Unfinished Business (29 page)

Mary's eyes sparkled with delight. “Really, Ms. Johnson. I could have it?”

“Sure.” Erica grinned and ducked back into the slouchy shoulder bag again, still looking for the elusive tube of lipstick. “If I can find it in all this junk. And call me Erica. Please. Aha!” She said at last, pulling a fire-engine red cylinder from the bottom of her sack. “I knew I had it.” And handed the lipstick to Mary.

The girl stared at it like it had magic powers, and then smiled at Erica. “Will you help me put it on?”

“Sure.” Erica shouldered her bag again. “I'm sure I could use a little freshening up myself.”

“There's a ladies' room right down the hall.”

“No,” Dickey Joe said in that same warning tone, just as Mark said, “Use the one in here.”

Dickey Joe's eyes locked on Mark's face with an expression Mark couldn't fathom. He looked almost panicked. Mark heard warning bells going off in his mind again. Something here was wrong. Very wrong.

“I mean, Mark's right,” Dickey Joe said in that same fake-sounding jolly voice he'd used only a few moments before. “Why walk all the way down the hall when there's a bathroom right here?”

Mary turned slowly toward her dad like she'd never seen him before.

“There's more room. And it's brighter,” she said simply. Her eyes found the floor again. “And…if it doesn't look good, you and…he…”—she jerked her head toward Mark—“won't have to see.”

“It's okay,” Erica offered, putting her hand on the girl's shoulder. “I promise I'll take good care of her. We'll be back in ten minutes, looking absolutely lovely. You'll see.”

“Erica—” Mark began, but she shot him a look he understood to mean
shut up
and led the girl out the door.

The second the door closed behind them, Mark leveled his hardest gaze on Dickey Joe.

“I always thought you were my friend, Dickey Joe.”

“I am your friend, Mark,” Dickey Joe said but there was an edge in his voice.

“Then you better tell me what's going on,” he demanded. “Why don't you want Erica to spend any time with her? Why the sudden paternal care and concern? I thought you liked Erica.”

“I like her fine, it's just—”

But he didn't get a chance to finish. The door of Mark's hospital room swung back so suddenly it slammed against the wall, and immediately the room was filled with uniformed and heavily armed officers—Capitol police, local forces and even a couple of FBI.

“Hands up! Put your hands up!” a voice screamed as the barrel of every weapon spun toward Dickey Joe.

“Look, I can explain it all. Or at least I think I can…” Dickey Joe began, slowly raising his hands to his ears.

“Down on the ground!” And now Mark recognized the voice as that of Sergeant McAfee.

“What the—?” Mark bellowed.

“Senator, we identified the source of the cyanide,” McAfee said. “It was concealed in the beer, sir. Dickey Joe's home brew. The lab found small amounts in the seven bottles left in your office, the two at your home and in the empties at your condo on Capitol Hill.”

Mark stared at Dickey Joe who now sat on the floor with his hands locked in handcuffs behind his back.

“Is this true?” he asked, even as he prayed it was a mistake. Had to be a mistake. A terrible, awful…

“Yeah.” Dickey Joe sighed. “It's true. I'm awful sorry Mark. I swear I didn't know…not until just yesterday when all hell broke loose…”

“How could you not know you were lacing the brew with cyanide?” Mark shouted, giving his fury and hurt its head.

“Because I didn't do it!” Dickey Joe shot back. “It's Mary. Mary's been doing it!”

Mark stared at him, stunned beyond speech. An officer hovered over his longtime friend reading him his rights, but Dickey Joe waved him away. “I plan on
tellin' you everythin', sir,” he told the cop. “I owe my friend Mark that much.”

Sergeant McAfee waved the uniforms out of the room with, “Get the girl back in here,” and closed the door, leaving only Mark, Dickey Joe, the two detectives and himself inside.

“Speak,” he commanded in a field voice Mark himself would have been proud of.

“I noticed it as soon as she got back from D.C.,” Dickey Joe began, keeping his attention fixed on Mark. “She's always liked you, had a schoolgirl crush on you, like a girl does on a teacher sometimes. But since she got back from D.C., since things went so bad for her up there, she hasn't been right. She's been obsessed by you. Everything about you. Talks about you all the time, things you did, things you're gonna do. How smart you are, how handsome, how she's gonna help with the campaign…on and on…” His voice broke. “When she said she wanted to bottle the last case of beer herself, just for you, I didn't think anything of it other than it was just part of this crush. Until I heard about the poison. Then I knew.”

“Shit, Dickey Joe,” Mark muttered.

“I couldn't turn her in, Mark. She's my daughter. She needs help. Especially now that she knows you're in love with someone else. When she found out about Erica…” he shook his head. “It's creepy. Like she wants to
be
her, or something.”

Erica.

Mark lunged off the bed, his bare feet on the floor, wearing nothing but the hospital gown. He glanced around for his cane, didn't see it and kept moving in painful uneven strides as McAfee barked, “Where?” and pulled his weapon out of its shoulder holster.

“Ladies' room.” Mark shoved the man aside in his haste and led the way out into the hallway before the
phalanx of uniforms raced past him, storming up the carpeted concourse toward the waiting area and the restrooms near there.

He was slow, too damned slow! He thought, hating the injury, hating wars and crimes and violence. Katharine floated to the top of his mind and he felt the crushing feeling of loss.

I won't lose Erica, too. I won't. I won't
—

By the time he reached it, the officers had already burst into the place and searched. One look in McAfee's face and he knew. His worst fears had come to fruition.

“They're gone,” the sergeant said.

The first thing she became aware of was the sharp pain at the back of her head, right at the spot where the neck met the skull. It hurt…and made everything else hurt: blinking, thinking, opening her eyes…

Mary
, she remembered, trying to reach up to touch the sore spot. But she couldn't: her arms were tied together at the wrists and stretched in front of her, bound to a thick girder post that looked almost as wide around as Erica herself.

Mary.

They'd gone into the ladies' room and, expecting nothing more than a makeup lesson, Erica had bopped up to the mirror…

And Mary had whacked her from behind with something hard and heavy that had turned out all the lights.

She looked around.

If the girl was here, she was invisible.

She couldn't decipher where she'd been taken, exactly, but it looked like one of those dank, dark un
dercover spaces that every public complex had. The place where the heating and the cooling systems shook hands with the plumbing. A place filled with the roar of engines working overtime to make others comfortable. A place where the invisible things—the things most people took for granted—got done.

But there was no one here with her. No one she could see.

“Help!” Erica hollered over the whir of machinery, ignoring the throb of pain that started pounding in the back of her head. The hospital was crawling with cops. And hadn't Sergeant McAfee promised her she'd have an undercover detail, someone with her at all times? They had to be looking for her, searching the building for her. “Somebody! Anybody!”

“Be quiet.” The girl's voice was very calm, very low, very sweet, but its owner was still unseen. “I'm not quite ready.”

Ready? Ready for what?
Erica was on the verge of repeating the words out loud when the girl appeared.

She was dressed almost identically to Erica: a long bohemian-style skirt and huarache sandals, tank top, and oversized shirt knotted at her waist. She'd done something to her hair—curled it somehow—so that it approximated Erica's own tousled 'do, and she'd tied a colorful kente band around it so that the excess fabric hung limply on her shoulders. Erica's bag was draped over her arm.

Mary strutted between the concrete pillars like she was working the Paris runway, turned and pirouetted back.

“I did it,” she said proudly. “I look just like you now. Don't I?” And when Erica didn't answer, she repeated the words in a firmer voice than Erica had ever heard her use. “Don't I?”

“You look…nice,” Erica said carefully. She pulled at the thick rope binding her hands, but it was no use. The bonds were tied tight.

“I don't look
nice
,” Mary corrected, a flush of annoyance coming to her cheeks. “I look like
you
.”

“Right. Just like me,” Erica agreed, deciding it was probably best not to antagonize the girl. Obviously, she'd come unglued, lost some critical facility for reason. And since she'd already taken a pipe to the side of her head, Erica decided arguing with Mary really wasn't in her best interest.

“We look like sisters,” Mary pronounced, swirling in the skirt. “We would pass for sisters on the street. Don't you think he'll think we're sisters?”

Erica frowned. “Who?”

“The senator,” Mary breathed, using the man's title with a reverence that was creepier than anything else she'd said or done up to that point. “Only he won't be a senator much longer. He's sick now. He doesn't need to go back to that awful old Washington. Now he'll have to stay here. With me and Daddy. So we can take care of him.”

Dread churned in the pit of Erica's stomach.

“You poisoned him,” she said, understanding instantly. “Oh, Mary…you could have killed him.”

“No,” the girl shook her head so vehemently the head wrap slid down over her eye. “It wasn't enough for that. Just enough to make him sick. Sick enough to withdraw from the election and come home. Only…” She frowned. “Now he wants to marry you. He won't be happy unless he has you. But,” she gave another quick turn making the full-bottomed skirt swing in a wide arc. “Now that I look like you, he'll never know the difference.”

It was a crazy-person thing to say, the most clearly crazy thing Erica had ever heard anyone say. The
throbbing bump on the back of her head, this dank and desolate spot, her hands slowly losing their feeling with the tightness of the cords around them, the matching clothes—all of those things pointed to jealousy. But to say that Mark wouldn't know the difference between Erica and Mary? The girl had turned around some bend from which there was no outlet, no return.

“Mary,” Erica said gently, “I'm not sure that's going to work.”

“Of course it will work!” The girl snapped, her eyes wild. “You just said we look alike.”

“We're
dressed
alike.”

“Exactly,” Mary exclaimed, triumphant. “Exactly.”

“But we
look
totally different.”

Mary shook her head. “How? I don't see it.”

“Well,” Erica said slowly. “To start with, I'm black.”

“I was raised to believe color doesn't matter,” Mary sniffed, resting on her superior moral fiber. “That's what they teach us in school—not to see people as colors. Color doesn't matter. So I don't see what difference
that
makes.”

Erica processed this information in silence. The girl had so warped the lessons of tolerance in her mind, Erica knew she would be unable to dissuade her. Instead she took another tack.

“What about the way I talk to him? The way I—”

“You're the most arrogant man alive, Mark Newman.” Mary's head bobbled on her neck and her finger waved into space. “You're nothing but a warmongering, cold-hearted Republican!”

Do I really sound like that?
Erica frowned.
I'm sorry Mark
, she told him in her mind.
If I ever get out of here, I'm laying off the name-calling. I promise.

Mark.

Just thinking of him renewed her courage. They had to be searching this hospital for her. They had to be.

“Well…they'll be finding us soon,” Mary said, looking around the place like she fully expected to be surrounded by S.W.A.T. officers within moments. “It's time for us to finish the switch,” she said and ducked behind one of the massive pillars again. Erica heard noises, as though she were chipping at a section of the concrete. When she emerged a moment later, she held in her hands one seriously large-barreled revolver.

“I hid this weeks ago, when I was here doing some volunteer work,” she said cheerfully. “I think that shows a lot of foresight, don't you? I'd never have been able to get this in here now.” She grimaced. “Too many cops.”

Erica's stomach did a slow roll.

“Wh—what are you going to do with that?”

Mary laughed. “I'm not going to do anything. I'm Erica Johnson. I'm the princess in the story and I'm going to marry Mark Newman and live happily ever after. But”—she heaved a sad sigh—“poor Mary. She's going to kill herself. Unrequited love. So sad.”

The ending Mary was writing flashed through Erica's mind like a movie. It wouldn't work, it couldn't work. But in Mary's deranged mind, they were identical. Somehow, she really believed that she could kill Erica, make it look like suicide and escape to live her life in Erica's place.

“Mary,” she said softly. “Mary.”

“No, I'm Erica now,” she said cheerfully, bending back to the concrete bunker where she'd stored her weapon. Erica watched her carefully load a single bullet in the chamber, snap the barrel shut and pace the short distance between them, leveling the gun at
Erica's temple. “You're really going to have to help me do this, Mary,” she said in what Erica supposed was her best approximation of Erica's voice. “I really
hate
guns.”

Two seconds from death.

Erica felt the knowledge of her own imminent demise sweep over her like a cold wave. In the time it took for this sad, sick little girl to twitch her finger, her life could be over.

Unless…

“Wait!” Erica said quickly. “If you're going to be
me
now, there's a few things you've got to know!”

Mary paused, and Erica felt the gun move. The cold steel left the side of her head and hovered somewhere in the space between Erica and Mary.

“Like what?” Mary asked. She sounded confused, uncertain.

“Like how to tie a head wrap, African style, for one thing,” Erica said quickly. “If you walk up to Mark with that thing hanging half off your head like you've got it right now, he'll know you're not me.” Erica nodded her certainty. “He'll know. I'm sure of it.”

Mary frowned. With her gunless hand, she reached up and touched the lank fabric, hanging loosely over her forehead and shoulders. “Y—you think so?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yes. See, you have to pinch it around the top of your head—then bring the edges around themselves,” she explained, knowing full well the description would make no sense. Tying African head wraps—like so many things in life—was something you did or you didn't do. It wasn't something you could explain. “I'll have to show you,” Erica said quickly. “Untie me. It'll only take a second.”

“No.” Mary's voice was hard and flat.

“But you
have
to,” Erica insisted. “If you don't, he's
sure to be suspicious. And if he's suspicious, you might get caught! He's watched me tie my hair a dozen times. Finds it fascinating,” Erica lied, giving her desperation its head. “You have to let me show you. You want to live happily ever after, don't you?”

Hesitation and uncertainty flickered in the girl's pale face. She touched the kente cloth again. “I thought I might have done it wrong,” she admitted in a soft voice.

“A little,” Erica agreed. “We can fix it in a jiffy, though. You untie me, I'll show you. Then you can shoot me. Or even better, you can give me the gun and I can shoot myself.”

“Would you?” Mary said, looking genuinely relieved. “I was a little worried about the killing part. If you really would shoot yourself, that would help. Help so much.”

I cannot believe I'm having this conversation
, Erica thought. It was like the script to one of those really bad television movies. The kind that come on late at night when only the least picky of insomniacs was still awake.

“Glad to help,” Erica said as cheerfully as she could manage.

“All right,” Mary said brightly, bending to loosen the bonds. “Thank you! Thank you so much.”

A few moments later, Erica was rubbing life back into her numb fingers and wrists.

“Show me!” Mary said, practically jumping up and down in her eagerness. “Show me! Show me! Show me!”

She might have been cute—a kind of overgrown girl-child who didn't know any better—if Erica hadn't known how deadly this fractured young woman's mind was. Still, she tried to smile as she said, “You'll have to hold still.”

The bouncing ceased instantly. Mary held herself as still as a statue and let Erica work.

“You twist this here…” she said, tucking and twisting the ends of the fabric around Mary's head, all the while watching the girl's gun hand grow more and more relaxed. She was going to have to make a grab for it. There wasn't any other option. “Then tuck, then twist, tuck, then twist…”

“I wish we had a mirror,” Mary murmured. “I can't see how you're doing it.”

“There was one in my purse,” Erica said easily, as if they were just a couple of girlfriends playing “hair salon.” “You want me to check or—”

“I'll look,” Mary said, and in the instant she bent toward the slouchy old bag, Erica made her move: She grabbed for Mary's wrist and screamed out “HELP!” as loud as she'd ever screamed in her life.

She felt the rebound of the gun as it barked its report. She jumped away from the thing, cowering against the ricocheting bullet. With the only bullet gone, Erica had expected Mary to run, to flee against imminent discovery.

But the woman stood over her, gun aimed directly at her heart, finger on the trigger.

“That was very stupid, Mary,” she said angrily. “But then, you always were stupid. Stupid and slow and stupid, stupid, stupid!” She repeated, letting her voice rise to a shriek. “Good-bye, Mary!” and her finger curled around the trigger.

Erica's life flashed before her eyes: her childhood in D.C. Working at Mama Tia's. Her days at Howard, where she'd first met Angelique on the Delta Sigma Theta line. All the faces of every kid she'd ever taught at Bramble Heights. Mark Newman…

She closed her eyes, thanking God for every second of it. Then she heard the sharp report of the gun.

And felt nothing.

She opened her eyes, feeling her body for the wound, but there was nothing. Nothing at all.

She looked up. Mary stood in front of her, a strange, transfixed expression on her face. Almost as Erica watched, a spot of blood bloomed, flowered, spread across her white tank. Then she crumpled to the ground in front of her.

“Oh my God,” Erica mumbled, sinking to the ground beside the girl. Her eyes were open and blood trickled from her mouth, but she wasn't moving. Not even a little bit. “Oh my God…” Erica repeated, feeling sobs of panic, relief, fear and anger bubble down her cheeks. “Oh my God…”

A man appeared out of the darkness, thin to the point of rangy, with nondescript brown hair, eyeglasses and holding a serious-looking black semi-automatic out in front of him.

It was the fourth time she'd seen him—that she knew of—and yet she still didn't know who he was until he pulled a baseball cap out of his pocket and settled it on his head.

“I could have had a clean shot a long time ago, if you hadn't spent all that time playing with her hair,” he complained.