Paul Robertson - The Heir

Just that thought was enough to get me through the night.

Saturday morning I began the journey home.

I woke feeling a strange lightness, and then I remembered my last thought before sleep. Nathan.

Of everyone involved in the Boyer morass, he was the only one standing on firm ground. He wasn’t owned by money, he wasn’t dominated by power. I was ready to listen to him. If I had no hope of anything besides capture and all that would come after, I at least had hope that there would be an answer to the questions.

And if there was any way to prove Fred’s guilt, it was not in West Virginia.

I crossed Pennsylvania, passed north of Philadelphia, and by midafternoon I was in New York traffic. I fought through it.

I reached JFK airport before dark and parked in a massive sea of cars. I left a thousand dollars taped under the passenger seat and had a thousand in my wallet.

From the terminal I took the subway downtown to Grand Central Station and bought a ticket for Boston on a train with stops in between. It was late afternoon now, and I had forty minutes to wait.

After the solitude of the campground I was disoriented by the crowding and noise, but it was enlivening. And in New York City no one gave me a second look. I sat, inert-I was used to sitting.

Of course there was a television, and of course it was spewing news, and of course the news was me. It was important to know if anything was happening, so I watched it. But there was nothing new. The only change was in the growing anger of everyone involved and the ferocity of the war over the money.

Suddenly there was a fragment of video, of a stone church I had seen and a few people I knew, walking slowly to a line of cars.

“… yesterday afternoon, Katherine Boyer was laid to rest.. .”

I stumbled out of the waiting room desperate to escape that vision.

Then I was on the train. The sun was just setting, and I leaned back in my seat and I tried to sleep. I would have to ask Eric where they buried her.

I woke twenty minutes out from my destination. I was off the platform before the train was on its way to Boston.

It was nine o’clock and dark. I checked the bus schedule. I had an hour to kill before the bus to Nathan’s neighborhood. No, to waste-I didn’t kill. Someone else was the killer.

I would get to Nathan’s house before eleven. I could only hope he was there and not on one of his interminable conferences. I imagined him reading in his study. By candlelight-my imaginings were fanciful. I would sit by him.

“What is the reason, Nathan? What am I doing here?”

“I can tell you that, Jason.”

But I couldn’t imagine what he would say.

The night was cold.

It was an eight-block walk to my downtown office. As I stood at the door of the train station, I thought about taking a risk. I hadn’t yet. It seemed like luck or fate owed me a favor for not tempting either of them for the whole week.

Would there be anything in Fred’s office? In fifteen minutes I could be at his door. But that would be as far as I’d get.

Eric’s apartment was maybe fifteen blocks. Did he still have his police protection? What would he do if I showed up at his door? I couldn’t guess.

A well-dressed couple passed me on the sidewalk, and then a larger group. Something had just ended and the audience was starting to fill the streets around the train station. It was the opera.

If only Felicity could see me now.

Still twenty minutes before my bus arrived, and I was restless. I caught myself in a mirror, beach-blond ugly. I was hungry and I broke a hundred-dollar bill to buy a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

A slow walk around the block would take ten minutes, and then the bus to Nathan’s neighborhood would be ready to leave. I stepped back out into the night and turned to my left, and at the corner I turned left again.

The street had been empty behind the train station, but as I turned the corner I saw someone in front of me. I had a sudden, queasy feeling. I turned to go back, but someone else was there in the dark, close. I dropped the sandwich. They were both moving right toward me.

There was no room to get away. I lunged at the closer one.

He was surprised and went down, but I did, too, on top of him. His friend pulled my arm to get me off, and I rolled and broke free. He kicked me in the side, but I caught his foot and he went down.

The first one was up and landed a kick on my back, and then the other put his fist in my face.

The light or the pain, I don’t know which woke me. The light was from a window or something above me. The pain was from all over.

Everything else was dark. I didn’t try to move. I closed my eyes against the blinding white light. Breathing was too hard. The pain was too much. I couldn’t even tell where it was.

Something else was terrible, apart from the throbbing. I took a breath and gagged. It was the smell.

I opened my eyes and the light had moved. I didn’t know where I was. The worst pain was my head-my jaw and a place above my ear. I tried to turn over, but the pain in my side and stomach was too sharp.

I was lying on an uneven pile, and my face was against rough metal. I thought as hard as I could and I finally figured it out.

I was in a Dumpster, on a heap of garbage. The top was closed, and just a narrow crack let in sunlight.

There was no use moving. I don’t know how long I’d lain there, or how long I had been unconscious. I remembered the train station, and then the fight. What had that been about?

Just a stupid back-alley mugging. I tried to feel for my wallet, but I couldn’t move my arm. They’d seen me buying the food, flashing my cash. Stupid.

I was going to Nathan’s house. I tried to sit up and almost passed out. Everything hurt, every part of me. How long had they beat me? Why hadn’t they just killed me? I wished they had.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. The pain was too much, it was overwhelming. I fainted.

When I was awake again, I could see daylight through the opening, but none was coming in. I had to move. Slowly I turned over, onto my back.

I could tell where the pain was. My jaw, my head, a dozen places. I sat up. The stench was nauseating. I could touch the closed cover, but there was no way I could lift it. Was someone going to open this thing sometime?

It was late afternoon maybe, or evening. I didn’t want to be here through the night. Please get me out.

Could I call for help? It would be the end. Billionaire fugitive murderer found in the trash. But I didn’t want to be here in the pitch black and the smell.

It would be better to give up. They’d put me in a hospital and the pain would stop. Oh, it hurt.

The garbage truck would come. It would lift the whole Dumpster and everything would tumble out. Just imagining it-falling and crashing-I was sweating. And then into the back of the truck and the crushing. They wouldn’t even see me. When would the truck come? I had to get out.

I couldn’t give up.

It got dark, then black. There were no streetlights.

I heard voices. There was a clang and the top lifted.

“Why’s it closed?”

“I don’t know.”

The crack was a couple feet wide. A heavy plastic trash bag was shoved in but wouldn’t fit through.

“Just put it in the other one.”

“It’s full. Help me get the top open.”

The top lifted farther to the height of its arc, then swung down, slamming harshly against the outside. Then the bags came in on top of me, one after another, and then they left.

It took me twenty minutes to get out-pushing the bags off of me, climbing over them, and then the final drop to the pavement that jolted every bone. But I was standing, outside, leaning against that evil prison. No one saw me. I limped away from it into the shadows.