Blindside f-8

by Catherine Coulter

It was in that moment Ms. Aquine Barton realized she was standing in front of three people wearing only her nightgown. She pointed the skillet at Troy Ward. “You don’t let him escape, Agent Savich, and I’ll get a robe on and turn up the heat in here.”

  They barely had time to turn Troy Ward onto his back before she was back, belting her long purple chenille bathrobe while somehow keeping a grip on the skillet.

  Troy groaned, his eyelashes fluttered and he stared up at Savich. “You bastard. How did you know I was here?”

  “I think the more relevant question is what you’re doing here, Troy. It’s kind of late to be paying a social call, don’t you think? And you didn’t even use the front door. Now, coming through a dining room window makes things look a little suspect, don’t you think, Troy?”

  “I didn’t want her to hear me.”

  Sherlock said, “You landed a little hard, Troy.”

  “I’d say so,” Ms. Barton said. “I can hear a boy playing with a paper clip at the back of the classroom. You sounded like a hippo trying to squeeze into a water bottle.”

  “Bastard. I want my lawyer.”

  “I’m not a bastard, you nasty little man. I’m a teacher.”

  “Not you, you stupid woman, him!”

  Savich said, “You know, that’s why I didn’t call you in for a chat. You’re too smart, Troy, for me to talk you into confessing, aren’t you? Yeah, I’ll bet you would have kept your mouth shut and demanded a lawyer. And I did wonder if I would have ever gotten enough to send you to prison for three murders and one attempted murder. So we just watched you. Thank you for climbing right in.”

  “I’m at the wrong house. I didn’t mean to be here. It’s all a mistake. I want my lawyer.”

  “Yep, a big mistake, I’d say. Agent Carver here followed you to the library this afternoon, saw you perusing local yearbooks. He figured you’d spotted your next victim. Fact is, though, even if we hadn’t been doing our good old-fashioned police work, you picked the wrong math teacher.”

  “No, that’s a lie. But why did you suspect me? What was there about me that made you suspicious? I can see it on your face. There was something you latched onto, wasn’t there? But what? I’m a professional sports announcer, what could have made you suspect me?”

  Savich saw that Aquine Barton was holding her iron skillet a little tighter. He gave her a slight shake of his head. He said, “I was in an accident several weeks ago, Troy, and they loaded me up with morphine. I was remembering our conversation, but in a morphine haze everything’s different. Maybe some hidden connections came bursting through, things that I’d picked up that you hadn’t actually said to me.”

  “And what did you pick up on, you bastard? That I wasn’t like you, because you were just like all those other moron jocks? You knew I was different, didn’t you?”

  “I listened to you call some of the Ravens game on Sunday. You were very good, just the right mix of play calling, commentary, and sweet silence.”

  “Yeah, I’m the best, but it’s just not enough, is it? You’re just waiting to tell everyone, aren’t you?”

  Savich said, “That Smith and Wesson.38 of yours, Troy. Turns out when I spoke to your wife’s sister, she remembered your owning a gun a long way back. A revolver, just like this.38 you brought here to Ms. Barton’s house. I know there are lots of.38s in the world, Troy, but the thing is, now we’ll get to test yours. Do you think we’ll find a match?”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “You’ll get your lawyer. But you might as well know we found where you bought the gun way back in 1993 in Baltimore. A small gun shop owned by a Mr. Hanratty on Willowby Street, downtown. He keeps excellent records. I’m sure your lawyer will show you a copy of the sale.”

  “Sounds like you better fess up, Mr. Ward,” said Aquine, who now was sitting on a dining room chair, the skillet in her lap.

  “Like I said, Ms. Barton, Troy here is really smart. You know, I kept worrying about motive, Troy, just couldn’t understand why you’d murder your wife, even if she found out you were gay.”

  “I’m not gay! That’s a lie! That’s not a motive either.”

  “No, but she wasn’t just going to tell the world about your being gay, Troy. I think some people already knew that and didn’t really care. What she was going to tell the world was that you trade in child pornography, and that you couldn’t allow.”

  “You can’t know about that, you can’t, unless-you hacked into my computer without a warrant? I’ll sue your ass off, Savich! That’s against the law!”

  “You’re right, it is. But you know, I have an agent in my unit by the name of Ruth Warnecki, and she used to be a D.C. cop. She has lots of snitches. One of them called her, told her he’d seen you on TV and knew he’d also seen you one night buying some kiddy porn on the street over on Halloran. I went there, and guess what, Troy? We found a witness who recognized your photo, said he’d seen you pay to go into a live shop with little kids parading around naked. Now, I can’t prove yet exactly what went on in those shows, and if we find out who the owners of that nasty little business are, we’ll nail them right along with you. But how much of that did your wife find out about, Troy? Did she even know you were gay?”

  “I want a lawyer. None of that crap means anything. Witnesses are paid off all the time. I don’t know anything about child pornography. Leave me alone.”

  “You know, Troy, we really don’t need your cooperation, not after you huffed your way over the windowsill and landed in Ms. Barton’s dining room with the murder weapon in your hand. That’s what I’d call catching the perp dead to rights. You’re a murderer, Troy, a vicious, cold-blooded murderer, and you’re going down for it. All the way down. You got anything else to say?”

  “I want a lawyer,” Troy Ward whispered and pulled his legs into his chest.

  Dane Carver hauled Troy Ward to his feet, read him his rights, and cuffed him. They left Ms. Aquine Barton with a fine story to tell the press and her students.

  42

  TUESDAY MORNING WASHINGTON , D.C.

  K atie was sore, but she wasn’t about to lie in bed and have the kids wonder if there was something else going on other than a brief bout with the flu. She showed up at the breakfast table, trying to stand straight and not limp. “Okay, I’m making waffles this morning. Miles, do you have twenty minutes?”

  He really didn’t, but he leaned over and kissed her. “Sure. I’ve never had your waffles, Katie.”

  “It’s the best thing Mama makes,” Keely said. “You’re lucky. She doesn’t make them often.”

  Miles grabbed Keely and tossed her into the air. She was his daughter, he thought, an amazing thing. She was laughing, and Sam joined in, hoping he was next. Miles, not about to let him down, swung him up and around, too, nearly crashing into the kitchen table.

  “Did I hear waffles?”

  “Aunt Cracker! That was a neat movie yesterday. And the pizza was yummy.”

  “Sure was,” she said, reaching out and ruffling Sam’s hair, then touching Keely’s hair. “See kids, Katie is just fine today. It wasn’t the full-blown flu, was it, Katie? Something not quite so bad, thank God, maybe just something you ate that didn’t agree with you.”

  “Could be,” Katie said. “Thank goodness it was nothing much, whatever it was.”

  Katie made the largest batch of waffles ever, Miles fried up bacon, and Cracker made the coffee. The kids laughed and argued and ate until Katie thought they’d both be sick.

  Forty-five minutes later, Katie dropped Keely and Sam off at the Hendricks Elementary School, with its attached preschool, only four blocks from their home. The last thing she wanted to do was go back to the house and pace and worry and wonder and make herself nuts. So she started driving. Even though she rarely saw them, she knew her two bodyguards were following her, two FBI agents assigned to protect her after the shooting in the park on Saturday, whenever she left the house.

  Funny thing, but she was certain to her toes she was the one th
e shooter had wanted. Not Savich, not Sherlock, certainly not Miles. But who was it? She couldn’t think of a single person. For an instant, Cracker’s face flashed in her mind. No, that was impossible, surely. She decided to call her mother when she got back to the house. Talking to her mother always made her feel better. She wished her mother were with her right now, but no, that could be dangerous.

  It was very cold, well below freezing, the sky an iron gray, the wind stiff. Snow was predicted by evening, the weather prediction of the first winter storm only a day late. It would stick and the kids would have a blast.

  She turned the heater up a bit, and kept driving. She drove past Arlington National Cemetery, a place she’d first seen when she’d been not more than five years old. All those thousands upon thousands of grave markers had touched her deeply as a child, though she hadn’t completely understood what they meant. Now, as an adult, all her own worries disappeared in the moments she stared over those fields of white crosses. So many men, she thought, so many.

  She drove around Lady Bird Johnson Park, then headed across the Arlington Memorial Bridge that spanned the Potomac. The water below was a roiling gray, moving swiftly, and looked so cold it made her lips tingle. She turned at the Lincoln Memorial when she saw the sign to Roosevelt Memorial Park. She’d first come here as a child, long before the memorial had been built, her small hand tucked in her father’s as they walked along the famous Cherry Tree Walk on the Tidal Basin near the national mall. She’d brought Keely here when she’d been a baby, just after Carlo was out of her life, with her mother and father.

  She shivered. It was getting colder. She turned up the heater again. The sky looked like it would snow much earlier than this evening.

  She parked her Silverado in the empty parking lot at the memorial, and looked around. There was no one here, no killers, no tourists, no workers, just her. She decided to walk through the memorial once again.

  One started at the beginning, since the memorial was organized chronologically, and divided into four rooms, which really weren’t rooms since it was all outside, each room representing one of Roosevelt’s terms in office. There were quotes, displays, and waterfalls everywhere. The place was so huge you could wander around until you dropped, but Katie didn’t browse. She found herself walking directly to the third room, depicting Roosevelt’s third term, where the waterfall was much larger and much louder. There, just to the left of the waterfall, was a large sculpture of FDR, and beside him sat his dog, Fala. Katie’s dad had loved Fala, loved all the stories told about the little black Scottish terrier, who’d even had his own comic strip. She stood looking at the huge sculptured cape that covered Roosevelt, listening to the hammering of the water crashing against huge loose chunks of granite. She’d heard that the waterfalls froze sometimes in the winter. With the way the temperature was plummeting, she imagined it wouldn’t be long before they were silent, frozen in place.

  Her mind flashed to her father lifting Keely in his arms, pointing to Fala, telling her a story about how he’d performed tricks on demand. How he’d wished he’d been old enough back then to go to Washington to see him in person. Oh Lord, she missed her father, wished he’d gone to a doctor earlier, but he hadn’t, just like a damned stubborn man, her mom had told her, and burst into tears. Not that it would have made much difference.

  There were memories, she thought, that touched you throughout your life. She had to keep hoping that all of Sam’s terrible memories would be tempered with the laughter and joy of experiences that were sweet and good.

  She looked at the statue of Roosevelt and said, “If you had lived any longer, would you have announced to the country that you were willing to be president for life? And would the people have elected you?”

  She half-expected an answer, and smiled at herself when the crashing water was the only thing she heard. Then there was something else, footsteps coming up behind her. She didn’t turn. She thought it was one of her bodyguards, come to check on her, and that was comforting. She stood there, wishing something made sense, wishing she was back in Jessborough, with Miles and Sam and Keely, all of them, in her house that had been magically rebuilt, her mother smiling as she came from the kitchen, carrying a tray of cinnamon buns. She craved another evening filled with tuna casserola and laughter.

  She nearly jumped straight into the air when a voice behind her said, “There you are, the little princess.”

  Katie froze.

  “That’s right, just stay right where you are. Don’t move a muscle.”

  Katie didn’t even consider a twitch.

  “All right. Turn around and face me.”

  Katie slowly turned.

  “Surprised to see me, Katie?”

  “Yes. Everyone believes you’re dead.”

  Elsbeth McCamy shook her head. “They won’t for much longer. I hear they’ve nearly dug all the way through the ruins of my beautiful house. They’ll soon find just one burned body, not two. Poor Reverend McCamy, not even buried yet, left under all that rubble, all that rain pouring down on him. No! Don’t you move, Katie Benedict!”

  Katie held utterly still.

  “I know I shot you on Saturday, but here you are, walking around this ridiculous memorial. I just couldn’t believe it when I saw you leave that big fancy house of yours this morning, looking all chipper, herding those children off to school like any good little mother.”

  Suddenly, she started shaking, and the gun jerked in her hand. “Dammit, I shot you! Why aren’t you dead like you’re supposed to be?”

  Katie heard hate and despair in her voice. And a bit of madness. She said, “It appears you’re not a very good shot.”

  “I practiced, dammit, practiced for a good week before I hunted you down in that park!”

  “People watch TV, see lots of violent movies, and think that when you fire a gun you kill someone, but it’s just not true. No matter how good a shot you are, it’s difficult to hit what you’re aiming at. Don’t feel too bad, you didn’t miss me. You shot me in the hip.” Katie lightly rested her hand against her upper thigh. “It aches a bit, but I’ll live.”

  “I’m only two feet away from you now, Katie. When I shoot you this time, you’ll die.”

  That was surely the truth. Where were her bodyguards?

  “I had to stay back in the park since you were with those other federal agents, and that new husband of yours. You really landed on your feet, didn’t you, Sheriff? Nice big house, husband kissing your feet, so much money you must think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  “Actually, I really didn’t think of it quite like that,” Katie said. Where were her bodyguards? Probably close, they surely couldn’t have lost her coming through the memorial. There wasn’t another soul around. Maybe they didn’t want to intrude on her when there was no one here to threaten her?

  “I wanted servants, but Reverend McCamy only wanted God, and me. Always God first, me second. He didn’t want servants to come into our home and intrude on his privacy. So I did everything myself, even made brownies. How he loved my brownies. I made them from scratch, stirred together all that chocolate and chocolate chips and pecans, but I didn’t eat any. He didn’t like any fat on me, said it would be a sacrilege.

  “Do you know that he studied his palms and his feet every single day? He prayed until his knees were raw, offered God everything he had, probably including me, if He would just bring back the sacred stigmata one more time. But God didn’t answer his prayers.”

  “The story from Homer Bean was that Reverend McCamy had experienced the stigmata when he was a child. Did you believe that?”

  Elsbeth McCamy nodded. “Of course. It’s all he could talk about, all he could think about. He would picture it, envision it happening again over and over in his mind, but it never did. He was furious with his parents for not recording it for posterity-to show to his congregation, to prove he wasn’t like those crooked loud-mouthed televangelists, that he was blessed by God himself.”

  “I’ve give
n it a lot of thought, Elsbeth, and do you know what I think?”

  “If I don’t shoot you dead right this minute, I guess you’ll tell me.”

  Katie stayed as still and small as she could. “I don’t think Sam suffered any holy stigmata. I think it was some sort of rash or exanthem, something brought on by his illness. I don’t think it was blood on his palms.”

  “His mother believed it was blood. For God’s sake, she videotaped it! She could probably smell the blood. You can, you know. Smell blood, that is.” She shook her head, bringing herself back from some memory. “She gave the tape to a senile old priest whose sister recognized its value and knew a member of the Reverend’s congregation. That’s how it came to Reverend McCamy. Who are you to question any of this? You’re just some hick sheriff.”

  “Let me ask you this, Elsbeth. Was Sam the only child like that Reverend McCamy had ever heard about, had ever tracked down?”

  Slowly, Elsbeth nodded her head. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t. I’m surprised and pleased that you managed to escape the fire, Elsbeth.”

  “I doubt you’ll be pleased much longer. If I’d burned to a crisp with Reverend McCamy, you wouldn’t be looking death in the eye.”

  “How did you get out?”

  Elsbeth McCamy shrugged. “We had a little… playroom at the back of the closet. There’s a door that leads down from there and out of the mud room. Reverend McCamy was dead, I knew it, and I didn’t want to die with him, and so I got out of there really fast.”

  “That little playroom, I saw it once.”

  “That’s impossible. No one ever saw it.”

  “Well, yes, I did. Agent Sherlock and I looked around your house once because we thought Clancy was there. I can understand why Reverend McCamy wouldn’t want servants hanging around to find it by accident. I’ll admit I was really surprised that Reverend McCamy was the sort of man who tied his wife down and whipped her.”

  Elsbeth McCamy looked blank a moment, then she threw back her head and let out a high wild laugh, and that laugh blended in with the crashing water and sent puffs of cold breath into the air. Katie was ready, only an instant from jumping at her, when Elsbeth’s head came back down, her laughter cut off like water from a spigot, and she whispered, “I want to kill you anyway, Sheriff, so please, come at me, please.”