by Bower Lewis
John shook his head. “Pax, if you’re going to serve the Lord, you’ve gotta stay better informed. It’s a topsy-turvy world out there.” He paused and looked away. “What have you done with It now? Did you grind It up again, or drown It in acid?”
She colored slightly. “I just gave It the night off. It’s been a stressful week, and we thought—”
He held his hand up. “I don’t want to hear anything more. You go let the phone out of whatever you’ve got it stashed in while I get Romeo, here, some ice for his face.”
Patience looked sideways at her uncle. That light space inside her was increasing in density as she rose slowly from the floor. It swelled to full-blown dread as she reached her bedroom. An ice cube tray cracked in the kitchen and she pulled the closet door open to the thwopping of cubes into a plastic bag, followed by the muffled chime of a message alert.
She reached to the bottom of the clothes hamper and relieved Zane’s sweatshirt of the phone. A single message awaited on the screen. It was a picture of the headline from that morning’s Globe.
Massachusetts State Senator Joseph M. Forsyth, 42, Dead After Sudden Illness.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She heard them calling from somewhere far away, but couldn’t respond. She lay on the floor, locked in a ball with the phone trapped between her hands as Zane brushed the hair from her face and John shook her again.
“You didn’t do this, Pax.”
She couldn’t understand what he meant. Her trembling turned to shuddering as the phone chimed again. Finally, John pushed Zane back and lifted her from the rug. He carried her into the bathroom and dropped her into the tub. Then he pulled her hands apart, removed the phone, and turned on the shower.
The blast of cold water hit her face and she threw her arms over her head. Zane shoved past her uncle and jumped into the tub beside her. She turned her face to his chest and cried into his drenched T-shirt.
“We didn’t do this,” he said again and again.
John turned off the water and leaned against the sink. He dropped his head to his hand as she choked on the last of her tears and Zane turned her face to his.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s what we’ve been trying to tell you for the past ten minutes,” John said. “You didn’t kill the senator. It was his mad corpse of a campaign manager.” He held the phone up to show her the screen. The Biz had texted a single word.
ROCKWELL
She shook her head and he set it back down.
“That doesn’t make sense. Joey Forsyth has been his meal ticket for over twenty-five years. If they’re really as scared of these SolarTech guys as he suggested, wouldn’t keeping the senator alive and finding a way to rehabilitate his image before Tuesday be their only hope? Rockwell is nothing to SolarTech without a candidate. Why would he kill him?”
“I don’t know,” John said. “Autopsy hasn’t been performed yet, and for the moment, everybody’s taking it on faith that he was overcome by some acute illness after what happened at the town hall yesterday. All we know for sure is that we had a problem, and for whatever reason, Rockwell has decided to solve it for us. So, I guess that’s it for me, kid. I’ve got to pack it up now and move on to the next catastrophe. But, I can’t go until I know you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay!” Patience shouted. “Nothing is okay. Forsyth may have been an egomaniacal moron, but he was still a human being. Rockwell would never have killed him if he thought he could still get some use out of him, but I guess we took care of that. What Joey Forsyth needed was a good spanking and a job where he couldn’t do any harm. He didn’t need to die, for Christ’s sake.”
John just shook his head at her. He looked tired. “Human nature is a funny, fucked-up kind of a thing. It veers off in unexpected directions. If you try to follow too close behind it, it won’t be long before you find yourself heading straight for the edge of a cliff with no time to hit the brakes. You’ve gotta step off a bit. You can’t save the world without considering it from a whole world perspective. What you’re doing right now is humanizing the enemy, and you can’t ever win that way.”
She stood up and turned to him with water dripping over her face.
“I thought you said we’d already won. Rockwell has solved our problem, and the world is now safe to fuck itself up all over again. Kudos to us, Uncle John.”
He took her by the shoulders and pulled her from the tub.
“I’ve just turned the hose on the person I cherish most in this world, after she got her heart stomped on by her own beliefs. Nobody’s won here, kid. It was a mean trick of the Lord’s, letting you run crazy without the proper guidance or preparation, but that’s my beef with Him. Looking at your face right now, there’s only one thing in the world I know for certain. Nobody’s won.”
Zane stepped between them and nodded up at the SCUD. “What do we do now?”
John just shook his head. “Nothing. What needed doing is done. I’ll admit that I’m a little uncomfortable about the lack of apparent reason to how this all went down, but I learned a long time ago not to get caught up in the whys and wherefores of a job. Senator Joey Forsyth is no longer a threat to the world, and there’s always more work to be done. So, I’m going to go have my own little heart-to-heart with God, and then it’ll be off to the next place He needs me to be.”
Patience grabbed him by the arm and he smiled back indulgently. “You can’t just leave, Uncle John. Rockwell can’t get away with this. We have to do something… We have to tell the police what we know.”
He shook his head and laid a hand on her shoulder. “What will you tell them, Pax? That you know the senator didn’t die of natural causes because God told you so in a text message that no one else can see? Or that you kidnapped the man and his campaign manager at gunpoint, shot one of them in the arm, and then fed the dead man a load of ipecac the morning before he kicked? Men have been killing men for as long as they’ve been on the Earth. I’m sorry, but this is outside of our jurisdiction.”
Patience shook his hand from her shoulder.
“I agree,” Zane said. “There’s no way this ends well if we go to the police. I’m sorry, Patience, but I’m with John on this one.”
Her uncle leaned in and turned her face back to his. “And if this Rockwell corpse ever threatens a pink hair on your head again, I’m going to kill him dead. There won’t be anything that you, or God, or all the SCUDs on Earth can do to stop me, you can be certain of that.” He turned to Zane then. “Same goes for you, rich boy. You watch yourself.”
Patience waved toward the door. “Just go.”
He rubbed her wet head and turned away. She stood where she was until his heavy footsteps paused at her newly rebroken door and then she yelled his name and ran back into the living room. She found him waiting for her before the threshold.
“How can I reach you?”
“I’ve got your number,” he said. “It won’t be so long this time, kid, I promise. And if you ever need me, I’ll know it.”
She looked away. “I needed you for ten years.”
“Nah,” he said. “You really didn’t.”
And then he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was all so horribly clear.
“How did we miss this?”
They stood together before the television, staring down at Rockwell’s sad and serious face. The campaign manager fought back his threatening tears with the perfect notes of courage and vulnerability. He appeared the very picture of a man determined to honor his late friend’s legacy with professional decorum, despite his personal grief, and the sling restraining his injured arm only heightened his heroic effect. Patience looked up at Zane as his right hand tightened into a fist and the spindly fingers of horror wound their way up to her throat.
“How could we possibly have missed that this would be his plan?”
He shook his head, his jaw twitching as Rockwell described the fearlessness of Forsyth’s final days, and how he�
��d refused to allow a grueling illness to deter him from reaching out to the good people of Massachusetts. He went on to describe how he, Alexander Rockwell, would live out the rest of his years with the knowledge that his great friend and mentor had been more gravely ill than he’d let on, and that he’d succumbed to the senator’s wishes to be allowed to continue with his busy campaign schedule.
“The Commonwealth of Massachusetts lost a champion last night.” Rockwell’s voice broke eloquently. “More importantly, the Commonwealth lost a friend. Senator Joey Forsyth was devoted to the state he served for nearly four years, so much so that he never left it, despite his enormous success in the entertainment industry. Long after most who’d achieved what he had would have moved on to lives at the beach and red carpet events, Senator Forsyth made the choice to roll up his sleeves and go to work for the people of Massachusetts. He was determined to give back to those who’d so embraced him all his life and to make sure their interests were represented on Beacon Hill with tenacity and vigor. And until the moment of his death, Senator Forsyth was determined to take their fight all the way to Washington, D.C.”
There was a smattering of applause and Rockwell fell silent. He nodded once to the cameras and looked down.
“It’s with a heavy heart this afternoon that I respond to the party’s request that I continue in the senator’s place for the remainder of this campaign. It will be my sad privilege to fill his seat, should he be elected to the United States Senate this coming Tuesday, until a special election can he held to determine the seat’s permanent fate. And I will make this promise to you, his friends and constituents, right here and now: I will represent your interests with every ounce of the passion that Senator Joey Forsyth would have. When you go to the polls this Tuesday, I hope you’ll show this great man, this great friend of Massachusetts, your appreciation for the fight he took up on your behalf. It was a fight he ultimately gave his life for. Please thank him with your vote. I thank you very much for listening, and God bless.”
Patience looked up at Zane as Rockwell took questions from the reporters. “What do we do now?”
He was saved the trouble of responding by a rapping at the door. She opened it to find a courier in the hall. She signed for the envelope and frowned at its plain, printed label.
“It’s for you,” she said. “Delivered here, with no return address.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
He ripped it open and removed a letter and a small stack of photographs. He stood very still as he read, with scarcely a glance at the pictures, until the page crumpled in his hand and he sat down on the floor. He pressed his fists to his forehead and the photos scattered over his knees and around his feet.
“What is it?”
She knelt beside him and he looked up. His eyes were terrible.
“It’s me, Patience. I fucked up.” She reached for a couple of the pictures as he pressed a hand over his eyes. “Alex has everything. We’re no safer now than we were before the town hall meeting, except that Alex isn’t as stupid as Joey was, and I’m about to be removed from the equation entirely.”
She stood up with the pictures in hand and a sick feeling in her gut. The shots had been pulled from what was clearly a security camera mounted to the Forsyth campaign’s tour bus. They were stills of Zane, chatting with the security guard, while carrying a brightly colored plastic necklace, a take-out container, and a generous jug of maple syrup.
Her vision blurred for a moment. “How could we not have known about this?” She looked down at him again, but he was folded over his knees with his face in his hands. “The Biz must have known about those cameras, Zane. This doesn’t make sense. How could He not have…?” She looked toward the window, and then her heart broke. “I was in a time-out.”
He looked up, uncomprehending. She just shook her head and pointed to the letter. His shoulders dropped as he held it up.
“Alex knows about the ipecac. The bug too. He’s got everything. Joey died of extreme dehydration and gastrointestinal distress, followed by respiratory failure. The only traceable substance they’ve found in his system is ipecac. For the moment, they’re ruling his death an accident, because it’s been confirmed by his camp that he’d been known to fool around with some questionable weight control methods, but Alex has what’s left of the syrup I sent in. He’s giving me until six o’clock tonight to convince my father to cozy up or he’s taking everything to the feds, along with his harrowing account of our past three days together. I have to get in front of this, Patience. I have to go in and tell them everything I know.”
Her mind went into lockdown. “That’s out of the question.”
“Patience, please.”
She charged past him, collecting her coat and the weapons. Zane tried to follow, but she wouldn’t stop moving. Finally, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back to face him.
“I have to go right now. I’ve got just a handful of hours before Alex’s deadline, and if I wait for them to come to me, I’ll have no credibility whatsoever.”
She pulled her arm back. “So help me, Zane, if you do this, I will make your life a living hell. You’ll barely even know you’re in federal prison, that’s how miserable you’ll be.”
He took her by the hand to stop her from turning away. “I’m sorry, Patience, but I’m in love with you. Ten years is not enough. I need to go.”
She pulled away and thrust the phone into his hand. “Don’t be an ass, Zane. You need to call your father.”
He stepped back with his hands in the air, forcing her to catch the phone again. “Not on your life.”
The lines of her face tightened, but she didn’t back down. “I’m sorry, Zane, but I’m in love with you, too. Ten years isn’t nearly enough. Especially if I only get to see you on visiting days. We need more than six hours to contain this, and appeasing Rockwell is the only sure way of buying us the time we need. Please call him.”
“Patience, listen to me. You cannot begin to imagine what involving Rutherford in this would unleash.”
She kept her gaze and the phone steady. “Will it be worse than what’s going to be unleashed once you’ve surrendered to the feds for poisoning a senatorial candidate?” He dropped his face to his hand. “We were introduced by God, Zane. Do you really think He’d have gone to the trouble if you were meant to spend our last days before the election detained and interrogated for something Alexander Rockwell did? Does that make any sense to you?” He didn’t respond, so she pressed her lips together and turned toward the window. “Does it make any sense to You?”
The Biz seemed disinclined to step into this one. She shot the sky a look. “Because our way will not be easy, right? Well, maybe if You’d quit making it harder than it has to be, we’d all be surprised by what could happen. With just a little more guidance and a lot less interference, this might become slightly less impossible and we might actually manage to get the job done. But You wouldn’t want that, would You? That would totally blow the point You’re trying to make.”
LOOK IM DOING MY BEST 2 HELP U
BUT U R IMPOSSIBLE!
“Gah!”
“Patience?”
She turned back with her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry, Zane, but I’m not doing this without you. If you cop out on me now, I’m through. I realize that probably sounds manipulative, and maybe it is, but enough is enough. I’m one hundred percent serious this time.” His mouth fell open and she looked away. Then her expression softened a little. “I’ll try harder with the phone, okay? I’ll be less antagonistic and I’ll let It finish Its thoughts without cutting It off or throwing It into traffic. You have my word on that. Please call your father.”
He crushed the letter into a ball and hurled it at the window. Then he dropped to the couch and slumped over his knees. “My God, Patience! You go through the first four stages of grief in one fell swoop when you’re not getting what you want, don’t you? I mean, bam!”
She didn’t respond. He looked up
again and held out a hand for the phone.
“I don’t call my father. I request an appointment. I can usually jump the line, though, if it’s important.”
“Will we have to buy me clothes for this?”
“Yes.”
“Super.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Patience ignored the estate completely. The main house was as elegant as Forsyth’s was ostentatious, and it could fit the whole of Rockwell’s into a single wing. The grounds were larger than any of the parks in Allston and they were intimately manicured. She was in no mood to be intimidated by such wealth, however. If anything, she was put off by its subtle insinuation that she should be.
“What do I need to know?”
She smoothed her hair down with a glance in the rearview mirror as Zane cut the engine and leaned back. She was still a little irritated by his refusal to let her to have the pink stripped out before their appointment with his father, adhering to some code or standard about her personal identity that she didn’t have time for or care much about, considering the circumstances. He’d even gone so far as to drive past Government Center at one point during the argument, with the implied threat of turning himself in if she changed who she was at the time he needed most for her to be herself, so he’d won that one. But she was irritated nonetheless.
He shook his head and turned his attention back toward the entrance of the house. He looked a little pale.
“I can’t begin to imagine how to answer that, Patience. I’m sorry.”
Her irritation dissolved at the sight of his expression. She’d managed, in her fervor to keep him out of prison, to ignore how hard a thing it was that he was doing, but there was no ignoring it now. She was fairly certain she was right about this, but that didn’t prevent her from hating everything about it.