(2012) Political Suicide

by Michael Palmer

  Papa Steve hesitated. The muscles in his face went taut, and he seemed to be having difficulty assimilating the new information.

  “What’s the deal, boss?” Cap asked impatiently. “We’ve been lucky so far. I don’t think we should be hanging here too much longer.”

  Finally, Papa Steve shrugged and pointed to a narrow dirt road in front of them. “That’s the road to the heliport. Officer Judy, would you mind taking us there?”

  “Brody’s gone,” Lou said. “What good’s that going to do?”

  “Trust me,” Papa Steve said.

  “Okay, then. Judy, go for it!”

  The cruiser rocketed forward, fishtailing twice before being expertly brought in line. A minute later, they were at the heliport. A guard, possibly alerted by radio, stepped out from behind a utility shed and trained his rifle on the cruiser car.

  “Down!” Lemon shouted.

  The four of them ducked as a bullet struck the front windshield dead center and exited out the back, leaving perfect spiderwebs in the glass. Driving like a NASCAR champion, Lemon hit the brake and skidded into a smoke-and-rubber-filled 360. Then, before the cruiser had fully stopped, she rolled out the door, rising to her feet with lightning quickness, her pistol trained on the center of the Mantis guard’s chest.

  “Drop that weapon, soldier,” she said. “That’s an order.”

  Papa Steve climbed out of the car. “Do as she says, son. We got no beef with you.”

  The standoff was short lived. The baby-faced soldier lowered his weapon, and within moments Lemon had his wrists handcuffed behind his back, and he had shown the three men lockers containing radio helmets for each of them.

  “I don’t get it,” Lou said. “What are we doing here? We’ve got to stop Brody.”

  Papa Steve gestured toward a weathered army helicopter, one of two remaining on the helipad. “Gentlemen,” he said. “If we want to stop Wyatt Brody, then we’re going to need to go for a little ride. Follow me, and I’ll teach you boys how to hot-wire a chopper.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Sarah could never bring herself to sell the town house she and David bought ten years before. Beckman Place was one of only a handful of gated communities within the D.C. city limits. Situated on a hill with majestic views over Sixteenth Street and Florida Avenue, Beckman Place sat on a piece of land that once housed a castle built for Senator John Henderson, coauthor of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. David fell in love with the location’s history enough to ignore the strain the 1,500-square-foot property put on their limited budget. Now, the stone entrance gateposts were all that remained of Henderson Castle, and memories were all that Sarah had of David.

  After spending the day with Edith, Sarah had grown even fonder of the remarkable woman she had come to regard as a friend. Edith had not visited Washington since before the so-called accident that blinded her, but she navigated the streets almost like a woman with sight. Once, on their way to Devlin and Rodgers to make copies of the Reddy Creek invoices for safekeeping, Edith used her cane to keep Sarah from crossing a street in front of oncoming traffic.

  “Open your ears,” she had said with a smile.

  When they arrived at Sarah’s office, there was a surprise waiting for them. Bruce Patterson, Edith’s former boss at the Raleigh News & Observer, had sent a FedEx box containing all the files, notes, and, research Edith had compiled during her Reddy Creek investigation. She and Sarah spent the remainder of the afternoon locked away in Sarah’s office, going through the material with the meticulousness of archeologists at a dig site.

  It was late afternoon, and Hogarth still had not called to accept Sarah’s offer.

  “Are you going to go public?” Edith asked.

  “We can’t back off,” Sarah said. “He made his choice. Besides, thanks to you, we have a wealth of evidence here, even without Hogarth’s cooperation, to establish a very strong motive for Brody to commit murder. I’m confident a jury will have more than enough reasonable doubt to acquit McHugh, if the prosecutors go to trial at all.”

  The two women returned to Beckman Place by Metro with only hours to go before Hogarth’s deadline expired. Sarah waved her electronic key in front of the card reader. Automatic gates rolled open on well-oiled wheels. The guard seated inside a tollbooth-sized stone guardhouse did not break away from his TV set as Sarah and Edith strolled past. Sarah even waved and said hello, but the distracted man ignored her. Even with the windows in the guardhouse closed, Sarah could tell he was watching some sort of sporting event.

  “I guess he’s more into basketball than he is into security,” Edith said, using her cane to feel the ground in front of her. “Third quarter, Wizards are losing by ten to the Celtics.”

  No longer surprised by anything Edith did, Sarah merely glanced over at her and smiled. “Maybe that’s why crime here goes up during football season,” she said.

  She locked arms with Edith, feeling warmed by the bond they had formed, and guided her the last hundred yards to the town house.

  “What’s that?” Edith asked.

  Sarah looked perplexed. “What’s what?”

  “I thought I heard something moving. A rustling.”

  Sarah went still as the dead, listening. Nothing. Not a sound. “The wind?” she asked

  “Maybe.”

  Sarah checked the branches on several nearby trees, wishing they were rustling. She took out her key and tentatively inserted it. At the instant the bolt turned, an exceedingly hefty man looped around the shrubbery and came up behind them. It only took Sarah a second.

  Detective Chris Bryzinski.

  The College Park cop trained his gun on Sarah, barely giving Edith a glance.

  “Inside. Quickly. Not a word from either of you.”

  Sarah’s heart stopped. Barely able to move, she inched the door open and led Edith inside the small, lighted foyer. Bryzinski grabbed Edith by the arm and swung her rudely onto her knees on the living room rug. Sarah moved to help her, but the massive policeman called her off. She saw determination in his cold eyes, buried deep in fat—a man with a mission.

  Not good.

  “Hogarth sent you, didn’t he?” Sarah said.

  “Shut up and sit in that chair.”

  “I’ll scream.”

  Shoving Edith aside with his boot, Bryzinski rammed the barrel of his gun into Sarah’s belly. She gasped and stumbled backwards into an Eames chair—one of a pair she and David had picked out together. Only then did she notice that the gun had a silencer.

  “I’ll shoot you both dead, right here, right now,” Bryzinski said. “You’ve still got a chance to live, but only if you do everything exactly as I say.”

  Sarah’s blood was ice. She could read people, and this man was there for only one purpose. She had no doubt that within minutes she and Edith would both be executed. A weapon of some sort? An escape path? A scream? A frontal attack? Nothing made sense except to stay calm and reason with the man. Ten feet away, her dark glasses lying on the rug beside her, Edith had worked her way to her knees.

  “Please,” Sarah said, fixing on the detective’s eyes. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t know what Hogarth is paying you, or what he has on you, but this is murder, plain and simple.”

  “Shut up!”

  “You don’t want our blood on your hands. We’re not just things to be removed. We’re people. Please, Chris, you swore an oath to protect and serve. Hogarth is a monster. An ambitious monster. He’d step on you like a bug if you were in his way. Don’t give in.”

  “Shut up, dammit!”

  Sarah could see some confusion in his eyes. She needed to push. She had to convince him he wasn’t a demon.

  As if in answer to her thoughts, Bryzinski glanced down at Edith and, without warning, kicked her over onto her side.

  Sarah knew what was coming now, and there was not a damn thing she could think of to stop it from happening. A china figurine stood on the end table to her right, a wedding present from her parent
s. She could throw it at his face and attack, relying on her quickness and perhaps Edith’s help to overcome his massive bulk.

  “Is it money, Chris? Is that what this is all about? Is that why you’re going to murder two women who never did anything to hurt you?”

  Sarah inched her hand closer to the figurine and at the same time sized up Bryzinski—his stance, the position of his gun, the commitment in his eyes.

  “I wish it was money,” he was saying. “I’m afraid you’ve made a powerful enemy. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “What about your wife? What would she think of you if she knew what you were about to do?”

  “You keep her out of this.”

  To Bryzinski’s right, Edith was back on one knee. Sarah forced herself not to look at her. The figurine was only a couple of inches away. Sarah could think of nothing else to do but continue to talk … to try to reason … to plead.

  “You don’t look ready to do this, Chris. Have you ever killed someone in cold blood?”

  “I’ll put the shot where you won’t feel a thing. Her, too.”

  “At least tell me how much Hogarth’s paying you. I have millions from the settlement of my husband’s death. Millions. I’ll give all of it to you—every cent. I mean it. Just let me get up and I’ll show you my bank statement. Whatever Hogarth is paying, I can beat it.”

  Edith was up in a crouch, with one knee still on the rug.

  “I wish it was money,” Bryzinski said again, ruefully. “Unless you’ve got a magic wand to erase the past, I got no choice here. Look, I’m sorry. I really am. But this is how it has to go down.”

  “I thought you said we were going to talk,” Sarah said.

  “I lied.” Bryzinski raised his gun and aimed it dead center at Sarah’s forehead. “God forgive me,” he muttered.

  His gun came up, the muzzle of the silencer an ebony hole in the universe. Sarah grabbed the figurine and hurled it at his head at the instant she heard the gunshot. In the same motion, she threw herself and her chair over backwards. Her head slammed against the oak floor beside the rug. A brief burst of white light, and all went black.

  A second? A minute? Ten? The first thing Sarah experienced when she came to was the ecstatic realization that she wasn’t dead or, for that matter, in any pain. The first thing she saw was Chris Bryzinski, lying facedown, trying desperately to pull himself across the rug. The first thing she heard was Edith’s voice.

  “… I mean it! Move one more inch, and you’re going to see how accurate I am with this thing. And with you panting like a water buffalo, I promise you I won’t miss.”

  “Fuck you, you bitch. You shot me.”

  “Keep talking, my friend,” Edith said. “Keep talking. Your voice and your buffalo breathing are the only ways I can keep a bead on you, and this derringer Snake Slayer still has one shot.” She waved the jewel-handled, double-barreled weapon in his direction.

  Shaking, Sarah scrambled to her feet and raced to Edith, pausing only long enough to kick Bryzinski in the side of the head, and then to pick up his pistol and throw aside the silencer.

  “You okay?” Sarah asked, her arm around Edith.

  “Did he bleed on your rug?”

  “Sort of.”

  “An oriental?”

  “Only sort of. Pottery Barn.”

  “I’m glad he said that little prayer before he pulled the trigger,” Edith said. “I wouldn’t have been able to get a precise bead on him otherwise.”

  “I completely forgot about your offer to have target practice in your office just to show me you could do it.”

  “My instructor taught me never to carry a gun unless I was prepared to use it. I was so ready.”

  “Will someone help me?” Bryzinski moaned. “She shot me.”

  “Packs a wallop, doesn’t it,” Edith said. “Beware the blind guy.”

  Sarah left Bryzinski writhing on the floor, clutching his tree-trunk thigh, and returned moments later with a white bedsheet and a kitchen knife. She ripped the sheet with the knife, using one strip to gag the detective, and several more to bandage his leg. Blood was continuing to flow, but not at a rate she deemed life threatening. Next, she found a pair of handcuffs in a fabric pouch latched to his belt, and manacled his hands behind his back.

  “What now?” Edith asked.

  “Now I’m going to get a dolly from the maintenance shed.”

  “What for?”

  “We’ve got to go drop off this dirty laundry.”

  Sarah hugged Edith hard, unwilling to let go. It felt as if she were embracing a sister and not just a friend.

  CHAPTER 45

  “A helicopter’s main job is to kill you,” Papa Steve said into the helmet’s microphone, “and the pilot’s job is to not let that happen. So far, so good.”

  The aging twin-engine UH-1N Huey bucked against a strong headwind as it flew a northeastwardly course toward Delaware. From the copilot’s seat, Lou watched, fascinated, as the man who self-admittedly could blow the antennae off a fly without blinding it demonstrated a completely unrelated skill set.

  In the backseat, Cap was looking far worse than Emily had during their one ill-fated whale watch together in choppy seas. The Huey dipped again and yawed severely before Papa Steve settled it down.

  “I told you I didn’t want to get in this thing!” Cap yelled from the backseat.

  “Haven’t you been in a helicopter before?” Papa Steve asked.

  “I’ve only been in a plane, like, twice. I don’t like the idea that there’s nothing between me and the ground but air.”

  “You can handle it,” Lou said. “Heck, you’ve stood up to the mob.”

  “And it cost me my boxing career.”

  Papa Steve banked the chopper hard right, flying at a thousand feet over a stretch of Virginia woodland.

  “Do you want an air sickness bag?” Lou asked.

  “No,” Cap said, shaking his head and looking precisely like a guy in need of an air sickness bag. “I want a pizza.”

  Lou gave Cap a big thumbs-up sign, and Cap responded by giving Lou the finger.

  “I need to call Sarah,” Lou said. “She’s been working on Spencer Hogarth, trying to use him to get Brody to admit to Colston’s murder. But now we’ve also got to find a way to get him to stop Operation Talon.”

  “You can make a call using the Huey’s sat phone,” Papa Steve said.

  Lou recited Sarah’s number and a few moments later heard ringing in his headset.

  “Hello?” Sarah sounded unsure.

  “Hey, there, Sarah, it’s Lou.”

  “I didn’t recognize the number.”

  “That’s because I’m in a helicopter with Cap and Papa Steve, on our way to Dover Air Force Base. Are you okay?”

  “Aside from having Detective Bryzinski try to kill us a little while ago, we’re fine.”

  “Jesus. Where are you now?”

  “Edith and I are in the car. Bryzinski is in the trunk.”

  “Does he fit?”

  “Just barely. We’re certain Hogarth has something big on him—enough to put him up to murdering us. He was about to do it, silencer and all, when Edith shot him in the leg.”

  “Edith?”

  “There’s more to this woman than you think.”

  “I guess. What are you going to do with him?”

  “His wound’s not too bad. We’re either going to give him to the police, drop him off at a hospital, or use him for some sort of bargaining chip with Hogarth. I’m leaning toward trying that first.”

  “I agree. I have some information that might help.”

  “What’s this about Dover?”

  Talking over the noise of the chopper, Lou quickly reviewed the frightening events at Mantis Base. When he was done, he felt the weight of Sarah’s pause.

  “You have the murder weapon?” she asked finally.

  “Your ballistics expert will tell us for sure, but yes, we probably do. My pal Cap has it in the backseat.”

&nb
sp; “When is this Operation Talon taking off?”

  “I suspect it won’t be long.”

  Another hesitation. “I’ll bet you think I’m furious because you’ve gone rogue again when you promised me you wouldn’t.”

  “The thought was crossing my mind.”

  “Well, let it pass, please. From what I can tell, that was an incredibly brave thing you guys just did. I really feel like I owe you an apology for being so hard on you all this time. Edith and I nearly got ourselves killed by taking the same sort of risks you’ve taken.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Lou said. “I’ve been pardoned?”

  “I’m done pushing you around.”

  “In that case, I’m done trying to stuff my feelings toward you. How’s that?”

  “I can handle it. See me when this is all over, Doc, and we have our acquittal. I’d love to set something up to thank you for all your help.”

  “Are you on speaker?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Hey, there, Edith. I’m glad you can’t hear my face turning red.”

  “You should be red, Doctor. She’s a hell of a woman.”

  “So, tell me, did Bryzinski confess that Hogarth hired him?”

  “I’ve asked him in polite and not-so-polite ways,” Sarah replied, “but I think he needs a bit more time in the trunk to open up to us.”

  “Without Hogarth’s cooperation, I don’t know what we’re going to do to get Brody to stop this Operation Talon. I thought you might be able to make that happen, but seeing as he tried to have you killed, I guess I’ll need to go with my Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “Plan B is that we’re going to Dover to stop him ourselves,” Lou said.

  “That’s crazy. You’ll get yourself killed. Listen, we can get to Hogarth.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll give him a new deal. We’ll offer to bury Reddy Creek if he stops Operation Talon.”

  “Great plan,” Lou said. “Maybe this time he’ll hire someone less incompetent to kill you.”