Only the Hunted Run (24 page)

“JOSH, BUDDY, EASE
up on the throttle.”

The boy, his unbuckled life jacket loose around his shoulders, was bringing them up the Potomac late in the afternoon. Washington lay to their right, Virginia to their left. They were under the Key Bridge, easing up to the Three Sisters. There were a dozen other boats, half of them yachts, party music thumping from the decks, anchored in the river, this little canyon between the bluffs, the houses way up there, the cars on the George Washington Parkway. The light in August fell from the west in a descending haze, the sun dropping behind the hills, the day feeling worn out from the heat, the humidity, half the river falling in shadow, half still in the amber light. Late on Sunday afternoon, Josh's last day in town, the weekend after the horror show.

“I'm barely
going
.”

“The wake, brother. Let's not rock it up on the other guys. Go to port here, get us in the shadows, drop anchor.”

“Which one's port again?”

“We been over this. How many letters in ‘port?'”

“Um, four.”

“How many letters in ‘left?'”

“Four.”

“You at the helm and facing forward?”

“Yes.”

“Well then.”

Alexis, sitting beside him on the back bench of the boat, gave him a playful elbow in the ribs. “Be nice,” she hissed.

“‘So which direction is left?'” Sully whispered back, imitating Josh's high voice. Then, louder, to Josh, “Star student. Kill the throttle. Here.”

Josh did, and the motor, which had been a low thrum, cut to silence. They drifted, a breeze coming, them passing from sunshine into shadow. Josh went to tend to the anchor. Alexis pulled her knees up to her chest, still holding her beer bottle in the left hand. She had his Saints jersey pulled over her two-piece, her concession to the season starting, her show of excitement about their trip to see them play in the Dome in October.

“Wow,” she said, “chilly in the shade.”

“So,” he said, leaning back in the seat, putting his right arm around her shoulders, “you're taking the photo editor job.”

“For a year, anyway,” She yawned, getting sleepy now, the sun, the skiing, the heat, the beer. They'd been out all day. She leaned her head over on his shoulder. “I like it. I like sitting in place for a while.”

“And you, this spring, telling me to get my ass back abroad.”

“Meant it.”

“Mmmm.”

“A break every now and then, you know. Not the worst thing. Facials. Workouts at the gym. Yoga.”

“Christ. Yoga.”

“Started. Who knows.”

He turned his mouth to her ear. “If you stay here,” he whispered, looking up at the bluffs on the Virginia side, “I'll keep you next to me. Safe.”

She looked up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with green, her body warm against him, legs crossed at the knee, this living
thing
, allowing herself, he saw, to be as vulnerable as a woman of her life and experience
could be. She was going to complain. He felt her body tense. She was going to good-naturedly tell him to bugger off, their version of flirting. But then he felt, under his touch, her body relax, release. It passed between them.

She took her eyes off his and looked over the river. The yellow golden light there, on the D.C. side. He felt her breath rise in her lungs, her chest, and let go.

“I know,” she whispered. She raised her head, then bopped it lightly against his chest, her hair wet against his skin, against his scars, as softly as a cat leaping from couch to floor.

His phone rang. It was up by the wheel. Josh looked at it, picked it up, and underhanded it back to him. “Unknown number,” he said.

“Why did . . .” and Sully caught it, left-handed, against his hip. He ordinarily would ignore it, but with the story finally on 1-A today, the centerpiece, the whole sordid family epic of George and Frances and St. E's, the place that had killed them both, maybe it was Eddie calling him from his home line, something urgent.

“This is Carter,” he said, putting some attitude behind it.

There was a series of clicks and hisses, some static down the line.

“Mr. Carter?” a voice finally said.

He recognized Lionel's voice before the second syllable of the first word. It jolted him off the vinyl seat, a quick step forward, moving to the front of the boat. The temperature, the air, it cooled over his shoulders. He put the phone tight against his jaw.

“Hey now.”

“You know who this is?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then let's don't fuck around,” Lionel said. “I's calling to let you know I was taking over from the previous administration.”

“Really now.”

“He say to tell you he retired. He say, he's just a building owner now, runs his apartments. Not into the life no more.”

“I have to say,” Sully said, “I am not shocked to hear this.”

“He say to tell you don't be calling him no more.”

“Not surprised about that, either.”

“Don't come around, neither. He say that, too.”

“Okay.”

There was a beat.

“So, like, whatever. I got no beef with you, mister.”

Sully found himself nodding. “Ditto.”

“You need to know something, you call me, we see what we can work out.”

“I'll, I'll be seeing you, Lionel,” he said, clicking off the call. He tossed the phone on the front seat of the boat. Should have thrown it into the river, that's what he thought. People finding him when he didn't want to be found.

Turning, he saw Alexis and Josh, sitting next to each other on the back bench, both looking at him, apprehensive, wondering what was going on, what was with the sudden bitterness to his features. He could see it in them, written under the skin, that sense of dread—of the unknown, of things in the shadows that had fangs and claws and walked on two feet. They were seeing it in him. He was looking at a reflection of himself.

In that instant, he felt something shift inside of him, a long-ballasted weight that came unmoored. It drifted through his chest.
Let go of it
, the night voices said. The voices he heard before sleep, usually an indistinct mumble, whispered inside his head, for once with perfect clarity. The weight rose through him like a balloon.
Let go of it
. The murder and violence and horror. A blood-red balloon, rising. He willed it to go. At least, he tried to, that afternoon on the river. He would remember that later, how he had willed the muscles in his face and in his heart to relax.

Then he forced a smile to his lips and peeled off his shirt, just that quick, put his gimpy foot on the mat, then put his good one on the rail and pushed off. Sully Carter, over the side, poised in the darkening air, his arms out, the balloon rising fast above him, finally loosed, weaving skyward. He did not look upward to watch it. The evening chill fell over his skin. “Who's with me?” he called.

He saw Josh rising, taking the bait, before he hit the water.

AS IN ALL
the Sully Carter books, I have worked factual events into a fictional universe. I have slightly altered the geography of the city, the layout of St. Elizabeths, and the architecture of several buildings to suit Sully's purposes.

In 1998, Russell Weston stormed the U.S. Capitol building, gained entrance, and killed two guards before being subdued. Long diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was held at St. Elizabeths for a time. He remains in a federal psychiatric hospital.

Walter Freeman researched the mentally ill at St. Elizabeths and helped perform the first lobotomy in the United States, at George Washington University Hospital. He later pioneered the transorbital procedure. His ice picks, barnstorming trips across the United States, and autopsies at St. E's are all historical details. The dates of his final lobotomies—carried out in D.C.—roughly match the historical narrative.

The history of St. E's is largely as described. The mentions of T. S. Eliot and Rosemary Kennedy are from historical records. St. E's has been vastly downsized. Most of the former campus now houses the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The fictional is everything else.

As always, I'm indebted to everyone who makes this particular railroad go. Most notably, my adorable spouse Carol, who runs everything from the locomotive to the caboose. She has her very own cowbell.

I am very lucky to be represented by the redoubtable Elyse Cheney Literary Associates—Elyse, Alex, and Sam—thank you for that voodoo that you do.

At Viking, Allison Lorentzen gave Sully Carter a home to call his own, and has made all three of the books about him better. Thanks also to Rebecca Lang, Bennet Petrone, and Diego Nunez.

My day job for the past sixteen years has been at the
Washington Post
, one of the free world's great newspapers. I'm indebted to my editors, Lynn Medford and Steven Ginsberg.

Elsewhere, Jack El-Hai, author of the definitive biography of Freeman,
The Lobotomist
, first wrote an excellent book, and then entertained further questions from me. For anyone interested in the history of the mentally ill in the United States, the PBS
American Experience
documentary in which Jack appears, also titled “The Lobotomist,” is as well done, sad, and horrifying as the book.

Freeman's papers and tools are housed at the George Washington University Library in the Special Collections Research Center. I thank the staff, none of whom are reflected here, for their assistance. The autopsy pictures that Sully sees there are historical items but are no longer on public view. The ice picks are.

The Honorable Russell F. Canan's stellar defense-counsel work took him to St. E's to meet with clients on many an occasion before he became a judge at D.C. Superior Court. He patiently answered my queries about that process and about some of the basic legal language employed in C-10 hearings—although I changed almost everything about all of it. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney June M. Jeffries is always thoughtful when I ask about the mysteries of her profession.

The Committee is the Committee and what happens there stays there. Love all y'all.

Last, hugs to Chipo, Drew, and Paige. You guys are awesome. Erika, sweetheart, we love and miss you every day. You are with us everywhere we go.

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