Tomahawk (42 page)

“It's consistent with the pattern of short flights. When's the report due out?”

“Next week.”

“Let me have what you got now in rough. We got Block I missiles going to the fleet right now.”

Manhurin agreed to overnight-express him their preliminary notes, then hung up. Dan sat back. Maybe that night in the snowstorm hadn't been a complete waste.

At 1700, the bar on the Hill was filled with pols and staff members, reporters and lobbyists, jackets off, ties loosened. Ceiling fans beat hopelessly at cigar smoke. He found a booth where he could watch the door. At twenty
after, Sandy Cottrell dusted rain off her hat and shook her hair out. She looked around, saw his lifted hand, and threaded her way toward him. Faces turned, and she called back greetings, but not as obstreperously as she usually did. She looked drawn and somehow subdued as she slid in opposite him. “Sorry I'm late. A lot's been happening in my life.”

“How's the new job working out? Kinematics, was that it? You sounded unhappy with it.”

“I was. It's Kinetic Solutions, and the job is past tense.”

“Gee, I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Don't be. I left voluntarily. I'm a free agent at the moment. Rog wants me back, but I'm holding off on that, too. Till I get a couple of things straightened out.”

The waiter stopped at their table. She ordered a Perrier and twist. Dan asked for a draft. When he left, she said, “I don't understand why you called. You didn't seem very interested the last time we got together. Though my recollection may be a bit fuzzy.”

“It's not exactly a date,” Dan said. He sucked a breath, then hurled himself in. “Do you remember my Christmas party? The girl who was there?” She nodded, and he went on to tell her about the engagement and then about Kerry's murder. She lost the suspicious look halfway through. “So I'm sorry if I was rude to you at the reception. We were going to get married. And now she's dead.”

Their drinks came. He actually had his hands on the cool curved glass when he remembered. Said to the waiter, “What's this?”

“What you ordered, sir. Miller draft?”

He almost said, “Oh. Okay,” especially since Cottrell was squinting at him again. And he wanted a beer; he
needed
a beer. But he made himself say, “My mistake. I'll pay for it, but could you take it away and bring me a coffee instead? Thanks.”

The waiter said sure, as if people did that every day, and left. Dan told her, “Sorry, I'm still… confused, I guess. Anyway, that's where my life is at the moment.” He leaned back, wishing he'd never have to tell the story again.

“Jesus, I'm sorry. And the cops have no idea who killed her?”

“I'm not saying it's their fault, but—Christ, they had two hundred and thirty murders in this city last year. There're only about a dozen detectives. They're not going to find him.”

A suit leaned over the table. “Sandy, hi, you gonna help us out on the Bialas hearing?”

“Oh, I'm on personal time now, all right? Call me at Rog's office next week; we'll talk then.” He left and Cottrell frowned. “Trial Lawyers Association Anyway

… Look, I understand now. That's awful. But why did you want to see me?”

“Well, I don't have too many close friends here. I know we didn't… hit it off, and all that, and I'm sorry. I like you, but… Anyway, the point I'm sort of groping around for is that you're the closest thing to a woman friend I've got.”

“Okay, and?”

He glanced around, making sure the lobbyists and staffers were intent on their own concerns, their own deals. “I want you to help me find out who killed her.”

“You mean, like to have Roger call Marion Barry? Put pressure on to get more resources committed—”

“No. I want something else. Something personal.”

Her eyes narrowed again. “Something
personal.
What? Or is this just a ploy for a little stopgap bedtime companionship?”

Lowering his voice, he told her, “No, Sandy. I want you to help me set a trap.”

25

 

 

 

Friday night—6:00 P.M., which in March meant that night was falling.

He stood at the top of the steps once more, looking down again on the place that obsessed him now even in his dreams. Beneath him the canal lay like a walled-in road under the stone battlements of Georgetown University. To his right were the complex of bridges and viaducts that channeled traffic from Arlington and downtown D.C. into the trendy shopping areas around M. Brightly colored patches bobbed in the failing light: hikers, bikers, and joggers. They were leaving now, streaming up past him, abandoning the park to darkness.

Beside him, Cottrell said, “How about giving me a hand with this?”

Shaking off reverie, he hoisted her bike to his shoulder and carried it down the steps. It was light, some kind of titanium-framed wonder. Beneath the viaduct, the shadows were dark as the interior of a submerged wreck. The wind smelled like fear.

Cottrell had seemed subdued when he'd met up with her in the lot of the Rosslyn Marriott Her normally flaming cheeks were like wax. She was dressed in a blue nylon windbreaker and stretch biking pants and high-tops. Her blond frizz was stuffed under a beret. Now she shivered, looking around. “Was this where it happened?”

“Out west, along the path. Got your whistle?”

“Right here. When?”

“They're not sure. Probably not much later than this.”

“Great.” She shivered again and started searching through her pockets. “Not yet, damn it. I need a butt before I do this.”

He paced around, eager to get started, yet at the same time dreading it. He'd imagined this again and again lying through the nights. Imagined hearing Sandy's whistle … running to catch up to her. Then afterward … driving across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the gun spinning away and down into the blue.

But in between, what he actually
did—he
hadn't imagined that, only a confused blur of blood and shouting.

An early cricket sawed in the underbrush. The red star of her cigarette glowed. Then, cursing, she suddenly slapped at her side.

“What's wrong?”

“Got to quit this dirty habit. I just burned a fucking hole in this brand-new jacket, can you believe that?”

“I'm sorry. I'll get you another one.”

“Forget it. You know, I'm not sure why I'm doing this. Is it for thrills? I don't feel thrilled.”

“You did it because I asked you to. And I appreciate it.”

“Sandy's on-call bait service. Making the world safe for little girls to go walking in the dark. Don't lag back, now. I don't want to blow this fucking whistle and not have anything happen.”

“I'll be behind you. And look—”

“What?”

“Once it starts, if anything starts, haul ass and don't look back. I don't want you to get involved.”

“Seems to me I'm about as involved as I can get.”

“I mean—never mind. But if you hear shooting, don't come back.”

“Don't worry about that. I'll be breaking the sound barrier.” She swung herself up, almost toppled, then regained control and wobbled off into the dusk. He waited, letting her get a head start. Then started after her at a brisk walk.

The dark came down like a black blade not long after they left the bridge. It fell over the path and over the trees,
over the canal and the tangled underbrush and scrub that fell away on his left, down toward the river. When the canal ran straight, he could see the pale blue patch that was her back. She was going slowly, sticking to the right-hand side, away from the downslape. But then they'd come to a curve, and he couldn't see her anymore. Then he'd walk faster, fighting the urge to run. His mouth tasted as if he was sucking pennies. The gun was as hard and dangerous-feeling against his ribs as if it were pointed at himself.

Not for the first time, he wondered if this was smart. Ogen had warned him to stick to what he knew.

But it was the only way he could think of that had even the slightest chance of finding whoever had murdered Kerry.

And that wasn't all he wanted to do. He had to admit that, striding along, sweeping his attention from side to side, pricking each shadow with an adrenaline-sharpened stare.

Once he found him, he intended to kill him.

The trouble was, along with the fear, along with the hate, he felt shame. After all the talks with Carl, after Kerry's example, after seeing them stand up against violence—what was he doing? Forging another link in the chain of murder. Not just willing to kill,
eager
to.

But then, as if his brain were some antiquated mechanical computer, it made an almost-audible
kachunk
and called up another template. He wasn't perpetuating violence. He was establishing deterrence. If the police and the courts could no longer mete out justice, what was the alternative? Purely and only a return to the most primitive and most basic system of justice: revenge.

But if he killed those who killed, would the killing ever end?

But if no one punished those who did evil, wouldn't evil rule the world?

Halting for a moment, he listened to the gurgle of black water, the receding crackle of gravel beneath racing tires. His whole body felt heavy, massive, dense as the lead in the bullets he carried.

Which was the right way to view the world?

Was
there a right way to view the world?

Or was it as Szerenci taught—that the universe was simply raw material, to be reinterpreted and refashioned moment by moment by every individual?

Red lights sparkled far off, above the black scrawl of a budding tree. He stared, then blinked, pushing himself into motion again. For a moment, the far-off lights had seemed to move; and his tired brain had taken him, for a second, back to sea.

Abruptly he wished for the familiar hermetic world of a destroyer's bridge. As dark as this, but in a different way. Instead of the pale curve of the towpath, the broad curve of the wake, glowing and whirling with pale fire. Instead of the whine of traffic the roar of the blowers, the gyro drone, the endless chant of the engines humming through the steel hull. Instead of distant streetlights, the slowly moving red and green and white lights of ships. Far at first, then riding with slow majesty closer and closer. Till through raised binoculars they jumped close, other selves moving across the empty deep …

At sea, you ran the bridge team from night orders. Directions simmered so thick over centuries of experience there was no contingency they couldn't cover, from mutiny to meteors.

But there weren't any night orders to tell you how to live. There wasn't any captain. Or if there was, he didn't answer when you hit the buzzer and put your ear to the voice tube. To hear only the hollow sigh of an empty seashell, and the frantic pounding of your pulse.

He stood alone under a wheeling universe of stars. And remembered another night, long ago, and a story Al Evlin had told him on the midwatch. About the holy man who had two disciples who complained they never got enough to eat.

Evlin said the prophet had given them each a chicken. He said, “Go and kill them where nobody can see.” The first man went behind a house and killed the chicken. The second man walked around for two days, carrying the chicken, and then came back. The holy man said, “Why didn't you kill it?” And the man said, “Wherever I go, the chicken sees.”

He'd blinked, there on the doomed
Ryan's
bridge, and wondered, Who was the chicken? He still didn't know.

Sometime later, he came to a straightaway and saw a figure ahead, not on a bike, but standing at the edge of the canal. It was so dark, he wasn't sure it was her till he was only a few steps away. He took his hand off the pistol. “Sandy! You all right?”

“Yeah. Just resting.”

“You sound winded.”

“Fucking cigarettes. But I still gotta have ‘em.” A flame flared. He looked away instantly, but afterimages still pulsated like luminescent jellyfish.

She said hoarsely, “Think this is doing any good?”

“I don't know. I haven't seen anybody yet.”

“I don't think anybody comes here after dark.”

“Maybe not.”

“And if there's never anybody on the fucking trail at night, why would the guys you want come down here? Ever thought of that?”

He didn't answer. She inhaled again, making the cigarette tip glow, and he saw her eyes, squinted closed, ember-lit. Then he heard the
phut-hiss
as the butt hit the water. “Saddling up.”

She disappeared again into the gloom. Too late, he thought of telling her to put her light on. Attract some attention, plus she wouldn't steer herself into the canal. As if she could hear him, he saw the cone of white light come on, narrow, not all that bright, but just enough to light the path ahead.

He checked his watch when they reached the turnaround point at the old wooden locks. Eight o'clock. They sat on the lock, feet dangling. “Man,” she said, “I'm wheezing. That's the next thing, cutting these out. Every one I smoke, I think, That's the last one. Then I want another. … You ever smoke?”