Tail Spin ft-12

by Catherine Coulter

  “That material,” Rachael said. “May I see it?”

  Savich handed it to her.

  It was dark brown, a smooth fabric, sharp, she thought. Rachael said, “Synthetic stew or not, the guy who’d wear this dresses sharp.”

  Savich’s cell sang out the Harry Potter theme. “Savich here. What? Okay, Tom, escort Dr. MacLean back to his room and make sure he stays there. Keep the reporter away from him and on ice until I get there. Yeah, okay, I understand. Yes, we’ll be right there.”

  Savich looked at them. “Dr. MacLean is talking to a reporter about Congresswoman Dolores McManus murdering her husband.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Washington Memorial Hospital

  It was nearly noon when they stepped onto the elevator in the hospital. They’d dropped Sean off at his grandmother’s house. She promptly hauled him off to church, whispering in his ear that she’d made potato salad for him, which made Sean beam at her and say in a confiding voice, “I’ll teach you how to fry Zhor, Grandma. You gotta get him into the Forest of No Escape and wrap a monkey vine around his neck.”

  “My day will be perfect.”

  The six people on the elevator obligingly moved to the side so they could enter. Savich said quietly as he punched the button, “I’ve got Ollie going through purchases made by Laurel, Quincy, Brady Cullifer, Greg Nichols, and three of the senator’s former staffers. We’ll see if a nice brown jacket shows up.”

  “It could be a hired thug, Dillon.”

  There were still two people on board when the elevator reached their floor.

  Sherlock said, “I’ll speak to Dr. MacLean, Dillon; you take the reporter. Scare him spitless, okay?”

  “That’s the plan “

  The reporter was the Washington Post’s Jumbo Hardy, a smart-ass the size of a well-fed linebacker with both a brain and a mouth. He always looked droop-eyed and worn-out, like he hadn’t slept in a week, only Savich knew better.

  Jumbo gave Savich a grin, fanned his big hands in front of him. “Hey, isn’t this something—I got one of the big guns.”

  Savich said easily, “I’m surprised to see you again so soon, Jumbo. Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “More than you do,” Jumbo said. “I didn’t think you could outdo your press conference, but having you show up in person to get rid of me—what’s going on, Savich?”

  “Yeah, you got my attention. Glad you could stick around.”

  “Your guy gave me no choice, said he’d arrest my butt and toss it in a janitor’s closet on the fifth floor of the Hoover Building. He said I wouldn’t be found until next month.” Jumbo gave Savich a big toothy smile. “I was just checking out Congresswoman McManus.” He patted his laptop. “It ain’t MAX, but I can still find most stuff, like the details about the death of her husband. Now I hear from her very own shrink that she admitted paying some hit man in Savannah to take out her old man. Now, that’s news, Special Agent Savich, big news.”

  “I know you’re not about to write about this until you’ve got verification. And you also know you’re not going to get it. Listen, Jumbo, you know very well Dr. MacLean is suffering from frontal lobe dementia, a disease that makes him talk about all sorts of stuff he shouldn’t, even stuff that didn’t happen. You also know there have been attempts on his life—”

  “Nearly more attempts than we poor representatives of the people can keep up with,” said Jumbo. “That deal last night, what a fiasco for you guys. I mean, an FBI agent getting stabbed in the neck with a needle, not to mention a nurse saving the day. What’s that all about?”

  “Hang that up, Jumbo. We’ve already made a statement.”

  “The people got a right to know, Savich, that’s all I was saying. I heard rumors about this disease of his, but no one ever confirmed it. To tell you the truth, that’s why I didn’t mind staying. I know he’s real sick, know what he says is likely libelous, and that he can’t control himself. Talk to me, tell me what’s coming down here.”

  “Off the record?”

  “If I agree, when do I get to go on the record?”

  “When everything is over. All right, Jumbo, I need your help.” Jumbo whistled, sat back, his arms behind his head, and crossed his legs. “What is this? You need my help? When did the sky fall? What’s going on here I haven’t already guessed?”

  FIFTY

  Sherlock found the good doctor sulking in his room. A neurologist, Dr. Shockley, was checking MacLean’s reflexes, humming under his breath. MacLean was ignoring him. His eyes narrowed when Sherlock came into the room. It looked to her like he was ready to yell his head off.

  Dr. Shockley straightened. “Well, you’re good to go, Dr. MacLean, despite the excitement.”

  Sherlock introduced herself, waited for him to leave the room, which he did, with one last very long look at MacLean.

  Before he could spit at her, Sherlock intoned just like she would to Astro, “Bad dog, Dr. MacLean, very bad dog.”

  “Bad dog?” MacLean said slowly, “Bad dog? That’s pretty funny, Agent Sherlock, but that’s exactly my point. I’m not your damned dog. It’s none of the FBI’s business if I want to talk to a reporter. It’s just talk, a bit of conversation with another sentient human being— wait, he’s a reporter, but at least I was sentient.”

  “Hey, that was pretty funny, too. Are you done?” When he would have continued, Sherlock raised her hand. “I understand, Timothy, I really do. But you’ve got to believe me now. It was wrong—you broke patient confidentiality, and to a reporter. Try to think clearly about this for a moment. This is exactly why someone is trying to kill you. Do you understand that your speaking to Jumbo Hardy was inappropriate?”

  MacLean shrugged. He looked petulant.

  A different tack then. Sherlock punched him in the arm. “I hear your wife was pretty upset about what happened last night. She didn’t want to leave you alone.”

  “Yeah, right. Oh, that stupid Molly, she’s always hovering, always checking my pulse, my eyeballs, my goddamned feet. She says my toenails need trimming. I didn’t do anything to deserve it—well, hardly anything, at least in cosmic terms.”

  “You told her to go find a lover because you found her disgusting.”

  He shrugged. “Well, fact is, she smelled funny.”

  Down the rabbit hole, Sherlock thought. “She loves you.”

  He was silent for a very long time. Then, “No, she doesn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  MacLean leaned his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes. “When she found out what finally happens to people with this disease, she nearly left me.

  “Everyone thinks she’s a bloody saint for sticking so close to me, but I know the truth. I know she’s siphoning off all the money she can out of our joint accounts. I know she’s got a lover, you see. Only thing is, she can’t very well leave me in this sucky condition, now can she?” He paused, shrugged. “It isn’t Pierre or Dolores behind this. No, Molly’s the one who’s trying to kill me.”

  Whoa.

  “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard out of you, Tim, and you know it and even the good Lord knows I’ve heard more than my share from you over the past twenty-seven years!”

  Molly MacLean stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, her face nearly scarlet with rage.

  “Mrs. MacLean,” Sherlock said, smiling at her, “would you please come with me for a moment?”

  “If I stay in the same room with this ... individual, I just might kill him,” Molly said, and waved her fist at her husband. “Lead on, Agent Sherlock. Save this idiot’s miserable lying hide by removing me.”

  Savich found Sherlock and Molly in the nurses’ lounge, Molly in tears. He paused in the doorway. Sherlock raised her eyes. “Hi, Dillon. I think we’ve got things in some perspective. Do we, Mrs. MacLean?”

  Molly knuckled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve got it together again. It’s so easy to forget he doesn’t realize what he’s saying, doesn’t begin to comprehend how his words
twist and turn the knife. He doesn’t even know there is a knife. And when I heard him talking about me to you like that—I’m sorry. Oh God, he’s so sick, so unlike himself. Sometimes I can’t stand it.” Molly lowered her face in her hands and wept.

  Sherlock lifted her to her feet and held her in her arms, murmuring nonsense to her, really, but kept it low and soothing.

  Molly pulled back, sniffed, and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry I lost it like that. I’ve got your blouse all wet. I’m a miserable human being for losing it when I know—I understand—he can’t help it.”

  “You’re doing remarkably well under the circumstances, Mrs. MacLean,” Savich said, and he meant it.

  Sherlock said, “Dr. MacLean was wound up today, probably as a result of last night. He called a reporter and he verbally attacked you, probably because Dillon and I ruined his fun. We’re so sorry.” And Sherlock hugged Molly. “You’re hanging in there as best you can.”

  She sighed and walked away from them to the window. She hugged herself. “Yes, I am. Poor Tim, to be trapped like that in this nightmare, and a lot of the time he doesn’t even recognize he’s in one. I spoke to his doctor at Duke, read what they gave me. It’s not going to be pretty, what happens from here on out.”

  Thirty minutes later, when Savich pulled his Porsche out of the hospital parking lot, he said, “Jumbo Hardy agreed to keep this under wraps. He’s going to put Rachael’s announcement in the Washington Post right away.”

  “What did you promise him?”

  He gave her a quick smile. “Not much. Jumbo sobered up real fast when I told him the course of the disease. He also knew he didn’t have a source he could quote. I did, however, promise him a one-on-one, with the FBI’s approval, of course, when we catch who’s trying to kill Timothy.

  “I’ve removed the phone from Timothy’s room. From now on, he’ll have to ask a nurse to dial any phone numbers for him to ensure he doesn’t pull something like this again. The nurses will have to be hard-nosed with him.”

  Savich said as he wove the Porsche in and out of traffic, “Hey, you want to tell Congresswoman McManus how she barely escaped the big bullet?”

  “That means she’d have to thank you. Fat chance.” She patted his shoulder. “It’s going to end soon, Dillon, both cases. But I’ve got some ideas of my own I want to check out.”

  “You wanna share?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Rachael was restless, and yes, she admitted it, scared out of her mind—a feeling she hated because it was so debilitating, a feeling that had been a part of her for more than a week now, ever since she’d been dropped into Black Rock Lake to drown. She remembered the coarse wet texture, the strength and stiffness of the rope as her fingers worked it. She closed her eyes for a moment. What was worse was that she was becoming used to the fear, a sort of vacant humming in her head that made her muscles clench. It should make a difference that she survived, but it didn’t seem to. She drew in a deep breath and looked around. At least she hadn’t been sitting lock-kneed on the sofa, her brain paralyzed. No, she’d cleaned Jack’s large corner apartment thoroughly, although, she had to admit, it hadn’t needed it.

  Before Jack waltzed out the door, he’d had the nerve to tell her to take it easy, check out his music, and eat, she was getting too thin, maybe take a nap, and he’d held her face between his hands and kissed her fast and hard, and left without another word, the jerk.

  She turned on his flat-screen TV and listened to the local newscaster while she watered plants—five azaleas and one ivy. She stopped when she heard the guy segue into a report on Senator John James Abbott’s memorial dinner at the Jefferson Club tomorrow evening. She stared at the TV while he listed some of the senators who would be there, mentioned Jimmy’s family, and at the very end, he finished by saying, “There’s an interesting aside here. Rachael Janes Abbott, Senator Abbott’s recently discovered daughter, will be one of the speakers.”

  The local channel skipped to the weather. Summer rain, nothing new there. Rachael turned off the TV and began pacing Jack’s very nice living room. No antiques, but lots of big, overstuffed pieces in rich browns and golds, touches of turquoise. He needed a couple of bright throw pillows, the designer thought, a focal point, and the room would be perfect. He had good taste, she’d say that for him, and that special “knack” most people didn’t have. He was also, she noted, an extremely good kisser.

  She wandered into Jack’s good-sized kitchen, all modern, appliances sparkling, and so they should because she’d shined them with a soft cloth for a good five minutes while she was off in never-never land. The walls were painted a pale yellow, the wooden cabinets the same yellow, the result bright and warm. She walked into the hallway, this time pausing to look at all the black-and-white photographs he himself had taken, photos of southwestern national parks, stark and wild, and a close-up of two mammoth elks fighting. And there were the pictures of people—diaper sized to ancient, faces lined and smooth, bodies twisted and straight. Her favorites were a teenage girl laughing hugely, her head thrown back, long hair blowing in a stiff breeze, white iPod wires in her ears, and an old man in baggy tweeds, his head bald as an egg, sitting on a bench, a meatball hoagie in his hand, smiling up into the bright sunlight, a drop of tomato sauce on his mouth.

  Jack’s world was eclectic, but entirely his. Here was a big-time FBI agent who was also an excellent photographer, an artist, and owned a house he was fixing up. What were the odds? She was struck, as she had been several times before, how you thought you knew someone, but many times you really didn’t have a clue. Take that gambling son-of-a-bitch former fiancé of hers, for example. She sneered at herself for being an idiot. Jerol Springer. She shuddered.

  She wandered back into the living room to one of the two big bay windows. His building was vintage 1930s, well maintained, as were the grounds, an amazing example of art deco, with oodles of atmosphere and style. But it was the magnificent views that made it prime, she thought, as she looked toward the Lincoln Monument. There were several photographs of the monument on the wall beside the window, one taken in the winter with snow piled everywhere, two determined, bundled-up tourists trudging up the monument steps, heads down, fighting a strong headwind. She wondered if he took the shots with a zoom lens from his living room window.

  Where was he?

  Rachael wandered into the guest bedroom, a room she’d only dusted lightly because it had indeed been pristine. It was small, tidy, spare, with a double bed covered with a sleeping bag spread on top, not a spread. She roamed back to Jack’s bedroom with its high ceilings and beautiful art deco moldings. She studied the Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams photographs on the white walls, obviously two artists he admired.

  The bed was nicely done, a big king with a navy blue and white quilt, two bright red pillows covered with red sequins tossed against the navy blue shams. Hmmm. The pillows added a nice punch. Who had added the bling? A former girlfriend? Why hadn’t this same person added bling to the living room? Hadn’t she been around long enough?

  Don’t go there. Maybe whoever she is, she’ll hook up with my loser of an ex-fiance.

  Rachael sat down on the side of the bed and twitched. She was driving herself nuts, she couldn’t help it. Her mind took her right back to her near drowning, that black water closing over her head as the concrete block dragged her down, then skipped to the very close call at Roy Bob’s garage, that man standing in the bay opening, shooting at her and Roy Bob, Sheetrock raining down on them. And Slipper Hollow, so many bullets, death, raw and ugly in their faces. If not for Jack being such a useful guy, things might not have ended so well. But at Roy Bob’s garage she survived because of her own skill, and she planned to keep reminding herself she wasn’t a helpless victim. She’d survived all three attempts. She supposed the incident at the house the night before didn’t really count because it hadn’t terrified her like being thrown into Black Rock Lake or being shot at. But now she was safe; whoever wa
nted her dead had no idea where she was. She knew that, knew it—but somehow it didn’t quite reach to her center, where all her doubts and fears crashed about endlessly.

  Rachael’s eyes went to a photo sitting on his dresser, obviously his parents, four siblings, and a slew of kids. She said aloud to the empty room, “No one knows where I am. No one. Not even you guys.”

  She repeated it. Finally, she accepted it enough to allow her built-up fatigue to get a toehold in her manic brain.

  Rachael lifted the blue patterned quilt to find beneath it a blue-and-white striped duvet cover. It was sharp, elegant. This was very serious, very cool coordination. A former girlfriend? His mother?

  Where was he?

  She lay down and closed her eyes. She’d called Uncle Gillette and told him the plan, about which he was markedly silent, then her mother, lying cleanly yet again. She’d listened to her half brother, Ben, tell her about how buff he was getting for the upcoming football season. She hadn’t known there were grade school football teams. Life didn’t just continue, she thought, marveling, it galloped forward. She remembered Ben at eight years old, tossing a Frisbee to her, rolling on the ground with his dog. The last time she’d seen him, he was fishing with his dad at Lark Creek Lake.

  Her own life wasn’t galloping. She was lying in a strange bed with nothing happening, nothing resolved, and no Jack. She closed her eyes and her brain sped up again and she remembered:

  “It wouldn’t do you any good to announce to all of them that you’ve decided not to tell the world about what your father did, Rachael,” Dillon said, Jack nodding in agreement. “You wouldn’t be believed because there’d always be the chance you would change your mind. It no longer seems to be about that, anyway. We have no choice but to go forward.”

  Forward it was, she thought. No other direction, really. She was very grateful it might all end tomorrow night at the Jefferson Club. She prayed it would.

  Where was Jack? For that matter, where was his house?

  Then Greg Nichols had called her cell.