The Simple Truth

by David Baldacci

  tightened around it. Fiske looked beyond her to a car parked on the road and the two men inside. “We’ll have the Feds along for a ride.” His manner and tone were now resigned. At least it wasn’t McKenna back there.

  “Good, I’ll feel very safe,” she said, her gaze refusing to leave his, until finally she saw she hadn’t lost him, at least for now.

  They climbed in their cars and Sara followed Fiske to a small shopping mall about a mile away, where they sat at an outdoor table and sipped lemonade in the heat of the late afternoon.

  “I can understand how you could hold that against your brother, although it’s not his fault,” Sara said.

  “Nothing was ever Mike’s fault,” Fiske said bitterly.

  “It’s not like your mother can help herself. It could just as easily be that she called Michael by your name.”

  “Yeah, right. She chose not to remember me.”

  “Maybe she calls you that because you visited her a lot more than Michael did and that’s her way of reacting to it.”

  “I’m not buying that.”

  Sara looked angry. “Well, if you want to be jealous of your brother even now that he’s dead, then I guess that’s your right.”

  Fiske settled a very cold gaze on her. She expected him to erupt. Instead, he said, “I am, was, whatever, jealous of my brother. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “But that doesn’t make it right.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” Fiske said, his voice tired. He looked away. “The first time I visited Mom and she called me Mike, I thought it was a temporary thing, you know, she was having a real bad day. After two months of it …” He paused. “Well, that’s when I cut Mike off. For good. Everything that had ever ticked me off about him, no matter how stupid, I just blew up into a huge picture of this evil sonofabitch with no heart, nothing good. He had taken my mother away from me.”

  “John, the day we came to see you at trial, I went with Michael to see your mother.”

  He tensed. “What?”

  “Your mother wouldn’t even talk to him. He brought her a gift, she wouldn’t take it. He told me she was always like that. He assumed that it was because she loved you so much, that she didn’t care about him”

  “You’re lying,” Fiske said in a hushed tone.

  “No, I’m not. It’s the truth.”

  “You’re lying!” he said again, more forcefully.

  “Ask some of the people who work there. They know.”

  A few minutes of silence passed. Fiske’s head was bowed. When he looked back up, he said, “I never really thought about him losing his mother too.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Sara asked quietly.

  Fiske stared at her, his hands clenched. “What do you mean?” he said, his voice shaking.

  “What stopped you from talking to your brother? Michael told me you had shut him out, and you just admitted that. Even so, I can’t believe you never knew how she treated him.”

  For a full minute Fiske said nothing. He stared at Sara, perhaps through her; his eyes revealed nothing of what he was thinking. Finally, he closed his eyes and said in a barely audible tone, “I knew.”

  He looked at her. The terrible pain on his features made her tremble.

  “I just didn’t want to care,” Fiske said. Sara gripped his shoulder tightly. “I guess I used it as an excuse not to have anything to do with my own brother.” He took another deep breath. “There’s something else. Mike did call me, before he went to the prison. I didn’t call him back. Not until it was too late.… I killed him.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that.” Sara’s words had no effect, she could see that, so she changed tactics. “If you want to blame yourself, then do it for the right reason. You unfairly cut your brother out of your life. You were wrong to do that. Very wrong. Now he’s gone. That’s something you’ll have to live with forever, John.”

  Now he looked at her. His face grew calmer. “I guess I’ve been living with it already.”

  Since he had confided in her, Sara decided it was only fair to reciprocate. “I saw your father today.” Before Fiske could say anything, she hurried on. “I promised you I would. I told him what really happened.”

  “And he believed you,” Fiske said skeptically.

  “I was telling the truth. He’s going to call you.”

  “Thanks, but I wish you had kept out of it.”

  “He filled in some gaps for me.”

  “Like what?” Fiske said sharply.

  “Like what happened to make you stop being a cop.”

  “Dammit, Sara, you had no need to know that.”

  “Yes, I did. A great reason.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know what!”

  Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Fiske looked down at the table too, and fiddled with his straw. Finally, he sat back and crossed his arms. “So my dad told you everything?”

  Sara glanced up at him. “About the shooting, yes.” Her tone was cautious.

  “So you know I’m probably not going to be alive and kicking when I’m sixty or maybe even fifty.”

  “I think you can beat any odds someone throws at you.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “If you don’t, that doesn’t matter to me.”

  He leaned forward. “But it matters to me, Sara.”

  “So you give up the life you do have?”

  “I think I’m leading my life exactly how I want to.”

  “Maybe you are,” she quietly conceded.

  “It would never work, you know.”

  “So you’ve thought about it?”

  “I’ve thought about it. Have you? How do you know this isn’t another impulse decision? Like buying your house?”

  “It’s what I feel.”

  “Feelings change.”

  “And it’s so much easier to admit defeat rather than work at something.”

  “When I want something, I work very hard at it.” Fiske had no idea why he said that, but he saw the devastated look on Sara’s face.

  “I see. And I guess I have no choice in the matter?”

  “You really don’t want to have to make that kind of a choice.” She said nothing and Fiske remained quiet for a moment. “You know, my dad didn’t tell you everything, because he doesn’t know everything.”

  “He told me how you almost died, how the other officer did die. And the man who shot you. I can understand how that could change your life. How it could make you do what you do. I think it’s very noble, if that’s the right word.”

  “That’s not even close. Do you really want to know why I do what I do?”

  Sara could sense the sudden change of mood. “Tell me.”

  “Because I’m scared.” He nodded at her. “Fear drives me. The longer I was a cop, the more it became ‘us against them.’Young, angry, attitude, with a pistol to back it all up.” Fiske stopped speaking and watched through the glass partition as people inside bought refreshments. They appeared carefree, happy, pursuing some tangible goal in their lives; they were everything he wasn’t, couldn’t be.

  He looked back at Sara. “I kept arresting the same guys over and over and it seemed like before I filed the paperwork they were back on the streets. And they’d blow you away like stepping on a cockroach. See, they lived the game of ‘us against them’ too. You lump people together. Young and black, catch ’em if you can. Blues coming at you? Kill ’em if you can. It’s quick and you don’t have to make choices about individuals. It’s like a drug addiction.”

  “Not everybody does that. The whole world isn’t made up of people like that.”

  “I know that. I know that most people, black, white or whatever, are good people, lead relatively normal lives. I really want to believe that. It’s just that as a cop I never saw any of that. Normal ships didn’t sail by my dock.”

  “So did the shooting make you rethink things?”

  Fiske didn’t answer right away. When he did, he spoke slowly. “I
remember dropping to my knees to check the guy, who it turned out was faking a seizure. I heard the gun go off, my partner scream. I pulled my pistol at the same time I was turning. I don’t know how I got a round off, but I did. It hit him right in the chest. We both went down. He lost his gun, but I kept mine. Pointed it right at him. He wasn’t more than a foot from me. Every breath he took, blood kicked out of the bullet hole like a red geyser. It made this swishing sound I still hear in my sleep. His eyes had started to freeze up, but you never knew. All I knew was that he had just shot my backup, and he had just shot me. My insides felt like they were dissolving.” Fiske let out a long breath. “I was going to just wait for him to die, Sara.” Fiske stopped talking as he recalled how close he had come to being another blue in a box, buried and mostly forgotten.

  “Your father said you were found with your arm around him,” Sara gently prompted.

  “I thought he was trying to grab my gun. I had one finger on the trigger and one finger stuck in the hole in my gut. But he didn’t even put his hand out. Then I heard him talking. I could barely make out what he was saying at first, but he kept saying it until I did.”

  “What did he say?” Sara asked gently.

  Fiske let out a breath, half expecting to see blood kick out of his old wounds, his tired, betrayed organs calling it quits on him forty years early. “He was asking me to kill him.” As if in answer to her unspoken question, Fiske said, “I couldn’t. I didn’t. It didn’t matter, though, he stopped talking a few seconds later.”

  Sara slowly sat back, unable to say anything.

  “I actually think he was terrified he wasn’t going to die.” Fiske shook his head slowly, the words becoming more difficult to put together. “He was only nineteen. I’m an old man already, next to him. His name was Darnell — Darnell Jackson. His mother was a crack addict, and when he was eight or nine she would whore him out for drug money.”

  He looked at her. “Does that sound horrible to you?”

  “Of course it does. Yes!”

  “To me, it was the same old shit. I saw it all the time. I’d become immune to it, or at least I thought I had.” He licked his dry lips. “I didn’t think I had any compassion left. But after Darnell, I got some back.” He flashed a troubled smile. “I call it my steel-jacketed epiphany. Two slugs in my body, a kid dying in front of me, wanting me to finish him off. It’s hard to imagine one event having enough force to make you question everything you’ve ever believed. But it happened to me that night.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Now I think of the whole future of the world solely in the context of Darnell Jackson. He’s my version of nuclear holocaust, only it won’t be over in a few seconds.” He looked at her. “That’s the terror that drives me.”

  “I think you really do care. You do a lot of good.”

  Fiske shook his head, his eyes glimmering. “I’m not some rich, brilliant white attorney running around nobly saving the little Enis’s of the world. And it took a lost kid blowing up my insides with a cannon to make me even give a damn. How many people do you think really care?”

  “You can’t be that cynical, can you?”

  Fiske stared at her a moment before answering. “Actually, I’m the most hopeful cynic you’ll ever meet.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  You did the right thing, Beth. As much as it hurts. I still can’t believe it about Sara, though.” Jordan Knight shook his head. They were in the back seat of his government limousine, which was threading its way through bumper-to-bumper traffic toward their Watergate apartment. “Maybe she just cracked. The pressures are enormous.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth Knight said quietly.

  “It all seems so bizarre. A clerk steals an appeal. Sara knows about it but keeps quiet. The clerk is then murdered. Then the clerk’s brother comes under suspicion. John Fiske just doesn’t strike me as the murderous type.”

  “He doesn’t strike me that way either.” Her discussion with John Fiske had only deepened her fears.

  Jordan Knight patted his wife’s hand. “I’ve checked on Chandler and McKenna. Both are rock-solid. McKenna has an excellent reputation at the Bureau. If anybody can solve this thing, I think those two can.”

  “I find Warren McKenna rude and obnoxious.”

  “Well, in his line of work I suppose he sometimes has to be,” he pointed out.

  “That’s not all. There’s just something about him. He’s so intense, but he almost seems to be” — she paused, searching for the right word — “playacting.”

  “In the middle of a murder investigation?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s just how I feel.”

  The senator shrugged and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve always said a woman’s intuition is worth more than a man’s best judgment. I guess in this town we’re all on a stage. Sometimes one does grow tired of it.”

  She eyed him closely. “The New Mexico ranch beckons?”

  “I’ve got a dozen years on you, Beth. Every day becomes a little more precious.”

  “It’s not like we’re not together.”

  “Time together in D.C. is not really the same. We’re both so busy here.”

  “My appointment to the Court is a lifetime one, Jordan.”

  “I just don’t want you to have any regrets. And I’m trying my best not to have any.”

  They both fell silent and looked out the window as the car traveled along Virginia Avenue.

  “I heard you and Ramsey went at it tooth and claw today. Do you think you have a chance?”

  “Jordan, you know I don’t feel comfortable talking to you about these things.”

  Jordan reddened. “That’s one thing I hate about this town, and our jobs. Government should not interfere in the covenant of marriage.”

  “Funny talk, coming from a politician.”

  Jordan laughed deeply. “Well, as a politician, I have to get up on the damn soapbox every now and then, don’t I?” He stopped and took her hand. “I appreciate your going forward with the dinner for Kenneth. You took some heat for it, I know.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Harold takes any opportunity, no matter how trivial, to tweak me, Jordan. I’ve built up a very strong resistance.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek, while he lovingly stroked her hair.

  “We really have prevailed, despite all the odds, haven’t we? We have a nice life, don’t we?”

  “We have a wonderful life, Jordan.” She kissed him again and he put a protective arm around her.

  “I say tonight we cancel all of our appointments and just stay home. Have some dinner, watch a movie. And talk. We don’t get to do that much anymore.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be good company.”

  Jordan squeezed her tightly. “You’re always good company, Beth. Always.”

  When the Knights arrived at their apartment, Mary, their housekeeper, handed a phone message to Elizabeth. A curious expression crossed her face as she looked at the name on the paper.

  Jordan appeared in the hallway rubbing his hands together. He looked at Mary. “I hope you have something nice planned for dinner.”

  “Your favorite. Beef tenderloin.”

  Jordan smiled. “I think we’re going to have a late dinner. Tonight the missus and I are going to relax completely. No interruptions.” He looked at his wife. “Anything wrong?” He noted the paper in her hand.

  “No. Court business. It never ends.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” he said dryly. “Well, I’m for a hot shower.” He went down the hallway. “You’re welcome to join me,” he called over his shoulder.

  Mary went off to the kitchen, a smile on her lips at the senator’s remark.