I looked over at him and he winked at me.
“Let’s check it out,” he said. “Don’t forget your stuff.”
There was a lockbox on the front door. Backus knew the combination and opened it, retrieved the key from the tiny compartment and opened the door.
He entered the house and flicked on the light in an entrance alcove. I followed him in and closed the door. The house was only modestly furnished but I ignored this because my attention was immediately drawn to the rear wall of the living room. The wall was made entirely of thick glass panels offering a spectacular view of the entire Valley sprawling below the house. I crossed the room and gazed out. At the far rim of the Valley I saw the rise of another mountain chain. I stepped close enough to the glass so that I could see my own breath against it and looked down into the dark arroyo directly below. A sense of unease at being at such a precipice licked at me and I stepped back as Backus turned on a lamp behind me.
It was then that I saw the cracks. Three of the five glass panels had fractures spidering through them. I turned to the left and saw the disjointed image of myself and Backus in a mirrored wall that had also been fractured by the earthquake.
“What else happened? Is it safe to be in here?”
“It’s safe, Jack. But safety is a relative thing. The next big one could come along and change everything. . . As far as other damage, there is a floor below us. Was a floor, I should say. Clearmountain said that is where the damage was. Buckled walls, broken water pipes.”
I put my computer bag and pillowcase down on the floor and turned back to the rear window. My eyes were drawn to the view and I bravely stepped to the glass again. I heard a sharp creaking sound from the direction of the alcove where we had come in. I looked at Backus with alarm.
“Don’t worry, they had the pylons checked by an engineer before they even started the sting. The house isn’t going anywhere. It just looks like it is and sounds like it is and that’s what they wanted for the sting.”
I nodded again but not with a lot of confidence. I looked back at him through the glass.
“The only thing going somewhere is you, Jack.”
I glanced at him in the mirror, not sure what he meant. And there, quadrupled in the broken reflection, I saw the gun in his hand.
“What is this?” I asked.
“This is the end of the line.”
In a rush it came to me. I’d taken a wrong turn and blamed the wrong one. In that moment I also came to the realization that it was the flaw in my own interior that had led me the wrong way. My inability to believe and accept. I had taken Rachel’s emotions and looked for the flaw in them instead of the truth.
“You,” I said. “You are the Poet.”
He didn’t answer. Instead he gave a small smile and a nod. I knew then that Rachel’s plane hadn’t been recalled and that Agent Carter was not coming with a tech and two good agents. I could see the true plan perfectly, right down to the finger Backus must have kept on the phone while he faked the call in my hotel room. I was alone now with the Poet.
“Bob, why? Why you?”
I was so shocked I was still calling him by his first name like a friend would.
“It’s a story as old as any of them,” he replied. “Too old and forgotten to tell you. You don’t need to know it now, anyway. Sit down on the chair, Jack.”
He signaled with the gun toward the stuffed chair opposite the couch. Then he aimed the gun back at me. I didn’t move.
“The calls,” I said. “You made the calls from Thorson’s room?”
I said it more to be saying something as a stall for time, though in my gut I knew that time was meaningless to me now. No one knew I was there. No one would be coming. Backus laughed in a forced, scoffing manner at my question.
“The luck of chance,” he said. “That night I checked in for all of us—Carter, Thorson, me. Then I apparently mixed the keys up. I made those calls from my own room, but the bill had Thorson’s name on it. I didn’t know that, of course, until I took the bills from your room Monday night while you were with Rachel.”
I thought about what Rachel had said about making your own luck. I guessed it applied to serial killers as well.
“How’d you know I had the bills?”
“I didn’t. Not for sure. But you called Michael Warren and told him you had his source by the balls. He then called me because I was his source. Even though he said you accused Gordon of being the source, I had to find out what you knew. That was the reason I let you back into the investigation, Jack. I had to figure out what you knew. It wasn’t until I went into your room while you were bedding Rachel that I found out it was the hotel bills.”
“Was that you who followed me later, to the bar?”
“That night you were the one with the luck. If you had gone to that doorway to see who was there, this would all have been over right then.
“But then the next day when you didn’t come to me and accuse Thorson of breaking into your room, I thought the threat was over. That you were letting it go. Everything proceeded nicely from there—right according to plan—until you called up today and started asking about condoms and phone calls. I knew what you were up to, Jack. I knew I had to move quickly. Now sit down in that chair. I’m not going to ask you again.”
I moved to the chair and sat down. I rubbed my hands down my thighs and felt my hands shaking. My back was now to the rear wall of glass. I had nothing to look at but Backus.
“How’d you know about Gladden?” I asked. “Gladden and Beltran.”
“I was there. Remember? I was part of the team. While Rachel and Gordon conducted other interviews I had my own little sit-down with William. From what he was willing to say it was not difficult for me to identify Beltran. Then I waited for Gladden to act once he was set free. I knew he’d act out. It was in his nature. I know about that. And so I used him as cover. I knew that if one day my work was discovered, the evidence would lead to him.”
“And the PTL Network?”
“We’re talking too much, Jack. I have work to do here.”
Without taking his eyes off me he stooped to the floor, picked up and then emptied the pillowcase. He reached down and felt around in my belongings, his eyes always on me. Unsatisfied, he did the same with my computer bag, until he came up with the vial of pills I had gotten at the hospital. He glanced down quickly at the label, read it and looked back at me with a smile.
“Tylenol with codeine,” he said and smiled. “This is going to work out nicely. Take one, Jack. Take two, in fact.”
He tossed the vial to me and I instinctively caught it.
“I can’t,” I said. “I took one a couple hours ago. I can’t take any for another two hours.”
“Take two, Jack. Now.”
His voice had stayed in a steady monologue but the look in his eyes chilled me. I fumbled with the cap and finally managed to open the vial.
“I need water.”
“No water, Jack. Take the pills.”
I put two of the pills into my mouth and tried to act as if I had swallowed them as I moved them under my tongue.
“Okay.”
“Open wide, Jack.”
I did and he leaned forward to look but he never came close enough for me to take a swing at the gun. He stayed out of reach.