Allison braced herself for a loyal daughter’s fury, but Tanya’s response was slow in coming. Finally she simply said, “You should have told me what you were doing.”
Her tone was surprisingly reasonable, putting Allison somewhat at ease. “I’m sorry,” said Allison. “Honestly, I thought the chances of your mother being involved were so remote that I didn’t want to alarm you.”
“You’re right. My mother would never do that. And even if your DNA test confirms that the lipstick was hers, that doesn’t mean my mother was involved.”
“DNA tests are very reliable.”
“I’m sure they are. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that someone took my mother’s lipstick and scrawled the message, without her knowledge. Someone like my father.”
Allison paused. Suddenly the chances of a DNA match seemed much greater. “That sounds more plausible to me.”
Tanya was silent, as if thinking something over. “Or,” she said quietly, “I suppose someone could have scrawled the message with her knowledge.”
“Is there something in particular that makes you say that?”
“Not a big thing, but big enough. My father came by this morning to see if I knew anything about the FBI looking into the death of Kristen’s father. My mom arranged the meeting, which doesn’t sound bad in itself. She just did it in a very surreptitious way. She obviously knew that my father wanted to grill me about Mark, but she never even gave me a clue about the purpose of his visit. In fact, she led me to believe it was going to be another attempt at father-daughter reconciliation. I never would have thought she’d mislead me like that, especially while my daughter is kidnapped. I guess my father has more control over her than I thought.”
Allison drummed her nails on the countertop, thinking. “Tanya, I don’t like to ask you to play spy, but is there any possible way you could get your mother and father together and just watch them? See how they act toward one another, listen to what they say to each other about Kristen’s kidnapping?”
“It would be hard. My father is campaigning full blast now.”
“He has to sleep somewhere tonight. Maybe he could spend the night with your mother in the spare bedroom. Tell your mother you’d like to have the family pull together as the crisis comes to a head.”
“He and I had a pretty big blowup before he left this morning. I don’t know that he’ll ever come back, even if my mother and I both ask him.”
“He’ll come back. If nothing else, I’m sure the image of family togetherness is something that appeals to his campaign instincts. To be honest with you, it wouldn’t hurt for the kidnappers to at least think that you’re pulling together. It might make them think they have an even greater chance of collecting a ransom.”
“Is this really necessary?”
“We’ve reached the point where we have to do everything we possibly can, as quickly as we can. If anywhere in your heart you feel there’s even a remote possibility that your father is in any way involved in that scarlet letter photograph I received or in the kidnapping of your daughter, then I’d say it’s absolutely necessary for you to get him in a position where you can watch him, at least for a little while. I hate to scare you, Tanya. But Harley and I both think we’re running out of time.”
“Don’t worry about scaring me,” she said. “I’m beyond scared.”
“I know you are. Just don’t let it paralyze you.”
She sighed deeply. “I’ll take care of it,” she said in a shaky voice. “Somehow I’ll get the general back here tonight.”
41
Kristen wasn’t sure she was awake. The last thing she’d heard was that voice in the alley, the scary guy who’d tackled her and said she’d never escape. The last thing she’d felt was that needle in her leg, like when those men had dragged her into the van and injected her with something to make her pass out. This time, however, the sleep seemed even deeper, harder to shake. Maybe this time she was waking before the drugs had worn off. Maybe this time a part of her just didn’t want to wake up.
Kristen Howe is not afraid. She thought it, formed the words in her mind, could almost see her mantra etched in big puffy white letters across a bright blue sky. But she didn’t believe, couldn’t make herself believe it. This time the mantra was nothing more than words. Less than words. Just lofty thoughts in the air that faded into smoke and dissolved in the wind.
She felt sticky, smelly, wet. Then a flash hit her eyes, though her eyes were not open. Another white flash, like lightning at midnight that brightens a black room and then leaves you in darkness. She opened her mouth to catch the raindrops on her tongue. But it wasn’t raining. And she heard no thunder.
She struggled to open her eyes, but the lids were too heavy. The harder she tried, the heavier they seemed. Sight was the one sense that completely eluded her. The others, however, were slowly come back to her. Taste, salty. And the smell was familiar. Like meat. Bloody, red meat.
Panic raced through her. Am I bleeding?
Couldn’t be. No pain, not anywhere on her body. And the blood was cold-icy cold, as if it had been stored in the refrigerator. That’s what it was! It was like the pig’s blood in biology class, when the teacher took it from the refrigerator in the middle school laboratory, and the students put a drop on the glass slide to examine it under the microscope. The same pig’s blood she’d tasted on a dare from her girlfriends. The pig’s blood she’d smelled when those boys dropped the jar on the floor.
Pig’s blood. All over her body.
Another flash, this time even brighter. She was floating. Not just in her mind, but physically floating. Her eyes began to open, the left, then the right. Two narrow slits unaccustomed to light, unable to form images.
Suddenly it was raining. Warm water pelting her body, rinsing the sticky, thick, smelly mess from her body. Steam filled the air, more like a hot shower than any rain she’d ever known. The wet warmth made her sleepier. Her eyes were closing once again, but not without a lucid moment. White everywhere. White tiles above. White curtain at her side. Smooth white porcelain all around her. A dark red stream swirling down the drain at her feet.
Another jab in her leg-that needle again. Then blackness and a quick return to blissful sleep.
The pain was worse at the end of the day. Allison had been going through the motions since last night’s meeting with President Sires, never really absorbing the full impact of her “suspension.” Finally it was beginning to hurt. Friends were already expressing their condolences. Foes were smiling and sharpening their knives for the November version of the bloody Ides of March.
The mob of reporters outside her door had dealt the first blow. It was only a few steps from her front door to the curb, but it had seemed like miles. Without Secret Service leading the way, she might never have reached her limousine. The ride to the studio had offered a moment of peace, but it was fireworks again on ABC’s political talk show, This Week in Washington. One outspoken panelist, in particular, seemed out to get her.
“Why didn’t you just stay out of the investigation from the beginning,” he’d asked pointedly, “and simply avoid the whole conflict-of-interest controversy?”
“It’s interesting you ask that,” was her dry reply. “Especially since you’re the one who blasted me in last week’s editorial for not doing more to save Kristen Howe.”
It had been downhill from there. Worse, actually. More like falling off a cliff.
How things change, she thought. Four years ago, her first appearance on a Sunday morning political talk show had been a virtual love fest-Allison Leahy, Washington’s new wonder woman. Back then, even the president had seemed taken with her. She recalled their first chat in her new office suite, just a day or so after her Senate confirmation. A photographer had snapped a shot of the two of them in front of the fireplace as they looked up with admiration at the portrait of Robert Kennedy hanging over the mantel. Later, the president had personally signed and inscribed the photograph for her: “Someday a new
attorney general will be admiring a portrait of you.”
Fat chance. She had the sinking feeling that her place in history was now considerably lower, more like the basement of the Justice Building, tucked behind the group portrait of former Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell and his prison-garbed Watergate coconspirators.
At 10:00 P.M. her limousine was finally taking her home from the airport. She’d filled Sunday afternoon with quick appearances in Philadelphia and New Jersey, followed by an in-flight meeting with her strategists to approve some new commercials. Somewhere between it all she did manage to call Harley to tell him about her conversation with Tanya Howe. He loved the idea of luring the general to Tanya’s house, though he had a more active notion of daughter-turned-spy than Allison had envisioned. She figured she’d leave it to Harley to Work out the details, knowing that Tanya wasn’t the kind of woman who could be talked into anything that made her uncomfortable.
“Should I run them over?” asked her FBI driver.
Allison peered ahead through the windshield, shaking off her thoughts. Reporters were still crowding outside her townhouse awaiting her return. She was tempted to say yes.
“That’s okay. I’ll just phone ahead and ask Peter to dump the pot of boiling oil out of the second-story window.”
The agent smiled, then braced himself for the frantic members of the media rushing toward the moving car. Excited faces and probing cameras filled the car windows, but Allison knew the tinted glass made it impossible for anyone to see inside. From her vantage point, they were everywhere-front, back, both sides. Had the limo stopped rolling they would have jumped on the hood. It was a theater of the absurd, the way they hollered and gawked, pressing their noses against the glass, assuming that Allison was inside and listening. She thought of the underwater exhibit at Sea World, where you could sit on the safe side of protective glass and watch sharks and barracudas swim by in the tank.
The limo stopped directly in front of her townhouse. One of her FBI escorts forced his door open, muscled his way around the car, and opened Allison’s door for her. With an agent on each arm she made it to the iron gate, bathed in almost constant blinding light from camera flashes. She opened the gate and hurried to the front door. One agent stayed outside, the other followed her in.
“Thank you,” she told him. She was out of breath, exhausted from the gauntlet. It was then that she noticed the package tucked under the agent’s arm.
He handed it to her. “A mutual friend asked me to give this to you.”
She looked at him curiously, taking it. It was wrapped in brown paper, about the size of a shoe box. “What is it?” she said with some trepidation.
“It’s okay. I’ve checked it out.” He gave her a thin smile, then said good night and let himself out. The noise cranked up when the front door opened, then leveled off at an audible level of disappointment the moment the crowd realized it was only an FBI agent.
Allison carried the package to the kitchen and laid it on the table. She filled a glass with ice water and drank half of it while staring at the package. It creeped her out a little. A mysterious package from “a mutual friend.” But she’d known her escort for almost six months. If he said he’d checked it out, he’d surely checked it out.
She tore away the packaging. It was indeed a shoe box. With care, she removed the lid and tissue paper. She paused.
What in the heck?
A smile came to her face as she removed the pink fuzzy slippers; then she chuckled to herself. The card was on the bottom. She tore open the envelope and read it to herself: COULDN’T FIND A TATTERED ROBE. STRONGLY DISCOURAGE THE CYANIDE TABLETS. HANG IN THERE. HARLEY.
Her heart swelled. For a brief moment, she didn’t feel so bad. “Thank you, Harley,” she said with a grin.
By 10:30 P.M., the pit in Tanya’s stomach had grown to canyon proportions. Allison had been right. All she had to do was ask, and her father would come.
Not only was he coming, but he had made a point of telling everyone all about it at every stop along his Sunday campaign trail. A family pulling together in a time of crisis did indeed mesh perfectly with the general’s campaign strategy.
Tanya rose from the couch and switched off the ten o’clock evening news. If she heard one more sappy news report about the general taking time away from his busy campaign schedule to be at his daughter’s side, she would surely vomit.
She heard a commotion outside the house. She knew that sound by now, had come to react to it, the way others might respond to the bark of their dog or the ring of their doorbell. The ever-present media watch was stirring to life, signaling the arrival of a visitor to the Howe household. She stepped to the front window and peered from behind the draperies. It was the black limo brigade.
Tanya flinched at the hand on her shoulder. Her mother withdrew her touch and said, “I’m proud of you, Tanya. It’s important for you and your father to come together at a time like this. He’s a wonderful man. He can be a real source of strength.”
She stared straight ahead, fixing on the candidate waving at the media as he cut across her lawn. She felt a pang of guilt about deceiving her mother, about not telling her the real reason she’d invited him. But she had to put Kristen first.
“Tanya, you’re doing the right thing.”
She turned and looked her mother in the eye. “Yes. I know I am.”
42
The doorbell rang in the middle of her dreams. Tanya shot up in bed and checked the glowing liquid crystal numbers on the clock on her nightstand: 2:20 A.M. Her heart thumped. Her mind raced with thoughts of her daughter. Bad news, she feared. Nothing but bad news came in the middle of the night. So bad that a phone call wouldn’t suffice. It had to be delivered to her in person.
She threw on a robe and rushed to the living room. The FBI agent who was serving night watch was already answering the door. He opened it. Tanya didn’t know who to expect, but she couldn’t hide her surprise. She’d never met him before, but she instantly recognized her father’s chief campaign strategist from the news and magazines.
“Mr. LaBelle?” she asked in a tone that sounded like What are you doing here?
LaBelle stepped into the foyer, speaking to Tanya in his most polite, southern accent. “Sorry to disturb you at this hour, Miss Tanya. But it’s very important that I speak to your father.”
“He’s asleep.”
“Not anymore,” the general grumbled from the hallway.
LaBelle closed the door, shutting out the cold draft. He glanced at Tanya and the FBI agent. “I’m very sorry to intrude, but would the two of you mind giving the general and me just one moment, please?”
“By all means,” Tanya said with sarcasm. She and the agent shuffled out of the room, he to the kitchen and she to her bedroom.
The general stepped into the foyer, speaking softly so as not be overheard. “What’s going on?”
“It’s important. I didn’t want to risk a phone call to your daughter’s house. Thought someone might be listening. Come on,” he said as he reached for the door. “Let’s talk in the car.”
Howe bristled. “It’s freezing out there, Buck. And there’s a ton of media-even more than usual, since I decided to stay here. What are they going to think? It looks conspiratorial, me sneaking out of my daughter’s house in my pajamas in the middle of the damn night, two men sitting in the back of the limo talking at two o’clock in the morning. It looks bad enough for you to come here.”
“Sir, this is extremely important.”
The general looked around with a pained expression. The FBI agent was fixing himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. The media were parked on the street. “Come on,” said Howe. “We can talk in the spare bedroom.”
The general led the way down the hall, to the opposite side of the house in which Natalie was sleeping. Tanya’s room was at the far end of the hall. He stepped quietly through the carpeted hallway, trying not to disturb her. The hinges creaked as he opened the door. Tanya had converted
the spare bedroom into a combination guest room and home office. LaBelle took a seat on the Hide-A-Bed sofa. The general closed the door quietly, then sat in the swivel chair in front of the computer.
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
LaBelle’s face was filled with concern. “They’re looking for Mitch O’Brien.”
“Who’s looking for O’Brien?”
“The FBI. They’re down in Miami, snooping around the marina, his house, asking neighbors questions. Nobody seems to know where he is.”
The general suddenly had that look on his face-the look of a volcano on the verge of eruption. He drew a deep breath, controlling it. He rose from the chair, as if towering over LaBelle made it easier to question him. “Does the FBI know anything?”
“I don’t know. I guess they suspect something.”
He began to pace slowly, adjusting his stride to accommodate the small room. “What could they possibly know unless they’ve talked to him?”
“Hard to say.”
“Maybe we should beat them to the punch. You know, release the O’Brien story ourselves, like I did with the rumors that the investigation was focusing on my own campaign.”
LaBelle shook his head. “I don’t think that rule applies here.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. “It would be different if the whole thing didn’t unravel at the end. I mean, it would be perfectly all right to say that Leahy’s ex-fiancé came to us before the Atlanta debates and said he was living proof that the attorney general had been unfaithful to her husband. The fact that he offered to take a polygraph is even better. It was like Anita Hill taking her polygraph to substantiate her sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas. Problem is, the polygraph is where our story begins to fall apart.”
“We don’t have to tell anyone he failed the damn thing. We just say he offered to take a polygraph. Period.”
The Abduction Page 26
