The Fourth Perimeter

by Tim Green

  “What happened?” Reeves asked.

  “We’re shutting down,” Vanecroft answered sullenly. He was dressed uncharacteristically in shorts and a polo shirt. His calves bulged from below the hem of the shorts like small watermelons.

  “Because?” Reeves said, surprised.

  Vanecroft shrugged. The thick muscles surrounding his neck heaved like plow blades. “Boss said it’s over. Something about the regulars being involved now. Everything will be handled at the right place in the right time. This whole thing never happened.”

  Vanecroft looked at him maliciously and added, “He wanted me to tell you that.”

  His dark little eyes, dangerous and unfeeling, were set close to the bridge of his nose, and it wasn’t hard for people to take offense at the expression that typically graced his face. But Reeves knew that his partner was just angry, period. He was angry with his government and angry at the world. On a much smaller scale, he was angry at having drawn the night shift on this assignment. He bitched about it openly. But someone had to have rank, and Reeves, being almost twenty years senior, got the nod.

  It wasn’t that he thought he was superior to Vanecroft. Reeves was too cautious for that. He respected his counterpart, his training as a Ranger and his record in combat, even after the way he’d been discharged from the army. Reeves was familiar with the difficulties of adhering to rules written by scholars behind a desk when you were faced with live action out in the field. Vanecroft’s only crime was that he got caught. Gunning down Iraqi prisoners wasn’t all that unusual during the Gulf War. The problem Vanecroft had was that his platoon had done it too far behind American lines. Reeves understood how these things happened. Vanecroft’s dishonorable discharge had nothing to do with the reason why he found the man at times too much to bear.

  Now he pursed his lips irritably at the subtle affront, but said nothing. The comment about the whole thing never happening didn’t deserve a response.

  Reeves was a professional. He knew that everything they did never happened. He’d spent the better part of his life doing things that never happened, and this topped the list. He could imagine the fallout if this Ford character really did get away with killing the president. He shook his head and chuckled at the lunacy of it, remembering the stories some of the old-timers in Military Intelligence used to tell about how the FBI knew Kennedy was going to get it. Vanecroft looked at him quizzically, but Reeves wasn’t saying anything. He’d show the big buffalo how quiet he could be. He’d just enjoy this little private joke to himself.

  Black humor: That’s what it was. There was something about Ford, about the way he talked, the way he was handling his affairs, that told Reeves the guy was for real. If anyone could pull off an assassination of the president, it was hard to imagine a better candidate than Ford. What had he said to his girlfriend? This was his game.

  Reeves hoped that for the sake of the people in charge they knew what they were doing. If anyone had bothered to ask him, he would tell them the guy should be taken out right away. A late-night visit, a tiny needle inserted into the hairy part on the back of his neck, and a simple heart attack. That was the easiest way to take care of something like this, and everyone knew it. But Reeves liked his job and he knew he wouldn’t keep it by telling the people upstairs how to do things. What success he had enjoyed in his career had come by keeping his mouth shut and achieving his objectives as they were given to him.

  He thought of saying something along those lines to Vanecroft and slipping in another jab about his seniority. But bitterness oozed out of his partner, and he knew even a small comment could incite something that he hadn’t the energy for. Instead, he nodded cheerfully and returned to his own room. On his way out the door he turned and said mysteriously, “You may not want to pack so fast. Something happened and they may not want us out of here so fast.”

  Vanecroft looked at him angrily, searching his face for some clue. But Reeves said nothing more. He closed the door tight and threw the bolt before opening up his digital phone. He dialed his own special number and then punched in a security access code.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “I ordered no further contact,” came the emotionless voice from the other end. “Haven’t you seen Vanecroft?”

  “The girl knows,” Reeves said, cutting right to the chase. “She went through the stuff in his office. He caught her and she told him she knew what he was planning. They had a tiff and she left.”

  “Where the hell did she go?” the voice demanded. It was fraught with emotion, something that nearly made Reeves wonder if he was speaking with the right person. Until now, emotion had never been a part of the equation.

  “I have no idea,” he responded calmly. He was used to the kind of crap that was about to come, but he knew how to play the game. He had his orders and he stuck to them. The higher-ups would always chide you for failing to use initiative, but Reeves knew that initiative could also get you eliminated.

  “You should have followed her.” The complaint came as if on cue. “Didn’t you think of following her?”

  “Of course not,” Reeves said. “I was told to stay right there and listen to everything that was said and watch everything that was done. If I left, I wouldn’t have been following my orders.”

  There was substantial huffing on the other end of the line and then pensive silence. Finally, “Can you find her?”

  Reeves bunched up his face doubtfully. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about it. It won’t be easy. I have no idea where she could be.”

  “Now, how the hell is that possible after weeks of surveillance?” snapped his boss.

  “Because I haven’t put one ounce of thought into what she’s doing and why. That wasn’t what we were ordered to do. We were ordered to stay on top of him, to listen in to what happened around the house. I’ve seen her go places, but I never even thought to find out where. She never spoke to anyone on the phone except her one friend and her office in New York. To be honest with you”—Reeves thought of the salacious moments he’d spent training his spotting scope on her nearly naked figure as she lounged by the water’s edge—“she’s kind of a loner.”

  “What did she say before she left?”

  “Not much,” Reeves replied, digging deep in his brain. “She said he would go to jail. She didn’t say by her, though. She said she wasn’t no patriot, but she wasn’t going to be a part of what he was planning to do. I presume she’s just going to drop out of sight until it’s all over.”

  “You aren’t in the position to make presumptions, really, are you?”

  Reeves didn’t respond. The silence lingered.

  “Find her,” his boss said finally. “Do whatever you have to do, but find her. We’ve got him taken care of at this point, but that’s where you should start. He’ll probably try to contact her or she might even contact him.”

  “And when we do find her?” Reeves asked.

  “Then,” said his boss, softly again and without emotion, “in a very quiet way, you’ll do what you do best.”

  That was how the order always came. Reeves was simply told to do what he did best. The association was so strong that his reaction was as physiological as it was emotional. His heart pumped true and his scalp tingled. He’d just been given the order to kill.

  CHAPTER 28

  Jeremiah had never seen anything like it. Jill simply showed up in her little MG Spider convertible, without the big diamond ring on her finger, and asked if she could stay with him. He knew right away from her body language that he wasn’t to presume that it was anything more than one friend helping another.

  Still, he held out hope that whatever she was going through would pass, and then there he’d be, nothing flashy, nothing sophisticated, but a good solid man that she could count on. He was her age and he wanted a family too. The idea had been building in his mind for some time now. He loved her passionately, and despite his sense of decency, he couldn’t say he felt bad that her engagement had be
en shattered.

  He wanted to make her happy; he thought that he could. There weren’t any fancy high-tech companies nearby, but he knew several intellectual types in the area who worked at Welch Allyn, a big medical instrument manufacturer in Skaneateles. He was sure someone with her background could find work there. Maybe he could even work out a deal with his brother to buy the farm.

  Over the next several days, Jeremiah’s hopes never failed. He was busier than normal anyway with preparations for the president’s visit. His troop was taking an active role in augmenting the protection detail as well as blocking off roads for the president’s travel, and between that and getting his hay cut and baled, he had little time to fret about Jill. But when he did stop to consider her, he worried. She had asked him to show her where Kurt went on the day he journeyed into Bear Swamp. When they found a motorcycle hidden there, she told him to leave it. But it was obvious their discovery affected her deeply.

  It was as though she were in mourning. She said very little, and sometimes he would walk out on the back porch to find her crying there in the swing, just rocking by herself with her feet curled up underneath her and her book lying open on the pillow by her side.

  When that happened he would simply nod his head toward her and continue on into the backyard and down to the barn as if he’d been going there all along. Not once did he feel she had afforded him the opportunity to really talk to her. One morning she asked if he would show her where Kurt had gone on the morning they’d seen him by the tire swing, but other than that her questions were simple and limited to subjects like where did he keep the pancake mix. She took up the preparation of food as if it was an agreement they’d come to together.

  When they did share a meal, Jill would quietly ask him about his farm work, or what the latest news was on the president’s visit. Never did she invite him to ask anything even remotely intimate, and in a strange way, Jeremiah was quite content to leave things that way. It was dreamlike really, just having her there, moving softly around his farmhouse like a beautiful forgotten ghost, and he simply preferred not to wake up.

  He even went so far as to call his brother’s wife and say it would probably be best if his niece didn’t come for her typical Sunday afternoon visit. That tore into Jeremiah, because part of him wanted the little girl, and his brother and sister-in-law, to see Jill. And he wanted Jill to see his niece. But his better sense won the day. He knew that the sight of his brother and sister-in-law would do anything but cheer Jill up. He knew them too well. Ten minutes wouldn’t go by before they began to browbeat her and assail whatever religious convictions she had. Instead of dealing with that situation, Jeremiah opted for solitude.

  But as Monday became Tuesday, and Tuesday turned into Wednesday, Jeremiah had the distinct feeling that something was changing inside her. She seemed to cry less, and more often than not he would catch her on the back porch staring pensively northward at the magnificent vista that stretched from his farmhouse across the long majestic lake and beyond its encompassing hills. Even when he told her excitedly how he had had the opportunity to shake the president’s hand as the great man strolled past his station on the main street in the middle of town, she had only responded with a vacant stare. So when she told him Wednesday morning at breakfast that she needed his help with something very important, he wasn’t surprised at all. He’d already been stricken by the sight of the big diamond ring back on her finger.

  Jeremiah wiped his lips with a paper napkin and pushed back the chipped china plate that held the scant remains of half a dozen fried eggs and a hunk of grilled ham. “I’ll help you in any way I can,” he told her solemnly.

  “What if I asked you to do something illegal?”

  Jeremiah’s eyebrows shot up instinctively. He’d seen a lot of questionable bending of rules during his years as a trooper, but not enough so that he was completely callous to the workings of the law. There was still enough of the old Boy Scout in him to leave him shocked at even the suggestion of something illicit.

  “I don’t know about that,” he heard himself slowly saying. Inside, his heart was thumping madly and his mind was skittering. Despite his words, he knew deep down there weren’t many things he wouldn’t do if she asked him.

  “It’s not something bad, Jeremiah,” she said, smiling indulgently. “It’s something good.”

  “Oh,” he said with obvious and ingenuous relief. “What is it?”

  Jill leaned across the red checkered tablecloth. The old kitchen chair creaked beneath her. Her wild hair spilled freely about her shoulders but her face was entirely composed.

  “I want you to arrest Kurt,” she said deliberately.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you to really arrest him,” she said quickly. “Listen, Jeremiah, if I tell you something, will you swear to keep it secret?”

  “Of course I will,” he said, nearly offended.

  Jill looked at him for a long moment, her eyes flickering as she stared into his until they narrowed painfully and she said, “Kurt is . . . is planning to kill the president.”

  A dumb smile broke out on Jeremiah’s face and he snorted humorously.

  “He is,” Jill said in a desperate voice. “I mean he really is. He thinks the president had his son killed. His boy was a Secret Service agent in Washington and about a month and a half ago they found him dead. It looked like suicide, but Kurt found out that it wasn’t really. He was murdered and they made it out to look like a suicide. Oh, Jeremiah, I don’t know if the president really was behind it or not. I just don’t know. He probably was. You have to know Kurt, but he’s just not wrong about things like that. He used to be in the Secret Service. He knows . . .”

  Jeremiah looked down and thought about all the intricacies of the president’s protection. Only someone who knew about it from the inside could sanely hope to do what she said Kurt was planning, but even so . . . Then the fishing trip he’d read about in the newspaper jumped into the forefront of his mind.

  “My God,” he said. It was clever, ingenious really. He looked up from the tablecloth. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Tonight I want you to go to the house and arrest him,” Jill said. “I’ve been thinking about how I can stop him. I don’t want to go to the police or the Secret Service. They’d arrest him and his life would be ruined. He has plans in his office that spell out pretty clearly what he’s going to try to do. He’d go to jail, Jeremiah—for the rest of his life.

  “I want to stop him,” she continued, “without anyone knowing. I’ve been thinking, if you can take him and bring him back here, if you can keep him here for just a day, he’ll miss the fishing trip. The president is leaving the next day. Kurt won’t get another chance like this and I think over time he’ll realize how crazy it all is.”

  “A cooling-off period,” Jeremiah said, nodding, then feeling foolish for trying to sound smart.

  “Yes,” Jill said patiently. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “But I can’t just arrest him and bring him here,” Jeremiah said. “That’s . . . that’s the illegal part, huh? It’s kidnapping.”

  “Do you trust me, Jeremiah?” she said, her eyes shining with emotion. She reached across the table and grasped the edge of his enormous hand.

  “Of course,” he whispered.

  “He won’t press charges,” she said. “He won’t do it. No one will know except you and him and me. But no one else can go with you. You’ll have to be careful. He might not come easily. I think you’ll need to surprise him.”

  “Oh, I can get him,” Jeremiah said, confident after a lifetime of overpowering other men. “I can just go up to the door and before he knows what’s happening I’ll have the cuffs on him.”

  “You can do it tonight,” Jill said. “Everyone who works at the house goes home in the evening. He’ll be alone.”

  “What if he doesn’t answer the door when he sees my cruiser?” Jeremiah asked.

  “He will,” she said. “He’s used to all
this. He knows how involved a presidential visit is, that it wouldn’t be unusual to have someone from the state police stop and talk to him. He’ll come to the door. That’s Kurt. He’s not going to try to run and hide. He’s betting on the fact that everything will work out through the proper channels and he’ll get on that boat with the president.”

  Jeremiah shifted nervously in his chair and it screeched loudly on the tiled floor. Still she held his hand.

  “I don’t want you here though,” he said, shaking his head. “I just don’t think that it would be good for you to be here. He’s going to be mad as a hornet anyway and I can only imagine if he sees that you’re here, that you were staying here . . . I don’t think anything will go wrong, but if it does, I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I’ll just get him in cuffs, put him in the back of my cruiser, and get him out in the hay barn. He’ll be okay. But if you want me to do this, that’s my one condition.”

  Churning through Jeremiah’s mind was every domestic call he’d ever been on as a cop. Those were the ones that got you killed. When you had to respond to a domestic call you got the two people as far apart as quickly as possible. Emotions, including hatred and rage, flowed hottest within the circle of a man and woman bound by intimacy.

  “You go stay at the Sherwood Inn for the night,” he told her. “Then you can come get him Thursday night. When I take those cuffs off to let him loose, it’ll be over. He’ll know he’s not going to get to that meeting with the president. Then I definitely want you here to explain to him why we did what we did. If he doesn’t go along with us, then I’m the one who could end up in jail.”

  He didn’t really believe that. What was Kurt Ford going to say? That a trooper illegally prevented him from killing the president? Jeremiah said it anyway because he wanted to make clear to Jill that although he didn’t want any trouble of any kind, he’d take the chance because of her.

  “All right,” Jill said after a moment, “but you’ll have to call me and let me know when he’s all right.”