Up in Smoke

by Charlene Weir

  She gave him one of her looks of scorn, a little anemic and a little brittle around the edges but a, by God, look of scorn. Course.

  He didn’t want to leave. He wasn’t one for premonitions and psychic flashes, but he had a cold feeling and he hated like hell to trust her to the guard.

  39

  The gun felt heavy enough in her bag that surely it must be obvious she had it. Em was so nervous she felt like she was poised on the edge of shaking apart, or like a tuning fork, she’d start vibrating with sound, if anything were to tap her. Stewart, the volunteer coordinator, was standing just outside the barriers at Wheaton’s Field. Usually it was just an empty field used for some athletic event, she assumed baseball or soccer. Now more bleachers had been put up, the platform and sound system were ready. Buses with the press pool and more buses with volunteers were parking at the far end. Highway-patrol officers were covering the field with dogs and metal detectors. She’d thought of hiding the gun somewhere here last night and now was glad she hadn’t. That would have been disaster, for sure. How was she ever going to get the gun past them?

  Em prayed, asking a God she felt was going to condemn her to hell for His help one last time. Jackson Garrett’s actions had caused a death. He deserved to be punished.

  “Hi, Em.” Stewart was distracted, watching Phil Baker talking with another man. When Officer Baker started to walk away, Stewart called out and trotted after him. Was this it? Em wondered. Did Stewart realize what she had in her bag and was telling the officer about it?

  Everybody’s background was going to be checked. Maybe they’d looked way back into hers and found she had a connection to Jackson Garrett. Maybe they found out he defended her daughter’s killer, defended him so well he won an acquittal. Maybe this was the end right here, maybe this was as far as she would get.

  She thought her intentions must be plain to anyone who glanced at her. With all that hatred in her heart, surely it must show in her face. Stewart nodded to Phil Baker and jogged back. Her knees felt weak. This was it, he was going to tell her, they found out about her, they knew what she was going to do, they were coming to arrest her.

  “Glad you’re here, Em. I need you to do something for me. Ross is a no-show. I need to get over there and check off our people as they go through the detectors.” He handed her a clipboard with a list of volunteers. “Can you check on this side?”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “There’s nothing to it.” He thought she was nervous and was reassuring her she could do it. “You know everybody, just check them off as they pass through the detector. And be sure and give everybody a sign.” He indicated the GARRETT FOR AMERICA signs stacked up by the entrance before he loped off.

  And just like that, Em was on the right side of the checkpoint. She managed a stiff smile as she put a check beside each volunteer’s name and reminded them to pick up a sign. When the last volunteer had passed through, Em grabbed a sign and inserted herself in the middle of the group. Highway-patrol officers lined up in front on the platform, facing the crowd. The volunteers started cheering. Em raised her sign to hide her face.

  When Governor Garrett appeared, Em saw him in clear detail, the rest of the world retreated into fuzzy shadow behind him. The cheering of the crowd was muffled and periodic like broken static. Highway patrol, the woman who stood proudly to introduce him, were nothing but props in a distant play, one that held no interest for her. With the GARRETT FOR AMERICA sign in front of her face, she took in a steadying breath and prepared her soul for her final moments.

  When Jackson Garrett smiled at the crowd and started speaking, she lowered the sign. The time had come, all the planning and the prayers and the help God had given her, the luck of running into Tyrell, had all come down to this moment. Her death was near, she only had one last prayer, that she could fire the gun before she was killed. In her fantasies, he would turn and see her, he would recognize her, resignation would come over his face, and then a look of understanding and rightness when she fired and the bullets struck. A life for a life. Justice at last.

  She felt young, like she hadn’t felt in thirty years, a surge of joy soared through her and she wondered if this was the precursor of death. When the soul slipped away, would the joy dissipate as eternal peace flowed in to take its place?

  A life for a life. When God didn’t let Tyrell kill her that first night and she thought Tyrell probably didn’t even know himself whether he would or not, she was confident that God would give her the courage to carry this through to the end. Jackson Garrett would die. Alice Ann would be avenged. The three of them would be tied together throughout eternity. Carefully, Em laid the sign on the floor.

  * * *

  Jack saw Molly, faithful wife that she was, sitting in the front row with a look of expectant adoration, he scanned the crowd and saw Cass in the row behind. In her face, he glimpsed a shadow of the young girl he’d loved twenty years ago. He permitted himself a small smile for those innocent days and wondered what might have been. A hand circling in the air caught his attention and he watched as Todd squeezed through the crowd, obviously wanting to tell him something. Todd climbed up on the platform and the three people already standing there shuffled aside so he could wedge himself in.

  Todd looked tired, Jack thought, and probably so do I. They’d all been working hard, putting in too many hours and the strain was beginning to fray the edges. With the D.C. primary coming up, it was only going to get worse.

  The woman on the other side of him stepped to the microphone. For a second, he’d forgotten her name. He really must be tired. One thing a politician should never do is forget a name. Gloria something—Shaw, that was it.

  “… of our chapter of National Organization of Women…” The crowd roared and volunteers repeatedly lofted signs skyward.

  “They managed to get quite a crowd here,” Jack murmured in Todd’s ear.

  Todd nodded. Jack smiled at Molly, looked for Cass again, and saw a dowdy woman behind her lay down her campaign sign. Did he know that woman? Another face he couldn’t remember. He must really be losing it. At this rate, he’d lose his bid for the nomination.

  “Listen,” Todd said.

  Jack tipped his head closer to hear. The woman wasn’t smiling like the rest of the crowd.

  “… maybe a nut … maybe a grudge…”

  The woman moved toward the platform.

  * * *

  Em stood there, willing Jackson Garrett’s glance to reach her and when it did, she still didn’t move. He was looking blank, like he didn’t know who she was. She wanted him to recognize her. She wanted him to know what was going to happen and she wanted him to know by whose hand he was going to die.

  Her intense focus caught his attention and they locked glances.

  The roaring in her head blotted out the screaming crowd. She stuck her hand in her purse.

  * * *

  Jack watched her, trying to figure out why she looked familiar. Any politician worth his salt remembered names and faces, it was one of the prerequisites, and he was an old hand, why couldn’t he place her?

  “Just to be on the safe side,” Todd was saying, “no unexpected side trips. No plunging into crowds. Okay?”

  The middle-aged woman, with short, scraggly gray hair brought a gun from her purse. Jack felt mesmerized, like a rabbit in the headlights, unable to move. She raised the gun. Jerking himself awake, he shoved at Todd. “Nooo…”

  The next thing he knew he was slumped back on the metal folding chair looking down at a red strain spreading across his white shirt. The woman’s face seemed to stand out from the crowd, she looked appalled, and her expression sickened. Then he recognized her.

  “Mary,” he whispered.

  Two highway-patrol officers covered his body.

  * * *

  Tyrell saw two more cops pushing toward Em. He saw her shove the gun up under her chin, but couldn’t hear the shot over the screaming, jostling crowd. He faded back and slipped thr
ough the crowd. Stupid bitch. What did he care if she blew her head off. He didn’t like her anyway.

  * * *

  Cass wanted to scream. All she could actually see was the top of Jack’s head and all she could see in her mind was Ted’s body, twisted in that awful way after the drunk smashed into the car. And Laura, covered in blood. Cass shook her head and watched Molly Garrett trying to get through the crowd to her husband.

  Cries and yells and shouts, everybody trying to figure out what had happened. Fear and panic. Milling mass of bodies, uncertain what to do, wanting to be away from danger. Cops shouting at each other, reporters chattering fast into recorders, or scribbling notes, photographers snapping pictures.

  Cass found herself shoving toward Jack. Local cops were trying to keep the crowd under control and prevent anyone from leaving. She elbowed people in her way and was caught in a strong grip. She struggled before she realized it was Bernie.

  “Oh my God, Bernie. Is he all right? I need to go…”

  “There’s nothing you can do.” Bernie’s face was sickly gray, but his voice was calm.

  With urging words and blunt force, the cops cleared a path through the crowd. Two paramedics raced by with a gurney, cops close around them. In seconds, the paramedics had Jack on the gurney and were running for the street where an ambulance waited. Jack’s face was white, his eyes closed. Cass didn’t know whether he was dead or alive.

  * * *

  In the pool of reporters, Sean watched the madness, the fear and frenzy of the crowd, the controlled fury and speed of the cops doing what they were trained to do.

  “Is he dead?” a young female reporter asked.

  Sean took out his cell phone and called his boss at home. He told her what had happened and suggested she get someone to the hospital ASAP. He’d be held up here until everybody was questioned, that could take hours.

  “Done,” she said. “Stay with it. And get me anything—and I mean anything—fact, rumor, or reasonable fiction.”

  “Right.” He phoned his office and dictated his report.

  * * *

  Demarco slipped into the ambulance right after the highway cops. Sirens blaring, ambulance going flat out, careening around corners, showed how perilous the situation was. Also showed Garrett was still alive. They wouldn’t need this kind of speed for a dead man. Maybe not much alive. Face gray, eyes open, sightless. Lots of blood from the hole in his chest. Gasping sound, like he was fighting for breath, except the sound came from the wound. Paramedics crouched on either side of him. “Lung’s collapsing,” one said. The other nodded and said to the driver. “We need to really pound it.”

  The ambulance speed increased and Demarco braced himself for a crash. Moving this fast and not stopping for cross traffic was apt to prove fatal. Who was the woman who shot him and how the fuck had she gotten in with a gun? The gasping sound grew erratic and different in pitch, then stopped altogether. The governor had died. Demarco was now looking at a homicide victim.

  With a dying wail, the ambulance pulled up to the emergency room. Demarco stayed out of the way, as the paramedics yanked the gurney from the back and raced to doors that opened as they approached. Highway cops followed, Demarco stuck to their heels.

  Nurses and physicians swarmed around the gurney.

  “GSW right chest. BP eighty over fifty and falling. Pupils responsive.” The paramedic spoke so fast the words were all strung together.

  Adam Sheffield, ER physician, said, “On three, gentlemen. One, two, three.”

  Garrett was half-lifted, half-thrown onto the examining table. Dr. Sheffield listened to Garrett’s chest while Maggie Mason, ER nurse, cut open the bloody shirt. “Pneumothorax,” the doctor murmured. Maggie handed him a metal tube and he jammed it into Garrett’s chest and threaded thin plastic tubing through it. Garrett’s chest convulsed and then tremored.

  “We have a pulse,” Maggie said.

  * * *

  Bernie and Cass sat with Molly in a waiting room with maroon couches and gray tweed chairs. The television mounted on the wall played and replayed a tape of the shooting. Jack looking puzzled, then alarmed and pushing Todd away, starting to speak just as the bullet hit, then falling back and a dark stain widening on his white shirt. Bernie got up to turn it off, but Molly stopped him.

  “I have to watch it.”

  Bernie looked at Cass, she shrugged, then nodded. If Jack’s wife had to see this over and over again, then she had to. Cass, of all people, understood how crazy a woman reacted when her husband got killed. She wished she were the praying kind, she’d send pleading prayers to the almighty, but she didn’t think her prayers carried any weight.

  A blond female on television was repeating what she had already said half a dozen times or more. “Governor Garrett was shot tonight at a fund-raiser in Hampstead, Kansas. He appeared to push Todd Haviland, his campaign manager, out of harm’s way, suggesting he might have seen the shooter. The woman who shot him turned the gun on herself and we were told she did not survive the self-inflicted…”

  “He saved my life,” Todd said, his voice clogged with emotion.

  “Does anybody know who the woman was?” Cass asked.

  Bernie shook his head.

  They waited. Cass studied the large painting on one wall, trying to figure out what it was. It was at least eight feet square, browns and yellows. It appeared to have pieces of tree trunks and maybe pieces of broken urns.

  The president appeared on the television screen, sitting behind the desk in the oval office. “It is with great sorrow that I must report to the American people that a terrible tragedy occurred this afternoon. Governor Jack Garrett, my good friend, has been shot. I want to express my sorrow and outrage to the family and the country. My prayers and those of my family are with him, as well as those of countless others around our land.” His face faded away.

  The blond came back. “That was the president expressing his horror at this awful tragedy and relaying hope and compassion to the governor’s family. The governor is in critical condition, I’m told. He was still alive when he reached the hospital, although he had stopped breathing and had no pulse. In the emergency room, procedures were taken to get his breathing started again. We’re waiting for word from the hospital to tell us more…”

  Cass reached out and took Molly’s cold hand.

  * * *

  When the cops finally released Sean, he hustled over to the hospital and after a thorough check by security was allowed to join the mob of press in a waiting area designated to keep them all under close watch. With the number of bodies packed into such a small area, the room was stifling. He edged along the wall and bumped into Ty Baldini, the local pencil.

  “What’s the latest?” Sean asked.

  “The Governor’s still in surgery. Hospital spokesman is supposed to be with us shortly.” Ty looked at his watch. “That was forty-five minutes ago.”

  It was another twenty minutes before a man in a gray suit came in. A barrage of questions were thrown at him. He ignored them and read from the slip of paper in his hand. Sean noticed the hand wasn’t steady and the suit didn’t look at the crowd of reporters and newscasters. Very likely, he hadn’t had to make many statements to the press.

  “Governor Jackson Garrett was admitted to this hospital at one thirty-seven P.M. Emergency procedures were immediately undergone to restore his breathing and then he was taken to surgery.”

  Questions came fast and furious. Is he still alive? Will he survive? Who shot him? Why? Did he know his attacker? How long was he without oxygen? What about brain damage?

  The gray suit continued to read. “He is still in surgery at this time, where the surgeon is repairing the damage to his chest. Medical personnel will be with you shortly to answer all your questions. Thank you.” He left with questions hurled at his fleeing back.

  Hadley Cane came in. The room went still with everyone focused on her face trying to decipher her news from her appearance. All Sean could read was that Hadley was p
ale and her eyes were slightly red and puffy as though she’d been crying, but she had herself under control now. As Garrett’s press secretary, she’d faced this bunch, or one like it, many times, but never under these circumstances and she was nervous, but she pulled in a breath and held her chin up. Atta girl, Sean thought.

  “Governor Garrett is still alive, still in surgery. I’m not a physician, but I’m told everything is going well. The woman who tried to kill him, as you all know, shot herself and was pronounced dead on arrival at this hospital. At this time we know nothing about her, who she is, or why she shot the Governor.”

  “When will you know anything?”

  “I can’t answer that question. And before anybody asks anything else, there’s nothing more I can tell you about her.”

  “How much longer will he be in surgery?”

  “Nobody seems able to answer that question with anything but an estimate. I’m told it’ll be maybe another two hours.”

  “Is he expected to live?”

  “The governor is young, in good health and good physical condition. His chances of surviving are very good.”

  “How long was he without oxygen?” Ty asked.

  “Due to the immediate response of the highway patrol, the quick arrival of the paramedics and the expert medical skill of the emergency room staff, a relatively short time.”

  “What about brain damage?”

  “Since the time he wasn’t breathing was so brief, there is every possibility that the governor’s mental functioning is every bit as good as always.”

  Sean could see that she was holding herself tight, straining to be professional in the onslaught of emotions trying to take over.

  “If he survives, will he continue to run?”

  She pressed her lips together, probably to prevent a sharp reply. “That’s a question that hasn’t yet been addressed. Priority here is to save his life. Whether he’ll continue is up to the governor. That’s it for now. There’ll be another update on his condition in an hour. Thank you.”

  Questions were tossed at her as she walked out.