By four o’clock he was home again, working in the kitchen. Tina was supposed to arrive at six. He had a few chores to finish before she came, so they wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time doing galley labor as they had done last night. Standing at the sink, he peeled and chopped a small onion, cleaned six stalks of celery, and peeled several slender carrots. He had just opened a bottle of balsamic vinegar and poured four ounces into a measuring cup when he heard movement behind him.
Turning, he saw a strange man enter the kitchen from the dining room. The guy was about five feet eight with a narrow face and a neatly trimmed blond beard. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie, and he carried a physician’s bag. He was nervous.
“What the hell?” Elliot said.
A second man appeared behind the first. He was considerably more formidable than his associate: tall, rough-edged, with large, big-knuckled, leathery hands — like something that had escaped from a recombinant DNA lab experimenting in the crossbreeding of human beings with bears. In freshly pressed slacks, a crisp blue shirt, a patterned tie, and a gray sports jacket, he might have been a professional hit man uncomfortably gotten up for the baptism of his Mafia don’s grandchild. But he didn’t appear to be nervous at all.
“What is this?” Elliot demanded.
Both intruders stopped near the refrigerator, twelve or fourteen feet from Elliot. The small man fidgeted, and the tall man smiled.
“How’d you get in here?”
“A lock-release gun,” the tall man said, smiling cordially and nodding. “Bob here”—he indicated the smaller man—“has the neatest set of tools. Makes things easier.”
“What the hell is this about?”
“Relax,” said the tall man.
“I don’t keep a lot of money here.”
“No, no,” the tall man said. “It’s not money.”
Bob shook his head in agreement, frowning, as if he was dismayed to think that he could be mistaken for a common thief.
“Just relax,” the tall man repeated.
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Elliot assured them.
“You’re the one, all right.”
“Yes,” Bob said. “You’re the one. There’s no mistake.”
The conversation had the disorienting quality of the off-kilter exchanges between Alice and the scrawny denizens of Wonderland.
Putting down the vinegar bottle and picking up the knife, Elliot said, “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Calm down, Mr. Stryker,” the tall one said.
“Yes,” Bob said. “Please calm down.”
Elliot took a step toward them.
The tall man pulled a silencer-equipped pistol out of a shoulder holster that was concealed under his gray sports jacket. “Easy. Just you take it real nice and easy.”
Elliot backed up against the sink.
“That’s better,” the tall man said.
“Much better,” Bob said.
“Put the knife down, and we’ll all be happy.”
“Let’s keep this happy,” Bob agreed.
“Yeah, nice and happy.”
The Mad Hatter would be along any minute now.
“Down with the knife,” said the tall man. “Come on, come on.”
Finally Elliot put it down.
“Push it across the counter, out of reach.”
Elliot did as he was told. “Who are you guys?”
“As long as you cooperate, you won’t get hurt,” the tall man assured him.
Bob said, “Let’s get on with it, Vince.”
Vince, the tall man, said, “We’ll use the breakfast area over there in the corner.”
Bob went to the round maple table. He put down the black physician’s bag, opened it, and withdrew a compact cassette tape recorder. He removed other things from the bag too: a length of flexible rubber tubing, a sphygmomanometer for monitoring blood pressure, two small bottles of amber-colored fluid, and a packet of disposable hypodermic syringes.
Elliot’s mind raced through a list of cases that his law firm was currently handling, searching for some connection with these two intruders, but he couldn’t think of one.
The tall man gestured with the gun. “Go over to the table and sit down.”
“Not until you tell me what this is all about.”
“I’m giving the orders here.”
“But I’m not taking them.”
“I’ll put a hole in you if you don’t move.”
“No. You won’t do that,” Elliot said, wishing that he felt as confident as he sounded. “You’ve got something else in mind, and shooting me would ruin it.”
“Move your ass over to that table.”
“Not until you explain yourself.”
Vince glared at him.
Elliot met the stranger’s eyes and didn’t look away.
At last Vince said, “Be reasonable. We’ve just got to ask you some questions.”
Determined not to let them see that he was frightened, aware that any sign of fear would be taken as proof of weakness, Elliot said, “Well, you’ve got one hell of a weird approach for someone who’s just taking a public opinion survey.”
“Move.”
“What are the hypodermic needles for?”
“Move.”
“What are they for?”
Vince sighed. “We gotta be sure you tell us the truth.”
“The entire truth,” said Bob.
“Drugs?” Elliot asked.
“They’re effective and reliable,” said Bob.
“And when you’ve finished, I’ll have a brain the consistency of grape jelly.”
“No, no,” Bob said. “These drugs won’t do any lasting physical or mental damage.”
“What sort of questions?” Elliot asked.
“I’m losing my patience with you,” Vince said.
“It’s mutual,” Elliot assured him.
“Move.”
Elliot didn’t move an inch. He refused to look at the muzzle of the pistol. He wanted them to think that guns didn’t scare him. Inside, he was vibrating like a tuning fork.
“You son of a bitch, move!”
“What sort of questions do you want to ask me?”
The big man scowled.
Bob said, “For Christ’s sake, Vince, tell him. He’s going to hear the questions anyway when he finally sits down. Let’s get this over with and split.”
Vince scratched his concrete-block chin with his shovel of a hand and then reached inside his jacket. From an inner pocket, he withdrew a few sheets of folded typing paper.
The gun wavered, but it didn’t move off target far enough to give Elliot a chance.
“I’m supposed to ask you every question on this list,” Vince said, shaking the folded paper at Elliot. “It’s a lot, thirty or forty questions altogether, but it won’t take long if you just sit down over there and cooperate.”
“Questions about what?” Elliot insisted.
“Christina Evans.”
This was the last thing Elliot expected. He was dumbfounded. “Tina Evans? What about her?”
“Got to know why she wants her little boy’s grave reopened.”
Elliot stared at him, amazed. “How do you know about that?”
“Never mind,” Vince said.
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Never mind how we know. The important thing is we do know.”
“Are you the bastards who’ve been harassing Tina?”
“Huh?”
“Are you the ones who keep sending her messages?”
“What messages?” Bob asked.
“Are you the ones who wrecked the boy’s room?”