It still took a little while—Christ only knew what was being interrupted, and how nervous the underlings had been about passing along this particular message—but then, her mother came on the other end, sounding anxious in a very controlled way.
“What is it, Meg?” she asked. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“You’ve got to get me the hell out of here,” Meg said, too angry to feel guilty about scaring her. “I mean, tonight. It’s bad enough that my life’s completely wrecked—I can’t fucking take someone else along with me.”
Her mother didn’t answer right away.
“Are you listening to me?” Meg asked, even more furious now. “I said, tonight. Do whatever you have to do to make it work.”
“All right,” her mother said, very calmly. “Anything you need, your father and I will arrange. Just—take a couple of deep breaths first, okay? Then, tell me what’s happening.”
Okay, maybe she didn’t sound entirely rational. Meg pulled in one long breath, and then another. “Susan is Susan McAllister.”
“I’m sorry,” her mother said, after a few seconds, “but I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”
Yeah, right. Meg gritted her teeth. “Susan Dowd is Susan McAllister.”
There was another silence, during which Meg heard several voices in the background, none of which she could fully distinguish, except that there was an urgency to the conversations.
“Meg, I’m having a slightly more complicated evening than usual,” her mother said, “and I’m also getting ready to go up to Dover in a little while, so you’ll forgive me, but I need for you to be very clear and, ideally, concise.”
Oh. “Um, Dover?” Meg said. Which was the air force base where military casualties almost always arrived first when they returned to the United States. “What happened?”
Her mother sighed. “We lost a Super Stallion.”
Which was a massive troop transport helicopter. Damn. “Hostile fire?” Meg asked.
“That’s really not germane to this conversation, Meg,” her mother said. “Please just tell me what’s happening.”
Maybe she should have been savvy enough either to have called her father, instead, or to have checked CNN before picking up the phone in a fury. “How many?” Meg asked.
“Nine,” her mother said. “At least three more are likely.”
A lot of funerals. And a lot of caskets to meet on the tarmac tonight. Meg let out her breath, and tried to sit down on her bed, except that her knee was so swollen that she couldn’t make it bend. So, she leaned against the bookcase, instead. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I should have—I’ll get them to switch me over to Dad, and you and I can talk tomorrow or something.”
Her mother’s sigh was the abrupt kind she usually made right before she lost her temper. “Let’s pretend—for a moment—that I’m capable of multitasking, and give me the bare outlines, okay?”
Right. Meg tried to think of the fastest and most cogent way to explain it—especially since she still wasn’t quite clear on what had happened herself. “There are reporters all over the place up here—I mean, a lot of reporters—going crazy, because it turns out my JA is the same Susan McAllister who was in the middle of those murders out in Cambridge a few years ago. You know, at Baldwin.” Which was the name of the prep school.
She could almost hear the crackle of synapses firing during the half-second it took the President to absorb that. “How bad is it?” her mother asked.
“Total feeding frenzy,” Meg said. “They’ve got their god-damn lights shining on my window right now.” Although the bulletproof shade was all the way down, so at least they couldn’t see—or shoot; in any sense—her.
“Oh, hell.” Then her mother raised her voice and spoke to someone or other in the room with her. “Will you find Mr. Fielding, please? Tell him I need to see him right away.” Then, she came back on. “Will you be okay if I hang up, and then either your father or I will call you back in a few minutes?”
There was only one appropriate way to answer that, under the very complicated circumstances. “Yeah,” Meg said.
“One of us’ll talk to you in a little while, I promise,” her mother said. “Just sit tight. We’re going to straighten this out, and it’ll be fine, okay?”
Oh, yeah. Everything was going to be just swell.
She stared at the telephone for a few minutes, but it didn’t ring. So she clicked on to one of the news sites she had bookmarked on her computer and scanned the headlines. The helicopter crash, cause undetermined, rebel insurgents claiming responsibility, nine Marines KIA, more than a dozen soldiers seriously wounded. A bombing in Tel Aviv, multiple civilian deaths, one of them an American citizen, numerous injuries. Three humanitarian relief workers in Africa ambushed and killed on their way to a refugee camp with food and medical supplies. A train derailment outside Dayton, resulting in a massive chemical spill and the evacuation of hundreds of local residents. And those were just the top four.
Okay, the President definitely had her hands full tonight.
She couldn’t stand waiting for the phone to ring, so she made her way back downstairs to the JAs’ suite, hesitating before she went in, because several scowling guys—including Andy and Quentin, damn it—were gathered in the stairwell just outside the common room. But she just stood there until they moved out of her way, and then limped past them and over to Susan’s door.
“So, I wanted to give you a heads-up,” Susan was saying. “In case they come after you, too.”
Meg knocked a very small knock.
“Yeah, I know,” Susan said, presumably to someone on the other end of the telephone. “I’m really sorry. It’s just never fucking going to go away, is it?”
Then she opened the door, looked at Meg, and turned her back—but left the door ajar.
Not sure what to do, Meg stayed in the common room.
“Anyway,” Susan said, into the telephone. “How’s Derek?” She listened. “Good. Tell him I said hi.”
Once she had hung up, Meg knew she should say something, but she didn’t even know where to start. “I, um, I told my mother I wanted to transfer. I mean, you know, right away.”
Susan’s smile was unfriendly. “Funny thing, that’s what I just told my mother, too.” Then she blinked a few times. “That is, we were discussing it right up until our call got interrupted by an urgent message from the White House.”
Oh, great. Not an ideal experience, when a person was trying to have an important, and very private, phone conversation. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know they were going to do that,” Meg said. “But I can be out of here tonight, if you want.”
Susan sat down on her bed, still smiling the strange, unfriendly smile. “And that would accomplish what, exactly?”
The smile was scary. “Well—they’d lose interest,” Meg said. “The story doesn’t have legs that way.”
“It’ll always have legs,” Susan said grimly. Then, she rubbed her temples, looking exhausted. “Close the door, okay?”
Right. Meg had only moved one step inside, but she retreated and started to shut the door.
Susan looked annoyed now. “Close it with you still in the room.”
Oh. Meg reentered the room, and then closed the door behind her. She felt like such a complete intruder—which she was, of course—that she stayed back against it, instead of moving in any farther.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she said. “I had absolutely no idea. About any of it.”
Susan studied her. “I have to admit, I’ve been wondering ever since you got here,” she said finally. “I wasn’t sure whether you honestly didn’t know—or were just a self-obsessed asshole who doesn’t care about anyone’s problems other than her own.”
So much for mincing words. Meg sighed. “Both, I suspect.”
Susan’s smile was still odd, but marginally more friendly.
“Whose bright idea was it?” Meg asked.
Susan shrugged. “I
’m not even really sure. When it turned out that you were going to be coming here, they interviewed a bunch of the JAs, and started doing security screenings and all. And then—” the spooky smile came back— “Dirk and I got picked.”
And had both regretted it bitterly every single day, ever since. Meg hunched over self-consciously, her good arm tight across her chest. “Couldn’t you refuse? I mean, my parents didn’t pressure you into it, did they?”
“I never talked to your parents,” Susan said. “As far as I know, the whole thing went through the Dean, and then—I don’t know—the White House, or the Secret Service or someone, must have approved it.”
So her parents might—or might not—be culpable. “You could step down,” Meg said. “Someone else could be assigned.”
Susan nodded. “Oh, yeah, they’ll be lining up for the chance.”
No doubt. Even under the best of circumstances, it couldn’t be much fun to be in charge of supervising a self-obsessed asshole. Even one of the non-notorious, danger-magnet, press-attracting variety.
“Sit down, instead of being a jerk,” Susan said, indicating the desk chair. “Your knee looks as though it’s about to give out.”
Probably because it was. Meg made her way cautiously over to the chair, trying not to wobble. There were a lot of photographs around, on the desk and tacked to the bulletin board above it, but Meg found herself instantly drawn to the one of Susan and a taller, quite beautiful, blond girl, both of them about sixteen years old, standing on what appeared to be a New York City street, grinning at the camera. She hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time in Susan’s room, but she had never noticed it before. Not that she would have made the connection, if she had.
Colleen Spencer, murdered about three years ago now. Headlines across the country, and even a couple of made-for-television movies and quickie true-crime books. Christ, why hadn’t anyone told her? Or, for that matter, why hadn’t she been smart enough to put it together for herself? Except that, mostly, it was Colleen’s name she remembered, and the murderer—who had been judged criminally insane, not the steadfast friend who had risked her life to find the killer. And here she was, sitting across from the friend.
Meg looked away from the photograph and directly at Susan. “I’m so terribly sorry.”
Susan nodded indifferently. “Yeah, you said that already.”
Meg shook her head.
“Oh.” Now, Susan looked at the picture, too, and her eyes brightened. “Well. Thank you.”
Meg couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if Beth was suddenly—no, she wasn’t going to let that thought into her head. Not ever.
“I’d give anything if I could have called her tonight,” Susan said. “But, then,” she blinked, and whisked the back of her hand across her eyes, “I pretty much feel that way every night.”
Alone in a crowd.
And, even though she bloody well knew better, her first instinct was to want to ask questions. What it had been like, how it had felt, if she still had nightmares.
If she’d been scared.
If she’d ever stopped being scared.
“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you or anything,” Susan said. “All you had to do was ask. But I was damned if I was going to volunteer the story.”
Meg nodded. “You’ve been dropping hints, though, haven’t you.” For weeks. “And waiting for me to have the good grace to pick up on one of them.”
Susan nodded.
And, sadly, she had lacked the good grace. She’d noticed, more than once, that something was a little off in a few of their conversations—some extra hostility about the press, the “did it ever occur to you that maybe I know what I’m talking about” remarks, and that kind of thing—and had just never bothered following up on it. Which was pretty damned unforgivable—and self-obsessed.
And not something she was going to be able to rectify anytime soon.
“Why Dowd?” she asked.
Susan shrugged. “My mother’s maiden name.”
Meg nodded. “When’d you change it?”
“Right before my freshman year,” Susan said, and indicated her hair. “After the trial was over, I started cutting this really short, too. My parents and I thought—well, there was still so much publicity going on then, and—it seemed like a good way to try and get a fresh start.”
Made sense. “But, people like Juliana knew about it?” Meg asked.
Instead of being spooky, Susan’s smile was sad this time. “All my friends here know. I might not want to advertise to the whole world, but it isn’t some deep, dark secret, either. Why wouldn’t I tell them?”
In direct contrast to people who weren’t her friends.
“That didn’t come out quite right,” Susan said, and then sighed. “Or, I don’t know, maybe it did. I only meant—”
Someone knocked, loudly, and they both jumped.
“Hey, Susan!” a female voice said, and then there was more knocking. “Are you in there?”
Susan got up to answer the door, and an African-American girl Meg had seen around the dorm before came rushing in. She might have been among the flurry of upperclassmen to whom Susan had introduced her that time at the Greylock party, too. Carla, or Kylie, or—Courtney, maybe.
“You okay?” the girl asked, looking very upset. “Fred told me what happened, and I was trying to call you, but the phone was—I decided I should just come over. You all right? God, this really sucks. Madison’s coming, too.” She glared at Meg. “Do you mind?”
Right. Meg got up, not looking at either of them.
Susan sighed, and followed her to the door. “Meg.”
Meg just shook her head. “Let me know if there’s anything you want me to do, okay? Because—I will.”
“All right,” Susan said. “Thank you.” Then she said something else over her shoulder, in such a low voice that Meg didn’t catch it.
“I don’t know why you keep defending her,” Susan’s friend was answering, as she left. “I mean, I’m sorry about what happened to her and all, but why should you be the one to—”
Susan quickly closed the door, cutting off the rest of the sentence.
The friend, whoever she was, and regardless of her general lack of tact, had a point.
There were quite a few people in the common room now, and on the stairs leading up to the third floor, mostly from her entry, and Sage D and F, and they all stopped talking when they saw her. Tammy looked as though she might be about to say something, but then she glanced at Juliana—who wasn’t hiding the fact that she was mad as hell—and subsided.
Well, terrific. This was just—terrific. Weeks of trying to make friends and feel like a part of the dorm, erased in a matter of seconds. There didn’t seem to be any way to combat the situation at the moment, so Meg went into her room and shut the door, very softly and unobtrusively.
She spent most of the rest of the night on the telephone. First, with each of her parents, who were upset. Neal, who was happy he had just seen her on television. Steven, who seemed to find it all kind of funny, which bugged her. Her father again, at length. Then, Preston. Trudy, who was unhappy to have seen her on television. Beth, who was in a near-panic, because a girl who lived on her floor had just come shouting down the hall, something about the President’s daughter and shooting. Her father, Preston, and then finally, her mother, in one last, very-late-night, guilt-ridden call, which Meg was pretty sure left them both feeling even worse, rather than helping.
The upshot of the whole deal was that Preston, Ginette, and the head of the White House Presidential Protective Detail, Mr. Gabler, would be showing up in the morning, and in the meantime, the White House was doing what it could to convince—persuade—strong-arm—all of the more reliable news organizations into shutting down the story as fast as possible. What the less reputable media outlets and tabloids were going to do was still anyone’s guess.
She knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep, but she didn’t turn on the television. Neal mig
ht have enjoyed watching her, but she had a feeling that she wasn’t going to find it nearly as pleasant.
It felt very wrong, but finally, at about four-thirty in the morning, she couldn’t stop herself from going on the Internet and pulling up some of the archived news stories about the Boston Prep School Murders. After saying, “Wait, her last name is McAllister? That Susan McAllister? Damn,” Beth had filled her in a little more, since she remembered the case better than Meg did.
The details were ugly. A clique of rich kids, who had too much money and too much free time, and were using enough drugs so that at least one of them, the ringleader, pretty much went around the bend, and began dealing heavily—and killing anyone who got in his way. Another student at the school ended up dead, and apparently, Colleen Spencer had been unusually courageous and idealistic, because she’d been stubborn enough to try and find out on her own what had really happened.
And was found in front of the prep school, dead of a massive drug overdose herself, for her troubles. The initial news stories were uniformly vicious, describing her as a beautiful, spoiled, All-American debutante who’d been hiding a self-destructive, possibly suicidal, drug addiction—and those character assassinations must have been what had triggered Susan’s involvement, all indications being that she turned out to be extremely god-damn courageous, idealistic, and stubborn herself. She had apparently managed to insinuate her way into the group, and gain their trust, which culminated in a near-fatal confrontation with the guy who’d lost his mind and thought he was smart enough to get away with murder. More than once.
Christ, if she were an ambitious, somewhat ethics-challenged television producer, Meg might have wanted to option the damn story, too.
Wealthy parents, expensive lawyers, cushy plea bargains, reduced sentences—it was all pretty sickening. She couldn’t bring herself to do more than skim the articles, but given the absolute lack of direct quotes, Susan must never have given an interview or responded in any way to the media, despite the saturation coverage of the case. But when she came across a file photo of Susan, leaving a courthouse with two people who looked as though they must be her parents, she instantly clicked off. Even the briefest glance at the unhappy expression on her face was too much.
Long May She Reign Page 29
