Conspiracy Theory

by Jane Haddam

  “Of course they did,” Gregor said, “but David Alden knew he was going to kill Tony Ross from the first. He’s been setting up that murder for over a year. That’s why he became Michael Harridan. Don’t you get it?”

  “No,” Jackman said.

  They had reached a neighborhood of small frame houses. Gregor tapped on Jackman’s shoulder.

  “We’re here,” he said. “I’ll go on explaining a little later.”

  “If you go on explaining, my head will explode,” Jackman said.

  He eased the car up against the curb. Gregor started to get out before the car stopped moving. It was a trick he had seen other people make look easy. It nearly got him killed. He caught his balance and stood up. He looked at the number on the house just ahead of him and started walking north.

  “Right up here,” he said to Jackman coming up behind him. “Let’s only hope we got here before he did. Because I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but I do know—”

  He had gone three houses up and stopped a moment to look at the sagging porch and the thin white lace curtains in the windows. He was not thinking of anything except the fact that the small black car parked up against the curb near the house looked familiar.

  “Listen,” he said, turning back to look at Jackman.

  That’s when the bullet caught him in the back of his right shoulder.

  2

  It occurred to him, falling to the ground in what felt like slow motion, that he had never been shot before. Not in the Bureau, not even in the army, although that might not count, since he had never been much of anywhere but the American South while he was in the army. Why was it that so many army bases were in the South, and in the rural South at that? Didn’t it make more sense to protect, say, New York City or Washington, D.C.? Would the hijackers have been able to hit the Pentagon if Fort Bragg had been in Chevy Chase instead of wherever it was, which Gregor could not remember, because he was in an impossible amount of pain. He couldn’t remember ever having hurt this badly in his life. He couldn’t remember ever having felt so disembodied, either. His head was occupying space where his body was not. Or something. Or something. He wanted to scream, but his mind was not connected to his lungs.

  He felt himself being pulled along the ground, and that hurt too, but it was a long way away. A moment later, he realized that he was lying next to a car wheel. The big black tire had treads that were much too worn for safety. He ought to leave a note for the owners. He could put it under the windshield, the way you put notes there when you’d dented somebody in a parking lot and couldn’t wait around for however many hours it might be before the somebody got back. He was making no sense at all. He was listening for the sound of another gunshot. He didn’t hear one.

  “I can’t be dead,” he said, out loud. “I’m too cold.”

  There was movement beside him, and then the sight of a knee, encased in good black wool, far too thin.

  “You’re not dead,” Jackman said. “I’m calling everybody on the planet. I’m not armed.”

  “Aren’t policemen supposed to be armed?”

  “The commissioner usually isn’t.”

  Gregor closed his eyes, and then opened them again. It was very unpleasant closing his eyes. It made him want to throw up. Jackman’s phone made those beeping and booping noises cell phones make when they’re dialed, if “dialed” was the word you used for cell phones, when it really meant something that could only be done to a rotary phone, and rotary phones were out of date. He had gone beyond making no sense. He was no longer connected to linear thought.

  “Listen,” he said.

  “Shut up,” Jackman said. “You’re not going to do yourself any good by wearing yourself out. They’ll bring an ambulance. Bennis is going to kill me.”

  “Listen,” Gregor said again. “Don’t let them kill her. The police, when they come. Don’t let them kill her.”

  “Armed standoffs are armed standoffs, Gregor, you know that. We don’t kill anybody if we don’t have to, but sometimes we have to.”

  “It’s what he wants,” Gregor said. Somewhere down there there was a point. Gregor even knew what it was. He could see it resting at the bottom, the way a cask of treasure rested at the bottom of a murky ocean pool. He just needed to bring it up. “He has to kill her,” he said, “and he can’t do it on his own. Don’t you see that? This isn’t his territory. This isn’t someplace he’s comfortable with and besides, he knows people are watching him. He knows. So he’s got to find a way to kill her, and he wants to get the police to do it for him.”

  “That’s quite a speech. When you die from loss of blood, will your ghost come back and protect me from Bennis?”

  “Die from loss of blood,” Gregor said. Then he looked down at his body— the body that didn’t feel like his anymore; the body that seemed to be nothing and belong to nobody—and there was blood coming out of his shoulder. He tried to think about that. There might be an artery there somewhere. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t think the bullet had hit it if it was there, because his suit jacket was covered with blood but it wasn’t pumping out of him like a spring. He could not keep himself thinking along any particular path to any particular point. His mind would not do it.

  “I don’t really think you’re going to die from loss of blood,” Jackman said.

  In the distance, there were sirens—but not very far in the distance. They got louder and louder, and the worse they got, the worse they were for his headache.

  “Listen,” he said again, trying to shout. It didn’t work. His voice came out in a croak. “Don’t let them kill her. She’s all you’ve got. If she dies, you’ll never be able to tie him to America on Alert, or to Steve Bridge. Got that?”

  “We’ll discuss it later.”

  “It’s the only direct evidence you’ve got,” Gregor insisted, and by now he felt like he was swimming through a sea of noise. “Everything else is circumstantial. Don’t let them kill her.”

  The sirens were right there now, right on top of them. Gregor felt the heat of the first vehicle before he saw it, which wasn’t odd, since he was still lying flat on his back. He tried to sit up. Jackman pushed him down. He tried to sit up again. Nobody stopped him, because there was nobody to stop him. Jackman was off talking to somebody else. He got himself more or less upright and looked around at what was now a sea of cop cars. There were uniformed officers everywhere. There were detectives too. Maybe he only thought they were detectives. His head had reattached to his body just long enough to give him a splitting headache. He wanted to stand up. He tried, and felt somebody push him down.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jackman said. “You’re going to kill yourself. And she’s still in there, and she still has a gun.”

  “Do you have any liquor?”

  “Of course I don’t have any liquor. In my car? What do you take me for?”

  “I need a shot of something serious,” Gregor said.

  There was a sound like a gong ringing, and Jackman ducked. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “There she goes again.”

  Somebody else crouched down next to them, somebody Gregor didn’t know, or didn’t recognize, at least at the moment. “How many are there?” the somebody else said.

  “I don’t know,” Jackman said. “I’ve only seen one. She may be alone.”

  “Susan,” Gregor said.

  “What?” Jackman said.

  “Susan,” Gregor said again.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jackman said. “There’s two of them involved in the organization. The one we think is shooting is called Kathi Mittendorf. There’s another one, though, named Susan something. You’ll have to get the details later.”

  “No men?” the somebody said.

  “No,” Gregor said. “Don’t kill her.”

  “What is this guy, her husband?”

  “No,” Jackman said. “She’s a witness in a murder case. In three murder cases. It would be a good idea if we didn’t kill her.”

  “Yeah, well,” t
he somebody said.

  There was another ping, and another, and another. Gregor felt the ground shake—everybody was hitting the dirt, getting down behind the cars.

  “Jesus Christ,” somebody said. “That’s a machine gun.”

  “Grenades,” Gregor said.

  “What?” Jackman said.

  “Grenades,” Gregor said again.

  Then, suddenly, the people right next to him were wearing white and not talking much. Somebody was tearing the cloth away from his wound. It was one of his best suits and they were ripping it to shreds … but maybe it didn’t matter anyway, because maybe the blood would never come out. They were ripping into his shirt. Somebody put a hard metal edge next to his skin and he screamed.

  “For God’s sake,” Jackman said. “Give him something for the goddamned pain before you go digging into him.”

  “Don’t let them kill her,” Gregor said.

  “Listen,” Jackman said. “If she starts lobbing grenades, we’re going to kill her. This is a residential neighborhood. What’s wrong with you?”

  “You can see what’s wrong with him,” one of the ambulance men said. “He’s got a bullet in his shoulder.”

  “Nah,” the other ambulance man said. “It went right through. I’d bet anything.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jackman said.

  “Listen,” Gregor said.

  There was another burst of gunfire, steady and staccato. How much ammunition could she have in there? They wouldn’t be able to take him out to the ambulance as long as she was shooting. They wouldn’t—

  They weren’t paying attention to him anymore. Gregor could tell. A new set of vehicles was pulling in. The whole scene was beginning to seem like something out of a Bruce Willis movie, and Gregor hated Bruce Willis movies. Still, it gave him his chance.

  He held on to the door handle of Jackman’s car and began to pull himself very carefully to his feet, inch by inch, molecule by molecule. He was in such pain he thought he was going to pass out, and the blood was coming out of the wound much faster now than it had been. He kept inching his way up, and then he was standing.

  He made it upright just in time to see that Kathi Mittendorf had dropped the machine gun and put her hands on a body instead, and the body was coming through the door and down the steps at them.

  It was Anne Ross Wyler, and she looked dead.

  3

  Later, when the shooting finally stopped, Gregor Demarkian would wonder exactly what had happened to him, and why. The sirens, the police strobes, the shouting—surely he remembered himself standing upright as Kathi Mittendorf staggered out the front door of her house, a gun in one hand and Annie Ross in the other, and bullets sprayed in an arc over her head, breaking windows, chipping brick. When you were dying, everything was supposed to happen in slow motion. Since everything had speeded up, Gregor concluded he was not dying, although he didn’t really conclude anything, because that assumed reasoned analysis. This was more like stream of consciousness, or stream of unconsciousness. Once he was standing up, he didn’t seem to be able to sit down. Everything hurt. He was dizzy. His eyes were watering. Kathi Mittendorf took Annie Ross’s body and dumped it on the ground. Then she backed into her house again and slammed the door shut. Gregor felt himself swaying in the wind. The wind was strong and cold and everything was getting darker. The door opened and Kathi Mittendorf came out again. She was carrying another body, and for a moment, all the police shooting stopped dead while everybody tried to get a look to determine if this body might still be alive. Gregor knew at once that it wasn’t. She wasn’t. It was the body of a woman. It had a hole the size of a McIntosh apple in its forehead.

  “Get down,” John Jackman screamed into his ear, grabbing him by the lapel of his coat and pulling him.

  Gregor had no idea why the pulling didn’t work. He was upright, and he seemed destined to remain upright. He could see the ambulance men, all three sets of them, crouched down behind their vehicles. They didn’t dare move from where they were. There were bullets everywhere. The sound of shooting was so constant, it had begun to feel like background noise. He wondered what Kathi Mittendorf was doing. She ought to be retreating into the house again. She wasn’t. She ought to be surrendering. She wasn’t. She had a gun in her hands, but she had stopped shooting it. Suddenly, everybody stopped shooting. The silence was so abrupt, it was like death. Kathi Mittendorf stayed were she was. The gun in her hand was a rifle, really. Gregor finally realized what it was she reminded him of: Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo movies, holding a machine gun in one hand and firing it. Did he do that? Gregor couldn’t remember. He hadn’t seen the movies. He’d only seen the commercials.

  Jackman stood up himself, cautious. “Maybe,” he said.

  Somewhere in the crowd of police, ambulance, civilians, SWAT teams, whatever was out there, somebody stood up and pointed a bullhorn at the door where Kathi Mittendorf was standing. Gregor had no idea why. They were close enough for a shout alone to have worked as well as it needed to.

  “Put the gun down,” the man said through the bullhorn.

  Gregor really wanted to sit down. He tried to bend his knees. They wouldn’t bend. He tried to bend his waist. It wouldn’t bend either. The pain in his shoulder was beyond belief. He didn’t even feel it as pain anymore.

  Up at the door, Kathi Mittendorf dropped her rifle to the ground. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She looked out at the crowd. Gregor couldn’t remember ever having seen anybody so calm. People in death were not this calm. Nobody was ever this calm. He searched her face for something in the way of emotion, but all he got was … amusement. Why would she be amused?

  He thought of her sitting in her own living room only a day or so ago, telling him about the reptilian aliens who had taken over control of the planet, of the One World Government that was already more than half in place, ruling the world, destroying the lives and hopes and dreams of Good Americans. The words had rolled out of her like mercury rolling out of a broken thermometer, practiced and perfect. He remembered it like music. It made no logical sense and it made no practical sense but on some very basic level it made emotional sense. It was the truth of her. He stood there staring at her as the wind blew across his face and across hers, and finally it hit him. She was smiling.

  If he’d been feeling better, his reaction time might have been better. On the other hand, it might not have been. She was smiling. The wind was blowing. She had something in her hand. Fruit, he thought, and then: oh, Jesus.

  He still couldn’t bend his legs. He stood where he was and watched her pull the pin out of the grenade and lob it in a high, wide arc over their heads into the street.

  The first explosion came from behind him.

  The second came from Kathi Mittendorf’s head.

  EPILOGUE

  Current Working Hypothesis: “The Overt and Covert Organs of the Vatican and British Empires are Locked in Mortal Combat for the Control of the World.”

  —ANNOUNCED AT A-ALBIONIC OVERVIEW ON

  MARCH 18, 2001 HTTP://A-ALBIONIC.COM/A-ALBIONIC.HTML

  1

  Anne Ross Wyler decided to give 500,000 dollars to the Freedom from Religion Foundation. It was in the Inquirer on the first day Gregor Demarkian felt capable of sitting up in his hospital bed—and it was on the front page too, along with a picture of Annie and Lucinda, with Annie in her usual frumpy Price Heaven baggy clothes, jeans this time, and a big sweater that had not come from Price Heaven at all. The thing was, Gregor thought, moving his shoulder slightly to see if it still hurt, Annie couldn’t disguise her face. The high cheekbones, the wide eyes, the chin-up back-tilt of self-confidence did not belong to the sort of person who usually looked, otherwise, as Annie looked. The headline didn’t help either. Billionairess Gives Gift To Atheists, it said. Gregor had had no idea that Annie Ross was a billionaire. He wondered if she really was.

  Outside in the hall, there was the clear sound of Bennis arriving, the Main Line accent drifting down the
corridor, the shuffle and smack of clogs. His shoulder did hurt. In fact, it hurt a lot. He got the little electric gizmo from the utility table next to the bed and tried to get the bed to put him in a more upright position. He was apparently as upright as it was going to let him get.

  Bennis came in, carrying two large canvas tote bags, but otherwise alone. This was something of a relief. At least once since he’d landed in the hospital as a result of Kathi Mittendorf’s last stand, they’d all arrived at once, and he thought he was going to die.

  “Oh, good,” Bennis said, putting the tote bags down on the floor next to the bed. “You’re awake. And conscious. You have no idea how that makes me feel. Are you feeling better?”

  “I must be,” Gregor said. “I’ve been reading the paper.”

  He waved the paper at her. She shrugged. “Oh, that. Apparently, a whole bunch of people wrote her letters after she was hurt saying that they just knew that she’d accepted God now, because there are no atheists in foxholes. Anyway, this organization she gave the money to has a project called Atheists in Foxholes, where they collect stories of people who didn’t get religion when they were in danger of death. Or something. I don’t know, Gregor, it’s just Annie Ross. Yesterday the paper was full of the foundation she’s setting up for Adelphos House. She’s giving it forty-five million dollars outright and a building closer to the strip where the girls are. A big building, too.”

  “The last time I saw her, I thought she was dead.”

  “She was barely even scratched,” Bennis said. “I think she spent something like six hours in the hospital before she bullied them into letting her out. She got hit over the head, and that was about it. Although you’d think she’d be in danger of concussion. Well, no matter. She probably made the nurses nuts. She used to make the teacher at dancing class nuts too. She nearly got kicked out of Madeira twice. Why don’t I have that kind of strength of character?”