Capitol Murder (47 page)

“Now? We’ve almost got this working.”

“Sorry. Those are your orders.” The three men dropped their tools and started down the
hallway.

Ben stood behind the door—knowing that alone made him a potential target—and shouted.
“Marshall!”

From inside, he heard, “Who the—?”

“It’s Ben Kincaid. I’m coming in, Marshall.”

“The hell you are!”

“I am. And you’re not going to shoot me, Marshall. I’m unarmed. You said you thought I was the
most honest geek on earth, remember? I think you called me a saint. So you know I’m not
lying.”

“Kincaid!” This was Agent Cross, about twenty feet down the corridor, running his way. “Freeze
immediately! Do not compromise this operation. We will use force if necessary to stop you.”

“Then you’ll have to shoot me in the back,” Ben muttered. “I’m coming in, Marshall!” Then he
closed his eyes, said a quick, silent prayer, and turned the doorknob.

Before Agent Cross could stop him, he was inside.

“What are you doing in here? What are you doing?” Bressler waved his hands back and forth in
the air. Both hands clutched the gun; he had two fingers wrapped around the trigger. Hazel was
cowering in the corner, half hidden by the copying machine. Both Marie and Christina were slumped
on the floor. The stillness, the pallor in Marie’s expression told Ben she was probably already
dead. Blood was seeping out of Christina’s thigh, but her eyes were still open. Just barely. But
open.

She was alive.

“I came for Christina,” Ben said. His heart was palpitating; he was breathing in deep staccato
gulps. “And Marie. They need medical help. After I take them outside, I’ll come back and be your
hostage.”

“Are you insane?”

“Probably.” Ben was having trouble understanding what the man was saying. Apparently the aural
implant was affecting his ambient hearing. “But that’s what I’m going to do.”

“No, you won’t!” Marshall wheeled himself forward until he had the gun right under Ben’s nose.
“You think you’re going to pull something. You’re trying to fool me!”

“I already told you, I’m not. I’m not armed at all.”

“Prove it!”

“All right, I will.” Slowly, one step at a time, Ben began removing his clothes. Come to think
of it, he thought, this is the second time I’ve had to strip in a U.S. Senate building. This
never happened to him back in Tulsa.

He continued disrobing, all the way down to his boxer shorts.

“Superman?” Bressler said, staring at the big red “S” shield on the front of Ben’s boxers.

“Well, people made fun of my last pair. So I switched to something more macho.”

“All right, so you’re clean. You’re still not taking anyone out of here.”

“Yes, Marshall, I am. And then I’ll come back and be your hostage. I promise you. I’ll stay as
long as you need me to stay. You can drill me full of holes if that’s what you want. But first
I’m getting the wounded women out of here.”

“You’re risking your damn life, you fool. Why would you do that?”

Ben paused and stared straight at the man in the wheelchair. Even off his meds, even totally
off his rocker, there had to be some shred of sanity and decency left inside that head. “Because
I don’t want Christina to die. Any more than you wanted Delia Collins to die.”

Ben took a slow small step, then another, toward Christina. He wobbled a bit as he moved. His
legs were trembling, and worse, the implant in his ear was affecting his sense of balance.

“I’ll shoot you!”

“I don’t think you will, Marshall,” Ben said, not looking back. “Because you know you can
trust me. And you don’t want these women to die. They didn’t hurt Delia. You have no reason to
wish them harm.”

Suddenly, Ben heard an intense squawking in his left ear, so loud he initially thought it had
burst his eardrum. “Kincaid? Can you hear us?”

Apparently someone noticed one of their implants was missing. He kept on walking.

“Kincaid!” It was Agent Cross. “You have endangered this entire operation. You will be fully
prosecuted for interfering with a federal hostage situation.”

Ben kept walking.

“But since you’re in there, see if you can get some information out of him. We’ve got the
fiber-optic camera working. We can see and hear you.”

Ben knelt beside Christina, his bare knees in the huge pool of blood. She could be dead
already, he realized. He could be too late.

“I need to talk to her,” he told Bressler.

“No!” he shouted. “Not a word.”

“Please. I can’t let her lose consciousness.”

“I said, no!”

“Just let me ask her one question. One lousy question.”

Bressler wavered. “Fine. But that’s it. One question.”

Ben heard the crackling in his ear. Martinez this time. “Ask if there are any other
hostages.”

Cross chirped in. “Ask if she’s seen any other weapons. Does he have a stash of ammo?”

Ben lifted Christina’s hand out of the blood, squeezed it between both of his hands, and
asked, quietly, “Will you marry me?”

Christina’s eyelids fluttered. When she spoke, her voice sounded like rusty hinges. “What do
you think I’ve been hanging around for all these years, you dunderhead? Of course I will. Now get
me out of here.”

Ben saw the makeshift tourniquet tied around her upper thigh. A piece of her blouse. Damn she
was tough. He tightened it, then wrapped his arms under her and lifted her up. He could tell the
movement was causing her pain, but she kept it bottled up inside.

“Stay with us,” he murmured to her. “Just a little bit longer.”

“I’m watching you!” Marshall cried. “One false move and you’re dead!”

He carried Christina to the door, opened it. A huddle of agents stood just outside, their
weapons drawn. “Stay back,” Ben said. “I gave the man my word.” He passed Christina to the
nearest agent. Almost immediately, paramedics converged around her.

Ben went back inside for Marie Glancy. When he brought her body into the corridor, he heard
Cross hiss, “We can go in behind you. Use you for cover.”

“If you do, we might lose Hazel.”

“If we don’t, we might lose you.”

Ben shook his head. “I made a promise. I’m sticking to it.” He glanced down at Christina, who
was already on a stretcher and being taken away. “Take good care of her.” And then he went back
inside the office. And closed the door behind him.

Ben and Marshall talked and talked and talked. No matter how psychotic the man was, no matter
how long he’d been off his medication, Ben was certain he wouldn’t try anything without
provocation. In the first half hour, he watched as Marshall tired and his rage subsided, until he
almost came to resemble the steady, wise Marshall Bressler whom Ben had known and admired these
past months. After the first hour of talking, he convinced Marshall to let Hazel go, promising to
remain as Marshall’s hostage. The more time passed, the more weary Marshall became. He still
clutched the gun, but Ben could see his eyes growing hazy, his body weakening. Soon he would have
to give in to the biological need for rest. And the more time passed, the less and less Marshall
talked about Todd Glancy. And the more he talked about Delia Collins.

“She was a beautiful woman,” he said, with such sincerity that Ben found himself feeling
sympathy for a man who was threatening to kill him.

“I know. I’ve seen the photos.”

“We met the first time she came to Todd’s office to try to enlist his support for that damn
insurance bill. We hit it off immediately. I couldn’t believe my luck. Here was a beautiful,
vivacious woman paying attention to a pathetic cripple. No woman had given me the time of day
since my accident—until Delia. Of course we knew her time was limited, but somehow we managed to
put that out of our minds. We kept dating—always on the sly so no one would accuse Todd of being
improperly influenced—and one thing led to another. Fast. We were so in love. We could hardly
keep our hands off each other.” He chuckled. “That idiot MacReady who stumbled in and saw Delia
making love. She wasn’t with Todd. She was with me. Can you believe it? Me!”

“That’s what I figured,” Ben said. “Eventually. I should’ve seen it earlier.” Because Glancy,
the control freak, would never have allowed a woman to be on top. Marshall, being crippled, had
no choice but to lie on the floor. That’s why he didn’t get up when MacReady came in—he
couldn’t.

“I did everything in my power to get Todd to support the bill. But nothing worked. Nothing.
And you know why? Not because he didn’t believe in it. He did. But he wouldn’t support it. He was
too dependent upon insurance companies for their campaign contributions. He wanted to remain
viable—in the running for a national ticket. That was the worst of it. We like to pretend that
this is a democracy, but it isn’t. It’s the big money, the special interests, the men pulling the
strings behind the curtains, they’re the ones who decide what laws are passed and what laws
aren’t. They decide which candidates to support, which candidates get on the ballot. At best, we
get to choose between two candidates who have been selected for us by opposing special
interests—and even then the political discourse is determined by campaign contributions. Once the
candidates are in office, they’re so beholden to their financiers that the whole idea of
‘government by the people’ becomes a joke.” He clenched his teeth tightly together. “You talk
about your vampires. These are the real vampires, the genuine article, the monsters who take our
public trust and suck it dry, who start out caring about the world and end up only caring about
reelection.”

Ben tried to understand. “So Glancy killed the bill Delia wanted. Still—she was terminal. Todd
Glancy didn’t kill her.”

Bressler looked at Ben, a stony expression on his face. “About six months after Delia died,
clinical tests by a team of researchers in Denmark showed that in some cases, an experimental
interferon-based cocktail could slow the spread of ovarian cancer, or in some cases induce a full
remission. The FDA eventually approved it for general use in the United States. Delia wanted that
treatment. But because it hadn’t been approved at the time, Delia’s insurance company wouldn’t
pay for it. And since our American health care system only provides health to those who can pay
for it, her sole recourse was Congress. And because Todd Glancy cared more about his own
reelection than a bill that could save lives—Delia Collins died. My sweet perfect Delia died.”
His voice was like gravel, racked with sorrow. “My life was over. What chance did I have of ever
finding a love like that?”

“What chance does any of us have?” Ben responded quietly, wondering what was going on outside,
in a hospital room somewhere, with a beautiful strawberry-blond patient. “So you decided to take
revenge.”

“I bided my time, waiting for the right moment. Todd is a careful man; he doesn’t take many
chances. But when he started up with that intern, I knew I had my opportunity. I was just going
to expose him, create a scandal, originally. Then I thought of something better.”

“Framing him for murder.”

He nodded. “After I first conceived the idea, I became obsessed by it. Spent all my spare time
thinking of ways to pull it off. Brought the knife to work, even before I knew what I was going
to do with it. I couldn’t help myself. That man’s evil was so enormous I couldn’t get it out of
my mind.”

More likely he was building up an immunity to the antipsychotic drugs that were supposed to
keep him under control, Ben thought. After so many years, their effectiveness must have
diminished.

“And then one day, the perfect opportunity fell into my lap. I found Veronica in the
hideaway—as I told you before, thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, this entire
building is wheelchair-accessible. She was making time with that living filth—the one they call
the Sire. I heard what they said, what they did. Her vampire lover took the money, had tawdry sex
with her, sucked her blood, gave her that drug, and left her for dead. But the amazing thing
is—she didn’t die. Veronica was stronger than any of us imagined. She might’ve pulled through—if
I hadn’t intervened.

“I got the knife and cut her across the shoulder to obscure the bite mark her boyfriend had
left behind, and to make a wound so large she couldn’t possibly recover. I flipped her upside
down, just for dramatic effect and to make her blood drain faster; my legs might be crippled, but
my arms are quite strong—I work out, remember? I was careful not to get blood on me or my chair.
And then I left. With all the press we had streaming around the building that day, I knew it was
just a matter of time till some snoop discovered the body. Plus I’d spotted Shandy eavesdropping
on them—though I made sure she didn’t see me. After that video, it wasn’t hard to deduce who
would be the cops’ primary suspect.” He paused. “What put you on to me?”

“I eventually realized you were the only one who could’vegotten that big knife into the
building,” Ben explained. “Security is so tight I couldn’t get in with a metal button sewn to my
shirttail. But I bet you could get almost anything in. Everyone knows you’re going to set off the
alarm. Because you’re riding around in a wheelchair.”

Bressler smiled a little. “At first they made some effort to search me, examine the chair. But
it was so hard—someone had to hold me while they sent the chair through separately, and I acted
like it really hurt, and after a few months . . .” He shrugged. “Well, what threat could I
possibly be? I’m just a harmless old cripple, right? And even if they had patted me down—which
they didn’t—they wouldn’t have found the knife. Just like they didn’t find this gun.”

“Because you put them in the compartment under the armrest of your chair,” Ben guessed. “Very
bold of you to show me that, way back when. I tried to call Marie before I came over here, to
verify my recollection, because I remembered you telling me she’d had the chair specially
designed for you. I’m sure she never imagined you’d use it to . . . well.” To smuggle in the gun
you used to shoot her.