‘Let me know the result of the court application, the moment you get it,’ said Powell. ‘If I’m not at the apartment I’ll be on the mobile phone.’
‘Sure.’
‘And I’ll come back direct from taking Beth home. Be here around six, I guess.’
‘Amy coming in today?’
‘Expected her by now,’ said Powell. It was just after ten. ‘Guess she’s got the right to a little free time. She’s practically moved her bed in since all this started.’
‘Dedicated gal,’ agreed the other man.
He was taking a career chance, Powell acknowledged, heading back over the river towards Virginia. It was not essential for him personally to be present at the bank application: it was entirely technical, a legal plea to be made in camera upon evidence that he was not required personally to present. He still should have been there; would have been expected to be there, not just by Harry Beddows but by the Director, too. So why wasn’t he? Because he deserved a little free time, too: free time with a kid he didn’t already spend enough with and who was due much more. Much more of everything, not just time. He’d already given the Bureau three hours that morning, would give them whatever was necessary that evening and probably most of tomorrow. And he had no idea if he’d be able to make next Saturday at all. The attempted self-justification didn’t really work.
Ann answered the door, looking much better than she had the last time he’d seen her. She’d had her hair done, blonding back the regrowing roots, and he thought it had been cut, too. She was made up and crisp in white sweater and slacks. She smiled and said ‘Hi!’ and as he followed her into the living room added: ‘What time do you think you’ll be back?’
‘It’s got to be by five. I’m taking time off, as it is.’
Her shout to Beth wasn’t as strident as it had been before. Then she said to him: ‘You’re getting a lot of shit.’
‘Goes with the job.’
‘Case going as bad as television says it is?’
‘We need a break.’ He wondered where Jim Pope was. Maybe he’d found a job.
Beth came hurrying from her bedroom, already wearing her backpack, kissed him and said at once, ‘I don’t think you’re no good. I think you’re terrific.’
Momentarily the remark confused him. Then Powell said, ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ To Ann he said: ‘Five OK?’
‘Not before. I might be going out. May be a good idea to call, before you leave your place.’
What was he going to do if something broke? A problem to be confronted when it arose. In the car he said they’d have to stay around the apartment all day, because he was on call, and Beth reminded him that was exactly what she’d wanted to do.
On the way they stopped at the same market as before and shopped for burgers, buns, hot dogs, Häagen-Dazs and Dr Pepper’s. It was Beth’s idea to get a Coors six pack. The beer Jim Pope had always seemed to be clutching, Powell remembered. The moment they resumed the journey Beth said, ‘Can’t I stay until seven, like always?’
‘I’m on duty.’
‘I’ve brought my homework!’ protested the child, jabbing her thumb towards the backpack on the rear seat. ‘I could do it with you.’
‘You still can,’ said Powell. ‘Today it’s got to be five.’
‘What about next week?’
‘We’ll have to see how the case goes. Maybe.’
‘Promise!’
‘I can’t promise. But I’ll try.’
‘Jim’s gone,’ the child announced, abruptly.
‘Gone where?’ asked Powell, stupidly.
‘Left Mom. Walked out.’
Powell frowned briefly across the car. ‘You mean for good?’
‘I guess so. That’s what mom said.’
Why hadn’t Ann said anything? ‘Mom upset?’
‘Kind of, for a few days. She’s all right now.’
‘How’d you feel about it?’
Beth shrugged. ‘He wasn’t my dad. Just someone who stayed over.’
It all seemed remarkably casual, thought Powell, as he carried the groceries into the kitchen. Beth unpacked while he stacked away.
‘Some guys at school say you’re not any good at the job.’
‘Don’t let it worry you,’ said Powell.
‘I don’t,’ she said, unconvincingly.
‘I’ll prove them wrong,’ he insisted, wondering about the conviction in his own voice.
‘You really get all those cases wrong, like they said on television?’
‘Only two, before this. And I haven’t got this one wrong. I just haven’t caught the guy yet,’ said Powell. ‘I can’t be right all the time.’
‘I always thought you were.’
‘Just most of the time.’
It was Beth who determinedly changed the subject, walking back into the main room. ‘I want to make lunch again, like last time.’
‘That’s the only reason I invited you, to cook and slave for me. How’s school?’
‘OK,’ said Beth dismissively, with a nose-wrinkling grin that exposed her tooth brace.
‘So how’s it really going?’ he said, not smiling back.
‘Mom went to a PTA meeting the other night. They said I lacked concentration.’
Why hadn’t Ann told him about that, too? ‘What’s your grade average?’
‘Can I have a drink?’
‘Help yourself.’
At the refrigerator she called out, ‘You want a beer?’
‘No thanks,’ he called back.
She returned with a Dr Pepper’s, the ringtop already popped.
He said, ‘There are glasses. You don’t have to drink from the can.’
‘This is the way we do it.’
‘You didn’t answer me, about grades.’
‘Cs.’
‘What about Bs? Or As?’
‘Sometimes. Not As. Bs.’
‘How about Ds?’
‘Dad!’
‘Don’t want you lying down on the job, honey.’
‘I’m not, Dad. Honest. I’m trying but it’s not easy.’
‘What about Mom? Doesn’t she help?’
‘She’s always got too much of her own stuff to do. And she says she teaches younger kids than me. That it wouldn’t help.’
Jesus! thought Powell. He’d take that up with Ann when he delivered Beth back. He also remembered that this was supposed to be a visitation, not an interrogation. ‘You get problems, why don’t you call me?’
‘You seem pretty busy most of the time, dad.’
‘Never too busy for you.’
‘OK,’ she said, unconvincingly again. ‘Can I watch TV?’
‘What about the work you brought?’
‘Later.’
‘Television’s off at midday.’
‘Sit with me.’
Powell did and Beth immediately snuggled into his side, shrugging his arm around her. With the remote control in both hands she danced the Saturday morning channels, settling for The Simpsons. When it and the cartoon that followed finished Beth got up unasked, telling him to set the table while she made lunch. He did so with a beer he didn’t want, drinking it because it had been Beth’s idea to buy them.
While they ate Beth said, ‘Last Sunday we went to Uncle Harry and Aunty Cath’s for a barbecue, just like when we lived in San Diego.’
‘You remember then?’
‘Course I do,’ said the child, indignantly. ‘I was almost ten, wasn’t I?’
Powell calculated that she would have been. There seemed to be a lot that Ann hadn’t told him. Difficult though things were between them he’d have expected Harry Beddows to mention it, too. ‘You go there often?’
Now Beth made a calculation, frowning. ‘Not for a few months. Aunty Cath said it was a pity it couldn’t be like it was before, all of us together.’
Powell held back from asking but didn’t have to. Beth went on: ‘Mom said it was one of those things.’
‘It’s good of them,
to have you over.’
‘We had steak. I don’t like steak unless it’s hamburger, like this. The pecan pie was good.’
Powell called the incident room while Beth cleared the table. There had been nothing new since he’d left, John Price said, but Mark Lipton had been on from the Public Affairs office, asking about a press release and had called him a stupid bastard when he’d suggested they say their inquiries were continuing. There were two television and three newspaper requests to interview Powell and he’d told the Public Affairs chief he’d have to discuss that personally with Powell. He was surprised Lipton hadn’t called Powell at home. Harry Beddows had telephoned, asking for him. So had Amy, saying she’d be in later.
‘I’ll try to get back a little earlier,’ said Powell, uncomfortably.
‘I’ve got your number,’ Price reminded him.
‘I’ve had some quality time with Beth.’ Had he? he asked himself.
‘Up to you,’ agreed the other man.
Beth’s homework was geography and computer theory, which she admitted to be her two worst subjects. He was in the middle of the geography project when the telephone’s ring jarred into the room.
Amy said, ‘I think I’ve got something. I need to talk to you.’
‘I’ll be in right away.’
‘I’m at home. Can I come to you there?’
‘What is it?’
‘I think I know where he is. And that he’s killed again. Twice.’
Powell thought Amy was right, within minutes of scanning the computer print-out she carried into the apartment, along with an encased laptop. When he looked up he realized Amy was doing her best to distract Beth, actually sitting beside her at the table and apparently studying the geography textbook.
‘How?’ he demanded.
‘I didn’t want to go into the Internet from an identifiable Bureau location, so I logged on from home. Surfed through some news pages and came up with those English reports. The methodology is surely too much of a coincidence?’
‘Unless it’s copycat, from our cases getting media play in England,’ said Powell. ‘But if it had I would have expected something from London by now.’
‘What I did is unauthorized. That’s why I wanted to see you away from the Bureau.’
‘What you did was brilliant …’ He looked at Beth. ‘Afraid I’ve got to go back to the office, honey.’
‘Dad!’
‘You could start things from here, while we’re on our way.’ Amy smiled sideways at Beth. ‘And while you’re doing that we could do a little more of this project.’
He agreed with that, too.
Amy and Beth remained in the main room while Powell phoned from the bedroom extension. He told Price to call the English-based Bureau agent into the embassy immediately and to fax complete summaries of all their killings to the FBI office there, while the man was coming from wherever he was spending the weekend. Powell wanted from the man far greater detail of the two English murders than was available on the Net and also the names of the British detectives heading the investigations, to be able to talk directly to them. He insisted that no information whatsoever should be given to Mark Lipton and as he spoke wondered about telling Beddows or the Director, deciding against it until he knew more.
John Price said, ‘We lost our man to the British?’
‘I don’t care who gets him,’ said Powell. ‘I just want him got.’
He tried Ann’s number but got her answering machine and left a message for her to call back, either at the apartment or on his mobile. When he returned to the living room he saw Amy had her laptop on, with Beth at the keyboard, working – sometimes laughing – excitedly to the guidance. It occurred to him that his daughter didn’t seem to laugh a lot.
He said, ‘Now I really have to go, Beth. And I don’t know what time I’ll get back. You want to wait here, for Mom to collect you, or let me take you back on my way into Washington?’
‘I’ve got a key. I guess I’ll go home.’
‘I’ll see you at the Bureau,’ said Amy, closing down her machine. To Beth she said: ‘You did very well. Six months from now you’ll be surfing the Internet and talking to Australia.’
On their way back to Arlington Beth said, ‘I think Amy’s amazing!’
‘So do I,’ said Powell, his mind on her Internet discovery.
Beth swivelled in her seat. ‘You guys an item?’
Powell laughed outright. ‘She’s someone I work with. And who today did something pretty impressive.’
‘It would be great if you two got together. You and Mom aren’t going to, are you?’
‘I guess not. And thank you for approving. Maybe we should tell Amy?’
‘I won’t tell Mom about her.’
‘There’s no reason at all why you shouldn’t.’
‘I know. But I won’t.’
‘I’ll see you up,’ said Powell, when they got to the apartment block.
‘That’s OK.’
‘I’d like to.’
As they rode up in the elevator Beth said, ‘Could we see Amy next week? We finished my computer homework: she made it fun.’
‘I’ll see if she’s busy,’ promised Powell. He would enjoy spending time with her as much as Beth would, he admitted to himself.
Beth hurried into the apartment ahead of him, abruptly stopping at the end of the corridor. Beyond, in the living room, Harry Beddows sat barefoot, his shirt undone almost to the waist. Ann wore only a T-shirt that ended just below her crotch.
He didn’t sleep and just before dawn he was aware of Janet getting as quietly as she could out of bed to return to her own room. The only way he could think of escaping the embarrassment was to kill her and he couldn’t do that, not yet. So what was he going to do! He didn’t know, he accepted. Which meant he wasn’t in control and it wasn’t possible for him not to be in total charge of everything.
Chapter Twenty
Beth said her friend Ann Marie only lived a block away and that she always went there by herself, so Powell let her go alone. For several minutes after the door closed behind her the three of them remained silent. Beddows buttoned his shirt. Powell enjoyed the man knowing how ridiculous – vulnerable – he looked. Ann too. Love – sex at least – gone sour, he thought. It wasn’t much compensation for how long they’d both made him look ridiculous.
He said: ‘Ever since San Diego?’
‘It just happened,’ shrugged Ann.
‘No it didn’t,’ said Powell. ‘I got sent out of town an awful lot when you were in charge there, didn’t I, Harry? Wasn’t that my reputation, the most travelled man in the office?’
‘We tried to end it with my transfer here,’ said Beddows.
‘Was there ever the supply teacher – what was his name, Max? – that you wanted to come here to get away from?’ demanded Powell.
‘He was part of trying to end it,’ said Ann.
‘Rather than trying to make a go of it with me?’
‘I didn’t want to make another go of it with you!’ she said, viciously. ‘We were a mistake. Beth was a mistake. I should have had an abortion; never married you in the first place.’
‘You want me to say we’re sorry, OK, we’re sorry,’ said Beddows. To Ann he hissed: ‘Why the hell didn’t you answer the call, like I told you!’
Powell wanted physically to hit her for what she said about Beth, actually twitched forward towards her before stopping himself. Ridicule – ridicule and something else he’d already decided to do – would hurt more. ‘What, exactly, are you sorry for, Harry? Fucking up my marriage? Or really treating me like an asshole, manipulating my transfer here to Washington to help save the marriage so that you and Ann could go on screwing each other? Or what you’ve been trying to do since I’ve got involved in this case, and probably the unsuccessful ones before – stacking the deck against me with the Director, to get me transferred way out somewhere in the boonies, along with all the other mentally retarded? You sorry about all of those things or m
aybe just one or two?’
Ann said, ‘Let us know when you’ve finished. Didn’t you hear you didn’t have a marriage to save?’
‘You’ll know when I’ve finished,’ promised Powell. ‘But not until I know what a cunt you’ve both made out of me. I need to know what I’ve got to recover from. What about Jim Pope?’
‘We tried again to break it off,’ said Beddows, quietly. ‘I gave it one more try with Cathy. Ann and I agreed not to see each other; didn’t for almost six months.’
‘So Pope was just a fuck, while you waited! Why didn’t you become a hooker, Ann? You like it that much – which I don’t remember your doing – you should have made a proper business out of it.’
‘We were both trying, for Cathy’s sake,’ said the woman. ‘What the hell’s it got to do with you anyway!’
For a moment Powell had difficulty in forming the words. ‘To do with you and me, nothing. You’re right. We’re finished. We never even started. But for months that motherfucker sitting there has been screwing me much harder than he’s been screwing you. That’s what it’s got to do with me. And—’
‘That’s not true …’ tried Beddows but Powell refused to hear him.
‘You know fucking well it’s true. Ann I can understand. Once a whore, always a whore. But doing – or trying to do – what you have professionally been trying to do to me is unbelievable.’
‘Don’t call Ann a whore,’ Beddows protested, although weakly. ‘We’re going to get married. I’ve told Cathy. As soon as we’re divorced Ann and I are going to get married. That’s it. All of it.’
‘No it’s not,’ Powell contradicted him again. ‘We haven’t talked about Beth yet. Beth isn’t – wasn’t – a mistake, not as far as I’m concerned. And she’s very much to do with me. I want her. You can have the visitation rights you’re entitled to, Ann, although I could probably successfully object even to that now we know you’re not interested. But Beth is coming to live with me—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Ann. ‘How can you look after a child?’
‘I don’t know but I will,’ insisted Powell. ‘I’ll take her from you legally. There’s two ways I can do that. We can do it by agreement and in private, just us and the lawyers. Or you can oppose me, in a custody court. If we go that route I’ll have my lawyers apply for a public hearing. What do you think, Harry? You think the Bureau would like to hear how you used your appointment as head of division to break up an agent’s marriage and get your mistress from one side of the country to the other? And how that mistress, just a first-grade teacher but still a teacher, can’t be bothered to help her daughter with school work; calls her a mistake that should have been aborted? It’s not like the days of J. Edgar Hoover but I heard somewhere the Bureau still has a moral code. You know what? I bet a dollar to your dime you’d end up looking the asshole both of you must have laughed at my being, all this time. Think on it …’
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