She would have a delicious time tormenting those male chauvinist fascists at the FBI who, God knew, richly deserved far worse. More importantly, she would be able to make the blind world see that emperor Quayle wore no pants — this military witch hunt for someone to pin the blame on had all the earmarks of a debacle in the making. Last, but certainly not least, tens of millions of voters who had never heard of Samantha Strader soon would.
There was no reason that she shouldn’t be the next president. After all, Quayle had the charisma of a fish. The real problem was getting the Democratic nomination, and if she could show what a woman could do to clean up this terrorist mess, she would have a leg up.
All in all, this was going to be an enjoyable, interesting project. As usual, Samantha Strader had not a scintilla of self-doubt: she believed in herself and her opinions with a white-hot zeal that would have looked good on a messiah. Despite the seriousness of the occasion Strader indulged herself in a luxurious grin.
Special Agent Thomas F. Hooper found his colleague Freddy Murray lounging beside the nurse’s station outside the intensive care unit. “How is he?”
“Coming out of it. It’ll be a few more hours. He surprised the surgeons. They thought he’d die on the table.”
“Seven dead men in the warehouse and one in his room at Quantico. The maid found the body an hour ago when she went in to change the sheets. The lab guys are trying to put it all together and figure out who everybody is.”
“I got ten bucks that says he killed them all.”
“No bet.”
Freddy Murray shook his head. “Funny, isn’t it? Ten months — wiretaps, depositions, surveillance cameras, the whole enchilada — and all we got to show for it are seven corpses.”
They stood silently, listening to the sounds of the hospital, the clicking, hissing, sucking, squeaking, groaning noises.
“The stiff in Harrison’s room at Quantico is white. Not sure yet, but one of the agents thinks it’s Tony Anselmo.”
“From New York?”
“Yeah.”
“We let this go on too long,” Freddy Murray said after a bit. “We should’ve busted Freeman’s bunch in September.”
“Don’t give me that! We didn’t have enough in September.”
“We let this go on too long,” Freddy repeated stubbornly.
Tom Hooper let it lie. “Let’s go sit down someplace. I only had three hours’ sleep.”
They collapsed on the sofa in the ICU waiting room, two doors down the hall.
Hooper sighed, then extracted a sheet of paper from his pocket and passed it to Freddy. “Ever seen this guy before?”
Freddy unfolded the paper. It was a copy of an artist’s rendering of a face. A very plain face. At the bottom of the sheet this information appeared: “White male, approximately forty years of age, five feet nine or ten inches, clean shaven, short dark hair, dark eyes.”
“Don’t recognize him. Who is he?”
“The dude who shot Gideon Cohen yesterday. Maybe. A woman saw him in the lobby of the building as he was leaving. He was wearing surgical gloves.”
Freddy looked at the picture again, trying to visualize that face on a real man. He started to hand the paper back, but Hooper waved it away.
“Keep it. We’re getting thousands made. It’ll be on television nationwide in an hour or so and in the papers this evening and tomorrow.”
“It isn’t that good a picture,” Freddy pointed out.
Hooper shrugged. “You’re a ray of sunshine.”
“So what are you going to do about Harrison?”
“Do?” Hooper muttered, donning a slightly puzzled look.
“You gonna arrest him or what?”
“What would I arrest him for? What charge? Is there any proof that he’s done anything illegal?”
“I dunno. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Get some cops up here — uniformed cops. I want a cop at the ICU door and one at the floor nurse’s station twenty-four hours a day. And I want to hear immediately when Ford regains consciousness.”
Hooper summoned all his energy and extracted himself from the soft couch.
“Where you going?” Freddy asked.
“Over to see what the hell those guys have turned up on the Willie Teal murders. You oughta see that place! Fourteen bodies! And we figured out which one is Willie. He was sitting on the crapper with his pants around his ankles when the grenades started coming in. Boy, is he ever dead!” Hooper scratched his head and glanced at his watch. “That search warrant for McNally’s place ought to be signed by now. I’d sure like to find those grenade launchers.”
Hooper looked at Freddy. “By the way, I haven’t let them tell the press about these McNally killings. We’ll hold onto that for a while and see what happens.”
“What could happen? The McNally brothers wiped out the Teal outfit. Now they’re dead. End of story.”
Hooper grunted and walked out. Freddy watched him go, then headed for the pay phone. The police department was undoubtedly going to be delighted to furnish two officers around the clock.
There was a light. He could see the glare but his eyes wouldn’t focus. Then the effort of holding his eyes open became too much and he closed them and drifted.
He had been dreaming and he tried to go back to the dream. It was July, that time of blue skies and hot, sticky days, and he was sitting on his grandmother’s porch counting the squeaks as the swing went back and forth, back and forth.
He had the whole summer to loaf and play and yet the only thing he could think of to do was sit in the swing and listen to the chain squeak as it rubbed on the hooks in the ceiling.
His grandmother had been in the dream, sitting on the steps stringing beans, and it seemed important to see her again. Crazy as it seemed, with all the events of his whole life, the most important one, the memory that he treasured the most, was of a summer day when he was very young, swinging on the porch and watching his grandmother. So he tried to go back to the porch and the swing and the dry cracking sound as the beans snapped and …
But the light was back.
Someone was moving around.
“Harrison. Can you hear me?”
He tried to speak but his mouth was dry, like sandpaper. He licked his lips, then nodded a tiny bit. “Yeah,” he whispered.
“It’s me, Freddy. How you doing in there?”
“Where am I?”
“Hospital. You had a bullet in your back. You lost a lot of blood. They operated and got the slug and plugged up all the places you were leaking.”
He nodded again, which was difficult. He was having trouble moving. He had no place to go anyway.
“Harrison, can you tell me what happened?”
He thought about it, trying to remember. It was difficult. The warehouse, driving around, all jumbled out of order. After a while he thought he had it straight. He said, “They came for me.”
“Anselmo?”
“And the other one. White guy. Pi … Pioche.”
That was right. He saw it clearly now. The stairwell, Fat Tony falling in the darkness, Freeman McNally screaming, the television shattering…. No. Something was mixed up some….
That scream. It had been almost in his ear, painfully loud, the man in mortal agony. And Harrison Ronald had enjoyed it. He lay here now immobile, his eyes closed, remembering. Savoring that scream.
“What else can you tell me?”
Why was Freddy so insistent? “He screamed,” Harrison said.
“Who?”
Who indeed! “Freeman.”
“Why did you kill him?”
Why? Well, hell, you idiot, because … “Because.”
“Hooper is gonna be over here in a few minutes to question you, Harrison. You killed eight guys. That’s real heavy shit. Real heavy. I think you should think through what you’re gonna say to Hooper very carefully. You dig me?”