Andrew Klavan: Nightmare City

So now the respectable doctor had become a criminal, a drug dealer.

Dr. Cameron was desperate to get out, desperate to get free of his troubles. And he thought he saw a way. Coach Petrie was one of his patients. The doctor suggested he could help the Tigers play better, ensure they would start winning. He said he could give them a chance to make it all the way to the Open Division and take the state trophy. Coach decided it was worth a try. He was soon visiting the doctor’s office more and more often, buying more and more of the illegal performance enhancers that gave his players extra size and strength. The Tigers started winning—against all odds, against all expectations—and Dr. Cameron started using his drug profits to bet on the final outcome of the championship with the bookies in Vegas. The odds against the Tigers at that early stage were enormous. If the Tigers won it all, the bookies would have to pay off big. Dr. Cameron could get out of debt at last.

It was no wonder Dr. Cameron was so frightened his story would come out. If his role in the Tigers’ corruption became public, all his criminal dealings would be exposed. Not only would he be sent to prison for a long time, but there’d be some very angry thugs in Nevada, tough guys who felt he’d ripped them off by rigging the big game without telling them.

His life—his honor, his importance, his friendships with governors and mayors and celebrities—it would all come crashing down in ruin and disgrace.

Karen Lee had been on hand as much of this tragedy unfolded. She had witnessed some of it and overheard some, and Dr. Cameron, in his misery, had even confided some of it to her. But she’d been afraid to tell anyone—afraid she would get in trouble herself and afraid of the lengths to which Dr. Cameron would go to silence her. She had kept her secrets for three years—right up until she had read Tom’s story in the paper. Then the quiet promptings of her conscience had grown louder and she could no longer resist them. Before calling Tom, she had tried to convince Dr. Cameron to come forward with the truth himself. But he had refused—and then, later, he had come to her apartment and tried to terrorize her into keeping her long silence.

As Tom walked out of apartment 6B, he realized he was walking into a world of trouble. The Sentinel story about the Tigers’ drug use had already caused a firestorm of controversy. If he and Lisa ran this additional story about Dr. Cameron’s involvement, the turmoil would grow tenfold. They would not only be accusing one of the most important men in town of breaking the law. They’d be uncovering a world of corruption and drug deals that could have repercussions through the whole city, maybe the whole state. A lot of people—Dr. Cameron, Coach Petrie, and all their important friends and supporters—would do anything they could to stop Tom and Lisa, to shut them up and shut them down.

So Tom knew he needed to act fast. Once the story was in the newspaper, once everyone knew the truth, Dr. Cameron wouldn’t dare attack Karen Lee again. And any important friends he had would probably turn tail and run instead of helping him. They wouldn’t want to risk getting in trouble themselves.

Tom’s heart was beating hard as he rode the elevator down to the lobby. Thoughts were crowding into his mind. He had to call Lisa. They had to get to work as quickly as they could. Write the story, put the paper out before anyone could stop them.

Marie will never forgive me , he thought . She will hate me forever .

He tried to push the idea out of his mind. What difference did it make whether Marie hated him or not? All her affection for him had been a lie anyway. He couldn’t lose a girl he’d never really had.

But even as he told himself that, the image of her face came to him. That amazingly pretty face he had loved since he was a little kid. The idea that she might hate him forever hurt—it hurt more than he wanted to admit. And he had a feeling it was going to hurt for a long, long time to come.

The elevator stopped. The door opened. Tom stepped out into the lobby. The receptionist with the stern face flashed a brief smile at him from behind her desk.

“Have a nice day,” she said without much feeling.

Tom nodded and walked out of the building.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle now. Tom’s Mustang was parked across the street. He got into it, turned on the engine, turned on the windshield wipers. As the wipers swept the rain off the glass, he dug his phone out of his pocket again. He called up Lisa’s name on his speed dial.

But before he could press the Call button, the phone rang. The readout lit up: Marie Cameron .

Tom stared at the name for only a second. Then he answered.

“It’s me, Tom,” she said.

The sweet, soft voice seemed to pierce through him. “Marie.” Her name came out of him in a low murmur. This was probably the last time she would ever speak to him, he realized.

“I need to talk to you, Tom,” she said. “It’s important.”

Holding the phone to his ear, Tom looked out the windshield at the street in front of him, looked through the air gray with rain. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Not on the phone. We have to meet. It’s about… it’s about my dad.”

“Your dad?”

“Yes. And about the football team. My dad was the one who… Look, I don’t want to say it on the phone. Please…”

Tom was quiet a moment, surprised. This was a twist. It didn’t make sense. If Marie had been flirting with him to keep him from finding out the truth, why was she telling it to him straight out like this? “I already know about that,” he said. “And listen, I’m sorry. I wish I could keep quiet about it.”

“Keep quiet?” said Marie, sounding startled. “No, no, you can’t keep quiet. Of course not. You have to write about it in the paper. But you can’t write about it until you know the whole story. The real story.”

Now Tom was just plain confused. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not what you think, Tom. It’s totally different than what it sounds like. Believe me. You have to meet me. Somewhere secret. I don’t want my father to know. Or Gordon.”

“Gordon? What’s he got to do with it?”

“Tom,” said Marie—and again, her voice seemed to go right into him. “I promise I’ll tell you everything if you just meet me.”

Tom only hesitated another moment. What could he do? He had to meet her. Maybe she was right. Maybe he didn’t know the whole story. Before he did anything else, he had to find out all the facts.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Where do you want to meet?”

“Up on Cold Water Mountain,” Marie answered. “No one goes there since the fire. Meet me at the monastery.”

It was a ten-minute drive to the trailhead. Half an hour’s hike up into the hills. Soon Tom was moving through the part of the woods that had been destroyed last summer by the Independence Fire. The blaze had started after a bunch of kids set off some fireworks near the trail. The dry summer brush had been torched, and the flames had swept through the woods for nearly three days before the firemen had finally managed to put the fire out. It had left behind a hellish landscape: a whole forest of twisted, blackened trees, their gnarled branches stunted, their broken silhouettes twisted against the boiling, cloud-covered sky.

The rain had stopped, but the light was failing. Evening was spreading across the mountainside like a gray stain. Tendrils of mist twined among the spooky, corkscrewing, coal-black corpses that had once been living trees.

Tom’s footsteps were the only noises in the deserted place. They were eerily loud as he made his way along the trail, under the gnarled branches. It was not long before the charred timbers of the monastery roof became visible over the ridge. A few more steps and the rest of the retreat came into view.