“Hypnotize him.”
“Yeah, we could do that. Good idea.”
All right, so he didn’t have a clue that her insides were at the boiling point; he was a guy, after all. More to the point, and the point galled her, she hadn’t said anything.
Everything’s okay, it’s over. Calm down. It’s not like you haven’t faced this before.
She cleared her throat, said, “I wonder how Angel’s keepers are doing with her attitude at Fairfax Juvie. Do you think she’s been released yet?”
“Probably. Maybe Angel’s got a chance. She’s a bright girl.”
“Yeah, yeah, so am I, and look what happened to me.”
A black eyebrow shot up as Savich turned to look at her. What was with the snark? He said, “What happened to you is that you married your boss—a pretty cool guy—you get to chase down bad guys, and you get to stay in shape. It’s like the perfect life for you.”
She didn’t laugh, as he’d expected her to. She said abruptly, “It’s a bummer about those phone numbers you got off Angel’s cell phone. You were so happy to think your five hundred dollars paid off.”
No more snark, that was good. Savich pushed the incline higher and breathed deeply, steadily. “Yeah, I was hopeful we might have Roderick Lloyd more in the loop, maybe calling Perky’s boss, talking about killing Rachael in Parlow, but what we got are calls to Pizza Mac’s, ordering double pepperoni, thick crust.”
He still wasn’t breathing hard, Sherlock thought, feeling a line of sweat snake down her back. She wanted to punch him for that, as well.
He said, “And the other three calls to bookies—three different bookies—and he owed all of them money.”
Elvis belted out “Blue Suede Shoes.” Savich pulled his cell off the clip on his waistband.
“Yes? Savich here.” He slowed down and listened. When he punched off, he sped up again and said, “That was Dane calling from Memorial. He said Perky is still in surgery, but it looks good. She should be okay unless something unexpected happens. Then, just maybe, we can cut a deal with her.”
“It could be a week before she’s up to physically visiting Quantico. Maybe we can deal with her at the hospital, have Dr. Hicks visit her.”
“That’s a good thought.”
Sherlock pushed the cool-down button, a bit on the violent side. “I like to impress the boss.”
That black eyebrow of his went up again. “You do, every single day.”
“You’re a guy, so you’re easy,” she said, and stepped off the treadmill. “We need to get back to Dr. MacLean.”
Elvis’s voice crooned out again. “Yeah, Savich here. Hi, Jack. Talk to me.” And Savich listened, asked a few questions, listened for a very long time, actually, then, finally, punched off, looking thoughtful.
“What? He and Rachael okay?”
“Yeah, no problem. He told me a bit more about Laurel, Quincy, and Stefanos. He said Laurel is the Big Dog, her husband is a slime, and Quincy probably has ulcers. He said Laurel hates Rachael’s guts, doesn’t try to hide it. About Quincy, Jack said that’s a tougher call. Quincy Abbott’s all about packaging—he’s flashy, a near prince in his nice Italian duds, and he’s a coward, which probably also makes him a bully, but he’s under his sister’s thumb. He said Quincy’s toupee is prime.
“If we need to reach Jack, he said he’s staying with Rachael in her house in Chevy Chase.”
Sherlock said, stretching, “I’m not at all sure I like the sound of that.”
That eyebrow of his went up again.
“For heaven’s sake, I’m not talking about sex. I bet they could sleep in the same bed and Jack wouldn’t touch her. Well, that’s optimistic. I was talking about the danger.”
“You know Jack is good. Nothing surprises him. He’s focused and wily. Don’t worry, he won’t let anything happen to Rachael. They’re going to see Senator Abbott’s head staffer, Greg Nichols, tomorrow morning. Nichols is already heading up another senator’s staff. Jack said he can’t wait to see what Nichols has to say to them.”
“I’d like to speak to Nichols, too, feel out how much influence he had over Senator Abbott.”
Savich nodded, sighed. “Jack asked me about Timothy MacLean, asked me what he could do. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything to tell him.”
Sherlock sighed right along with him, her righteous snark all gone in the face of what was happening to Timothy MacLean.
Savich began to slow his stride. “I’m thinking you and I should focus on the two who appear to have the best motives—Congresswoman McManus and Pierre Barbeau. We’ve got to check out timelines, see if Jean David Barbeau drowned before the first attempt on Timothy’s life. To be on the safe side, I’ll have Ruth and Dane begin on his other patients.”
“That sounds logical.”
Savich said, “Let’s visit the congresswoman first, see what she’s got in the way of an alibi—not that it matters since she hired a thug to do the deed. I’ll have Ollie check with the Atlanta detective who worked her dead husband’s case, see if they had any leads. Maybe we can get a line on that thug she hired—in Savannah, was it?”
“That’s what Dr. MacLean said.” She cocked her head to the side as Dillon ended his cooldown. “Do you believe she really had her trucker husband murdered so he wouldn’t stop her run for Congress?”
“Yes, I do.”
Sherlock chewed on that for a moment. “Maybe so. Still, I’m betting on Pierre Barbeau. Lots of wormy stuff going on there.”
“We’ll find out. How’s your French?”
Laughter spurted out of her, from wherever it was hiding. “You’ve never complained before.”
He grinned as he wiped his face with a towel. “You made me forget why I was asking.”
Sherlock popped her knuckles. “You ready to come with me to the slam room?”
“Is that its new name?”
“Oh yeah. I’m going to make sure you’ll relate to it shortly.” She swatted at him with her towel as she walked past him.
Because he saw blood in her eyes and wasn’t a fool, Savich allowed himself to be pummeled and thrown, and generally smacked around. The kick pad he’d held for her fared no better. He thought, at the end, it was worth it because Sherlock was laughing as she counted the number of times she’d thrown him. Violence, he thought, as he showered, appeared to calm the woman down and restore her perspective. He’d even called a halt several times during his royal butt-kicking to stretch and rub his muscles, and give her a chance to hoot and dance.
They stopped off at Dizzy Dan’s for pizzas, one vegetarian for Savich and Sean, the other a pepperoni for the carnivore.
They ordered in two more when Savich’s sister Lily and her husband, Simon, walked in right behind them. A short visit, they said, but neither Savich nor Sherlock believed them once they made a beeline for Sean, a new computer game in hand.
Lily was four months pregnant now, just beginning to show. “Practice is everything,” she told Sean every time he challenged her to another game of
Treasures of the Ninja.
They were finally asleep at midnight. Elvis sang in Savich’s ear just as he was revving his race car at the Indy 500. He was instantly awake. “Savich here. Oh, no. Yes, I understand. Yes, I’m sorry, too.” He clicked off. Sherlock was propped up on her elbow. “Who was that? What happened?”
“That was the hospital. Perky’s dead. The surgeon said she came through surgery fine. She was in and out of recovery in an hour, still doing fine, and back in her room. No need for the ICU. When the nurse went to check on her maybe an hour later, she was simply dead.” He slammed his fist against his night table. “I was going to assign an agent to guard her beginning tomorrow. I’m an idiot.”
“It sounds like she died from a surgical complication.”
“We’ll know tomorrow, after the autopsy. But what if it wasn’t from unexpected complications?”
Savich cursed, something he so rarely did he sounded faintly ridiculous. Then he got up, pulled on sweatpants, and said over his shoulder as he walked out of the bedroom, “I’m going to see if I can’t come up with a plan to get things moving.” He was talking more to himself now than to her. “Yeah, and MAX can maybe do something with all those initials and numbers in Perky’s address book.”
Sherlock didn’t sleep again until he came back to bed. She didn’t speak, simply curled up against him, her palm over his heart, and felt the strong, steady beat. She felt him begin to relax, and it simply all came out of her mouth. “You could have died. I was so scared this afternoon when she tried to kill you, Dillon, so scared I couldn’t help you. I wanted to kill you.”
He kissed her hair, her ear. “Don’t you think it scared me spitless when she fired at you? And she looked at me the instant before she turned to you.”
“I love you, Dillon. I loved you even when I kicked you into the wall mirror in the slam room.”
“I won’t forget,” he said, and kissed her eyebrow. “We’ll deal with this in the morning, Sherlock. Go to sleep.”
THIRTY-ONE
Washington, D.C.
Thursday morning
J
ack and Rachael were nearing the Hart Senate Office Building on Constitution Avenue for their nine o’clock appointment with Greg Nichols in his new position with the senior senator from Oregon, Jessie Jankel, when Ollie called. “Turn on your radio, Jack, you’ll want to hear this. It’s Savich holding an FBI press conference.”
Jack said to Rachael as he flicked on his turn signal, “I bet he’s speaking this morning because he has an agenda,” and he turned up the volume on the radio. “He’s got to address all the crap that went down yesterday at the Barnes & Noble, but then, it’s his show.”
Savich had an agenda. He stood at Jimmy Maitland’s elbow, looking out over the sea of media faces from newspaper, radio, and TV, most of them familiar to him, seated in their folded chairs, the TV people well-groomed, sharp, camera ready, the newspaper reporters looking on the seedy side in jeans, more like real people. He glanced over at Sherlock, gave her a smile and a nod. When Mr. Maitland introduced him, he stepped up to the mike, and looked out at the avid, hungry faces, ready to hurl their endless questions at him, eager for a sound bite or two.
“I suppose most of you have heard about the disturbance at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Georgetown yesterday afternoon.”
There was a wave of laughter since every reporter in the room had swarmed over Georgetown, interviewing everyone within ten blocks of the Barnes & Noble. Steve Olson, the manager, had closed the store and stood out on the sidewalk to take their questions. It had been a special report weaving in and out of regular programming throughout the evening, some of the speculation rivaling the truth, which was strange enough.
Savich said, “The woman we arrested in the Barnes & Noble died at Washington Memorial Hospital at around midnight. An autopsy is scheduled for this morning.”
“Agent Savich, why an autopsy? Didn’t she die of bullet wounds?”
“Did you shoot her yourself ?”
Savich said, “So far, our preliminary information is that her wounds weren’t fatal. Did she die from surgical complications? We’ll know today.”
“But she’s still dead. Hey, wait a minute. You think she was murdered?”
“How many times did you shoot her?”
“What did she do? Who was she?”
“Why did she run into the bookstore?”
“What’s her name?”
Savich finally held up his hand.
The room fell silent. “Her name was Pearl Elaine Compton. She was an established assassin, a very good one, according to our information, also a very long-lived one, given she was forty-one years old at the time of her death.
“She had three cohorts. One is dead, one is in the hospital, and the third is still at large. I’ll say it again—we’ll know the cause of her death today.
“As you might have heard, there was a lot of alarm and panic, all understandable, until one of the agents brought her down right after a teenage girl she was using as a shield was smart enough to bite Compton’s forearm and escape.
“It took two shots to bring the suspect down, shoulder and arm. She stayed down and we evacuated her to the hospital.
“No one else was hurt—no customers, no employees, no one in law enforcement.” He leaned even closer, cupped the mike between his hands. “The manager of the M Street Barnes & Noble is Steve Olson, a man I know personally. He was a great help at calming everyone down. He did complain to me, however, that they only now finished reshelving at least five hundred books.”
A bit of laughter. All of them were straining to get closer.
“What this all boils down to is that we escaped tragedy on this one. I sincerely hope my next visit to the bookstore will involve only a cup of tea and looking through the new best sellers. Okay, does anyone have any questions?”
Every single hand shot in the air, voices already escalating. Savich gave them a look. He nodded to Mercer Jones, longtime crime reporter for the
Washington Post
. Mercer had planted a couple of stories for him over the years. Mercer said in his deep, plodding voice, “Agent Savich, why is the FBI involved in a shooting in Georgetown? Why not the Washington police? What’s really going on here? Why were you after this Pearl Compton?”
Mercer was good, bless him; Savich had always recognized it. Mercer had given him the perfect lead-in. Savich said, “Good questions. Let me give you some critical information.” He looked at Jimmy Maitland, who nodded.
“As you all know, Senator John James Abbott recently died in an automobile crash that was ruled accidental.” He paused. “We now believe it’s possible that Pearl Compton, the assassin who died last night, was involved in his death. We’ve reopened the case.”
No need to mention Rachael, and Mr. Maitland had agreed. After all, this performance was to protect her. Why kill her if the FBI already knew everything she knew? The media would go haywire, dig into all of it. They’d find Rachael, but it would take a while. Whoever in Senator Abbott’s family was behind it, they had to be afraid. Fear meant mistakes. As he expected, there was a moment of stunned silence, then pandemonium.