Gideon (19 page)

“Been her long?” Shaneesa murmured.

“That’s supposed to be my question, isn’t it?”

Amanda didn’t have to ask why Shaneesa had spent the night in the office. There was a boyfriend who had the worst possible combination of personal traits: he was unemployed, he liked to yell, and he couldn’t take a hint, even when the hint was as straightforward as “Get out of my life.”

“Mmm. That coffee smells good.”

“It is. So you might want to get yourself a cup—somewhere else.”

Shaneesa
could
take a hint. Within seconds, both shoes were on, her sweater was tied around her neck, and she was heading toward the coffee machine at the far end of the newsroom. But before Amanda could return to the problem at hand, another one of her babies, Cindy, a tough little Asian woman from San Francisco, marched in and sat down. She wanted to talk. Amanda encouraged her reporters to come in and talk anytime they wanted to. Cindy was hot into a story about a local priest, the pastor of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, who had disappeared. No body had been found yet, and there was no cause to suspect foul play. There
were
all sorts of rumors—possible accusations of sexual abuse, a secret wife stashed somewhere in Virginia, depression over a dead sister, even suicide—but Cindy felt there was something else going on. She’d cozied up to a few sources, had begun to get intrigued with this handsome and charismatic young priest. There was a lot of competition for this story—the man of the cloth was a rising star in Washington circles—but Amanda had fought for Cindy to stay on it and she had won. The story was theirs. Except there was one big problem—Cindy knew what she believed
hadn’t
happened. But she didn’t have one solid lead about what
had
happened.

If only Amanda could concentrate. But she couldn’t. She hardly heard a word Cindy was saying.

Her secretary was buzzing her.

Amanda picked up her phone and said, “I can’t talk to anyone right now. Please take a message.”

“Okay.”

Amanda hung up the phone and turned her divided attention back to her reporter. Or tried to. Her secretary was buzzing her again.

She answered impatiently. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, Amanda, but he says it’s urgent. there’s some kind of emergency with your grandmother.”

Her grandmother? Was this some kind of joke? She’d never even met one of her grandmothers, and the other one had died several years …

Amanda froze. She swallowed, composing herself.

“Did he say he’s calling about my granny?”

“That’s what he said. It sounded really important.”

Amanda asked Cindy to please excuse her. She got up and closed the door after her, then sat back down. She picked up the receiver and slowly brought it up to her ear.

“Carl?” she whispered.

“So listen,” he said with maddening calm. “I know we agreed to wait until next year, but something has kind of come up.”

* * *

The moment she hung up the telephone, Amanda announced that she could be reached at home if anyone needed her and went flying out of the newsroom. She told her secretary that she was coming down with a virus, which was not totally untrue. It was fair to liken Carl Granville’s effect on her physical and mental well-being to that of a virus—one of those nasty Hong Kong ones, the kind that every time you think you’ve gotten rid of it, it comes roaring back and flattens you all over again.

On the phone, she told him where her spare key was—under the flowerpot with the nasturtiums in it—and told him to let himself in. She also told him to stay put and that she’d be there immediately.

As she impatiently nudged her Subaru through the midday snarl of government office drones and tourists on Connecticut Avenue, what she was telling herself was something entirely different:
I am out of my fucking mind. I am jeopardizing everything I’ve worked for—my career, my reputation, possible even my freedom. And for what?
As unreal as it all seemed, Carl was a fugitive from justice. By harboring him, she was aiding and abetting a man who was wanted for two savage murders. So why didn’t she just turn him in? Why hadn’t she just hung up on him? What on earth was she doing?

She knew exactly what she was doing. She was being a total fool. One of those hopeless, low-self-esteem doormats who end up on
Jenny Jones
when the topic for the day is “Good Women Who Love Bad Men.”

Except he
wasn’t
a bad man. He was Carl. Granny, for God’s sake. The man she used to think she’d be spending the rest of her life with. And so she would hide him and help him and be there for him. At least until he answered a few questions.

Questions like: Did he actually kill those two women? If he didn’t, then who did? And why was he being branded as the prime suspect? Why had he acted so crazy with that Apex publisher? Why was he running instead of facing this thing head-on? And, oh, by the way, just exactly who was this gorgeous upstairs neighbor, this blonde, this actress? Had he been seeing her? Sleeping with her? Was he in love with her?

Yes, Amanda had questions, all right. A million of them. And he’d better have some answers. Damned good ones, too.

She made one stop on the way, at the market. There was no food in the house. Not a crumb. Then she streaked home.

Klingle was a very quiet street during the day. She drove slowly past the mansion, looking for any sign that someone was watching it. But she saw nothing out of the ordinary. It did not appear that anyone was paying any attention to where she lived.

The shutters in the carriage house’s living room were completely closed. She usually left the top half open. Otherwise, there was no sign of anyone being home. No hum came from the air conditioner in the living room window, even though it was a brutally hot day. Carl was being careful. This was good. She drove around the corner and pulled into the attached garage directly to the left of her little house. It was her greatest luxury—a private parking space. She got out of the car, closed the garage door behind her, and took a deep breath. Then she headed toward the back door, the one that led from the garage to her kitchen, unlocked it, and went barging inside with her groceries and her mixed feelings.

The television was on softly, tuned to ANN, the Augmon owned news network. He was glued to it, staring at the screen as if it were his last like to the outside world.

She barely recognized him when he got up and came across the room toward her. The man who stood in her sweltering, airless living room was not the Carl Granville she knew. There was no easy smile, no calm and confident swagger. This man was hollow-eyed, ashen, and unshaven. His hair was uncombed and greasy. The white button-down shirt he wore was grimy and rumpled, and he smelled disturbingly like a public rest room. This Carl Granville was exhausted and shattered and desperate. He looked like a man who had been buried alive in a cave-in for a week.

It took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to run to him and take him in her arms and hold him. But she did not. She just stood there, gazing at him warily.

“Did you have any trouble getting in?” she finally asked him, her voice hoarse.

“Not really.” His own voice sounded clear and firm. Even casual. How was that possible? “Just figuring out which one was the nasturtiums. I had to turn over every pot. Since when are you so—”

“Into growing things? Always.” She went bustling into the kitchen with the groceries. For some reason she felt it was important that she stay busy. The floor plan in her carriage house was very open. An island separated the kitchen from the dining area and living room. She put the groceries down on the counter and flicked on the air conditioner. Right away the place started cooling off. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

She had bought him some chunky peanut butter, grape jelly, and white bread. One of his favorite forms of sustenance. He immediately sat down at the kitchen table, made himself a sandwich, and tore into it like a ravenous stray animal. She had bought milk, too, so she poured him a glass.

He finished one sandwich, then made another and ate that, too. And then one more. Each sandwich was washed down by a tall glass of milk. Finally he sighed, leaned back in the chair, and looked at her, satisfied and grateful.

“Have you been away?” he said.

She shook her head. “Why do you ask?”

“There was no food in the house.”

“If it’s there, I eat it.”

“You look skinny,” he told her.

She saw the look of concern on his face, and she let a rueful smile cross her lips. “There’s no such thing as too tall or too skinny.” Before he could say anything, she said, “And besides, you’ve got a lot more important things to worry about than my diet.”

That was when he noticed the groceries she’d laid out: a slab of corned beef, a head of cabbage, carrots, potatoes.

“It happens to be the only thing I know how to make, remember?”

“I remember.”

That’s when she saw it. The look. It was an expression in his eyes; he used to get it when he would watch her and he didn’t think she was looking. It was a look of bemusement and familiarity and deep affection, along with a touch of confusion. She asked him about it once—she said she’d never seen anything quite like it—and he told her that what she was seeing was the fact that he was in love with her. Love combined with awe—he couldn’t believe she was also in love with him.

She turned away. It was not the look she wanted to see right this minute. “Here,” she said. “I also got you a few things I thought you might need.” She began unloading them from the bag. “A package of underwear, socks. Also a toothbrush, a comb, disposable razors …”

He didn’t respond other than to stare in dumbfounded amazement at all the stuff on the counter. This look was quite different from the one that had been on his face just a few moments earlier.

“What?” she demanded. “What did I do?”

“Christ, Amanda, why didn’t you just go ahead and advertise that you’re harboring a male fugitive—with a size thirty-two waist?”

“All I did was—”

“All you did was put up a neon sign announcing that a man’s staying in your apartment! Don’t you understand? They’re looking for me. Which means they’re looking for anyone, anywhere, who might help me. Which means that sooner or later they’re going to be looking for you. Watching you.”

“Well, excuse me,” she shot back defensively. “I don’t have a lot of practice at this. And it’s been a helluva long time since I’ve seen
Bonnie and Clyde
.”

He took a deep breath to calm himself down.“You’re right, you’re right,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve gotten totally paranoid. I’m sorry.” And then very quietly he said, “I’m really sorry.

Amanda had never seen him look so vulnerable, and it rattled her.

“Believe me,” he continued, “I understand the risk you’re taking by letting me stay here. I had no right to barge in on you like this. I would’ve understood if you’d said no. I’ll understand if you
still
say no.”

“I’m not saying no,” she said softly. Then she steeled herself. They did not have the luxury of sentiment. “Only it’s time for you to explain what the hell is going on.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes. For a moment she thought he was starting to drift away. Then his eyes opened. This time what she saw when she looked inside them was anger and bewilderment and a sense of utter helplessness. For the first time his own voice cracked with strain. “I don’t fucking
know
what’s going on!”

She poured fresh water into the Melitta coffeemaker and stood there watching it drip. She found it hard to look at him again. He looked way too much like a wild animal caught in a painful, even deadly trap. “Carl, if you didn’t do these things—”

“If?” He stared at her. “
If
, Amanda?”

“Then why don’t you just turn yourself in?”

At first he said nothing. Then the faintest smile crossed his lips. It lingered for the briefest of moments. Then he started to laugh. And then he stood up, started to pace, and began to talk. It all came spilling out too fast, and she had to periodically stop him, make him repeat himself, make him go slower and fill in more details so she could begin to understand.

He told her about his meeting in the apartment with Maggie Peterson and hearing about
Gideon
and the check he’d received. He told her about Harry Wagner and the diaries, all the information he’d been fed. He talked about how he began to worry that something wasn’t right with the book he was writing. About her own phone call telling him that Maggie was dead. He told her about Bartholomew and the break-in at his apartment, the destruction, and Sergeant O’Roarke, and the cop, Payton, trying to shoot him. He talked about finding Toni. Then running and hiding. It had been twenty-four hours since his world had turned upside down, but he already felt as if he’d spent his entire life running and hiding.

When he stopped, Amanda lit a cigarette. She waited, but he was so stressed out that he didn’t even make a snide comment. “What happened then?” she asked softly. “Where did you go?”

“Uptown to Harlem. Figured they wouldn’t think to look for me up there. What white man is going to hide in a black part of town, right? From there I took a cab out to the Amtrak station in Newark. A gypsy cab. No medallion and no questions asked. I hid in a stall in the men’s room until the Night Owl came through on its way from Penn Station.”

Well, that explains the smell
, Amanda thought.

“It stops in Newark at four-oh-nine A.M., in case you’re interested,” Carl went on. “I paid on board for my ticket. I was afraid to wait in line. Paid cash, since I couldn’t use my credit card—they’d be able to track me that way. Same with my ATM card. At least I took some cash out on a whim.” He grinned sheepishly and shrugged. “So I’m not going to have to borrow any money from you.” He took a deep breath now. He was almost up to date. “The train got into Union Station just after eight this morning. That’s where I called you from.”

“No one recognized you on the train?”

“I don’t think so. The hat and shades helped.” He indicated the gaudy New Jersey Nets cap and wraparound sunglasses that were lying on the dining room table, an old oak worktable that she’d picked up in the Shenandoah Valley on one of her solitary weekend jaunts. “I swiped them from a shop at the station. After I talked to you, I took the subway straight here—”