Someone Must Die (16 page)

C
HAPTER
25

Diana sat on the white sofa in Jonathan’s living room. Beyond the sliding glass doors, the sky was the same shade of blue as the suitcase she’d brought to college when she was a freshman. The suitcase she kept in her closet filled with mementos.

The past was everywhere, but she didn’t know if or how it might help her figure out who had taken Ethan so she could get him back.

She heard the clink of glassware and glanced over at Jonathan, who was hunched over the bar. They had come here straight from the luncheonette and hadn’t spoken on the short drive. She’d been thinking about Gertrude and how much Jonathan had said he loved her. Was it possible he blamed Diana for her death? Could he have kidnapped Ethan as an act of revenge? Vengeance was a powerful motive that led people to do unthinkable things, but this theory made sense only if Jonathan knew what really happened on April Fool.

“It’s just after noon,” Jonathan said, his soft voice breaking into her thoughts. “I think it’s acceptable to start drinking.” He handed her a snifter, then sat down beside her with his own.

She took a swallow of brandy. “After you and Gertrude had the fight, did you ever see each other again?”

“You still want to talk about her?” He sounded exasperated.

“Yes.”

He shook his head and released a puff of air. “Okay. We’ll talk about Gertrude.” He set his brandy down on the coffee table and picked up the crimson paperweight that encased a butterfly.

Gertrude had been a butterfly. Free and beautiful. But there had always been something hard surrounding her. Diana wondered if that was the person Jonathan had known, or whether he had seen a different side of her.

“We split up a week or so before the April Fool explosion,” he said. “I never saw her again.” He cradled the paperweight in his hands. “I keep thinking back to our last fight. It was just after the news came out that the army was bringing charges against several officers involved with the My Lai Massacre.” He carefully set the paperweight back down on the coffee table. “Gertrude was enraged that there hadn’t been a full-blown investigation. She said the government was covering up the truth, that the slaughter of innocent villagers in My Lai wasn’t an isolated incident but rather the norm. She swore she would avenge them somehow.”

Diana remembered Gertrude’s fury, too. Then, a few days before April Fool, something changed. Her roommate seemed calmer—happy, even.

Gertrude’s lighter mood would have been right around when Jonathan said he and Gertrude had had their big fight. So why would she have been happy?

A buried memory came to her. Gertrude dancing around the dorm room in a brightly colored scarf, singing,
La cucaracha, la cucaracha.
Then she laughed.
I think I’ll brush up on my Spanish, Pollyanna. Might come in handy.

As though she was planning to go away. Was she? With whom? Jonathan, Jeffrey Schwartz, or with someone else?

A couple of days later, Gertrude was dead.

Diana drank the rest of the brandy and put her glass down too hard on the table. The sudden sound made Jonathan jump.

“How did you feel when you learned Gertrude had died in the explosion?” Diana asked.

His reddish-gray eyebrows came together. “I was devastated, of course. Why are you asking?”

“Were you angry?”

“Angry?” He looked genuinely perplexed. “Well, after I got over my grief, I was angry with her, of course. Angry that she’d put herself in that situation.”

“And you didn’t blame Stormdrain?”

“No more than I blamed the government or the university for their pigheaded policies.” He rubbed his cheek. “What is it, Diana? I don’t understand where you’re going with these questions.”

She wasn’t sure where she was going, either. Jonathan didn’t seem to know anything about her own connection with Stormdrain, which meant it was unlikely he had anything to do with Ethan’s kidnapping.

But there was still Jeffrey. If he knew the truth about April Fool and blamed her for Gertrude’s death, might he have been further enraged by Diana’s relationship with Jonathan, the man who had competed with Jeffrey for Gertrude’s attention forty-five years ago?

Could Jeffrey have kidnapped Ethan and presented the ultimatum, which would both punish Diana and eliminate his former adversary? Or had Gertrude had other secret lovers and confidants? The truth was, Diana didn’t know who was behind the death demand. She only knew she had to do something to get Ethan back.

“Diana?” Jonathan’s tone was gentle.

She didn’t like the way he was studying her, like she was a mental patient.

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head, then released a heavy sigh. “Please don’t get angry, but I have to say this. You must tell the FBI about the note. It’s the only reasonable thing to do.”

“No.”

“Diana, the FBI is trained to handle this kind of situation.”

“I said no.” Her voice came out louder than she’d intended. Jonathan looked like she’d slapped him. “I’m sorry, but I won’t put Ethan at risk.”

She stared out at the railing, focusing on one point to keep the room from spinning. She felt trapped.
Calm down. Think.
There might be no connection between Jonathan, Jeffrey, or someone else from those days, and the ultimatum. It was her own guilt that had her believing April Fool was involved. What if she were wrong, and there was a much simpler solution? A solution where no one had to die.

She turned back to her fiancé. “There are things we can try before turning this over to the FBI.”

“What things?”

When Diana had brought the idea up to Aubrey, they had considered it a long shot, but they were running out of options. If it worked, both Ethan and Jonathan would be saved. “Would you be willing to withdraw from consideration for the Supreme Court?”

He studied her over the rims of his glasses, his brow in a frown. “You want me to withdraw.”

“Yes.”

He rolled the brandy snifter between his hands.

“You said you would never put your career ahead of family,” she said. “Were you just trying to placate me?”

“Of course not, but I’m not going to act rashly.”

“Rashly?”

“We need to think this through, darling. The note said they wanted you to kill me. It said nothing about me withdrawing.”

“But maybe your stepping down would satisfy them. Maybe they made the threat about harming Ethan to frighten us. To make sure you wouldn’t accept the nomination.”

“But there’s no guarantee we’d get Ethan back if I did withdraw.”

“If there’s a chance it would work, we have to take it.”

He tossed back the rest of the brandy. “These people, whoever they are, are trying to terrorize us with their threats of violence. Giving in to them goes against everything I believe in.”

“If we don’t try to appease them, they’ll kill Ethan.”

He got up and refilled his glass at the bar. He took a long drink.

Why was he procrastinating when in a few hours the kidnappers’ deadline would run out? Or were his political aspirations too important, just as they’d been when he turned away from Gertrude?

“Will you do it, Jonathan?”

“I want to think it through.”

“Then think it through.” She got up from the sofa. She was trembling.

“Diana,” he said, coming toward her.

She held up her hand for him to stop. “I’m leaving. You’ll be able to think about it more clearly if I’m not here.”

“Don’t go,” he said. “Not like this. Not when you’re angry with me.”

He followed her through the foyer to the front door. “Please, Diana. Let me at least drive you home.”

“I’d rather walk.” She looked back at the cold white room splotched with crimson, the blue sky just beyond. “I have my own thinking to do.”

C
HAPTER
26

The midday sun beat down on Diana, pounding on her head and burning through the back of her white cotton blouse as she walked south on Brickell Avenue, away from downtown and Jonathan’s building.

The street was airless, the breezes blocked by tall, wide condos, so that even the palm trees that lined the sidewalk were motionless. Diana found it difficult to catch her breath.

Jonathan wasn’t willing to save her grandson. And, yes, she understood his argument that withdrawing from the Supreme Court might not be what the kidnappers were after, but he should have been willing to give it a shot. Now their options were running out. The kidnappers wanted a response in less than twelve hours, and she had nothing for them.

If we don’t have physical proof of Jonathan Woodward’s death, Ethan will die.

She had no doubt they meant it.

The white sidewalk began to swirl in front of her. She reached for a palm tree, regretting the brandy she’d had at Jonathan’s, and waited for the dizziness to pass.

It was foolish of her to walk home in this agitated state. She pulled in a few deep breaths and noticed a bus stop a few feet away. She staggered toward it and collapsed on the bench, grateful for the shade of a nearby palm.

She was scared. Not sure what she was capable of doing. She needed Aubrey.

She touched her phone, but the screen remained blank, the battery very likely dead.

She was alone.

A bus heading in the wrong direction pulled up to the stop. The driver looked at her, waiting. She shook her head and waved him on. The bus roared away, leaving the stench of diesel exhaust in its wake.

Jonathan didn’t want to give in to threats of violence. His words had lit up a feeling of déjà vu. About how they had all believed in violence back then. They had accepted it as the only way to get what they wanted.

Someone still believed it was the answer. But to what end? What did these people who had taken her little grandson want from her? Was it Jonathan’s death?

The thought sickened her. She was a physician, for God’s sake. A healer, not a murderer.

Their battle cry echoed in her head.
Someone must die!
In order to go forward, you needed to destroy. In order to be noticed, you had to kill.

Maybe it was as simple as that.

Di sat with Linda in the front row of folding chairs, close to the boarded-up fireplace in the cold, damp brownstone. It was late November, but there was no heat, so everyone wore coats and jackets.

Michael had painted a giant peace symbol over the mantel, and magazine photos of war atrocities were taped to the walls. One of the other girls lit candles on the mantel and around the room, casting everyone in sputtering shadows. Sheets hung over the windows so people in the street couldn’t see inside.

Most of the girls were crying, herself included. They had seen the photos on the news, and all the magazines had carried them—
Time
,
Life
,
Newsweek
.

The massacre at My Lai. It had happened months ago, back in March, but the news had been quashed, until one determined investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, had finally brought it all to light. Since the story had broken a few days ago, it was all anyone could talk about. The murder of hundreds of Vietnamese women, children, old men—ordinary people. Murdered in cold blood. By American soldiers.

They went too far this time,
Lawrence had said. Now the world will finally take notice of this immoral war.

Members of Stormdrain streamed into the living room and sat down. The sweet smell of marijuana wafted in with them. Everyone spoke in low voices, but Di sensed a nervous energy in the room.

She searched the young men for Lawrence, but he wasn’t among them. She wished he would come and hug her before the meeting began. They had become a couple on Halloween—twenty-two days ago. It was Di’s first serious relationship, and she treated each day as an anniversary. Except that since the news of My Lai, Lawrence had become distracted, almost as though something inside him was taking root and growing.

Di got that about him—loved it about him. That he cared so much about these people who lived on the other side of the world. Lawrence had cried when he read that the women had been gang-raped, then mutilated. Some of the mothers had lain over their babies, hoping to protect them, but the soldiers threw their dead bodies aside, then murdered their children, too.

“Just like the Holocaust,” Di had said.

Lawrence had held her hands and replied, “We’ll stop them this time. I promise you, Di. We’ll stop them.”

“What do you think Lawrence will tell us to do?” Linda asked. Her eyes were eerily large, shadowed by mascara smeared by her tears. A few weeks before, her close-cropped blonde hair had looked chic, but now it made her resemble photos of Auschwitz survivors. Or maybe it was Di’s raw emotions in play.

We’re all victims
, Di thought.
Now, then, forever. Unless we stop them
.

She was about to answer Linda when she noticed her friend’s lips open and eyes widen with an almost religious adoration. Di turned to see Lawrence striding toward the front of the room. His face was uncharacteristically flushed, his jaw clenched.

Everyone became quiet as he faced them from the fireplace.

“Thank you for coming, comrades,” he said in such a soft voice that she sensed everyone around her lean toward him.

A shape came into the room and stood in the front corner, just beyond the glow of candles, but Di would know her roommate anywhere, even in shadows.

Lawrence glanced at Gertrude, then continued speaking. But Di only half paid attention. She wondered whether the two of them had just been
together.
If
that
was the reason for his flushed cheeks.

“The government has screwed itself this time,” Lawrence was saying. “There’s a movement building, and not just students like us. Ordinary citizens are becoming outraged as the facts come out. The US military is murdering hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent civilians.”

His words caught hold of Di, causing everything else to flee from her mind.

“Burning to death women, children, people like us, with napalm.” Lawrence’s voice became louder, angrier. “Destroying their villages with air strikes and bombardments.” His nostrils flared. “Murdering for the sake of murder.”

People shifted in their chairs. Di, too. It was impossible to sit still, listening to him.

Lawrence waved his hand at the photos on the walls. “We’ve become a country of baby killers.”

Linda gasped. She was clenching the seat of her chair, as though afraid she might fall.

Lawrence made a fist. “We won’t stand by and take it anymore!”

“We won’t take it anymore!” shouted a new Stormdrain member named Gary. Others joined in, pounding the air with their fists.

“You’ve seen the outcry,” Lawrence said. “A few days ago in Washington, DC, a half million of our comrades marched against these murderers. This isn’t the last we’ll see of protests. Next week, the government will hold a draft lottery to raise its military manpower. To try to send the rest of us into this immoral war. But we’re not going to put up with that.” His voice rose once again.” We’re not going to put up with killing babies in the name of democracy.”

“No more killing!” they shouted.

Linda’s voice was loud in her ear, almost hysterical. “No more killing!”

Lawrence held up his arms to quiet them, his loose white shirt reminding Di of a prophet’s robes.

The shouting continued despite his efforts. “No more killing. No more killing.” People were flailing their arms, standing on chairs, running between the aisles in a frenzy.

Di looked around for her roommate, but she was no longer standing in the corner, and Di couldn’t spot her with all the movement in the room.

“Comrades,” Lawrence said. The flickering candlelight played upon his cleft chin, his hollowed cheeks. “Comrades, we need to plan.”

The noise died down. People returned to their seats or leaned against the walls. All eyes were on Lawrence.

“I feel your rage, comrades,” he said. “I share it.”

Another burst of voices.

He waited until they settled back down, then said, “When we formed Stormdrain, our mission was clear. Peace on American soil. And peace throughout the world.” He held out his hand for quiet, as he continued. “But we’ve learned that to achieve peace, sometimes violence is necessary.”

“Let’s blow the motherfuckers to pieces!” Jeffrey shouted from the back of the room.

Lawrence shook his head. “Not that way.”

“Then what the fuck are we supposed to do?” Steve called out. “Sit on our asses while they keep killing babies?”

“We need to show them we mean business,” Lawrence said, “but we won’t resort to the government’s tactics. That will make us no better than they are.”

Heads nodded in agreement.

“We’re currently working on a plan to destroy certain significant targets,” Lawrence said. “Statues of historical significance. Government property. And property belonging to corporations that support the war industry.”

“Yeah, man,” a voice called out.

Di shifted in her chair, uneasy about what Lawrence was suggesting. People could get hurt. But Lawrence would never take a risk like that. She was sure he knew what he was doing.

“Every act of violence must be related to a specific injustice, and it’s crucial that we explain what we’re doing and why in a Manifesto.” Lawrence paused. “Our first Manifesto and first act of retribution will be dedicated to the victims of the My Lai Massacre.”

People began to talk all at once, but Lawrence held up his hand. “We’ll call it Project George,” he said. “We’re going to blow up the statue of George Washington in Union Square Park.”

“Finally,” Steve called out. “Count me in.”

“Me, too,” Albert said.

“How are we going to blow up anything?” Gary asked. “Do we know anything about bombs?”

The room went quiet and everyone turned to Lawrence. In the wavering candlelight, his features seemed to sag, but then he forced out a smile. “Come with me, comrades.” He strode out of the room to the little mudroom, then down into the basement.

Di pushed her way through the crowd on the stairwell and leaned over the rough wood banister. The basement had been transformed since she’d been down here with Lawrence a few weeks before at the Halloween party. In the center of the room was a printing press and folding tables piled with cartons. But of greater interest was the workbench against the brick wall where Lawrence stood beside Gertrude.

“This, comrades,” Lawrence shouted over the noise. He waited until everyone quieted down. “This, comrades, is our bomb factory.”

On the workbench, Di could make out bottles, pipes, small boxes of nails, metal cans of lighter fluid. She watched Lawrence glance at the table, then meet Gertrude’s eyes. Di felt a pang of jealousy. Lawrence and Gertrude shared something she wasn’t a part of.

“We must treat these bombs with respect,” Lawrence said to the group, as Gertrude reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a matchbook. “Our goal is attention and recognition through destruction of property,” he said. “We are not going to kill anyone.”

Gertrude got ready to strike the match, just as Lawrence’s hand closed over hers. “What the fuck are you doing?” he said.

She flicked her braid over her shoulder and stared at him. “Blow up a statue?” She pulled her hand out of his. “That’s the best you can do?”

Lawrence clenched his jaw.

Gertrude turned to the group. “If we want to be heard, we need to make a bigger bang.”

The people around Di seemed to shrink, as though they wanted to disappear.

“Who’s with me on this?” Gertrude shouted.

No one spoke. Lawrence was breathing hard, his fists in tight balls.

“You say you want to change the world,” Gertrude said, “but you don’t mean it. None of you are ready to do what it takes.” She met Di’s eyes.

Di winced, exposed for all to see by her roommate. All her pronouncements about wanting to stop injustice, her mission to prevent another Holocaust. It was just talk.

“To stop violence, we must be violent,” Gertrude said. “To stop murder, we have to kill. If we want to go forward, we have to destroy,” she shouted. “Someone must die!”