Page 54 of The Furies

One of the tenants appeared at the inner door. As he came out, I stepped in. Bobby Wadlin shouted after me as the door closed.

“I’m not giving you the damn key!”

“I won’t need it,” I said.

* * *

MOMENTS LATER I STOOD outside Raum Buker’s unit and removed a small flat-head screwdriver from my pocket. I inserted the edge behind the lens of the peephole in the door and pushed. The outer part of the viewer popped onto the floor while the inner part remained in place. Through the hole I could see a length of black wire. I used the screwdriver to ease it forward and felt the wire catch. I explored deeper, and the head caught on an edge of adhesive tape, and a cylindrical shape that must have been the power supply. I knew now why Raum’s view was obscured.

Someone had installed a camera in his door.

CHAPTER LX

Kepler checked out of the motel by the mall. He’d already remained there too long, but staying had been easier than moving, physically at least. By night, though, his spirit, or some poisoned surrogate, chose to wander, leaving him with the memory of dreams that were not his own. The entity inside him was growing restive after too many years of his company, and it felt the pull of the coin. He thought it would be glad to see him die.

The peephole camera he had installed in Buker’s room at the Braycott Arms was no longer functioning. From the final images, it was obvious that someone had discovered and removed it. Kepler was eager to establish who might have been responsible, but the fool manager, Wadlin, wasn’t answering his phone. It couldn’t have been Buker himself because Wadlin had been paid well to let Kepler know when, or if, he returned. Kepler doubted that Wadlin was clever enough to have spotted the device, but if by some faint chance he had, he’d also have been sufficiently streetwise to connect its presence to Kepler and forget he ever saw it. That left the private investigator, Parker, who very much was clever enough to uncover a hidden camera, which was another reason Kepler had seen fit to change accommodations. He had also ditched his old SIM card and replaced it with another. If Parker had been the one to find the camera, his next step would be to ask some awkward questions of the manager. Wadlin had a line of communication to Kepler, which could be used to track him, and Kepler did not care to become easy pickings for Parker.

The new motel wasn’t any more luxurious than the old, but the rooms were marginally bigger, and the location was farther from people and commerce. In the bathroom, Kepler stripped naked and bathed himself gently. The action of the cloth was like sandpaper against his skin, so exposed and sensitive had his depletion made the nerve endings, but he liked to stay clean. When he was done, he put on some scent. The bottle was almost empty, but applying the eau de cologne was more a question of habit than necessity. He had been using it for so long that the odor had infused him, and he exuded the smell of rosewater and civet from his very pores.

Finally, Kepler stood before the full-length mirror on the door, the runic tattoos on his body like the errors of a life made manifest. He could no longer deny the progress of his decay by refusing to look upon it. On the bedside table, the exposed workings of the ornate clock whirred and clicked, but much, much slower than before. When the clock stopped entirely, so also would Kepler’s heart.

And as he watched, something like a worm crawled beneath his skin.

CHAPTER LXI

Bobby Wadlin was staring at the mechanism.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

“It’s a camera. Someone installed it so that it faced into Raum Buker’s unit.”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” said Wadlin. “Wait, did you damage the door?”

His concern for his property, allied to the expression on his face, made me inclined to accept Wadlin’s denial of responsibility, but I wasn’t about to let him off so easily.

“Who else has been asking questions about Raum?” I said.

Wadlin began to open his mouth, but I raised a finger to stop him.

“Bobby, if you lie to me, I’ll know, and I’ll tear that desk apart to get to you.”

I saw him weigh an immediate threat to his well-being against a more distant one, and come to the correct decision.

“There was someone,” he said. “He wanted me to tell him if Buker met with anyone, and keep track of his messages and movements. It was nothing parole officers haven’t asked me to do in the past, and they don’t pay.”

“Who is he?”

“He didn’t give a name, just an email address.”

“Did he search the room?”

“I don’t know. He might have. I didn’t ask.”

“Describe him to me.”

Wadlin did. If this was Kepler, and Wadlin’s description was accurate, Eleanor Towle had been right to refer to him as a bogeyman. He sounded as though he was only one step from the grave.

“I’ll take that email address,” I said.

---