Who?
The main gate swung open electronically as the limousine neared it, and the caravan proceeded onto the estate grounds. As always, there was an aura of pastoral serenity to the landscaped lawns and outer gardens, the redwood-and-stone buildings, the horses roaming inside the paddock and the split-log corral; but this time it struck Justice as false illusion, like a set for a movie in which terror was the dominant theme.
If murder had been done in the White House and on the Presidential Special, it could be done here too.
Four
When the limousine drew up in front of the manor house, Augustine stepped out immediately and then reached back inside to give his hand to Claire. The two Cadillacs pulled up behind the limousine; the other cars had veered off onto the branch road that led to the garage barns and the staff and security quarters.
With Claire standing beside him, Augustine gazed around the ranch acreage. He tried to tell himself it was good to be home again—but it was not good except in a superficial way. The familiar sights and sounds and smells offered little comfort, little peace. The bastards have taken this away from me too, he thought.
The permanent domestic staff of The Hollows, headed by Walt and Ella Peterson, an elderly couple who had been with the Augustine family for thirty years, came out from the house. Augustine forced himself to feign cheerful responses to their greetings, and when Elizabeth Miller joined them he left her and Claire to answer the Petersons’ questions about lunch and other household matters, and walked over to where Maxwell and Christopher and the others were standing.
Justice, he saw, seemed to be in a state of anguish, as if there were conflicts raging inside him. And for the first time since he had known the man, Harper appeared listless, empty of his usual self-assurance. The others wore sober expressions, unaware of all the facts but sensitive to the grim tenor of things.
Faces before the fall? Augustine thought, and tightened his lips to keep from wincing. He said, “The day is yours, gentlemen. We’ll table business discussions until tomorrow.”
Small frowns of protest. Dougherty said, “But Mr. President ... ”
“We can all use a short break,” Augustine said. “Besides which, I have personal matters to attend to today and I’d rather not be disturbed.”
He turned away from them, to escape their eyes and to shut off further protest, and walked quickly to the house. But as he came up onto the wide roofed porch, Harper hurried up behind him and touched his arm. Augustine stopped, looked at him.
“Nicholas,” Harper said in a low voice, “I don’t think tabling business matters is a good idea. There are pressing issues to be dealt with as soon as possible—the Indian situation, the S-1 bill, campaign strategy—”
“I can’t face those things today.”
“You’ve got to face them.”
“Tomorrow,” Augustine said. “I need time to get my head together. I just can’t think about domestic issues of campaign strategy after what happened to Julius.”
“Yes,” Harper said bitterly, “Julius. You’ll notify Saunders at the FBI right away, won’t you?”
“Naturally. We settled that on the train.”
“Yes. We settled it on the train.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Maxwell.”
Harper gave him a bleak look. “Of course you’ll tell Saunders the search has to be conducted with the utmost secrecy—”
Irritation made Augustine say in louder tones than he’d intended, “Don’t tell me how to deal with a security problem, damn it.”
In alarm Harper stared at him, then past him, and Augustine realized abruptly that his voice must have carried. He swung around and saw Claire and Elizabeth Miller and the domestic staff looking over at him, Claire with an expression of startled concern. But at least the rest of his aides had already moved off toward the guest house; only Justice still stood by the Cadillacs.
Augustine brought himself under control again, managed to smile at Claire and the others in an apologetic way, and looked back to Harper. “Mea culpa, Maxwell,” he said wearily. “We’ll talk later.”
Tight-lipped, Harper nodded. And turned and stalked down off the porch.
Augustine entered the house. All the window curtains were open in the massive beam-ceilinged family room, admitting intersecting funnels of sunlight in which dust motes tumbled against one another like tiny insects. Mica particles glittered in the stone face of the fireplace; the redwood wall paneling and the antique Victorian furniture glistened with wood polish. The effect was one of bright, cheerful elegance that at other times would have given him a warm feeling of complacency, of nostalgia for all the carefree days spent here with his father and with Claire. Now he merely glanced into the room, noted it without thought or emotion, as he would have noted a room in the house of a stranger, and walked away from it toward his study at the rear.
When he reached the study he saw that it too was bright with sunlight, and immediately went to the windows and drew the drapes. Like the family room, and the formal parlor and the library and the conference room and each of the five bedrooms, the study was paneled in redwood. Shelves and glass cabinets lined two of the walls and were stocked with more of his collection of railroadiana: postcards, company rule books, equipment manuals, rate guides, dining-car silver and china, uniform buttons and badges and patches. Against a third wall was a long, wide table on which sat a toy train layout—O-gauge track, miniature station houses, crossing signs and semaphores, working models of Ives and Lionel and Dorfan cars and locomotives from the early 1900s.
Augustine went to his desk, filled a calabash with tobacco, and then crossed to the toy train board and plugged in the electrical cord and threw the switch. Chewing on the curved stem of the pipe, he watched tiny signal lights flash and one of the Lionel locomotives pull a string of freight cars around the network of tracks.
Behind him, then, the study door opened and Claire’s voice said, “Nicholas?”
He turned. She came inside, closed the door and walked slowly to where he stood. Her eyes were steady on his face, probing, as they had been when he joined her on the Presidential Special and from time to time during the silent ride out from the station. She knew, of course, as she always seemed to know, that something was wrong. Outwardly she appeared calm and reserved—she would have made a brilliant actress, he thought, not for the first time—but he had been able to feel the tension in her when she held his hand inside the limousine, could almost see it in her as she faced him.
Quietly she said, “Do you want to talk now?”
“Yes. But I wish I could spare you from it.”
“Is it that bad?”
“It’s that bad.”
Her breath made a sibilant sound as she exhaled. “Tell me,” she said
He heard the faint chattering of the toy train speeding around the tracks, abruptly reached back to shut off the switch. The room became silent—an acute silence that seemed charged with a shrillness not quite perceived, like a shriek just beyond the range of human hearing.
“Wexford disappeared from the train last night,” he said.
“It appears as though he fell off the observation platform.”
Claire closed her eyes, seemed to sway for a moment; emotion flickered like shadows across her face. Then she shook herself visibly and regained her poise, and the emotion vanished as though behind a mask that had momentarily slipped. She said, “When did you find out about this?”
“Earlier this morning. Christopher searched the Presidential Special just before we arrived.”
“Who else have you told?”
“Just Maxwell. I’ve got to call Washington and talk to Saunders at the Bureau, have him instigate a search—”
“No,” Claire said, “not yet.”
“I know what you’re thinking. But there’s nothing we can do this time, no way we can begin to cover up. Don’t you think I’ve already considered that? The longer we delay, the worse it’s going to be when the facts come out.�
�
“The facts,” she said woodenly. “First Austin and now Julius. God help us.”
“Yes,” Augustine said, “God help us.”
She hugged herself. “What are we going to do, Nicholas?” “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to think. I need time to think, to make some sort of decision.”
Claire was silent for a moment, then she said softly, “You do have to make a decision now. You know that, don’t you.”
“Yes,” he said.
To her credit, she did not say anything more about it; they both knew what that decision involved, and she sensed that he needed to reach it alone, without any more discussion. She said only, “Would you like me to call Saunders in Washington?”
“That’s my responsibility.”
“Let me help you where I can, Nicholas. Please.”
“All right,” he said because he did not really want to do it himself. “You know what to tell him?”
“I know.” Claire came forward, kissed him tenderly on the cheek. Up close, her eyes were shiny and moistwindows, dark windows. “I’ll be in the house if you need me,” she said.
When he was alone again Augustine pulled a chair over in front of the board and switched the toy train back on and sat down to stare at it. Lights flashed, semaphores waved, signals changed as the miniature rolling stock traveled along the interconnected tracks. Going around and around in intricate loops. Going nowhere at all.
Five
Justice spent the morning in his room at the security quarters—drinking cup after cup of black coffee, pacing the room, sitting in one of the chairs, mechanically unpacking his suitcase after it was delivered by one of The Hollows’ staff. But by noon the passive waiting, and the caffeine, had set his nerves to jangling so badly that getting out of there became a matter of self-defense.
He wandered over to the manor house, circled it without seeing any sign of the President. As he walked toward the guest houses it occurred to him to seek out Maxwell Harper; he needed desperately to discuss his suspicions with someone and Harper was a logical choice. But then he thought: What if he’s the psychopath? It could be him; it could be anyone. Justice shivered faintly in the warm sunlight, veered away toward the patio and the swimming pool. He had never felt more alone in his life.
There was no one by the pool except for a maintenance man cleaning leaves from the water with a long-handled screen. Three gardeners worked among the flowers and shrubs in the surrounding gardens. An almost breathless hush seemed to envelop the ranch, as it almost always did in spring and summer. Even the cries of birds, the drone of insects was muted.
Justice walked past the tennis courts, through the wall of black oaks to the east fence, back along the fence behind the guest cottages. Through the east gate he saw what appeared to be three men on horseback, making their way along the northeast riding trail. He went across to the paddock. Three more horses moved lazily inside the split-log fencing; the smell of their manure was pungent here. He walked around past the stable, looked in through the open double doors and noticed three ranch hands in Western garb working inside.
And came to an abrupt halt. Threes, he thought. Three gardeners, three riders, three horses, three ranch hands. Clusters of three. Things happen in threes.
He was not a superstitious man; he did not believe in omens. And yet he felt a sudden portent, a vivid and overpowering intimation of tragedy and violence. There’s going to be another murder here at The Hollows. The hairs on his neck prickled; he could feel the staccato throb of his pulse. And the victim could be anyone too. It could even be ... God, it could evens the President himself.
Chills capered along Justice’s back. He could not keep his suspicions to himself, not any longer; he couldn’t take the risk or the responsibility. He had to tell the President.
Justice hurried back to the manor house. No one answered his knock on the front door; everybody was apparently either at the back of the house or gone out elsewhere. Maybe the President is in his study, he thought, and came down off the porch and started back along the north wall.
The French doors to the family room were open now, to admit the faint noonday breeze, and when he reached them he heard the voice of the First Lady from inside, carried clearly on the still air. He hesitated, glancing inside, thinking that she might be talking to the President. But she was alone in the room; she stood with her back to the French doors, speaking into the telephone.
“ .. stress too strongly how important this is,” she was saying. “No, I don’t care to go into details on the phone. How soon can you locate him and have him fly out to California?” Pause. “Yes, all right, I understand. Do whatever you can.” Pause. “Yes. Good-bye.”
She replaced the receiver, turned immediately before Justice could move, and saw him standing outside. She blinked twice in surprise, put a hand to her breast.
Justice said quickly, “I didn’t mean to startle you, Mrs. Augustine. I’m sorry.”
She looked at him for a long silent moment, then lowered her hand and came across to the French doors. “What are you doing prowling around out here?”
“I wasn’t prowling, ma’am.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Looking for the President,” he said.
“He’s not here. He left fifteen minutes ago—to go riding, he said.”
“Oh, I see.”
She gave him a long probing look, and Justice began to fidget under the scrutiny. He felt awkward in her presence, as he always seemed to; she was such an imposing, inscrutable woman that she made him aware of his inadequacies, his inconsequentiality. It was not a conscious domination on her part, but it was a domination nonetheless. He could understand at moments such as this exactly why she was and had been such a powerful motivating force in the President’s life.
At length she said,“I suppose you overheard me on the phone.”
“Only for a moment, Mrs. Augustine.”
“Do you know to whom I was talking?”
“No ma’am.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I was talking to the FBI in Washington. Director Saunders isn’t available, but I’ve asked that he be located and requested to join us here as soon as possible.”
“Because of the search for the attorney general?”
“Among other reasons.”
“Other reasons?”
“They don’t concern you, Christopher.”
“Yes ma’am.” It was plain to Justice that she wanted to terminate the conversation. “I won’t bother you any longer, Mrs. Augustine,” he said. “I’ll see the President later, after he returns.”
He pivoted away, walked back to the front of the house. He sensed that she had stepped out through the French doors and was looking after him, but because he was frowning in contemplation he did not glance back. Why had she asked Saunders to come to The Hollows? he was thinking. What were those other reasons she had spoken of?
Did she also suspect that Briggs and Wexford had been murdered?
Six
Harper rode awkwardly at the President’s side on the trail which angled across the valley meadowland to the northeast. Unused to horses, he was filled with the panicky intimation that at any moment the aged gelding would break from trot to canter and then into a full gallop, and that he would be pitched off to shatter a hipbone, fracture his skull, even break his back on the hard earth. He was aware of what had happened to jockeys such as Anthony DeSpirito and Jackie Westrope, not to mention the best of them all, Willie Shoemaker, who had been crushed by a highstrung filly and had lost a year of his career to traction and pain. If it could happen to Shoemaker, rider of six thousand winning races, it could happen to the effete Eastern intellectual Maxwell Harper.
He clung nervously to the reins, body tilted forward over the horse’s bobbing neck. Fifty yards ahead of them, the two Secret Service agents riding point (Augustine’s term, “riding point”; dialogue from a puerile Western movie, for God’s sake) were just entering the dense forest o
n the northeast slope; the other two agents trotted along thirty yards behind them. The giant redwoods and the mountain peaks loomed above, dark against the clear sky, and looking at them, Harper felt his stomach clench in agoraphobic reaction.
He wished that he had not agreed to come out riding with the President. But Augustine had been persuasive, and Harper had not felt strongly enough about it at the time to argue. It was an opportunity to talk to him, at least. Still, how could you discuss grave political matters with any degree of substance when you were jouncing along on the back of a damned horse?
Harper glanced at the President beside him: sitting erect in the saddle on Casey Jones, his big sleek bay, wearing riding boots and a fringed leather jacket and a broadbrimmed cowboy hat. Like LBJ at his Texas ranch, he thought disgustedly. Trying to prove to the end that he has his own natural element, playing the dual role of Rough Rider and country squire as though his administration wasn’t in a state of near-shambles. The Teddy Roosevelt syndrome.
As they followed the broad path upslope into the trees, Augustine gave him a faint smile and said, “You ride like a dude, Maxwell. Relax, sit up straight, grip the saddle with your knees.”
“I’m doing the best I can. I’m no horseman.”
“I’ll say not. You really should take lessons from one of the men.”
Lessons, Harper thought. We’re facing political annihilation and he sits there talking about riding lessons. “Nicholas,” he said, “did you call Saunders?”
“Claire took care of it, yes.”
“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“What difference does it make who called him? He’s been called, that’s all that matters.”
“All right. Did you prepare a statement yet?”
“Statement?”
“For the press when Wexford’s body is found.” Augustine did not say anything. They were into the woods now and it was cool and dark and quiet; the only sounds were bird calls, the creaking of saddle leather, the faint clopping of the horses’ hooves. The path, carpeted here with pine and redwood needles, had begun to hook to the north, still climbing. Eventually, Harper knew, it would come out of the heavy forest growth near the gorge through which the Yurok River ran, and then parallel the rim of the gorge to an area of high ground called Lookout Point. Augustine claimed the view from there was spectacular. Harper thought it was terrifying and found himself dreading the time they would spend there before turning back.
Acts of Mercy Page 14