NO SAFE PLACE

by Richard North Patterson

  Quickly, Ginsberg glanced at one of the agents. Narrow-eyed, the tall man told the sound specialist, “Have your man come to the head of the chute. We’re going to have to sweep him.” Then he turned to Ginsberg, asking, “Can you meet him up there? We don’t want someone new inside.”

  Ginsberg faced Sean, nodding toward the head of the chute. “Wait for this mult-box guy, okay? Folks can grab their own signs.”

  Swallowing, Sean nodded. “All right.”

  He began sliding against the traffic, the stream of volunteers. Then the stream ceased altogether.

  At the head of the chute, more volunteers waited for two Secret Service agents to install a magnetometer.

  * * *

  For long moments, Nate waited patiently with the rest of the cattle—the press corps, slowly filing through the checkpoint for the press platform. Next to him, Lee McAlpine clutched his sleeve. “Share,” she murmured. “After all, we’re friends.”

  Nate merely smiled.

  Soon someone else would sniff this out. That was the fear Jane Booth was feeling, and Mason’s veiled warning to hurry seemed to make the competitive pressures on her unbearable. He could imagine the fevered conference calls—Jane in Washington; the publisher and the managing editor in New York; perhaps others. Nate wondered how much difference it would make that Mason had plainly leaked the memo; while it mattered to Nate himself, and seemed crucial to the story, there had been no real chance to hash it out with Jane.

  Lee still waited next to him. Then Nate passed through the checkpoint and climbed up into the bleachers, away from her.

  It was hard to see this as just another event—Kilcannon’s effort to mend his fences with pro-choice women—when the theme itself was so resonant with irony, its painful subtext so near the surface. But Nate would try. He stopped to scribble on his notepad that it was a fresh spring day, a seeming metaphor for the new hopefulness of Kilcannon’s supporters. Climbing the bleachers, he stood on the uppermost board, pad in hand, satisfied that he had a clear view of the crowd, the signs, the speakers’ platform.

  * * *

  “A beautiful day,” Kerry remarked to Ellen Penn.

  They sat in the rear of Kerry’s limousine as it glided to a stop on Sacramento Street. The junior senator from California, dark-haired, diminutive, and feisty, answered, “This is San Francisco, Kerry, not some toxic waste dump near Passaic. There’ll be a good crowd too. All you have to do is tell them where you really stand.” Her grin was somewhere between cheerful and challenging. “Or do I have to remind you?”

  This is San Francisco,Kerry thought reflexively,where Jamie died. But last night the dream of his own death had not plagued him. He supposed that was the upside of sleeplessness.

  “I know where I stand,” he assured Ellen with a smile. “Three steps behind you, like Prince Philip.”

  Ellen gave a satisfied laugh. Then their driver turned to say, “About two minutes, Senator.”

  * * *

  Nauseated, Sean stopped short of the magnetometer.

  The device was like the one he had passed through at Logan Airport, the nuisance that had made him leave a far better gun behind. Through the metal frame he could see the line of black Lincolns parked at streetside, waiting, then reporters and cameramen climbing from a large bus with a cardboard sign in its window marked “Pool.”

  Waiting in one of the Lincolns, Sean knew, was Kerry Kilcannon. Just as Sean knew that to pass through the magnetometer would be fatal.

  The last of the volunteers came through the frame. Behind them, Sean saw an anxious-appearing Asian man holding a metallic box in his hands while an agent swept his body with a metal baton. Another ritual followed, partially obscured from view: the box was swept, inspected, sniffed by a dog, put through an X-ray machine. Sweating, Sean tried to believe in the power of his staff pin.

  He took two steps forward—as far as he dared—stopping at the threshold of the magnetometer.

  A mustached agent, weathered as a cowboy, steered the Asian man to the frame. Only the device itself separated Sean from the soundman, the box in his hand.

  “You John Kelly?” the agent asked Sean.

  Sean nodded. The Asian man stepped through the frame, setting off a buzzing sound, and handed Sean the box.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  Jerkily, Sean turned and slithered back through the chute, passing the line of volunteers.

  At the end of the chute, Rick Ginsberg waited, the soundman just behind him.

  “Grab a sign,” Rick snapped at Sean.

  Sean took a sign, hurrying past Ginsberg and the two agents, handing the mult-box to the soundman. And then, quite suddenly, Sean was amidst the volunteers.

  To his right, he saw Clayton Slade again, still talking with the gray-haired agent.

  Averting his eyes, Sean edged through the volunteers, blending among them. The speakers’ microphone was above and to his right, fifteen feet away; the end of the chute to his left, near the stairs to the platform where Clayton stood. Four Secret Service agents were stationed at the base of the platform, facing Sean and the other volunteers.

  Sean glanced around him. The others had already started cheering—an Asian woman with glasses, a Latin man, a blond lawyer Sean recognized from headquarters. Wordless, Sean raised his sign, to conceal his face from Clayton Slade.

  * * *

  Lara and her cameraman stood with their backs to the magnetometer, waiting with the others for Kerry to emerge from the black Lincoln.

  It was like a frieze, she thought—the stillness of the cars, the Secret Service agents beside them. Only the pool, wrestling for position, seemed to move. Then an agent took the cell phone from his ear and stepped toward the rear door of a limousine.

  Briskly, he flung it open.

  A small woman emerged, Ellen Penn. And then, behind her, Kerry. More notable women came from the other cars, to join them: Susan Estevez; a local congresswoman; Dolores Huerta, vice president of the UFW, wiry and energetic, with her silver-streaked raven hair; the mayor of San Jose. Kerry greeted each of them, smiling, and then the party headed toward the passageway, the pool first backing into the chute, cameras aimed at Kerry’s face. In the semi-chaos, Lara did not think Kerry saw her.

  It was not a frieze anymore, she thought—more like the running of the bulls. Kerry was ten feet away.

  “Senator,” someone called out. “Do you think you’re ahead now?”

  Surrounded by agents and his women supporters, Kerry smiled. “Wasn’t I before?” he joked.

  Suddenly Lara found herself inside the plaza. She became part of a file of pool reporters moving between the platform and Kerry’s supporters. Spotting Dan Biasi and Joe Morton at the base of the platform, she drew a breath. The chaos had ended; the presence of the agents, as always, reassured her.

  * * *

  With Senator Penn, Kerry emerged into the light.

  Seeing him, the volunteers erupted in cheers, the sound passing like a contagion to the outer limits of the crowd. As he stopped at the foot of the stairs, Kerry watched Ellen Penn climb them, preparing to introduce the others, then Kerry himself. He noticed Clayton a few feet away—solid, loyal, watching over him as he had since the last days of the Musso case. Their eyes met and, despite everything, Kerry smiled.

  THREE

  When Sean saw Kerry Kilcannon, everything changed for him.

  The cheering crowd, the Secret Service agents, Ellen Penn—all were far away, like split-second images in the slipstream of a car. The plaza was noiseless; the hush of prayer seemed to enter his soul.

  As if knowing his fate, its justice, Kerry seemed to smile.

  Sean lowered the sign.

  All of his dreams, his planning, the luck with which God had graced his last days and hours, had brought him to this moment. He had no thought of living past the next few freeze-frames, already imprinted in his mind like a silent film: raising the gun, the shock on Kerry’s face when he recognized Sean at last, then his look of resign
ation as Sean emptied the gun into his head and body.

  How many times, in how many ways, had Sean imagined their final meeting. He felt a new lightness, a flood of transcendent rapture, and wondered if this was how death would be, the soul slipping from the body, toward eternal peace.

  That action was imperative Sean must not doubt. Frozen by cowardice, his own people—the Church, Operation Life—had become complicit in mass murder. Now Sean would share the light occupied by Kerry Kilcannon; united in death, they would save the lives of children, shame the compromisers who had been immobilized by fear disguised as moral qualms.

  Slowly, Sean let the sign slip from his hands.

  * * *

  Catching Kerry’s eye, Clayton edged toward him.

  He wanted to tell him something, Kerry thought. He felt Dan Biasi step aside, making room for Clayton. From the platform, one by one, Ellen Penn introduced the women who had come with them to vouch for his pro-choice credentials.

  Just before Clayton reached him, Kerry saw Lara.

  She was behind Clayton, in Kerry’s line of sight, framed by the crush of volunteers with signs. He looked into her face and allowed himself the smallest smile, a private, rueful signal of his pain and loss. And then Clayton blocked her from view.

  His friend’s face, Kerry thought, mirrored his own fatigue. They had been through so much together, and now, most likely, it was almost finished. That the reason was Lara Costello made the juxtaposition of these two faces, both dear to him, seem all the more sad. But this was no time to say so.

  “The great leader of the United Farm Workers,” Ellen Penn was proclaiming, “Dolores Huerta . . .”

  The crowd erupted in cheers, volunteers waving their signs up and down. Kerry put a hand on Clayton’s shoulder. “They’ve done well here,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” his friend answered. “They have.”

  Kerry still watched the crowd. Behind Lara, a dark-haired volunteer had dropped his sign.

  “Peter just told me something,” Clayton was saying.

  Kerry half listened. The man’s expression was different from the others, he thought, as unsmiling as the women demonstrators in Los Angeles.

  “This nut,” Clayton continued, “the one who did the Boston murders. They think he may be here in San Francisco . . .”

  There was something more, Kerry suddenly knew—a fever in his eyes, then a terrible familiarity.

  The man stepped forward.

  * * *

  Sean felt their eyes meet.

  Kerry’s face froze. There was a new focus in his gaze, a stillness in his body; in that moment, Sean felt Kerry acknowledge him at last.

  It was their time.

  Sean’s throat tightened. Light-headed, almost suffocating, he reached inside his jacket.

  * * *

  Kerry watched the movement of his hand.

  “So,” Clayton finished, “no plunging into crowds, okay? Just as a precaution . . .”

  The man held a gun now, aimed at them both.

  Kerry felt himself turn to lead. “What is it?” Clayton murmured.

  The quiet words jolted Kerry. With a sudden effort of will, he pushed Clayton away from him.

  “John,” Kerry called out.“No . . .”

  A pop shattered the air, and then Kerry felt the bullet strike him.

  There was a searing pain, a blinding whiteness. Kerry’s legs went out from under him.

  He dropped into a sitting position. Shock ripped through his body, numbing the sticky warmth on his chest. All he could see was that one face, its expression now sickened and appalled.

  “John,” he whispered.

  * * *

  “Gun . . .”

  As the screaming crowd recoiled, John Musso saw the stain on Kerry’s white shirt, the emptiness in his eyes. Kerry’s lips moved, and then he fell back, two agents covering his body.

  Another two pushed toward John.

  Putting the gun to his throat, John thought of Kate Feeney. But the last image in his brain before the bullet tore through it was of Kerry Kilcannon in a witness room, reaching across the table toward an eight-year-old boy.

  * * *

  Lara felt the shriek die in her throat.

  All she could see were Kerry’s legs, twitching reflexively. The crowd emitted a collective moan of horror; the agents collapsed around Kerry, shouting to each other; the pool reporters were still, stunned by an instinct more basic than their job. Then a photographer began snapping pictures, a reporter started chattering into her tape recorder.

  Dropping her notepad, Lara rushed forward.

  Thrashing blindly, she reached the edge of the crush surrounding Kerry, saw the two agents covering him, more agents sealing off the crowd. Then she found herself in Peter Lake’s strong grip.

  “No,” he said in a low voice. “You can’t.”

  His face was sickly gray. In near hysteria, Lara began to fight him, her voice choked. “Let me go . . .”

  At the end of the chute, two paramedics ran forward with a stretcher, convoyed by more agents. Still holding Lara, Peter turned to them. “Damn you,” she spat out, “I have tobe with him . . .”

  “Let her go,”someone called to Peter.

  It was Clayton, tears streaking his face. “Take her with him,” he said thickly. “For chrissakes, get him out of here . . .”

  Kerry lay on the stretcher now—unconscious, eyes shut, chest moving rapidly, arrhythmically. Quickly glancing from Clayton to Lara, Peter began to snap out orders.

  The stretcher rose from the ground, and the agents and paramedics started rushing Kerry back through the chute. Lara felt Joe Morton’s hand on her arm; she began running with him, heart pounding, leaving behind the chaos, the dead assassin, her work.

  * * *

  From the bleachers, Nate could see both the madness and the discipline: the animal fright of the crowd; the controlled frenzy of the agents swarming around the candidate and clearing a path for his stretcher with quickness and brute force. Cries of fear and grief and panic rose from the squirming mass of bodies.

  “No,” Nate murmured, thinking automatically of James Kilcannon. “Not another one . . .”

  Lara Costello scurried behind the stretcher, an agent at her side.

  “What’s shedoing ?” he heard Lee McAlpine blurt.

  Nate turned to her. Pale, Lee began scribbling notes, still watching Lara.

  “God,” he heard Sara Sax say baldly. “I wonder if he’s dead.”

  It was a reminder of what Nate needed to do. Taking out his cell phone, he called Jane Booth at home and told her to get someone to the hospital, more people to the site. Then he phoned the office and began dictating his story. His voice, Nate thought with professional detachment, sounded quite steady, his opening paragraph quite coherent.

  FOUR

  The paramedics laid the stretcher in a waiting ambulance, Joe Morton and Lara scrambling in after them.

  It felt like madness—the sudden acceleration; the nightmare shriek of sirens; the sense of careening wildly, a fun-house ride gone out of control. The white-coated strangers bent over Kerry’s body, blocking him from view. Then, beneath the sirens, Lara heard the terrible sucking sound.

  Sliding sideways, Lara found a place near Kerry’s head.

  His eyes were open, lifeless. Blood spread from the right side of his chest; a ragged hole in his shirt and skin showed the white jagged edge of shattered bone. The sucking sound came from the hole, as if the wound itself were gasping for life.

  One paramedic, a smooth-faced black man, glanced quickly at the brunette woman who was his partner. “His lung’s collapsing,” he said.

  The ambulance struck a pothole; Kerry’s body bounced like a rag doll’s, with no volition of its own.Please, God, Lara prayed in silence.Please. The repeated prayer, the awareness that the Service had rehearsed this, were her only threads of sanity.

  From behind him, she bent her face to Kerry’s.

  His eyes seemed wider now, as if
fighting their own sightlessness. The sucking sound grew ragged, perfunctory.

  Do you still love me?he had asked her.

  Oh, Kerry,she had answered,that’s such a sad question . . .

  “I still love you,” she told him now.

  The paramedics did not seem to hear. Intent, they monitored Kerry’s pulse, his pressure, their eyes like slits, barely seeming to breathe themselves.

  The wound took a final gasp, shallow now, and was silent. Kerry’s chest no longer moved.

  The woman inhaled sharply. “No pulse,” she said.

  Through a film of tears, Lara watched Kerry begin to die. Then she felt the ambulance slow, heard the sound of the sirens expiring with him; it was as if, she thought, death had overtaken them.

  Abruptly, the ambulance stopped.

  The rear doors flew open. Leaping out, the black paramedic grabbed the stretcher at Kerry’s feet. Then, quickly, Kerry’s face slid from beneath Lara’s, head lolling, and the stretcher was outside, run by paramedics and Secret Service agents toward a metal double door. Instinctively, Lara grabbed Joe Morton’s arm.

  “Please,” she said.

  Lara saw the compassion in his eyes and remembered what he must have heard her say. Suddenly, Joe took her elbow; they slid out of the ambulance, running after the others. Lara was barely aware of the clipped phrases with which Joe guided her past a gauntlet of agents and through the door. It was only when they stopped that Lara saw Kerry again.

  He was on a table, shirt ripped open, surrounded by doctors and nurses. A gaunt young doctor said tersely, “Tension pneumothorax.”

  Someone shoved a metal clamp on his hand. With controlled savagery, he jammed the clamp through Kerry’s wound.

  Lara heard the sudden sucking sound, so loud and desperate that her hands flew to her mouth. From between the nurses, she saw Kerry’s chest shudder, trembling.

  Deftly, the doctor removed the clamp and inserted a thin plastic tube through the bullet hole. Kerry’s body convulsed again.

  “I have a pulse,” someone said.

  Lara slumped against Joe Morton, watching the rise and fall of each new breath. It was some moments later when she learned what she had seen and that Kerry’s life still hung in the balance; minutes more until she knew what she must do.