Cape Disappointment (39 page)

“Yes, it is, but it's not going to happen. I was wondering about the bomb. Did they ever figure out why it didn't go off when you were on the podium?”

There was something in the tone of my comment that made Maddox step back. He didn't say anything. Neither did anybody else. I had the feeling that people around him didn't speak much about the bombing. He leaned forward and turned on his speechifying voice. “It's been a tragedy for a lot of people, but especially for America. Anytime anarchists try to take away the democratic process, we all lose. Just give me the goddamned photo op.”

Behind him, Deborah saw the glint of temper in my eyes.

“Who placed the bomb?”

“The FBI's working on it.”

“Are they still staking out my house?”

“What? Who?”

“The FBI. They were staking out my house. Somebody was.”

“I don't know anything about your house. This was probably a radical
fringe group. There's some speculation they may have rigged the Apple flight to take me down, and got Jane Sheffield instead.”

“The FBI's saying the plane crash was an assassination?”

“There's been speculation in that direction. This is all hush-hush. Remember, before we canceled we had booked that same airline. When they finally arrest some of these people and question them, we'll know more. But remember, we're not sure these people are involved with the plane crash. At this point, it's all conjecture.”

“They were after
you
the whole time?”

“Possibly. It's beginning to look like somebody can't stand the thought of me in the Senate.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A little over half the voters in the state.”

If he'd been angry before, he was furious now. As a way of exculpation, Deborah said, “Don't worry about it. He's on drugs. He doesn't know what he's saying.”

Apropos of nothing, Maddox said, “There's talk we might never catch the bombers.”

How odd, I thought, that Maddox who, back in his SPD days, had carried a reputation for abject cowardice, had shown such outstanding disregard for his own safety the night of the bombing. Could it have been because he was virtually certain there was no second bomb? Could it have been that while the firefighters and other rescue personnel were waiting for the second bomb to go off, the old tried-and-true tactic of terrorists, Maddox had foreknowledge that it wasn't there?

“A horrible thing,” Maddox said. “Horrible, horrible. But in the end, what with all the favorable news footage we've been getting, it was actually lucky for the race.”

“You're running just about the luckiest campaign anybody ever ran, aren't you?”

Maddox gave me a flat look that assured me he didn't know whether I was being sarcastic or was just hell-bent on getting myself fired. The flunkies behind him turned and headed for the door. There was no doubt in their minds, or in Deborah's, that I'd turned on him. Maddox was the only one who didn't seem sure of it. Or maybe he was just so intent on getting the photo op that he didn't want to let it sink in. Deborah shook her head almost imperceptibly, then smiled, again almost
imperceptibly. Maddox said nothing as he left. Deborah lagged behind.

“You going to use those?” I asked.

“What? Use what?”

I nodded at the cellphone in her hand, with which she'd been surreptitiously taking pictures of my meeting with Maddox.

“If you were in my place, would you?” she asked.

“I'm not in your place.”

“If you were?”

“Part of the reason I'm not in your place is I never would have snapped those pictures.”

“I wouldn't be judging others too harshly if I were you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You were spying on Kalpesh and me in my apartment.”

I had no reply for that because it was true. By the time my face cooled off, she was gone. She was right, though. There were times when I felt the ends justified the means and acted on it just as often as anybody else. As much as I wanted to hold other people's feet to the fire, I needed to own up to my share of guilt, too.

FOR ALMOST HALF A MINUTE
after Kathy opened the front door to Delilah's house I couldn't do anything but stand like a dummy and drink her in. In our entire relationship, we'd never had a moment quite like it. Our first real reunion since her death and resurrection and my bombing. In some ways seeing Kathy in that doorway was like seeing her for the first time. She was almost a stranger but in other ways was as familiar as an old shoe under the bed, though quite a bit prettier. We both knew our relationship would never be the same, that there would always be a before and an after. Before she died— after she died. Before the bomb— after the bomb. It didn't mean our relationship would be any worse or better or weaker or stronger, but we would have befores and afters.

We had both spent time under a doctor's care. We had both been drugged for days on end. We had both been scared out of our wits at the bedside of the other. Today I was the quasi-invalid and Kathy was the healthy one. Despite her regained health, I could see that hiding out was gnawing at her sanity. Kathy was a people person who needed to be out in the world. She thrived on social interaction, and this enforced isolation and idleness was withering her spirit.

After we finished staring at each other, Kathy ran sliding across the floor in her socks and kissed me exuberantly. “It's so good to have you back.” We soon found ourselves in a large, overstuffed chair in the living
room, her bottom squarely in my lap. “Glad to see you're still alive, buster.”

“Glad to see
you're
still alive, sister.”

“I guess this is how we're going to greet each other from now on.”

“You talking about the woody?”

“Uh … no. I was glad to see you're alive.”

“Oh, right. That's what I meant. I am alive.”

She laughed, and the kissing lasted longer than the first round. She sat back and said, “So how long am I going to have to hide out? Not that Delilah isn't a wonderful host, but this isn't my house and I need to get back to work. Hell is being trapped in another woman's house because maybe a cabal of renegade government ops will maybe want to kill you if you maybe leave. This whole thing is so screwed up.”

“Bert saved your life once. We have to respect his judgment on this, crazy as it sounds. Have you heard from him?”

“Not a peep. And you're right. I think. It's just that I've got cabin fever.”

“Snake tells me they've talked, but he still doesn't have a clue where Bert is. He went out to their grandmother's place in Enumclaw, but as far as she knew Bert hadn't been there. I'm going out to check again in a few minutes.”

“Why not wait for Elmer?”

“I'll be okay by myself.”

“After Enumclaw, what?” She kissed me.

“We'll see where that leads.”

“And then what?” She kissed me again.

“And then … Oh, I get it. Well, that might be a while. I'm still beat all to hell. But keep your motor revving, sister. I'll get my strength back shortly.”

“I'm so glad you're doing better. I never did give a rat's ass for Mad-dox, but he saved your life, and I'll be forever grateful to him for that.”

“Bert saved yours. What do you think about turning him over to the police for kidnapping?”

“If the police get hold of him he'll clam up like a … well, like a clam, and he's the truest link you have to whoever brought that plane down.
If
somebody brought it down.”

“I keep thinking he's going to confess to having a part in it.”

“I'm still having a hard time believing it was taken down on purpose.”

“Of course you are. It means a U.S. senator was murdered right out in front of God and our drying laundry, and if a federal agency is working to cover it up, it means the feds are in on it, too. Who wants to believe our government is that corrupt?”

“You're right. It's about what you're willing to believe.”

“In the hospital I had a lot of time to think. Kalpesh steered you onto that airplane, and after he began working for Maddox, he steered me into that gym.”

“Don't go blaming this on Kalpesh.”

“He sent me right to the bomb. If I hadn't accidentally detoured, I would be in a thousand pieces, just like that poor janitor.”

“Thomas, you don't know he's involved in anything other than a love affair.”

“He switched allegiances pretty fast.”

“That's true. He was the last person I expected to jump ship.”

“You remember anything else about that day with Bert?”

“Not much. I got in his car, opened a bottle of water, and basically the next thing I knew, I was here at Delilah's. I've been thinking he put something in that water.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

I showered and changed into some clean clothes Snake had procured for me while I was in the hospital, and then I left just as Snake came in. To confuse whoever might be triangulating on my phone, Snake and I swapped cellphones, which we had been doing ever since I'd discovered I was being followed. Kathy had been at Delilah's almost six days. A total of sixteen days had elapsed since the crash. The news on the car radio said the NTSB had completed their report on the matter of the Sheffield plane crash and there would be an official pronouncement the following morning. I was halfway to Enumclaw when Snake's cellphone in my pocket chimed. “Thomas?”

“Yeah?”

“I just got a call for you. That redhead, Deborah Driscoll. The hot one.”

“What did she say?”

“She was on her way to a meeting. Said she's been thinking about your discussion in the hospital and wants to talk to you in private about Ruth Ponzi and some other stuff. Said you could find her at her place.”

“When?”

“All she said was ‘later.'”

“Thanks.”

ENUMCLAW WAS WET AND COLD,
clouds scudding across the sky in eighteen shades of gray. I could see Mount Rainier today, its snow-covered presence looming to the south like the backdrop to a fairy tale.

I parked in the same spot we'd used the other day and hiked across the property. When I got close to the small trailer Bert lived in, I heard what sounded like a Christian radio station blaring from one of the barns. Bert's little pickup truck was parked in front of his trailer, the engine cold. In the back was an unfurled tarpaulin and ropes tied to the tie-downs on the side of his truck. There was a small swatch of blood on the sidewall. I wondered if Bert could have been poaching deer. Or maybe I was looking at my future. I hadn't brought a weapon and didn't have a plan. Beating the hell out of Snake in the mistaken belief he was Bert had taken some of the starch out of my anger. The morphine I'd been on had taken more.

Still, when he answered the door, there was something about the way he said “Hey, man” that annoyed me more than it should have. Without giving it a whole lot of thought, I swung, got a solid poke in, and sent him flying backward. I'd more or less promised myself this wouldn't happen, but what the hell. When I went inside, he was reaching for something under the bed. I kicked him in the ass and sent him sprawling. He hit his head on the end wall of the trailer and bounced back, coming at me unexpectedly like a whirlwind. Despite his training, I'd like to think under normal circumstances he wouldn't have had a chance, but he managed to get a knee into my stomach, which was still bandaged and already aching from the exertion of hitting him. I went down hard on my back, Bert on top of me, grasping for something off to my right, probably a weapon. The quarters were so tight I began to believe I would never get him off me. I managed to grab his
right arm and chomped down hard until he screamed. At the same time my left hand reached out for anything that might serve as a weapon.

All I found was a cat's litter box. When his mouth was at its widest, at the apex of his scream, I scooped up a handful of litter and shoved it into his mouth. For a few moments as I watched him choke and claw at his mouth, I thought I might have killed him. Then he gagged and rolled off me.

All I could think about was Kathy, drugged into a stupor in that miserable rented farmhouse in Naselle while I thought she was dead. I stood up, groping around in the shadows until I found the weapon he'd been reaching for. It was a Taser, a stun gun designed to emit powerful but nonfatal electric impulses. I'd been Tased before and knew how much it hurt and how quickly it put most people out of commission. The thought that he'd been willing to inflict that much pain on a man who'd just gotten out of the hospital riled me enough that I switched it on and touched his shoulder with it. It jolted him off his knees and onto his back, where he twittered like a hooked Dolly Varden.

He still hadn't cleared all the cat litter out of his mouth and was trying to spit, his eyes turning into moons of panic. Coughing and hacking, he crawled out of the trailer and into the wet yard, where he stood up and tried to get water from the garden hose. “Why are you doing this?” he gasped, speaking through puffy lips.

“Why am I doing this? Could it be because you kidnapped and drugged my wife? Because you immobilized her with plaster casts and head wraps for ten days? Could that be the reason?”