Bentley Little - The Walking

Hal left the office for an hour or so, and while he was

gone, Naomi came over to tell him that no one would care if he took off.

Miles gave her a grateful smile. "I'm fine."

She shook her head, rushing quickly back to her desk to answer a ringing phone. "Stubborn," she said. "You are so stubborn. When Hal returned, Miles was again staring absently out at the fog.

"You still here. he said. "I thought Naomi was going to tell you to go home."

"She did.

Hal snorted. "Fypical."

Miles examined the pencil he was twirling in his fingers. "Do you believe in the supernatural?"

Though he did not look over at Hal, he could feel the bearded man's scowl. "What are you talking about? You mean, like ghosts and demons and crap?"

"Yeah." He continued to look at the pencil. "You've been in this business a long time. Haven't you ever come across something you didn't understand or couldn't explain?" "Why? What happened?"

"Nothing. I'm just wondering."

"You're not just wondering. What is it?"

Miles put the pencil down, looked over at his friend. "All right, it's my dad. Ever since he had that stroke he's been... different."

"Well, of course--"

"No, it's not that. It's something else. It's like. I don't know.

Sometimes it just seems like he's a different person. He looks like my dad and he sounds like my dad, but every once in a while we'll be talking and something will change. I don't know how to put it any better than that. Something shifts. It's nothing concrete, nothing specific, but I just feel something."

"Sounds like you're the one with the problem, not him."

Miles sighed. "Maybe so. maybe so. Last night I could have sworn I heard voices in the house. Whispering voices. And they were saying my dad's name."

"Voices like what? Like ghosts?

Miles shrugged. "I guess."

"You are going off the deep end."

"I'm probably just afraid of my dad coming home. It was all right, him being in the hospital. That's where you're supposed to be if you're sick. But now he'll be home, where he used to be when he was well, and he'll still be sick. I think I'm just freaked about those two worlds colliding." 'that why you're here today?" "Probably."

"You know, I used to wonder what would happen if my wife got a brain tumor."

Miles smiled wryly. "You've always been a barrel of fun." "I'm serious. What if she lived but it changed her personality, made her into a completely different person? Would I still love her?"

"A shallow barrel of fun."

"No. Because I'm not sure if I love her personality, the person I know, the person she is now, or if I love some nebulous spirit that is her true essence, something unique that would still be there even if her personality did a complete one-eighty. You know what I mean? It's a question of faith, I guess. Do I think she's just a sum of her experiences and genetics and the chemicals that determine her behavior, and it's that surface woman I love, or do I think she has a soul? Is it that soul I love? Do you see what I'm getting at?" Miles nodded, sighed. "I'm afraid I do."

Hal walked over, clapped on the back. "Dont we, bud. You can hack it I just wish I didn't have to."

Hal headed off to the break room, and Miles leaned back in his chair, staring up at the acoustic tiled ceiling. He had

not admitted it to himself until he'd said it; but there was something different about his dad these days, something that try as he might he could not attribute to the stroke.

The phone on his desk rang, and Miles picked it "Hello?"

"Mr. Huerdeen?" It was Marina Lg- was.

"I told you, Miles."

"I need you to come over to my father's house," she said. "Now."

There was an urgency in her voice he hadn't heard before, a tightness that sounded like barely controlled panic. "What is it?" he asked, though he knew she was not going to answer.

"I don't want to talk over the phone."

"I'll be right there."

"Do you need the address?"

"I have it. Give me twenty minutes."

He opened his lower desk drawer, grabbed his mini-tape recorder, threw it into his briefcase along with an extra notebook. He checked the clock. Ten-fifteen. His dad wasn't scheduled to be released until two. He should have plenty of time.

I won't be back," he told Naomi. "Anything important, leave a message."

She smiled softly at him. "Good luck, Miles. I hope your father's okay."

All the way to Santa Monica, he wondered what it was that Marina couldn't tell him over the phone. She'd sounded freaked, as though she'd discovered something she hadn't been prepared for and didn't want to deal with.

Liam Connor lived in an older neighborhood of single family Spanish-style homes with white stucco walls and red tile roofs. The lawns were all neatly mowed and nicely manicured, and the juxtaposition of the elderly residents' boat like Buicks and dusty Pontiacs with their younger neighbors'

well-polished Mercedes Benzes and BMWs made it clear that this was a street on the rise.

Marina and a young man Miles assumed to be her husband walked out as he pulled into the driveway. They'd obviously been waiting for him, and they reached his car before he finished opening the door.

Marina tried to smile. 'thank you for coming out Mr. .... uh, Miles."

He nodded at her, smiled politely at the man. "Gordon," the man said.

"I'm Marina's husband."

Miles glanced toward the house. "Is your father here?" he asked.

Marina and her husband shared a glance.

He caught it, and his antennae immediately went up. "Did something happen to him?"

Marina shook her head. "No. Nothing like that."

"What is it, then? What couldn't you tell me over the phone?"

"It'sit's something he did. Something he wrote. We have to show you."

The two of them started across the lawn toward the house.

Miles followed. "Is your

"He's in his room," Gordon said. "He... he doesn't want to see you."

They walked inside. The interior of the house was hipper than Miles had expected. Instead of framed family photographs and reproductions of generic landscape paintings in the living room, there was an original abstract expressionist painting on one wall, a grouping of antique western memorabilia on another. The furniture was low and modern, and there was an enormous large-screen TV. The hardwood floor gleamed to perfection.

"I still don't understand why your father won't cooperate with this investigation. You said he felt threatened. He even went to the police. How did he go from that point to

being totally uninterested in finding who is harassing him?"

"I don't understand it either," Marina admitted. "But..." she trailed off.

"But what?" he prodded.

"But you have to see what he wrote." She and Gordon led him into what looked like a den or office: a small cramped room filled with overflowing shelves and boxes piled atop a worktable, everything dominated by a massive old-fashioned rolltop desk.

"It's there," Gordon said, pointing. '

Miles walked over to the desk. On top of a manual typewriter was what looked like handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad.

"What do you make of it?"

The note was a list of names Liam had obviously drawn up. Miles picked up the pad and quickly scanned the list.

His gaze locked on a name in the middle, his pulse racing. Montgomery Jones. He turned toward Marina and her husband. "What is this?"

Marina faced him, looking pale. 'that's what we want to know."

"Did you ask your father about it?" ' "He won't talk." She took a deep breath. "I recognized that one guy's name, the one who was killed, and that's why I called you. Gordon and I thought that there might be some connection between the woman or whoever's stalking Dad and the person who killed that man."

"Do you think we should go to the police?" Gordon asked.