First Daughter (40 page)

Nina Miller was sitting on the bed, her long legs stretched out, crossed at the bare ankles. She'd kicked off her sensible shoes and now looked fetching in a pearl-white silk shirt. Her dove gray wool skirt had ridden partway up her muscular thighs. She was a fine tennis player, as was Paull. It was how they'd met, in fact. Now they played mixed doubles whenever they had a chance, which, admittedly, wasn't often.

Nina put down the book she was reading—
Summer Rain
, by Marguerite Duras—a first edition Paull had given her last year for her birthday. It was her favorite novel.

"You're looking luscious."

She smiled. "I could have your job for workplace sexual harassment."

"This isn't the workplace." Paull bent, kissed her on the lips. "This isn't harassment."

"Flatterer."

Paull pulled over the desk chair, sat down beside her. "What have you got for me?"

She handed him a thick manila folder. "I back-checked the dossiers of every member of the D.C. Homeland Security office. Everyone's clean, so far as I can tell, except for Garner."

"Hugh's my deputy." Paull shook his head. "No. He's too obvious a choice."

"That's precisely why the National Security Advisor recruited him." She pointed at the open file she'd compiled. "Over the past eight
months, Hugh has met five times with a man named Smith." She laughed. "Can you believe it? Anyway, Mr. Smith is Hugh's acupuncturist. He also happens to be in the office adjacent to the National Security Advisor's chiropractor."

Paull, paging through the file, said, "I see their appointments overlapped on those five occasions."

Nina folded her hands in her lap. "What d'you want to do?"

Putting the folder aside, Paull leaned over her. "I know what I
want
to do."

Nina giggled, took his head between her hands. "I'm serious."

"I couldn't be more serious." His lips brushed the hollow of her throat. "How's your friend Jack McClure?"

"Mmmm."

Paull raised his head. "What does that mean?"

She made a moue. "You're not jealous, are you, Denny?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

She pushed him away. "Sometimes you can be so starchy."

"I only meant that considering Hugh Garner hates McClure's guts, perhaps between us we can work out a way for him to take care of Hugh for us."

Her mouth twitched. "What a Machiavellian mind you have."

Paull laughed appreciatively as he manipulated the tiny pearl buttons down the front of her shirt.

Tossing the file on the floor beside the bed, she said, "I've gotten as close as I can to Jack. He's carrying a Statue of Liberty-size torch for his ex."

"Poor bastard."

"Nothing
you'll
have to worry about," she said. "You don't have a heart."

"Birds of a feather." He made a lascivious grab for her. "Anyway, what could be better than an affair with no strings attached?"

"I can't imagine." She gripped his tie, pulled him down to her.

J
ACK TURNED
and saw her, framed between two trees, her skin pale in the ghostly light.

"Dad . . ."

"Emma?" He took a step toward her. "Is that you?"

The rain, gaining strength, beat down on him, water rolling into his eyes, mixing with his tears. Could Emma have come back to him? Was it possible? Or was he losing his mind?

He moved closer. The image wavered, seemed to break up into a million parts, each reflected in a raindrop spattering black branches, glistening brown bark, pale gold of dead leaves. She was all around him.

Jack stood in wonder as he heard her voice, "Dad, I'm here. . . ."

It wasn't the voice of a person or a ghost. It was the sough of the wind, the scrape of the branches, the rustle of the brittle leaves, even the distant intermittent hiss of traffic on faraway streets, avenues, and parkways.

"I'm here. . . ."

Her voice emanated from everything. Every atom held a part of her, was infused by her spirit, her soul, the electrical spark that had animated her brain, that made her unique, that made her Emma.

"My Emma." He listened for her, to her, heard the wind, the trees, the sky, even the dead leaves call his name, felt her close all around him, as if he were immersed in warm water. "Emma, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. . . ."

"I'm here, Dad. . . . I'm here."

And she was. Though he couldn't hold her, couldn't see her, she was there with him, not a figment of his imagination, but something beyond his ken, beyond a human's ability to comprehend. A physicist might call her a quark. Werner Heisenberg, architect of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, would understand her being here and not here at the same time.

J
ACK RETURNED
to the house dripping wet, feeling at once exceptionally calm and subtly agitated. He couldn't explain the feeling any more than he could the last half hour, nor did he want to. Heavy-limbed, he wanted only to return to his bed and sleep for as many hours as he could until sunlight splintered the oak tree outside his window and roused him with warm and tender fingers.

Before he did so, however, he peeked into Alli's room, saw her sleeping peacefully on her side. Silently closing the door, he tiptoed back to the bathroom to dry off. Then he stumbled into bed and, after pulling the covers up to his chin, passed into a deep and untroubled sleep.

J
ACK FELT
as if he were walking a tightrope. On the one hand, he had promised Edward Carson to deliver Alli at noon today; on the other, he needed to find some way to get Alli to open up about Ian Brady because she was his only link to him. She'd been with him long enough; it was possible she had seen or heard something that could lead him to the murderer.

"Alli, I know how hard this must be for you," he said as she came down to the kitchen, "I know this man is scary."

Instantly, she turned away. "I don't want to talk about it."

He ignored the deer-caught-in-the-headlights glassiness of her eyes, plowed relentlessly on. This might be his last chance to get her to talk about her ordeal. "Alli, listen to me, we need to know why Kray abducted you. He didn't do it for a lark, he had a plan in mind. Only you and he know what that is. You're the key to what happened."

"I'm telling you I don't
know
. I can't remember."

"But have you tried?" Jack said. "Really tried?"

"Please, Jack." She began to tremble all over, absolutely certain that she was close to something terrible, that she was approaching a pit
of fire into which she could not help but walk and be consumed. Even Jack couldn't save her now. "Please stop."

"Alli, I'm sure Emma would want you to—"

"Don't!" She spun around, her face flushed. "Don't use Emma that way."

"All right." Jack held up his hands. He knew he'd gone too far. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you." The more he pushed her, the more agitated she became. He wasn't going to get anything more out of her this way or any other way he could think of. Like it or not, he had to back off.

He smiled at her. "Are we good?"

Alli tried to smile back, but all she could do was nod numbly.

T
HEY WERE
just sitting down to breakfast when Jack heard a car pull up outside. Assuming it was the Secret Service detail, he crossed to the front door, stepped outside to tell them not to come into the house. Instead, he saw Egon Schiltz's maroon classic station wagon, a superlative 1950 Buick Super Model 59 Estate Woodie Wagon, with its unique Niagara Falls bumper, real birchwood side panels, the original straight-eight-cylinder engine with 124 horsepower and GM's then-innovative Dyna-flow automatic transmission. In truth, it should have been in a showroom or bombing down Victory Boulevard in L.A., but it was Egon's second child, and he drove it everywhere.

He raised an arm as he got out of the woodie. "Finally. I tried all yesterday to reach you, but you weren't answering your cell phone, and Chief Bennett gave me a number for the task force that's no longer in service."

Jack came down off the porch. The mild air was still in place; there was only the hint of a chill in the air, low sunlight already melting silver hoarfrost.

"How are you, Egon?"

"Ask me in a month." Schiltz gave a wry smile. "I came clean with
Candy. I think she would've moved out, except for Molly. Molly must never know, that's something the two of us absolutely agreed on."

"If you agree on one thing, more will follow. You two should see someone."

Egon nodded. "I want to. I'm sure Candy does, too. She just needs some time." He scratched the back of his head. "You're a good friend, Jack, thank you. I feel . . ." He sighed heavily. "It turns out you know me better than I know myself. Living a lie isn't for me, which is why I've stopped going to church for the time being." He leaned back against the mottled trunk of a tree. "It's not so bad. Truthfully, I don't think Molly misses it at all. I tried to make her see the light, but it's no good, you see. It doesn't work. You want for your child everything you yourself didn't have, only to discover she wants only what she wants. And in the end, you're meaningless, really. It's her life." He rubbed his hands briskly. "She never really got God. Either you believe or you don't. There's no point going through the motions."

"I hope you haven't stopped believing, Egon."

The ME produced a rueful smile. "That would make my entire life a mockery. No, no, I still believe in God, but what you made me realize is that there are many paths to redemption. I've got to find mine. The Church can't help me."

Jack clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Everyone needs the freedom to make up their own mind." He gestured with his head. "D'you want to come in? I can fix you some breakfast."

Egon glanced around. "Not if you have guests."

"In that case," Jack said, "let's take a walk."

They went around the north side of the house. It was colder here; the green Bilco doors were still rimed with a thin layer of ice, the fallen leaves stuck together with the glue of winter.

"Something mighty queer is going on," Egon said.

Jack was automatically on alert. "In what way?"

"You heard about that girl, Calla Myers, being stabbed to death on
the Spanish Steps the other day. The District ME is an old bridge buddy of mine. He called yesterday morning, and I met with him. He told me that the stab wound was in the same place as the ones on the two agents guarding Alli Carson. I showed him the photos of the wounds, and he confirmed the one that killed Calla Myers was identical."

"Did you confirm it on her body?"

"Well, that's the thing," Egon said. "The body wasn't in his morgue. The feds whisked it out of there along with his preliminary findings."

Jack was hardly surprised, since it was clear that Calla Myers was Ian Brady's latest victim. But the very fact that he'd targeted her set Jack's synapses to firing overtime. Another Rubik's Cube was forming in his head, and he didn't like the shape of it one bit. He'd heard the president's address. Direct evidence linked Calla Myers, a member of the FASR, to the murders of the SS agents. That was part of the rationale used to close down the Kansas Avenue office and take its members into custody. What did it mean that Brady—a federally protected person—had murdered Calla Myers? Brady had killed the Secret Service detail. In the initial briefing, Hugh Garner had told him that the detail's cell phones hadn't been found. In an instant, the Rubik's Cube in Jack's mind slid into focus. Of course the phones hadn't been found; Brady had taken them. And now he'd planted one with Calla Myers to implicate her and, by extension, the FASR.

Egon broke into his thoughts. "Jack, are you still with me?"

Jack nodded. "I was just thinking about Calla Myers's murderer. I think I know who it is, but I have no idea what his real name is or where to find him."

"I just might be able to help you there." Egon took out a small pad, flipped it open. "As I said, my friend hadn't finished his autopsy on Calla Myers when the feds took her away, but he did note something interesting. He hadn't yet put it in his prelim, because he needed to check it out, so the feds don't have it."

Schiltz consulted his pad. "As per the MO, there were no fingerprints whatsoever except for the vic's, which leads us to the inescapable conclusion that the perp wore gloves of some sort. My friend found traces of a superfine powder on Calla Myers's coat, in the place under her left arm consistent with where someone who had his arm around her would place his hand.

"It took him some time to figure out what this powder actually was." Egon glanced up. "You'll like this, Jack. What was on Calla Myers's coat was logwood powder. Logwood is a heartwood extract from
Haematoxylon campechianum
, found in Central America and the West Indies. When mixed with a carrier, such as ethyl alcohol, glycerine, or Listerine, it becomes a black pigment used for tattooing." He snapped the pad closed. "And, by the way, Calla Myers had no tattoos."

Jack's heart leapt. "So the logwood powder came from the perp."

Schiltz nodded. "Whatever else this sonovabitch is, he's also a tattoo artist. But here's the best part. Almost all tattoo artists buy pre-mixed pigments. None of those use logwood as an ingredient. Your man mixes his pigments by hand."

I
LIKED
the white Continental better," Alli said as she slid into Jack's car.

He laughed as he put the car in gear. A moment later, he picked up the Secret Service detail in his rearview mirror. It was 11:20. The minutes were counting down to when he'd lose his access to her. It was now or never.

"Alli, there's something I've been wondering," he said. "Did the man who abducted you have a tattoo?"

Alli went rigid. She stared straight ahead.

"Alli, honey, it's all right for you to tell me."

"I only saw his arms." Alli slowly shook her head from side to side. "He didn't have any tattoos."

Jack, heading for the Carsons' house in Chevy Chase, did his best to keep to the minimum speed. He didn't want this drive to end yet.