Shining City

by Tom Rosenstiel

  Madison looks down at the ground, as if he were praying.

  “I didn’t know about Calvin Smith. And it never occurred to me that Alan Martell’s murder or Rochelle Navatsky’s might have anything to do with the Johnson trial.”

  But they almost certainly do, Rena thinks. The only thing Navatsky, Martell, and Smith had in common was Robbie Johnson.

  And now someone is killing them. Killing everyone involved.

  The thought of it jars Rena. He pulls out his phone and calls Hallie Jobe, the ex–FBI agent from his firm. She could be there sooner.

  Fifty-one

  8:41 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  Vic has come to love the C&O Canal. She can run north along the Potomac into Maryland one way, or downriver toward the city and the Kennedy Center the other. Either is one of the most beautiful spots in the city. The terrain is flatter than the hilly trails back home and makes for a more liberating run.

  She slows down at Thirty-First Street. She always walks the last two blocks to cool down, then does some stretches before heading back inside.

  She has run well today, her body loose, the run easy—a day when you imagine you could run for hours.

  She hadn’t begun that way. But in the first mile, she felt a kind of elation, the tension of the day before melting away like snow after a storm. She isn’t just worried about her dad’s nomination. She is angry—with her father for keeping things from Peter, with Peter for the way he has acted, and with herself, for not doing more to help Randi and Peter help her father.

  She has stronger feelings for Peter than she expected. She isn’t entirely clear what they are.

  “M . . . m . . . mornin’, ma’am.”

  Hubert, the utility man who works at the Elmwood Apartments, where she and her father are staying, is pulling tools out of his van. They exchange pleasantries, as they do most mornings. He has become something of an unexpected pal. He has a slow, courtly manner, seems undaunted by his slight stutter, and takes pleasure in being kind—a southern thing, she thinks. She has spent so little time around the rest of the country.

  “S . . . s . . . s . . . aw your dad on TV. He looked good. Tell him I . . . I . . . I’m rooting for him.”

  “Hubert, if he has won you over, he has nothing to worry about.”

  “Well, he’s the o . . . o . . . only judge I know. So course I’m for him.”

  Vic climbs the stairs to the second-floor apartment, walks through the living room to the kitchen, and towels off. She could use some water, and needs to cool down for a few minutes before she showers.

  She has no idea when her father will be back, and she’s apprehensive about him being gone. Peter calling her dad after taking a red-eye, needing to see him right away—everything in Washington seems urgent. Maybe it is. Everything you do seems to be on C-SPAN.

  The doorbell rings. Maybe Dad is back. Did he forget his keys?

  “Hi, Hubert.”

  “’Scuse me, ma’am. You, uh, you know how I said I had to check the water usage? I know it’s mornin’. But, well, I’ve got to leave early today. I wonder if I could do it now. Just get it done. The m . . . m . . . meter is in the closet in the hall.”

  She was planning to shower, but she can have breakfast first.

  “Of course, come in.”

  The legs of Hubert’s baggy overalls rubbing against each other make a swooshing sound as he heads down the hall to the meter near the bathroom. Vic begins to make coffee and assemble fruit for breakfast.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Hubert? Excuse me?”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  Hubert is in the kitchen. His voice is strange.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  Hubert moves toward her, closer than she is comfortable with. She begins to think she should say something.

  His expression hardens. Before she can decide how to react, he brings his right hand up behind her head and grabs her hair at the back of her neck. He pulls her hair down, forcing her face upward.

  The surprise of it doesn’t quite register in her mind. Hubert, this friendly man she has known every day for almost a month, has her by the hair. She can feel it pulling underneath his leather work gloves.

  “When’s he coming back?” The stutter is gone.

  “I don’t know!” she says.

  “Come on,” he commands.

  Come on where? He is dragging her down the hall by her hair. She can feel hair pulling out of her scalp.

  Then fear jolts into awareness and she kicks her legs out wide, trying to catch something along the hallway wall. The more she kicks, the harder he pulls and the more she feels her scalp tearing.

  It takes forever to reach the bathroom at the end of the hall. He is filling the tub. He is going to drown her in it. Drown her in the bath. She is going to die here.

  “Hubert, don’t.”

  “Shut up.”

  On the sink, four neatly torn pieces of duct tape are hanging in a row.

  With his free hand, he puts one piece of tape over her eyes, a second one over her mouth. The sudden blackness makes her heart feel as if it were tightening in her chest.

  What she felt before, in the hall—in her whole life up to now—is not fear like this. This is something tangible, something liquid.

  “Do you feel this?” he says.

  It’s a knife against her neck. She nods.

  “You struggle, I’ll slit your throat.”

  She feels the blade move away. Then he lets go of her hair, takes hold of her wrists, and yanks her arms back behind her—hard. She feels duct tape winding around her wrists.

  She pictures the scene in her mind, as if she were floating above it. She sees herself, in her running shorts and tank top, standing in the corner, her back against the towel rack in the bathroom facing the sink. He has pushed her there, against the wall, to steady her. She is blindfolded, muzzled, and tied at the wrists.

  “Who’s in charge now?” he says. “Who’s the judge now?”

  She begins to cry and can feel the tears leaking underneath the duct tape. He pushes her down, so she is now sitting on the bathroom floor. Oh, God, she thinks, don’t kill me.

  Then he stops.

  She can sense him still standing over her. But she can hear nothing. What’s happening?

  Something has distracted him. A sound? She isn’t sure.

  But an opportunity. She tries to kick.

  “Don’t do that,” he says. His voice doesn’t sound panicked, merely irritated.

  He puts his hands on her throat and pushes down. He has put the knife down somewhere.

  “Stop it now and I won’t kill you.”

  She starts to kick him harder, pummeling bicycle kicks.

  What happens next occurs slowly, as if she were underwater. He punches her very hard in the face. And she feels everything that comes next perfectly: The push of his fist against her flesh down to her bone. The back of her head hitting the tile floor. The recoil of her neck bouncing up from the tile.

  She can’t believe how slowly time begins to move. It would be wonderful if things seemed to move this way all the time. You can appreciate everything so much more. At this speed life is experienced in a heightened, adrenal consciousness—as if, at last, for the first time, she were using her whole mind. She hears a pounding and wonders if it is the sound of her own heart. She hears a voice, but she does not know whose or where it’s from, or whether it’s even real. She sees a scene surrounded by dark, like a movie. Is she dreaming? Is she sleeping? If it were a dream, wouldn’t recognizing the dream mean you are waking up?

  A thick, dark veil begins to slide over her mind. It is heavy and at the same time weightless. And the dark seems absolute.

  “Victoria! Vic!”

  She shoulders the door open, smashing the doorjamb.

  “Vic, it’s Hallie Jobe!”

  It had taken Jobe only minutes to get here since Rena called. Her town house is a few blocks away. />
  No one in is the kitchen, but the milk is out on the counter. Someone making breakfast interrupted.

  “Vic!”

  Gun drawn.

  Living room?

  Hallway?

  Bedroom?

  Another bedroom?

  At the end of the hall is a bathroom door that’s closed.

  “Vic!”

  Jobe looks down the hall and her training tells her she has limited options. If someone were going to shoot her through the door they might have fired already. The hallway is too narrow for her to come at it from an angle. She just needs to move quickly. And create some distraction. She screams a banshee yell and kicks full force near the door handle.

  Vic is lying on the floor, bound, gagged, and not moving.

  She moves to her. “Vic?”

  Look for a wound or signs of strangulation.

  Then, vaguely, she senses motion behind her. Her mind registers an indistinct object.

  Someone hiding in the shower. Swinging something.

  Not one body now, but two. He looks down at the woman who came down the hall. Blood trickling from the scalp.

  Truth is he was lucky. Woman had a gun. Could have gone differently.

  Time to go. If this one came so could others.

  Pick up the tools and walk to the van like there was nothing going on. Clear head.

  The walk is an eternity.

  And he is limping. When the daughter started kicking she caught him once in the thigh.

  He sees no one.

  He opens the back door, puts the tools in, and takes a breath. His mind seems locked in fourth gear. Breathing too fast.

  Take a couple of long inhales.

  Then he realizes: This is the end of it.

  After more than a year of planning and then doing it. The longest he’s ever worked on anything in his life.

  Done and done. Can’t come back. Can’t do the judge. Whatever he thought he was gonna do, he’s done it.

  One thing he knows for sure: He is never going to prison again.

  He’s imagined plenty about what comes next. That he will disappear to Mexico or someplace before anyone pieces together that the killings are connected, then write his mother and tell her the truth. Then people would know that Robbie was really innocent. Because if someone has done all this for him, well, then he must be.

  And maybe they would think on vengeance and justice. And think he is not the disappointment everyone always said.

  Other times he’s imagined telling no one anything. He will just disappear and no one will connect it all. Just three killings. Or five. Just more mystery. No meaning to it. And he’ll be free.

  Mostly he’s wondered what Mama will think. If she knew the truth, she would say she doesn’t understand. You can’t make a wrong thing right with another wrong thing. Quote the Bible. But in time? With people talking? Some would quote other parts of the Bible. Say, it is really something, isn’t it, what he did?

  Either way, he can’t get caught. Then she would only be more unhappy.

  When Robbie was arrested, then convicted, then killed, Mama just dried up. She had always been the one talking about hope. And after he died, she didn’t do it anymore. Because she hadn’t any hope left. She had poured it all into Peanut and then it was used up.

  It isn’t like he and Peanut were close. They were so different it was hard to believe they were brothers. But he loved him. And now he has proven it.

  One moment kept coming back to him all those years when he was inside. The first time he was arrested, when he was seventeen and Peanut was eleven. When he finally got home, after being arraigned and spending a night in jail, Peanut just cried. Momma was there, too, looking like he had stabbed her or something. And he looked at Peanut, so small and weak, it made him angry. Whimpering, like a girl. Weaker than a girl. It made him boil.

  “Stop crying.”

  Robbie turned away from him and kept whimpering.

  “Stop crying, damn it.”

  Robbie’s crying only made it worse. It only made their mother feel worse. It only made James look worse.

  So he hit Robbie.

  The boy went down and lay there in the fetal position.

  “Get up.”

  But he kept crying and kept lying there.

  “If I end up in prison, you’ve got to be the man. Understand?”

  Mama ran to him and grabbed him. “Oh, please, please, please stop.” Wailing, tears, holding his arms. “Please! Jimmy James, please.” Her wailing and Robbie whimpering. He had stomped out that night and not come back for three days.

  The memory haunts him. Of all his regrets, of all the bad things he’s done, all the ways he has disappointed people, that one picture, that moment, keeps coming back.

  He closes the back doors of the van and takes another deep breath. Once he’s behind the wheel, he stops for a second and closes his eyes. Too much gone down. Too much to take in. Then he turns the motor over, puts the van in gear, and drives.

  Fifty-two

  Rena sees Jobe’s car and pulls the Camaro in next to it.

  Jobe could get here sooner. That’s why he’d called her.

  In the passenger seat next to him, Madison is silent. Rena has said nothing other than that they had to get back here. He didn’t need to. He swings open his door and is about to move at a run when he stops.

  “Go into the apartment, Rollie,” Rena says coolly. “And be ready to call 911.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “Check the apartment. And be ready to call 911. Go!”

  Rena switches the Camaro back on and watches Madison run toward the apartment.

  As they had pulled in, he’d recognized the face, behind the wheel of a white van. A face from the file Wiley and Lupsa had given him. A police photo, side and front. The face in the photo was younger, and angrier, but the same face now. Robert Johnson’s brother, James.

  The two men had locked eyes a moment as the van was pulling out, and Rena sensed James Johnson had recognized him, too—though Rena had no memory of ever seeing Johnson before.

  He had a look Rena had seen in combat. Mortal rage mixed with fear.

  In the weeks he’s been pretending to be Hubert, he has thought a lot about what to do if he had to run. The white van stolen in California would be a liability, slow, poor handling. So he worked something out, an escape plan.

  He needs it now. Especially, he thinks, because the guy in the car recognized him.

  The streets in the oldest part of Georgetown by the river are a maze. Some are just a block or two long. He has walked them all, looking at every angle, until he could see them in his mind, draw a map from memory.

  He will head right into the maze, with all the short turns, and try to get out of sight of any car tracking him. He’s even figured a route, the way out, like Bird taught him.

  He pulls out of the parking lot behind the apartment onto Jefferson and makes a right, down the hill to K Street under the freeway.

  K is so old it has rail tracks and cobblestones peeking through the blacktop. He goes just one block and makes a right, glancing in the rearview mirror as he slows. He sees the tip of the Camaro getting to K Street one block behind him. Did the Camaro see him turn?

  Now his maze begins.

  Just a few feet up there is a little alley, South Street or something. A left there.

  If he can get through the alley unseen, he is out to another street, a main street, sometimes jammed with cars, Wisconsin Avenue. If it’s crowded, that would screw him up. But if it’s clear, he only needs to travel on it about thirty feet and then he can cut right onto another alley, take it for a block, and turn again. He would be making a circle. By then, he should have lost the Camaro if he hasn’t already. And he could head out on K toward the bridges and Virginia and be gone.

  It’s early in the morning. Streets should be pretty clear. A glance back for the Camaro. Nothing.

  But there is a guy in the alley dumping garbage, and he h
as to slow down for him.

  C’mon. To the corner. Get to the corner.

  The big street is clear.

  He pushes it and is able to make a hard right onto the second alley, head back, and circle around.

  He is through the second alley, right on Thirty-First Street, then down to K Street. If he has lost the guy, he is only two blocks from a freeway.

  As he gets to K, left or right? Is he clear? Can he make the left? He glances back.

  And sees the tip of the Camaro. He veers the van to the right.

  The van swerves a little as it enters K Street, as if the driver intended to turn left and then changed his mind and turned right. Away from the freeway. Back to the river. Down K street is a dead end.

  Rena presses the Camaro, double footing, racing technique, left foot on the brake, right on the accelerator, to power around the corner to get onto K Street. He can see the white van bouncing down the last vestiges of K Street underneath the Key Bridge.

  The van is going to run out of road. It disappears through a small tunnel underneath the old bridge. He points the Camaro down the cobbled road and the big engine pushes the car forward with a rush.

  At the end of the road the van is stopped. Beyond it, a figure in work overalls is running. Rena stops behind the van to block its escape, jumps out, and begins to chase.

  Beyond the end of the road are docks on the Potomac used by the crew teams from local colleges and high schools. Past the boathouses is a path that runs alongside the river. At a certain point the path diverges from the river and hugs the road. Though they are still in the city, if the guy in the overalls manages to get to the river at that point he could get away.