Supreme Justice (22 page)

Where were Eaton and Cribbs?

And where were the fucking cops?

As if in answer to that last question, a distant siren teased him.

“Gabe, you can see we’ve got a standoff here. Let’s take it down a couple of notches, and you can tell me where Amy is and explain to the world how the tragedy that befell your daughter inspired your righteous actions. That you were a patriot in this.”

“I
am
a patriot . . .”

“You are. You think I don’t share your views. But I do.
I
was the bleeding-heart liberal all these years, remember. You’ve done a real service, exposing what Jackson and these other fascist justices did to our country.”

Jackson gaped at Reeder while Sloan said, “You are goddamned right I did.”

“So let Amy go. Let me go. Let me go to Amy. And tell the world your story. But not the story of a madman. The story of a patriot.”

Sloan swallowed, eyes still glittering. “I’m not that easily manipulated, old friend. Goddamn you, anyway.”

The siren seemed not so distant now.

“You ruined things from the start,” Sloan continued, “analyzing that damn security footage. And, Jesus, did you
have
to talk Harrison out of appointing liberal replacements?”

“That’s what you get, Gabe, not bringing me in at the start of your coup.”

Sloan almost yelled in Jackson’s ear: “You are going to
die
because of
this
do-gooder, Your Honor! Because he’s the one who made a third justice death mandatory. Must be done, to make sure what I’ve accomplished was for a reason.”

Jackson found the nerve to growl, “A
reason
?
”

“A reason! I’m fixing what you fucking broke, you dithering piece of shit. My daughter didn’t
have
to die. She wouldn’t have, before you came along. And now a new, more liberal Court will reestablish Roe v. Wade. And all the girls like Kathy, like Amy, will be safe from the interference of old white men like you.”

Reeder said, “You almost certainly have already made that happen. You’ve said I’m your best friend. Do you really want to murder me, or frame me into lethal injection? Do you want to put Amy through that? Haven’t you done enough to her already? Put the gun down, Gabe. It’s over. Hear those sirens? Your window has closed. Let’s stop this right here.”

Rustling trees announced Rogers finally emerging from the woods, coming around the front end of the limo; but she had no shotgun in her grasp. She did have a gun—a Glock . . .

. . . at her temple.

Courtesy of a glowering Walt Eaton.

“We’re not stopping
anything
,
” Eaton said. “I have too much riding on this.”

Rogers gave Reeder a look that mingled apology and fear.

This left Reeder facing two gunmen, each with a human shield, one right in front of him, the other to his left. Chances were, if he killed one, the other would kill him, and Rogers. And the Chief Justice.

And what would happen to Amy?

Help was coming. Should he just wait it out? Stall some more?

“Put the gun on the ground, Peep,” Sloan said, aware of the sirens nearing, and a new sound: a helicopter.

Reeder shot Sloan in the head and blood spatter kissed the Justice’s cheek. Eaton, horrified and amazed, swung his gun away from Rogers’s temple and toward Reeder, but a second head shot ended that ambition, Rogers lurching from Eaton’s grasp as he fell like a bag of cement from a high window.

Sloan, a hole in his forehead, eyes wide with surprise, slid down to sit slumped against the limo like a kid in the corner taking a timeout. The Chief Justice moved away and stood slouching, with a hand on his forehead as if taking his own temperature. He seemed to be trying not to throw up.

Rogers rushed to Reeder, who said, “Go inside and make sure Mrs. Jackson is all right.”

With a nod, she went off to do that.

Reeder approached the Chief Justice. “Are you all right, sir? My apologies for some of my remarks.”

Jackson’s face was the color of wet newspaper. “My God . . . we survived it. Thanks to you, we survived it. You handled him . . . handled him
very
well, Mr. Reeder. Was he
really
your friend?”

“Apparently not,” Reeder said.

Soon Rogers came running back, and she was holding off tears. “Jess Cribbs is in there with her head caved in. Fucking Eaton must have pistol-whipped her. I don’t get a pulse. Mrs. Jackson was locked in a closet. She’s okay. I’ve called 911, but . . .”

She trailed off because the sirens were on them, the flashing lights, too, as well as the churning blades of a chopper.

“Oh, Joe,” Rogers said, clutching his arm. “You took such a terrible risk.”

“You were safe. The Justice, too. A head shot stops all motor skills.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean . . .
Amy
. With Sloan dead, how do we find Amy?”

“I think I know where she is,” he said. “But even if I’m wrong, she’ll be fine.”

“She will?”

He nodded. “One thing Gabe Sloan wouldn’t do is hurt his goddaughter.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m the people reader, remember? Goddamnit, I
hope
I am . . .”

He sat suddenly, almost collapsing, onto the sloping lawn. He began to cry, a sobbing man in the company of so many littered corpses.

Rogers leaned down and put a hand on his shoulder. “No time for self-pity, Joe.”

The lights of the helicopter were strobing the area as it set down on the street. She was having to talk over its churning blades.

“If you know where your daughter is,” Rogers yelled at him, “I think our ride is here.”

“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Thirty-Fifth President of the United States of America, former senator and representative from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Section 45, Grid U-35, Arlington National Cemetery.

TWENTY-TWO

The chopper had barely touched down when its back door whammed open and three Kevlar-clad agents clambered out, pistols at the ready. They closed in on the two subjects standing near four fallen, in the apparent aftermath of a shooting. Uniformed police from patrol cars went to Justice Jackson, who hugged his arms to himself as if chilled, down where the driveway met the street.

Reeder and Rogers had their hands up, though the latter held her FBI ID wallet open in her right hand.

“Special Agent Rogers!” she called, working to get over the copter noise.

The front passenger-side door of the helicopter swung open, and Assistant Director Fisk stepped out and down, her perfect dark hair barely impacted by the slowing blades, though her gray pantsuit flapped like a flag.

Fisk came over, weaving her way through and around the bodies.

“Jesus God,” she muttered, eyeing the dead. Then louder: “What the hell’s going on here?”

Though Reeder was in something like shock in the aftermath of the shooting, he remained driven by the need to get to his daughter. He took a step forward to meet Fisk, and the Kevlar-vested agents moved with him.

Rogers, in better shape to do the briefing, cut in front of Reeder, holding him back like a crossing guard. She filled Fisk in quickly but thoroughly, the AD wearing an astounded expression but asking no questions.

That expression may be what prompted Chief Justice Jackson to interrupt, pointing to the dead Sloan, saying, “That man confessed to killing Henry and Rodolfo.” Then he pointed to Reeder. “
That
man saved my life.”

Fisk swung to the agents who still had the drop on Reeder: “
Lower those weapons!
Mr. Reeder, we all owe you a debt of thanks.”

“I’ll collect right now,” he said. “I need to get to my daughter.”

Rogers touched Reeder’s arm and said, “Let me . . .”

In a swift but businesslike fashion, she filled Fisk in on that aspect.

Then Fisk asked Reeder, “Will your daughter be in a hostage situation?”

His breathing was almost back to normal. “Doubtful. Sloan was her godfather. I don’t think he would hurt Amy. My opinion is that he and Eaton were the key conspirators, with few, if any, confederates at large.”

“But Sloan
did
kidnap her,” Fisk said.

“Yes, though I imagine he did so under false pretenses, not force.”

Fisk thought for a moment. “I’m sending one of my SWAT agents with you. You need to leave the weapon you used in this firefight here at the crime scene, Mr. Reeder, but we’ll fix you up with another sidearm. Agent Rogers, do you have a sidearm?”

“Not presently.”

“Go get yourself one, and Mr. Reeder.”

“Yes, Director.”

Rogers went off to do that, and Fisk gave Reeder a tight smile and stuck out her hand, which he shook.

“Go get your daughter, Mr. Reeder. And by the way . . .”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for your service to our country . . . even if the President you saved
was
a jackass.”

She grinned at him, and the surprise of it was enough to get a smile out of him, as well.

Within scant minutes, Reeder, Rogers, and a Kevlar-vested agent boarded the Sikorsky 60.

Fisk leaned in to tell the pilot to fire up the engine and to “take Mr. Reeder here where he wants to go. But keep me informed.”

The pilot nodded while Fisk returned to personally supervising the crime scene, which was already turning into a carnival of lights, bodies live and dead, and technology.

Reeder was in the front rider’s seat with Rogers right behind him and the SWAT agent next to her. Rogers and Reeder had both been on copters before and quickly got with the program, closing their doors and donning headsets, the latter making in-flight conversation possible.

The fortyish pilot, who in his time had seen everything twice, asked, “Where to?”

He might have been a cabdriver.

Reeder said, “Shenandoah Mountain ridge.”

“Maybe a little more specific, Mr. Reeder?”

“US Highway Thirty-Three, Rawley Springs. Emergency situation.”

“Understood.”

The pilot eased back on the stick and the chopper slowly lifted. When they wer
e above the electrical wires and the treetops, the seasoned flier hit the throttle, hurtling the aircraft through the night sky, southwest bound.

“ETA?” Reeder asked him.

“How long’s it take you by car?”

“Three hours. A little more.”

“We’ll be there under two.”

Reeder’s stomach did a flip, and it had nothing to do with fear of flying. “Can you make it an hour?”

“In daylight, no wind, maybe. But at night?”

“My daughter’s been kidnapped. We’re headed to where I think she’s being kept.”

The pilot said nothing but goosed the throttle and the air speed gauge went from 170 knots to north of two hundred. They were already out of the DC metro area, the ribbon of headlights that was I-95 disappearing as the chopper turned farther west.

Rogers’s voice came through the headset: “What’s our destination?”

Reeder said, “Sloan has a rustic cabin in the mountains off US Highway Thirty-Three. Been in his family for generations.”

“I heard you two talking about it. No cell service, no TV?”

“Right. I’m betting that’s where Sloan put her.”

“Put her . . . how?”

“Amy and Gabe were close—he knew how down I am about her and that Landon kid. I figure he showed up on her doorstep and gave her a birthday present—weekend at the cabin with Bobby. Maybe even said it was my idea, that I’d come to my senses.”

“Would Amy have driven there herself?”

“She doesn’t have a car, and neither does the Landon kid.”

“Gabe drove her.”

“No task force business last night. Yes. He drove her.”

How sure of himself he sounded.

Tell that to his stomach . . .

They flew through a darkness only occasionally leavened by the lights of some hamlet. He seemed to exist in an enclosed limbo where dashboard glow was his only reality, where his confidence that he was right, and his hope for Amy’s welfare, could not burn bright enough to light the way through all this goddamned darkness.

An eternity passed, and the pilot said, “Should be close to where you want to be.”

Reeder’s heart raced as he looked into nothing. Then the pilot toggled a switch and, from the underside of the chopper, a floodlamp spilled light, illuminating a two-lane road.

The pilot said, “Highway Thirty-Three.”

Straining against his seat belt, Reeder searched for any recognizable landmark. Not a lot in the way of towns or businesses out this way.

The pilot said, “Rawley Springs, up ahead.”

Reeder pointed out at the darkness and said, “Just outside of town, highway curves left, but a dirt road veers off right.”

“That’s the way to the cabin?”

“That’s the way.”

They flew over the unincorporated little town, likely waking up more than a few residents.

When the chopper found the dirt road, the pilot followed it through a wooded area and up a mountainous ridge.

Perhaps ten minutes later Reeder pointed.
“There.”

The thickness of trees left the pilot little room for error as they followed the dirt road into a small clearing, where Sloan’s cabin sat on a flat spot near the top of the ridge.

“Can you land there?” Reeder asked.

“Tight,” the pilot said.

“Try that.” Reeder pointed out a spot beside the cabin about where Sloan usually parked his car—just big enough for the Sikorsky. Maybe.

As the chopper descended, the spotlight turned night to noon around the rustic two-story cabin. The front door flew open and a figure emerged—Bobby Landon in a pair of boxer shorts, shielding his eyes with a raised forearm, not just from the brightness but dust the rotors were kicking up.

Okay, the kid was all right, but where was Amy?

“That’s a friendly,” Reeder told their FBI chaperone via headset mic. “I see no sign of vehicles. Patti, I think they’re alone . . . but stay frosty.”

“Copy that,” she said.

The helicopter touched down and settled, and as the pilot cut the engine, Reeder jerked off the headset, released his seat belt, and threw open his door. Behind him, Rogers did the same.

When the trio stepped down, both Rogers and the SWAT guy had their handguns poised, but Reeder didn’t bother. Everything was all right. It had to be.

But where was Amy?

And then there she was, belting up a shorty robe, her hair tousled, no makeup, irritation clenching her pretty features, rushing out barefoot.

“
Daddy
!
” she blurted.

Then reeled back as she saw Rogers and the other armed agent approaching, though her father was in the lead, patting the air gently with his palms.

“Everything’s okay, sweetie . . . Are you alone up here?”

“Just Bobby and me . . . Goddamnit, Daddy, isn’t this a little
extreme,
even for
you?
”

And he went to her laughing, crying, taking her into his arms, holding her close, and she squirmed at first, but then, for all her confused irritation, she was hugging him back.

Rogers edged up to him. “I’ll get word to your ex-wife! And I’ll fill Bobby in. Let’s take it inside.”

Reeder nodded to his partner gratefully and, with his arm around his daughter, walked the girl inside Gabriel Sloan’s cabin. Sidearm holstered, the SWAT guy and a confused, rattled Bobby were bringing up the rear.

In the hours and days to come, with Rogers helming the task force, Reeder would learn that Sloan and Eaton were indeed the chief conspirators. That former Fairfax County Deputy Eaton had recruited Granger, Brooks, and Marvin and funded their robberies, by way of creating fall guys. That Eaton’s motivation was money and career advancement, and that he’d murdered Granger. That Sloan had indeed given Amy a “birthday present” of a weekend away at his cabin.

And of course Reeder would have to tell his daughter the awful truth about her godfather.

But for now, nothing else mattered but Amy.