Devoted(112)
Rodchenko became a Vesuvius of words.
He answered every question at greater length than wanted.
He answered questions that weren’t even asked.
He incriminated himself and his partners and all manner of other people, including a man named Alexander Gordius.
Thanks to Woody’s research, they already knew Gordius was Dorian Purcell.
Megan recorded it all.
She emailed the recording to Rosa Leon’s attorney, Dorothy’s dear friend, Roger Austin.
Online, Ben went to the Atropos & Company site on the Dark Web.
Following Rodchenko’s instructions, he hacked their computer and downloaded everything onto a flash drive.
A copy of this was also sent to Roger Austin.
Roger would have to work out how to extract evidence from all this, as well as from Woody’s report.
That was a difficult job. But essential.
When the evidence was given to some trusted authority, it must not be traceable to Woody or Megan.
Because of the Mysterium.
If the four killers were no longer a threat, they were for sure a problem.
Because of the Mysterium, which did not yet dare to be known.
“We’re in something of a fix,” Ben said, “but there’s a way out that’s less risky than it sounds.”
124
The lavish arcade in the Tiburon home contained forty-six pinball machines from different periods in the evolution of the game. Dorian preferred to play when all machines were lighted, because the flashing-pulsing backboard displays and the come-on music enlivened the place, made it feel like a real arcade in an amusement park or on a boardwalk somewhere. Now he activated the forty-six from a single switch just inside the arcade door.
Near the middle of the chamber, he decided to start with a kick-ass Gottlieb machine called Haunted House, which he and Haskell Ludlow had been aces at when they were kids. The deep game table had three levels: upstairs, main floor, and basement. There were eight flippers and various ramps and secret passageways for the ball, so sometimes you couldn’t guess from where it was going to appear. Because the machine was set up for free play, he didn’t need coins, and in maybe ten minutes, he was in the groove of it, as if he had played only yesterday.
One of Dorian Purcell’s rules for living a good life was that no matter what you were doing, whether it was building a giant tech company or banging your mistress, breaking a competitor and driving him into ruin or playing pinball, you had to commit to it as if it was everything, as if your very survival depended on it. He leaned into Haunted House, fiercely determined to beat his previous highest score, which the machine showed as 1,340,000 points. He worked the flippers with pinball-wizard finesse no less impressive than the keyboard work of a great concert pianist, played with body language, cheering each triumph, cursing every missed chance with such fervor that spittle sprayed across the glass that covered the game table.
Because of the theme music, clattering flippers, ringing bells, other sound effects, and his own exclamations, because of his intent focus on winning, he didn’t react to the words “Ochus Bochus,” which was an early form of hocus pocus and which he assumed came from the machine in a raspy voice, just one of its many spooky effects. His concentration began to falter only when he slowly realized that he smelled again the malodor he’d detected but couldn’t track down in the library and later in the kitchen. A ball escaped his control, slipped down the chute labeled Goodbye, and almost at once he lost another. He realized this would not be the day when he beat his previous highest score. With that recognition came a sudden keener awareness of the stink, which had gotten much stronger than before. He was not alone.
He turned, and Lee Shacket was three feet away. Shacket had been to this house three times during its construction, Purcell proudly showing it off. But this was Shacket monstrously changed, blistered and pocked with suppurating sores, scaly patches on his face, his eyelids red and swollen, and his eyes protruding as though subject to a terrible pressure in his skull. His lips were pale. No. Not just pale. White. Peeling and as white as flour, as if he had pressed his mouth into some acidic powder that burned the color out of his lips. He said, “Dorian,” his voice thick and gravelly.
The Haunted House pinball machine was at Dorian’s back. He would have to slip to the right, slide out of Shacket’s reach, and run for the arcade exit. He didn’t believe Shacket—this thing that once had been Shacket—could move fast, not in its condition. Dorian could escape, as he had always escaped the negative consequences of his actions. He could escape this, lock himself in one of the panic rooms, call for help. All he had to do was fake to the left and slip to the right and run.
But he couldn’t move. His muscles were locked. His body seemed to have turned to stone. “Dorian, I’m becoming. Do you see how I’m becoming?” It wasn’t just the terror of this creature that paralyzed Dorian Purcell, but something else, a greater horrific possibility that trembled at the back of his mind, that he couldn’t quite name. Or maybe he didn’t dare to name it, for fear that the naming of it would make actual what was at the moment only possible. “Becoming the king of predators,” Shacket said. He grinned, he licked his teeth, his tongue was as white as his lips. His teeth were stained, the spaces between them clogged with gray material, his breath foul, rancid. The tremulous thought that Dorian strove to avoid would not be repressed. Maybe it wasn’t his destiny to significantly extend the human life span, to live for hundreds of years; maybe he would not be one of the first transhumans, with vastly enhanced intellect and extraordinary powers. Maybe he would die as billions had died before him. Having lived with the conviction that the world could not evict him, he was paralyzed by the possibility of mortality.