“ Start in Norman, Oklahoma.”
“ Oklahoma?”
“ He sent the wire from there.”
“ Christ, he's halfway across the continent.”
“ He's shrewd and deadly. He'll be killing as he goes. Set up a command post in Oklahoma. I'll… I'll join you there.”
“ Are you sure?”
“ Yes, damnit, I'm sure.”
Jim interrupted. “He could be counting on that if he's as treacherous as you say.”
“ What?”
“ That you'll come to him.”
“ Right, well, then he'll be right.” Zanek asked, “Who are you talking to?”
“ Jim Parry.” She imagined Zanek was checking his watch about now and figuring Hawaii time.
“ Ahh, oh, yeah,” he sputtered. “Sounds like he agrees with me, Jess, that it'd be best for you to return to D.C.”
“ Where I can sit on my thumbs? Wait and wonder and fear my own shadow? No, thanks.”
“ Let us take care of Matisak, Jess.”
“ I let you guys take care of him already, remember?”
“ All right, Jess. I'll meet you in Oklahoma, but not anywhere near the bureau offices. He'll be watching the offices, if he imagines you'll come.”
“ Or he'll be on a flight for here,” she countered.
“ What's it to be, Jess?”
“ Oklahoma for me, and Parry's people will watch the terminals here.”
Parry stared across at her, seeing the determination in her eyes. She hung up after telling Zanek that she would wire him in Norman with her flight numbers.
“ I'm going with you to the mainland, to Oklahoma,” he now said.
“ The hell you are. You have a bureau to run here. You're… you're the goddamn linchpin here in the islands, Jim, respected by both sides. With your expertise and knowledge of the Kowona affair… well, you're just needed here; otherwise anything could happen to this powder keg you call paradise.”
“ To hell with all that.”
“ To hell with it? No way you're going to turn your back on what you have here, Jim; what you've accomplished and built. Hell, even Kaniola has renewed respect for you and the bureau since-”
“ Don't B.S. me, Jess.”
“ He said as much.”
“ I can't let you fly off after this madman alone, Jess.”
“ Alone? Don't be ridiculous. The entire bureau's on alert. I'll have an army of willing bodyguards and Paul Zanek'll be at the lead.”
“ That's supposed to put me at ease?”
“ Come on. What we have found here together… no one'll ever replace, Jim. And maybe, when this is all over, I'll… I'll come back…”
“ And maybe you won't.”
“ Don't, Jim… don't make this choice any harder than it already is, please.” In fact, in her mind, there was no choice. He sensed this.
Their coffee had gone cold and the Hawaiian sky at the windows had become overcast for the first time since she'd come to Oahu.
She dialed for the airlines. He dressed. They went around one another like a pair of zombies as she packed. “Everything's changed now,” she finally said.
“ Everything?”
“ Circumstances, but not how I feel about you… just circumstances. I don't want to go. I have to go.”
“ Why, Jess? Why can't you just stay?” We're not kids, Jim. That would mean giving up my career. Besides, he knows I'm here. I'm… I feel vulnerable. I have to take the offensive.”
“ And if it's a trap, to lure you there?”
“ I've walked into traps before, once with you, remember?”
He was hurt, his insides turning over.
“ Will you take me to the airport?”
“ If you're sure. Okay.”
“ Funny this should happen now,” she said.
“ Funny?”
“ I finally discard that damned cane, declare myself free of Matisak and the scars he inflicted on me. My nights were no longer haunted by him, and now this.”
The flight out of Hawaii was long, tedious torture, the States half a hemisphere away, and it gave her too much time to wonder what might have been, too much idle questioning of her decisions until she was second-guessing herself. She thought of Jim Parry and how much he meant to her, about how dear he was, about what she was giving up.
Maybe Jim was right. Maybe she should chuck it all, turn around and return to his arms and the paradise-or near- paradise-she'd discovered there in the lush islands of the Ohana.
But if she remained it would be like a homing beacon for the evil of Matisak to invade there. If she returned to Hawaii, Matisak would be forced to find her there, and she'd be jeopardizing people there, even Jim. Matisak wanted to poison her life in every conceivable way, and how better to poison it than to destroy whatever and whomever she loved. She must never give Matisak that kind of power, the power of knowledge over her, of information that could harm her.
She feared even corresponding or talking with Jim on the phone now, for Matisak's evil genius would leam of her lover, and he would plot some awful nightmare for Jim Parry, a night of torture and death in which the psycho would slowly drain Jim Parry of his blood. This tort 9 killer, this vampire, was cunning and cruel.
She wasn't crazy or paranoid to feel this way toward Matisak. Over the years of his incarceration she'd had to make many visits to him, interrogating him, and he in turn had made numerous death threats, both direct and indirect, careful always to do so whenever her recorder ran out of tape. Still, she had fooled him once into threatening her by carrying a second, concealed tape on her person. It was useless as evidence to take to his parole board, which would be sitting in a matter of four years from now, as she'd smuggled it in and he was being taped without his knowledge, but it gave credence to her claim, and it had opened Paul Zanek's eyes to the monster.
Matisak had been careful and controlled around others, and around tape recorders. He didn't want to slip up or say anything that could be used against him when his parole board sat, but everyone except Matisak knew that no amount of good behavior and cooperation with the FBI interviewers over the years was going to win him a free walk on the first go-round.
Somehow, Matisak figured this out. Dr. Arnold, Matisak's keeper all these years, might have nastily explained it to him in a fit of his own, earning Matisak's undying hatred. Actually Matisak hated everyone, and in particular, his rage had fixated on Jessica Coran, who had unmasked him and caused his capture and eventual imprisonment.
Here on the plane with the hum of flight in her ears, she now imagines Matisak's moves there in the asylum. He manages first to slip some small item into his cage, no small trick in the maximum-security nuthouse where all transactions are handled through a revolving door in a glass cell. Then comes the injury, self-inflicted. Though Matisak is wise to medical procedures, so he may have staged a masquerade, a supposed natural injury, say a bleeding ulcer or blood frothing from the mouth. Then comes the transportation to the hospital ward, and the subsequent lapse in security, ending with three deaths and the disappearance of Matisak, who, using a doctor's coat and badge, wallet and credit cards, waltzes out to a car belonging to the murdered doctor and drives off into the night without objection from anyone.
She now silently curses the scenario she has painted in her mind, wishing to quell it, to rest for the long haul ahead, but her mind and Matisak play on.
Then Matisak speeds across the country, no doubt leaving a trail of bloodless bodies in his wake. He exchanges cars somewhere along the way, and the fiend stops in Norman, Oklahoma, to send her a wire, having learned of her whereabouts through Dr. Arnold, who'd always taken some perverse pleasure in taunting Matisak with her comings and goings, always keeping him apprised of her whereabouts in some sick, childish game that had gone on between doctor and patient, captive and keeper throughout their relationship. This long after she had stopped visiting the asylum on a routine basis, refusing to deal with Matisak after the Claw Case, in which he had sought to undermine her confidence even from his asylum cell.