Scott Free (30 page)

“F
OR CRYING OUT LOUD,
S
ANDERS
,” Brandon growled. “Give him some room. He's exhausted.”

“He can sleep tomorrow,” Sanders replied. “Right now, I need to know what he knows. Give it to me again, kid.”

“His name is Scott,” Sherry said, but Sanders's only response was a bored glare.

It looked like what it was, essentially—a jailhouse interview, with Scott on one side of a conference table, flanked by his parents, and Agent Sanders and James Alexander on the other side. Scott was so tired he couldn't remember what he'd already told them, so he started from the beginning. He told them about Isaac's witness protection story and about the two men who came to kill him. He told about dumping the bodies into the dry well, and, finally, about the chase that ended here in the police station. So far, the only portion of the outlandish tale that had been verified was the part about Mr. Pembroke and the dead police officer, Jesse Tingle. Barry Whitestone was out breaking the news to Jesse's mother.

“If the FBI were running some kind of a covert operation up here, I'd know about it,” Sanders said. “It would have been in the security brief.”

“Isaac said they were bogus,” Scott said.

“Might've been bounty hunters,” James suggested.

Sanders looked at Scott. “Or a figment of a young imagination.”

Scott fired a panicked look to his father, then said to Sanders, “You think I'm
lying
about this? You think I'd make this stuff up?”

“I've never seen anything shot up like that truck was,” James said. “I want to know how you got out of there.”

“I jumped,” Scott said, rubbing the bruises he had to show for it.

“Out of a moving car?”

“The truck was barely moving,” Scott explained. “I yelled to Mr. Pembroke, but…” His voice trailed off.

“Tell me what he said about the president,” Sanders said.

“I already did.”

“Again.”

Brandon had had enough. “For God's sake, Sanders, show some respect for what he's been through.”

“Why do we keep talking?” Scott wanted to know. “Shouldn't you guys be raiding Isaac's house?”

“That'll happen in time,” James assured.

“But he'll be gone!”

“From what you tell me, he's gone already. Either way, it'll take some time to muster the troops and get the paperwork done.”

“Paperwork?” Sherry asked, aghast.

“We're trying to find a magistrate to approve the warrant.”

“Can we talk about this assassination plan, please?” Sanders said. “You're worrying about horses that have already left the barn. I've got a healthy thoroughbred to protect. So, Scott, tell me. Where did this assassination plot come from?”

“Think about it,” Scott said. “Why else would he stick around after the shootings this morning? Whether those people he killed at the house were cops or mobsters,
somebody's
trying to get him, so I figured that unless he had another job to do first, he'd take off. Then I remembered that the president is in town, so I put two and two together.”

“Two and two,” Sanders repeated, musing. “So, you never actually
heard
this DeHaven guy say he was going to kill anybody.”

“I
watched
him kill people. He didn't have to tell me anything.”

“But he never
said
he was going to kill the president.”

That question slowed Scott down. “No,” he said after a moment's reflection. “But who else?”

“I don't understand you, Sanders,” Brandon said. “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck—”

“You don't understand the way the Service works,” Sanders said. “I'm not trying to badger the boy. It's just that we're expecting about five thousand people in the square tomorrow, and if the threat were more direct, I might be able to convince Eagle to change his plans and let us make ourselves more visible. Like any politician, he doesn't like to be surrounded by bodyguards. I don't think he'll go for it based on this.” He rested his forearms on the table and leaned closer to Scott. “You're sure he didn't make a direct threat?”

“I can say he did, if that makes your job easier,” Scott offered.

Sanders held the eye contact for a moment longer than was necessary, then sat up straight again. “No, that's fine. Last thing I want you to do is lie.” He shifted his gaze to Brandon. “You guys gonna be around for a while?”

Brandon looked first to Scott and then to Sherry. “We're going back to the chalet. If you need us, you can reach us there.”

They all stood. “Thank you very much,” James said, shaking Brandon's hand. Then it was Sherry's turn, with Scott saved for last. “Glad to finally meet you, Scott. We've all been thinking about you a lot these past few days.”

Scott smiled. “It's good to be back.”

“You sure you don't want him checked out by a doctor?” James asked the parents.

Scott pleaded with his eyes. “No,” Brandon said, “I think we'll save the poking and prodding for later.”

James said, “Suit yourself,” and he started to follow Sanders out the conference room door.

“Oh, James,” Brandon said, prompting the cop to turn around. “Try not to need us, okay? Not for another couple of days, anyway.”

 

I
T COULDN'T POSSIBLY
have been six hours. Six minutes, maybe, but six
hours?
No way. Yet, that's what the clock on the nightstand said, and the sunlight streaming through the massive windows verified it. It was all Scott could do to stay conscious in the shower when they got home. After that he'd collapsed in the king-size bed, and that was the end of it.

Now, seemingly seconds later, it was eleven in the morning, and he thought he'd heard his name.

“Over here, Scott,” the voice said again. It was his father's, and it sounded delightful.

Wincing against the intrusion, the boy rolled over and burrowed deeper under the covers. “Leave me alone,” he groaned.

“We can't do that,” said another voice.

Something about the tone shot fear through Scott, and he sat up abruptly. God, he hurt. Through his barely open eyes, he saw a cluster of silhouettes in his doorway. “Who are you?”

“Chief Whitestone, Eagle Feather police,” the voice said. “We met earlier this morning. You probably remember Agent Sanders.”

Yeah, sure, he remembered, and after vigorously rubbing his eyes, he could see them all.

“I'm sorry, son,” Brandon said. “This really can't wait.”

Scott adjusted himself against the headboard, and pulled the covers up protectively. “What is it?”

“Mind if we sit down?” Whitestone asked, even as he helped himself to a corner of the bed. “We raided the Flintlock Ranch about two hours ago, and found everything just the way you'd described it, from the bodies in the well to the tunnel in the secret room. What we didn't find was your friend DeHaven.”

Scott looked at Sanders. “I told you he'd get away.”

“We also found the vault you'd described,” Barry went on, “wide open and stripped of everything. Looks like he took his arsenal and nothing else but a few clothes.”

“Get to the point, Chief,” Brandon prompted.

“A quick check of the fingerprints in the cabin show that your Isaac DeHaven can be tied to several other murders over the course of many years, some as recent as a few days ago.”

“No shit,” Scott scoffed.

“I mean in addition to the ones you've witnessed. We do indeed believe that your Isaac DeHaven is a professional killer.”

Scott smiled, in spite of himself, proud to have figured it out.

Sanders stepped forward to take over the narrative. “Just because we can match the fingerprints doesn't mean necessarily that we can trace them. We can put DeHaven at the scene of the other murders, but we still don't have any idea who we might be looking for. We simply don't know what he looks like.”

A sense of dread had begun to bloom in Scott's stomach. When he saw the grimness of his father's expression, the size of the knot doubled.

“They need your help,” Brandon said.

Scott's eyebrows joined in the middle.

“It's simple,” Sanders said. “You
do
know what he looks like. All we want you to do is watch the crowds this afternoon—”

“He'll kill me!” Scott blurted.

“You won't be alone,” Whitestone said. “At least one of my officers will be with you the whole time. If you see DeHaven in the crowd—”

Sherry walked into the room in the middle of the pitch. “Absolutely not,” she said.

“He'll be perfectly safe,” Sanders assured.

Sherry shook her head vehemently. She was dressed for her press conference—recently recast as her victory conference—and looked stunning. “No, perfectly safe is what he'll be if he stays as far away from that madman as possible.”

“Relatively perfectly safe, then,” Sanders said. His annoyance with the interruption was palpable.

Sherry turned to her ex-husband. “Tell them, Brandon.”

Yeah,
Scott thought.
Tell them, Brandon.

The boy's father cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “I said the same thing initially. But I'm afraid there's a darker side to all of this.”

“That's right,” Whitestone said. “These murders that DeHaven has been linked to. It appears that a good portion of them were carried out solely to eliminate witnesses.”

Scott's stomach-knot quadrupled in size.

“What are you saying?” Sherry gasped, but her expression showed that she already knew.

Whitestone looked straight at Scott as he said, “Son, this might be the best and only chance for you to find peace of mind. Ever. As you know, we have every reason to believe that DeHaven will be lurking in that crowd somewhere this afternoon. If you see him, or if we get him on our own, then he's out of business and the good guys have won. If not…” He trailed off.

“I'll never sleep soundly again,” Scott said, finishing the thought for him.

Whitestone sighed and nodded. “I'm afraid that's the way we see it, yes.”

Scott turned that horrible thought over in his mind. He'd seen the coldness with which DeHaven dispatched his enemies, and that was without the frustration of a score to settle. Jesus, he'd never be able to relax. Every stranger passing him on the street, every waiter in a restaurant…

You don't ever want to cross me, kid.

The words echoed through his head. When he looked up, they were all staring at him, waiting for his answer. “This really sucks,” he said, finally.

“Yes, it does,” Whitestone agreed. “Righteously.”

They shook on it, and it was done.

S
COTT FELT LIKE SOMEBODY'S MANNEQUIN.

He stood in the middle of the police station's squad room, his arms outstretched as James Alexander fitted him with a Kevlar vest. The place was packed with police officers now, apparently representing a number of jurisdictions, judging from the various styles of uniforms. The one thing they all had in common was a black stripe across their badges, in deference to Jesse Tingle.

“I'm really sorry about your friend,” Scott said to James. “I feel kind of responsible.”

“Thanks for the thought,” James said, drawing the Velcro tight under the boy's armpits, “but you're not the least bit responsible. Jesse died doing his job, and it was a job he'd have cheerfully laid down his life for.”

Scott looked at his dad and got a sad smile in return.

James stepped back to admire his work. “Okay, that looks about right. You'll wear that under a coat.”

“That'll stop a rifle bullet?” Brandon asked.

“It's what we all wear,” James said. It was an artful dodge that neither of them pursued.

“What about his head?” Brandon said. “Don't you have a helmet or something to protect his head?”

Scott was horrified. “I'm not wearing a helmet, Dad. People will think I'm a retard.”

“I'm thinking about your safety, son. Besides, you've got to cover that blue hair with
something.
”

“I'll wear a hat, then. A ski cap. But I'm not wearing a helmet.” All he could think of were those kids in his elementary school who wore modified football helmets to keep from hurting themselves.

James explained, “We're playing the odds, here, Mr. O'Toole. First of all, even the vest is overkill. Merely a precaution. That said, most killers go for the body because it's a higher-probability kill shot—a bigger target. Chances are, to even better his chances, a killer will be using hollow points or devastators, which are designed to open up and slow down on impact. Without a vest, it's almost a guaranteed kill shot. With the vest, it's nothing more than a bruise. Okay, a really big bruise, but one you can walk away from. Finally, by keeping the vest under his outer garment, we make the body that much more attractive a target. Does that make sense?”

As the cop made his little speech, Scott felt his skin contracting under the vest as it reacted to the thought of being pierced with a bullet.

“I want to go with him,” Brandon said.

James laughed. “I never suspected otherwise.” He handed another vest to Brandon. “This one's yours, just in case. I figure, after all you've been through this past week, I won't be able to squeeze a piece of paper between you two. I'm a little surprised Mrs. O'Toole isn't here.”

Brandon removed his jacket and slipped the vest over his head, mimicking what he'd seen done to his son just moments before. “Here's some life-saving advice for you, James: never let my ex-wife hear you refer to her as Mrs. anything. She's
Doctor
O'Toole, and proud of it.” He and Scott were the only ones who found the comment funny. “But she won't be joining us,” Brandon concluded. “She'll be somewhere around City Hall, doing a press conference.”

And what a battle that had been. When the decision had been made for Scott to help on this crazy mission, Sherry had wanted to cancel the press conference to stay with her son. “He's the one they'll want to talk to, anyway,” she'd said, back in Scott's bedroom. “I'm staying with him every step of the way.”

“No, you're not,” Sanders said. “I'm willing to let one of you come along with him—like I've even got a choice—but not both. And with all due respect, Dr. O'Toole, I don't need a celebrity face drawing attention to what we're doing. Please don't argue, because it's not negotiable. The boy gets to decide whether he goes in the first place, but after that, everything else is up to me.” There was absolutely no room for argument.

“So, what am I supposed to do?” Sherry asked, her dignity bruised. The dismissive shrug she got from Sanders didn't help.

“Do the press conference,” Brandon urged, drawing a confused look from his ex. “Tell them that Scott isn't ready to face the cameras yet, and that you're there to answer their questions. Somebody's got to do it, and God knows I don't want it to be me. Do it for your fans. They must be worried sick for you. Let them know how everything turned out.”

Sherry clearly wasn't comfortable being on the stage alone. “But this isn't about me,” she said.

Brandon smiled. “You know, I don't think I've ever heard you say that before.” A week ago, those words would have started a war. Now, they were just gentle teasing and Sherry smiled, too. “What else are you going to do? Just pace around the chalet? Go and face your public.”

Looking back on it now, Brandon felt pity for her—not the spiteful pity that he'd vocalized so many times in the past, but the genuine article. Here she was trying to work her way back into her son's life as quickly as possible, and at a moment of crisis, she was being shut out by the Secret Service. It had to be a tough pill. If nothing else worthwhile came out of the nightmare of the past week, maybe Brandon and Sherry had finally found the knob that would allow them to dial down the acrimony between them.

“Do you think they'll let me play my guitar if I go on the
Today
show?” Scott asked, squirming under his vest in an effort to make it more comfortable.

The randomness of the question made Brandon laugh. “Well, I guess that's just something we'll have to negotiate when the time comes.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?” It was Chief Whitestone. He stood atop a desk, his hair nearly brushing the ceiling tiles. The room fell quiet. Scott found a desk chair to sit in. “Thank you, folks. As you all know, we've got a big crowd forming up out there, and if I estimate correctly, about half of them are cops.”

For the next five minutes, Whitestone outlined in detail the events surrounding the president's speech. First, the mayor would talk, followed by the governor, who would then introduce the president. The officials gathered in the squad room right now had but one purpose: to be as visible as possible. “If anyone in that crowd so much as thinks an unfriendly thought, I want them to feel squirmy.”

From there, the speech devolved into logistics and trivia. He talked about entrance points and exit points, and about all manner of official detail that couldn't keep Scott's attention. His mind drifted back over the days he'd endured. The image of Cody Jamieson's frozen corpse being torn to shreds haunted him. Cody deserved a better end than that. So did the two guys in the dry well, but at least their bodies were recovered.

A nudge to Scott's shoulder lurched him back to the present. An entire roomful of people stared at him.

“You slept through your introduction,” Brandon said, his voice a loud stage whisper. People laughed. “The chief wants you to stand up.”

Cringing at the redness that flooded his cheeks, Scott stood and gave a little wave.

“Now, if he can stay awake through this exercise, young Mr. O'Toole will try to spot our man in the crowd. Officer James Alexander—wave, James, so everyone can see you.”

Alexander smirked. It was an ongoing joke between the chief and him. In a crowd this white, no one could possibly miss him.

“If Scott sees our man, he'll tell James, and James, in turn, will put the word out on the radio. We'll move in and get him. The rest of you just please keep an eye out for anything that strikes you as suspicious.”

A murmur of assent rumbled through the crowd.

“One last point,” Whitestone concluded, “and then we can get out of here and go to work. I don't want to sound patronizing, but I think this needs to be said: there's a big difference between vigilance and paranoia, okay? We have reason to believe that
one
man may be trying to kill the president of the United States this afternoon. One. That means, we'll have roughly five thousand other people out there who want nothing more than a distant view and maybe a handshake. I'd just as soon not send those hands back home broken.”

 

S
HERRY STOOD IN FRONT
of the enormous window, watching the skiers below. Standing in the wash of sunlight on this cloudless day, she was uncomfortably warm, despite the thirty-degree reading on the digital thermometer. The glare off the snow was as beautiful as it was blinding.

The old anger was returning, grinding in her belly like a three-day fast. Intellectually, she knew it was unreasonable, but there was something about the reuniting of Team Bachelor that made her feel empty and angry. Of course she was thrilled that Scott had survived and was healthy, and that moment of warmth as she and Brandon both comforted him there in the police station was not lost on her. It was like a taste of the poisonous fruit.

For a while there, during the darkest hours, she'd felt that she'd rediscovered her love for Brandon, and that maybe, just
maybe
they might be able to start the process of mending as a couple; but now, as she looked back on it, she realized that they'd merely shared an emotional buoy in the midst of a raging storm. As the wind died and the skies cleared, she'd once again be left alone as Team Bachelor motored off again.

Hearing the brief summary of Scott's adventures, Sherry marveled at her son's nerve, his pluck. Given the same circumstances, Sherry knew that she'd have panicked on the first day and made some stupid fatal error. Her admiration for the young man whom she'd so recently found annoying and irresponsible now bordered on awe. She wondered when he'd grown up. How could she have spent so much time in the presence of a budding young man, yet have seen only an irresponsible boy? How could she have missed what Brandon had so plainly seen all along?

Thinking these things, watching the antics of the skiers through the window, Sherry Carrigan O'Toole caught a glimpse of the mistakes she'd made, and tasted for the first time the price she would have to pay. She'd squandered her one and only opportunity to witness the metamorphosis of boy to man. The years lost would never return, and it was entirely possible that the threadlike bond that linked mother and son would never strengthen.

The realization took her breath away. In chasing what appeared to be the opportunity of a lifetime, she'd blown the opportunity to share a life; she'd abdicated it to a man she'd once thought so naïve, but now appeared to have it all. He alone would know the
real
story of Scott's adventure in the woods—the details that would dribble out a little at a time over the course of months and years. Sherry would learn only the headlines, just as she'd learned only the headlines for the past six years.

That anger brewing in her gut, she realized, wasn't anger at all. It was envy. A raging jealousy that she'd chosen a route that would leave her to be only an observer in Scott's life, the emotional equivalent of a benevolent aunt. It was so much easier when she could hate Brandon, but now she didn't even have that anymore. She had only loneliness.

“Okay,” she said to the room. “The pity party's over.” She pulled three tissues from the box on the end table and dabbed her eyes. The last thing she needed right now was a mascara emergency.

At least the press conference would be fun, she thought. And packed to the gills, thanks to all the news crews who would already be on hand for the president's Founder's Day gig. What had so recently been billed as a plea for patience in the face of overwhelming odds could now address wholesale triumph over those odds. She couldn't wait. She might not be able to do much else for Scotty, but at least she could help to make him famous.

Even though her appointment with the cameras didn't begin until 3:30, after the president had concluded his remarks, Larry was supposed to pick her up at 2:00 to deliver her to City Hall before the Secret Service shut down everything at 2:45. From then until the president was out of the area, no one would be allowed to enter or leave any building within a two-block radius of the bandstand in the square.

Now, if only Larry would get here. If there was one thing about Larry that consistently pissed her off, it was his total disregard for promptness. He'd sent a message through the front desk that he would pick her up and bring her to City Hall himself, but it was already after two. Honest to God, she couldn't count the number of times he'd raised her blood pressure over the years—

Finally, the doorbell rang.

“Well, it's about time,” she said. Grabbing her coat off the back of the chair where she'd left it, she climbed the two stairs to the foyer and opened the door.

 

D
OWNTOWN
E
AGLE
F
EATHER
looked like the Fourth of July with vanilla frosting. Red, white and blue bunting draped the bandstand gazebo in the middle of the square, continuing the theme that stretched across the front of the speakers' scaffold that had temporarily replaced the steps of the public library. According to comments Scott had overheard, the president would announce his reelection bid at this speech, thus explaining the huge throngs of people. In the bandstand, a cluster of musicians played a piece that Scott recognized as a march, but he didn't know which one. To his ear, marches pretty much all sounded alike.