Jake Needham - Killing Plato

“They would probably assume he had.”

“And you think whoever is doing all of this goddamn assuming would send two goddamned gunmen to ambush Mia’s car and kill everybody in it just to get me? Just in case I actually do know whatever it is I’m supposed to know?”

“You can put it together that way.”

I stared at Kate. “Oh, man,” I sighed, “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I feel like I got you into this, Jack,” Kate said.

I noticed Kate’s voice had turned businesslike. So much, apparently, for the personal warmth part of our program.

“Until I figure out how to get you out of it, a team of my best people will be with you around the clock. You can trust them absolutely.”

“With my life?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Gee, then I guess my worries are over.”

“They can’t get set up until morning, but I’ve got local police all around this hospital until then. Don’t worry. We’re not going to give them a second chance.”

“Give who a second chance?”

Kate glanced briefly out the window, which there was very little point in doing since it was pitch black out there. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze.

“I don’t know. The truth is I just don’t know for sure.”

But of course I did. I knew. For sure.

“And you think the marshals had nothing to do with this?” I probed again.

“No.”

This time I was watching Kate’s eyes when she answered and I decided she believed what she was saying. She didn’t know about Marcus York, I was certain of that now, but something still kept me from telling her.

“What about the email intercepts?” I asked, trying to make up my mind how to play it from there. “They had to mean something.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jack.”

“Kate, I’m talking about the email intercepts, those transcripts you gave me…”

“I never gave you anything.”

I was a little slow-witted right then, I realized, but not that slow-witted.

“Okay,” I said. “I see.”

“I’m glad.”

Kate may not have known specifically about Marcus York trying to kill me, but she knew there was something out there. She also knew it was something ugly and something neither of uspec understood. She wanted to get as far away from it as she possibly could. I could hardly say I blamed her.

“So,” I said after mulling that over for a bit, “if I told anyone you had given me copies of the NIA email intercepts from the US Marshals that implied they were actually here to kill Karsarkis rather than return him for trial…”

“I imagine most people would have a hard time believing that. Without copies of the intercepts, of course, which you don’t have.”

“Which I do have,” I said.

Kate went completely still.

“You couldn’t have gotten past the security routine in that file,” she said after a moment.

“You’re right,” I said. “I couldn’t have.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“But I know people who could. Did, in fact.”

Kate measured me with a long look. As she did, she bit unconsciously at her lip. One tooth made a little white mark there and I looked at it until it had faded away.

“All right,” she said after a time had passed in silence. “So what are you going to do?”

I blew out a breath and popped my lips.

“Maybe I’ll just go back to sleep,” I said, “and think about everything again tomorrow.”

“That’s probably the best thing for you to do.”

Kate smiled and started to turn away, but then to my surprise, and possibly to hers as well, she reached out and stroked my hair with the tips of her fingers. Her cool hand lingered on my forehead as she might let it linger on the face of an injured child. I could see a thought come into her eyes like a dark bird, stay a moment, and then fly away.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” she said after a moment or two had passed that way.

I was about to say something in reply, something that would tell Kate how happy I was she was there right then and that she would be coming back, but before the thought could shape itself into words, the drugs took me and I was gone.

When I woke again Kate was gone. All the lights in my hospital room were off. Even the glow of the aquarium had been extinguished by some thoughtful soul who must have feared it would disturb my sleep.

My eyes searched the room for the clock. They did not find the clock, but what they did find made me lose all interest in the time.

Plato Karsarkis was sitting on a chair at the end of my bed. He was wearing jeans, a black golf shirt, and black loafers without socks. One leg was draped casually over an arm of the chair and he was facing away from me as if he was studying the heavy draperies that covered the windows.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Karsarkis tilted his head back and turned it toward me without moving his body.

“I would think first you’d want to know how I got in. Your girlfriend is supposed to have this place locked down tighter than a gnat’s asshole.”

I let Karsarkis’ characterization of Kate pass. I was hardly in any state to engage in a pointless debate.

“Apparently not,” chI said instead. “I gather you walked right in.”

“Ah, well…” Karsarkis made a little movement with his hands he probably thought was self-deprecating. “People like me do pretty much what we want to do. You said as much once yourself, didn’t you?”

I didn’t take the bait.

“So,” I repeated instead, “what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for what’s happened. I wish now I hadn’t gotten you involved in this.”

“Mia’s the one who’s dead,” I said, “not me.”

“Yes, well…”

Karsarkis swung his legs to floor and pushed himself out of the chair. Its springs squeaked in the stillness. He took a few steps toward me and put both hands on the rail at the foot of my bed.

“Now we’ve both lost people we loved,” he said.

For a moment, I didn’t see what Karsarkis was talking about, then Anita’s face faded into my consciousness like a transparency projected on a screen.

I said, “It’s not the same thing.”

“It is, in a way,” Karsarkis said. “There are all kinds of losses.”

“Your wife was cut to pieces by rifle fire and left to bleed to death. Mine just found somebody she liked better.”

“Either way there was no way for either of us to avoid the final outcome,” Karsarkis said. “How such things happen is less important than that they have.”

“Do you ever think about anything except yourself?”

“Actually, I was thinking mostly about you, Jack. About what you’ve lost.”

“I’ll bet you were.”

Karsarkis took a deep breath and glanced away, but when he looked back at me his face showed such weariness and resignation that for a moment I was almost embarrassed at the way I was treating him.

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “It’s just…well, I guess we all have our own ways of dealing with things.”

“Some of which aren’t very attractive,” I said.

Karsarkis nodded slightly as if he hardly cared one way or the other, then he folded his arms and stood silently for a while, looking at the wall over my head.

“First Mike O’Connell, then Mia,” I said. “They’re getting closer.”

“They are, aren’t they?”

“You know who it is.” I didn’t bother to make a question out of it. There was no reason to.

Karsarkis seemed to weigh the idea for a while as if he were genuinely considering its nuances and implications.