The Never Game

Never adopt a strategy or approach a task without assigning percentages.

Never assign a percentage until you have as many facts as possible...

That, of course, was the key.

Colter Shaw couldn’t make any assessment of what had happened on October 5, fifteen years ago, until he gathered those facts... What in these pages addressed that? There were three hundred and seventy-four of them. Shaw wondered if the number itself were a message; after all, his father had been given to codes and cryptic references.

Ashton had been an expert in political science, law, government, American history, as well as — an odd hobby — physics. The pages contained snippets of all those topics. Essays started but never completed and essays completed but making no sense whatsoever to Shaw. Odd theories, quotations from people he’d never heard of. Maps of neighborhoods in the Midwest, in Washington, D.C., in Chicago, of small towns in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Population charts from the 1800s. Newspaper clippings. Photographs of old buildings.

Some medical records too, which turned out to be from his mother’s research into psychosis for East Coast drug companies.

Too much information is as useless as too little.

Four pages were turned down at the corner, suggesting that his father, or someone, wished to return to those pages and review them carefully. Shaw made a note of these and examined each briefly. Page 37 was a map of a town in Alabama; page 63, an article about a particle accelerator; page 118 was a photocopy of an article in The New York Times about a new computer system for the New York Stock Exchange; page 255 was a rambling essay by Ashton on the woeful state of the country’s infrastructure.

And Shaw reminded himself that it was possible these documents had no relevance whatsoever. They’d been compiled not long before October 5, yes, yet look by whom they’d been compiled: a man whose relationship with reality had, by that time, grown thread-thin.

As Shaw stretched, looking up from examining a picture of an old New England courthouse, he happened to see a car moving slowly along the street, pausing at his Malibu. It was a Nissan Altima, gray, a few years old, its hide dinged and scraped. He couldn’t see the driver — too much glare — though he did notice that he or she didn’t sit tall in the seat. Just as Shaw was rising, phone ready for a picture of the tag, the vehicle sped up and vanished around the corner. He hadn’t seen the tag number.

The person from last night? The person spying on him from above San Miguel Park? Which begged the all-important question: Was it X?

He sat down once again. Call the Task Force?

And, then, what would he tell Wiley?

His phone hummed. He looked at the screen: Frank Mulliner. They weren’t scheduled to meet for an hour.

“Frank.”

“Colter.” The man’s voice was grim. Shaw wondered if the young woman’s health had taken a bad turn; maybe the fall had been worse than it seemed originally. “There’s something I have to talk to you about. I’m... I’m not supposed to but it’s important.”

Shaw set down the cup of superb coffee. “Go ahead.”

After a pause the man said, “I’d rather meet in person. Can you come over now?”

26

A white-and-green Task Force police cruiser sat like a lighthouse in front of the Mulliners’. The uniformed deputy behind the wheel was young and wore aviator sunglasses. Like many of the officers Shaw had spotted in the HQ, his head was shaved.

The deputy had apparently been told that Shaw was soon to arrive, along with a description. A glance Shaw’s way and he turned back to his radio or computer or — after Shaw’s indoctrination into the video gaming world yesterday — maybe Candy Crush, which Maddie Poole had told him was considered a “casual” game, the sort played to waste time on your phone.

Mulliner let him in and they walked into the kitchen, where the man fussed over coffee. Shaw declined.

The two men were alone. Sophie was still sleeping. Shaw saw motion at his feet and looked down to see Luka, Fee’s standard poodle, stroll in, sip some water and flop down on the floor. The two men sat and Mulliner cupped his mug and said, “There’s been another kidnapping. I’m not supposed to tell anybody.”

“What’re the details?”

The second victim was named Henry Thompson. He and his marriage partner lived south of Mountain View, in Sunnyvale, not far away. Thompson, fifty-two, had gone missing late last night, after a presentation at Stanford University, where he was speaking on a panel. A rock or a brick had crashed into his windshield. When he stopped, he’d been jumped and kidnapped.

“Detective Standish said there weren’t any witnesses.”

“Not Wiley?”

“No, it was just Detective Standish.”

“Ransom demand?”