Deadly Pedigree - By Jimmy Fox Page 0,87

murderer, of human beings, of genealogy.

“You should not have come back,” she said. “I had envisioned a happier fate for you.”

“Mrs. Armiger, you don’t direct fate. You never did. The past and the future are beyond your control. Your delusion is a convenient excuse to do what you want–save this one, kill that one, as if the world were your personal ant farm. You don’t really believe that, do you? Maybe it’s worked so long that you do. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. You have to pay for what you’ve done.”

She seemed momentarily amused. A brief smile played across the surface of her lips and was gone, like fugitive sunlight on a cloudy, windy day.

From her lap she lifted an elaborately inlaid, silver-and-gold double derringer. Nick thought it might have belonged to Euphrozine, her great-grandmother, or to Jacob Balazar; it might even be the one Ivanhoe mentioned in his diary. But he didn’t doubt it was capable of a modern killing.

“Justice, payment for our sins, ‘a divinity that shapes our ends,’ I believe Hamlet says. What a quaint archaic concept of life, Nick.”

He wanted to point out that she was the one who’d named her company after a Greek goddess, but his mouth was too dry.

The weak spots in her armor, he kept telling himself, hoping his poker face was better than his cards.

“Zola and I will survive our difficulties, lawsuit or no lawsuit, here in New Orleans or elsewhere. You could have lived to know how lucky you were to have occupied a brief space in our hearts–and our checkbooks. Now you are the one who has overreached; in your delusion, you are an agent of Nemesis. When the media report your death, it will be something like this: crazed Artemis investor with a petty grievance breaks into Armiger estate, where he is shot dead by security guards. Don’t worry, we’ll open an account for you.”

Nick could see her finger beginning to move the trigger. He found his tongue. “If you kill me, Zola will find out about her adoption, what you allowed to happen to her parents.”

“I told you never to mention that again!” Her outburst drained her; she panted as her wild eyes searched the room for the strength to continue. Her caftan seemed to be devouring her, inch by inch. “You’re bluffing. You have no proof. You merely put together some odds and ends, some coincidences. No, that story died with Max. The immediate danger has been”–she seemed to lose her thread–“has been…neutralized. And one day, I will gather those records, as well. Those, as well…. But now, your threat will die with you.”

“Odds and ends, coincidences, vague patterns–genealogy defined,” Nick said, talking rapidly, all the while looking down at her finger on the trigger of the derringer, three feet away. “So spread out, so powerfully free, that not even you can gather them in to your glass cases of revisionism. I put Zola’s story on a dozen computers, timed to be released online–if I don’t live to stop it. No matter where she is, it will follow her. At first not many will notice, just the cybergeeks. But eventually thousands of people will start to ask thousands of questions. One day, maybe years from now, she’ll turn on her computer or pick up a magazine, and there will be her real past, pointing the accusing finger at you.”

In all Hawty’s rhapsodies about the information superhighway, something had stuck in his memory. He hoped it sounded convincing.

A sudden pain made Armiger inhale sharply; she fought it. Each sign of her increasing anguish made Nick bolder.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. But he could see she did.

The gun drifted slightly. She was calculating profit and loss.

After a moment’s reflection, she asked, “For the sake of discussion, if you are telling the truth, what do you propose?”

“My quaint archaic concept. All is chance and necessity, Democritus said. Ancient Greece again; you should feel right at home. What do I propose? Has your chance reached the limit of necessity? Have the things you can alter met the things you can’t? Let Fate–with a capital f–decide our contest here.”

Something twisting her insides made the veins in her neck stand out.

“The legal system you mean? I am to turn myself in, confess? Do you really believe that I would be indicted for anything more serious than jaywalking? My means are not inconsiderable, even now.”

She picked up the pillbox and tried to open it as she continued to cover