gravel drive, they illuminated clouds of dust that their tires had kicked up. One of the beams swept across her, stopped, and came back to settle on her. Then the other beams joined it, and made it so bright that she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She just stood still and held her arms over her head.

She heard a man’s voice amplified electronically: “Are you Emily Kramer?”

“Yes,” she shouted, and nodded her head dramatically so they could see it from a distance.

She heard the sounds of running feet now, heavy footsteps and the whipping of weeds against their legs. A closer voice said, “Where is the man who took you?”

“He left. I don’t know how long it’s been. I had to dig myself out of a hole. At least half an hour or forty minutes, maybe an hour.” The lights seemed to dim a bit, so she opened her eyes. There were tall black silhouettes around her. One caught up with the others, and suddenly wrapped its arms around her.

“Emily,” he said.

“Hi, Ray. I knew if anybody looked hard enough for me, it would be you.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. He just kept me handcuffed and asked me questions. I’m just really tired.”

“You’ll be able to rest. They’ll take you to the hospital and clean you up and make sure you’re all right.”

A big new silhouette appeared. “You’re safe now, Mrs. Kramer.” It was the voice of Detective Gruenthal. “Mr. Hall, I’d like you to ride with Officer Daniels here, and we’ll take Mrs. Kramer with us. We need to talk.”

Emily made a decision at that moment, and she was not even certain why. It was possible that it was simply the “You’re safe now,” which she had heard before and no longer believed. She would tell them all about the kidnapping and the man in the ski mask. But somehow the other part-the part she had figured out and kept from telling the man in the mask-didn’t belong to the police; at least not yet. It belonged to her.