We Know (aka Trust no One) (2008) Page 24

  "What's her favorite thing to make?"

  "Reservations."

  It was an old joke, sure, but the delivery made me smile anyway. The senator always hit the marks, giving great press without sounding coached. Probably because he wasn't. He famously didn't rehearse. You got the sense that he

  didn't watch polls, though of course he did, and that he didn't choose sound bites the night before with a bunch of world-weary spitballers slurping bad coffee and chewing Rolaids. What voters would be betting on--or against--was his personality, which he was unafraid to present in relatively unfiltered fashion.

  I veered off onto an unpayed apron, watched the dirt billow up from the tires and drift away like a dusty ghost, like Homer. I looked at the view, marveling at how I was embroiled in something that could affect matters discussed on radio shows and TV broadcasts and front pages around the world. I thought about how I'd sat beside Caruthers in his conference room, so close I could have rested a hand on his shoulder. How he was turned away so the midday light from the window had caught his silhouette. I pictured his shaving nick, that tiny mole on his forearm. He was just a man, like Frank. But, like Frank, he seemed as if he were more.

  In the distance a twinkle dipped through the haze, heading for the Burbank Airport. I watched until it merged with the pinprick lights of the Valley.

  The crappy cell showed a surprising three bars. I called Induma on the phone I'd left there. When she picked up, I said, "I'm okay."

  She was silent for a long time, and I wondered about the expression on her face. Her voice was slightly uneven when she spoke. "Come over?"

  The customary fears stirred in me. "Bilton knows I know now. It's in the open. This is a whole new level of exposure. I shouldn't be near you."

  "That's not just your decision to make."

  "This is life and death, Induma."

  "Everything is life and death."

  "Not like this. Look at what happened to Homer."

  "Exactly; " she said. "Look at what happened to Homer."

  And she hung up.

  Holding the phone in my lap, I tried to spot the plane down below, but I'd lost the points of reference to pick it up. There were no cars in earshot, and I could hear crickets sawing away down the hill. I pulled out onto the lonely road, and then I dialed again.

  Steve answered on the first ring and recognized my hello.

  "Nick? " I could hear the relief in how he said my name.

  "I'm alive," I said.

  "Then you'd better get over here."

  "Why?"

  "I tracked down Jane Everett. She was murdered eleven days after Frank was killed. They found her body in a lot."

  The static over the line matched the thrum of ragged road meeting tire, a dazed, inadvertent composition. For an instant I felt suspended, separate from the car, hurtling around dark turns three feet off the ground.

  From a great distance, I heard myself say, "Baby Everett?"

  Steve cleared his throat once, hard, like it was bothering him. "Two weeks old. I'm afraid they found her, too."

  Chapter 40

  We sat around the kitchen table, Steve, Callie, and I, with new photos of Jane Everett laid before us. A college-graduation shot that had run big in the press and a candid taken eight years later, her pulling a Snoopy maternity shirt tight across her pregnant belly and grinning at the camera. She had large, expressive eyes and full lips that made her look younger than she was. There were fat dimples on her thighs, visible beneath the hem of the shirt, and her back was arched in an exaggeration of the weight pulling her forward. She looked happy.

  A sentence kept running through my head like one of those crawls at the bottom of Fox News: The president had this woman and her baby murdered.

  The kitchen light was half dimmed, and we'd spoken only in whispers. Not just because Emily was asleep upstairs but because, I think, we were awed by what we were up against. Right now it was just us, bound by this muted circle of light. If

  we spoke too loudly, maybe we'd rouse the sleeping giant.

  I lifted the Los Angeles Times printout from the table and read the article again.

  Oxnard, CA--The bodies of a 32-year-old woman and her 13-day-old daughter were discovered yesterday at 11:00 p.m. in a dirt lot in Oxnard. Jane Everett had been shot in the head, and her baby, Gracie, suffocated.

  Neighbor Tris Landreth saw two men throw the bodies from the back of a truck into the deserted construction area. She immediately alerted the police.

  Jane Everett lived and worked in Sherman Oaks, but Landreth claimed that the new mother had been in the neighborhood before. "I saw her around the trailers out by the 101 a few times a month or so ago. I remember her because of that great big belly. This is a horrendous, horrendous tragedy."

  The suspects were described as Hispanic in appearance. No arrests have been made. The Oxnard Police Department has requested that any additional information or previous sightings of Jane Everett be reported to the department.

  Everett is survived by an older sister, Lydia, 43, and her mother, Bernice, 66. She is remembered by friends as a loving person who was interested in local politics and symphony music.

  Given the exhaustion and stress, Callie was showing her age--her eyelids textured, the corners

  of her lips drooping, her skin faintly loose along the line of her jaw. She'd held me in the entryway as Steve closed and locked the door, relieved that I was out of danger for the time being. While she was clutching me, we both grew awkward about the physical display. We were two adults now, who didn't know each other well as such.

  "At first I couldn't find any information on Everett," Steve said. "Credit header, utility bills, phone company, DMV, the usual. So I checked the death registry."

  "We finally have a name for the baby," I said.

  I noticed Steve's and Callie's heads pivot slightly to exchange a look, bewildered, no doubt, by my reaction to Grace Everett. She'd come into the world the same month I'd been forced into my new life. We'd been born of the same circumstances, products of similar fallout. Since I'd seen that ultrasound, we'd been in it together, me and her, at least in my head, and yet she hadn't been there after all. I'd made her my responsibility, and, foolish as it was, I couldn't help feeling that somehow I'd failed her.

  "It sounds stupid, but I guess I thought maybe if I could save her, I could, you know . . ." But I couldn't bring myself to finish the cliche. My face grew hot, so I focused again on the papers before us.

  Because of the baby, the murders had made quite a splash, but since they'd occurred two weeks after Frank's death, neither Callie nor I had noticed them.

  Who had helped neutralize Bilton's problem? Who'd shot Jane in the head, cupped his hand over Grade's tiny mouth and nose? How many others through the years had safeguarded what they knew? A secret like that rots outward until someone gives a damn.

  The Voice echoed in my head: Charlie did this for me, but it turned into more. Why? He wanted to do what was right. Charlie certainly had plenty of guilt to expiate. If he hadn't threatened to blackmail Bilton, would Bilton's men have needed to remove mother and daughter from the equation? Were their murders on Frank's head, too?

  I wanted Frank's death to make sense the way it used to. I stared at the printout and the photos as if they could make it so.

  Steve flipped the article up, eyed the line of text at the bottom. '"Interested in local politics,'" he read.

  "That fucking bastard," Callie said. "His own child."

  "What's with the quotation about seeing Jane Everett out by the freeway?" I asked. "Isn't that a bit specific for a short news blurb?"

  "It's all an inference game," Steve said. "Oxnard's always had a meth problem at the outskirts. Trailers are a favorite for cooking labs."

  "So the witness is lying? Putting Everett at the trailers?"

  "Not necessarily. Bilton's people are smart.

  Maybe they figured out a way to get Everett over on that side of town where she'd be seen. Or mayb
e she really did have some drug involvement, and they used that as a cover story."

  "The two men of Hispanic appearance play nicely into that."

  "Right. Wisely chosen as the dumping crew by Bilton's men because they match the meth-pushing pop in the region. Playing to racist fear is always good and distracting."

  "If the police suspected that this was a drug-related killing, why didn't they just come out and say so?" Callie asked.

  "Because the detectives can't go on record claiming they think a nice white girl from Sherman Oaks was meth-whoring on the wrong side of Oxnard," Steve said. "They want leads, sure, but they have to be careful. So they made sure the article was phrased to get the information out on the street without saying anything disrespectful."

  "Maybe Bilton's people oversaw the article. Or the investigation."

  "They wouldn't want their fingerprints on it. Plus, they didn't need to. They did something better." He tapped the printout. "Everyone thinks they know what happened here. Half the people followed the wrong trail, and the other half didn't want to ask uncomfortable questions. This is the perfect way to bury a body in unspoken implications."

  "Two bodies," I said.

  "You watch your ass, Nick. This isn't just a spin game with poll numbers at stake. This is about accusing the president of the United States of murder."

  But I didn't feel afraid. Nor did I feel the usual swirl of paranoia. I wasn't jittery. I wasn't stressed out. I felt only a cold, calm rage.

  I asked, "Any of the family local?"

  Steve scratched his curly hair. "Everett's mom passed away in '01. Lung cancer. But I got an address for the sister at the office. I'll call you with it first thing tomorrow."

  I stood and zipped up my jacket.

  Callie looked at me disbelievingly. "We're talking about the commander in chief, Nicky."

  I pointed at the witness's name on the article. Tris Landreth. "Will you get me her address, too?"

  I thanked them both and showed myself out the back door.

  Sitting in the dark Jag four blocks from Callie's house, I dialed Alan Lambrose. He answered perkily, saying his name like it was something to be proud of.

  I said, "It's me. Nick Horrigan. I need to talk to the Man. Only him."

  "You got a reach number?"

  I read him the digits off the back of the disposable phone, hung up, and waited, chewing my thumbnail. I didn't wait long.

  The same voice I'd heard an hour before coming across the airwaves. "Nick? Are you all right?"

  Having access to a presidential candidate was the kind of thing I could probably never get used to. "Yeah, I'm fine. Where are you?"

  "Franklin County. I'm told that's in Ohio."

  The phone brushed against the Band-Aid, sending a jolt of pain through my face. "I need to see you. Privately. This has just jumped into a whole new league."

  "What is it?" Wariness in his voice.

  "Not over an open line. But the threat of it leaking was enough to get me out of Secret Service custody earlier tonight."

  "You were in custody? Why didn't you contact me? We could have helped. Bullied the bullies."

  "I didn't want to drag you into it. Besides, I wasn't being offered a free call."

  His hand rustled over the phone, then he said to someone else, "I'm ready. A minute." Back to me: "Can you convey whatever it is to Alan?"

  "No, Senator."

  "I trust Alan implicitly. And he's in Los Angeles right now."

  Trust no one. I didn't respond. I just stared through the windshield, unsure of how to refuse respectfully, until Caruthers rescued me.

  "I understand," he said. "I'll be back in L.A. tomorrow afternoon. Can we meet at the condo at

  three?"

  "I'd like to meet in secret. No agents."

  "I can't promise no agents, and I can't come alone, but I'll see if I can sneak out with a few aides and maybe just James. But we'll talk alone. I'll have Alan call you first thing with a location. I'm sorry, but I really have to go. Oh--and Nick?" A weighty pause. "Watch your neck."

  Chapter 41

  Induma opened her door, wearing a sheer nightgown, and the breeze lifted the hem, folding it back against her dark brown thigh.

  I said, "He killed her. Thirteen days old. Had her dumped in a dirt lot with the body of her mother."

  Induma didn't ask a single question. She just opened her arms, and I went to her, bowing my head and breathing in the scent of Kai lotion on her neck. Warm air behind her, the cold curling around us, tightening the skin of her arms, raising goose bumps. I felt her heart beating against the pit of my stomach. The strength of it, but also its fragility. I didn't want to let go of her, but finally I did.

  She closed the door behind us, and I locked it and threw the dead bolt. We went to the living room, and I sat cross-legged on the couch while she listened patiently. When I finished, there was a hum of silence, and then she said, "What do you need?"

  I said, "Cartoons."

  We found him in short order, white chest puffed out, carrot at the ready. " 'Of course, you know, dis means war."' Animated shenanigans flickered across my numb face. Cunning rabbits, French skunks, elastic mice, with their speech impediments and well-drawn plans. They were a comfort, not an amusement. They never made you consider the fragility of their hearts beating against your stomach.

  How clear it all was in the land of Merrie Melodies. Pull-string cannons. Red TNT cylinders with sparkler fuses. Throw on a hat and an accent and you're a whole new rabbit. Or just put your head down and burrow until you wind up in a bullring or the South Pole or Ketchikan, Alaska. Only problem is, when you do that, you lose track of where you're going and wind up lost. Or worse, right where you started.

  The credits rushed by in a syndicated flurry, and then Induma clicked a button on one of four remotes surfing the cushions and the channel blinked and we were back in the real world. In anticipation of Thursday's debate, C-SPAN was reairing the one from Harlem that I'd watched the night the Service kicked down me and my door.

  Induma looked across at me, gauging my temperature, but I didn't mind watching. I wanted to see Bilton in all his banality-of-evil glory. I wanted to see Caruthers dismember him verbally and sweep the dais with his parts.

  Jim Lehrer hunched over the moderator's podium, his doll eyes impartial and unblinking. "Senator, I have a two-part question for you. Early in your career, you were for the death penalty, and now you're opposed to it. My first question is this: If June Caruthers were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"

  "Ah," Caruthers said, "the old Dukakis chestnut."

  "Please let me finish, Senator. And the second part is, why the change in your position?"

  Caruthers's green eyes gleamed. "If my wife were raped and murdered, I'd want to hunt down her killer and gut him. But in civilized countries we don't let the victim's relatives choose the punishment. Imagine if we did. To answer your second question, before we even get to a discussion about the morality of the death penalty, we're hamstrung by the unavoidable fact that it is ineffective, biased, and incredibly expensive. This has become increasingly apparent to me. I have had some shifts in opinion over the course of my long career. And thank God for that. How many of you want a politician who refuses to learn on the job?" A wicked pause. "Well, I suppose forty-six percent of you."

  A rumble of laughter, punctuated by a few hisses. The cutaway showed Bilton, the picture of mature restraint, jotting a note on the lectern.

  Caruthers offered a collegial tilt of the head. "My opponent would like to exploit a reasonable evolution of thinking to paint me as wishy-washy. Or as a waffler. Or whatever deprecation has currency this go-round. But I hope that I will never hold consistency above conscience. And I will never claim not to have made mistakes. In fact, I just may have made enough mistakes in the past to avoid some in the future."

  Bilton leaned toward the black bud of his slender microphone. "Senator, most of the time it seems lik
e you've made too many to keep track of."

  His constituency, bolstered by relief, applauded overenthusiastically.

  Induma hit mute. "If smugness could be fitted for a suit. . ."

  Bilton's lips moved as he continued his retort.

  What did it take to order the killing of the mother of your child? His own flesh and blood, suffocated and dumped on a dirt lot?

  I said, "I can't believe that bastard might win."

  "This is about politics?" Induma asked.

  "No," I said, "this isn't about politics at all."

  I bolted awake, scrambled up in the sheets on the couch, 2:18 glowing from the darkness beneath the TV. I carried out of sleep the image of Frank's foot ticking back and forth, metering the drainage from the gut wound. As I tried to untangle my breathing, the bank of windows rocked into view, the stretch

  of lawn, the fence of the boxwood, and the murky canal. Induma's living room. I was in Induma's living room.

  I rubbed my eyes, felt the pinch of sleep. The rucksack was at my feet. The top was loose, and I could see the red jewelry box inside. I reached in, pulled out those earrings with the sapphire chips. Held them up to the faint light and pictured them against Induma's skin.

  I thought about Frank and his thousand small decisions.

  The stairs creaked a little on my way up. I paused outside her door. Opened it gently.

  She was sleeping on her stomach, having slid down off her pillow, her hair a neat half circle against her cheek. The image of peacefulness. And then her eyes were open, and she wiped her mouth and rustled up. She tilted her head for me to come in, and I crossed on unsteady legs and stood a few feet from the bed, the jewelry box hard in my sweating hand and low by my side, hidden. She was leaning back, resting her elbows on the clutch of pillows behind her, her eyes dark and serious, her shiny hair spilled forward on her shoulders, the strokes of her collarbone pronounced beneath that velvet skin.

  I said, "There's no part of you I don't find magical."

  I wanted to get it all out, because I knew if I stopped, I wouldn't be able to pick up again. "I

  know I blew it before. With us. But everything that's happened has cracked my life open. And I got to see it for what it was. And what it isn't. I'd do anything to be with you again, and I'm ready for it to be different."