Acts of Mercy

by Bill Pronzini

“Yes sir.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Positive, sir. I’ve been through the entire train twice; I looked everywhere.”

  Harper said, “Jesus.”

  The same kind of shock Augustine had felt two nights ago in Washington, when Justice brought him the news of Briggs’s fatal accident, seemed to take hold of him again. “It isn’t possible,” he heard himself say. “How could a thing like that happen?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Justice said. “But Mr. Dougherty told me he saw Mr. Wexford out on the observation platform last night, after midnight. Maybe he lost his balance when the train lurched, or had a stroke or something, and ... well, fell off the platform.”

  Harper pivoted and stared at Augustine as if in accusation. But I was only joking earlier, Augustine thought numbly. I never imagined it might be true. How could I imagine anything like that would be true?

  “What should we do, sir?” Justice asked him.

  “Do?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Harper said, “There’s nothing to do,” in a curiously dull, hollow voice—a tone Augustine had never heard him use before.

  “But there’s a chance he might still be alive, badly hurt somewhere along the tracks—”

  “Don’t be a fool, Justice. A man Wexford’s age could never survive a plunge from a speeding train.”

  “I guess you’re right, Mr. Harper. Still, shouldn’t a search party be sent out right away?”

  “Yes,” Augustine said. “A search party.”

  He went behind his desk, sank heavily into the chair. I hated Julius, he thought, I hated him for what he tried to do to me—but he was a friend for twenty years, I never wanted him dead. I never wanted Briggs dead either. Briggs. And now Wexford. One is bad enough, but two; two. No way to cover this one up, even if I wanted to. And Briggs will be found anytime now back in Washington.

  Why did they have to die? Goddamn them, why did they have to do this to me?

  Outside, the train’s air horn echoed loudly through the quiet morning. Augustine lifted his head, realized that the Presidential Special had slackened speed and that they were passing through the long limestone-walled cut into the narrow valley where The Hollows station was located. Less than five minutes now before arrival.

  He also realized Justice was speaking to him. “ ... all right, sir?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked if you were all right, Mr. President.”

  “Yes. A little shell-shocked, that’s all.”

  “Do you want me to have Communications radio in a report to the FBI?”

  “No,” Harper said.

  Justice shifted his gaze. “Sir?”

  “What’s happened is terrible enough without risking an immediate leak to the media. We can contact the FBI directly from The Hollows; a half-hour or so isn’t going to make any difference to Wexford. And there’ll be time to prepare an official announcement for when the body is found.” He looked at Augustine. “Don’t you agree, Mr. President?”

  “Yes,” Augustine said.

  “Then that’s how we’ll handle it.” And to Justice, “Not a word to anyone, do you understand?”

  Justice seemed to want to say something; instead he nodded grimly, silently.

  Augustine thought: Why couldn’t they all have been as strong and as loyal as Maxwell and Christopher? And Claire too ... Claire. God, what will she say? I’ve got to tell her—but not right away, not until we get to The Hollows. I can’t face her with it until then.

  “We’ll be at the station any minute,” Harper said. “Can you put up a front for the media, Nicholas?”

  Augustine looked across at the liquor cabinet, then imme. diately pulled his eyes away from it again. “Don’t worry about the media,” he said.

  The air horn sounded another time and the train lost more of its speed, coasting as they neared the station.

  Augustine got slowly to his feet. “We’ve all got things to do before we disembark,” he said. “We’d better do them.”

  Harper nodded. “Just the amenities at the station and straight to The Hollows. All right?”

  “Yes. All right.”

  When they were gone Augustine stood staring at the closed door. How can I beat them now that Wexford is dead too? he thought, and felt a coldness settle on the back of his neck.

  How can I beat them now?

  Eighteen

  Justice finished repacking his suitcase and stood at his compartment door. The Presidential Special had already stopped, and outside the windows, on the station platform, there was a good deal of noise and activity. But he did not pay any attention to it. He might have been alone somewhere, standing in utter silence. He knew the name of the fear now that had been plaguing him since Thursday night, and the voice of it echoed in his mind and would not be shut away.

  What if something far more ominous had happened to Briggs and Wexford, the voice kept saying, than death by freak and coincidental accident?

  What if they were murdered?

  What if someone close to the President was a homicidal psychopath?

  PART THREE

  The Hollows

  One

  Harper disembarked from the Presidential Special prior to Augustine and the First Lady, as was customary for the staff aides, and walked quickly through the mixed crowd of media people and security officers on permanent assignment to The Hollows. He kept his expression carefully blank, but it felt brittle, like something made of thin opaque glass. Inside him there was a kind of bitter hopelessness; he did not let himself dwell on it, kept it under rigid control, but it was there and he could not rid himself of it.

  He stood alone at the far end of the station platform, segregated from the crowd by the stolid bodies of Secret Service personnel, and waited and watched his breath puff whitely on the cold morning air. The glare of sunlight reflecting off the metal surfaces of the train hurt his eyes and he wished vaguely that he had adopted the affectation of sunglasses—dark ones to dull not only the glare but his perception of the sharp edges of the valley.

  Sharp edges. An accurate phrase, he thought with distaste. The pointed tops of pine and spruce and those overrated California monoliths, the redwoods. The jagged crowns of distant mountain peaks. The sawtooth tips of the valley slopes. The knifelike blades of the rail tracks, the axlike blades of the long limestone cut through which the tracks passed. The thin serrated-looking security fences that stretched away on both sides of the asphalt road beyond the station. The corkscrew line of the road up and across the eastern ridge toward the ranch complex in a second “hollow.” Even the station itself—an old wood-and-stone structure that had once been part of a logging railhead in the days before Philip Augustine had built The Hollows—with its alpine roof and its square stone chimneys and its sloping platform ceiling.

  He hated this place, The Hollows. He was city-bred and city-oriented, an urbanite in every respect; the so-called great outdoors had always given him an unsettled feeling of inefficacy, as though these sharp open spaces somehow abrogated both his worth and his ability to maintain complete control. A mild form of agoraphobia, he supposed; but there was nothing to be done about it.

  He drew the collar of his overcoat tighter around his neck. The morning seemed hushed despite the faint chuffing of the locomotive and the murmur of voices from the crowd. Nothing moved anywhere except here on the platform. On the far slopes thin waterfalls of melting snow, cascading down to the hidden Yurok River which ran through The Hollows, seemed motionless in perspective—white veins in the green tracery of trees. Even those high patches of mist which had not already burned off clung to pines and redwoods like giant gray spiderwebs.

  The edge of the world, Harper thought—and Augustine and Claire finally appeared and started down the metal steps from the train.

  The crowd stirred to attention. Harper moved closer, saw that Augustine wore his public face like a mummer’s mask and that he appeared to be in relatively good command of himself
. The stress lines were visible enough, but not so apparent as to alert the reporters. At his side, wearing a black alpaca coat and a stylish cossack hat over her blonde hair, Claire smiled and waved with a kind of detached reserve. Her face was pale and her eyes looked huge and dark. Harper wondered if Augustine had told her yet about Wexford. He wondered what her reaction had been or would be. He wondered again if he would ever know—not that it seemed to matter any longer—what her motivations and her feelings truly were.

  As they started across the platform, Augustine saying to the reporters, “No questions right now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry,” Harper saw Justice come down the stairs, the last of the Secret Service agents to leave the train. No public face on him, nor any of his usual stoicism; he looked far more troubled and worried than he had in Augustine’s office. His eyes, fixed straight ahead, had a remote quality, as if he were not wholly aware of externals.

  Augustine led the way swiftly through the station and out to where a phalanx of automobiles—The Hollows’ limousine, a pair of sleek Cadillacs, a mixture of security cars and station wagons—waited bumper-to-bumper in a long straight line, like an unintentional parody of the Presidential Special. He helped Claire into the rear of the limousine, slid in beside her without turning to face the reporters again. Framed in profile behind the window glass, his face to Harper had the look of a bust inexpertly chiseled from old gray stone.

  Harper went to the second of the Cadillacs because the first had already been claimed by other aides. The reporters and photographers and television crewmen milled around in a frustrated way, radiating a faint aura of hostility at the President’s summary treatment of them. One of the reporters started toward Harper, who got quickly into the Cadillac and moved across to the opposite window. Justice followed him inside, as did Ed Dougherty; Elizabeth Miller already sat in the front seat, another Secret Serviceman beside her at the wheel. Outside, the reporter stood grimacing, hands on hips. Harper smiled out at him professionally, thinking: To hell with you, my friend; to hell with all of you.

  Even before the other cars in the caravan were loaded, the President’s limousine pulled away from the station and onto the asphalt road. Both Cadillacs followed immediately. Harper glanced at Justice beside him: still looking straight ahead, hands flat on his knees. Miller and Dougherty also seemed disinclined to talk, which suited Harper. He tucked a hand under his chin and tried not to look out at the passing scenery.

  It was a six-mile drive from the station to the ranch, and for most of that distance the road serpentined—more sharp edges—through dense forest. But near the crest of the ridge which separated the two valleys, the trees thinned out and there was a short stone bridge that spanned a limestone-andgranite gorge. The Yurok River, swollen with snow runoff, raced through the gorge two hundred feet below with such speed that its surface was coated with swirls of white foam. A thousand yards farther on, the road straightened briefly across the flat ridge crown, then began its descent. As they started down, following the first Cadillac and the limousine, the second valley and The Hollows appeared beyond the windshield.

  The overview reminded Harper, as on previous visits and unpleasantly, of a huge open-air amphitheater. The valley floor was flat, and on all sides of the ranch complex, rolling green meadowland stretched away to the encircling slopes and ridges. The complex itself sat in the exact center of the valley, ringed widely by a high security fence which government architects had designed so that it blended into rather than detracted from the country-estate landscaping. In the exact center of the complex was the manor house, a huge sprawling single-story structure built of redwood and native stone. Behind it, to the east, was an arrangement of six private guest cottages; on its north side were tennis courts, a covered swimming pool, and a garden patio shaded by black oaks; on its south side were garage barns, accommodations for personal staff and security officers, stables and a paddock and corral for Augustine’s complement of horses. Outside the security fence, riding paths wound through the meadowland in three directions, leading up into various parts of the forest and beyond into the rangeland hills and shallow valleys that comprised the bulk of the thousand-acre ranch. But the only road into or out of the valley below was the one on which they were traveling.

  Harper’s stomach began to feel queasy as the Cadillac started through a series of sharp, descending curves. I don’t want to be here, he thought. I don’t want to be trapped in all this goddamn wilderness. All I want—

  The car jounced suddenly, skidded for an instant as the Secret Serviceman at the wheel took one of the curves with too much speed and was forced to brake in abrupt compensation. The bucking motion pitched Harper into Justice, jarring both of them. Dougherty said something in warning to the driver, who muttered a deferential apology and allowed their speed to decrease and the distance between the two Cadillacs to lengthen.

  Harper pushed away from Justice again, leaned against the padded side panel and listened to the sour rumbling in his stomach. His mind seemed to have gone blank, as if the jarring had caused a minor short-circuit in his thought processes. He no longer knew what he wanted, or cared because it seemed evident enough that he was not going to get it.

  Not now and not ever.

  Two

  As we approach The Hollows we are troubled, far more troubled than we were on the Presidential Special because a new insight has come to us. We have executed two traitors, committed two acts of mercy—but how many other traitors are there still to be dealt with? How many more acts of mercy are necessary in order to end the conspiracy against the President? One, two, five, a dozen, a score?

  Too many?

  Perhaps, in our zeal, we have set ourself an impossible, an ultimately futile task. If there are too many of these turncoats, how can we continue to execute them with impunity? There can only be so many “accidents” before those who are our enemies, or those who are our friends but who do not understand the need for corporal punishment, realize the truth and take steps to nullify us.

  And yet, we cannot—we must not—stop now. We are committed, we must go on, we must try to wipe out the conspiracy before it destroys Nicholas Augustine and all that he stands for. We must!

  One thing is certain: no matter what happens, others of them will die. Kineen, and the next traitor whose deceit we are positive of—those two, at the very least, will die to protect the sanctity and the glory of the President of the United States.

  Three

  Sitting on the Cadillac’s rear seat, Justice kept thinking: Was it murder, what happened to Briggs and Wexford? Is someone close to the President a psychopathic killer?

  He did not want to believe it. Yet years of experience in police work had taught him to distrust extreme coincidence, and you could not find any more extreme coincidence than two fatal accidents to two high-ranking political figures in as many days. And even though his conscious mind had refused to consider it, there had been a small suspicion in him from the beginning, from the moment he had found Briggs’s body under the office window, that the press secretary might not have died by accident—the seed that had spawned the lingering fear.

  A psychopath. Every person had homicidal tendencies; that was a proven psychological fact. In most people they were buried deeply, and in others they came closer to the surface but were held in careful check; but in some individuals the impulse to murder became too great, eventually controlled reason and exploded into violence. Usually when that happened the person ran amok; in rarer instances he turned cunning and clever and committed his crimes in secret, so that you had no way of telling just by looking at him or talking to him that he was psychotic. Justice had read about such cases, had even investigated one during his time on the Washington police force—a mild-mannered business executive with a wife and three children who had strangled four women in the space of three months before he was finally caught. It could happen, it had happened, to people from all races, creeds, professions, classes, and intellects. And that meant it could happen to s
omeone in the hierarchy of the U.S. government.

  But even a psychopath had motives. If someone had murdered Briggs and Wexford—why?

  Blank.

  Justice did not know what to do. His training demanded that he immediately take his suspicions to the President, or at least to his superiors in the Secret Service. And yet, suppose he was wrong? Suppose he was creating a monster out of misfortune and anxiety? He had no proof, not even a shred of circumstantial evidence; he had nothing but an ugly, half-formed hunch. There was no reason why the President should believe him, no reason why his superiors should believe him. And he could not go to his superiors in any case, he realized, because then he would have to tell them about Briggs, whose body had still not been discovered in Washington. (And why hadn’t it been? Somebody should have found him by now.) Then the removal of the corpse from the White House might come to light, and that was something he could not take responsibility for. He had given the President his oath of silence.

  All right, then. The only other alternative was to find proof himself. But how? In mystery novels the detectives solved all sorts of bizarre and improbable crimes by incisive questioning and astute observation, by stringing together clues to establish a pattern of truth. But he was no deductive genius like Poirot or Peter Wimsey or Gideon Fell; he lacked the capacity for ratiocination. He was nothing more than a simple working police officer, and simple working police officers conducted their investigations on the basis of evidence and fact....

  They were almost to The Hollows now. Ahead, through the windshield, Justice could see the President’s limousine approaching the main gate to the ranch complex. Then he became aware of Ed Dougherty sitting on his left, Maxwell Harper on his right, Elizabeth Miller in the front seat. One of them? he thought. Or the agent, Judson, at the wheel? One of the other staff aides? One of the other security people? Who?