Read The Liar's Lullaby Online
Authors: Meg Gardiner
The Liar's Lullaby (41 page)
Vienna was descending the steps with the bishop and five pallbearers. Ten feet behind, surrounded by Secret Service agents, came Robert McFarland.
Halfway across the park, Gabe was looking at her.
She could tell him to come back. She could wave him in this direction.
Chennault was beyond him in the crowd. Tang and Officer McNamara were beyond Chennault. Amy had missed Chennault. She was walking with the young cop toward the steps of the church. Toward the hearse.
Gabe looked at Jo. Tang was too far away to hear her. So were Vienna, the bishop and pallbearers, the Secret Service, and the president.
Jo’s lips parted. She could tell Gabe,
Come back. Run this way.
Come back. Run this way.
Her heart paused, pleading with her. Then she cupped her hands to her face and shouted, “Gabe—Chennault’s behind you. Warn the president.”
She pointed.
Gabe turned toward the church. He saw McFarland, Tang, everybody near the hearse. A Secret Service agent touched his ear. Gabe ran toward the president, shouting, “
Move
. Take cover.”
Move
. Take cover.”
Chennault reached into the sling. He pulled out a cell phone.
Gabe threw himself up the steps. Chennault pressed a number. He dropped the phone, reached into the sling again, and drew a gun.
And the bomb in the flowers exploded.
59
T
HE HEARSE CAUGHT THE BLAST. IT BLEW HIGH INTO THE AIR AND flipped. The gas tank exploded. Orange fire swarmed across the view.
HE HEARSE CAUGHT THE BLAST. IT BLEW HIGH INTO THE AIR AND flipped. The gas tank exploded. Orange fire swarmed across the view.
Standing on top of the police car, Jo felt the blast wave like a wall of pressure. The air shoved her back. Her ears popped.
Then noise came, and heat. She threw herself to the roof of the cruiser.
People screamed. They fled. The scene turned to a lather of shrieks and gunshots.
Jo rolled off the roof of the cruiser and ran in the direction of the explosion.
The Secret Service charged down the cathedral steps, weapons drawn. Television crews ran in all directions—some for cover, some filming as people careened past them for safety. Jo ran through the crowd as people poured toward her in waves, like banshees, parents hoisting children into their arms and sprinting away from the gunfire.
The heat from the fire reached her face. The hearse lay upside down on the cathedral steps, burning like a rocket.
In the distance, beyond the cathedral, sunlight flashed off the windows of two Suburbans as they roared from the scene. The president was out of there.
The first person Jo saw was Vienna. She was facedown in the street, covered in blood. Her clothes were smoking. The bishop was nearby, crawling toward her. He pulled his vestments over his head. He tried to throw the vestments over Vienna as a blanket but collapsed six feet from her.
Jo grabbed them and threw them on top of Vienna. Vienna’s coat was toasted, her boots scorched, her red hair blackened. She moved her fingers.
The screams continued. People were clearing the square. Vaguely, yet sharply, Jo saw the Secret Service and SFPD converge on the spot near the barricades where Chennault had been standing. Jo saw feet splayed, legs crooked, a hand covered in blood. She didn’t look at the rest. The agents approached Chennault and kicked his gun away.
Vienna moaned.
“Hold still,” Jo said.
Vienna coughed. “God.”
Jo’s hands were trembling. Vienna rolled over and sat up. She stared weirdly at Jo, reached out, and patted Jo’s arm. Jo looked. All Vienna’s fingers were broken.
“Everybody okay?” Vienna said.
Carefully, Jo pulled off Vienna’s smoldering coat. “Hold still.”
“Fine, hon.” Vienna blinked. “Holy cow.”
Jo took her pulse. It was going like a runaway train, but felt strong. She was breathing well. Her eyes were clear.
“Wings . . . ,” she said. “Ringing. I can’t hear you.”
Paramedics descended on the plaza. Of course they’d been on alert—the president had been here. Jo called to them.
Again she saw the Secret Service agents surrounding Chennault. This time she couldn’t help seeing his upper body. It looked like a doll that had been filled with meat and blood and cloth, and then ripped open with a crochet hook.
A paramedic ran up to her.
“Help Ms. Hicks,” she said.
The paramedic set down her equipment case and got to work. Jo looked around the plaza. Beyond Chennault’s body, against the barrier, she saw Gabe. He was on his hands and knees, head down, leaning over Tang.
Jo was squeezing Vienna’s shoulder. Vienna said, “What’s wrong?”
Jo’s vision constricted and began to gray at the edges. Tang was nearly flat on the ground, scrunched against the barricade, looking up at Gabe with horror.
Vienna saw. With her broken fingers she touched Jo’s hand. “Go.”
Jo held on, eyeing her injuries.
“Don’t you dare sing to me,” Vienna said. “I ain’t about to die. Get going to your friends.”
The paramedic looked up at Jo. Nodded.
Jo stumbled to her feet and ran toward Tang. Amy was hanging on to Gabe’s shirt. Blood soaked her chest and neck. It wrapped her arms like long gloves.
Jo leaped over a piece of the hearse. An axle, with a burning tire attached. Tang was holding tight to Gabe’s shirt. She said something inaudible to him. Her face was broken with pain.
“Amy.” Jo fell to her knees at Tang’s side.
Clinging to Gabe’s shirt, clinging like Gabe’s shirt was life itself, Tang looked at her. “Help.”
Jo turned and shouted, “Medic!”
Tang grabbed her arm. Her hand was warm and wet and gripped like a vise.
“Where are you hit?” Jo said.
Tang opened her mouth and shook her head. Jo ran her hands across Tang’s chest, searching for the wound.
Tang squeezed Jo’s hand. “Not me.”
Jo ripped Tang’s shirt open. “Hold on, Amy.”
Tang looked at Gabe. Jo stopped, still.
Tang was gripping Gabe’s shirt, but not in pain. She was holding him up. She was pressing her palm against his chest. Jo turned to him. He was shaking. As she watched, he collapsed at Tang’s side. When he fell over, Jo saw the wound. He was the one who had been shot.
60
T
HE KLAXON IN JO’S HEAD DROWNED OUT ALL OTHER SOUNDS. She waved her arms overhead at the EMTs and screamed,
“Medic!”
The Klaxon swallowed the word, she didn’t hear it, but the paramedics looked up. Tang got to her knees. She pushed her hands against Gabe’s ribs. She was glued to him. She wouldn’t let go.
HE KLAXON IN JO’S HEAD DROWNED OUT ALL OTHER SOUNDS. She waved her arms overhead at the EMTs and screamed,
“Medic!”
The Klaxon swallowed the word, she didn’t hear it, but the paramedics looked up. Tang got to her knees. She pushed her hands against Gabe’s ribs. She was glued to him. She wouldn’t let go.
Jo kept waving. “Gunshot wound to the chest.”
The EMTs grabbed their equipment case and hustled toward them through greasy black smoke and gun barrels and police lights.
Tang leaned close to Gabe’s face. Her lips worked. She seemed to be trying to press her own life force into him.
Gabe watched her lips. Then his gaze slid to Jo.
Her ears cleared. She heard Tang, saying over and over, “You saved me.”
Jo tried to get a look at the wound. All she could see was blood, and the rough dimensions of the exit. The noise returned to her head, a high, solid droning squeal.
Gabe blinked. He seemed to look at her from the far end of a periscope. His fingers crept across the dirty asphalt to touch her arm. Though he was flat on his back, it seemed to Jo that he was examining her from a great height.
“Saved me, Quintana,” Tang said.
The EMTs rushed up. Tang was shaking but wouldn’t stop reciting her mantra.
Jo touched her shoulder. “Let go.”
Tang pressed her hand to Gabe’s chest. “Saved me.”
“Amy, let go,” Jo said.
“Ma’am, let us get to work,” said the EMT.
Tang looked up. She stared at her arms as if they belonged to somebody else. Finally, she lifted her hands from Gabe’s chest. The EMTs cut away his shirt and began to work on him.
He seemed to unthread, as if a seam were being pulled loose. He’d been holding on, or Tang had been holding him here, until the EMTs arrived. The pain in his eyes was deep but didn’t seem to surprise him. He closed his eyes.
Jo put her hands on either side of his face. “No.”
He opened his eyes.
“You’re here,” she said. “No place else. Listen to me.”
He blinked and tried to focus.
“Be here,” she said. “Sophie’s here. You have to stay.” The high-pitched drone increased in intensity. “I’m here.”
His lips moved but nothing came out. The paramedics scrambled, pulling equipment from their case. One of them called on her radio for a medevac helicopter.
Jo leaned down, pressing her hands against Gabe’s face, trying by the force of her stare to keep him from closing his eyes.
“Turn away from the light, Quintana, and look at me. It’s not time yet. I love you.”
She never knew whether he heard her.
T
HE BODIES OF THE DEAD lay on the street and cathedral steps for hours, while the authorities took photos and forensics teams walked among them in white bodysuits, ghostly and dedicated. The news helicopters were kept at bay like circling barracudas, but low-angle camera shots captured footage clear enough to show the world Chennault’s handiwork. His coda.
HE BODIES OF THE DEAD lay on the street and cathedral steps for hours, while the authorities took photos and forensics teams walked among them in white bodysuits, ghostly and dedicated. The news helicopters were kept at bay like circling barracudas, but low-angle camera shots captured footage clear enough to show the world Chennault’s handiwork. His coda.
In the waiting area at San Francisco General Hospital, Jo watched the news coverage. Vienna Hicks was in surgery. She had shrapnel embedded in her back, plus second-degree burns, but her condition was stable.
Tang found Jo near the television and handed her a cup of coffee. “Who’s with Sophie?”
“Gabe’s mom and dad,” Jo said.
Tang looked at the TV screen, only briefly, and turned her back on it. She hugged herself. “Gabe shouted to take cover.”
“I know.”
“Did you see Chennault first?”
“Yes. The sling.”
“And you tried to warn us?”
Jo nodded. “You didn’t hear. Gabe did.”
“Secret Service heard him and grabbed McFarland. Gabe knocked me and Officer McNamara to the ground. Threw himself on top of me. And he took the round.”
Jo didn’t respond. What could she say?
“They found Chennault’s lair. He planned this spectacle from his computer. He worked with the man and woman who attacked the law firm,” Tang said. “Both of whom are dead. Officers killed the woman when she fired on them in the lobby.”
Jo had a sense that the currents in the case ran to deep and powerful depths. She needed to piece together disturbing scraps of information, once she could rouse herself to focus. She needed to understand what had happened during the attack on the law firm.
She rubbed her forehead. “Howell Waymire, the head of the firm—I spoke to him in the ER after he was stabilized. He told me something that . . . bothers me.”
“What?”
Jo shook her head. “Later.”
Tang put up her hands, indicating
okay
. “Chennault had a number of careers. He was briefly in the army, and then an insurance agent before he became a journalist. His specialty was arson. And I don’t just mean arson investigations. He was adept at setting fires himself.”
okay
. “Chennault had a number of careers. He was briefly in the army, and then an insurance agent before he became a journalist. His specialty was arson. And I don’t just mean arson investigations. He was adept at setting fires himself.”
“Is that how he learned about explosives?”
Jo’s voice was flat. She couldn’t put any inflection into it. She didn’t care.
“I’d wager a year’s salary he got the bomb from his accomplice. Keyes—guy was ex-army, ex-merc. We’re investigating how, exactly, they found each other.”
Tang hugged herself tighter. She looked like she was wearing her own invisible straitjacket. “Chennault was a professional political extortionist. He liked to threaten people by burning down their families’ schools and workplaces. Then he’d send them a calling card—a matchbook.”
“He sent the matchbooks to Tasia and Noel Michael Petty?”
“Yes.”
Jo nodded. “Check CCTV from the ballpark. You’ll spot Chennault outside the corporate hospitality suite. I’m sure,” she said.
“You’re convinced he killed Tasia?”
At the end of the hall, double doors opened. A surgeon walked out, wearing scrubs and a cap.
He looked around. “Mr. Quintana’s sister?”
Jo’s system cascaded into overdrive. Sparks poured down her arms like water. “Went to get coffee.”
“Gabe’s in recovery,” the surgeon said. “He’s stable. He’ll be in intensive care tonight, but what we need to do is let his body rest and marshal its resources.” He rubbed the back of his neck and stretched. “He’s young, he’s strong, and he held on right until we put him under. He has a lot of fight in him, and a lot to fight with.”
The entire hospital seemed to light up. Electric, like a Disneyland parade.
The surgeon turned to Tang. “You kept pressure on the wound, I hear, even though there was gunfire and an explosion.”
Tang shrugged.
“Good job. You ever want to go into emergency medicine, let me know.”
“I’m squeamish,” she said. “I’d rather get shot out of a cannon.”
He laughed, clapped her on the shoulder, and left.
Jo saw it through a tunnel. No longer gray at the edges but throbbing with color. She tried to let out the breath she’d been holding. Couldn’t.
The door hadn’t blown shut. The tide hadn’t taken him. Gabe was on this side of daylight.
She didn’t believe that prayers worked as magic, or as a tether to keep people from sinking into the realm of the dead, so she hadn’t said any prayers. But right then she leaned her forehead against the wall, felt the cool plaster, and shut her eyes.
Slam that door,
she said to the universe.
Lock it, throw the key away, and keep it sealed until Sophie has grandchildren. Until Gabe knocks and says it’s time.
she said to the universe.
Lock it, throw the key away, and keep it sealed until Sophie has grandchildren. Until Gabe knocks and says it’s time.
Tang stood in the center of the waiting area, small and isolated. Without a word, she turned and left. After a moment Jo went to find her. She rounded the corner and nearly tripped.
Tang was crouched against the wall, hands over her face. Jo held back. Tang inhaled.
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