The headache that had started out as only a nagging annoyance crept to the front of her brain and seized at her temples. She had aspirin in her shoulder bag but was afraid to stop what she was doing and find them. What if the gun fell out when she was looking for aspirin?
The man in charge was looking at her. She felt his gaze all the way across the room but didn’t look up when he walked toward her. Was he going to tell her to leave? She wasn’t doing it right. She wasn’t fast enough, or persuasive enough when talking to potential voters. Oh no, no, he couldn’t tell her not to come back. Volunteering here was the best way to keep track of what Jackson Garrett was doing and where he went. She couldn’t lose this opportunity. How would she manage, if she was sent away?
“Em?”
She started even though she’d been expecting him to speak to her. When he put a hand on her shoulder, it took all her energy to keep from flinching. Like a whipped dog, she thought, any time a hand reaches for you, it’s going to inflict pain.
“Hey,” he said. “You’ve been at it a long time. It’s time to quit. Next shift coming in. You don’t have to work day and night. Take off. Come back rested tomorrow.”
When she looked around she saw that everybody who’d been working when she started was no longer there. The young man seated next to her was replaced by a middle-aged woman, the middle-aged woman across from her was replaced by a young woman, probably a college student. She nodded to the young man in charge, she thought his name was Scott, and put her hands in her lap. Dumb. Did she think if she wasn’t careful, they’d leap up on their own and start dialing.
“You’ve done a really good job,” he said.
Em held her breath. Now he was going to say it, but don’t bother to come back. You’re not fast enough. You’re too old. We have somebody better.
“… So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
A second or two passed before she processed his words, then she smiled. “Oh yes.”
“You have a pretty smile, Em, you should use it more often.” He gave her shoulder a little pat, then went off to snag a new person who had just wandered in.
It was nearly dark when she left the headquarters. She didn’t much like being out after dark. Not that it was late, and not that she cared what happened to her, but she had to complete her work. After that, nothing mattered. She pulled a soft cloche hat from her shoulder bag and put it on. She couldn’t even remember what color it was, she had several in different shades. Aware of the importance of not being noticed, she was in the habit of changing clothes often, sometimes wearing a hat, trying to keep changing her appearance so nobody would remember her as the woman who was always around.
She was tired. How nice it would be just to go home and lie down. No! She straightened her shoulders. Not yet, not until she finished the job.
At Eighth Street, instead of simply walking on by, she stopped and looked up at St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral. A big, imposing building, it looked exactly like a church should. Important, like God could perform miracles in this place. So many of the new churches looked like office buildings. How could you fear God and repent your sins in an office building? Before she could talk herself out of it, she was inside. Dim and hushed. Deep feeling of being in the presence of God. She lit two candles, one for herself and one for Alice Ann.
Moving slowly, in a dreamlike way, she sat in a pew and stared at the altar of God. She wanted a miracle, but the miracle she wanted was a sin against that God. For thirty minutes, she prayed. Then, still in her half-wake state she took confession. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” And I intend to sin more. She told the Father she had something in mind and it was a bad thing what this would lead to. She didn’t tell him what these plans were and he didn’t push her. She wasn’t looking for forgiveness or absolution, but just being here and speaking vaguely of her plans made her feel eased, like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The Father told her to say fifty Hail Marys and read a passage in St. Matthew. This is what a life is worth? Fifty Hail Marys and a bible reading?
As she was leaving the church, she saw a young woman across the street who looked like Alice Ann. A burst of grief gripped Em with such pain, she thought she couldn’t breathe. Alice Ann, her daughter, the love of her life, dead now for almost twelve years. Nothing would bring her back. Em’s pain was burned away by anger. Such hot anger that it owned her, possessed her, was the only thing that kept her warm, the only thing that kept her going.
She dug out her key and let herself into the motel. It was close to campus and because it was inexpensive many parents stayed here when they came to see their sons or daughters at Emerson.
“I’m home,” she said.
Sitting on the end of the bed, she untied her shoelaces and slipped off her shoes, wiggled her toes at the relief. An eight-by-ten photo in a silver frame sat on the lamp table by the bed. She kissed two fingertips and placed them gently on the face of her dead daughter in the eight by ten photo in the silver frame. The picture was taken the year Alice Ann graduated from high school. Soft blond hair, slightly disarrayed, as if caught by a gentle breeze. Smooth forehead, quizzical blue eyes, lovely pointed chin. Beautiful, she was so beautiful. “Soon, my child.”
The feeling of destiny swelled in her chest.
Em had been against the marriage from the very start. She never liked Kirby Vosse from the first time Alice Ann brought him home. Her husband had said she was just being clutchy, hanging on because she didn’t want to let her baby go, but deep down where he wouldn’t admit it, he understood. He didn’t want to let go either, but there was nothing they could do. Alice Ann was all grown up and ready to make her own life. She had chosen this young man. It didn’t matter how they felt about him. Because Alice Ann loved him, they must find a place in their hearts for him.
“This is really the hardest part, you know? Waiting for the right time.” Em took off her blouse and pants, hung them in the small closet and pulled on a nightgown. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and when she noticed herself in the mirror, she was startled at the lines and sags in her face. When had the frown appeared between her eyes?
My daughter is dead because of Jackson Garrett, she told her image.
Alice Ann had a sweetness with a desire to please. At first there had been a bruise, once a black eye, and another time a broken arm, but she only said she fell, she was clumsy, she just seemed to bump into things. That happened over and over and then …
Em got angry still, remembering her daughter in the hospital, so battered she was barely recognizable. Em had flat out asked her if her husband had done this.
“It was my own fault,” Alice Ann had whispered. “I knew he was tired. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
Dear God in heaven, Em thought, picking up her daughter’s hand. “Tell me what happened.” She spoke sharply, but it took more than that, it took repeated urging and pushing before Alice Ann would say anything. As near as Em could piece it all together from Alice Ann’s stumbling words her daughter had been home alone, waiting for Kirby. He hadn’t come home for dinner, it was late, she started getting concerned. She waited up for him and fell asleep on the couch with the television on so she didn’t hear him unlock the door and come in. The first she knew, he was standing over her.
“Where have you been?” She wasn’t prying, just concerned and glad he was back.
“You telling me I can’t do what I want?” He’d been drinking.
“No, I—”
“Why do you always do this to me?” His voice was soft, almost a whisper and very sad.
Numb with fear, she didn’t answer.
He shook her. “Why?” His eyes glittered and his breath was foul.
Frozen, she didn’t respond. He hit her low in her stomach and she felt the warm trickle of urine.
“Christ, look at you. Pissing all over yourself like a baby.” By one arm, he hauled her to the bathroom and flung her at the toilet.
She sprawled across it and banged her he
ad on the tile floor. A gray fog crowded her mind. He kicked her breast and stomach and throat. She gagged and knew she was going to be sick.
When she vomited, he yelled, “You’re disgusting,” and rubbed her face in it. Grabbing the back of her neck, he squeezed it hard and smashed her face against the side of the tub. Whimpering, tears and snot mixing with the vomit, she begged him to stop. He tossed her in the tub and her head hit a faucet.
When she regained consciousness, he was gone. She could barely move, the pain was so bad. It was a long time before she managed to get to the phone and call help.
Alice Ann was hospitalized for several days. Em told her she had to have Kirby arrested and somewhere she had to find the courage to testify against him. If she didn’t, he would kill her next time.
Maybe, Em thought, she shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have pushed Alice Ann so hard, shouldn’t have insisted she have him arrested. Maybe if Em hadn’t been so angry, so intent on revenge, if she had snatched up her daughter and run far away maybe Alice Ann would still be alive.
Alice Ann’s husband got a lawyer and the lawyer got him off. The husband bought a gun and killed Alice Ann. The lawyer was Jackson Garrett.
With everything set, Em felt restless. Waiting was something she’d never done well. She felt nauseated all the time and food didn’t taste good. It was almost like her system was getting ready for the end. Anticipation left her feeling giddy.
When you lose a child, some part of you dies. You can’t explain it to anybody who hasn’t been there. You never get over it. You wake up with it, you carry it with you all day wherever you go, you take it to your grave.
It’s almost over. Her world was at the verge of ending as she put herself on the path toward the final confrontation.
She turned on the television, pulled off her shoes and lay back.
* * *
When Cass turned on her television set, she discovered she was all over the news. The shot of her leaving the faculty dining room with her head down was played over and over on every channel. Hadley Cane put her press secretary spin on it and explained that Ms. Storm had only recently joined the team and didn’t realize that all walls had ears, even those of the ladies room.
Free advertising for Jack, the seed planted in the voters’ minds that Halderbreck was stupid, and payback for Halderbreck’s suggestion that Jack would be second on his ticket.
Democracy in action.
29
“If you’d stop yelling, maybe I could figure out what you’re going on about.” Sean, with two large grocery bags, trotted up the steps, brushed past Susan in the doorway and plopped the bags on her kitchen table.
“Where the hell have you been?” She’d left messages all over the place and he hadn’t called back.
“Jesus, you sound like my wife.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” The media had been clamoring at her all day and she wasn’t in the best of moods to begin with. Having to fight them everywhere she went didn’t help any.
“Just like my wife.” He turned to face her, leaned back against a cabinet and crossed his arms.
“Are you trying to make me lose my temper?” It wouldn’t take much.
“No, darlin’, though ’tis a delightful sight altogether.” He started removing tomatoes, garlic, onions from a bag. “You want to tell me what you’re going on about before I lose mine?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m in the mood for a home-cooked meal, and since you can’t cook, I’m the one who has to do it. Always been that way. You get into something and can’t handle it. I have to step in.”
Susan put her hands on her hips. “You only step in when you have a guilty conscience. What have you done?”
Bell peppers, baby squash, salad greens. Her kitchen table was beginning to look like the produce department at Erle’s Market.
“Is there a place called Weir, Kansas?” He squatted, rummaged in the cabinet and came up with a large pot.
“I doubt it. Why?”
“I think I was there.” With a woefully weary sigh, he crossed his eyes in a mad, blitzed-out-of-his mind dippy look. “I’ve been places today where no man has set foot since the beginning of the last century. They dig them out of the ice for the tourists.”
“All right,” she said. “You’ve charmed me out of being mad. Now—”
“No, really. That’s where I was. Learned fascinating and highly suspect information from the natives.”
She eyed him suspiciously, wondering what the hell he was going on about. He smiled benignly. Alarms went off. “My father sent you, didn’t he? He bribed you and sent you out here to get me fired. That way I’d have to come back home.”
“I can’t understand why you wouldn’t, aghra. Have you looked around at where you are?”
“I have an officer who wants to throw your ass in jail. I’m having a little difficulty understanding why I don’t just let him.”
“You’d just stand by and let me be arrested?”
She sighed and rubbed the tips of her fingers up and down her forehead. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop behaving like a jerk and recall that someone hit a woman over the head and stuffed her into the trunk of her car to die. Someone also—maybe a different someone, but most likely that same someone—stuck a gun in the mouth of a paralyzed man and pulled the trigger.”
“Sorry, Susan. What am I about to be arrested for?”
“Your fingerprints were found in her house.”
“Yeah.”
She thought he sighed, but since he’d banged the pot in the sink and turned on the water, she couldn’t be sure. “Sean—”
He transferred pot to stove and turned burner on beneath it. “That’s what I came to see you about.”
“You were in Gayle’s house.”
He slapped a package of pasta on the countertop, set a bottle of olive oil beside it, brought out a bottle of wine from the other bag and took glasses from the shelf. “Where do you keep your knives?”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? Top drawer on your left.”
“I’m a reporter, Susan. I’m not in the habit of giving information to cops.” He uncorked the wine, poured two glasses and handed her one.
“You want to explain?” She took the glass, held it up to the light, and admired its ruby color. She sipped.
“Friday.” With the tip of a knife, he chopped onions with a precise rhythm. Chop chop chop. Shoved minced bits out of the way. Chop chop chop. “I ran into the hotel and Wakely, listing in his wheelchair, was waiting in the lobby. Half-looped, as usual, and mad as a viper. He kept saying, loudly, that he had to be somewhere and his keeper wasn’t there.”
“Keeper?”
“Murray, the physical therapy guy, who takes care of him. Being the sort of crafty investigative reporter that I am, I thought, aha, a gift horse. Far from looking him in the mouth, I’ll put him in my rental car, and extract hitherto unknown secrets about Jackson Garrett.” Sean put a dollop of oil in a skillet and turned the burner on under it.
“Where’d you take him?”
“I followed his directions. Turn here, turn there, that’s the house, stop here. I got him inside, wheelchair and all. And that wasn’t easy. For my troubles, I got nothing. He wouldn’t even introduce me to the woman who opened the door.”
“You took Wakely Fromm to see Gayle Egelhoff.” It never hurt to state the obvious if you were arranging clarity in your mind.
“Yes.” He scraped onions and garlic in the skillet and stirred them around. The resulting aroma made her mouth water.
“Don’t try to tell me you didn’t find out her name.”
“When I got Wakely settled in the living room, I noticed a magazine on the coffee table just before I left. It was addressed to Vincent Egelhoff. I assumed she was Mrs. Egelhoff.”
“Why?” she said with exasperation. “Why did he go to see Gayle and why didn’t you tell me?”
“He wouldn’t tell me who he was g
oing to see, he wouldn’t tell me why.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “What did he say?”
Sean added chopped bell peppers to the sizzling onions. “He kept muttering to himself, ‘No point now. And better left alone.’”
“What did that mean?”
“I couldn’t get anything more out of him.”
“Really?”
He held up a hand. “Honest to God’s truth.”
“Sure,” she said flatly.
He dropped pasta into boiling water. “Wakely always talked about his good friend Jack. Best smoke jumper that ever was. Hero. Wouldn’t be alive if Jack hadn’t dragged him out of hell’s fire. It was like a litany, repeating the same phrases over and over. That’s all he ever said.”
“You think there’s something fishy there.”
“It piqued my interest. Enough that I did a little research at the Hampstead paper on that twenty-year-old disaster.”
“And you found out—?”
“Jack Garrett was a hero and saved the life of Wakely Fromm.”
She took a sip of wine. “How was Fromm getting back to the hotel?”
“He said he’d call someone.”
With a fork, Sean lifted a strand of pasta and tasted it for doneness. “I have no idea why Fromm went there. I took him because I wanted to pump him, get something the rest of the media didn’t have.”
“Why?”
“By the time NewsWorld comes out, that’s all old news.”
Susan picked up the bottle and topped off both their glasses.
“The whole situation with Garrett taking Fromm in, making himself responsible for the man, Fromm living with Garrett even after Garrett got married. It’s just—” Sean shrugged. “The whole situation is unusual. I wanted to find out—” He broke off, thought a second, then added, “What I could find out, I guess. What does this say about Garrett? Would it continue forever? If Garrett were to be nominated, and an even bigger if, if he were to be elected, would Fromm go to the White House?”
Up in Smoke Page 19