“Small as a germ’s ass?” LaTour suggested.
The doctor considered this and said, “That sums it up pretty well.”
+ − < = > ÷
THE DAY WAS TOO NICE to be inside so Mac McCaffrey and Robert Covey were in the park. Tal spotted them on a bench overlooking a duck pond. He waved and veered toward them.
She appeared to be totally immersed in the sunlight, the soft breeze; Tal remembered how much this member of the Four Percent Club loved the out-of-doors.
Covey, Mac had confided to Tal, was doing pretty well. His blood pressure was down and he was in good spirits as he approached his surgery. She was breaching confidentiality rules by telling Tal this but she justified it on the grounds that Tal was a police officer investigating a case involving her patient. Another reason was simply that Tal liked the old guy and was concerned about him.
Mac also told him that Covey had finally called his son and left a message about his condition and the impending surgery. There’d been no reply, though Covey’d gotten a hang-up on his voice mail, the caller ID on the phone indicating “Out of Area.” Mac took the optimistic position that it had indeed been his son on the other end of the line and the man hadn’t left a message because he preferred to talk to his father in person. Time would tell.
In his office an hour ago Tal had been distracted as he listened to Mac’s breathy, enthusiastic report about her patient. He’d listened attentively but was mostly waiting for an appropriate lull in the conversation to leap in with a dinner invitation. None had presented itself, though, before she’d had to hang up to get to a meeting. He’d hurriedly made plans to meet here.
Tal now joined them and she looked up with that great crooked smile he was deciding he really liked and was more than just a little sexy.
“Hey,” he said.
“Officer,” Robert Covey said. They warmly shook hands. Tal hesitated for a moment in greeting Mac but then thought, hell with it, bent down and kissed her, though on the noncommittal cheek. This seemed unprofessional on several levels—his as well as hers—but she didn’t seem to care; he knew he certainly didn’t have a problem with the lapse.
Tal proceeded to explain to Covey that since he was the only victim who’d survived the Lotus Foundation scam the police needed a signed and notarized copy of his statement.
“In case I croak when I’m under the knife you’ll still have the evidence to put the pricks away.”
That was it exactly. Tal shrugged. “Well…”
“Don’tcha worry,” the old man said. “I’m happy to.”
Tal handed him the statement. “Look it over, make any changes you want. I’ll print out a final version and we’ll get it notarized.”
“Will do.” Covey skimmed it and then looked up. “How ’bout something to drink? There’s a bar—”
“Coffee, tea or soda,” Mac said ominously. “It’s not even noon yet.”
“She claims she negotiates,” Covey muttered to Tal. “But she don’t.”
The old man pointed toward the park’s concession stand at the top of a hill some distance away. “Coffee’s not bad there—for an outfit that’s not named for a whaler.”
“I’ll get it.”
“I’ll have a large with cream.”
“He’ll have a medium, skim milk,” Mac said. “Tea for me, please. Sugar.” She fired a crooked smile his way.
+ − < = > ÷
ABOUT A HUNDRED YARDS from the bench where the old man sat chatting away with his friend, a young woman walked along the park path. The redhead was short, busty, attractive, wearing a beautiful tennis bracelet and a diamond/emerald ring, off which the sunlight glinted fiercely.
She kept her eyes down as she walked, so nobody could see her abundant tears.
Margaret Ludlum had been crying on and off for several days. Ever since her boss and lover, Dr. Anthony Sheldon, had been arrested.
Margaret had greeted the news of his arrest—and Farley’s, too—with horror, knowing that she’d probably be the next to be picked up. After all, she’d been the one that Sheldon and Farley had sent as a representative of the Lotus Foundation to the couples who were planning to kill themselves. It was she who’d slipped them plenty of Luminux during their last few weeks on earth, then suggested they buy the blueprint for their deaths—the suicide books—and coerced them into killing themselves and afterward cleaned up any evidence linking them to the Foundation or its two principals.
But the police had taken her statement—denying everything, of course—and let her go. It was clear they suspected Sheldon and Farley had an accomplice but seemed to think that it was one of Farley’s research assistants. Maybe they thought that only a man was capable of killing defenseless people.
Wrong. Margaret had been completely comfortable with assisted suicide. And more: She’d been only a minute away from murdering Robert Covey the other day as he walked down the street after leaving the Lotus Foundation. But just as she started toward him a van stopped nearby and two police officers jumped out, pulling him to safety. Other officers had raided the Foundation. She’d veered down a side street and called Sheldon to warn him. But it was too late. They got him outside his office at the hospital as he’d tried to flee.
Oh, yes, she’d been perfectly willing to kill Covey then.
And was perfectly willing to kill him now.
She watched that detective who’d initially come to interview Tony Sheldon walk away from the bench up the path toward the refreshment stand. It didn’t matter that he was leaving; he wasn’t her target.
Only Covey. With the old man gone it would be much harder to get a conviction, Sheldon explained. He might get off altogether or serve only a few years—that’s what they doled out in most cases of assisted suicides. The cardiologist promised he’d finally get divorced and he and Margaret would move to Europe…They’d taken some great trips to the South of France and the weeks there had been wonderful. Oh, how she missed him.
Missed the money, too, of course. That was the other reason she had to get Tony out of jail, of course. He’d been meaning to set up an account for her but hadn’t gotten around to it. She’d let that slide for too long and the paperwork never materialized.
In her purse, banging against her hip, she felt the heavy pistol, the one she’d been planning to use on Covey several days ago. She was familiar with guns—she’d helped several of the other Lotus Foundation clients “transition” by shooting themselves. And though she’d never actually pulled the trigger and murdered someone, she knew she could do it.
The tears were gone now. She was thinking of how to best handle the shooting. Studying the old man and that woman—who’d have to die, too, of course; she’d be a witness against Margaret herself for the murder today. Anyway, the double murder would make the scenario more realistic. It would look like a mugging. Margaret would demand the wallet and the woman’s purse and when they handed the items over, she’d shoot them both in the head.
Pausing now, next to a tree, Margaret looked over the park. A few passersby, but no one was near Covey and the woman. The detective—Simms, she recalled—was still hiking up the hill to the concession stand. He was two hundred yards away; she could kill them both and be in her car speeding away before he could sprint back to the bench.
She waited until he disappeared into a stand of trees then reached into her purse, cocking the pistol. Margaret stepped out from behind the tree and moved quickly down the path that led to the bench. A glance around her. Nobody was present.
Closer now, closer. Along the asphalt path, damp from an earlier rain and the humid spring day.
She was twenty feet away…ten…
She stepped quickly up behind them. They looked up. The woman gave a faint smile in greeting—a smile that faded as she noted Margaret’s cold eyes.
“Who are you?” the woman asked, alarm in her voice.
Margaret Ludlum said nothing. She pulled the gun from her purse.
+ − < = > ÷
�
��WALLET!” Pointing the pistol directly at the old man’s face.
“What?”
“Give me your wallet!” Then turning to the woman, “And the purse! Now!”
“You want—?”
They were confused, being mugged by someone outfitted by Neiman Marcus.
“Now!” Margaret screamed.
The woman thrust the purse forward and stood, holding her hands out. “Look, just calm down.”
The old man was frantically pulling his wallet from his pocket and holding it out unsteadily.
Margaret grabbed the items and shoved them into her shoulder bag. Then she looked at the man’s eyes and—rather than feel any sympathy, she felt that stillness she always did when slipping someone drugs or showing them how to grip the gun or seal the garage with duct tape to make the most efficient use of the carbon monoxide.
The woman was saying, “Please, don’t do anything stupid. Just take everything and leave!”
Then Robert Covey squinted. He was looking at her with certain understanding. He knew what this was about. “Leave her alone,” he said. “Me, it’s okay. It’s all right. Just let her go.”
But she thrust the gun forward at Covey as the woman with him screamed and dropped to the ground. Margaret began to pull the trigger, whispering the phrase she always did when helping transition the Lotus Foundation’s clients, offering a prayer for a safe journey. “God be with—”
A flash of muddy light filled her vision as she felt, for a tiny fragment of a second, a fist or rock slam into her chest.
“But…what…”
Then nothing but numb silence.
+ − < = > ÷
A THOUSAND YARDS AWAY, it seemed.
If not miles.
Talbot Simms squinted toward the bench, where he could see the forms of Robert Covey and Mac on their feet, backing away from the body of the woman he’d just shot. Mac was pulling out her cell phone, dropping it, picking it up again, looking around in panic.
He lowered the gun and stared.
A moment before, Tal had paid the vendor and was turning from the concession stand, holding the tray of drinks. Frowning, he saw a woman standing beside the bench, pointing something toward Mac and Covey, Mac rearing away then handing her purse over, the old man giving her something, his wallet, it seemed.
And then Tal had noticed that what she held was a gun.
He knew that she was in some way connected to Sheldon or Farley and the Lotus Foundation. The red hair…Yes! Sheldon’s secretary, unsmiling Celtic Margaret. He’d known, too, that she’d come here to shoot the only living eyewitness to the scam—and probably Mac, too.
Dropping the tray of tea and coffee, he’d drawn his revolver. He’d intended to sprint back toward them, calling for her to stop, threatening her. But when he saw Mac fall to the ground, futilely covering her face, and Margaret shoving the pistol forward, he’d known she was going to shoot.
Tal had cocked his own revolver to single-action and stepped into a combat firing stance, left hand curled under and around his right, weight evenly distributed on both feet, aiming high and slightly to the left, compensating for gravity and a faint breeze.
He fired, felt the kick of the recoil and heard the sharp report, followed by screams behind him of bystanders diving for cover.
Remaining motionless, he’d cocked the gun again and prepared to fire a second time in case he’d missed, looking for a target.
But he saw immediately that another shot wouldn’t be necessary. Tal Simms carefully lowered the hammer of his weapon, replaced it in his holster and began running down the path.
+ − < = > ÷
“EXCUSE ME, you were standing where?”
Tal ignored Greg LaTour’s question and asked them both one more time, “You’re okay? You’re sure?”
The bearded cop persisted. “You were on that hill. Way the fuck up there?”
Mac told Tal that she was fine. He instinctively put his arm around her. Covey, too, said that he was unhurt, though he added that, as a heart patient, he could do without scares like that one.
Margaret Ludlum’s gun had fired but it was merely a reflex after Tal’s bullet had struck her squarely in the chest. The slug from her pistol had buried itself harmlessly in the ground somewhere nearby.
Tal glanced at her body, now covered with a green tarp from the Medical Examiner’s Office. He waited to feel upset, or shocked or guilty, but he was only numb. Those would come later, he supposed. At the moment he was just relieved to find that Mac and Robert Covey were all right—and that the final itch in the case had been alleviated: The tough Irish girl, Margaret, was the missing link.
They must’ve hired muscle or used somebody in the Foundation for the dirty work.
As the Crime Scene techs picked up evidence around the body and looked through the woman’s purse, LaTour persisted. “That hill up there? No fucking way.”
Tal glanced up. “Yeah. Up there by the concession stand. Why?”
The bearded cop glanced at Mac. “He’s kidding. He’s jerking my chain, right?”
“No, that’s where he was.”
“That’s a fucking long shot. Wait…how big’s your barrel?”
“What?”
“On your service piece.”
“I don’t know. It’s whatever they gave me.” Tal nodded at the gun on his hip.
“Three-inch,” Greg said. “You made that shot with a three-inch barrel?”
“We’ve pretty much established that, Greg. Can we move on?” Tal turned back to Mac and smiled, feeling weak, he was so relieved to see her safe.
But LaTour said, “You told me you don’t shoot.”
“I didn’t say that. You assumed I don’t shoot. I just didn’t want to go to the range the other day. I’ve shot all my life. I was captain of the rifle team at school.”
LaTour squinted at the distant concession stand. He shook his head. “No way.”
Tal glanced at him and asked, “Okay, you want to know how I did it? There’s a trick.”
“What?” the big cop asked eagerly.
“Easy. Just calculate the correlation between gravity as a constant and the estimated mean velocity of the wind over the time it takes the bullet to travel from points A to B—that’s the muzzle to the target. The ‘MTT.’ Got that?”
“MTT. Yeah.”
“Then you multiply distance times that correlated factor divided by the mass of the bullet times its velocity squared.”
“You—” The big cop squinted again. “Wait, you—”
“It’s a joke, Greg.”
“You son of a bitch. You had me.”
“Haven’t you noticed it’s not that hard to do?”
The cop mouthed words that Mac couldn’t see but Tal had no trouble deciphering.
LaTour squinted one last time toward the knoll and exhaled a laugh. “Let’s get statements.” He nodded to Robert Covey and escorted him toward his car, calling back to Tal, “You get hers. That okay with you, Einstein?”
“Sure.”
Tal led Mac to a park bench out of sight of Margaret’s body and listened to what she had to say about the incident, jotting down the facts in his precise handwriting. An officer drove Covey home and Tal found himself alone with Mac. There was silence for a moment and he asked, “Say, one thing? Could you help me fill out this questionnaire?”
“I’d be happy to.”
He pulled one out of his briefcase, looked at it, then back to her. “How ’bout dinner tonight?”
“Is that one of the questions?”
“It’s one of my questions. Not a police question.”
“Well, the thing is I’ve got a date tonight. Sorry.”
He nodded. “Oh, sure.” Couldn’t think of anything to follow up with. He pulled out his pen and smoothed the questionnaire, thinking: Of course she had a date. Women like her, high-ranking members of the Four Percent Club, always had dates. He wondered if it’d been the Pascal-sex comment that had knocked him out of the r
unning. Note for the future: Don’t bring that one up too soon.
Mac continued, “Yeah, tonight I’m going to help Mr. Covey find a health club with a pool. He likes to swim but he shouldn’t do it alone. So we’re going to find a place that’s got a lifeguard.”
“Really? Good for him.” He looked up from Question 1.
“But I’m free Saturday,” Mac said.
“Saturday? Well, I am, too.”
Silence. “Then how’s Saturday?” she asked.
“I think it’s great. Now how ’bout those questions?”
+ − < = > ÷
A WEEK LATER the Lotus Foundation case was nearly tidied up—as was Tal’s office, much to his relief—and he was beginning to think about the other tasks awaiting him: the SEC investigation, the statistical analysis for next year’s personnel assignments and, of course, hounding fellow officers to get their questionnaires in on time.
The prosecutor still wanted some final statements for the Farley and Sheldon trials, though, and he’d asked Tal to interview the parents who’d adopted the three children born following the in vitro fertilization at the Foundation.
Two of the three couples lived nearby and he spent one afternoon taking their statements. The last couple was in Warwick, a small town outside of Albany, over an hour away. Tal made the drive on a Sunday afternoon, zipping down the picturesque roadway along the Hudson River, the landscape punctuated with blooming azaleas, forsythia and a billion spring flowers, the car filling with the scent of mulch and hot loam and sweet asphalt.
He found both Warwick and the couple’s bungalow with no difficulty. The husband and wife, in their late twenties, were identically pudgy and rosy skinned. Uneasy, too, until Tal explained that his mission there had nothing to do with any challenges to the adoption. It was merely a formality for a criminal case.
Like the other parents, they provided good information that would be helpful in prosecuting Farley and Sheldon. For a half hour Tal jotted careful notes and then thanked them for their time. As he was leaving he walked past a small, cheery room decorated in a circus motif.
Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories, Volume 3 Page 50
