13
TINA KEPT A WELL-STOCKED BAR IN ONE CORNER OF her office for those infrequent occasions when a business associate needed a drink after a long work session. This was the first time she'd ever had the need to tap those stores for herself.
At her request, Elliot poured R é my Martin into two snifters and gave one glass to her. She couldn't pour for them because her hands were shaking too badly.
They sat on the beige sofa, more in the shadows than in the glow from the lamps. She was forced to hold her brandy snifter in both hands to keep it steady.
"I don't know where to begin. I guess I ought to start with Danny. Do you know about Danny?"
"Your son?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Helen Mainway told me he died a little over a year ago."
"Did she tell you how it happened?"
"He was one of the Jaborski group. Front page of the papers."
Bill Jaborski had been a wilderness expert and a scout-master. Every winter for sixteen years, he had taken a group of scouts to northern Nevada, beyond Reno, into the High Sierras, on a seven-day wilderness survival excursion.
"It was supposed to build character," Tina said. "And the boys competed hard all year for the chance to be one of those selected to go on the trip. It was supposed to be perfectly safe. Bill Jaborski was supposed to be one of the ten top winter-survival experts in the country. That's what everyone said. And the other adult who went along, Tom Lincoln—he was supposed to be almost as good as Bill. Supposed to be." Her voice had grown thin and bitter. "I believed them, thought it was safe."
"You can't blame yourself for that. All those years they'd taken kids into the mountains, nobody was even scratched."
Tina swallowed some cognac. It was hot in her throat, but it didn't burn away the chill at the center of her.
A year ago Jaborski's excursion had included fourteen boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. All of them were top-notch scouts—and all of them died along with Jaborski and Tom Lincoln.
"Have the authorities ever figured out exactly why it happened?" Elliot asked.
"Not why. They never will. All they know is how. The group went into the mountains in a four-wheel-drive minibus built for use on back roads in the winter. Huge tires. Chains. Even a snowplow on the front. They weren't supposed to go into the true heart of the wilderness. Just into the fringes. No one in his right mind would take boys as young as twelve into the deepest parts of the Sierras, no matter how well prepared, supplied, and trained they were, no matter how strong, no matter how many big brothers were there to look out for them."
Jaborski had intended to drive the minibus off the main highway, onto an old logging trail, if conditions permitted. From there they were going to hike for three days with snowshoes and backpacks, making a wide circle around the bus, coming back to it at the end of the week.
"They had the best wilderness clothing and the best down-lined sleeping bags, the best winter tents, plenty of charcoal and other heat sources, plenty of food, and two wilderness experts to guide them. Perfectly safe, everyone said. Absolutely, perfectly safe. So what the fuck went wrong?"
Tina could no longer sit still. She got up and began to pace, taking another swallow of cognac.
Elliot said nothing. He seemed to know that she had to go through the whole story to get it off her mind.
"Something sure as hell went wrong," she said. "Somehow, for some reason, they drove the bus more than four miles off the main highway, four miles off and a hell of a long way up, right up to the damn clouds. They drove up a steep, abandoned logging trail, a deteriorated dirt road so treacherous, so choked with snow, so icy that only a fool would have attempted to negotiate it any way but on foot."
The bus had run off the road. There were no guardrails in the wilderness, no wide shoulders at the roadside with gentle slopes beyond. The vehicle skidded, then dropped a hundred feet straight onto rocks. The fuel tank exploded. The bus opened like a tin can and rolled another hundred feet into the trees.
"The kids . . . everyone . . . killed." The bitterness in her voice dismayed her because it revealed how little she had healed. "Why? Why did a man like Bill Jaborski do something so stupid as that?"
Still sitting on the couch, Elliot shook his head and stared down at his cognac.
She didn't expect him to answer. She wasn't actually asking the question of him; if she was asking anyone, she was asking God.
"Why? Jaborski was the best. The very best. He was so good that he could safely take young boys into the Sierras for sixteen years, a challenge a lot of other winter survival experts wouldn't touch. Bill Jaborski was smart, tough, clever, and filled with respect for the danger in what he did. He wasn't foolhardy. Why would he do something so dumb, so reckless, as to drive that far along that road in those conditions?"
Elliot looked up at her. Kindness marked his eyes, a deep sympathy. "You'll probably never learn the answer. I understand how hard it must be never to know why."
"Hard," she said. "Very hard."
She returned to the couch.
He took her glass out of her hand. It was empty. She didn't remember finishing her cognac. He went to the bar.
"No more for me," she said. "I don't want to get drunk."
"Nonsense," he said. "In your condition, throwing off all that nervous energy the way you are, two small brandies won't affect you in the slightest."
He returned from the bar with more R é my Martin. This time she was able to hold the glass in one hand.
"Thank you, Elliot."
"Just don't ask for a mixed drink," he said. "I'm the world's worst bartender. I can pour anything straight or over ice, but I can't even mix vodka and orange juice properly."
"I wasn't thanking you for the drink. I was thanking you for ... being a good listener."
"Most attorneys talk too much."
For a moment they sat in silence, sipping cognac.
Tina was still tense, but she no longer felt cold inside.
Elliot said, "Losing a child like that . . . devastating. But it wasn't any recollection of your son that had you so upset when I walked in a little while ago."
"In a way it was."
"But something more."
She told him about the bizarre things that had been happening to her lately: the messages on Danny's chalkboard; the wreckage she'd found in the boy's room; the hateful, taunting words that appeared in the computer lists and on the monitor.
Elliot studied the printouts, and together they examined the computer in Angela's office. They plugged it in and tried to get it to repeat what it had done earlier, but they had no luck; the machine behaved exactly as it was meant to behave.
"Someone could have programmed it to spew out this stuff about Danny," Elliot said. "But I don't see how he could make the terminal switch itself on."
"It happened," she said.
"I don't doubt you. I just don't understand."
"And the air ... so cold . . ."
"Could the temperature change have been subjective?"
Tina frowned. "Are you asking me if I imagined it?"
"You were frightened—"
"But I'm sure I didn't imagine it. Angela felt the chill first, when she got the initial printout with those lines about Danny. It isn't likely Angela and I both just imagined it."
"True." He stared thoughtfully at the computer. "Come on."
"Where?"
"Back in your office. I left my drink there. Need to lubricate my thoughts."
She followed him into the wood-paneled inner sanctum.
He picked up his brandy snifter from the low table in front of the sofa, and he sat on the edge of her desk. "Who? Who could be doing it to you?"
"I haven't a clue."
"You must have somebody in mind."
"I wish I did."
"Obviously, it's somebody who at the very least dislikes you, if he doesn't actually hate you. Someone who wants you to suffer. He blames you for Danny's death . . . and it's apparently a personal loss to him, so it can hardly be a stranger."
Tina was disturbed by his analysis because it matched her own, and it led her into the same blind alley that she'd traveled before. She paced between the desk and the drapery-covered windows. "This afternoon I decided it has to be a stranger. I can't think of anyone I know who'd be capable of this sort of thing even if they did hate me enough to contemplate it. And I don't know of anyone but Michael who places any of the blame for Danny's death on me."
Elliot raised his eyebrows. "Michael's your ex-husband?"
"Yes,"
"And he blames you for Danny's death?"
"He says I never should have let him go with Jaborski. But this isn't Michael's dirty work."
"He sounds like an excellent candidate to me."
"No."
"Are you certain?"
"Absolutely. It's someone else."
Elliot tasted his cognac. "You'll probably need professional help to catch him in one of his tricks."
"You mean the police?"
"I don't think the police would be much help. They probably won't think it's serious enough to waste their time. After all, you haven't been threatened."
"There's an implicit threat in all of this."
"Oh, yeah, I agree. It's scary. But the cops are a literal bunch, not much impressed by implied threats. Besides, to properly watch your house . . . that alone will require a lot more manpower than the police can spare for anything except a murder case, a hot kidnapping, or maybe a narcotics investigation."
She stopped pacing. "Then what did you mean when you said I'd probably need professional help to catch this creep?"
"Private detectives."
"Isn't that melodramatic?"
He smiled sourly. "Well, the person who's harassing you has a melodramatic streak a mile wide."
She sighed and sipped some cognac and sat on the edge of the couch. "I don't know . . . Maybe I'd hire private detectives, and they wouldn't catch anyone but me."
"Send that one by me again."
She had to take another small sip of cognac before she was able to say what was on her mind, and she realized that he had been right about the liquor having little effect on her. She felt more relaxed than she'd been ten minutes ago, but she wasn't even slightly tipsy. "It's occurred to me . . . maybe I wrote those words on the chalkboard. Maybe / wrecked Danny's room."
"You've lost me."
"Could have done it in my sleep."
'That's ridiculous, Tina."
"Is it? I thought I'd begun to get over Danny's death back in September. I started sleeping well then. I didn't dwell on it when I was alone, like I'd done for so long. I thought I'd put the worst pain behind me. But a month ago I started dreaming about Danny again. The first week, it happened twice. The second week, four nights. And the past two weeks, I've dreamed about him every night without fail. The dreams get worse all the time. They're full-fledged nightmares now."
Elliot returned to the couch and sat beside her. "What are they like?"
"I dream he's alive, trapped somewhere, usually in a deep pit or a gorge or a well, someplace underground. He's calling to me, begging me to save him. But I can't. I'm never able to reach him. Then the earth starts closing in around him, and I wake up screaming, soaked with sweat. And I ... I always have this powerful feeling that Danny isn't really dead. It never lasts for long, but when I first wake up, I'm sure he's alive somewhere. You see, I've convinced my conscious mind that my boy is dead, but when |'m asleep it's my subconscious mind that's in charge; and my subconscious just isn't convinced that Danny's gone."
"So you think you're—what, sleepwalking? In your sleep, you're writing a rejection of Danny's death on his chalkboard?"
"Don't you believe that's possible?"
"No. Well . . . maybe. I guess it is," Elliot said. "I'm no psychologist. But I don't buy it. I'll admit I don't know you all that well yet, but I think I know you well enough to say you wouldn't react that way. You're a person who meets problems head-on. If your inability to accept Danny's death was a serious problem, you wouldn't push it down into your subconscious. You'd learn to deal with it."
She smiled. "You have a pretty high opinion of me."
"Yes," he said. "I do. Besides, if it was you who wrote on the chalkboard and smashed things in the boy's room, then it was also you who came in here during the night and programmed the hotel computer to spew out that stuff about Danny. Do you really think you're so far gone that you could do something like that and not remember it? Do you think you've got multiple personalities and one doesn't know what the others are up to?"
She sank back on the sofa, slouched down. "No."
"Good."
"So where does that leave us?"
"Don't despair. We're making progress."
"We are?"
"Sure," he said. "We're eliminating possibilities. We've just crossed you off the list of suspects. And Michael. And I'm positive it can't be a stranger, which rules out most of the world."
"And I'm just as positive it isn't a friend or a relative. So you know where that leaves me?"
"Where?"
She leaned forward, put her brandy snifter on the table, and for a moment sat with her face in her hands.
"Tina?"
She lifted her head. "I'm just trying to think how best to phrase what's on my mind. It's a wild idea. Ludicrous. Probably even sick."
"I'm not going to think you're nuts," Elliot assured her. "What is it? Tell me."
She hesitated, trying to hear how it was going to sound before she said it, wondering if she really believed it enough even to give voice to it. The possibility of what she was going to suggest was remote.
At last she just plunged into it: "What I'm thinking . . . maybe Danny is alive."
Elliot cocked his head, studied her with those probing, dark eyes. "Alive?"
"I never saw his body."
"You didn't? Why not?"
"The coroner and undertaker said it was in terrible condition, horribly mutilated. They didn't think it was a good idea for me or Michael to see it Neither of us would have been anxious to view the body even if it had been in perfect shape, so we accepted the mortician's recommendations. It was a closed-coffin funeral."
"How did the authorities identify the body?"
"They asked for pictures of Danny. But mainly I think they used dental records."
"Dental records are almost as good as fingerprints."
"Almost. But maybe Danny didn't die in that accident. Maybe he survived. Maybe someone out there knows where he is. Maybe that someone is trying to tell me that Danny is alive. Maybe there isn't any threat in these strange things happening to me. Maybe someone's just dropping a series of hints, trying to wake me up to the fact that Danny isn't dead."
'Too many maybes," he said.
"Maybe not."
Elliot put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently.
"Tina, you know this theory doesn't make sense. Danny is dead."
"See? You do think I'm crazy."
"No. I think you're distraught, and that's understandable."
"Won't you even consider the possibility that he's alive?"
"How could he be?"
"I don't know."
"How could he have survived the accident you described?" Elliot asked.
"I don't know."
"And where would he have been all this time if not . . . in the grave?"
"I don't know that, either."
"If he were alive," Elliot said patiently, "someone would simply come and tell you. They wouldn't be this mysterious about it, would they?"
"Maybe."
Aware that her answer had disappointed him, she looked down at her hands, which were laced together so tightly that her knuckles were white.
Elliot touched her face, turning it gently toward him.
His beautiful, expressive eyes seemed to be filled with concern for her.
"Tina, you know there isn't any maybe about it. You know better than that. If Danny were alive, and if someone were trying to get that news to you, it wouldn't be done like this, not with all these dramatic hints. Am I right?"
"Probably."
"Danny is gone."
She said nothing.
"If you convince yourself he's alive," Elliot said, "you're only setting yourself up for another fall."
She stared deeply into his eyes. Eventually she sighed and nodded. "You're right."
"Danny's gone."
"Yes," she said thinly.
"You're really convinced of that?"
"Yes."
"Good."
Tina got up from the couch, went to the window, and pulled open the drapes. She had a sudden urge to see the Strip. After so much talk about death, she needed a glimpse of movement, action, life; and although the Strip sometimes was grubby in the flat glare of the desert sun, the boulevard was always, day or night, bustling and filled with life.
Now the early winter dusk settled over the city. In waves of dazzling color, millions of lights winked on in the enormous signs. Hundreds of cars progressed sluggishly through the busy street, taxicabs darting in and out, recklessly seeking any small advantage. Crowds streamed along the sidewalks, on their way from this casino to that casino, from one lounge to another, from one show to the next.
Tina turned to Elliot again. "You know what I want to do?"
"What?"
"Reopen the grave."
"Have Danny's body exhumed?"
"Yes. I never saw him. That's why I'm having such a hard time accepting that he's gone. That's why I'm having nightmares. If I'd seen the body, then I'd have known for sure. I wouldn't be able to fantasize about Danny still being alive."
"But the condition of the corpse . . ."
"I don't care," she said.
Elliot frowned, not convinced of the wisdom of exhumation. "The body's in an airtight casket, but it'll be even more deteriorated now than it was a year ago when they recommended you not look at it."
"I've got to see."
"You'd be letting yourself in for a horrible—"
"That's the idea," she said quickly. "Shock. A powerful shock treatment that'll finally blow away all my lingering doubts. If I see Danny's . . . remains, I won't be able to entertain any more doubts. The nightmares will stop."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps you'll wind up with even worse dreams."
She shook her head. "Nothing could be worse than the ones I'm having now."
"Of course," he said, "exhumation of the body won't answer the main question. It won't help you discover who's been harassing you."
"It might," Tina said. "Whoever the creep is, whatever his motivations are, he's not well-balanced. He's one sort of sickie or another. Right? Who knows what might make a person like that reveal himself? If he finds out there's going to be an exhumation, maybe he'll react strongly, give himself away. Anything's possible."
"I suppose you could be right."
"Anyway," she said, "even if reopening the grave doesn't help me find who's responsible for these sick jokes—or whatever the hell they are—at least it'll settle my mind about Danny. That'll improve my psychological condition for sure, and I'll be better able to deal with the creep, whoever he is. So it'll work out for the best either way." She returned from the window, sat on the couch again, beside Elliot. "I'll need an attorney to handle this, won't I?"
"The exhumation? Yeah."
"Will you represent me?"
He didn't hesitate. "Sure."
"How difficult will it be?"
"Well, there's no urgent legal reason to have the body exhumed. I mean, there isn't any doubt about the cause of death, no court trial hinging on a new coroner's report. If that were the situation, we'd have the grave opened very quickly. But even so, this shouldn't be terribly difficult. I'll play up the mother-suffering-distress angle, and the court ought to be sympathetic."
"Have you ever handled anything like this before?"
"In fact, I have," Elliot said. "Five years ago. This eight-year-old girl died unexpectantly of a congenital kidney disease. Both kidneys failed virtually overnight. One day she was a happy, normal kid. The next day she seemed to have a touch of flu, and the third day she was dead. Her mother was shattered, couldn't bear to view the body, though the daughter hadn't suffered substantial physical damage, the way Danny did. The mother wasn't even able to attend the service. A couple weeks after the little girl was buried, the mother started feeling guilty about not paying her last respects."
Remembering her own ordeal, Tina said, "I know. Oh, I know how it is."
"The guilt eventually developed into serious emotional problems. Because the mother hadn't seen the body in the funeral home, she just couldn't bring herself to believe her daughter was really dead. Her inability to accept the truth was a lot worse than yours. She was hysterical most of the time, in a slow-motion breakdown. I arranged to have the grave reopened. In the course of preparing the exhumation request for the authorities, I discovered that my client's reaction was typical. Apparently, when a child dies, one of the worst things a parent can do is refuse to look at the body while it's lying in a casket. You need to spend time with the deceased, enough to accept that the body is never going to be animated again."
"Was your client helped by exhumation?"
"Oh, yes. Enormously."
"You see?"
"But don't forget," Elliot said, "her daughter's body wasn't mutilated."
Tina nodded grimly.
"And we reopened the grave only two months after the funeral, not a whole year later. The body was still in pretty good condition. But with Danny . . . it won't be that way."
"I'm aware of that," she said. "God knows, I'm not happy about this, but I'm convinced it's something I've got to do."
"Okay. I'll take care of it."
"How long will you need?" she asked.
"Will your husband contest it?"
She recalled the hatred in Michael's face when she'd left him a few hours ago. "Yes. He probably will."
Elliot carried their empty brandy glasses to the bar in the corner and switched on the light above the sink. "If your husband's likely to cause trouble, then we'll move fast and without fanfare. If we're clever, he won't know what we're doing until the exhumation is a fait accompli. Tomorrow's a holiday, so we can't get anything done officially until Friday."
"Probably not even then, what with the four-day weekend."
Elliot found the bottle of liquid soap and the dishcloth that were stored under the sink. "Ordinarily I'd say we'd have to wait until Monday. But it happens I know a very reasonable judge. Harold Kennebeck. We served in Army Intelligence together. He was my senior officer. If I—"
"Army Intelligence? You were a spy?"
"Nothing as grand as that. No trench coats. No skulking about in dark alleys."
"Karate, cyanide capsules, that sort of stuff?" she asked.
"Well, I've had a lot of martial arts training. I still work at that a couple of days a week because it's a good way to keep i n shape. Really, though, it wasn't like what you see in the movies. No James Bond cars with machine guns hidden behind the headlights. It was mostly dull information gathering."
"Somehow," she said, "I get the feeling it was considerably more . . . interesting than you make it out to be."
"Nope. Document analysis, tedious interpretation of satellite reconnaissance photographs, that sort of thing. Boring as hell most of the time. Anyway, Judge Kennebeck and I go back a long way. We respect each other, and I'm sure he'll do something for me if he can. I'll be seeing him tomorrow afternoon at a New Year's Day party. I'll discuss the situation with him. Maybe he'll be willing to slip into the courthouse long enough on Friday to review my exhumation request and rule on it. He'd only need a few minutes. Then we could open the grave early Saturday."
Tina went to the bar and sat on one of the three stools, across the counter from Elliot. 'The sooner the better. Now that I've made up my mind to do it, I'm anxious to get it over with."
"That's understandable. And there's another advantage in doing it this weekend. If we move fast, it isn't likely Michael will find out what we're up to. Even if he does somehow get a whiff of it, he'll have to locate another judge who'll be willing to stay or vacate the exhumation order."
"You think he'll be able to do that?"
"No. That's my point. There won't be many judges around over the holiday. Those on duty will be swamped with arraignments and bail hearings for drunken drivers and for people involved in drunken assaults. Most likely, Michael won't be able to get hold of a judge until Monday morning, and by then it'll be too late."
"Sneaky."
"That's my middle name." He finished washing the first brandy snifter, rinsed it in hot water, and put it in the drainage rack to dry.
"Elliot Sneaky Stryker," she said.
He smiled. "At your service."
"I'm glad you're my attorney."
"Well, let's see if I can actually pull it off."
"You can. You're the kind of person who meets every problem head-on."
"You have a pretty high opinion of me," he said, repeating what she had said to him earlier.
She smiled. "Yes, I do."
All the talk about death and fear and madness and pain seemed to have taken place further back in the past than a mere few seconds ago. They wanted to have a little fun during the evening that lay ahead, and now they began putting themselves in the mood for it.
As Elliot rinsed the second snifter and placed it in the rack, Tina said, "You do that very well."
"But I don't wash windows."
"I like to see a man being domestic."
"Then you should see me cook."
"You cook?"
"Like a dream."
"What's your best dish?"
"Everything I make."
"Obviously, you don't make humble pie."
"Every great chef must be an egomaniac when it comes to his culinary art. He must be totally secure in his estimation of his talents if he is to function well in the kitchen."
"What if you cooked something for me, and I didn't like it?"
"Then I'd eat your serving as well as mine."
"And what would I eat?"
"Your heart out."
After so many months of sorrow, how good it felt to be sharing an evening with an attractive and amusing man.
Elliot put away the dishwashing liquid and the wet dishcloth. As he dried his hands on the towel, he said, "Why don't we forget about going out to dinner? Let me cook for you instead."
"On such short notice?"
"I don't need much time to plan a meal. I'm a whiz. Besides, you can help by doing the drudgery, like cleaning the vegetables and chopping the onions."
"I should go home and freshen up," she said.
"You're already too fresh for me."
"My car—"
"You can drive it. Follow me to my place."
They turned out the lights and left the room, closing the door after them.
As they crossed the reception area on their way toward the hall, Tina glanced nervously at Angela's computer. She was afraid it was going to click on again, all by itself.
But she and Elliot left the outer office, flicking off the lights as they went, and the computer remained dark and silent.
Chapter 13
问题
1. After reading this chapter, can you explain why there were many bizarre things that had been happening to Tina?
2. Where can you perceive that Elliot was a good listener?
3. Elliot promised that he would help Tina without hesitation. What can he do to help Tina?
翻译
1. Tina swallowed some cognac. It was hot in her throat, but it didn't burn away the chill at the center of her.
2. His beautiful, expressive eyes seemed to be filled with concern for her.
3. Although the Strip sometimes was grubby in the flat glare of the desert sun, the boulevard was always, day or night, bustling and filled with life.
思考
"The exhumation? Yeah."
"Will you represent me?"
He didn't hesitate. "Sure."
Tina告诉了Elliot发生的所有怪异事情以及她的困扰，希望他能帮助她开棺验尸，Elliot二话不说便答应了，为什么Elliot会支持她这一想法呢？
