Acts of Mercy (19 page)

They were almost to The Hollows now. Ahead, through the windshield, Justice could see the President’s limousine approaching the main gate to the ranch complex. Then he became aware of Ed Dougherty sitting on his left, Maxwell Harper on his right, Elizabeth Miller in the front seat. One of them? he thought. Or the agent, Judson, at the wheel? One of the other staff aides? One of the other security people? Who?

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.

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.

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.”