Brian Freeman - Stripped

Stride was anxious to see Vancouver again. He liked the city, and he wanted to face his demons, or maybe just wallow in them. When they landed, he realized it wasn’t to be. There was no car to take him to Walker Lane but rather a helicopter waiting for him after he was cleared by a customs official who met the plane. It swooped him up and took him south, away from the city, toward the gulf islands north of Victoria. He was a little nervous flying over the water, not in a floatplane but in a rock that would simply hit the water and sink if its rotors stopped turning. At least it was a calm, cloudless day. They flew for what seemed a long time, but was probably only twenty minutes, before Stride saw islands dotting the blue water below them. He saw fishing villages and large bands of oak and fir trees covering the hills and sweeping down to narrow stony beaches. As they passed over one of the smaller islands, the pilot began to descend, perilously close to the treetops. Beyond the crest, on the southern shore of the island, Stride suddenly saw a clearing where a massive estate clung to the beach. The water seemed to lap almost to the windows overlooking the sound. The house itself was Victorian in design, with numerous gables and a large main tower topped by a cone-shaped roof. The coloring was dark and gothic.

The pilot flew over the home itself and gently set the helicopter down on a concrete circle amid the rear gardens. He cut the engine, and Stride climbed out. An attendant greeted him and guided him back through a maze of topiaries and fountains into an expansive rear porch, with heavy antique furniture and ceramic tile the color of creme brulee.

“ Mr. Lane will be right with you,” the woman told him, and left him alone to wait.

Stride stood near the doors and felt the cool cross-breeze cutting across the island. He wondered what to expect from Walker Lane. All he had seen was photographs from decades ago, when Walker looked very much like his son, MJ, with unruly hair and a gangly look, like a kid whose limbs had grown too far too fast. Even then, he had been a millionaire, and over the years, he had traded the m for a b. Stride had never met a billionaire. From Walker ’s voice over the phone, he imagined the man to be tall and severe, imperially gray, wearing a sweater and cupping a glass of port.

He was right about the sweater, and that was it.

“Welcome to Canada, Detective,” Walker said, as he rolled onto the porch in a wheelchair operated from a joystick in his right hand. “I’m glad you agreed to join me here.”

Stride found himself staring. He recognized the voice, which sounded like a stormy gale, but not the man. Half of Walker ’s face was strangely rigid, as if he had lost control of it in a stroke. The man’s right eye was fixed, and it took Stride a moment to realize the eye was fake, made of glass. His nose was misshapen, broken and reconstructed. When he smiled, his teeth were pristine and perfect, and Stride guessed that those were fake, too.

“Not what you expected?” Walker asked dryly.

Stride was too surprised to answer. He extended his hand, and Walker shook it. The man’s grip, at least, was strong and tight.

“I don’t advertise my disability, Detective,” Walker added. “I hope I can count on your discretion. Most people who come here sign nondisclosure agreements. I didn’t do that with you, because I want to trust you, and I want you to trust me.”

Stride was still unsettled by Walker ’s appearance and by the fake eye that seemed astonishingly real. “I understand,” he said.

“Do you know who killed my son?” Walker asked pointedly. He sounded like the impatient man Stride had talked to on the phone.

“Yes, we do.” Stride saw surprise bloom in Walker ’s good eye, and he reached into the slim folder he carried to retrieve the police sketch. “We haven’t arrested him, but we have his face. This is the man who killed MJ.”

“Let me see it.”

Stride handed him the sketch, and Walker took it eagerly. He held it far enough away in his right hand that his eye could focus.

“Do you know him?” Stride asked.

“No.” Walker shook his head, disappointed. “He’s not familiar to me”

“I’ll leave the sketch with you.”

Walker turned the sketch over and put it in his lap. “Would you like a tour before we get down to business? Not many people get to come here, you know.”

Stride had come halfway across the continent to see the man, and he was curious about the estate, which was the kind of home he was never likely to see again. “Why not?” he said.

“Good.”

Walker spun his wheelchair around and led him from the porch into the main body of the house. For all the antique decor, it was electronically sophisticated, with every feature controlled by computers and operated from the control pad on Walker ’s chair. Windows, lights, doors, curtains, skylights, everything could be opened, closed, turned on, and turned off with a flick of the keypad. They passed from room to room, and each one felt like something out of a European palace, huge and elaborately decorated, but sterile, like a museum. Stride knew the house couldn’t be more than two or three decades old, but it felt like a relic from another century. It didn’t feel like anyone lived here.

The house was generally warm, but some of the dampness of die region still made its way inside the walls, and the heat sometimes seemed to dissipate into the high ceilings. Stride found himself shivering and pulling die button closed on his suit coat. In just a few months, he thought, he had changed from a Minnesotan impervious to cold to a desert dweller chilled when the temperatures dipped below eighty.

“I rarely leave the island,” Walker told him. “I’m sure you know that. But I can do almost anything from here. I see just about every movie made right in here.” He guided Stride into a full-sized movie theater that had a handicapped-access row directly in the center. They might as well have been in the upscale multiplex in Las Vegas. Stride realized the theater here was probably always empty, just Walker sitting here, alone, analyzing movie after movie. He began to feel sorry for the man.

Walker sensed his emotions. “Don’t feel bad for me, Detective. I’m not Howard Hughes, you know. People visit me all the time-actors, directors, editors, agents. I am intensely engaged in every aspect of every one of my movies. When they’re being filmed, I have the dailies transferred to me electronically right here, and I review them and get my feedback back on the set by morning.”

“Why not go there?” Stride asked.

“First, I don’t need to. I can do it from here, and you have to admit, I have one of the most beautiful locations anywhere on earth.”

Stride nodded. That was true. Every time they passed a window, he saw the island, the sound, or the gardens, and each one was a view to get lost in.

“Second, I’m intensely private. I’m not a partier, not anymore. To be very candid, the way I look makes people uncomfortable. I hate that. The people who come here generally know me well enough to respect my privacy and not to be put off by who I am.”

He took Stride through the living room at the front of the house, with chambered windows looking out on the water, and then out onto a deck that led down toward the boat dock below. Stride could see a ferry passing by well offshore on its way to Victoria. The trees closed in around the estate, and he saw several eagles circling overhead.

“This is wonderful,” Stride told him honestly.

“Thank you, Detective.” Walker seemed to recognize that the compliment was genuine, and it pleased him. “You want to know about MJ, don’t you? How things went so wrong between us?”