It was almost dark outside, and she’d turned off all the lights in the house except the one in the dining room, where the hospital bed was. She wished she could raise someone on the phones, but they were still all shut off. And Jake might not even know she’d left the hospital yet. Probably did not know, she realized, remembering her somewhat evasive answer to his question about her leaving.
Okay, so she was on her own. She reached over to the dining room table and pulled the small oxygen bottle with its attached mask over, cracked a valve, and took some hits to get her breathing stabilized. The doors were all locked. The lights were off, all but the small bedside lamp here in the dining room. There was no way he would know from the outside that she was in the house.
The car. He’d see the car. But if he thought he’d killed her up there in Garrison Gap, then he’d have to assume someone else had brought the car back. As they had, in fact, done.
“But I will need your house,” he’d said.
For what—to hide out until the hullabaloo all died down? They’d expect him to try to get as far from Washington as possible, not hide out right here in town, so it wasn’t a bad move.
She looked over at the dining room curtains. They were moving around, billowing in slightly as the night wind probed the edges of the plywood. If he came around to the back of the house, he might see this light. That won’t do, she thought, so she reluctantly switched it off. The room dropped into total darkness, except for a small green diode on the pain pump and the green clock numerals on the microwave in the kitchen.
The wind seemed more audible now, and she could almost hear the drapery material rustling above the noises of bushes scratching against the living room windows. She tried the phone again, but it was still dead. Were they all dead, or just hers? Was he here already? Had he cut the wires? Was he out there right now, crouching in the bushes in her backyard, figuring out how he was going to get in without setting off the alarm system? She felt around under the bedcovers for the snake gun. Had she loaded it? She couldn’t remember.
With trembling hands, she cracked the awkward thing open. She put a finger in the back of the barrel and felt nothing at all.
She hadn’t loaded it!
And where was that box of special twelve-gauge shells? Somewhere here in the dining room with the rest of her stuff. But where? And should she turn on a light to see? No. Seen from outside, a light coming on would mean that someone was in the house.
She lay back on the covers and thought hard. Where was the damned box of shells?
She heard a noise outside that was not the wind. She was sure of it. Something different from tree branches or the usual creaks and cracks of an old house in winter. She felt his presence, and then she held her breath when a thin white beam of light came through the crack between the edge of the sheet of plywood and the curtain. A small spot of white light began to traverse the room, starting at the door into the kitchen and moving slowly, very slowly, across the dining room–living room wall. She pulled the covers right up over her head and got as flat as she could under them, all the while keeping one edge pushed up by her face so she could watch that spot of light.
It traveled slowly but purposefully across the wall, but higher than it should have been if he wanted to see everything in the room. Then she remembered that someone on the ground outside looking in would have to have a box or a small ladder to really see, because the ground was almost six feet below the windowsill.
The beam went across the china cabinet, slowed, and then kept coming, now illuminating the serving surface of the buffet. There was all sorts of stuff up there.
Including the small green rectangular end of the box of shells.
She watched the spot of light slip across the box, go past it, and then stop.
Shit! He’d seen it.
But when the light came back, it didn’t stop on the box. It stopped on the shiny scale of the sphygmomanometer, which the nurse used to take her blood pressure. The light lingered on that for a second and then moved left again, continuing its inspection of the wall.
If I slip out of the bed right now, before it gets to me, she thought, then maybe I can get to the box. And the light, if he does get it low enough, will reveal an empty bed, too.
Have to do it, she told herself. Now, right now. Before he puts a crowbar into that crack and levers the plywood out of the way. The alarm system is only on the doors, not the windows.
The tiny spot of light was illuminating the tops of the living room curtains twenty feet away, but still moving left. Pretty soon now, it would hit the headboard of the hospital bed. She dreaded making the move—it would put direct pressure on the bandaged area of her back.
You have to move now, she told herself again. Before he sees the bed. Without that gun, you are dead meat.
She stopped thinking about it and forced her bare feet to move left and out from under the covers. The floor was colder than she had expected. She hesitated, trying to figure out the best way, and then decided to slip down onto her knees at the side of the bed, as if she were saying prayers. That would allow her to hold on to the sheet so she wouldn’t fall, while getting her down on the floor with the least wrenching of her back.
She rolled carefully over on her left side, clutching the covers, thankful for the traditional nurse’s tight tucks at the corners, and then felt her knees slide off the edge of the mattress and then down onto the frame, and finally onto the floor with a bump that jarred her wound and caused some of the bandages to pull tautly across her skin. But she was on the floor.
She could see the beam of light coming closer, so she smoothed out the covers as best she could and began to crawl over toward the buffet on her hands and knees, each movement a little more painful than the last. She kept her head hunched down so as not to pass out, but the dizziness wouldn’t go away. It hurt to move, but she had to get to the buffet.
She couldn’t see the light anymore from her head-down position on the floor, but she could see the legs of the buffet, and they were right in front of her face. Her knees were stinging and the stitches around her wound felt like they were tearing, but now she had to stand up, or at least reach up, and get that damned box. She lifted her head but then put it right back down again. She was much weaker than she’d thought. She looked left, searching for the beam of light, but it wasn’t there anymore.
Show time, she thought to herself. He’s done looking. Now he’s coming. She grabbed one of the legs of the buffet and began to lever herself off the floor.
“Where we going now?” Swamp asked as they headed up Wisconsin Avenue in a Secret Service sedan. Lucy was in the front seat with the driver, seat belt fully on this time. Hallory and Swamp were in the backseat.
“District cops report a church warden finding what he’s calling a government Suburban. There was a badly injured cop in the back. This was the same cop who’s been missing from the downtown Mall area for a couple hours. And it sounds like the same Suburban that was seen going through a police checkpoint, supposedly en route to Georgetown University Hospital.”
“Why do we think it’s him?” Swamp asked.
“Because the VID numbers make it as the Suburban bought last Friday,” Lucy said. “By a Mr. E. Hodler.”
Swamp nodded his head in the darkness as the car went through another roadblock checkpoint on its way uptown. The cops examined ID cards, looked inside, and then waved them on. Swamp could just about imagine what had happened: The guy had had a vehicle prepositioned, maybe two, but he’d rigged one out as federal law-enforcement vehicle. He’d done it before, if that was the same Suburban that had been behind Wall when she fled to West Virginia. Find a cop on the way, run him down, throw the body in the back, and then get through the rest of the roadblocks with an injured cop, one of their own, in the back. Yes indeed, that would work.
“The cop alive?”
“Was when they transported him. Came to long enough to say the guy ran him down in the street near the Jefferson Memorial.”
>
Ten minutes later, they stopped next to the entrance to the church parking lot, which was shimmering with flashing blue strobe lights. The lot was filled with vehicles and both District cops and Secret Service agents.
“We really want to go in there?” Swamp asked.
“It’s the hottest part of the trail right now,” Hallory said.
Swamp looked out the window, searching for a street sign. “Where are we now, exactly?”
“Quebec Street and Wisconsin,” the driver announced. Swamp turned to Hallory.
Quebec Street, Swamp thought. That’s her street. The nurse. Who’d been trying to tell them one more important thing. “I have a hunch,” he said. “He’s obviously abandoned the vehicle. He either had another one set up here or he’s on foot. And if he’s on foot, I think I know where he’s headed.”
“And the answer is?” Lucy said skeptically, turning around in her seat.
“This is Quebec Street. That nurse’s house is on Quebec Street. On the other side of Connecticut. That’s only—what?”
“Five, six blocks,” the driver said, pointing. “That way.”
“Okay. He thinks he killed her up there in West Virginia. After trying more than once. Why did he want her dead so bad?”
“Because she could ID him, of course,” Lucy said wearily.
“But she couldn’t. This guy had totally changed his face, not to mention the ability to grow breasts on demand and fool even Ms. Wall into thinking ‘he’ was a ‘she.’”
“Excuse me, ‘grow breasts’?” Lucy asked, exchanging glances with Hallory. The driver was listening with rapt attention.
“When I first interviewed Connie Wall, she told me that they’d done a partial sexual-reassignment procedure on one male patient. Gave him the ability to pump some kind of fluid into skin pouches on his chest that would give him totally realistic breasts. One procedure among many, but what if that patient was him? That naked lady running out of the burning duplex? I’ll bet that was him. And he needed the nurse dead because he needed her house when it was all over. To go to ground, right under our noses.”
Hallory looked at Lucy. She shrugged. “It’s possible, I guess,” she said.
“Anybody got a better idea?” Swamp asked.
Heismann swore under his breath. He hadn’t been able to find anything to stand on, so he’d been able to see little through the crack between the plywood and the window frame. The problem was that antique race car. What was it doing back here at the nurse’s house? Would the police have just returned it to her house, even though she was dead? The car salesman had indicated it was valuable. Wouldn’t they lock it up?
He shivered in the cold night air. The neighborhood was as quiet as a graveyard. He’d seen no police vehicles anywhere since crossing Connecticut Avenue. The house was dark and locked up tight. Those security company decals on the doors and out in front of the house meant that there was an alarm system, but would it sound if all the telephone systems were still down? It might not ring in a central office, but the system could have a locally audible alarm that would bring neighbors if he smashed in a door.
So, it would have to be a window, and this one was already broken. Leaving his briefcase, he went over to the garage, but now it was padlocked. Then he saw the trash cans. There were two. He rolled them both over behind the house to the dining room window and turned them over on their sides. But when he tried to stand atop them, the plastic gave way and he sank silently down into the grass. He stepped back from the house, backed into the shadow of a tree, and examined all the windows again. Then he saw movement up on the second floor, in a window above the back porch roof. Was there someone in there? He stared hard at the window, and then saw it again: A curtain or drape moved. He finally realized it was moving in time to the occasional gusts of wind.
That upstairs window was cracked open.
He stared at it for a few more minutes before he was convinced. Then he saw that one of the tree branches above him could get him to the porch roof.
Connie heard the scuffling noise out on the back porch and held her breath. Had she imagined it? But then it came again, a sound of something heavy moving on the roof of the back porch. Then silence, then a sound from inside the house: a window being raised. She swore silently: She hadn’t been able to check upstairs. She knew exactly which window it was, the one she cracked open to provide some cross ventilation when the house was all shut up in winter.
She heard him drop down onto the floor and then slide the window back down. The floorboards creaked above her head, although he was otherwise moving quietly. She could imagine that white flashlight beam probing the upstairs rooms and hallway. She lifted the phone again, but there was still no dial tone. She put it back as quietly as she could and lay back on the covers, gripping the snake gun between her knees.
Okay, he’s going to search the house and eventually come in here. What do I do then? She tried to remember what the dealer had told her about the snake gun: It was originally a flare pistol. Twelve-gauge gun, but only an eight-inch barrel. You needed to hold it with both hands, because it would kick like a mule. Around six feet for an effective range. And you had to use only the special shells, or it would blow up.
She heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He was confident now, sure that there was no one home. Connie gripped the gun with both hands. She raised her knees under the sheets, and twisted her body slightly so that she could cover both doorways, the one to the kitchen and the one to the living room. Then she took a deep breath and waited.
Heismann stopped two steps from the bottom. His mental antennas had detected something. What, exactly, he didn’t know, but his instincts were buzzing, and he drew out the Walther. He remained on the stairs for a whole minute, wondering if he was imagining something or if there was someone in the house. Because that’s what it felt like—someone in the house.
All right, if there was, where would he be? The stairs gave him a view of the living room, where he’d encountered the nurse’s derringer that night and nearly had his head blown right off. The chair was upright but still askew in the living room, but the drapes were drawn, admitting almost no light except across the very tops. That left the kitchen and the dining room. He tried to remember the layout. If he went through the living room and into the dining room, someone in the kitchen could get behind him by coming down that front hallway. But if he went the other way, left through the hallway, into the kitchen, and then into the dining room, anyone trying to sneak up on him would have to come down that narrow hallway, and thus present a much better target.
He listened some more, but he heard only the outside sounds of wind and shrubbery. He felt his heartbeat accelerating. He’d been on the run ever since noon, and he was tired, thirsty, and hungry. His “breasts” hurt. But he was almost safe. No one would look here for the Capitol bomber. All he had to do was wait for a few days. They couldn’t keep the capital of the entire free world sealed for more than a day or so, and then he’d find a way to start that car out there and simply drive away. He’d go west and then south, sell the old race car and get himself another invisible minivan. He had two other passports, so from Florida to the islands, and from there to his money. And from there, anywhere at all.
There was no one in this house. It was just his overactive imagination. He pocketed the gun and stepped down onto the main floor and walked into the kitchen, where he turned on the light. He saw the hospital bed in the dining room out of the corner of his eye and stopped dead, one foot just off the floor. There was someone in the bed.
He turned his head and stared, amazed to see that damned nurse looking right at him, her knees raised as if she were about to give birth, the sheet pulled right up to her chin.
He turned slowly to face her, casually dropping his right hand into his pocket to grip the Walther. When he had his fingers wrapped securely around the gun, he stepped toward her, forcing a smile.
“I am impressed,” he said, although his throat was dry. Where wer
e her hands? Did she have a gun under those sheets? But then he saw that she was trembling, and that her lower forearms were visible just above the hem of the sheet, which she must be clutching. Hands trembling, too. He took another step, approaching the foot of the bed. Her face was very white, and there were pouches under her eyes.
“You should be dead,” he said in German.
She just looked at him, her eyes bright with fear. He took in the pain pump’s tubing, the walker, and the wheelchair. She was here, but she was gravely injured. And so helpless, those knees drawn up like a child’s, as if she’d just awakened from a bad dream and found her nightmare at the foot of the bed.
He stood there for a long moment. Well, there was nothing more to say here, now, was there? He withdrew the gun, glanced at it to make sure it was ready for business, and then lifted it.
Something changed in the woman’s eyes, and then the sheet billowed out toward him and the world ended in a shattering roar of noise, bright red light, and incredible pain.
Lucy got up off one knee, the edges of her mouth working, as if she were trying to contain something in her stomach. “Took his face right off,” she announced unnecessarily. “And his chest…well…”
Swamp could see that Hallory was a little green around the gills, too, which wasn’t surprising, given the mess on the floor. He didn’t feel so great himself. Connie Wall had her head back on the pillows, her eyes shut. Her face was pale in the light from the overhead fixture. They had driven up right before the shooting, and there was still a strong smell of gun smoke in the room. And some other smells, too. They’d been getting out of their car in the driveway when they heard the truncated roar of a shotgun in the house. The driver had broken down the back door and then had to silence the alarm siren with a hammer while the other three assessed the situation in the dining room.
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