The Greater Good

by Casey Moreton

  “Great, thanks for your patience.” The door shut and the lock engaged. Joel took a deep breath, and St. John rushed to the door to see if the concierge had in fact gone. He pressed an eye to the peep—his left-hand palm flat to the door, the Glock momentarily at his side. His one mistake. A second later, St. John felt a cool ring of steel, the size of a dime, pressed to his right temple. It was a familiar and unmistakable shape. A sinking, terrible lump filled his gut. In that breath of time, the assassin understood the score.

  “Drop the gun,” Joel ordered, his voice shaky but insistent. St. John nodded, and the Glock hit the floor between them with a softthud.

  32

  TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES NORTHWEST OFNEWYORKCity, the videocassette finished rewinding, and static fuzz filled the TV screen. Brooke was dizzy with mental overload. She had sat on the floor in front of her bed, barely breathing. Vice President James Ettinger had spun an incredible tale.

  The reality of Ettinger’s words had yet to fully sink in, yet she understood perfectly the implications of what he had described. And those implications involved the total collapse of the current White House administration, not to mention more federal indictments of high-level government officials, and others, than she could even begin to conceive. In comparison, Watergate seemed like a puff piece on the local news.

  Her legs had fallen asleep, a fact that didn’t make itself apparent until she tried to unfold them to stand. They wobbled beneath her, and she made a mad grab for the footboard of her bed. The clock radio on her bedside table told her it was now after 1:30 in the afternoon. She stood, her knees aching. She pulled the videocassette from the VCR and tossed it onto the bed. Right now, she thought, she needed to shower and get dressed. She’d think this through in the shower. As she walked down the hall toward the bathroom, her mother popped into sight from the family room and asked if everything was all right.

  “Fine, Mom. Just going to grab a shower.”

  Grace nodded hesitantly, but then shook her head and stood her ground. “Brooke, you’re scaring me! I want to know what is going on and I want to know itNOW, young lady!”

  Brooke closed the bathroom door, tugged the shower curtain aside, and sat on the edge of the tub until the water temperature felt about right.

  Her mother stood outside the bathroom door asking, “Brooke, did you hear me? I’m worried about you.”

  Brooke ignored the clammer outside. She yanked up on the little knob on the faucet, and the showerhead sprang to life. She dis-robed and stepped into the plume of steam.

  Darla Donovan was dead. James Ettinger was dead. Barry. Joyce. Lipton. Connor. Jill. Lesley. But most of all, Darla and the vice president. Dead within a week of each other. Ettinger by an assassin’s bullet. Darla in an explosion—its cause still in question. And now, a taped confession by the vice president, hours before his death, had been mailed directly to Darla’s postal box, and the fact that it had been labeled with only Ettinger’s Secret Service designation. It would take a mighty persuasive explanation to convince her that the two incidents weren’t related.

  Brooke was aware that Darla had a positive working relationship with Ettinger. But that Ettinger would send his mind-blowing confession only to Darla Donovan would have never even entered her realm of consideration. It was a journalist’s dream.

  The most explosive piece of political documentation in the history of the nation was on ninety minutes’ worth of VHS on the quilted bedspread in the bedroom where she grew up. Vice President James Ettinger had played a part in a crime that would level Washington, D.C. Clearly someone knew what he’d had to say, and had killed him for it. They somehow also knew that he’d sent the confession tape to Darla Donovan, and Brooke would bet every penny she’d ever make in her lifetime that whoeverthey were, also had been responsible for the explosion at Darla’s apartment building. And if that were the case it wouldn’t stop there. The information on that tape was too volatile. If and when it hit the news it would—

  Brooke’s eyes flashed open in the spray from the showerhead. Something had fallen through the tripwire in her subconscious. She stood stone-faced in the rising steam, and she put a hand to the wall to keep her balance.

  The phone call from the train. The message she’d left on Darla’s machine from the train.

  They knew. They knew she had the tape.

  I have to get out of here,she thought, her chest tightening.

  I have to take the tape and run. I don’t know where to go, but I have to run!

  But then she paused and thought for a second, and realized that in fact shedid know where to go. She knewexactly where she had to go.

  Using his right foot, Joel kicked away the Glock, sending it coasting lightly across the hotel carpet. His heart was pounding madly, and his upper body glistened with sweat. He backed away slowly, the snub-nosed .22 aimed dead-level with the guy’s ear.

  “Keep your hands where I can see ’em.”

  St. John slowly raised his hands. His palms faced out at shoulder height. He was sick with himself.

  Joel knelt to retrieve the Glock, then stood and aimed the 9mm at St. John. He took a deep breath, the fire in his throat still roaring. He coughed. “Turn around,” he said. St. John pivoted slowly where he stood in front of the door. Joel motioned with the gun. “In there,” he said, indicating the bedroom.

  They moved together, St. John six or seven paces ahead of Joel.

  “Sit.”

  St. John eased into a wing chair against the wall. How that gun had materialized, seemingly from nowhere, had him baffled. He cursed himself for the lapse of judgment. Now for the second time in a matter of hours he’d allowed someone to get a drop on him.

  Taking a shirt from the hanging bag in the closet, careful never to turn his back to the guy in the chair, Joel put on the shirt, shifting the gun from hand to hand as he put his arms through the sleeves.

  “What do you want with me?” Joel said, awkwardly buttoning the shirt using only one hand.

  “The woman in the picture.”

  Joel unzipped his fly and tucked in the shirttail. “Why?”

  “I am engaged to marry her.”

  Engaged?Joel hesitated, puzzled. “Why’d you assumeI have her?”

  St. John pointed at the crumpled photocopy on the bed with one of his upraised fingers. “You were looking for her, no?”

  “Okay…”

  “And now she’s been taken from me, and I was led to believe you might know where she is.”

  “What is her name?”

  St. John considered, then went ahead, “Her name is Megan Durant.”

  The chills began at the toes, sizzled up his legs, and branched out in gooseflesh throughout his upper body, reaching the tips of his fingers, and crackling up the back of his neck. Had he really saidMegan? Joel wondered. Had the past week not been in vain after all?Megan…Megan…Megan. His mind had not betrayed him after all. His eyes had seen what they thought they’d seen. That face in the crowd had indeed been a face from his past. His only child. His daughter. His angel.

  His knees suddenly felt like rubber. He didn’t know whether to smile or cry, but he resisted the temptation to do either.Durant. Ariel had changed their last name; he’d figured as much. But Megan was still Megan. He had indeed found her. Never could he have imagined that it would come about in such a fashion, standing in a hotel in New York City, holding a stranger at gunpoint, a stranger who’d heldhim at gunpoint only moments earlier.

  “You saidMegan?”

  St. John nodded. “That’s right.”

  From a hanger in the closet, Joel put on his coat. What, where, how? These were the questions he had no answers for. What to do with this guy? And where? And how?

  “What do you want with her?” St. John said.

  Pulled from his thoughts, standing on the far side of the bed, Joel looked up, brushed his hair back with his free hand, and said, “She’s my daughter.”

  The blood drained from St. John’s face. It had to be a l
ie. It simplycouldn’t be the truth. It was too impossible. It was inconceivable. Megan had spoken so little of her family that there was limited resources for him to draw from. He worked to play back their many conversations, desperate to run across even the smallest scrap of related data. Hadn’t her parents divorced? Megan avoided the subject at all costs, and Olin hadn’t pressed her. Shewas American born, and this guy was clearly from the States. But that alone was not enough to even begin to prove such an absurdity to be the truth.

  St. John lowered his arms a hair, his eyes unblinking and locked on the guy across the room. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, clearly, choosing his words. “My friend, whoever you are, I can assure you that Megan Durant is not your daughter.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She is being held against her will.”

  “By whom?”

  St. John lowered his hands nearly to his lap.

  “Heyhey! Up with the hands!” Joel took a step forward, the gun in front of him, aimed at St. John’s chest.

  St. John raised them level with his chin.

  “Bywhom?” Joel repeated.

  “Actually, I’m not altogether sure.”

  “Where?”

  “Good question.”

  “Why are they holding her? What do these people want?”

  “They want me to do something for them.”

  “What?”

  St. John shrugged. “That’s between me and them.”

  “It just became my business. What do they want you to do?”

  “Someone has something they want, and I have to get it for them.”

  “Where?”

  “Syracuse.”

  “Syracuse?”

  “New York. Syracuse, New York.”

  “And if you don’t, if you don’t bring them what they want, what then?”

  “They will kill Megan.” He watched the shock register in Joel’s eyes. St. John watched the Glock, watched it dip slightly in the man’s hands. If he got the slightest opening, he’d rush in, take his chances.

  Joel looked away, his stunned gaze sweeping the floor. It had become unspeakably difficult to differentiate between reality and fiction. But this man sitting in the wing chair before him was the one and only link he had to Megan. And he refused to let the trail end here.

  “You’re lying!”

  St. John shrugged. “Am I?”

  Propelled by a sudden rush of burning rage and confusion, Joel stormed across the expanse between them, and thrust the muzzle of the Glock in the man’s face, his face wretched and hard and shaking with determination.“LIES!” he screamed.

  St. John faced straight ahead, expressionless. If this were to be his moment of death, he would accept it without flinching. So much had gone wrong so quickly. But behind the cool demeanor was a tempest of cognitive activity. There was a way out of this. And eventually he’d find it.

  Joel held the silencer’s muzzle at St. John’s nose. And he wondered if he truly had the resolve required to jerk the trigger and put a bullet through the man’s head. His right index finger quivered against the curved steel of the trigger. His fist was wrapped tight around the pistol grip. But the awful truth was that he needed this guy. If a word of what he’d said was even half true, he’d need him. Frustration sparkled up his spine.

  St. John released a long-held breath through his nose. “I have till midnight tomorrow, then they kill her. Believe what you like, but you’re just wasting my time and putting Megan in further danger. We both want to find her, and we can’t do that sitting here threatening each other.”

  Joel backed up three paces and motioned with the Glock. “Up,” he ordered.

  St. John stood.

  Syracuse,Joel thought. We’ve got to go to Syracuse, New York. How?

  “How far is Syracuse from here?” he said.

  Hands still in the air, St. John shrugged.

  “You have a car?”

  St. John shook his head no.

  Joel rubbed his chin, in need of a decision he’d rather not have to make. “What was your plan?”

  There was no reason to hold back. “I’ve chartered a plane.”

  “Where’s the plane?”

  “JFK.”

  Joel considered this, then shook his head. “Won’t work.” He waved the gun. “I don’t think they’d appreciate our…situation.”He waved him ahead with the Glock. “We’re going to walk out of the hotel now. We’ll take the fire exit. I want you three steps ahead of me.”

  St. John led the way, hands in the air.

  Joel rounded up his few pieces of luggage, shoving the hand with the Glock in a deep coat pocket. He realized then that the silencer made the gun too long for the pocket. He set the bags down and detached the silencer tube from the muzzle of the gun, then tested how it fit in the pocket. Good.

  He folded the hanging bag over his left forearm, taking up his briefcase with that hand. Now there was a small bulge where the Glock pressed against the inside of the coat pocket. St. John eased out ahead of him.

  “When we get in the hall,” Joel said, “put your hands at your sides, but don’t get stupid on me. Just take it easy.”

  St. John moved ahead in silence.

  Joel followed him into the hall. An elderly couple hobbled by. St. John offered them a nervous smile and a polite nod. Joel swallowed hard. He had no real idea where this was going. He was playing this by ear. St. John almost made his move right then and there, and he should have; Joel was facing away at an angle, pulling the door shut.

  “Move,” Joel ordered, keeping his tone low.

  St. John progressed forward. “Do you really think you’re helping Megan, doing this?” he said.

  “Shut up and walk.”

  It was a good question. Was this really being productive? Would this bring him any closer to Megan? It was something he’d asked himself dozens of times over the past five days. And his answer now was the same as it had been every other time.Dear God, I hope so.

  33

  THE GARAGE WAS A BARN-SHAPED BUILDING SEPARATE FROMthe house. Both of the family’s cars were parked inside, behind double doors. The only way in without a clicker for the door opener was to go through the side door, which led down a short cement walk to the front door of the house. Dean had shrugged on his heavy coat and hurried out to the garage to start his wife’s Subaru wagon.

  His glasses slid down his nose as he sorted through the jangling mess on his key ring. The doorframe on the side door shifted in winter, the wood puckering in the cold. He had to put a shoulder to it, and it popped with a jarring vibration. He brushed a light switch with the back of his hand, and a bulb flickered on somewhere in the open rafters.

  The Subaru was cold, having sat idle for five or six days. In bad weather like this, he and Grace tended to run their errands together, taking his four-wheel-drive Ford Expedition, which was parked on the far side of the Subaru. He found the Subaru key and turned it in the ignition. The battery struggled, then the ignition rolled over a half-dozen times before the engine finally sparked to life. Dean punched the clicker button clipped to the sun visor over his head, and a chain-drive contraption slowly raised the garage door. The gas gauge registered at three-quarters of a tank. He didn’t know how long Brooke would need the car, or how far she had to go, but he understood from her frantic state that it was urgent that she get going, and get goingnow. The wagon got nearly forty miles to the gallon, so three-quarters of a tank could send her scooting a good piece down the road.

  Exhaust coughed from the tailpipe and swirled at the rear of the car. Dean climbed out and shut the door, having popped the hood to check the oil. He knew good and well that the oil was fine, but it was habit, and it gave him something to do with his nervous energy.

  Back inside the house, Grace was wound tight. Her daughter had locked herself inside her bedroom for over an hour and a half, then hurried to the bathroom for a shower. Now suddenly she was babbling about having to get out of the house, that she had urgent business to tak
e care of. She needed to borrow a car.

  “I don’t understand,” Grace was saying as Brooke finished dressing, her face pallid and sober. “Where are you going?”

  “Mom…Mom…please.” Brooke shouldered her bag, marching out her bedroom door and past her mother. “It would really be better if you didn’t know. Justtrust me on this one, okay?”

  Grace frowned, her hands on her hips.

  Wyatt sat in his wheelchair at the end of the hall. Whatever was up with his sister, he sensed quite accurately that it was not something they should waste time discussing. He reversed in his chair a bit as the two women flew past in a storm of words.

  “At least let me pack you something to eat,” Grace said, desperate to have a hand in the situation.

  “Mom…please.”

  “I don’t understand what’s come over you all of a sudden,” Grace called after her daughter. “You’re rushing around here like the world’s coming to an end!”

  Brooke spun on her heels and gave her mother a big hug. “I love you, Mom, but I’ve just got something I have to do. I’ll call you assoon as I can and let you know that everything’s all right. Something has come up, and it just can’t wait. Okay?”

  Dean barged in the front door, kicking snow off his boots, flurries whipping around his head. “Brooke, you be careful on these roads. It’s a mess out there.”

  “Will do,” Brooke said. She looked at Wyatt, parked at the edge of the kitchen, watching her. Nothing cut deeper than the thought of leaving him. How much time he had left was anybody’s guess, and she hated herself for rushing away when he needed her most.

  “Mom…Dad…,” Brooke said.

  Dean crossed from the front room, disregarding the trail of slush and slop he was leaving. He stood next to his wife, and Brooke put a hand on a shoulder of each of her parents. Her face was suddenly stern.

  “Listen, you two…” She craned her neck around to catch her brother’s eye. “This goes for you, too, buddy boy. No one is to know that I was here. If someone asks about me, I’m still in New York. You haven’t talked to me on the phone for a week or so, and you have no idea when you’ll see me next. I never came home for Christmas. I was never here.”