“Hell-lo.”
She knew the voice, if not the ring. McKenzie sucked in her courage. “Daddy?” She heard an echo of her own sharply caught breath. Before she could hang up, or say something, she blurted out. “I’ve got to come home.”
“Then come.”
No hesitation. McKenzie’s knees, locked in anger and desperate strength all night, suddenly went weak. Her grip on the pay phone was the only thing keeping her standing.
“Or do you need me to come get you?”
“No. No. I’m driving down. It’ll be a day or two.”
“All right.” He hung up, the line going dead.
No questions. Nothing.
She wanted to call back, to explain the failure, to sob out the story and feel the comfort, but she had no more coins. She hung up the receiver in the cradle and tried to stiffen her legs. Home. Home.
The dash of icy rain in her face sharpened her wits as she walked back to the car. She put a hand on its aging frame. She didn’t know if it would get her all the way from Seattle to L. A., but it was all she had. McKenzie slid behind the wheel. She laced her fingers around it.
Something tinkled in one of the cardboard boxes behind her seat, one of the few pieces of her mother’s china she had left. She hadn’t had time to wrap them well. It didn’t matter now. Either it would make the trip whole or shattered, just like she would.
If it had broken, she’d simply have to put the pieces back together. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t look back. He would find the car rental receipt. He would begin looking for her through that trail. He did not know she’d bought this car secretly months ago. She’d kept it parked on campus and used the bus to get back and forth to it.
Her ribs ached. The shoulder which had been dislocated enough times before that it popped out now at the slightest movement made a protesting sound as she leaned over the bench seat. There was a towel laid there, slightly soiled, its surface gleaming under the dome light with fine, red-gold hairs. Dog hairs.
McKenzie closed her eyes. The knot which choked her throat threatened to unwind, to explode. Memory of the golden retriever’s soft, intelligent brown eyes flooded her. She folded up the towel and pushed it away so that she couldn’t see the hairs. Couldn’t see the fresh image of trusting eyes, the low whine of uncertainty, the sudden look of betrayal as the other had reached down and grasped him.
She swallowed tightly. No tears. Not yet. She couldn’t afford them.
McKenzie started the car and drove it back into the rain, seeking out the road home.
He stood in the driving rain, watching the frantic activity around the Whiteside home. Figures ran back and forth in front of the brightly lit windows. They were carrying suitcases and boxes. Leaving. The adults and two children, bumping into each other, going through the rooms of their home like ants in an anthill that’s been stirred up.
He’d done that. Him. Or the lies she’d told about him. He wasn’t sure if it was remorse that he felt now, watching it, or power. They were fleeing because of him.
That would make no never mind. He leaned a shoulder against the tree. They’d be gone in minutes. They’d leave stuff behind. Food. Information. He’d get what he wanted from the Whitesides anyway.
Jack Trebolt bared his teeth against the rainy weather and shook himself like an old dog before moving in under the shrubbery, to crouch, waiting.
When the van had been hastily packed, they loaded up the livestock and left, pulling out with a squeal on the damp driveway. He let the street go dim again, free of headlights, before moving to the back door and popping it open with one twist of a heavy-duty screwdriver. Inside, things were more button-down and orderly than he’d expected. He searched around the two main telephone bases, in the kitchen and in the living room, but there were no hastily scrawled notes or hen scratches to tell if Mac had called.
There was an answering machine. He stood over it, looking at the little lighted dots that told him it was functioning. He reached out and switched it off. Then, he made a pass through the refrigerator to see if there was anything left he could eat.
There was the butt-end of a roast, sitting in its juices in a plastic bag. He fished it out with a pot holder. Jack tore open the baggy and sank his teeth into the cold roast. He surveyed the kitchen pensively, could think of nothing else to do here.
He went to the counter and dug out his wallet. A worn photocopy of an even more worn clipping fell out.
It was an obituary for a Jean Ann Smith, of Los Angeles.
He picked at a bit of gristle between his teeth. No matter what McKenzie thought, he knew blood was thicker than water.
She had no place else to go.
The car ran low on gas long before she ran out of adrenaline. Sometime after the third fill-up, when the Oregonian highway patrolman said, “Flying low?” as he took her false ID and began to scratch out a ticket, McKenzie uncurled her fingers stiffly from the steering wheel. Her knuckles, pale across their expanse except for the three with angry, broken skin on her right hand, all hurt. The weather had given on the way south. The sky was a pale blue, scratched by wispy trailing clouds. The car sat, its engine making ticking noises as it cooled, scrunched down on the gravel of the road’s shoulder.
Thinking she couldn’t do much about the license plate, she sat in stony silence. The sound of her heartbeat filled her ears. She couldn’t even hear the static buzz of his radio. Could he hear her pulse? Could he see her palms sweat as she placed her hands back on the wheel? The ID hadn’t been that good years ago in college, but at least now the age was accurate. If he didn’t look too closely.... It was one of the few ways she could think of to obscure her trail from Jack.
He filled out the citation, giving her a lecture on driving the rural roads of his state, and passed it to her through the open window, adding, “At least you’re not from California.”
She silently took the ticket, thinking, Oh, but I am, and I’m going back as fast as I can. Her head throbbed. She looked briefly into the patrolman’s eyes. He had brilliantly blue eyes, thickly lashed, making up for the austere sternness of his face. The pain in her skull made her lose her vision momentarily and she gasped.
“Are you all right, miss?”
Mac looked back at him, afraid of what she might see. White misted him for a second, cut across his shoulder and arm. She put her hand out, touched his uniform.
“Are you all right?” he said again, his voice sharpening.
A sling or a cast. But it wasn’t there, she couldn’t feel it. Mac drew her hand back. “Your arm....”
He flexed it slightly. “Broke it a couple of months ago. First day out of the cast. It’s good to be back to work though.” He leaned down closer. “You drive carefully, now.”
She stuffed the citation into the purse on the seat of the car beside her and put her hand on the gear shift.
The Oregonian patrolman hesitated. His attention wandered to the front bumpers of the car. What did he suspect? Was he looking for her? Had she given herself away? Her stomach crawled into a knot.
“You were goin’ a pretty good clip. Maybe you thought you hit something ... there’s a lot of wildlife on these roads.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
He flipped his glasses down from his forehead. “You look upset. I hate to send you away like this.” She could see her face in his reflective sunglasses, the strain apparent. “If there’s anything wrong, you shouldn’t be driving.”
Her fingers tightened on the gear shift lever. Of course there was something wrong. McKenzie forced a smile to her lips. “Thank you, Officer, I’m just fine.”
His hesitation seemed interminable. She did not breathe until he touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Drive safely, ma’am,” and withdrew.
She wanted to peel rubber, get out of there as soon as she could, but McKenzie forced herself to start the car quietly and pull away smoothly. Not until the motorcycle was far, far in the distance did she begin to accelerate again.
Home. Home . Home, where, when you went there, they had to take you in, as Robert Frost had once so eloquently said. Robert Frost. Sarah would approve of the poetic reference. McKenzie let out a sigh, and tried to roll her shoulders, relax at the wheel. She was surprised she still knew the poet’s works, hadn’t had that beaten out of her. Like the old handyman, she wouldn’t be turned away. She knew her father well enough to know if he didn’t want her, he would simply have hung up. And so, flying on wings of adrenaline, she was heading home.
The plane dropped lower over the L. A. Basin, like a knife hoping to cleave its way through the perpetual haze which curtained the city. John Nelson hugged the window, watching. His eyes felt dull and gummy from the red-eye flight, and he hoped a dose of California sunshine would wake him up, but what he saw as he looked out did not help.
Congressman Nelson, retired from the FBI, relocated and elected from Illinois, was not happy. He shrugged within his signature blue suit, ran his hand through his equally recognizable silver-blue hair, and sighed. Poor dumb bastards actually thought the air quality was getting better. Why not?
The management boards said it was. Trotted out statistics from ten, fifteen years ago. Look at the measurements. Dropping, steadily dropping. What the poor dumb bastards who lived in, breathed, hell, even ate down below didn’t know was that the standards had been revised, were still being revised, so that the numbers lied . Any fool who’d spent the last twenty-five years or so in southern California could tell you the air was worse. All you had to do was look. Facts lied, because the yardstick had been recalibrated. His own industry-laced district wasn’t much better.
Nelson sighed again. He ought to spill the beans, make it media public. Anyone who wanted to know could, but like a herd of cattle contentedly grazing on the good life, no one had the initiative. He could make it a major point of the next campaign, and would, except that most of the industries which contributed to that layer of haze would eat him alive. Then what would happen to his law and order hopes?
Nelson decided he would wait. After all, reelection was not for another two years for him. Maybe the air quality actually would get better in another year or so. Then he wouldn’t be faced with the dilemma of the truth and the apparent truth. If not....
He thought about his scheduled lunch with Carter. Ten years, a lot of water under the bridge, since he’d last seen the congenial newspaperman as a Fed. A lot of time since Bauer had slipped between their fingers and disappeared. He’d kept track of Windy since Chicago. A few years here, a few years there, floating on a tide of ... what? Not booze, like some reporters. Depression, perhaps. The Bauer escape had hit them both hard. They’d kept in touch, a ghoulish glue holding them together. Maybe even, in his own inimitable fashion, Carter was still tracking the serial killer. Nelson had, for the first few years, until it became apparent after the first three killings that Bauer had evidently gone underground, or gone six feet under. Nothing had come on the systems which even suggested the type of crime Bauer was infamous for. He’d either switched methods of gratification, highly doubtful, or he’d been permanently satiated. Only death could have brought that about.
For whatever reason, both crossed paths occasionally in L.A. at this time in their lives, although Nelson spent most of his time in Washington. But, yeah, hoisting a beer with Carter sounded good. Committee business could be grueling. He had a few drabbles of information that he’d milked dry, but which the newsman might find interesting. He was too involved in his new life to keep chasing Bauer, but Carter Wyndall was another matter. Better than the rest of his agenda. He’d come here to kick butt, basically, because the party wanted to use L.A. as a symbol of redemption and rebuilding. First, they had to create a reasonable facade of same.
Nelson grunted as he fastened his seat belt in response to the stewardess’ request. His ears popped gently as the plane descended. Seeing Carter sounded good. A few hours’ sleep in the old hotel room, lunch with a friend, then on to the rigorous schedule a congressman had to keep with lobbyists, constituents, city officials, and whatnot.
Nelson laughed silently at himself. It was the whatnot that could get you killed.
His heavy eyes shuttered themselves and he was almost asleep again when the wheels bumped the landing strip.
Burdened with carry-on luggage like a pack mule, he made his way to the car rental counter, got his keys, and then drove out of LAX. He checked in at his favorite hotel, a quietly middle-class establishment which he’d gotten used to while an agent. It didn’t suit his status now that he was a congressman, but he didn’t care. He liked it, was comfortable with the security, knew the various wings and floors, the kind of staff they hired and the kind of clientele who stayed there.
The pretty counter clerk, with almond-shaped eyes and wings of blue-black hair, checked him in with slender, flying fingers. Miko smiled at him as she slid a key across the marble counter. “Enjoy your stay, Mr. Nelson.”
He allowed himself a grin back. Miko was the best of East and West combined, California style with Pacific Rim beauty. Although she knew him for what he was, she did not fawn on him. She did, however, always order extra towels. He scooped up the key card. “Thank you, Miko. When’s the bar open?”
“Four p.m., as always. Your towels should be up in a few minutes.” She hid a smile as she returned to her computer terminal, to finish logging in his presence.
When he threw himself on the bed, it was with a relief that postponed everything but sleep ... even the telephoning of his staff and confirming reservations with Carter.
Miko caught a line of error in a pending reservation as she closed out Nelson’s account. From the corner of her eye, she thought she might have seen something in the security camera’s screen. She halted, looked at the monitor, saw nothing else, and decided it was security’s problem. The hotel only had a second monitor at the front desk as a backup. Wrinkling her smooth forehead in concentration, she looked back down at her terminal, determined to change the honeymoon suite back over to its original designees, thus avoiding a host of problems this coming weekend.
She did not see the dark, lithe figure in the hooded sweatshirt slip down the service hallway and up the back fire stairs. Security was not at his desk, watching. The call of nature had taken precedence. He was an older man, retired from the police force, and his bodily functions were as regular as he could maintain them. He could be clocked by his early morning breaks.
The tape backup to the camera would only record a lengthening shadow, perhaps a wearing on the film, as they were used again and again, if no incidents had been taped. A bin of tapes waiting to be degaussed sat unsteadily next to the monitor, awaiting their fate. On one of them, a similar shadow might be seen, in rehearsal, making its way around a corridor corner and out of camera sight. It had not been spotted then. It did not plan on being spotted now.
The hooded figure wore jogging shoes, leaving no imprint on the worn carpet runners. The sweatpants, matching the hooded shirt, were unremarkable. Worn, comfortable, somewhat faded from washing. An outfit donned every day for a morning run.
Except they had been purchased just two weeks ago, when the congressman’s schedule had been released, washed and dried ten times over, quickly, and worn in actuality only twice, the first time for rehearsal. The wearer moved quickly and confidently in them, staying close to the corridor walls, negotiating the rather complicated tunnels and turns from one wing to the next tower without hesitation as though he had a map drawn on the palm of his gloved hand. The drawstring hood was pulled over, half-obscuring the face, even the eyes.
In the last corridor, his head began to thump as though it would explode. Something inside his head began to crawl and scratch restlessly. I hear you knockin’, but you can’t come in— He put his back to the wall and sucked in his breath. Sweat rolled down the back of his neck and he suddenly got queasy.
He had to do this. He had to. There was no backing out. The sleeping man wouldn’t let him, and even more frightening was
the possibility that the sleeping man would rouse and possess him, exploding through his skin—
He had to get back to her . She was the only one who could help him, but he did not dare go back to her a failure. He rubbed the back of his hand over his lips and took a deep breath. He knew what he was here for. He shoved the sleeping man back into the corner of his mind, and put a hand on his gun.
Nelson woke enough at the knock on the door to mumble, “Come in.” His towels had arrived. He could get up, lock the door, pull a pillow over his head, and go back to sleep until noon. Damn budget-economizing red-eye flights. He let out a yawn as the door pushed open.
He froze. Strings of old training, precautions, stances, strategies ran through his mind, flashes of a past life. He could feel his guts grow cold as he faced the gun-wielding assailant.
His jaw worked. “Who?—what the hell are you?” Fear made his voice go high.
The assassin put the first bullet down his throat and the second between his eyes. Nelson saw the flash from the gun barrel with the first, never saw the second, already dying, catapulted back into the room, wondering.
Death Watch Page 3