Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

Some of these guys are medium bent.”

  “Any connection to the Navy?” Dan asked.

  “Nope. His clients are mostly political types: committee staffers, lobbyists, one lawyer whom we love to hate downtown, one company that’s supposedly a front for the CIA, and an import-export licensing firm—people like that.”

  “Are these activities legal?” Dan asked.

  “What they do is legal; what they have him do probably is a mixture.

  These guys operate almost entirely in the shadows; the last time you got to see lots of them was Watergate.”

  “I think I was in high school,” Dan said with a smile.

  Vann grinned. “Sorry to hear it, sonny.”

  “Thank you for arranging this, Captain,” Grace said.

  “That poor woman in there deserves better than having this thing just fade away.”

  Vann’s face became entirely serious. “For her, none of this is going to fade away. Or for me.” He looked at her steadily. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you Miss. Snow? I saw you looking at that picture and then at me in there.”

  “He was your son, wasn’t he, Captain?” Grace said softly. Dan was startled. He had never considered that possibility. He watched Vann’s face work its way through several expressions. Finally, he spoke.

  “Yeah. It’s a complicated story. Things here … well, they just didn’t work out. Wesley never forgave me for leaving. When I came to Elizabeth’s funeral—she was Angela’s child by her first husband—Wesley wouldn’t speak to me. He was so damn torn up by the whole thing. But I didn’t figure it was anything other than her getting killed that way, so damn … wastefully.

  Neither one of them told me anything about this.

  That’s why when you came along—”

  “I think I understand,” Grace said.

  “I doubt it, Miss. Snow,” Vann said after a few seconds.

  “But thanks for the sympathetic tone of voice.

  Commander, you know your way back to town from here? This can be an interesting neighborhood at night.”

  “I think so,” Dan said, looking around.

  Vann nodded and looked as if he was going to say something else, but then he shook his head. “Let’s all talk tomorrow, shall we? I think I need to go back inside for a while.”

  “We’ll be in touch, Captain,” Grace said.

  Vann nodded, shook hands with both of them, and went back up the steps.

  Dan took off his uniform coat as Vann went into the house, and then he unlocked the doors, holding the curb door open for Grace to get in.

  He hung his uniform jacket up on the hook above the backseat and walked around to get in. Neither of them spoke until they were back out on Pennsylvania Avenue, headed back into the city. The dome of the Capitol gleamed faintly in the distance through the growing mist.

  “How the hell did you glom on to that little secret?” he asked her finally as they went over the Sousa Bridge.

  “Like he said, the pictures. And I’ve never been able to put a finger on why he was in the game—if he thought they had a homicide to work, he’s enough of a proto have turned it over to one of the Homicide squads.

  But the pictures, and the way she kept looking over to him for guidance—it had to be something like that.”

  Dan nodded. The trained investigator at work, he mused. But she had been right on the mark. He gunned it to get through a yellow light; he was not comfortable stopping on these streets.

  “It will complicate things, I think,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s freelancing, and he may not be able to confront the people I think we’ll have to confront with this.”

  “Freelancing? That’s funny,”

  she said, going on to explain why. He smiled, but it didn’t relieve the problem.

  “I’ve got to talk to Summerfield,” he said. “He’ll know how to do this.

  I’m way the hell out of my league.”

  As he drove the rest of the way, they talked about the Hardin family and speculated on what the relationships had been. By the time they reached Georgetown, it was close to 9:30. It being a Sunday night, even the Georgetown traffic had thinned out, and there was even a double parking space in front of Grace’s house. Dan pulled in, partially across the driveway. Her front porch light was on.

  “You turn that light on?” he asked.

  “No, it has an electric eye. Comes on after dark. Otherwise, I’d forget the darn thing all the time. Why don’t you come in for a little while.”

  “Yeah, that’s a plan.”

  he locked up the Suburban and walked her through the iron gate. She stopped to make sure the BMW was locked, then remembered that Dan’s car had to show a parking permit. Finally, they went up to the front door.

  She fumbled for keys and then unlocked the door and stepped through, with Dan right behind her. As he turned to close the door behind him, he heard her inhale sharply.

  “Comdr. Daniel Collins, U.S. Navy?” a harsh voice demanded, practically in his ear. Dan whirled around from the door and saw a huge man, all in black, standing right in front of him, a head taller than he was, a ferocious expression on his face.

  “What—” he began, but then the big man pole axed him in the stomach and his head and chest snapped forward as all the breath whooshed out of his lungs, his entire middle a blaze of pain. He was unable to straighten up, to raise his arms, to do anything, and then what felt like a tree fell on his neck and he pitched over into a black roaring canyon.

  after dropping dan, the man turned to face Grace Snow, who was frozen in her tracks, her mouth open but nothing coming out, her eyes wide. Before she could move, he stepped in very close to her, grabbed the front of her blouse with one enormous, gloved paw, and lifted her up on her toes.

  His face was something out of a nightmare, big, rawboned, with terrible scars all over his throat. There was a strong smell of whiskey on his breath.

  “And you, you must be Miss. Snow of the NIS, right?”

  the man growled in her face. His breath really stank.

  “Formerly of the NIS, I think is more accurate, right, Miss. Snow?”

  Grace, flailing, raised her right hand and tried to push him away, but he caught her wrist in his left hand and squeezed; he was so strong that it felt like a car was running over her wrist, and she cried out reflexively, her left side turning to him as if in some grotesque jitterbug move. Desperate now, she tried to knee him in the groin, achieving a solid hit with her left knee. To her horror, he just laughed at her again, then kneed her in the groin. She yelled and crumpled forward with the lancing pain, wrenching her neck as he held her up, now completely off the floor, like a rag doll. Then he dropped her, letting her hit the wooden floor on her hands and knees, and kicked her arms out from under her before kneeling down with one rock-hard knee into her back. As she fell, she knocked over a card table by the front door, shattering the small glass lamp in the process. He ignored the broken glass and pinned her arms behind her hard enough to make her cry out again. The pain from her groin was awful; she thought she would be sick.

  Then she heard a ripping noise and felt some kind of tape being wrapped around her wrists.

  When her arms were bound behind her, he lifted her head, again wrenching her neck. He was looking into her terrified eyes, his own eyes blazing with hate, and then out of nowhere he slapped her so hard, she literally saw stars and fainted.

  Malachi stood up and surveyed the scene. Navy was rolled up in a fetal ball, his head almost between his knees, his head twisted sideways, out cold. Yo, Navy boy. Now you know what Pearl Harbor felt like. The woman was bent in the middle like a hairpin, the left side of her face bright red from where he’d slapped her, and her arms secured behind her with duct tape. Her dress had rucked up in their struggle, and her left leg was exposed all the way up to her white panties. He looked at her for a moment and then lifted the rest of her dress with the tip of his shoe, staring at her nakedness.

&n
bsp; But there was nothing in it for him. She was just meat. He prodded her breast with his foot and she moaned. Welcome to the NFL, honey bunch, he thought.

  He turned away and bent down over Collins. He took the roll of duct tape and began pulling off a continuous strip of tape and wrapping it around Collins’s head, from his hairline all the way down to under his jaw, leaving only the barest slit in front of his nose. Using his elbow, he hit Collins on the left side of his nose, starting an immediate nosebleed. There, he thought. Now he’ll have to be real careful with his breathing when he wakes up. He took some more duct tape and wrapped it around Collins’s left wrist, then pulled his left arm and wrist between his legs, forced his right arm under his right buttock, and then taped the two together, forearm to forearm, leaving Collins totally immobilized. The final step was to tape Collins’s fingers together so he couldn’t get a hold on anything when he came to. He considered taping his feet together but then decided to leave them free. If he struggled when he came to, he’d soon find out that he had to choose between drowning from that nosebleed or staying perfectly still.

  He took a quick look around. He had rigged the house in case he had to get out quickly: The back door was unlocked and partially open, as was the back gate.

  The phone line was cut. The gasoline was also ready.

  He looked out the front windows, listened for a moment, and then nodded with satisfaction. It had been a perfect surprise attack. He had especially loved the expression on her face, just like the country song said, that “deer in the high beams” look, when she saw what happened to her boyfriend. Standard procedure: Hit the woman first, you have an enraged guy on your hands; take out the guy first, the woman will stand there in shock every time. He turned back to the woman, got behind her, grabbed her under her armpits, and pulled her up the stairs, her heels thumping up each step, and toward the bedroom, which was all prepared for her coming interview.

  Back downstairs, Dan came to in a haze of pain, almost totally disoriented. He could neither see nor hear, and it felt as if he was trying to breathe through a wet cotton plug stuffed into his nose. He tried to open his eyes, but they were literally stuck together. Then he realized that his head was wrapped in something sticky, his whole face, ears, mouth, eyes, most of his nose, lips, all covered up and seemingly solidified, like a mummy. An image of Wesley Hardin flooded his forebrain, and for a moment he panicked, his heart racing out of control, until he remembered what had happened. Grace. What had the bastard done with Grace! He tried to call out for her, but suddenly he could not breathe anymore, his nose filling with a warm, sticky fluid, causing him to swallow and then sneeze violently. With his mouth taped shut, the sneeze made things a lot worse, and he ended up gargling uncontrollably, a drowning sensation sweeping over him before he fought it back and regained control of himself. He took a painfully slow breath, inhaling in little tiny bites of air past the obstruction in his nose, then exhaled forcefully, feeling the spray on his shirt front, but he could breathe now, and he did, twice, three times, getting a grip on himself, repeating the process, and then discovering that part of the problem was that he could not straighten out.

  His forearms were taped together between his legs, and his hands felt like big sticky paws. His first effort to pull his forearms apart sent a spear of pain into his groin, so he gave that up right away. Worse, his neck felt all mushy from the bottom of his head to the top of his spine, especially on the left side, and there was a core of pain in his stomach where that guy had hit him in the first place. He tried to think of who this guy could be and what this was all about, but there was a red haze in front of his taped-shut eyes. He knew he had to move, get out of all this tape before that guy came back, or he was dead meat. The front door.

  Maybe he could get to the front door, attract some attention from the street. How? Where is the front door?

  he thought. I don’t know, but gotta move, gotta move.

  Scrunching like an inchworm on its side, he started across the floor, not knowing if he was headed for the door or the kitchen or the bottom of the stairs or into a wall. No sight, no sound, not even any feel from the skin on his face. He could move a couple of inches, snort his nose clear, move again, snort again. This is hopeless, he thought. I could be going in a circle down here. He forgot to snort, and a small river of blood welled into his throat, almost causing him to lose it again.

  He tried to move his hands and his arms; maybe he could pull that leg through—he was pretty limber from all the rowing, but there was simply no room. He inched again, then one more time. Snort, clear that nose.

  Inch. Snort. Carpet’s gonna be a mess; they’ll never let us in that rug store again. And then something sharp pricked the balls of two fingers on his right hand.

  He froze, his fingers stinging with pain. Glass. Broken glass. Broken glass can cut the tape. But not without fingers. Nothing to hold the glass with. Shit! The bastard really had him. He almost cried in frustration, except that his eyes were taped shut. And then he realized that the tips of his fingers were bleeding. And moving.

  Moving! The damn blood was dissolving the tape mastic. That’s right—if this is duct tape, water turns it into a sticky, soggy mass. Blood.

  Gotta have more blood.

  He wiggled around on the floor, searching for more glass, finally finding it when a shard punctured his knee and then the back of his right arm. Focusing furiously, he tracked the shard of glass with his skin, positioning it and himself so that he could touch it with the tips of his fingers, then jabbing at it, exulting in the sharp little stings and then the greasy, sticky feel of blood. He rolled sideways, trying to force his bound hands into the air so that the blood would flow back into the tape, then straining with his fingers and his hands, pulling his hands back and forth until finally, after what seemed like forever, he could feel the tape moving slightly along his fingers.

  Malachi had dragged Grace up the stairs and into her bedroom at the back of the house. He pitched her up on the bed, her hands still bound behind her back, and then closed the door. He turned on her bedside lamps and then picked up a large, sharp kitchen knife and cut the tape on her wrists. He rolled her onto her back, pulled her arms up to the headboard, and retaped her wrists to the bedposts; then he pulled her legs apart and taped her ankles with several straplike segments of tape to the foot board. She whimpered, her eyes still shut, as he pulled her body into a spread-eagled position. He took another short hank of duct tape and smacked it down over her mouth. He would let her see and let her breathe. It didn’t matter if she saw him, he thought, because if these two were what he thought they were, neither one of them was going to survive the night. She whimpered again and turned her head, keeping her eyes closed tight.

  While she was coming around, he pulled her makeup table over to the side of the bed, where she would be able to see it. He pulled a large black bundle out of his equipment bag and opened the Velcro straps that held it rolled up. Inside were several surgical instruments, a stainless-steel handsaw, a cranium drill, a mixed set of scalpels, forceps, hemostats, rib spreaders, and a variety of clamps, their stainless-and chromium-steel surfaces gleaming in the light of the bedside-table lamps. He positioned the implements on the table so that she would be able to see all of them clearly. He reached into the bag and brought out a small mason jar of alcohol, which he opened and set next to the implements.

  She coughed once and then groaned, but she still did not open her eyes.

  He went into the bathroom and found a pitcher she used to water the house plants that were set under the bedroom windows. He filled it with cold water, came back into the bedroom, walked over to the head of the bed, and poured the entire contents into her face. She jumped, straining at the tape, coughed, spluttered through her nose, and opened her eyes.

  “Reveille, reveille, reveille,” he intoned. “Welcome back to the world, Miss. Snow. At least for a little while.”

  She looked frantically around the room, refusing to meet his gaze, and he laugh
ed at her.

  “Looking for Navy? Navy’s downstairs. He’s a bit wrapped up at the moment, but he’s doing fine, as long as he doesn’t try to move. Or breathe very much.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and ran his hand over her face to check the tape. She flinched at the feel of his hand.

  “What’s the matter, Miss. Snow? Don’t care for a man’s hands on you? Or is it just on your face? Is that it? How about here—is that better? Or here, yeah, that’s better, isn’t it? No?”

  He touched every part of her, gently and then harder, massaging her breasts and then her belly and then between her legs with his gloved hand, watching her face all the while. So much meat, that’s all it was.

  Too bad, she was very pretty. Maybe a little thin for his taste, but what the hell. Once upon a time, he would have had a hard-on by now, but now there was nothing left down there. Thanks to a woman. Which was why when she kicked him, he had laughed at her. He laughed at her now, sliding his hand up under that long dress, between her legs, his gloved thumb probing the softness of her sex. She was starting to cry.

  “This game is called hearts and minds, Miss. Snow,” he said. “When we were in Vietnam, we were supposed to be fighting’for the slopes’ hearts and minds. Mcnamara’s counterinsurgency bullshit. What the sergeants all knew was that if you grabbed them by the balls, their hearts and minds would follow you anywhere. And that’s what I want from you Miss. Snow—I want your heart and mind to follow me through some questions here, okay?

  Okay?”

  She jumped when he raised his voice with the second “okay?” and then she nodded.

  “Very good, Miss. Snow.” He withdrew his hand from under her dress.

  “That’s much better. Hearts and minds, yes, ma’am, that’s how we did it in Nam, hearts and minds, and then maybe some of these little numbers, over here, Miss. Snow, yeah, over here, what do you think?”

  He watched her face as she focused on the surgical implements, watched her eyes widen, that “deer in the bright lights” look appearing again.

  Shit, this was no pro. She was too soft, too easily frightened. A pro would have shown fear but would have been looking around, calculating how to get out of this fix. But what the hell—she was the bird in hand, so to speak. He started picking up the implements, one by one, naming them, telling her what they were for, embellishing the details of how they worked. When he was finished, she was visibly trembling, and he leaned forward and placed the bone saw on her chest, just under her chin. He jostled the bottle of alcohol, spilling a little, filling the room with the smell. He patted her cheek, laughing when she flinched behind the duct tape again, and he then got off the bed.