Up in Smoke (32 page)

“Was Fromm left-handed?” She switched on a lamp, then sat on the floor with her back resting against the hearth, cradling the bowl of the wineglass in both hands.

Sean crossed his left hand over his right and played arpeggios up and down the keyboard. “I'm not sure. I guess he was. Let me think.” He played scales with both hands. “Yeah, I guess so. He used his left to eat with and write with.”

Sean rippled through a series of fast chords. “I can see by your face that's not the answer you want. What's this about left-handed?” He crossed his left over his right and played a fast, intricate bit of fingering.

She shook her head.

“Something about his suicide?” Sean changed key and played another set of chords, a look of deep sorrow settling on his face. “Susan, no wonder you are depressed. This piano is terminal.”

“It hasn't been tuned in a while.”

“Darlin', what this piano needs is a whole lot more than tuned. Donate it to any church who'll take it and put it in isolation in the basement.” He played a polonaise and then romped through “The Entertainer” making exaggerated grimaces of pain at the flat notes and the dead keys. “You're thinking he didn't kill himself?”

“It's a possibility.”

Sean jumped right into “Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.” “His right hand was stronger. He had more strength in his right hand. He'd injured the left somehow.”

“How do you know this?”

Sean shrugged. “The only way I know anything. By asking questions.” He swung his legs around and sat with his back to the piano. “You should take this thing out and shoot it, put it out of its misery.”

“Sean—”

He took a swallow of wine. “You wouldn't be asking questions about what hand the man used to write with if you didn't have some doubts about suicide.”

She sighed.

Sean leaned foreward on the piano bench, bracing a hand on each side. “He used his right hand because he couldn't have lifted anything as heavy as a gun with his left.”

“This is general knowledge? Everyone knows about his weak left hand?”

“I don't know, but I doubt it. I'm an observing type. Also I talked with the guy.”

“Why?”

“Why did I talk with him? Because he knew Jackson Garrett and right now Jackson Garrett is my job. Come on, Susan, I feel like I'm a suspect here.”

She waited a beat. “You
are
a suspect, Sean.”

35

Three-hundred-foot-high wall of fire, thundering like a waterfall, swept up the mountain. Jack struggled to run. Two hundred fifty feet to the top. He couldn't feel his legs. Chain saw weighed him down. Feet stuck to the ground. Shouts from the radio clipped to his vest. “Run! Run!”

The last thing a smoke jumper did was leave his equipment. If he did, it meant the situation was dangerously serious. When Jack dropped the chain saw, he knew he'd never make it. Through the radio, he heard the agonized screams of the dying. His mouth opened. Intense heat scorched his throat.

Another breath and he'd be dead. Fluid would fill his lungs, his throat would close in response to the super hot air, carbon monoxide would replace the oxygen in his blood, death would be quick.

“Jack? Jack!”

Fear pumped adrenaline through his system and his heart beat wildly.

“Jack! Wake up!”

Aware of his arm being shaken, he struggled to bring himself back from the dead. When he managed to open his eyes, he squinted in the light.

“Jack?” Molly, sitting up beside him in bed, rubbed a hand down his arm. “You're dreaming again.”

Lingering tentacles of the dream clung in his mind. Beneath the echoes of men screaming for help, he could hear the television in the other room. Farm, he told himself. Hampstead.

Picking up Molly's hand, he kissed the palm. “Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.” He tossed back the blankets and got up.

“Jack—?” She struggled out from under sheets, blankets, and comforter.

“Don't get up.” He pulled on sweatpants and sweatshirt and went to the hallway.

Molly ignored his order—nobody told her what to do—slipped on the green silk dressing gown and went out after him, along the hallway toward the living room.

Todd, looking rumpled and tired, slouched on the couch, watching television with press secretary Hadley Cane. Leon was on the floor, propped against the wall, legs straight in front of him.

These people, especially Todd, never seemed to sleep. They were always studying the opposition research, watching the polls, keeping up on the latest developments. Molly ignored them and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The kettle was just starting to shriek when Nora came in, wrapped in a green dressing gown very similar to Molly's. Molly felt a flick of irritation. Nora could sometimes be tedious.

“Tea?” she asked.

Nora nodded and got down another cup. “Why are you up? Jack having nightmares again?”

Molly put a tea bag in her cup, one in Nora's, and poured boiling water in each cup.

“These nightmares.” Nora dunked the tea bag up and down. “You know what they're about?”

Molly shook her head.

“Did you ever ask him?”

Molly transferred a dripping tea bag into a bowl. “He won't talk about them.”

“Maybe he needs to see a therapist,” Nora said.

Molly sighed. “If that's a joke, it's not funny; if it's serious, it's political suicide.”

“Did you tell him about—you know.” Nora added her tea bag to the bowl. “Going to see that woman?”

“Of course not,” Molly said. “And you're not to tell him either. He's got an awful lot on his mind now, he doesn't need anything else. I just wish he would get rid of that Cass woman.”

“You think the nightmares might have something to do with her?”

“Honest to God, Nora, I don't know. He won't hear of telling her she's not needed.”

The two of them stood in the kitchen talking in low voices like conspirators.

“Maybe she
is
needed.” Nora opened cabinet doors, found a package of cookies, and set them on the counter.

Molly shot Nora a look. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know. I just wonder if there's something going on there. They were real close at one time.” Nora opened the cookies and offered Molly one.

Molly shook her head. “Yeah, well, that was a long time ago.”

“Is that what he's telling you?”

“Nora, what are you saying?”

“I'm saying she's going to be trouble. We have to get rid of her.”

*   *   *

“Anything noteworthy going on?” Jack sat on the end of the couch.

“CNN just backed down on their prediction of your victory in the D.C. primary. They think all this tragedy is going to hurt you.”

“Duh,” Hadley said.

A perky newswoman with short dark hair was telling two newsmen, “… it's been quite incredible. When Jack Garrett first started campaigning for the Democratic nomination, the heavy betting was that he couldn't win over the current vice president. The smart bettors then started scrambling to rearrange their stakes. Governor Garrett had the voters thinking the vice president was right up there with the president in responsibility for the loss of public confidence in the stock market and the huge drop in the Dow in recent weeks, the discovery of allegedly illegal campaign contributions, the billions being poured into the war on drugs with, not only no success, but obvious failure, and continued spending to fight a war on terrorism that also is beginning to seem impossible to win.”

“What can we expect in the next ten weeks?” a newsman asked.

“Now with two deaths, one definitely murder and the other a possible suicide, the voters have definitely changed their minds and Garrett is losing—”

*   *   *

There was a tap on the door and a trooper let Bernie in. Bernie tossed Todd a jacket.

“Hey, my jacket,” Todd said. “You finally gave it back. And about time, too.”

Leon scooted his butt a bit closer to the wall so Bernie could get past his outstretched legs.

“Doesn't anybody around here ever sleep?” Jack said.

Bernie thought Jack looked moody, like he sometimes got. Jack had a tough competitiveness that kept him moving, from town to town, giving the same speech half a dozen times and making it sound just composed as he stood there, dropping into bed and getting up in the morning, going to another town and doing the same thing day after day. A mind-numbing existence. Fighting fatigue and any doubt that he wouldn't be the Democratic choice, seeing dozens of local politicians, shaking thousands of hands, until his own was swollen and painful. But sometimes it was more than that, sometimes he just drifted off somewhere and when he was in that state, he wasn't reaching people like he could when he was hot. Bernie didn't like it that Jack looked distracted.

“You worry too much, Bernie.” Jack stood up, put an arm around Bernie's shoulder, and nudged him to the couch. “Don't look at me like you're afraid I'm coming down with a virus. It's the end of the day. You look like shit, too.”

*   *   *

Yeah, Jack thought, he probably did look like shit. Remembering Pale Horse Mountain did that to him. Jack leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Months ago, not years, like it sometimes seemed, just before he started seriously trying for a shot at the nomination, he'd spoken with the president and thought the president looked like shit. The job aged a man like nothing else. Jack wondered why someone hadn't run pictures, side by side, the day a new president walked into the office and the day he walked out. With this war on terrorism taking its toll, the president had aged several years in as many months.

“So,” the president had said. “You think you're the man for this job? Well, my friend, you might think you've struggled with a monumental decision by deciding to run, but that's nothing. A presidential campaign is moving into a fishbowl. You don't eat, sleep, or take a crap without it being noted and discussed on the six o'clock news. Strangers run your life, and you begin to suspect even your best friends of hanging around only because of what you might be able to give them. You start to worry maybe you're not suited or not smart enough. And it's true.” The president looked at him like he found Jack wanting.

Jack felt a warm lick of anger.

“Hey, it's not you,” the president said. “It's everybody who thinks he should take a shot at this job. You've got humiliation waiting while you go begging assholes for the financial means to keep going, assholes who think you should be happy groveling for their filthy money.”

Beside him on the couch, Bernie shifted and Jack opened his eyes. A picture of Bob Sallas was being shown on television. “Does this man look like a president?” Jack asked Todd.

“He thinks he does. And he fucking
wants
it.”

“Naw,” Leon said in his soft drawl. “He'll never get it. Shifty eyes. Look at 'em. Nobody's gonna vote for a man with shifty eyes.”

A clip came on of local news, a shot of Chief Wren hounded by the media surging toward her in a wave whenever she left the police department, microphones shoved in her face, questions thrown at her.

She was the picture of a female black Irish warrior, black hair and eyes as blue as the lake of Kilarney. Jack wondered whether she'd figure out the answer to the murders.

36

“We're here in the hospital room of Arlene Harlow,” the blond female newscaster spoke into the mike with solemn quiet to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and the place, “the young sister-in-law of Governor Garrett's friend Vince Egelhoff who…” The cameraman moved in closer to get a shot of the governor bending over to speak with the girl in the hospital bed.

The lights were too bright and too hot, the room was too crowded with a bunch of media people. Sean Donovan, Her Ladyship's hot-shit cousin, was one, politicals Todd Haviland, Bernie Quaid, Hadley Cane, and Leon Massy from Governor's staff, the governor, the governor's wife, her friend Nora, and highway-patrol cops.

“… and Arlene can't speak to us right now because her jaw was fractured by…”

Demarco stayed clear of the circus and kept his eye on the kid who was starting to go gray around the edges. Tired, face slack, lips blue. Because of all the blood she'd lost when she was attacked, she fatigued easily. He could see her hands clench at the Arlene bit. Moonbeam was what she wanted. She was going to be a singer and call herself Moonbeam Melody.

Molly Garrett stepped close, spoke to the kid, smiled and patted her hand, then stepped back and stood by her husband's side. The politicals, Todd and Bernie, gave the kid a word or two, Leon and Hadley moved up and did the same, then the three of them faded back so the camera could have an unobstructed view of the governor. The blond was still talking into her mike when suddenly the kid's hands curled tight around the sheets and her eyes went wild.

The governor put a hand over one of hers. “Something wrong?”

Demarco pushed through to her. “What?”

She was scared stiff, frozen and small in the damn hospital bed, camera and lights focused on her face.

“Are you in pain?” the blond asked.

Demarco turned and shifted so the camera got his back instead of her face. “She'd like to ask you all to leave, but she's not able to talk.”

“I don't blame you,” the governor said. “We'll get out of here and let you rest. Concentrate on getting well.” He leaned over, spoke something in her ear, patted her shoulder, put his arm around his wife and went out. Todd, Bernie, Leon, Hadley, Nora, and cops trailed after him.

“Okay,” Demarco said. “They're gone. What is it?”

She typed furiously.
He was here!

“The governor? Don't let it go to your head. He only did it to get on TV. Good for votes. Visit a sick kid.”