The Third Coincidence

by David Bishop

  “Jingles. I’m home,” she called out. Then suddenly felt wary. With her vision still impaired, she couldn’t see her cat, but she should have heard his familiar squeaky meows.

  Jingles is always right at the door.

  She shut her eyes tight and saw the dancing dots of lights. She considered turning on the lights, but her instincts told her not too. She pressed her back against the wall, extended her foot over and pushed the door until she heard it latch. Her breathing went shallow. And she waited, wishing she were invisible while her eyes hunted for enough light to let her see.

  I always leave the drape over the side window open so Jingles can lie on the sill to catch the morning sun. But it’s closed. Someone has been in here. Maybe still is?

  Fear wet her armpits. She slipped off her shoes, braced herself by spreading her legs and leaning hard against the wall and drew her Sig Sauer. She reached over with her hand to confirm the door to the front coat closet was closed. It was; that door always creaked, so she could move past it and trust her ears. She eased down into a squat with her back still against the wall. Her eyes found enough light for her to see the outlines of her living room furniture, the kitchen, and the hall reaching back toward her bedroom and bath. She focused down the center and relied on her peripheral vision.

  Someone was here. She was sure of it. If not, Jingles would be weaving back and forth between her feet.

  As her vision improved, the white refrigerator took inexact shape, then she saw the handle on the fridge.

  She swallowed, licked her lips, tossed her purse onto the far living room chair, and quickly moved to the back of the couch. Nothing had moved but her.

  There were no shadows that shouldn’t be there. Then one leaped toward her, and collapsed. Rose again. Rushed her, and then disappeared, all without an accompanying sound.

  She crouched next to the end of the couch, and cradled her gun in the palm of her other hand. If he had wanted her dead, he would have attacked as soon as she came in, before her eyes began to adjust. From her position she could drop the invader with a shot to his legs. But there weren’t any legs, only a fast shadow. She held her aim, fighting to even out the ebb and flow of her breathing. Then the shadow rose again. Moved again. She had tightened the slack in the trigger when she realized the source of the shadows. The wind was blowing the small curtain over the bathroom window she left open to help dry the shower. Still, someone had to be here. If not, her cat would be with her.

  She rose to a crouch and moved into the space between the two bar stools on the living room side of the kitchen island. In a sudden move she pushed the covered pan from her morning oatmeal over the edge of the island.

  Clang. Bang. The pan noisily settled onto the floor.

  Then nothing.

  Her safe zone now included the kitchen. She could call the bureau for backup and hunker down to keep the bastard from getting to the front door—the only way in or out. While keeping her eyes on the hallway, she stepped to the chair in the living room area and reached inside her purse for her cell phone. It wasn’t there. The slot just below the top flap was empty. She reached deeper. It wasn’t there. She raked her hand hard across the bottom of her bag. It wasn’t there. She moved to the counter and dumped the contents and glanced down. Her phone wasn’t there.

  It must have fallen out when I spilled my purse, she thought. Christ, I should’ve installed a land phone.

  She couldn’t go out and look for her phone without giving the intruder the time to get out, and she wasn’t about to let the bastard escape. He had to be in either the bedroom or the bathroom.

  She stood still. Alone in the dark lifeless kitchen. Listening. One minute. A breath. Another minute. Another breath.

  Screw this. I’ll finish it right now. Alone.

  The apartment’s one bathroom had two doors, a pocket door into the one and only bedroom, and a hinged door to the hallway. She couldn’t go down the hall to her bedroom without exposing her back to the bathroom’s hallway door. She needed a plan to clear the bathroom without leaving herself vulnerable to an attack up the hallway from the bedroom.

  From near the refrigerator she saw a faint reflection of the bathtub in the mirror over the sink. The clear shower slider stood half open.

  I always pull it closed. With the window open, it dries faster.

  She could enter the bathroom quickly and close the door to the hall. No. That would allow the son of a bitch to recapture the space between her and the front door. She could stop in the hall and pull the bathroom door shut, then proceed to the bedroom. But that would momentarily leave her vulnerable from the dark bedroom.

  She eased open a kitchen drawer, removed a flashlight, held it against her stomach and turned it on. It worked. She flicked it off and slipped it inside her waistband. From an upper cabinet she took two large water glasses, shoving the fingers on her left hand deep inside. Then, holding her gun in her right hand above her shoulder, she rushed the bathroom, smacking the door with her right shoulder. The door slammed against the wall, the knob gouging out its shape in the drywall.

  She watched the open pocket door into the bedroom while listening for movement in the hallway. Hearing nothing, she slid one foot toward the door she had come through and quickly glanced down the hall toward the bedroom. Nothing.

  The silence ended when she shattered the first glass against the hallway floor, while keeping her focus on the pocket door. Then she smashed the second water glass the same way. Now, if the intruder entered the hall from the bedroom, she would hear him.

  The bedroom was as black as her hair. The uninvited guest had closed the blackout drape over the small window on the far side of the bed, the one she opened each morning so Jingles could catch the afternoon sun.

  She eased her bathroom handheld mirror through the pocket door. The closet sliders on the far wall were shut.

  Men get in my bedroom by invitation only, you son of a bitch. Ready or not, here I come.

  She squared her shoulders to the opening in the pocket door and tossed a round plastic bottle of hand lotion so it would roll across the bed until it dropped off the far side. She trained her gun on the darkness along the wall, but got no reaction when the lotion bottle hit the floor. Nothing. She stepped through the door, stooping beside the bed, and listened.

  Quiet.

  Dark.

  The bastard’s still here, he must still be here. If he got out, my cat would have met me at the door meowing his head off. Oh, my God. That’s what Jingles did the night my bra disappeared.

  She moved to the wall beside the closet, reached over, and used her fingers to find the recessed cup handle in the slider. When she had it, in one violent motion she thrust the slider as hard as she could. The door bounced off the far jamb.

  “Toss out your weapon. Crawl out here on your knees. Slow. Hands empty or you’re dead. Now!”

  Nothing.

  Quiet.

  Dark.

  Rachel crouched and squinted. Then flipped on the flashlight, the stark light blunting against the clothes. She moved the beam lower. She had not before realized just how many pairs of shoes she owned, but none of them had feet in them.

  He has to be in the front coat closet.

  She pushed the bedroom door to the hallway closed, circled around through the bathroom pocket door and into the hall beyond the broken glass, closing the bathroom door behind herself. At the panel of switches near the front door, she raised her gun, flipped on the closet’s inside light, dropped to one knee, and flung the door open.

  Coats and umbrellas. Only coats and umbrellas.

  A sense of relief struggled with her anger. Someone had been here. But now he was gone. And so was Jingles. Her nerve endings began tingling as her adrenal gland shut down.

  After a futile hour of looking for Jingles outside, during which she found her cell phone under her car, she stood at the top of the landing softly calling for Jingles. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered as if a seam in time had allowe
d December to visit June.

  Back inside, she put her gun on the kitchen counter, and cleaned up the broken glass.

  She put on an oversized T-shirt and went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin looked wet and felt hot. She splashed her face with cold water, ran a rung-out washcloth over her neck and down her arms. As she turned, her field of vision included the toilet bowl where she saw a dark shadow against the stark white porcelain.

  Jingles.

  His eyes had been gouged out.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Supreme Court is effectively standing down.

  —Eric Dunn, freelance columnist, June 11

  The way McCall had watched Rachel Johnstone leave his home that first night had convinced LW that Rachel would be the perfect messenger. She would tell Jack about her stupid cat, and he would understand: stop interfering.

  LW screwed the cap off a bottle of red wine and sat down to watch MSNBC’s rebroadcast of its earlier edition of D.C. Talk.

  But what he heard was not what he had been expecting. He flailed his arms, sloshing wine onto the floor. “Fuck you, Nesbit,” he shouted at the TV screen. “Don’t you get it? This is not about me! It’s about stopping the unelected officials who really run America.” You Goddamn fool! It’s blasphemous to compare me to John Wilkes Booth and the Reverend Jim Jones.

  “Charles Nesbit. I sentence you to death.”

  Chief Justice Evans paused outside the conference room and took a deep breath before walking in to face his five surviving associate justices. At six four the chief justice towered above the others. At a signal from him, his fellow justices took their seats in accordance with the Court’s long tradition: Justice James Dunlin, the senior associate justice, sat to the right of the chief justice. Michael Roberts, the second senior associate justice, sat to the chief’s left. Justices Penelope Budson and Harold Sanders, the third and fourth senior, sat second to his right and left respectively. The fifth surviving and newest Associate Justice Jonathan Phineas Huckaby faced him across the table. The seats where those killed would have sat, remained empty.

  “The president has asked that we move our families away from our homes,” the chief justice told his associate justices, choosing his words with care. “Today. The FBI and our Court police will accompany us during these relocations and each of us and our families will thereafter remain under surveillance.”

  When several of them started to speak, he held up his hands. “I know,” Evans said. “I know. This is a sad day. The FBI is checking our automobiles for bugs and explosives. I took the liberty of giving them permission. I trust no one objects. We’re to leave unannounced as soon as we finish this meeting. When the FBI tells us our homes are clear, we can return our families to them. While we’re gone, the FBI and our Court police will electronically sweep our chambers here and the private and common areas of the courthouse before installing cameras and listening devices.”

  Justice Penelope Anne Budson, an elderly woman who’s gray hair had bluish highlights, spoke first. “Mr. Chief Justice. How are we to proceed with our duties? Our deliberations must be confidential.”

  “There will be no listening devices or cameras inside this conference room. We’ll post security outside this door twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This room will be used for all our discussions about the cases we have under deliberation. In our respective chambers we will need to watch what we say and make more use of e-mails and memos.”

  “But still—” Justice Budson insisted.

  “Penny,” the chief justice interrupted, “how can we proceed with our duties when one of us per week is being murdered? We cannot expect to go forward without some inconvenience. Let us hope inconvenience is the worst we suffer.”

  “Excuse me, but this appears to transcend mere inconvenience,” Justice Michael Roberts said, his voice sharp with annoyance.

  “You’re quite correct, Mike. But then, calling it whatever you prefer, the situation remains.”

  Senior Associate Justice Dunlin dropped his pincer glasses onto the notepad before him. “Perhaps,” he said in his Maine accent, “we should, for now, suspend our work as this Commander LW has demanded. Our summer recess is fast approaching. We could claim an inability to proceed with so many vacancies on the bench. The president and the Senate could delay the confirmation process until this LW and his militia are captured.”

  “There it is,” Evans said. “All right; it’s on the table. Does anyone second Justice Dunlin’s motion that we adjourn during these trying times?”

  “I did not place a motion on the table, Mr. Chief Justice. I thought we were having informal discussion.”

  “All right then,” the chief justice corrected himself, “does anyone wish to informally discuss further Justice Dunlin’s idea of recessing early?”

  Justice Sanders stabbed his notepad with his mechanical pencil. “I will oppose any effort for an early adjournment. Make no mistake, whether foreign or domestic, if madmen figure they can shut down the Court or any part of America we will get more terrorism, not less.” A double pencil stab punctuated his comment.

  Chief Justice Evans pointed his finger and thumb at Sanders as a child would mimic a pistol. “I agree, Sandy, but high principle is often easiest when one is not looking down the barrel of a gun.” He then turned to his senior associate. “Justice Dunlin, do you wish to put your idea in the form of a motion?”

  Dunlin stroked his pale, bony jaw. “No.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The president and the Senate are discussing plans to fast-track the confirmations process.

  —FOX News, June 11

  Ms. Addiena Welch, the White House press secretary, sensed her boss would be on the ground floor nearing the situation room about now. She knew him to be a punctual man, even for press conferences.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, standing on her toes so as not to adjust the microphone that had been preset for the president, “a few ground rules: This press conference is limited to the president’s statement and your questions related to the recent killings of government officials. No other subject will be discussed. A little later the president will be joined by Senators Marshall Leland and Ruth Ann Mitchell, the chairs of the Senate’s Judiciary and Banking Committees, respectively, the confirming committees for nominees to the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board of governors.”

  She paused and blotted her forehead with a tissue. The maintenance staff had failed again in their effort to lower the temperature in the pressroom to offset the heat generated by the television lights and cameras.

  There was a slight disturbance behind her. She glanced over her right shoulder and saw the president in the wings. She stepped back.

  President Schroeder moved into position in front of the soft blue backdrop and stood at the microphone. He drank from the glass of room-temperature water left on the shelf just below the top of the lectern and began.

  “Thank you for coming with so little notice. Under the circumstances it is important that the American people hear from their government.”

  He paused and then read from a prepared document: “As you all know, we have lost three U.S. Supreme Court justices, Adam Monroe, Herbert Clarkson Montgomery, and Donald Quincy Breen, as well as two Federal Reserve governors, John Santee and Charles Taylor. All of them were good men who believed in and practiced public service. To their families, friends, and all of you, I offer my deepest, heartfelt condolences. They will be missed.”

  After a somber look into the cameras, he continued reading his statement. “Their positions will be filled by other capable, patriotic men and women. We are a nation of many such individuals. The business of this government will continue. No other position is consistent with the strength of this country. No other position is consistent with the responsibilities of governance. No other position is consistent with the examples set by our forefathers, and the legacy we must leave for those who come later. I will now take
your questions.”

  Unlike most presidents in the past, Samuel Schroeder often moved out from behind the lectern after finishing his prepared statement. He did so now and pointed toward the New York Times’s Washington correspondent. “Ms. Liotta.”

  Her bleached teeth matched the white collar on her taupe blouse. “Mr. President, what’s being done to protect the eleven remaining members of these two institutions?”

  “It would be inappropriate for me or any member of the government to reveal the security measures in place and please, ladies and gentlemen, we have to assume whoever is behind these killings listens to press conferences, watches television, listens to the radio, and reads your papers. Let’s all do what we can to catch this . . . this . . . LW,” the president said, clearly suppressing other words he would rather have used. He then called on the reporter from the Baltimore Sun, Arthur McDonald.

  “Mr. President, our observer at the Court reported that the justices vacated the courthouse this morning shortly after nine. Is the Supreme Court standing down as LW has demanded?”

  The president moved forward so that he was looking directly at McDonald, who was sitting in the front row.

  “Your sources are reliable. The Court has a long history of recessing for various periods of time, for various reasons. I’m confident that tomorrow your observer will confirm that the justices have returned to their duties.”

  President Schroeder gestured toward the Washington Post’s plump White House correspondent, whose constant wearing of heavy earrings had elongated her earlobes enough that some of the catty members of the press called her Dumbo.

  “Mr. President, what can you tell us about the efforts to identify and stop this Commander LW and his militia?”

  “As you are aware, we have assembled a multiagency task force under the leadership of Jack McCall, a special deputy to Harriet Miller, the director of Central Intelligence. Mr. McCall has a long and distinguished career as an American intelligence officer.” The president spread his hands. “I have complete faith in Jack McCall.”