Absolute Power (30 page)

“Maybe for an honest, respectable person, but not for him.”

“My God, Kate, the man was scared. I’ve never seen him scared before, have you?”

“I’ve seen all I need to see of him. He chose his lifestyle and now apparently it’s catching up to him.”

“He’s your father for chrissakes.”

“Jack, I don’t want to have this conversation.” She started to get up.

“What if something happens to him? Then what?”

She looked at him coldly. “Then it happens. That’s not my problem.”

Jack got up and started to leave. Then he turned back, his face red with anger. “I’ll tell you how the funeral service goes. On second thought, what the hell would you care? I’ll just make sure you get a copy of the death certificate for your scrapbook.”

He didn’t know she could move that quickly, but he would feel the slap for about a week, like someone had poured acid across his cheek, a truer description than he realized at the moment.

“How dare you?” Her eyes blazed at him as he slowly rubbed his face.

Then the tears erupted from her with so much force that they spilled onto the front of the robe.

He said quietly, as calmly as he could, “Don’t shoot the messenger, Kate. I told Luther and I’m telling you, life is way too short for this crap. I lost both my parents a long time ago. Okay, you have reasons for not liking the guy, fine. That’s up to you. But the old man loves you and cares about you and regardless of how you think he’s screwed up your life you have to respect that love. That’s my advice to you, take it or leave it.”

He moved toward the door but she again got there before him.

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“Fine, I don’t know anything about it. Go back to bed, I’m sure you’ll fall right asleep, nothing important on your mind.”

She grabbed his coat with such force that she jerked him around, even though he outweighed her by eighty pounds.

“I was two years old when he went to prison for the last time. I was nine when he got out. Do you understand the in credible shame of a little girl whose dad is in prison? Whose dad
steals
other’s people’s property for a living? When you had show-and-tell at school and the one kid’s dad is a doctor and another’s is a truck driver and it comes to your turn and the teacher looks down and tells the class that Katie’s dad had to go away because he did something bad and then she’d skip to the next kid?

“He was never there for us.
Never!
Mom worried sick about him all the time. But she always kept the faith, right up until the end. She made it easy for him.”

“She finally divorced him, Kate,” Jack gently reminded her.

“Only because that was the only choice she had left. And right when she was just getting her life turned around, she finds a lump in her breast and in six months she’s gone.”

Kate leaned back against the wall. She looked so tired, it was painful to witness. “And you know what the really crazy thing is? She never once stopped loving him. After all the incredible shit he put her through.” Kate shook her head, having a hard time believing the words she had just spoken. She looked up at Jack, her chin trembling slightly.

“But that’s okay, I have enough hate for both of us.” She stared at him, a mixture of pride and righteousness on her features.

Jack didn’t know if it was the complete exhaustion he was feeling or the fact that for so many years what he was about to say had been pent up inside him. Years of watching this charade. And brushing it aside in favor of the beauty and vivaciousness of the woman across from him. His vision of perfection.

“Is that your idea of justice, Kate? Enough hate balanced against enough love, and everything equals out?”

She stepped back. “What are you talking about?”

He moved forward as she continued to retreat into the small room. “I’ve listened to this goddamned martyrdom of yours until I’m sick of it. You think you’re some perfect defender of the hurt and victimized. Nothing comes above that. Not you, not me, not your father. The only reason you’re out there prosecuting every sonofabitch that comes into your sights is because your father hurt you. Every time you convict somebody that’s another nail in your old man’s heart.”

Her hand flew to his face. He caught it, gripped it. “Your whole adult life has been spent getting back at him. For all the wrongs. For all the hurt. For never being there for you.” He squeezed her hand until he heard her gasp. “Did you ever once stop to think that maybe you were never there for him?”

He let go of her hand as she stood there, staring at him, a look on her face he had never seen before.

“Do you understand that Luther loves you so much that he’s never tried to contact you, never tried to be a part of your life, because he knows that’s how you want it? His only child living a few miles away from him and he’s completely cut out of her life. Did you ever think about how he feels? Did your hate ever let you do that?”

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t you ever wonder why your mother loved him? Is your picture of Luther Whitney so goddamned distorted that you can’t see why she loved him?”

He grabbed her shoulders, shook her. “Does your goddamned hatred ever let you be compassionate? Does it ever let you love anything, Kate!”

He pushed her away. She stumbled backward, her eyes locked on his face.

He hesitated for a moment. “The fact is, lady, you don’t deserve him.” He paused and then decided to finish. “You don’t deserve to be loved.”

In one furious instant her teeth gnashed, her face contorted into rage. She screamed and flew at him, hammering her fists into his chest, slapping his face. He felt none of her blows as the tears slid down her cheeks.

Her assault stopped as quickly as it started. Her arms like lead, they clutched at his coat, holding on. That’s when the heaves started and she sank to the floor, the tears bursting from her, the sobs echoing through the tiny space.

He lifted her up and placed her gently on the couch.

He knelt beside her, letting her cry, and she did so for a long time, her body repeatedly tensing and then going limp until he felt himself growing weak, his hands clammy. He finally wrapped his arms around her, laid his chest against her side. Her thin fingers clutched tightly to his coat as both their bodies shook together for a long time.

When it was over she sat up slowly, her face red, splotchy.

Jack stepped back.

She refused to look at him. “Get out, Jack.”

“Kate—”

“Get out!”
Despite her scream the voice was fragile, battered. She covered her face in her hands.

He turned and walked out the door. As he headed down the street he turned to look at her building. Her silhouette was framed in the window, looking out, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking for something, he wasn’t sure what. Probably she didn’t even know. As he continued to watch, she turned from the window. A few moments later the light in her apartment went out.

Jack wiped at his eyes, turned and walked slowly down the street, heading home after one of the longest days he could ever remember.

*   *   *

“G
ODDAMMIT
!
H
OW LONG
?” S
ETH
F
RANK STOOD NEXT TO THE
car. It was not quite eight in the morning.

The young Fairfax County patrolman didn’t know the significance of the event and was startled by the detective’s outburst.

“We found her about an hour ago; an early-morning jogger saw the car, called it in.”

Frank walked around the car and peered in from the passenger side. The face was peaceful, much different from the last corpse he had viewed. The long hair was undone, streamed down the sides of the car seat and flowed across the floorboard. Wanda Broome looked like she was asleep.

Three hours later the crime scene investigation was completed. Four pills had been found on the car seat. The autopsy would confirm that Wanda Broome had died from a massive overdose of digitalis, from a prescription she had filled for her mother but obviously had never delivered. She had been dead for about two hours when her body was discovered on the secluded dirt path that ran around a five-acre pond about eight miles from the Sullivan place just over the county line. The only other piece of tangible evidence was in a plastic bag that Frank was carrying back to headquarters after getting the okay from his sister jurisdiction. The note was on a piece of paper torn from a spiral ring notepad. The handwriting was a woman’s, flowing and embellished. Wanda’s last words had been a desperate plea for redemption. A shriek of guilt in four words.

I am so sorry.

Frank drove on past the rapidly fading foliage and misty swamp that paralleled the winding back road. He had fucked that one up royally. He never would have figured the woman for a suicide candidate. Wanda Broome’s history pegged her as a survivor. Frank couldn’t help but feel sorry for the woman, but also raged at her stupidity. He could’ve gotten her a deal, a sweetheart deal! Then he reflected on the fact that his instincts had been right on one count. Wanda Broome
had
been a very loyal person. She had been loyal to Christine Sullivan and could not live with the guilt that she had contributed, however unintentionally, to her death. An understandable, if regrettable, reaction. But with her gone, Frank’s best, and perhaps only, opportunity to land the big fish had just died too.

The memory of Wanda Broome faded into the background as he focused on how to bring to justice a man who had now caused the death of two women.

*   *   *

“D
AMN
, T
ARR, WAS IT TODAY
?” J
ACK LOOKED AT HIS CLIENT
in the reception area of Patton, Shaw. The man looked as out of place as a junkyard mutt at a dog show.

“Ten-thirty. It’s eleven-fifteen now, does that mean I get forty-five minutes free? By the way, you look like hell.”

Jack looked down at his rumpled suit and put a hand through his unkempt hair. His internal clock was still on Ukraine time, and a sleepless night had not helped his appearance.

“Believe me, I look much better than I feel.”

The two men shook hands. Tarr had dressed up for the meeting, which meant his jeans didn’t have holes in them, and he wore socks with his tennis shoes. The corduroy jacket was a relic from the early 1970s, and the hair was its usual tangle of curls and mats.

“Hey, we can do it another day, Jack. Me, I understand hangovers.”

“Not when you got all dressed up. Come on back. All I need is some grub. I’ll take you to lunch and won’t even bill you for the tab.”

As the men walked down the hallway, Lucinda, prim and proper in keeping with the firm’s image, breathed a sigh of relief. More than one Patton, Shaw partner had walked through her turf with absolute horror on their face at the sight of Tarr Crimson. Memos would fly this week.

“I’m sorry, Tarr, I’m running on about twelve cylinders lately.” Jack tossed his overcoat over a chair and settled down miserably behind a stack of pink message slips about six inches high on his desk.

“Out of the country, so I heard. Hope it was someplace fun.”

“It wasn’t. How’s business?”

“Booming. Pretty soon, you might be able to call me a legitimate client. Make your partners’ stomachs feel a lot better when they see me sitting in the lobby.”

“Screw ’em, Tarr, you pay your bills.”

“Better to be a big client and pay some of your bills than a teeny client who pays all of his.”

Jack smiled. “You got us all figured out, don’t you?”

“Hey, man, you seen one algorithm, you’ve seen ’em all.”

Jack opened Tarr’s file and perused it quickly.

“We’ll have your new S corp set up by tomorrow. Delaware incorporation with a qualification in the District. Right?”

Tarr nodded.

“How’re you planning on capitalizing it?”

Tarr pulled out a legal pad. “I’ve got the list of potentials. Same as the last deal. Do I get a reduced rate?” Tarr smiled. He liked Jack, but business was business.

“Yeah, this time you won’t pay for the learning curve of an overpriced and underinformed associate.”

Both men smiled.

“I’ll cut the bill to the bone, Tarr, just like always. What’s the new company for, by the way?”

“Got the inside track on some new technology for surveillance work.”

Jack looked up from his notes. “Surveillance? That’s a little off the mark for you, isn’t it?”

“Hey, you gotta go with the flow. Corporate business is down. But when one market dries up, being the good entrepreneur that I am, I look around for other opportunities. Surveillance for the private sector has always been hot. Now the new twist is big brother in the law enforcement arena.”

“That’s ironic for somebody who got thrown in jail in every major city in the country during the 1960s.”

“Hey, those causes were good ones. But we all grow up.”

“How does it work?”

“Two ways. First, low-level orbit satellites are downlinked to metropolitan police tracking stations. The birds have preprogrammed sweep sectors. They spot trouble and they send an almost instantaneous signal to the tracking station, giving precise incident information. It’s real time for the cops. The second method involves placing military-style surveillance equipment, sensors and tracking devices on top of telephone poles, or underground with surface sensors on the outside of buildings. Their exact locations will be classified, of course, but they’ll be deployed in the worst crime areas. If something starts to go down, they’ll call in the cavalry.”

Jack shook his head. “I can think of a few civil rights that might be trampled.”

“Tell me about it. But it’s effective.”

“Until the bad guys move.”

“Kinda hard to outrun a satellite, Jack.”

Jack shook his head and turned back to his file.

“Hey, how’re the wedding plans coming?”

Jack looked up. “I don’t know, I try to keep out of the way.”

Tarr laughed. “Shit, Julie and I had a total of twenty bucks to get married on, including the honeymoon. We got a justice of the peace for ten dollars, bought a case of Michelob with the rest, and rode the Harley down to Miami and slept on the beach. Had a helluva good time.”