Authors: Keith Ablow
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Psychological
"Where are you? I’ll send a cruiser to pick you up."
"Four cruisers from Chelsea are here already," Clevenger said. "It didn’t break down. Somebody blew it up."
"Jesus Christ. Are you alright?"
"I got out in time. New truck and new leather jacket, and I’ll be as good as new."
"Any idea who did it?"
"None. There was a note on the windshield from Lindsey Snow, but I don’t think she knows how to wire a car to explode."
"What did the note say?"
"She’s confused. She thinks she has feelings for me. It’s really all about her being close with her father and missing him."
"Okay... How long had the truck been parked?"
"Three, three-and-a-half hours."
"I’m sending an officer out to keep tabs on you," Coady said.
"Like I said, I don’t do the entourage thing," Clevenger said. "But it would be nice to know someone was looking out for Billy. He’s hanging out with me right now, but I have to leave. He’ll be up in the loft."
"I’ll have a car out in front of your place all night, every night, until we wrap this case up."
"Thanks."
"Anything from Anderson’s trip to D.C.?"
"Not that I know of." He realized he should alert Anderson to how far someone had gone to stop the investigation. "I’ll check in with him right now."
"Let me know if he’s turned up anything. I’m gonna check in with Kyle Snow to see if he can account for his whereabouts this evening. It wouldn’t be the first time he delivered something for his sister. I’ll drop in on Collin Coroway and George Reese, too."
"I’ll call you tomorrow morning."
"I’ll be here."
Clevenger hung up. He dialed Anderson, got him on his cell and found out he had landed at Logan on the last shuttle, hadn’t quite gotten to his home in Nahant. He told him about the explosion.
"Maybe you should lay low for a few days," Anderson said. "I can pick up the slack."
"We’ve got someone running scared. I don’t want to let up."
"I don’t know if blowing up your truck qualifies as ‘running scared,’ but I get the general idea."
"Tell me about D.C."
"I got a very cold reception at the patent office today, but I still got some of what we needed."
"Shoot."
"Every patent of Snow-Coroway’s is classified. They hold fifty-seven. All that’s on record is the date they applied for each and the date each of them was awarded. The content of the application is kept secret."
"Any recent applications?"
"As recent as the day after Snow died," Anderson said. "The company applied for two patents that afternoon."
"Vortek?"
"I tried every way I know to get the patent office to disclose the general focus of the applications — as in, missile design," Anderson said. "I even had a patent attorney I know from Nantucket take a shot, cite the Freedom of Information Act. They wouldn’t budge."
"If Snow have Collin Coroway and George Reese what they needed, if he created Vortek and turned over the intellectual property, then he was expendable. He was the only thing in the way of a public offering of Snow-Coroway stock. But why kill Grace?"
"Good question."
"It doesn’t feel like we’ve got a lot of time to find the answer."
"That must mean we’re gonna win soon."
"I love your optimism," Clevenger said.
"When it starts looking like euphoria, you can put me on meds."
"I’ll let you know."
* * *
Clevenger took a taxi and got to the Four Seasons at 10:55
P.M.
, dialed the operator from the lobby and got put through to Whitney McCormick’s room.
"Hey," she answered.
"I’m downstairs."
"Give me two minutes."
"I’ll be outside the Bristol."
She met him beside the hostess’s desk. She was wearing a black skirt and a trim-fitting, cream-color, cashmere cardigan with pearl buttons. She’d obviously taken time with her hair and makeup. She looked elegant and beautiful. Nothing overdone, nothing racy, which made her all the more alluring.
Clevenger felt a key sliding into the lock on his soul. "You look magnificent," he said. He leaned and kissed her cheek, lingered a moment to whisper in her ear. "You always do."
"Likewise, Doctor."
"Thanks," he said, straightening up. "But if you smell burning metal, I can explain.
She smiled. "What are you talking about?"
"Let’s sit down."
The hostess escorted them to a set of deep, pillowy armchairs by the window, looking out on the Public Garden, its gracious trees lined with white lights. A waitress magically appeared. Clevenger ordered a coffee. McCormick ordered a merlot.
"I have a good excuse for being late," Clevenger said.
"Try me." She reached and took his hand.
He hadn’t expected her touch, but instantly warmed to it. "My truck blew up. I mean, somebody blew it up."
"You’re joking."
"Who would joke about something like that?"
She went pale, let go of his hand.
"What?"
"I have to tell you again," she said. "You’re in way over your head."
"I always swam better in the deep end," he said. "It helps motivate me, knowing the only alternative is drowning."
"You’re over your head in national security issues," she said, in a detached, professional tone. "It isn’t wise, and I already told you I think it’s unnecessary."
"Are you speaking for yourself, or the FBI?"
"What’s the difference?"
Maybe there wasn’t a difference anymore. "Talk about job loyalty," Clevenger said. "I hope you get a company car. Just make sure it comes with a remote starter."
"You think this is funny. I don’t."
Clevenger heard concern in her voice, not irritation. "I’ll watch myself," he said.
"Watch yourself?
Somebody blew up your car
."
"What do you want? I’m not about to let a murderer walk."
"Why don’t we see if the case can be turned over to the Bureau?"
That sounded like a power play. "It’s my case."
"No, it’s Mike Coady’s case. He brought you in as a consultant."
"You’re interfering."
"I’m trying to help. The way to read the Agency’s involvement is simply as a sign that there are forces in play you can’t control."
"One thing I learned when I put down the booze: The only thing I can control is myself."
"Maybe you’re onto something there," she said. "Maybe the reason you can’t back off the case is because you’re addicted to it."
"What exactly would I be addicted to? Having my apartment ransacked or my skull fractured?"
"To darkness. To some idealized, uncompromising vision of the truth, which only you can see. Maybe that’s why you won’t take my advice. Because you can’t."
"Possible," Clevenger allowed. "But I have to be honest: I’m never kicking this habit. It’s what I do. It’s what I am."
The waitress brought their drinks.
Clevenger watched McCormick’s lips kiss the edge of her glass. "Since I’m incurable, maybe you’d help me get over a particular craving of mine," Clevenger said.
"Maybe," McCormick said, obviously thinking they were done talking shop. She put down her glass.
"North went down to Washington to see whether Snow-Coroway filed any patents related to Vortek. They filed two, the day after Snow was shot. The content is classified. I don’t know if they have to do with Vortek or not. Maybe you can find out."
"You can’t be serious. I’m telling you to back off. I wouldn’t help you get in deeper, even if I could, which I can’t."
"Your father might be able to." He knew her relationship with her ex-senator father was a sore point with them, maybe the reason their relationship had never worked out, but he had to ask the favor.
She smiled. "Let’s face it, my father isn’t about to use his contacts to help you."
"Why would he have to know he was helping me?"
"Because I don’t lie to him."
Clevenger nodded. Within ten minutes of sitting down together they were right back at the psychological dynamic most responsible for them separating — McCormick believing she needed to choose between devotion to her father and romantic love. "I’m sorry," Clevenger said. "Forget I asked. It wasn’t appropriate."
She closed her eyes a second, shook her head. Then she looked back at Clevenger. "How about we forget the professional reason I flew up here and focus on the personal one?"
Maybe that was still possible. "Sounds good to me," Clevenger said.
"I miss you."
How did she do it? She could shift gears flawlessly between work and play, probably the reason it had felt so easy to fall more and more deeply in love with her as they tracked the Highway Killer. But, somehow, when they’d finally caught up with him, their relationship had gone from hot to warm. Was that because violence fueled their passion? Did hunting a killer, seeing their own exquisite mortality in the faces of those victims, make love feel like the only antidote to death? Is that why Clevenger felt as drawn to McCormick that very moment as the first time he had laid eyes on her? "I miss you, too," he said. He meant it.
"Coady told me John Snow and Grace Baxter used to meet here to make love," she said.
"In a suite overlooking the Garden." He sat back in his seat. "I thought we weren’t going to talk shop, anymore."
"We’re not." She opened her left hand and showed him the key to her room.
* * *
They made it inside the door, but not to the bed. McCormick backed him against the wall, kissed him deeply.
He didn’t let the haze of passion take him completely. He wanted to feel her lips on his, her tongue on his. He ran his hands over her delicate shoulder blades, felt her press even closer to him, then ran his hands down her back.
She kissed his ear, then his neck.
He pulled her skirt up and ran his hands under her panties, pulling her against him, telling her without words how much he wanted her, how ready his body was for hers. But there was much more unspoken in that embrace: whole chapters of a life story spent in search of truth, but also of love, running from the sadism of his father and the cold withdrawal of his mother.
She unstrapped his belt, unzipped his pants, ran her hand inside his underwear.
He sighed.
She held him tightly, stroking him gently, again and again.
He moved his hand between her legs. She was warm, wet, for him, which other men might take for granted, but he took for a miracle, as much evidence for the existence of God as he was likely to find in this world.
She pulled him down toward the thick carpet, guided him onto his back, then inside her. And then she moved for both of them, her rhythm a wish that loneliness could be banished, that hope could be eternal, that death could be defeated.
They lay naked together, under a single sheet, looking out on a fantasy of lighted trees.
"You think they saw what we’re seeing right now?" she asked him.
"Probably," Clevenger said.
"They must have felt very safe."
"Because..."
"It’s warm in here, cold out there, you know? You have to bundle up, in a couple different ways. It’s real life. It isn’t about love. It’s about getting things done, getting ahead."
Clevenger didn’t miss McCormick’s go-getter version of herself in the outside world, or the fact that she had used the word love to describe what she felt inside the room. "I wonder if they were really in love," he said. "I don’t understand why Snow would have gone forward with the neurosurgery, if it meant saying good-bye to her."
"It’s easy to think you’re in love inside these four walls. Everything is pretty and clean. Perfect. Maybe reality intruded."
"In the form of George Reese?"
"Possibly. But Snow couldn’t have known Grace Baxter —
really
known her — by meeting her in a luxury suite once or twice a week. She could have fallen short some other way."
Clevenger thought about Snow’s love of beauty and perfection. In the same way that Snow had relied on his work to take him away from the realities of family life, the Four Seasons suite, with its sheer curtains and surreal view, could have helped obscure the real Grace Baxter. Maybe he got a glimpse of something about her that was imperfect — or worse, truly ugly.
He thought again of Baxter sitting in his office, tugging at her diamond bracelets.
I don’t want to hurt anyone, ever again
, she had said.
I’m a bad person. A horrible person
. Had she hurt Snow, shattered the illusion that she was perfect? Was that the reason he had come to see a scalpel as his only way out, his only truth?
"What are you thinking about?" McCormick asked him.
He wasn’t comfortable about sharing his insights on the Snow case, which told him that although he might love McCormick, he didn’t trust her completely. He wondered whether that was possible. "I’m thinking whether you can know anyone, ever, whether you’re ever safer with another person than you are alone."
She snuggled closer under the sheet. "I think almost everyone gives up before they ever get there," she said. "We should just keep trying."
He looked at her, saw in her eyes that she was being sincere. Maybe two people could join into something greater than either one of them. Or maybe that was a fantasy, too. Folie à deux. A shared insanity. "I’d like that," he said. He ran his hand onto her abdomen. "Maybe that’s the whole idea, you know?"
"What?"
"To keep trying. Maybe the trying is the thing. Maybe it doesn’t get better than that. Maybe you never quite get there. And maybe that’s okay."
"You know what I think?" she asked, sliding her hand over his.
"What do you think?"
"I think you should get back into therapy." She laughed.
He moved his hand lower. "When’s my next appointment?"
January 15, 2004