The Inner Circle (45 page)

“You knew…” I say. “You
knew
Eightball was here.”

“Only recently.”

“How recently? A week? A month?”

His face goes pale like an onionskin. “I lied to my own soul.”

“How long?” I ask.

“Two years. Two and a half years,” he whispers, his head sloping down as if his neck no longer works. The car still sits in the parking lot. I search the service road. Still no one there. “You have to understand, when I found out… when I confronted Palmiotti… They said they moved him here to keep an eye on him—to take care of him—but I was the only one who came to visit him. He needed to know… I needed to tell him what Wallace had done. For me. I didn’t do it for the greater good. It was only good for me. But I had no idea Nico heard me,” he adds, his voice at full sprint. “That’s why, at the cemetery… when you said you were coming here… I knew. I knew it! This was my chance to end it. I’m sorry for being so weak, Beecher—but this is what I should’ve done the moment this started…”

Over my shoulder, he raises his blade to cut me.

But in the mirror, I see it.

It’s already covered in blood.

I look down, patting my neck. I didn’t feel anything…

Without warning, the blade drops from his hand, bouncing and falling into the front seat.

His onionskin face goes practically transparent. He sags backward, sinking in his seat.

Oh God. Has he been shot?

I check the front window… the sides. All the glass is intact. But as I spin back to face him… in the seat… There’s blood. So much blood. It’s not splattered. It’s contained. A small pool. On the seat… on his arms… No. Not his arms…

It’s coming from his wrists.

“What’d
you do
?” I yell.

“She paid her penance,” he whispers through a hard cough. “I need to pay mine.”

“
What the hell’d you do!?
” I repeat as a slow red puddle blooms in the backseat, raining down to—On the floor. I couldn’t see it before.

At his feet, a larger pool of blood seeps into the carpet. From the size of the puddle… all that red… He did this. When we were talking. He wasn’t just staring down at the razor. He’d used it.

“You tell them—you tell them there’s a cost,” he sputters, about to pass out. “Every decision we make in life, there’s always a cost.”

“Gimme your wrists! I can stop it!” I tell him.

“You’re missing the point,” he stutters, no longing cringing. Whatever pain he was feeling is finally gone. “For thirty years, I wondered why they stumbled into my store that night. They could’ve picked any store. Or no store. But it’s no different than that guy… from Hiroshima. It’s no different than Yamaguchi. We spend our lives thinking history’s some arbitrary collection of good and bad moments stirred together in complete randomness. But look at Yamaguchi. When history has your number, there’s… there’s nowhere on this planet you can run.”

He sags sideways, his breathing sputtering as he collapses against the back door.

I kick open my own door, rushing outside. Whatever I think of him, he still needs my help. But as my feet hit the concrete and I reach for his door, my face nearly collides with the chest of the man who’s just arrived outside the car and is now blocking my way.

I know he’s got ground privileges. He followed the path right back the way he came. To the parking lot across from his building.

“Don’t look so scared, Benjamin,” Nico says, barely noticing that he’s standing in my personal space. “I’m here now. Everything’s going to be all right.”

93

You need to move,” I say to Nico as I try to cut around him to get to the back door of the car.

Nico doesn’t budge. Doesn’t move. But he does see what I’m looking at. In the backseat. The black man covered in blood.

“I know him,” Nico blurts. “He’s the barber.”

“What?”

“He comes to give haircuts. To Griffin. But sometimes when he leaves—I check. Griffin’s hair isn’t cut at all. I told them, but they never—”

“Nico, get out of the way!”

“The barber… for you to do this to him… he was watching me, wasn’t he? I know their eyes are everywhere.”

“Nico…”

“That’s why you came back, isn’t it? To do this. To protect me…”

“Protect you?”

“I see your razor. In the driver’s seat,” he says, his eyes flicking back and forth as he dissects the contents of the car. “I see how you killed him.”

“That’s not—”

“It makes perfect sense,” he adds, nodding feverishly. “It’s what I said. This was your mission… your trial. The test of Benedict Arnold. And you—you—don’t you see?—you finally passed, Benjamin! Instead of betraying George Washington, you were given a chance… a chance to protect him.
And you did!
You risked your life to protect me!”

Annoyed by the nuttiness, I shove him aside, tear open the back door of the car, and feel for a pulse. Nothing. No heartbeat.

Across the long field that leads back to the medical building, a security guard turns the corner, heading our way.

“You need to go,” Nico says to me, eyeing the guard. “They can’t know you did this.”

“I didn’t do anything!” I say, still staring at the barber.

“There’s no need to mourn him. He’s moved on to his next mission.”

“Will you stop?
There is no mission!
” I explode, slapping his hand from my shoulder. “There’s no test! There’s no trials! There’s no George Washington—and stop calling me Benedict Arnold! All that matters is
this
! This,
right here
,” I hiss, pointing back at the body of the barber. “I know you and she… you
caused
this! I saw the sign-in sheet! I saw Clementine’s name! And if it’d help you get out of here, I know you’d do anything, including making your daughter blackmail the Pr—!”

“What’d you call her?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know she’s your daughter,” I challenge.

He takes a half-step back and stands perfectly still. “She told me she was a graduate student. But students… students don’t come to see me. That’s how I knew,” Nico admits, blinking over and over and suddenly looking… he actually looks
concerned
. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it just as fast. He’s fitting his own pieces together. But as his eyes stop blinking and the concern on his face slowly turns to pain, I can’t help but think that I have it wrong. Maybe this isn’t the father-daughter operation I just thought it was.

“When I fed the cats, Clementine used to—I saw her one Wednesday. When the barber was cutting hair,” Nico blurts. “She helped him. She told the barber Griffin’s hair looks better when it’s long in front. He listened. It made her smile more.”

On my right, across the field, the security guard is less than fifty yards away. On my left, down by the front gate, the guardhouse’s white-and-orange-striped gate arm rises in the air. A black car pulls up the service road. Someone’s just arrived.

“It made me smile more too,” Nico adds, barely noticing. “But she heard the barber, didn’t she? She heard his confession.”

“Nico, you need to get away from here,” I tell him as the guard picks up his pace, coming right at us.

“She did this… she caused this, didn’t she?” Nico says, motioning to the barber.

On the service road, the black car picks up speed.

“The doctors here… they say I have a sickness,” Nico says. “That’s what put the evil in my body—the sickness did. And so I prayed—I begged God—I begged God since the first day she came to visit… I worried she had it too.”

“Nico, get out of here,” I insist, tempted to jump in the car and take off. But I don’t. The barber’s dead—I can’t take him with me. But if I stay and try to explain, there’s only one place I’m going if they find me with Nico and a bloodied corpse.

“All these years, I knew my fate. I always knew what God chose me for,” Nico adds. “But when Clementine came… when she reached out to me like that… I thought I finally got—I was lucky. Do you know what that means, Benjamin? To be a lucky man?” he asks, his voice cracking.

“Nico, please get out of here,” I beg, grabbing my phone from the front seat.

The black car knifes to the left, heading straight for our parking lot.

The security guard is now running.

“But there is no luck, is there, God?” he asks, talking to the sky. “I knew that! I knew it all along! But when I met her… when I saw her… how could I not hope? How could I not think that I’d finally been blessed—the truest blessing—that despite the sickness inside myself, that You made her different than me.” He stares up at the sky, his eyes swollen with tears. “I begged You, God! I begged You to make her different than me!”

“Nico, back to your building!
Now!
” the security guard shouts in the distance.

Behind me, the black car speeds up the service road, its engine roaring.

“
You!
Away from Nico!” the guard yells at me.

There’s a loud screech. The black car skids into the parking lot, punting bits of frozen gravel at us. But it’s not until the passenger door bursts open that I finally see who’s driving.

“Get in! Hurry!” Dallas shouts from behind the steering wheel.

“
Nico, don’t you move!
” the guard yells as he reaches the parking lot. That’s still his priority.

“Nico, I’ll see you next week!” I call out, trying to make it all sound normal as I dart to the black car, which is already pulling away.

As I hop inside and tug the door shut, Dallas kicks the gas and we’re off. Behind us, the guard grabs Nico by the arm. The guard looks relieved. Problem solved. That’s still the top St. Elizabeths priority. No escapes.

The road isn’t long. Within ten seconds, we’re rolling past the main gate. Dallas offers a casual wave to the man in the guardhouse. The fact that he waves back tells us the guard in the parking lot still hasn’t found the barber’s body. Word’s not out yet.

“That guy with the knife… the barber—” I say.

“I know. I could hear,” Dallas says, holding up his phone as we pull out of the gate and reach the main street. “I think I was able to get most of it on tape.”

“Then we should—”

“No,” Dallas says, twisting the wheel as we speed toward the highway. “Right now, there’s only one place we need to go.”

94

From the front seat of the white van that was parked down the block, it wasn’t hard to spot Beecher.

Or Dallas.

There are two of them now
, the driver of the van thought, watching their black car bounce and rumble as it left St. Elizabeths. Two of them to deal with.

From the look on Beecher’s face, he was terrified, still processing. Dallas wasn’t doing much better.

It was no different for the driver of the white van.

It had all gone so bad, so quickly.

But there was no choice. That’s what Beecher would never understand.

For a moment, the driver reached for the ignition, but then waited, watching as Dallas’s car coughed up a small choke of smoke and disappeared up the block.

This wasn’t the time to get spotted. More important, the driver wanted to see if anyone else was following.

For a full minute, the driver sat there, watching the street and every other parked car on it. No one moved.

Beyond the front gate, up the main service road that ran inside St. Elizabeths, there was a swirl of orange sirens. On-campus security. No doubt, Nico was already being medicated for whatever mess the barber’s panicking had caused.

The driver was tempted to go up there, but again, there was no choice.

There was never any choice.

Not until the one problem that had caused so many others was dealt with. The problem that she could only blame on herself.

Beecher.

By now, the black car was long gone, zipping toward its destination.

With a deep breath, Clementine pulled out onto the road and did her best to stay calm.

Beecher’s head start didn’t matter.

Not when she knew exactly where they were going.

95

Four months ago

St. Elizabeths Hospital

The man with the black leather zipper case was never late.

He always came on Thursdays. At 4 p.m. Always right on time.

But as Clementine glanced down at her watch and saw that it was already a few minutes past four…

“Heya, Pam,” the older black man with the silver hair and silver mustache called out as he shoved his way through the swinging doors, approached the nurses’ station, and eyed one of the many open rooms. Like an ICU, the rooms of the Gero-Psych Unit didn’t have any doors. “How’s your Thursday?”

“Same as my Wednesday,” the nurse replied, adding a flirty laugh and crumpling up the foil wrapper of her California Tortilla burrito.