by Robert Ellis
It hung there with Kay staring at Frank in the mist.
“Does this have anything to do with your partner’s murder, Frank?”
He thought it over, then got rid of his cigarette. “The kind of people running for office. It’s an old story, Lou. They still want to be kings.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“Tomorrow’s election day.”
“It’s after midnight. We’re already there.”
“Then take the loss and run again. You’re a natural just like Helen Pryor. I’ll help you find someone you can trust when this is over.”
“What if I wanted you?”
Frank got to his feet. “You’ve just heard my confession. I’ve done enough damage. Besides, my reputation burned down five hours ago.”
“Mine’s pretty good, too,” Kay said. “Let’s do it, Frank. Let’s fight it and beat it together. I couldn’t make it without you.”
Chapter 68
Frank crossed the street, heading off the Mall and down the block to his car. He felt dizzy, getting all the garbage out of his head at once. For some impossible reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about Merdock’s library. The books lining the walls that had been purchased by an interior decorator and placed on the shelves for effect. There was something about it that he found unnerving.
Frank shuddered, picking up his pace. By now the block looked deserted, the gas station he was passing, closed. He spotted his rental car on the other side of the street and started toward it. As he unlocked the door, someone in a beat-up station wagon turned the corner, moving behind his back in a slow arc. The noise was horrendous.
He got into the Chevy and locked the door, thinking of the signs he’d missed along the way. He remembered his first win in the House. The candidate was someone both he and Woody admired. About a year after the election, they were making the rounds trying to drum up new business and stopped by the congressman’s office. When they walked in, Frank noticed that there wasn’t anything on the man’s desk. Not a file or a pen. Not a single piece of paper or even a note. Still, the congressman was a favorite on the talk show circuit and seemed to have a lot to say.
The headlights from a car spiked off the rearview mirror. Frank noticed the sound of that station wagon again. Squinting through the glare, he looked into the mirror and saw the car rushing toward him at high speed. His eyes moved instinctively to the driver’s face. It was Raymond, clinching his teeth and wild eyed—just before impact.
The blow had the feel of being struck by a freight train. Frank’s head hit the windshield, then slammed back against the passenger seat. He could feel the car’s body buckle as it shot into the middle of the street.
A moment passed. Everything hazy.
As he laid across the front seat, he could hear the LTD backing up and panting like an angry bull. The air bags deployed and he seemed puzzled. Groggy. When he heard the LTD’s tires screeching, he grabbed the passenger door handle and braced himself. The Chevy took a second hit, harder than the first, and he could feel the car skidding sideways. There was a crunching noise. Frank saw what looked like the trunk folding over the backseat in slow motion. Shattered glass from the rear window crashed over his body in a wave that cut and slashed. When he turned away from the glass, he looked through the windshield and saw the service station rushing toward him. The gas pumps were bouncing into the air, the Chevy sheering them off and finally zigzagging to a hard stop.
Gasoline shot into the sky like an oil well. Frank watched it rolling down the windows, his eyes glassy. It sounded like a rain storm, maybe even a hurricane.
He turned and peered out the side window, following the gasoline as streamed across the lot and splashed off the curb. A flood pool was forming in the street. He saw the LTD back up, dragging its front bumper across the pavement, bright red sparks aglow. The car stopped, its engine roaring even louder now. Frank could see Raymond staring back at him and understood what was about to happen next. If the gasoline in the street ignited, half the block would burn down. Once the fire was out, identifying Frank’s body wouldn’t be a matter for the police or even close friends. They’d need his dentist.
The LTD suddenly thrust forward, the front bumper sparking like a firing pin off the pavement as Raymond made one last push.
Frank ripped open the passenger door, struggling to get out. His right leg was caught beneath the crumpled-up dash and the passenger-side air bag. Gasoline rained down on him, burning what felt like holes in his eyelids. He could hear tires squealing in the background, the LTD’s engine pounding forward. He spotted his cell phone on the floor, but grabbed his pant leg and yanked himself free. Staggering into the darkness, he turned back and saw the death wagon dragging its red-hot bumper past the pool of gasoline, then vanishing into the night as the car hit air speed. The gasoline ignited. Everything went dead quiet, and in that brief moment, Frank thought that he could hear Juliana screaming from her broomstick, We’ve won, Frank! We’ve won! Then Frank covered his face, shouting at an explosion so big and bright that it seemed like high noon.
Chapter 69
That twitch in his eye was back.
Raymond saw Jake and Norman waiting for him in the Lincoln and parked the battered LTD across the street. He wanted to kill something, anything—he needed to see something stop breathing. He got out of the car with his bag of tools and slammed the door. By the time he slid into the backseat of the Lincoln, his other eye had started throbbing. He pulled the latex gloves off and slipped them into his pocket. He had been wearing them for hours, his fingertips so wrinkled from sweat that they hurt.
He had called Jake and agreed to meet him here because of the view. They were on a hill overlooking the huge blaze in the distance. Firefighters were working their way through the flames as news choppers dipped in and out of the sky trying to beat each other for the most dramatic shot. The fire at the gas station had burned itself out almost before the fire department had the hydrants tapped. But the flames had leapt into the next block, chewing up buildings three and four at a time.
Raymond scanned the scorched block until he found what was left of the gas station in the cinders.
“There’s no ambulance,” he said. “And I don’t see the coroner’s van.”
Jake turned away from the fire, staring at him from the front seat.
Chapter 70
He could see his house. At least it looked like his house.
All the lights were on and people were scurrying in and out. Frank sunk to the ground, hidden in the darkness and trying to conserve his strength from behind a rhododendron across the street.
His feet hurt and his body ached. His clothes remained wet from the gasoline, clinging to him and stinging him as if caught in a nightmare swarm of a thousand bees. He needed to catch his breath and get away from all the bees.
He had been lucky. He knew that. He hadn’t been burned.
The explosion occurred just as he stumbled around the corner behind the gas station. He’d been cut by the flying debris and knocked unconscious. When he awoke from the heat of the firestorm, he found his body covered in shattered glass and a greasy black soot. The blaze seemed to be moving toward him as it worked through the building and rode the wind. He watched it, unable to move at first. He could see the fire eating the fog in the air. He stared at it blankly as if watching from a distance or seeing it on TV. When the greasy soot on his sleeve ignited from the sheer heat of the inferno, he brushed off the fire and hobbled away on wobbly legs.
His mind surfaced as he noticed a dog barking somewhere not so far away. He tried to focus. It wasn’t a bark, but more wild than that.
Buddha.
Frank turned back to the house, peering through the branches for another look. It was definitely his house, he decided. Three patrol cars were parked at the curb with their lights flashing. The front door stood wide open and he could see men in suits discussing something in his living room. When he looked in the driveway, he saw the coroner’s van park
ed beneath the trees.
Something frightful had happened. He looked past the house to his dog racing back and forth along the fence in the backyard. Then the coroners wheeled a gurney out the front door, lifting it over the porch steps and rolling it toward their van. The U.S. Attorney was with them, followed by Randolph and Grimes.
Frank’s eyes flicked back to the gurney, and he wondered who was inside the body bag. Even from a distance, the corpse appeared small and frail and maybe even feminine—his mind racing through the possibilities and skipping ahead until it hit the wall and time stopped.
It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t.
The coroners closed up the van and jumped in the front seat. Pulling out the drive, Frank watched the truck glide down the street, its lights fading into the big black nowhere. He turned back to the house—his house and the crime scene. Randolph and Grimes were getting into the back of a sedan. As the U.S. Attorney slid into the passenger seat, a suit with blond hair took the wheel.
The sedan made a U-turn, passing the rhododendron and vanishing around the corner.
Then Frank fled into the night, his mind clearing as the terror chased him. The terror all around.
Chapter 71
Racing down the sidewalk, Frank spotted the sedan parked across the street from Linda’s townhouse and darted into the neighbor’s yard. Through the trees he could see the blond man in the suit waiting with the car. The passenger side window was down and he could hear music playing over the radio, which struck Frank as odd given the circumstances. He couldn’t tell what time it was, but guessed that it had to be closer to dawn than midnight. It must have taken him the better part of an hour to get here on foot. It had been a grueling passage, his mind beating him up from the inside out until it reached a numb, blank space where the horror lived. He turned to the house and saw every window lighted. As he fought his way through the shrubbery, he saw the U.S. Attorney pacing in the living room. Randolph and Grimes were sitting on the couch. But they weren’t searching the place, he realized. They were waiting, and he found this odd, too.
And then Linda walked into the room.
Frank took a step closer, peering through the window. She looked frightened and upset but absolutely alive and breathing as she stepped into the living room in a pair of jeans and that black V-neck sweater he liked so much. He wondered if he had passed out. If what he was seeing might not be some kind of dream or vision. He had suffered a concussion. He’d seen the coroner at his house. Another body wheeled out in a Ziploc bag.
He rushed behind the house, passing through a small rose garden to the deck. He knew that Linda kept a spare key beneath a flower pot by the steps. When he lifted the pot, the key glistened at him and he grabbed it. He moved to the backdoor, sliding the key into the lock and easing the bolt aside. Then he inched open the door and slipped inside.
He listened, standing in the kitchen and hearing their voices from the living room. When they continued speaking, he eased the door shut and froze as he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His face had been blackened from the explosion, his hair singed in the fire. There was a nick on his chin, and another on his cheekbone. Carved into his forehead, a deep gash ran three inches long just missing his right eye. He looked gaunt and wasted, the smell of gasoline clinging to him like an aftershave with too much bloom.
“We’ve got a warrant for Frank Miles’s arrest,” the U.S. Attorney said in a grim voice from the other room.
Frank turned away from the mirror, looking toward the foyer when he heard Linda finally speak.
“Frank and I haven’t exactly been close over the past year.”
“That may or may not be true, Ms. Reynolds. But I spoke with your accountant and I know about the money. We’ve got a motive now.”
“What money?” she asked.
The U.S. Attorney didn’t answer. Frank wondered where the man was going and could tell by Linda’s tone of voice that she had been caught off guard as well. Then someone cleared their throat.
“May I have a glass of water?”
It was Grimes, and Linda was telling him how to find the kitchen.
Frank looked around the room. It was a full-sized kitchen with a dining area. He spotted the pantry and stepped around the corner. As he pressed himself against the wall, he glanced back and caught the blood on the floor where he’d just been standing. Then Grimes entered, looking for the sink and missing the blood as he crossed the room.
“Frank’s gonna make a lot of money as a result of his partner’s death, isn’t he?” the U.S. Attorney started in again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Linda said.
“Sure you do, Ms. Reynolds. Your media buy adds up to almost seventy-five million dollars. Who could forget that?”
Grimes took a glass from the dish rack and filled it with tap water. Frank could see the detective’s face reflecting in the window over the sink. Grimes seemed troubled, staring outside and thinking it over as the U.S. Attorney continued to grill Linda.
“Your accountant told us that the firm takes fifteen percent off the top. That’s about a eleven million, two hundred thousand.”
Grimes lowered the glass. He was gazing at something on the counter, and Frank thought that it might be the two photographs set in frames beside a bowl of fresh apples. Frank could see the photos clearly, standing just ten feet away. The first was a picture of Jack Kennedy. The president wore a golf shirt and sunglasses while aboard his sailboat. He had a smile on his face, big and bright like he owned the world. The second was a more recent shot. Linda and Jason Hardly had their arms around each other and were smiling like they’d staked out their piece of the world, too. But it wasn’t the pictures Grimes had his eye on. It was the pad and pen beside them. The detective seemed to grunt, stepping away from the sink and jotting something down. It looked to Frank like Grimes was doing the math as he listened to the U.S. Attorney in the living room.
“Eleven million, two hundred thousand dollars,” the U.S. Attorney repeated, probably shaking his head. “That’s a lot of money. The kind of money most people only dream about. With one partner gone, your accountant says that you split the pot not by three, but by only two. After your expenses are paid, he says that’s five million dollars each. Maybe even a couple hundred thousand more.”
They had him, Frank realized. The U.S. Attorney finally had a motive. It was a lie, of course—pure fiction. But Frank imagined that it was a story a grand jury would understand. Missing the blood on the floor, Grimes left the room like he understood it, too. Frank sat down at the kitchen table and listened to the U.S. Attorney lay out his case. Frank had killed his partner for the money, he was saying, and made it look like a robbery committed by a teenager. There had been a witness to the teenager’s killing, Alan Ingrams. Frank lied to his friend Reverend Neilmarker, using the pastor to help him locate the witness. Then Frank murdered Ingrams, too. But there was another witness, someone picked up on a DUI outside their office on the night of the killings. Ozzie Olson. Frank murdered Olson, made it look like a suicide, and then dragged Linda over to his office pretending to find the body.
They had him. Without embarrassing the Merdocks by introducing the affair or mentioning the sex shots Olson had taken. Frank had done it for the money.
“They argued a lot, didn’t they?” the U.S. Attorney said. “Woody and Frank didn’t like each other. Woody even went behind Frank’s back, hiring someone to snoop on his client.”
Frank suddenly realized who was in the body bag. Everyone involved except Doc Neilmarker was dead now. Because the pastor was a friend, anything he said on Frank’s behalf could easily be turned upside-down. The U.S. Attorney had put the puzzle together in his own way without any loose ends.
“You’ve twisted everything,” Linda said, her voice quiet like she might be breaking down.
“I guess I don’t have to remind you that you’re gonna profit, too.”
He was inferring that Linda might be involved. The U.S. A
ttorney had taken her to the edge of the cliff. Now he was letting her see what might happen if she fell.
“I don’t know where Frank is,” she said, her voice shaky but gaining strength. “And it’s late. I want you to leave.”
“I’m not finished,” the U.S. Attorney said, bullying her.
“Yes, you are. Unless you have a warrant, you are.”
“That could easily be arranged,” the U.S. Attorney said.
“Then arrange it,” Linda shot back at the man. “Now get out of my house. You heard me. Get out.”
No one said anything. After a long moment, Frank heard the three men cross the room to the foyer. The front door opened and closed. Frank checked the time on the microwave and saw sunlight streaming in the windows. Then Linda stepped into the kitchen. They didn’t connect at first. Startled by his appearance, she didn’t recognize him and he thought that she might even scream.
“It’s me, Linda. It’s me.”
She let out a gasp, her eyes moving over his face quickly.
“They found Eddie,” she said.
Frank nodded. “We need to get out of here.”
She glanced at the counter and noticed the pad that Grimes had been using to add up the money. “What’s this?” she asked.
She ripped the top sheet off and handed it to him. A chill rolled up his spine as he looked at it. Grimes hadn’t been doing the math or even jotting a stray thought down. Instead, he’d known that Frank was in the room all along and had left a note. It said to keep in touch and included the number to his cell phone.
Chapter 72
They were moving now, Frank wheeling Linda’s Explorer through the late morning traffic. He saw a 7-Eleven on the corner. When he started to pull into the lot, Linda sounded incredulous.
“What are you doing? We need lawyers, Frank. The meanest lawyers money can buy.”
