"They came up the front walk-they're just here to poke around and harass me. Believe me, I can handle this. But you need to go now, or we both run out of options."
I started for the rear door, hesitated.
Induma said, fiercely, "If they catch you here, it's over."
The doorbell rang again.
I scrambled out the back. Someone-another agent-was fussing with the latch, trying to open the side gate. I sprinted across the lawn, vaulted the boxwood hedge, and skidded down the canal slope, water seeping through my shoes.
As quietly as possible, I sloshed the length of four houses, stooping under footbridges, dodging sleeping ducks with their heads turned to rest on their backs. A flashlight beam played briefly in Induma's yard, but no one crossed the barrier to check the canal. I misjudged my proximity to a cluster of mallards, and they exploded up in a spray of water and pinfeathers, scaring me senseless. I bolted up onto someone's deck and cut through an easement overgrown with foxtails.
Induma's house was no longer visible, but still I crept through front yards to avoid stepping out into the open. The Jag was where I'd left it, in the shadows between streetlights. I drove away, forcing myself not to speed. My hands shook as I called my mom. Steve answered.
I said, "They're closing the net. I had to warn you they might come-"
He cut me off. "Yeah, Janice, she can't talk right now. We've got some people here asking about her son."
He hung up.
I pulled over and sat in the car, breathing hard. Caruthers's men were beating the bushes, cutting down my options, forcing me to keep on the run where I'd be likely to make a mistake. I had to find somewhere to bed down until everything blew open. But I had nowhere left to go.
Except back where it all started.
I blended in with the slipcovered furniture, breathing the familiar air, becoming a part of this house that had become a part of me. The walls echoed with memories. Sitting in the armchair of the otherwise-empty living room, sheltered by this structure that had sheltered me as a child, I closed my eyes, and in the sweet musk of dust and rotting wood, past became present and present past. Here Frank had embraced me and called us a family. Here he'd bled to death in my arms. Here I sat, waiting to duplicate my walk of seventeen years ago, from back door to pitcher's mound.
I rose.
It was time to meet Frank's killer.
Chapter 47
In the dark on the pitcher's mound, I breathed in the smells of my youth. Damp grass, rosin dust, and the vintage blend of infield dirt-silt, sand, and red clay. It seemed inconceivable that I'd played on these grounds, that I'd lost my virginity on this very spot. I hadn't been back to Glendale High, not since that night.
I was waiting in the great wide open. Given that everyone knew what cards I was playing, my strategy had changed. Mr. Pager would have been long tipped off that I was the enemy. If he came here expecting Tris Landreth and saw me instead, he'd be unable to resist confronting me, finding out where I'd stashed the evidence, and killing me.
Or he'd just shoot me from a distance. That would render my plan less effective.
In right field a sprinkler chopped away, going it alone. I couldn't see the streams, just the moist gleam of the darkness over there. I thought about my first glimpse of Isabel McBride on the mound, the breeze plastering her sundress against her contoured form. How different she was now. How different we all were.
My shoes, and pants from the knee down, were still damp from the canal. I was wearing a jacket I'd bought earlier, but it wasn't for comfort alone. Aside from some white-noise traffic and the staccato beat of the sprinkler, the school was quiet. Desolate, even. A few distant streetlights. The buildings, flat blocks against a moonless sky. The glow of my cell phone showed 12:18 A.M. Mr. Pager, true to form, was fashionably late. Scouting me out this very moment. Crosshairs leveled at my head, perhaps, or maybe he was placing a call to two Eastern European gentlemen with a penchant for inquiry. I tried to relax, to let the cool breeze blow through my clothes and cleanse me. I'd been lured to this place seventeen years ago, avoiding Frank's killer. And now I'd come back to face him.
I sensed movement at the fringe of visibility, shadow against shadow, and then a form resolved. Circling like a shark, head turned watchfully, not to me but to the darkness beyond. I was not a perceived threat. Painstakingly he drew closer, until I recognized the bearing, and then at last, the pale, lean face.
He stepped forward and stopped, about halfway to home plate. The boogeyman in a dark suit. His hands were shoved in his pockets, and I noted the bulge in the fabric.
Wydell spread his arms as if to say, Here I am. Then he put his hands back in his pockets. "Without evidence you've got nothing. Which brings us to the question at hand." "Or the questions before that," I said. "Which are?" "Sever?"
"Sever doesn't know anything. He's a good soldier."
"The guys who guarded Jane Everett?" "Hired hands. Bulgarian operatives, Cold War discards looking for work." "There are Bulgarian operatives?" "You bet your ass. It's an ugly world." "Uglier by the minute. What happened to them?" "One had an accident. One bought a boat and drifted off. You'll never find him. Least I haven't been able to." "You must have had more help inside the
Service. Besides the Godfather."
"Brown?" Wydell smirked. "Caruthers still has an inner core, sure. Five, six agents. They're loyal. They view you as a threat. They don't need to know anything else."
I pictured those agents who'd come striding up Induma's walk earlier this evening, how their blank expressions and firm posture conveyed a certain assurance of purpose, a freedom from uncertainty.
"But you still don't get it," Wydell continued. "This isn't about Caruthers and some agents. This is the party apparatus. Do you have any idea how many defense contracts and subsidy deals rest on his not getting knocked off the ticket? What happened seventeen years ago? No one cares. No one even knows the whole story. Not even Caruthers."
I thought about Caruthers's tears when I'd told him what had happened to Jane and Gracie. Though I believed nothing else about him, his grief in that moment was undeniable. He'd never known precisely how it had gone down. He'd been well cushioned by plausible deniability, insulated all these years by the people protecting him. Somehow that made it worse.
Wydell said, "That's how it gets done. Everyone holds just one piece of the mosaic."
"Except you."
He withdrew a pistol from his pocket and held it contemplatively, not aiming at me. "And now you."
I constructed a story from the muddle, as I had so many times before. Except this time it wasn't a story. I said, "You were on Caruthers's protection detail back then. You found out I was trying to talk to Callie about Frank's death, so you flew two agents in from some shit field office, workaday agents who wouldn't mind having a few paid days in Los Angeles. They were willing to take my life away without even knowing why."
"They saved your life, Nick. Think about the alternative."
"You hired Tris Landreth. And Kim Kendall seventeen years later. You met them up in Runyon Canyon. You left the film slip in my locker at the gym, tipping me to Mack's address. Then you assigned Sever to sit outside the apartment. He didn't know Mack was already dead inside. You watched from the neighboring roof, the rifle grenade locked and loaded for when I showed up. As soon as you saw that I found the planted Polaroid of Bilton and Jane-"
"You know how many of those things I left lying around that apartment for you to find? You stepped on one in the bedroom."
"I hear doctoring Polaroids is tough."
"Try getting eighteen-year-old film packs, to start with."
"You planted a bug in my truck, then told me about it so I'd trust you, so I'd ask for you if I got tangled up or taken in. You're the one who sprang me from custody, knowing I'd run to Caruthers."