“This would’ve been memorable, a real hardcore migraine, with the characteristic twinkling lights that mess with your vision.” She saw this resonated with the widow Lambert. “When was it, Gwyn?”
“At the WIC, the What If Conference, last September in Vegas.”
“What’s the What If?”
“The Gernsback Institute brings together a panel of futurists and science-fiction writers for four days. It challenges them to think outside the box about national defense. What threats are we not concentrating on that might turn out to be bigger than we think a year from now, ten years, twenty years?”
She put one hand to her mouth, and her brow furrowed.
“Something wrong?” Jane asked.
Gwyn shrugged. “No. Just for a second, I wondered if I should be talking about it. But it’s not a big secret or anything. It’s gotten a lot of press attention over the years. See, the institute invites four hundred of the most forward-thinking people—military officers from every branch of service, key scientists, and engineers from major defense contractors—to listen to the panels and ask questions. It’s quite a thing. Spouses are welcome. We women attend the dinners and social events, but not the sessions. And it’s not any kind of bribe, by the way.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“The institute is an apolitical nonprofit. It doesn’t have any ties to defense contractors. And when you receive an invitation, you have to pay your own travel and lodging. Gordie took me with him to three conferences. He just loved them.”
“But last year he had a bad migraine at the event?”
“His only one ever. The third day, in the morning, for almost six hours he was flat in bed. I kept after him to call the front desk and find a doctor. But Gordie figured anything less than a bullet wound was best dealt with by letting it work itself out. You know how men are always having to prove things to themselves.”
Jane warmed to a memory. “Nick was woodworking, gouged his hand when a chisel slipped. It probably needed four or five stitches. But he cleaned the wound himself, packed it full of Neosporin, and bound it tight with duct tape. I thought he’d die of blood poisoning or lose his hand, and he thought my concern was so cute. Cute! I wanted so bad to smack him. In fact, I did smack him.”
Gwyn smiled. “Good for you. Anyway, the migraine went away by lunchtime, and Gordie missed only one session. When I wasn’t able to persuade him to see a doctor, I went to the spa and spent a bundle for a massage. But how did you know about the migraine?”
“One of the other people I’ve interviewed, this widower in Chicago, his wife had her first and last migraine two months before she hung herself in their garage.”
“Was she at the What If Conference?”
“No. I only wish it was that simple. I can’t find links like that between a significant number of them. Just fragile threads, tenuous connections. That woman was the CEO of a nonprofit serving people with disabilities. By all accounts she was happy, productive, and beloved by virtually everyone.”
“Did your Nick have a one-and-only migraine?”
“Not that he mentioned. The suspicious suicides that interest me…in the months before they died, some complained of a few brief spells of vertigo. Or strange, intense dreams. Or essential tremors of the mouth and the left hand that resolved after just a week or two. Some experienced a bitter taste that came and went. Different things and mostly minor. But Nick didn’t have any unusual symptoms. Zero, zip, nada.”
“You’ve interviewed these people’s loved ones.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-two so far, including you.” Reading Gwyn’s expression, Jane said, “Yeah, I know, it’s an obsession. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand.”
“You’re nobody’s fool, honey. Sometimes it’s just…hard to move on. Where will you go from here?”
“There’s someone near San Diego I’d like to talk to.” She leaned back in her chair. “But this What If event in Vegas still intrigues me. Do you have anything from the conference, a brochure, especially a program for those four days?”
“There’s probably something in Gordon’s study upstairs. I’ll go look. More coffee?”
“No, thanks. I had a lot with breakfast. What I do need is a bathroom.”
“There’s a half bath off the hall. Come along, I’ll show you.”
A couple of minutes later, in the spiderless, spotless powder bath, as Jane washed her hands at the sink, she met her reflection eye-to-eye. Not for the first time, she wondered if by setting out on this crusade two months earlier, she’d done the very worst of wrong things.
She had so much to lose, and not just her life. Least of all her life.
From the roof, by way of the bathroom-vent duct, the growing wind spoke down through the second floor to the first, like some troll that had moved from under his traditional bridge to a home with a view.
As she stepped out of the bathroom, a gunshot barked upstairs.
8
* * *
JANE DREW HER PISTOL, held it in both hands, muzzle pointed to her right, at the floor. It was not her FBI gun. She wasn’t allowed that weapon while on leave. She liked this one as much, maybe even better: a Heckler & Koch Combat Competition Mark 23, chambered for .45 ACP.
The noise had been a gunshot. Unmistakable. No scream before it, no scream after it, no footsteps.
She knew she hadn’t been followed from Arizona. If somebody had already been waiting here for her, he would have taken her when she was sitting at the kitchen table, widow to widow, her defenses down.
Maybe the guy was holding Gwyn captive and fired one round to draw Jane to the second floor. That didn’t make sense, but then most bad guys were emotion-driven, short on logic and reason.
She thought of another possibility, but she didn’t want to go there yet.
If the house had back stairs, they would likely be in the kitchen. She hadn’t noticed them. There had been two closed doors. A pantry, of course. The other was most likely the door to the garage. Or to a laundry room. Okay, the front stairs were the only stairs.
She didn’t like the stairs. Nowhere to dodge left or right. No possibility of retreat, because she’d be turning her back on the shooter. Once she committed, she could go only up, each of the two narrow flights like a close-range shooting gallery.
At the landing between flights, she stayed low, slipped fast around the newel post. Nobody at the top. Heart knocking like a parade drum. Bite on the fear. She knew what to do. She’d done it before. One of her instructors had said it was ballet without tights and tutus, you just needed to know the moves, exactly where to make them, and at the end of the performance, they would throw flowers at your feet, metaphorically speaking.
The last flight. This was where a professional should try to take her. Aiming down, his gun would be just below eye level; aiming up, hers would be in her line of sight, giving him the surer shot.
Top of the stairs and still alive.
Stay crouched and close to the wall. Both hands on the pistol. Arms extended. Stop and listen. No one in the upstairs hall.
Now it was all about clearing doorways, which sucked nearly as much as the stairs. Crossing a threshold, she could be hosed, right here at the end of it.
Gwyn Lambert occupied an armchair in the master bedroom, head rolled to the left. Her right arm had fallen into her lap, the gun still loosely held. The bullet had entered her right temple, tunneled her brain, and broken out the left temple, spattering the carpet with chunks of bone and twists of hair and worse.
9
* * *