No Safe Place (34 page)

“Thanks. Appreciate it.” With that, Nate stepped inside the bathroom, waited for a moment, and then returned to his seat.

He resumed watching the curtain.

A few minutes before landing, Kit appeared. She knelt by his seat with a professional smile that conveyed neither warmth nor its absence. “I hear you’re fact-deficient, Nate.”

“Uh-huh. Can you give me a couple of minutes in Elk Grove, after the speech?”

Across the aisle, Nate saw, Lara seemed to study her nails. Kit’s smile narrowed fractionally. “I’ll try. But no promises. If I leave Kerry by himself too often, God knows what he’d say.”

Nate did not smile. “It won’t take long,” he answered.

The rally at Elk Grove was in a stretch of the American heartland, a patch of dirt near some stables that could have been a fairground. The platform was surrounded by tractors and bales of hay, and in the distance, Lara saw silos and wavy fields of grain she supposed were wheat. Her lack of agrarian knowledge reminded her of a piece of family lore she had once
shared
with Kerry: the day that the nine-year-old Lara, a child of the city, had driven with her parents past a field of grapes. “Look,” she had told them, “wine plants.” For minutes, her father could not stop laughing. Hearing the story, Kerry had eyed her with feigned puzzlement. “Why?” he had asked her. “What else do they call them?”

Remembering, Lara smiled briefly to herself, thinking of Kerry in this setting.

She stood on the press bleachers, surrounded by her colleagues with their tape recorders, laptops, Minicams. The PA system blared Bruce Springsteen singing “Born in the U.S.A.”; it was a point of pride that Springsteen, another New Jersey boy, supported Kerry. The candidate himself was climbing the speakers’ platform. Filling the fifty square yards between the platform and the press was the kind of eclectic crowd that Kerry seemed to draw: farmers, small-business owners, Asians, high school kids, some Mexican farmworkers. It was four o’clock, and a waning sun fell gently on the platform—a metaphor, Lara thought suddenly, for the last days of a campaign, perhaps of a career.

A few moments before, Lara had checked her voice mail in Washington. There had been one message—from her first roommate, a friend from Stanford now working on the Hill. A reporter from
Newsworld
had called, Maria explained, asking about Lara and Kerry Kilcannon. But Maria had told them nothing, had nothing to tell. What
was
this? her message asked.

Nothing, Lara must tell her. Nothing at all. Suddenly she felt a piercing loneliness: she and Kerry, trapped within their secret, could not even speak.

Two steps behind her, Nate stood with his tape recorder.

He would stay close, Lara knew. For the next five days, her world would be claustrophobic.

To rising cheers, Kerry walked to the podium holding a scrap of paper, no doubt with the names of the local worthies he should acknowledge—the mayor, the county commissioners. But when he set down the paper, it blew away in the wind.

Kerry froze, eyes following the paper as it drifted into the crowd, a pantomime of the nonplussed politician. “Oh, no,” he said, “there goes my farm program.”

It was a risky joke, Lara knew—self-parody with a core of
truth. But there was a chorus of good-natured laughter, from farmers most of all. Flawlessly, Kerry acknowledged everyone on the platform.

There was a soft buzz in the pocket of her sport jacket. Watching Kerry, she took out her cell phone and answered, “Yes?”

“Lara?” The mere sound of her bureau chief’s voice startled her; for a sickening moment, Lara thought she had been exposed. “There’s been a death threat,” Hal continued, “against Kilcannon. Someone phoned our affiliate in Sacramento.”

Lara felt numb. “What did they say?”

“That they’d kill him on the six o’clock news. We think that means at the rally in Sacramento.”

Lara took a deep breath. “I’ll ask the Service about it. Kit too.”

“Good. By the way, I liked your report last night.”

Still speaking softly, Lara thanked him, then slid the telephone back into her pocket.

Quickly, she surveyed the area for vantage points—trees, the roofline of the stables. She saw the billed caps of three Secret Service sharpshooters on the roof of the barn, then the top of one’s head, his eyes trained on the platform. How, she wondered, must it feel to be Kerry?

She turned to watch him. The crowd was silent now, solemn.

“The death penalty,” he said, “is one of the most painful questions facing a civilized society.

“Once, several years before I was a senator, I toured a prison. I saw the faces of men waiting to be executed, and I thought of the sadness, the loss, the waste of those lives. And if it were humanly possible, I would have an America where no life is so blighted, so warped, that its defining act is the taking of another life.”

Kerry, Lara realized, was not speaking from notes. His voice, though quiet, carried easily.

“For a time,
that
was all I could think of. But I since have had occasion to think of all the faces I would
never
see: those of the men, women, and children these men had killed. For when we give up the notion of private revenge, we do so with the
expectation that our laws will pay proper tribute to the value of an
innocent life: that, if warranted, the death of the murderer may follow the murder of the innocent.”

How they had argued, Lara recalled—for hours, alone in Kerry’s apartment because they could not be seen together. “Like college,” Kerry had said with gentle humor. “Beer, pizza, and the death penalty.”

She knew why Kerry felt the way he did. Even without the pressure of politics, perhaps he could not have felt otherwise. But still she had challenged him. “Murder is murder,” she had argued. “There’s no such thing as a public service killing, or where does it end?”

“Murder is murder?” Kerry had rejoined. “Perhaps the Senate’s made me a connoisseur of irony. My pro-life colleagues love them till they’re born but don’t mind a righteous execution afterward. Whereas death row is where many of my pro-choice friends at last develop scruples, even if they’re saving Charles Manson …”

As Lara watched, the crowd was still, attentive.

“But before we take a life,” Kerry went on, “we must be certain that the race or status of the murderer can no more count than that of the victim.

“The least the death penalty
demands
of us, if we choose it, is fair jury selection, a just trial and a just review, and a scrupulous regard for the rights of the accused. Because if we follow the siren song of law and order—a shortcut here, a right abandoned there—we will surely be complicit in the murder of the innocent. And that is too great a price for
any
of us to pay …”

It was a moment before Lara felt Nate next to her.

“Did you two ever talk about this?” Nate asked. “I remember how
you
felt.”

Lara turned to him.
You bastard,
she thought. “No,” she answered coolly. “Why would we?”

She turned away, looking for her cameraman.

The question had hurt, Nate thought. He could see in her eyes that it struck too close to home.

She was lying, had to be. But his near certainty, however important, gave him little pleasure.

He went to find Kit.

She did not have the excuse of sticking with Kerry Kilcannon,
he quickly saw; the Service had hurried him to his limousine. Kit stood near the speakers’ platform amidst the pool, its members slowly dispersing to their bus. Though Nate was only a few feet back, Kit seemed not to see him.

Hands shoved in his pockets, he waited her out.

When only two reporters remained, Kit acknowledged him with her eyes. After the others had left, she walked slowly to Nate, squinting against dust kicked up by the wind.

“What was that movie?” Kit asked. “
The Grapes of Wrath
? Or was it a book?”

Nate smiled; like most of the reporters, he admired Kit for her tart humor, and for her professionalism. She might duck, but she seldom lied.

“So,” Kit said, “what can I tell you?”

Nate looked around them. “I need to see the senator,” he answered.

Kit frowned. “Not until after Tuesday, Nate. It’s not that we don’t love you, but most of your readers aren’t California voters, and we love
them
best of all.”

Nate shook his head. “What I have won’t wait that long.”

Kit raised her eyebrows. “Donations from extraterrestrials? Right now, ‘won’t wait’ doesn’t get it.”

“The question I have is sensitive.” Nate kept his tone low, patient. “It’s something he should answer directly.”

Kit folded her arms, gazing at the dust around her feet. Carefully, she asked, “Are we talking about some sort of illegal activity?”

She knows, Nate thought; she’s trying to be a filter for Kil-cannon. “It doesn’t involve a crime. It’s about the senator’s personal life.” His voice became harder. “So when do I get to see him?”

Kit looked up again, her eyes less friendly. “As soon as you tell me what it is. And why it’s credible enough to take Kerry’s time before Tuesday.”

“Quit being the Stepford Press Secretary, Kit.” Nate made his voice soft again. “You don’t want me asking him along the rope line. If this is something Kilcannon can deny, he’ll want to do that in private. I’m trying to give him that chance.”

“Or?”

“Or we go with the story next Tuesday. Based on what we have.”

Kit studied him. If Nate was right, and Lara had gone to Kil-cannon, he could imagine Kit’s calculations:
Did
Newsworld
have enough to print?

“I’ll think about it,” Kit said finally. “
You
can think about telling me more.”

“Seventy-two hours,” Nate repeated.

Kit smiled slightly—whether in belief or disbelief, Nate could not tell. Then she walked away.

Nate went to the press tent to type up his notes. When he next saw her, Kit was standing alone near the barn, talking into her cell phone.

“God,” Stacey Tarrant murmured in bemusement. “Jamie would be amazed at all this, don’t you think?”

Kerry smiled. “Maybe at me. ‘What are you doing?’ I can imagine him saying. ‘Do you have to learn
everything
by experience?’”

They were in the back of Kerry’s limousine, cruising toward the skyline of Sacramento; at Kerry’s insistence, the motorcade had met her plane at a private airstrip, so that the two of them would have time to talk. Since Jamie’s death, they had seen each other rarely, but a certain affinity had developed, a shared understanding. Stacey was a perceptive woman who did not mind quiet; to a degree that surprised him, Kerry could be direct with her, at ease. It reminded him of Lara.

“Oh,” Stacey answered, returning his smile, “he always thought you had
ability
. He just wondered what it would take for you to figure it out.”

“I’m glad he didn’t know.” Kerry turned to the window, watching the towers of the city, light and shadow in the failing sun. “‘Such a joke,’” he added softly. “‘But what does it mean?’”

For a moment, Stacey was quiet. “Do you ever get frightened?” she asked.

Kerry nodded. “Who’s out there? you ask yourself. Someone. But you don’t know who, or where.”

Stacey tilted her head. “Then why did you decide to run?”

“Other than what I always say—to make America a better place?”

“Yes.”

Kerry appraised her; Stacey’s candid blue eyes were probing, but not unkind. She had suffered a great deal once, he thought, for the sake of his brother’s ambitions. A sense of his own ambitions was all that he could offer her.

“It’s complicated,” he said at last. “Some of it has to do with my personal life—things I’ve had, things I’ve lost, things I may never have. If I’d had a woman I loved, or children, would I have done this, knowing what happened to Jamie? I’m not sure.” He paused, trying to explain as much as he was free to explain. “A couple of years ago, I came to a decision point. There was no one to ask but me. Because I was his brother, some people had always wanted me to run, some part of me had always felt I should. But for
what
, I had to decide—wasn’t it enough that, as a senator, I could help bring about things I believe in? Why should I be President?

“Then I looked at the others. The Republicans have all the answers, but too often we simply disagree. Mason
has
no answers. What does he believe? I wonder. What does he even
feel
? I’ve seen him mist up at the funerals of people he despised, show righteous indignation because some pollster told him to, waffle on gun control so he could beat me in New Hampshire. I can’t tell which are more promiscuous—Dick’s emotions or his beliefs.” Slowly, Kerry shook his head. “I question if there’s anything that really reaches him, any principle for which he’d risk losing. Any moment in which Dick Mason truly has an authentic self, and knows who that is.

“People are cynical, Stacey. We’ve helped make them that
way. We try to flatter
them
, we smear our opponents, and we lie
about ourselves. Dick Mason as President would be one more nail in the coffin.” Kerry caught himself and smiled faintly. “I can think of others who might be better than both of us. But they can’t win. So here I am, doing the best I can.”

Unsmiling, Stacey gazed down, her expression pensive. “But you wonder if you’re good enough.”

“Yes. All the time.”

Turning, she gave him a long, thoughtful look. “That’s something Jamie could never admit.”

“Why should he have?”

“Your brother?” Her voice was quiet again. “So cool and self-possessed? Because he was afraid of all sorts of things, including being known. That was what his wit was for—his own protection. I think Jamie was afraid he was this terrible fraud, a self-invented Kennedy, the son of people he could never talk about. But you were probably too young to see that.”

The image of a tormented Jamie startled Kerry; it was as if she had taken his memories and, like a kaleidoscope, changed their form. “Maybe there were clues,” he said at length. “But I could never read them.” He paused a moment, then asked, “Why did you love him, then?”