Gathering String (66 page)

He shook his head and came to her, saying firmly, “Tell me about the paint thrown around in your studio yesterday.”

She shrugged, looking back down at her pictures. “I tried to get it cleaned up. It was mostly just the waterbase.” Little lines of apprehension drew her brows down. “Only the red paint on one wall was oil, so it didn’t …”

He nodded. “What did it say?”

She looked at him sadly and asked instead, “Sam called you? He’s up in my studio?”

“I asked him to go look. It was Swede who called. He’s sorry about the dog, about your workroom, about frightening you.” His mouth twisted down cynically. “He just hopes it won’t be necessary to send Pete around again.”

Her breath caught, and she suddenly leaned forward, resting her head against his chest. For a second he thought the sound she made was a groan of pain, but then he realized it was a deep, wracking sob. Taking her shoulders, he tried to pull her back, but her arms came around him, clinging. He pulled her closer, rocking gently, allowing it all to break, the tension, frustration, anger and fear. It seemed endless, the shaking of her shoulders, the soft, gasping of her breath. Burying her face tight against him, his shirt muffled the sound, the tears soaking through the soft cotton.

Finally the sobbing slowed, and he slipped down onto one knee, to look into her face, still holding her shoulders tight. Otherwise she would have pulled away and hidden behind her hands. “I’m s-so sorry,” it was a hoarse whisper, “Oh Jack, I’m just so tired.”

He pushed the strands of hair back from her wet, red cheeks. Staring into her strained, thin face, he saw that she wasn’t just upset. She was ill. And his heart started to race as the memory of something she’d said yesterday surfaced in a blinding second. “That appointment in the city, it was with a doctor?” She nodded, but before she could speak, he blurted, “You’re sick? My God …”

She shook her head quickly, drawing a shuddering breath to murmur, “Not sick, not really …”

As she hesitated, she saw the fragments that tumbled around his weary mind for weeks fall into a whole, and he caught his breath, “Oh Tess.” There was wonder and anguish in the words as his fingers spread wide and his hand went to the denim over her smooth, flat stomach. His wide eyes held the question, and for a stunned moment she only looked at him. Then, very slowly, she nodded her head. When she took his face in her hands, she wiped away his tears with her warm, moist fingers.

She was asleep on the old sofa in the break room when he left, covered with an afghan his mother had made. She was too spent, too ill with fatigue, for anything else. He didn’t try to make her talk. He just held her until she dropped off, quickly and deeply. On his way out, he stopped at the front desk where Thelma and Amber were talking and said, “Tess is asleep down in the break room. Leave her …”

“For heaven’s sake, why would she sleep there?” Thelma’s voice never seemed more strident. “It’s not like she works. She could just go home …”

“Leave her alone, Thelma.” The tone of his voice was enough to cause the old woman to snap her mouth closed and her eyes to widen. “But if she does wake up, tell her I’ll be right back. I have to take care of something at home. Just keep her here.”

Both women looked at him like he was crazy. Amber nodded, but Thelma spoke up again. “The ad agency for the Corner Grocery Stores called a bit ago. They wanted the details on our new advertising rates. Jack, where did they get the idea we’d made such an increase? They were talking about prices all out of reason …” When he turned back, Thelma was stopped by the look on his face. “It was a mistake?” she asked quietly.

“A big one,” he muttered, and then he went out the door. As he went down the front steps, he noticed a Highway Patrol car parked across the street. When he pulled the Jeep onto the street, he glanced into the rear-view mirror to see that it had pulled out and was following a discrete distance behind him.

Sam was watching Jack Westphal play basketball. It was an old ESPN broadcast he’d found in a stack of DVDs next to the TV equipment set into one of the bookshelves. More discouraged than he’d ever remembered, he ignored the fruitless itineraries, grateful for anything that would take his mind off the scrawling on the wall and the picture upstairs. With his stocking feet propped up on the shiny cherry wood desk, he’d fast-forwarded to the last half of the game. With two minutes left, State up by two, he smiled grudgingly as a much younger Westphal seemed to stand in mid-air to pull in a rebound, coming down with a pirouette worthy of a dancing master.

When the front door slammed, Sam sat up quickly, stopping the disk and closing the lid on his laptop. Hurrying into the hall, he caught sight of Jack clearing the landing, going up the stairs two at a time. He started to call after him, but heard the footsteps in the upstairs hall, and they turned toward Tess’s studio. Sam frowned. Looking up the stairway, he didn’t want to follow. But he also knew what was up there couldn’t be ignored. He started climbing slowly.

Jack was standing still as stone, staring at the sun porch wall, his face gray. Just past the threshold, Sam stopped and waited without speaking. He already knew the word “WHORE” was plainly visible. He already knew how it looked, the red paint dribbling down from the H, bloody and lurid. He didn’t need to see it again.

He watched as Jack just stood there with the bright sunshine illuminating the fouled wall in front of him. And then Jack turned toward him, slowly, as if his neck moved on a rusty hinge and said, “She’s pregnant.” It was a harsh rasp of sound.

At Sam’s carefully blank face, Jack knew he’d been beaten again at putting the pieces together. With a groan, he shut his eyes. “This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. Not like this.” Sam just continued to watch him. “I thought … I imagined … that the first person I’d want to tell, but ... He sent his crazy brother out here to threaten my wife.”

A tiny frown of impatience creased Sam’s mouth. “So?” Jack’s eyes flew open and flashed toward Sam. “So it’s not what you imagined. What ever is?”

The brown eyes widened with loathing, and his arm flung out toward the wall. “She said last night Swede knew about you and her. This is why.” Sam nodded, but held his tongue. In the face of the sudden candor, he showed no surprise. “She was so young,” it was just a murmur, and Sam came further into the room to catch what Jack was saying. “She had so much talent, so much going for her. She made it to the
Trib
so fast.” The furious eyes narrowed and Sam stopped in his tracks. “She was so much younger than you. And you, you used her, like any of your other fucks …”

“No.” Sam was startled at the abrupt sound of his own voice. “No, it wasn’t like that. She …” And the words froze in his throat as Westphal started for him, fists clenched, the two quick strides forcing Sam to instinctively back toward the door as he blurted, “She saved me. For God’s sake, Jack, she
saved
me.”

Something in the words stopped the advance, but not the threat. “You fucked up everything she’d worked for. And then when you were done with her, you dumped her and went back …”

“She left me.” Sam said it quietly, but couldn’t mask the pain in the words. “I would have given anything. Done anything. But she left me.”

The knuckles of the big fists went white, and Sam braced himself, planting his feet, trying to be ready if he came at him again. But the struggle was all Jack’s. Aching to pull Waterman to pieces, his entire body strained with the effort of holding back. For a few seconds he stood there, breathing deep and ragged, and then his hands opened and flexed. Turning away, he ran them over his face. His voice was muffled. “You have got to get out of here.”

“You step off the porch, and you’ll be marked before you get to the front gate,” Jack said. “A state trooper followed me from town. He turned just past the creek. I figure he’s watching the house from the dirt road along the bottoms.” Sam’s frown deepened. “I can’t make a move Erickson doesn’t know about. And neither can you.” He looked back at the wall and added with an ominously soft voice, “This has got to stop, Sam, and it’s got to stop now.”

“You chicken shit!” Sam face went red. “You’re just going to curl up and let Erickson walk free and clear and right over you? Tell me something, are you taking him up on that increased revenue?”

“No.”

“Well, you might as well because unless we bring him down, and that means you and me, Hoss, because I won’t get him alone, you are going to be jumping to his tune for a hell of a long time to come.” All sense of caution was lost to Sam’s wild desperation. “Come on, let me take a crack at the mother …”

“I won’t live like this. This is my home, this is my life, and he’s trying to force me down on my knees.” Jack’s head came up, and there was relief in his voice. “I’m in. We’ll write it together.”

“You’re, you’re going on the record?” Sam couldn’t wipe the skeptical scowl from his face.

“Yes,” Jack nodded, but there was a hard gleam in his red-rimmed eyes. “But wouldn’t you rather have the candidate?” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out something small, holding it up between his two fingers, and whispered gruffly, “In his own voice?”

Sam’s eyes narrowed, and for a heartbeat, he just stared at Jack’s raised fingers. Then he was the one who came striding toward the other man. “An audio disk? You had that little recorder …”

With a sardonic twist to his mouth, Sam spat, “Man, you are a piece of work. Your clean-cut, country boy ass is hanging a good long way over the ethics line with this one.” If he’d had a hope of wrestling it away from the bigger man, he still might have tackled him. “Erickson couldn’t have known.”

“He knows I always use one. He never said he was off the record.”

“He never thought you’d walk in there with that in your pocket, and you know it.”

Jack tilted his head in agreement. “He could have asked. He should have asked. What are you trying to do, Sam, talk me out of using it?” Sam just glared at him. “You want to hear the conditions, or not?” Sam didn’t answer, just stepped back with a loud exhale.

“We write the story together. As soon as we’re done, you get the hell out of here, subpoena be damned.” Sam nodded. “It runs on both the Politifix and the
Journal
websites under our shared byline on the same morning with a copyright. Same deal with the podcast of the audio. I'll print it in a special morning edition of the
Journal
as well. And I want to be paid by Politifix.” Jack’s mouth was a grim, thin line, “But not the usual freelance fee. I want a lot. A hell of a lot. Once the
Journal’s
revenue goes down, I’m going to need every dime I can lay my hands on.”

Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “All I can do is ask.”

Jack nodded and said, “Then ask. But before you do, we have to sit down with Tess. You don’t make a single call to your editors until then.” Sam’s head tilted in question. “She needs to hear this too. We’re not using any of this until she signs off on it.” As he spoke, the pallor of his face went even whiter.

Sam felt the nauseating sensation of his own stomach rolling over. He knew what was on that disk. With a short nod, he said, “Go get her.”

“No need,” her voice came from behind them, and they both turned. She’d come up the stairs so quietly neither knew how long she’d been standing in the doorway. “I made Thelma drive me out.” Still pale, her eyes still swollen, she looked from one to the other. “Let’s go downstairs and at least be comfortable while we listen.”

The recording wasn’t really that long, but to the three listening, it seemed an eternity. Except for the voices, audible if a bit muffled, there was no sound. No one said anything. No one asked questions. They were in the living room. Jack stood looking out at the familiar sight of his own front yard while it played. Tess sat in the overstuffed armchair, Sam on the sofa.

Sam started out taking notes but when he heard his own name and the gruff voice said, “
I know how to deal with hacks like him,”
he stopped writing and just listened. Erickson added
, "I may be saddled with crazy Tami Fuller as a running mate, but it's worth it. She did a hell of a job keeping a certain investigation front and center.”
Sam couldn’t keep from blurting, “God damn it, I knew it!"

But he fell silent again, trying not to squirm as the Governor said,
“He’ll be in jail long before the election. He’s such a stupid bastard, he’ll refuse to cooperate, so there he'll sit for a hell of a long time.”

It was just a few seconds later that they heard Erickson’s voice taunt,
“People aren’t perfect. Not me, and sure as hell not that saucy little wife of yours.”
Sam looked over at Tess and saw the color rise in her face.

And even Sam shut his eyes when he heard,
“But once they find out about her and a married man, one everyone saw her running around town with just awhile back? Hell, that old crone Thelma will be delighted, saying she knew all along and that your wife is just a ... Well, it would get awfully hard for Tess to show her face in Lindsborg, don’t you think?”
When Sam opened his eyes, he glanced over at Tess. She was looking at Jack’s turned back.