as had the cocaine and PCP. Because everyone up and down the street
from Arkadian’s station had dived for cover at the sound of all that
gunfire, no one had witnessed Anson Oliver with a gun in his hands
except the people who died–and Jack. Mrs. Arkadian had never seen
the gunman while she’d been hiding in the office, when she’d come out
of the service station with Jack, she’d been virtually blind because
smoke and soot had mucked up her contact lenses.
Within two days of the shootout, Heather had been forced to change
their phone number for a new, unlisted one, because fans of Anson
Oliver were calling at all hours. Many had made accusations of
sinister conspiracies in which Jack figured as the triggerman.
It was nuts.
The guy was just a filmmaker, for God’s sake, not President of the
United States. Politicians, corporate chiefs, military leaders, and
police officials didn’t quiver in terror and plot murder out of fear
that some crusading Hollywood film director was going to take a swipe
at them in a movie. Hell, if they were that sensitive, there would
hardly be any directors left.
And did these people actually believe that Jack had shot his own
partner and three other men at the service station, then pumped three
rounds into himself, all of this in broad daylight where there well
might have been witnesses, risking death, subjecting himself to
enormous pain and suffering and an arduous rehabilitation merely to
make his story about Anson Oliver’s death look more credible?
The answer, of course, was yes. They did believe such nonsense.
She found proof in another plastic window in the same wallet. Another
decal, also a two-inch-diameter circle. Black background, red letters,
three names stacked above one another: OSWALD, CHAPMAN, Mcgarvey?
She was filled with revulsion. To compare a troubled film director
who’d made three flawed movies to John Kennedy (Oswald’s victim) or
even to John Lennon (Mark David Chapman’s victim) was disgusting. But
to liken Jack to a pair of infamous murderers was an abomination.
OSWALD, CHAPMAN, Mcgarvey?
Her first thought was to call an attorney in the morning, find out who
was producing this trash, and sue them for every penny they had. As
she stared at the hateful decal, however, she had a sinking feeling
that the purveyor of this crap had protected himself by the use of that
question mark.
OSWALD, CHAPMAN, MCGARVY?
Speculation wasn’t the same thing as accusation. The question mark
made it speculation and probably provided protection against a
successful prosecution for slander or libel.
Suddenly she had enough energy to sustain her anger, after all. She
gathered up the wallets and threw them into the bottom drawer of the
nightstand, along with the decals. She slammed the drawer shut–then
hoped she hadn’t wakened Toby.
It was an age when a great many people would rather embrace a patently
absurd conspiracy theory than bother to research the facts and accept a
simple, observable truth. They seemed to have confused real life with
fiction, eagerly seeking Byzantine schemes and cabals of maniacal
villains straight out of Ludlum novels. But the reality was nearly
always far less dramatic and immeasurably less flamboyant. It was
probably a coping mechanism, a means by which they tried to bring order
to and make sense of–a high-tech world in which the pace of social and
technological change dizzied and frightened them.
Coping mechanism or not, it was sick.
And speaking of sick, she had hurt two of those boys. Never mind that
they deserved it. She had never hurt anyone in her life before. Now
that the heat of the moment was past, she felt … not remorse,
exactly, because they had earned what she’d done to them . . . but a
sadness that it had been necessary. She felt soiled. Her exhilaration
had fallen with her adrenaline level.
She examined her right foot. It was beginning to swell, but the pain
was tolerable.
“Good God, woman,” she admonished herself, “who did you think you
were–one of the Ninja Turtles?”
She got two Excedrin from the bathroom medicine cabinet, washed them
down with tepid water.
In the bedroom again, she switched off the bedside lamp.