The President's Killers (15 page)

SIXTY-TWO

Denny panned slowly across Section B with his binoculars. Where in the world was she?

It was a big area. If Meesh was somewhere among all those faces, he couldn’t find her. The entire stadium was a sea of red and white, row upon row of students and parents, the huge crowd continually swelling as more people filed into the stadium.

Suddenly, a stupendous roar went up.

He lowered the glasses and saw an army of football players in white jerseys with big red numbers sprinting into the stadium. The entire crowd rose to its feet, screaming.

When the cheering finally subsided and the fans sat down again, Denny scanned Section B again. It was almost filled now. Most of the students were in their seats.

There! His heart leaped. There she was. In the upper third of the section, near the center. A gold nugget in the ocean of red and white.

Her head turned in one direction, then in the other. The blond hair, with a dark clasp at the nape of her neck, shimmering in the sun. The silky bangs and ponytail fluttering in the breeze.

She looked like the co-eds around her, except none of them was as beautiful as she was.

Denny’s seat in Section Y was behind the end zone. Her seat was around the long curve of the stands, at about the ten-yard line. The hustler who sold him the tickets had lied to him, of course, but it didn’t matter.

Once he located her, he didn’t need the glasses to pick out her golden head and shoulders in the rows of red and white. When he looked at her through the binoculars, it was like a TV camera cutting to a close-up. Suddenly, she was only six feet away.

The crowd was exuberant. Whenever the Wisconsin Badgers moved the ball, the students were on their feet, yelling and thrusting their arms into the air. A few rows below him, someone held up an aerosol can that emitted an ear-splitting screech. On third-and-short, the noise was deafening.

When Wisconsin scored, the stadium exploded, the students screaming, pounding one another on the back and exchanging high-fives. Someone tossed a large stuffed badger into the air, and they batted it high above their heads, up and down the rows of seats.

Nobody paid any attention to Denny. All around him there were students who had painted their faces red and white. With his red fleece jacket and white knit cap, decorated with tiny red W’s, he was one of them.

No one was aware of the Glock pistol in his jacket pocket.

The first quarter seemed interminable. Ignoring the action on the playing field, Denny kept scanning the faces of the spectators in Meesh’s section, searching for faces that were a shade too serious or appeared to focus more on Meesh than on the field. If there were any, he didn’t see them.

The hands on the game clock moved so slowly that he was convinced at one point the clock had broken down. The second quarter, interrupted repeatedly by penalties and time-outs, was even worse.

Meesh seemed oblivious to the chaos around her, a blank expression on her face. She was obviously lost in deep thought.

The game clock showed 9:00 left in the half. Meesh had never been a football fan. Did she understand his instructions? In two minutes he’d know.

With the teams at the other end of the field, everyone was staring past him at the players. He saw Meesh brush her bangs back and turn her face upward towards the clock at the far end of the field.

It showed 8:12 remaining. She turned her head again. She was looking around her. She smoothed down her jacket and bent forward to pick up something. A bag.

She was going to do it! She was going to leave the stands.

At exactly 7:00, she rose and made her way down the row of students towards the stairway. The exit from the stands was ten rows below her.

As she made her way down the stairs, Denny peered through the binoculars at the crowd around her. Everyone else in the section was seated.

She was at the exit now. For a moment she was framed in the entranceway. Then she was gone.

The binoculars limited his field of vision. Lowering them, he saw a man in dark clothing, on the other side of Section B, stand up and start towards the exit. He’d been sitting a few rows above Meesh.

Denny caught him in the binoculars and watched until he disappeared beneath the stands. Was he tailing her or merely going to the john himself?

Ten minutes later, Denny saw Meesh return. As she was taking her seat, the man in dark clothes reappeared.

Denny studied him through the glasses. He was wearing a green flight jacket and a red-and-white Wisconsin cap. When he reached his seat, he sat down heavily and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He looked natural enough, but didn’t speak to those on either side of him. He was alone.

When the half finally ended, most of the spectators rose to their feet.

Denny watched the man in the flight jacket stand up and scan the stands around him. At that moment he realized who the man was.

SIXTY-THREE

With the third quarter winding down, Groark was beginning to fret.

Kinney’s girlfriend still hadn’t made a move. He had assumed she’d be on her cell phone with Kinney. Or she’d leave at halftime to meet him somewhere in the mass of humanity under the stands.

Although she was doing her best to look as though she was interested in the game, it was obviously an act. She wasn’t in sync with the crowd. She didn’t yell and cheer when they did…

He studied the crowd filling the stands that encircled the playing field. Everybody was wearing red. Kinney must have known that would be the case. Wherever he was, it wouldn’t be hard for him to spot his girlfriend’s yellow hair and jacket in the sea of red.

Groark could see only the top of her head and part of her face, but even from a distance she was a looker. He could picture the plump breasts and slender waist under the gold jacket and the long, milk-white legs inside the black tights. Kinney was a lucky kid.

The air was turning colder by the minute. He rubbed his hands together and cursed his nylon flight jacket. It wasn’t worth a damn at a football game in Wisconsin. He checked the game clock. Thank God, the third quarter was almost over.

When he looked back at Kinney’s girlfriend, she was on her feet heading towards the exit again. Maybe this was it, the moment he finally caught up with Kinney.

He watched the lovely Ms. Walker until she reached the exit, then started after her.

At the exit, he hurried down the stairs into the wide corridor beneath the stands and caught a glimpse of the yellow hair and jacket disappearing into the ladies’ rest room.

The corridor, reeking of mustard and coffee, was much quieter than the stands, the crowd noises muted.

Two fresh-faced male students were cleaning a concession stand. A white-haired couple was buying coffee. The souvenir stand where Groark had bought his red-and-white cap was closed.

A young man was standing at a pay phone, leaning into a red-and-white plastic shell shaped like a football helmet. All Groark could see were his bleached jeans. The legs could be Kinney’s.

When the caller stepped back, Groark swore. It was only some fool teenager. Groark moved up next to a concrete column and waited.

The rest room door opened. Out came a teenager and a woman who looked as though she was her mother. They hurried past him, towards the stands.

The next person to come out was Michelle Walker.

Groark turned to hide his face from her and felt a sudden, sharp jab in his lower back. Someone grabbed his arm.

“Keep your mouth shut or you’re dead, Lott!”

SIXTY-FOUR

Meesh stood motionless in front of the women’s rest room, transfixed by what she was seeing.

“Hey,” Lott protested, “what the hell — “

Denny slipped his free hand under Lott’s flight jacket and grabbed his belt. He jammed the pistol harder into his back.

“Shut up!”

With his head and red-and-white face, he motioned to Meesh.

She finally recognized him and rushed over to them.

“Denny!” When she saw Lott’s face, she gasped. “He was in the cab with me.”

“Get on the other side of him, will you?”

Working his hand along Lott’s belt, Denny found his pistol and handed it to Meesh to put into her bag.

“Over this way,” he said, guiding them towards the entrance to the stands.

There was nobody on the stairway. On either side of the stairs was a triangular opening four-foot high.

He turned to Meesh. “Stay right here, okay? I need a couple of minutes.”

She nodded, wide-eyed. “Be careful.”

He pushed Lott into one of the openings. “Move!”

They had to crouch but there was much more space under the concrete stands than the small opening suggested. He’d explored the stadium the day before. Between the bottoms of the seats and the bare ground beneath them were long, narrow crawlways.

“Keep going!” He pushed Lott forward.

The rumble of the crowd was only inches above their heads. It was just light enough for him to see Lott’s face. When they came to a wide crevice where they could stand almost upright, he tripped Lott, sending him sprawling onto the ground, and planted a knee in his back.

“Who the hell are you?”

“We’re going to get you out of this, Denny. We’ve been trying to find you.

He jammed Lott’s face into the dirt. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m leveling with you, I’m leveling with you!”

He stuck the tip of the pistol barrel into Lott’s ear and twisted it back and forth.

“Don’t! For Christ’s sake! It was a set-up, we set you up!”

“Who did?”

The crowd above them erupted with a roar so loud Denny’s ears rang, and he looked up. At the far end of the crawl space he saw a dark form move.

It was too dark to make out what it might be.

There was another movement. Suddenly, there was a flurry of movement. A female voice squealed.

Students. Kids more interested in getting laid than watching football. They were scrambling towards the other end of the crawl space.

Suddenly, Denny was thrown against the pillar behind him, brilliant lights exploding in his brain as his head struck the hard concrete..

Lott lunged at him, and they crashed onto the ground, the Glock flying out of Denny’s hand.

Lott’s full weight was on the left half of Denny’s body. Catching hold of s thick forearm, he squirmed free.

He tried to get to his feet, but a foot caught him in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him.

In a moment they were both on their feet, grappling with each other’s hands and arms.

Lott clamped a powerful hand on the back of his neck. “You punk!”

Denny grabbed Lott’s elbow. With his other hand, he seized a wrist, pulled the arm over his own head, and drove it across his body. He got a foot behind one of Lott’s legs, and Lott went down.

He could see the thick hands searching the ground.

Above them, the crowd roared, stomping their feet and chanting.

Lott struggled to his knees, the Glock glinting in his hand.

Diving at him, Denny grabbed the wrist of the hand with the gun.

Lott bulled himself upward, and they were on their feet again.

Twisting around, Denny clamped Lott’s wrist against his own stomach and pushed his back against Lott’s chest while Lott flailed at him with his free hand.

Denny pushed his hips upward, then suddenly dove onto his free shoulder. Lott flew over him, the gun exploding.

Denny landed on him and felt his heavy body shudder. The wrist of Lott’s’ gun hand no longer resisted. The gun slipped to the ground.

He ran his other hand over Lott’s shoulder and chest and felt moisture. The bullet had caught Lott in the chest.

He couldn’t feel or hear Lott breathing. Lifting Lott’s head, he slapped his cheeks.

“Come on, come on, you bastard, breathe!”

There was no response. He felt Lott’s wrist and neck, searching for a pulse. Nothing.

Damn it, damn it, he’d killed him.

He was panting. Working his hand into each of Lott’s pockets, he found a wallet and an airline ticket envelope. He stuffed them inside his own jacket, found his Glock, and made his way back to the opening.

Meesh’s face brightened when she saw him. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, still breathing hard.

“There’s a bar, the End Zone,” he said. “On Regent Street, three blocks from here. Meet me there. Black-and-white awning. You can’t miss it. I’ll give you a head start.”

She squeezed his hand and he kissed her.

“Be careful,” she said.

SIXTY-FIVE

The End Zone was a student hangout with pink walls cluttered with glass beer signs and gaudy brewery mirrors. When Denny arrived, the place was nearly empty.

He spotted Meesh in a booth near two unused pool tables at the rear.

When she saw him, the worried expression on her face turned into a smile of pure joy. He took her into his arms, squeezing her with all his might.

“Sweetheart!” Her blue eyes glistened. “It’s so wonderful to see you!”

“I didn’t want to get you involved in this.”

“There’s no way I’m not involved.”

At the bar, a student was nursing a beer while the bearded young bartender was cleaning glasses. A waitress nearby was straightening tables and chairs. Nobody was paying any attention to the two lovers.

“I’ve been scared silly.” She kissed him, then drew back to look at him. “I love the copper hair and paint job.”

“Copper? I asked for bronze.” He waved for the waitress. “This place is going to be jammed in another twenty minutes. Let’s grab something to eat. We can slip out when the crowd arrives.”

The waitress brought a pitcher of beer.

“What happened to that guy?” she said. “Is he an FBI agent?”

“No, no. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. Did you find the pencil?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, digging into her bag. “Yes, I found it.”

“Terrific!”

He examined it carefully. Imprinted in white on the navy blue pencil stub, about a half-inch beneath the eraser, were small letters:
JJRTC.

“Wonder what they stand for?” he said. “Do they mean anything to you?”

“No. No, afraid not.”

“I hope they’ll turn up somewhere.”

She told him how her mother had helped her elude the FBI. “Mother thinks they’re being terribly unfair to you.”

He grinned. It wasn’t hard to imagine the conversation.

Their burgers and fries arrived as the first students trickled in. The game was over. Within minutes, the place was filled by an oddly subdued crowd.

“Wisconsin must have lost,” she said.

When they finished their burgers, they elbowed their way through the crowd. Outside, it was still fairly light, and the chilly air felt good.

For several blocks the sidewalks were crowded with football fans. When they got beyond them, Denny told Meesh everything.

“There’s no Erickson?” she said.

“No. I’m sorry. They wouldn’t let me to tell anyone, not even you.”

“Well, I’m not surprised. And everything they told you was a lie?”

“Everything.”

She noticed spots on his sleeve. “You got your arm in the ketchup.”

He inspected the spots. “It’s blood.” He told her what happened under the stands.

“Oh, my God!” She stared at him and began to sob. “Oh, my God!”

He kissed the top of her head.

“We’ve got to get you out of here!” she said.