Capitol Murder

by William Bernhardt

  He made sure no one was looking. Then he quietly picked up one of the aural implants on the desk and pushed it into his left ear.

  He walked slowly down the corridor, passing Agent Cross and the others. By the door, the three officers were still trying to get the fiber-optic cable through the hole in the wall.

  “Change of assignment,” Ben said, mustering as much authority as he could manage. “Cross says she wants to see you immediately.”

  “Now? We’ve almost got this working.”

  “Sorry. Those are your orders.” The three men dropped their tools and started down the hallway.

  Ben stood behind the door-knowing that alone made him a potential target-and shouted. “Marshall!”

  From inside, he heard, “Who the-?”

  “It’s Ben Kincaid. I’m coming in, Marshall.”

  “The hell you are!”

  “I am. And you’re not going to shoot me, Marshall. I’m unarmed. You said you thought I was the most honest geek on earth, remember? I think you called me a saint. So you know I’m not lying.”

  “Kincaid!” This was Agent Cross, about twenty feet down the corridor, running his way. “Freeze immediately! Do not compromise this operation. We will use force if necessary to stop you.”

  “Then you’ll have to shoot me in the back,” Ben muttered. “I’m coming in, Marshall!” Then he closed his eyes, said a quick, silent prayer, and turned the doorknob.

  Before Agent Cross could stop him, he was inside.

  “What are you doing in here? What are you doing?” Bressler waved his hands back and forth in the air. Both hands clutched the gun; he had two fingers wrapped around the trigger. Hazel was cowering in the corner, half hidden by the copying machine. Both Marie and Christina were slumped on the floor. The stillness, the pallor in Marie’s expression told Ben she was probably already dead. Blood was seeping out of Christina’s thigh, but her eyes were still open. Just barely. But open.

  She was alive.

  “I came for Christina,” Ben said. His heart was palpitating; he was breathing in deep staccato gulps. “And Marie. They need medical help. After I take them outside, I’ll come back and be your hostage.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “Probably.” Ben was having trouble understanding what the man was saying. Apparently the aural implant was affecting his ambient hearing. “But that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “No, you won’t!” Marshall wheeled himself forward until he had the gun right under Ben’s nose. “You think you’re going to pull something. You’re trying to fool me!”

  “I already told you, I’m not. I’m not armed at all.”

  “Prove it!”

  “All right, I will.” Slowly, one step at a time, Ben began removing his clothes. Come to think of it, he thought, this is the second time I’ve had to strip in a U.S. Senate building. This never happened to him back in Tulsa.

  He continued disrobing, all the way down to his boxer shorts.

  “Superman?” Bressler said, staring at the big red “S” shield on the front of Ben’s boxers.

  “Well, people made fun of my last pair. So I switched to something more macho.”

  “All right, so you’re clean. You’re still not taking anyone out of here.”

  “Yes, Marshall, I am. And then I’ll come back and be your hostage. I promise you. I’ll stay as long as you need me to stay. You can drill me full of holes if that’s what you want. But first I’m getting the wounded women out of here.”

  “You’re risking your damn life, you fool. Why would you do that?”

  Ben paused and stared straight at the man in the wheelchair. Even off his meds, even totally off his rocker, there had to be some shred of sanity and decency left inside that head. “Because I don’t want Christina to die. Any more than you wanted Delia Collins to die.”

  Ben took a slow small step, then another, toward Christina. He wobbled a bit as he moved. His legs were trembling, and worse, the implant in his ear was affecting his sense of balance.

  “I’ll shoot you!”

  “I don’t think you will, Marshall,” Ben said, not looking back. “Because you know you can trust me. And you don’t want these women to die. They didn’t hurt Delia. You have no reason to wish them harm.”

  Suddenly, Ben heard an intense squawking in his left ear, so loud he initially thought it had burst his eardrum. “Kincaid? Can you hear us?”

  Apparently someone noticed one of their implants was missing. He kept on walking.

  “Kincaid!” It was Agent Cross. “You have endangered this entire operation. You will be fully prosecuted for interfering with a federal hostage situation.”

  Ben kept walking.

  “But since you’re in there, see if you can get some information out of him. We’ve got the fiber-optic camera working. We can see and hear you.”

  Ben knelt beside Christina, his bare knees in the huge pool of blood. She could be dead already, he realized. He could be too late.

  “I need to talk to her,” he told Bressler.

  “No!” he shouted. “Not a word.”

  “Please. I can’t let her lose consciousness.”

  “I said, no!”

  “Just let me ask her one question. One lousy question.”

  Bressler wavered. “Fine. But that’s it. One question.”

  Ben heard the crackling in his ear. Martinez this time. “Ask if there are any other hostages.”

  Cross chirped in. “Ask if she’s seen any other weapons. Does he have a stash of ammo?”

  Ben lifted Christina’s hand out of the blood, squeezed it between both of his hands, and asked, quietly, “Will you marry me?”

  Christina’s eyelids fluttered. When she spoke, her voice sounded like rusty hinges. “What do you think I’ve been hanging around for all these years, you dunderhead? Of course I will. Now get me out of here.”

  Ben saw the makeshift tourniquet tied around her upper thigh. A piece of her blouse. Damn she was tough. He tightened it, then wrapped his arms under her and lifted her up. He could tell the movement was causing her pain, but she kept it bottled up inside.

  “Stay with us,” he murmured to her. “Just a little bit longer.”

  “I’m watching you!” Marshall cried. “One false move and you’re dead!”

  He carried Christina to the door, opened it. A huddle of agents stood just outside, their weapons drawn. “Stay back,” Ben said. “I gave the man my word.” He passed Christina to the nearest agent. Almost immediately, paramedics converged around her.

  Ben went back inside for Marie Glancy. When he brought her body into the corridor, he heard Cross hiss, “We can go in behind you. Use you for cover.”

  “If you do, we might lose Hazel.”

  “If we don’t, we might lose you.”

  Ben shook his head. “I made a promise. I’m sticking to it.” He glanced down at Christina, who was already on a stretcher and being taken away. “Take good care of her.” And then he went back inside the office. And closed the door behind him.

  29

  B en and Marshall talked and talked and talked. No matter how psychotic the man was, no matter how long he’d been off his medication, Ben was certain he wouldn’t try anything without provocation. In the first half hour, he watched as Marshall tired and his rage subsided, until he almost came to resemble the steady, wise Marshall Bressler whom Ben had known and admired these past months. After the first hour of talking, he convinced Marshall to let Hazel go, promising to remain as Marshall’s hostage. The more time passed, the more weary Marshall became. He still clutched the gun, but Ben could see his eyes growing hazy, his body weakening. Soon he would have to give in to the biological need for rest. And the more time passed, the less and less Marshall talked about Todd Glancy. And the more he talked about Delia Collins.

  “She was a beautiful woman,” he said, with such sincerity that Ben found himself feeling sympathy for a man who was threatening to kill him.

  “I know. I’v
e seen the photos.”

  “We met the first time she came to Todd’s office to try to enlist his support for that damn insurance bill. We hit it off immediately. I couldn’t believe my luck. Here was a beautiful, vivacious woman paying attention to a pathetic cripple. No woman had given me the time of day since my accident-until Delia. Of course we knew her time was limited, but somehow we managed to put that out of our minds. We kept dating-always on the sly so no one would accuse Todd of being improperly influenced-and one thing led to another. Fast. We were so in love. We could hardly keep our hands off each other.” He chuckled. “That idiot MacReady who stumbled in and saw Delia making love. She wasn’t with Todd. She was with me. Can you believe it? Me!”

  “That’s what I figured,” Ben said. “Eventually. I should’ve seen it earlier.” Because Glancy, the control freak, would never have allowed a woman to be on top. Marshall, being crippled, had no choice but to lie on the floor. That’s why he didn’t get up when MacReady came in-he couldn’t.

  “I did everything in my power to get Todd to support the bill. But nothing worked. Nothing. And you know why? Not because he didn’t believe in it. He did. But he wouldn’t support it. He was too dependent upon insurance companies for their campaign contributions. He wanted to remain viable-in the running for a national ticket. That was the worst of it. We like to pretend that this is a democracy, but it isn’t. It’s the big money, the special interests, the men pulling the strings behind the curtains, they’re the ones who decide what laws are passed and what laws aren’t. They decide which candidates to support, which candidates get on the ballot. At best, we get to choose between two candidates who have been selected for us by opposing special interests-and even then the political discourse is determined by campaign contributions. Once the candidates are in office, they’re so beholden to their financiers that the whole idea of ‘government by the people’ becomes a joke.” He clenched his teeth tightly together. “You talk about your vampires. These are the real vampires, the genuine article, the monsters who take our public trust and suck it dry, who start out caring about the world and end up only caring about reelection.”

  Ben tried to understand. “So Glancy killed the bill Delia wanted. Still-she was terminal. Todd Glancy didn’t kill her.”

  Bressler looked at Ben, a stony expression on his face. “About six months after Delia died, clinical tests by a team of researchers in Denmark showed that in some cases, an experimental interferon-based cocktail could slow the spread of ovarian cancer, or in some cases induce a full remission. The FDA eventually approved it for general use in the United States. Delia wanted that treatment. But because it hadn’t been approved at the time, Delia’s insurance company wouldn’t pay for it. And since our American health care system only provides health to those who can pay for it, her sole recourse was Congress. And because Todd Glancy cared more about his own reelection than a bill that could save lives-Delia Collins died. My sweet perfect Delia died.” His voice was like gravel, racked with sorrow. “My life was over. What chance did I have of ever finding a love like that?”

  “What chance does any of us have?” Ben responded quietly, wondering what was going on outside, in a hospital room somewhere, with a beautiful strawberry-blond patient. “So you decided to take revenge.”

  “I bided my time, waiting for the right moment. Todd is a careful man; he doesn’t take many chances. But when he started up with that intern, I knew I had my opportunity. I was just going to expose him, create a scandal, originally. Then I thought of something better.”

  “Framing him for murder.”

  He nodded. “After I first conceived the idea, I became obsessed by it. Spent all my spare time thinking of ways to pull it off. Brought the knife to work, even before I knew what I was going to do with it. I couldn’t help myself. That man’s evil was so enormous I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  More likely he was building up an immunity to the antipsychotic drugs that were supposed to keep him under control, Ben thought. After so many years, their effectiveness must have diminished.

  “And then one day, the perfect opportunity fell into my lap. I found Veronica in the hideaway-as I told you before, thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, this entire building is wheelchair-accessible. She was making time with that living filth-the one they call the Sire. I heard what they said, what they did. Her vampire lover took the money, had tawdry sex with her, sucked her blood, gave her that drug, and left her for dead. But the amazing thing is-she didn’t die. Veronica was stronger than any of us imagined. She might’ve pulled through-if I hadn’t intervened.

  “I got the knife and cut her across the shoulder to obscure the bite mark her boyfriend had left behind, and to make a wound so large she couldn’t possibly recover. I flipped her upside down, just for dramatic effect and to make her blood drain faster; my legs might be crippled, but my arms are quite strong-I work out, remember? I was careful not to get blood on me or my chair. And then I left. With all the press we had streaming around the building that day, I knew it was just a matter of time till some snoop discovered the body. Plus I’d spotted Shandy eavesdropping on them-though I made sure she didn’t see me. After that video, it wasn’t hard to deduce who would be the cops’ primary suspect.” He paused. “What put you on to me?”

  “I eventually realized you were the only one who could’vegotten that big knife into the building,” Ben explained. “Security is so tight I couldn’t get in with a metal button sewn to my shirttail. But I bet you could get almost anything in. Everyone knows you’re going to set off the alarm. Because you’re riding around in a wheelchair.”

  Bressler smiled a little. “At first they made some effort to search me, examine the chair. But it was so hard-someone had to hold me while they sent the chair through separately, and I acted like it really hurt, and after a few months…” He shrugged. “Well, what threat could I possibly be? I’m just a harmless old cripple, right? And even if they had patted me down-which they didn’t-they wouldn’t have found the knife. Just like they didn’t find this gun.”

  “Because you put them in the compartment under the armrest of your chair,” Ben guessed. “Very bold of you to show me that, way back when. I tried to call Marie before I came over here, to verify my recollection, because I remembered you telling me she’d had the chair specially designed for you. I’m sure she never imagined you’d use it to… well.” To smuggle in the gun you used to shoot her.

  “Yeah.” Marshall took a deep breath. His eyelids fluttered; Ben could see he was barely able to keep them open. “You about ready to go, Ben?”

  “I’d appreciate it. Those FBI guys outside must be going nuts. And-I’d really like to see how Christina is doing. And I wouldn’t mind putting my clothes back on, either.”

  Marshall nodded. “I heard what you said, when you carried Christina out of here. Reminded me of Delia. How we were. While it lasted.” His eyes filled with tears. He laid down the gun. “I loved her so much, Ben. So much. Did you ever love someone like that? Love them so much-and then lose them?”

  “Yes. I mean, she didn’t die, but-it hurt just the same.”

  “You’re too young.”

  “No one’s too young,” Ben replied. “And my father died, several years ago. That hurt, too. And we didn’t even get along. He thought I was wasting my life, that I’d been a traitor to him. But when he died-I couldn’t handle it. Probably should’ve gone into therapy. Instead I ran off to Tulsa and tried to leave my family, my past, far behind.” He paused. “It didn’t work. Running isn’t the answer.”

  “No.” Marshall looked up at him, almost smiling. “And I suppose taking hostages isn’t, either.”

  Ben tilted his head to one side but said nothing.

  “You go check on your girl, Ben,” Marshall said, still weeping. “And you take good care of her, understand? Remember-every day the two of you have together is a gift. A rare and precious gift. Every single day.”

  “I won’t forget.” Ben took
the gun and motioned to the FBI officers he knew were watching through the fiber-optic cable. “Thank you, Marshall.”

  “Thank you for listening. If-if my Delia were still around, I think she’d take a shine to you, Ben.”

  “She is still around,” Ben said. He laid his hand softly on the side of Marshall’s face, wiping away the tears. “And thanks to you, she always will be.”

  30

  “W ell, I gotta hand it to you, Chrissy,” Loving said. “You’ve worn some crazy getups in the past. But this one takes the cake.”

  “Ha, ha,” she said, with simulated acerbity. She was wearing a hospital gown, a thin pale blue linen number. “I think the floral pattern goes well with my eyes.”

  They were all standing around her hospital bed-Ben, Jones, Loving, and Lucille. The small private room was festooned with flowers, gifts, and a host of greeting cards dangling from a banner stretched across the head of the bed.

  “Wanted you to meet my new, umm, friend,” Loving said, gesturing to Lucille. He winked. “I thought the two redheads in my life should meet. She was a big help to the investigation.”

  “Aw, he did all the hard stuff,” Lucille said, blushing. “All I did was dress up like a floozy and play the tease.”

  “Sounds like hard work to me,” Christina said. She turned to Ben. “Has there been any word about Marshall? And Marie?”

  “She’s going to pull through,” Ben replied. “It’ll take a while, but the docs say she’ll make a full recovery. I’m amazed-but I guess I shouldn’t be. She’s a tough woman. And Marshall is being treated by some of the best mental health specialists in the country. Todd is paying the bills.”

  “No criminal charges?”

  “Not at this time. I doubt he could be found competent to stand trial. I just hope he gets the help he needs to recover the man he once was.”