When Augustine was beyond the second barn he veered at an angle to the west. Justice, coming out along there moments later, saw him heading toward the far side of the stable, and clenched his teeth in frustration because the gap that separated them seemed to have increased: the President was maintaining the frenzied pace of someone half his age.
The stable loomed blackly; the fence rails enclosing the corral and the paddock were like black bars drawn on a yellow-white backdrop. Augustine went past the building, along the paddock fence-but there was nothing beyond the end of it except another copse of evergreens and then the security fence. Where is he going? Justice thought. Where is he running to?
Why is he running?
Why am I running? Augustine thought.
But it was fragmented, submerged with other thought shards in the raw fluid of panic. Blood on my hand, but it isn’t blood. Get away, get away from Justice, don’t let him catch you. Ashtray on the floor, blood on that too, bludgeoned Maxwell to death with an ashtray. Get away. I couldn’t do a thing like that. He was in love with Claire but I couldn’t do a thing like that. Psychopath. Three murders, I should have listened to Justice. Christopher, I didn’t do it. Run. Help me, I don’t know what’s happening to me. Run!
And his brain continued to give motor commands and his body continued to respond: flight, escape. The exertion constricted his chest, formed a stitch in his left side; he could not get enough air into his lungs. Sweat streamed into his eyes, made perception of his surroundings an aqueous blur, as though he were running at great speed underwater.
He did not quite know where he was until his foot stubbed against something and he staggered off-balance, nearly fell, then caught blindly onto a round vertical object and held himself upright. The familiar rough-wood feel of the object transmitted to his mind and became the words fence post, and when he dragged an arm up to clear his eyes he saw he was at the far corner of the paddock. Run. I didn’t do anything. Justice is after you, run!
The horses.
Yes, yes, the horses. Not even Justice can run as fast as a horse.
Augustine shoved away from the fence post and ran along the far side of the paddock. He reached the stable without seeing Justice, his breath coming now in small explosive grunts. The door to the tack room was on that side of the building, closed now but never locked, and it opened under his hand. He went inside, shut the door after him.
Familiar odors: manure from the adjacent stalls, good oiled leather, liniment and hay and the gamy effluvium of horses. Without pausing-he knew the tack room even in darkness-he went to the door that led to the stalls, swung it open. Turned back, took a bridle off its wall peg, dragged one of the heavy saddles down and struggled with it into the stalls.
Some of the horses had begun to move restlessly; one of them made a soft blowing sound. Casey Jones was in the third stall, where he was always kept, and Augustine went there and opened the half-door and took the saddle inside. Casey nickered but stood stilclass="underline" obedient and trusting, a fine old engineer. Augustine threw the saddle on the animal’s back, cinched the straps, hooked the bridle on. Hurry, Justice is outside-and he caught the reins and led Casey Jones out of the stall, across to the double doors in the west wall. I didn’t do it-and he mounted the bay and then leaned down to unlatch the doors.
I don’t know why I’m doing this-and he shoved the doors wide and heard himself say “Run!” and dug his heels into Casey Jones’s flanks.
Justice was in the trees beyond the paddock, searching frantically for the President, when the night erupted in sound: a sharp wooden clattering, what might have been a cry, the unexpected pound of a horse’s hooves.
He wheeled around, ran back toward the paddock. And to the north of the stable the horse and rider-Augustine, it could only be Augustine-came galloping into view, heading toward the east gate. Justice stopped, made an involuntary sound of his own that was almost a sob. Why? he thought. If he’s not guilty, why?
Then he began to run for the tack room.
The guard on the north gate came hurrying out of the small gatehouse as Augustine neck-reined Casey Jones to a halt. He stared open-mouthed and said, “Mr. President! What-”
“Open the gate,” Augustine shouted at him.
“But it’s almost nine o’clock, sir. You can’t go out riding alone at this time of-”
“Open the gate!” Stop me, don’t let me go. “That’s a direct order, mister. Open this goddamn gate!”
The guard hesitated, frowning, uncertain. And then nodded and said, “Yes sir, if you say so,” and went back into the gatehouse. A moment later the gate began electronically to swing open.
Augustine waited only until the opening was large enough for the horse to pass through; then he kicked Casey Jones again and sent him charging out onto the moonlit meadowland beyond.
Justice knew something about horses-he had taken riding lessons at one of the academies in Maryland during a long-ago summer-but he had little experience with outfitting one of the animals. Even though he had put on the stable lights, it took him long agonizing minutes to get the saddle and bridle into place on a small roan mare.
Can’t let him get away. Innocent or guilty I’ve got to stop him…
He swung finally into the saddle, heeled the mare through the stable doors and round the north side of the building and straight toward the east gate. The night was still quiet, empty; all this running, afoot and now on horseback, the noise and the tension like static electricity on the cool night air, and no one had been alerted. It was as if the world had diminished to a microcosm in which only the two of them had significance, in which only he and the President struggled toward truth and sanity.
When he neared the gate he saw that it still stood open, saw the guard standing there looking bewilderedly through it to the northeast. At the sound of the mare’s hoofbeats the guard turned, brought his legs and his boots together and raised one arm-an awkward request to stop that seemed more like a parody of a Nazi salute. But Justice slowed the mare only long enough to shout at him, “It’s all right, I’ll handle it, I’ll handle it,” and then he was past him and through the gate.
More than a hundred yards distant, silhouetted against the clear sky, he could see the black joined shapes of man and horse. He slapped the mare’s neck with the reins, pounded his heels into the animal’s sides, and went after the fleeing figure of the President as if it were life itself pelting away from him.
Seventeen
The wind whipped coldly at Augustine’s face, billowed his hair and Casey Jones’s mane, burned like ice on his bare fingers clutching the reins. But the wind was an ally, the wind and the night and the mountains and the horse. He was part of it, part of them all, and together they offered him freedom.
From what? From what?
The smells of dust and pine and horse sweat assailed his nostrils; the staccato beat of the bay’s hooves was like thunder in his ears. His heart skittered wildly. The sensation of speed was almost exhilarating: moon-drenched meadowland flashing past them, forest slopes rushing closer and beckoning sanctuary. Oh yes, he was in his element now; Justice couldn’t catch him now.
I want him to catch me, I didn’t do anything.
He twisted his head to look over his shoulder. And Justice was there, just coming through the gate on one of the smaller horses, coming after him. One-man posse. Relentless. Justice on the prod.
Augustine pulled his head around again, into the wind.
When the mare stretched out into full gallop Justice clung to the reins with one hand and to the saddle horn with the other; he had never ridden at this speed before; he was afraid of being jarred out of the saddle. More than a hundred yards still separated him from the President, and there were less than a hundred yards between Augustine and the northeast slope. The horse he was riding was Casey Jones, and Casey was bigger and faster than the mare: Justice knew there was no hope of catching up to him before he reached the trees.