Day of the Delphi (13 page)

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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Day of the Delphi
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Kristen Kurcell had called Senator Jordan from Duncan Farlowe’s office before leaving Grand Mesa.
“You should have told me what was going on before you left,” Jordan said softly. “I’ve been so worried. Jesus, I would have helped you.”
“I’m sorry. I just panicked. I … didn’t know it was going to be this bad.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry, Kris. But I’ll be waiting at the airport when you land. We’re going to take this on together. Hell hath no fury like an angry senator with a crucial committee seat.”
 
Jordan’s driver was standing next to the Lincoln’s rear passenger door when Kristen stepped out of the terminal Saturday night. The man saw her and pulled the door open. Kristen hurried over and placed her single small overnight bag in his outstretched hand. Then she plunged into the backseat.
Inside the senator was waiting. They embraced and Kristen felt Jordan’s lips sliding toward hers and turned away at the last.
“It’s okay,” Jordan said soothingly, kissing her on the cheek instead. “You’re home now.”
Samantha Jordan held Kristen tightly against her as her driver restarted the Lincoln’s engine.
 
Samantha Jordan had not made any advances toward Kristen until the night they had celebrated her promotion to chief of staff eighteen months before. A wonderful dinner had been followed by a bottle of champagne at the senator’s townhouse. They sat together on the couch sipping glass after glass, Kristen becoming uneasily aware that Jordan was moving ever closer to her. One of the senator’s hands began to stroke her knee and then slid slowly up the inside of her thigh.
Kristen pulled away. Their eyes met and in that instant of silent embarrassment she knew. It was in Samantha Jordan’s stare even if it hadn’t been in her words. Kristen had left the townhouse and walked home in a stupor.
Perhaps she should have resigned the next day. She could never recall a time in her twenty-seven years when she’d felt more uncomfortable and ill at ease. But that would have meant throwing away a friendship with the person who had been there for Kristen during the most difficult time of her life in the summer preceding the election in ’92. Samantha Jordan had canceled two days of campaigning to be by her side for her parents’ funeral. She had helped with the arrangements, helped with everything. Kristen didn’t know what she would have done without her, glad to be able to return the favor when an unpleasant divorce ended with Jordan losing custody of her two children just two months later.
Kristen had spent the night the final decree had come down with the senator just talking, and she did not see the inside of Samantha Jordan’s townhouse again until the night
they celebrated her promotion in November. She knew Jordan was lonely and, since the divorce, given to frequent bouts of depression. She accepted the attempted seduction as an upshot of that tumultuous emotional combination.
But more attempts followed in the succeeding eighteen months, inevitably mirroring Jordan’s lowest times. They always ended in the same innocent fashion with Kristen helping the senator up to her bedroom and then sleeping downstairs to be there in case Jordan awoke with the bout of depression still in progress.
Washington loves rumors, and those linking the two women amorously were among the hottest for a time. They continued to simmer in large part because Kristen did not bother to refute them, afraid that drawing more attention to the situation might bring Samantha Jordan’s emotional instability to light and destroy the brilliant career that alone was holding the senator together. Beyond that, there was no man in her life Kristen could point to in order to repudiate the story, and there hadn’t been for some time. The death of her parents had torn away any desire she had for a relationship and had severely constrained her urge for physical pleasure. Whenever she started to feel good, guilt inevitably entered in. She thrust herself into her career, because working was the only thing that took her mind off everything else.
Kristen would languish through the long nights alone downstairs in the senator’s townhouse, glad at least to be able to share the hole her emotions had fallen into. The only man she could see herself taking up with again would be one who could provide the kind of strength she tried to provide Samantha Jordan during her worst spats with depression. A friend first, who asked for nothing more than what she was capable of giving, who wouldn’t let her down.
Following Kristen’s desperate call from Colorado, Samantha Jordan hadn’t let her down. With Kristen on the verge of slipping into a vortex of hopelessness after the
gruesome death of her brother, she had reached down and pulled her up.
“We’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning at the Pentagon with the head ordnance officer for all stateside military bases,” the senator said as her driver pulled the Lincoln away from the curb.
“On a Sunday?”
“The Pentagon knows who to open their offices up to, babe.”
“Have you found out anything about Paul Gathers?” Kristen asked her.
“From what I’ve been able to piece together, his assignment was strictly routine.”
“But did you speak to him?”
“It’s not time to force the issue yet, Kris. But when the time comes, there’s no one better at doing the forcing.”
 
At the Pentagon Sunday morning, it was all Kristen could do to keep up with the senator’s pace down the corridors. The woman was a dynamo. Nothing and no one got in her way. She had bulldozed her way through subcommittee after subcommittee until the spot on the appropriations committee opened up. The party hierarchy was afraid of what she might do if they didn’t choose her. Samantha got the seat.
Jordan double-checked the number on the office they had stopped at and then stepped in without knocking or announcing herself to the receptionist.
“Senator Samantha Jordan, Colonel,” she announced to a uniformed figure seated behind the desk after closing the door. “And this is my chief of staff Kristen Kurcell.”
Colonel Haynes came out of his chair, checking his watch. “I’m sorry, Senator, but I thought our appointment was for—”
“I’m a little early. Now let’s cut the bullshit and get right down to it, if that’s all right with you, Colonel Haynes.”
“Of course,” Haynes said, tripping over his words. “Of course, Senator.” He didn’t sit down.
“I want to talk to you about Miravo Air Force Base in Colorado.”
“Miravo?”
The senator turned to Kristen and nodded.
“My brother saw something happen there last Thursday night,” Kristen began and then proceeded to tell the story, steeling herself from more tears when she came to the part about identifying David’s body.
Colonel Haynes listened intently, an increasingly perplexed look drawn over his features. When Kristen had finished, he moved from behind his desk deliberately and closed the door to his office.
“Senator Jordan,” he said, standing rigid, “what’s your security clearance?”
“I serve on two subcommittees of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Colonel. My clearance is G-5, and they don’t come any higher than that.”
“Then I’m going to assume for the moment that Ms. Kurcell’s is the same. I think the two of you should sit down.”
“I think we’ll stand.”
“As you wish. Senator, your assistant—”
“Chief of staff.”
“—chief of staff claims Miravo is abandoned, mothballed.”
“Yes,” Kristen chimed in. “As of yesterday anyway.”
“That’s impossible. You see, it’s been up and functional again for six months.”
“Not according to the logs furnished my subcommittee, Colonel,” said Jordan with a hard edge to her voice.
Haynes hedged. “I think perhaps my superiors should brief you on this.”
“You report directly to the Joint Chiefs, Colonel, and both of us know it. I believe you can handle the chore equally well.”
Haynes nodded slowly. “Miravo’s reopening was authorized
under a blank standard your appropriations committee authorized, Senator.”
“Wait a minute, did you say
re
opening?”
“Yes. Miravo along with several other mothballed bases in strategic locations across the country.”
“Why? What exactly is it that was supposedly authorized by my committee?”
“The dismantling and destruction of nuclear warheads in accordance with the latest disarmament treaties. Miravo and the other similarly isolated bases were retasked and reoutfitted accordingly.”
“I’m telling you it was deserted,” Kristen insisted.
“Then you weren’t at Miravo.”
“I’m sure it was Miravo. Christ, I was almost killed in the hills surrounding it!”
“I toured the base myself just last month, ma’am.”
“My brother was killed because of something he saw going on there. I was almost killed because I followed his trail to the base.”
“I’m sorry about your brother, but he couldn’t have been at Miravo.”
“You’re saying the base was active
Thursday
night,” Kristen badgered.
“Yes.”
“As well as yesterday?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Haynes relaxed just a little. “Senator, I’m going to order a full investigation. I’m going to—”
“No,” interrupted Samantha Jordan. “No investigations. I’m flying out there today to see for myself, and I’d appreciate it if base personnel were not forewarned of my coming.”
“That’s highly irregular, Senator.”
“So is Miss Kurcell’s story.”
“Which, apparently, you believe.”
“Yes,” Jordan said, eyes on Kristen. “Yes, I do.”
 
 
En route to Huntsville State Penitentiary in Texas from Gainesville, Johnny Wareagle tried to tell himself that Chief Silver Cloud had been mistaken. If Traggeo was in prison, he could not have been responsible for Will Shortfeather’s disappearance, nor could the old chief’s vision of another, more recent murder be correct. Johnny wanted to believe that the killer was behind bars, as the sheriff’s deputy in Gainesville had assured him; that the years had finally blurred the great Silver Cloud’s eyes. But the resolve that had burned in the old chief’s stare ruled out any error on his part, a fact confirmed by the warden of Huntsville Sunday morning.
“Traggeo was granted early parole five months ago, after serving seven months of a five-year sentence,” he reported, a manila file open on his desk. A pudgy, balding man, the warden peered up at Johnny through Coke-bottle glasses.
“Who granted it?”
“The governor, it says here. Got a paper inside with his signature.”
“I didn’t think Texas was in the habit of granting early parole to brutal killers.”
“I don’t make the rules, Mr. Wareagle.”
“Is there a forwarding address?”
“Of course. Let me just—Wait a minute … That’s odd.” The warden looked back at Wareagle through his thick glasses. “I’m afraid many of the blanks on this form have been left empty.”
“Is there anyone here who can help me fill them in?”
“If you mean furnish information not present in this file, the answer’s no. Unless …” The warden sifted through the file once more. “Apparently Traggeo’s cellmate is still with us. Elwin Coombs, doing twenty years to life for murder. I doubt he’ll be cooperative, though.”
“Where can I find him?”
“You didn’t let me finish. Coombs has been cited numerous times for threatening guards. He broke a chaplain’s nose and hospitalized a psychiatrist, during an annual examination. He doesn’t like answering questions.”
“Where can I find him?” Johnny repeated.
The warden relented with a shrug. “He’ll be in the yard now helping to get the afternoon show of the annual rodeo ready.”
“Rodeo?”
The warden explained that every year the prisoners of Huntsville Penitentiary put on a rodeo for the public. Admission was charged for bleacher seats erected in the huge yard and all the money went into a fund to be dispensed as an inmate board saw fit. The rodeo had opened on Friday and would close after this afternoon.
“He’s over there,” said the guard who had escorted Johnny into the yard, gesturing toward a corral. “Good luck.”
Wareagle glided toward it.
The huge, barrel-chested Coombs was pouring feed into the trough before the pen of one of the bucking broncos that were the rodeo’s central attraction. When he leaned over to drain the rest of a bag, Johnny shoved him through the rails into the pen.
“Hey!” he screamed as the bronco inside bucked and kicked at him. “Hey!”
Coombs climbed to his feet and circled away from the snorting monster. Its legs kicked out toward him and Coombs slammed against the pen’s rear.
“Hey!
”
No sooner had he yelled than Coombs saw the huge figure of an Indian grab hold of the bronco’s reins and, impossibly, hold him steady.

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