Senator Love (26 page)

A GREY-HAIRED couple got on the elevator with her. She
smiled thinly, let them push the button, and stood against the rear panel as it
descended.

On the lobby floor, she hung back and waited until they got
out. Then she moved, walking slowly, exhibiting herself. Her check-in method
was to pay in advance and there was no need for her to stop at the desk. This
time she did, asking the clerk for the time. Peripherally, she saw Bunkie. He
was sitting in a corner, a magazine held up to partially conceal him. When she
was certain he had made her, she headed out the side door toward the parking
lot.

She pushed through the door, noting as she angled her body
that he made no move to rise and follow her. Cates, she knew, was waiting in
his car at a point in front of the hotel that afforded him the best view of any
of Bunkie's potential actions. She assumed that Bunkie's car, too, was parked
at curbside. The objective for Cates was to keep the man in view at all times,
while giving him enough distance for him to think he was safe enough to make
his move. Apparently, now that he knew who she was, he would save that for
another time.

Almost at the moment she approached her car, her cop's
sense of things awry assailed her. She slowed her steps, studying the vehicle.
Then she saw it. The inside lock button was raised. Had she been careless when
she left the car? Highly unlikely. She had equipment in her glove compartment,
a walkie-talkie. Under the dash was the police radio and car telephone. No way
would she have left the door open. Force of habit. Someone had hooked it open.

Her mind focused on that fact and she could feel the
adrenaline pumping. Was someone inside? Who? There was no time to analyze. She
prepared her body, which surged with alertness, every cell ready to react.

Hesitating for a brief moment, she touched the mechanism in
her brassiere, felt it activate, then opened the door to her car on the
driver's side. Before she slid in, her peripheral vision caught the picture.
Someone was, indeed, lying on the floor of the car. It was a tricky moment.

There were no doubts now. Frances had snookered them.
Quickly, she noted that there were no people in the parking lot. Only cars.
Good, she thought. No interference. The time was now. She bent forward, put her
key in the ignition, then straightened, calculating the moment. Her fist went
up to her neck at precisely the moment when the scarf swished over her head.
She felt the pressure on her fist and windpipe as the scarf was pulled taut,
tightening as strong hands pulled at either end of a loop.

She heard the grunting sound, distinctly female, although
the grip seemed masculine. Body to body, she had been taught—the key to
overpowering an opponent was leverage and concentration. With her free hand,
she grabbed a handful of hair, pulled back, heard the squeal of pain. With her
fisted hand she pushed, feeling the grasp loosen and scarf loop widen. Then she
slid under the loop and twisted her body, both arms free now, as she rose to
her knees on the front seat and tightly grasped both of Frances' wrists.

In a quick twist, she reversed the woman's body. Frances
was strong. No question about that. But not as skilled in defense. In a few
seconds, despite the awkwardness of her position, Fiona had both her arms
twisted behind her and was tying her wrists firmly behind her with the scarf.

In a futile effort to get free, Frances had used her head
as a weapon. Fiona had avoided it, and after the knot was tied, she pulled the
woman's head back until it literally hung over the front seat and the woman was
grunting in pain. Then she quickly rolled over to the rear seat, unholstered
her pistol, and still holding a handful of hair put the muzzle of the gun against
the woman's forehead.

"Give me the pleasure, lady," Fiona said
breathlessly. Frances had continued to struggle, but the warning froze her. In
the light, she saw the woman's frightened eyes. "Funny how even the worst
of them hate to die," Fiona snapped.

She pushed the woman facedown on the rear seat, removed a
pair of cuffs from her shoulder bag, closed them on her wrists, undid the
scarf, then looped it around the cuffs and, forcing the woman to bend her
knees, tied the scarf to her ankles.

Then she pushed the woman on her side, jumped over to the
front seat and started the car. Her body was still charged as she backed the
car out of its space and headed out of the lot.

"Just you and me, babe," she muttered, angling
the rearview mirror to see the woman immobilized on the back seat. To see
behind her, she glanced at the sideview mirror. No sign of Cates. He was off
following Bunkie. Good. This one was for her. And Sam.

"Real smart-ass," Fiona said, looking at the
woman.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Mine to know. Yours to find out."

She headed the car north along Route One toward the
District of Columbia. Again she checked the sideview mirror. No sign of Cates.

"Had you going," Frances said after a long and
deliberate silence on Fiona's part. The woman needed to simmer. Fiona's own
plan was still vague. Above all, she needed the woman to talk up a storm.

"You have the right to remain silent—" Fiona
began.

"We're getting formal, are we?" Frances sneered.

Fiona completed the spiel, getting it on tape just in case,
knowing that the legal niceties would inevitably be gummed up by the lawyers.
Okay, baby, Fiona silently urged the woman. Talk to my tits.

"You people and your little games," Frances said.
"Fools, the pack of you."

Fiona let silence do its work. She said nothing for a long
time, a psychological ploy, feeding on the woman's natural anxiety. Finally,
she said, "Blaming all this on poor, sad Bunkie." Fiona shook her
head in mock ridicule.

"Not over yet," Frances said. Incredulously,
Fiona thought she saw the woman smile.

"For you it is," Fiona said.

No mistaking it now. The woman was smiling.

"Back to square one, lady. No real evidence."
Frances giggled. "And old hot-cock's career goes down the tube."

"Beware a woman scorned," Fiona said.

"Scorned? Me? You've got it wrong, lady."

"Have I?"

"I was the only one he loved. The first and
only."

"That's a laugh."

"They didn't have any rights to him. They were
usurpers. Who were they supposed to answer to?" She laughed. "They
deserved it." Off and running, Fiona thought, relieved.

"Why not Nell?"

"I would never interfere with the sanctity of the
marriage bond." When she said this, there was not the slightest hint of
sarcasm in her tone.

It was convoluted, of course. But the woman was obviously
mad, answering only to her own skewered logic.

"If you didn't miss the ankle bracelet we might never
have identified Betty Taylor."

"Nobody's perfect," Frances said. "Little
black cunt. She was easy."

"Easy?"

"Got her just like I nearly got you. In back of the
apartment house, where she parked her car. Got rid of everything she owned in
the city dump. Fourteen years and you hadn't a clue."

"You strangled her?"

"She was gone in no time at all. No time at all."

"Swimming pool and the rain fucked you up," Fiona
said. She pressed her breast, felt the tiny recording purring.

"The fact was they came too close to the property line
when they built that pool. They were illegal. I measured it."

"There you go. Nobody's perfect."

The road grew more congested as they headed north. She cut into
the spaghetti curves at the edge of Arlington and headed past the Pentagon
toward Memorial Bridge. Spring buds had just exploded into leaf along the
parkland beside the highway and the Potomac was slate grey without its normal
muddy brown caste.

"Tell me about Harriet," Fiona asked.

"That pig," Frances muttered. "I didn't even
want to dirty my hands. I counted her as an infatuation. I used to think about
them together, her stinking of horseshit. I just chased her into a tree. Pure
panic. I enjoyed the harassment. Never laid a hand on her."

"But you missed Judy Peters," Fiona goaded.

"I was going to follow her to Europe, the little
bitch. But I had a big deal going. I canceled out. Then when she came back, I
burned out on her."

"Had to feel the white heat of it?"

"Something like that."

Then Frances grew silent.

"Where are you taking me?" she said after a
while.

Fear of death, Fiona thought. She had seen it when she had
put the pistol muzzle against her temple. She saw it now. No question. The
woman was a psychopath. And yet she feared death. Was that a contradiction? At
that point another idea had popped into her mind. Resisting arrest. Bang bang.
She tried to will it away.

"Why, after all that time, did you do Helga?"

"Kraut pussy. I thought it was over for old hot-cock.
I really did. Then when I saw him and her together I knew it hadn't. She was a
greedy little pig. I knew she was in the market to buy. Got it right off the
computer. I caught her in the ladies' room they had set up in Mount Vernon and
told her I had this piece of property to show her, a real deal, a steal. She
liked that. Picked her up a block from the Embassy. Dug the hole the night
before."

"In the rain."

"Yeah, the rain, the damned rain. Was good for
digging, though. Nice and soft."

Frances began to laugh, a kind of cackle, hardly normal.

"What are you laughing at?"

"She put the idea in my head about pinning it all on
Bunkie."

"How?"

"That day when I picked her up—to show her up—on the
pretext of showing her some property, we had a real talk, us girls. She told me
about her affair with Sam. After all, we did have him in common. All of us. You
and me, too."

The remark curdled Fiona's stomach. All of us, she repeated
to herself. How could he have loved all of us?

"What about the idea?"

"She told me about how Bunkie had told her it had to
end. She was upset about it. But she understood. The thing that upset her the
most was being told to do it by Bunkie. It was really just a coincidence."

"What was?"

"Him and me onto the same thing. And just about at the
same time." She giggled. "Only I made sure it was permanent."

"Killing them?" Fiona said, mostly for the
benefit of the machine purring next to her right breast.

"You got it. And they deserved what they got."

"Then you decided my time had come."

"At first I thought, 'She's just a cop, good for a
quirky quickie.' You know, doing-it-while-you-wear-your-gun kind of
thing."

Fiona's hand went up to her breast. Shut that damned
recording off, she told herself, but she made no move to stop it.

"You've got a dirty mind," Fiona said. Again, it
was mostly for the recorder's benefit. Who could possibly understand?

"Do I?"

"You spotted my partner—you knew it was all a scam to
flush you out. Motivate you to do what we believed you did to the others."

The woman paused, then giggled again. "Big surprise,
huh?"

What did that mean? Fiona wondered, feeling strangely
uncomfortable. Had she enough on tape? Enough to satisfy them? Was it time to
turn it off? More important, was it enough for her?

She turned onto Memorial Bridge, saw the bronze horses'
rear ends glistening in the sun. To reach headquarters she would have followed
the curving road to Constitution then headed toward the Hill. Instead, she took
another turn, which brought the car back under Memorial Bridge, leading toward
Hains Point.

From the rearview mirror, she saw Frances struggling to
raise her chin to see out the window.

"Where are we going?" she asked again.

Fiona did not answer. Instead she parked the car in a
deserted spot along the curb. Ahead she could see the fountain spraying water
in the middle of the Potomac.

"If you knew it was a trap, why did you walk into
it?" Fiona asked. She turned to look at the woman, lying awkwardly on her
side, her eyes feral and malevolent.

"Because it had to be done," Frances said, as if
it was the most elementary bit of knowledge. "You had no rights to Sam. I
had to set things straight."

"By killing me?"

"Of course. You know that."

It was getting too close to the bone, Fiona decided.
Irrelevant to the confession. Still, she could not bring herself to stop the
recorder. Then, suddenly, it was too late.

"You think you could fool me?" Frances chortled
with contempt. "You can't deny it, Miss Cop. You and he were getting it on
and it was the real thing. That had to be stopped."

"So here you are. Caught in the act," Fiona said
with some bravado. Only then did she cut the recorder.

"Your word against mine," Frances said.
"Bunkie, on the other hand, is in deep shit."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Bring me in. I'm ready to tell my story."

Fiona felt her anger mounting. This was a crazy woman. Why
then was she taking so much time with her? She had the confession on tape.
Surely it would be enough to put the woman away. A good lawyer could plea
bargain her into an institution.

"What story?"

"You'd like to know, wouldn't you?"

"You just told me the story."

She was tempted to tell her about the recorder.

"But not about Bunkie and the jewels," Frances
teased.

"What about them?"

"Interested, aren't you?" She giggled again, reflecting
an inner hysteria. "I'll make you a deal."

"No deals."

"I'll let you have Sam. Sam forever. Sam your true
love. No more Bunkies to give you the old Dear-John."

It was madness talking, spewing out the distorted logic of
a twisted mind. And yet, there was something in it that was too compelling to
resist.