Pursuit

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “Stay close,” Mark breathed as they left the path for the concrete circle, and Jess did.

  They were accosted immediately.

  “You got a twenty you can give me, man?” The punk was one of a group that had been smoking dope near the bronze horse’s raised forelegs. All Jess could see of him through the darkness was that he was under six feet tall and stocky, with long, stringy hair. He planted himself in front of Mark, still holding his joint, the tip of which glowed red. The smell of weed was strong.

  “I’m looking for Dawn. She around?”

  “You want to buy some shit, man? I got shit.”

  “I want Dawn.”

  “Who’s that looking for me?” A woman pushed through the group and came toward them. Reed-thin, with teased black hair that fell down past her shoulders and a face so pale it seemed to float through the darkness like an oval moon, she was wearing skinny pants and an oversized sweatshirt. “Who wants Dawn?”

  Mark didn’t say anything, just turned his head to watch her approach. A few steps away, some of the swagger left her gait.

  “Oh, it’s you.” It was clear from her tone that she recognized Mark and didn’t like him. “What do you want?” Then in an aside to her stringy-haired friend, she added, “Get out of here, Daryl, he ’s a Fed.”

  “Oh, shit,” Daryl said, and disappeared into the shadows.

  “I want to talk to you,” Mark said.

  “About what?”

  “Mrs. Cooper. Did you happen to see her a couple of hours before she died?”

  Dawn crossed her arms over her chest and glanced away without saying anything. Jess could see the sudden tension in her body.

  “I’m not looking to bust you or get you into any trouble. I just need some information.”

  Dawn’s gaze fastened on Jess.

  “Who’s that?” Her voice was heavy with suspicion.

  “Nobody you need to worry about.”

  “I ain’t talking about nothin’ in front of somebody I don’t know.” Her eyes rested on Jess.

  “I’ll just go wait for you over there,” Jess said to Mark, nodding toward the nearby base of the statue. When he squeezed her hand, then let go, she took it to mean that he agreed with her assessment as to the best course of action and moved off. None of the shifting clumps of people eddying around them seemed to be paying her the least bit of attention, but still she didn’t go as far as the statue ’s base, because that was where everybody seemed to be hanging out and because it was really dark there and it would be easy to lose sight of Mark. Instead, she stopped just a few paces away, out of Dawn’s sight but close enough that when she turned around, she could still clearly see Mark. And, she thought, he could see her.

  “So you saw Mrs. Cooper that night.”

  Folding her arms over her chest and doing her best to fight off the shivers that assailed her, Jess realized she could still hear their conversation. Mark’s tone had made it a statement rather than a question.

  “Maybe she bought some ’killers from me, I don’t know.” Dawn sounded sulky.

  “Was she by herself ?”

  “If she was here, she was.”

  “She say anything or do anything to make you think she might be upset?”

  Dawn hesitated.

  “She was good to you, Dawn,” Mark said. “It would mean a lot to her memory if you could help us out with this.”

  “Yeah, okay. She was real jumpy, said she needed the ’killers to help her calm down. Her hands were shaking when she paid me, you know? And she kept looking around, like she was expecting you to jump out of the bushes.” She said that last with a touch of venom.

  “She say anything about why she was upset?”

  Dawn shook her head. “Only other thing she said was she asked me about e-mail. She asked me if I knew how to e-mail something. A video that was on her phone. I said, hell, no.”

  “A video—” Mark began, but broke off as the sound of footsteps pounding through the grass in front of the statue caused him to look sharply around. Pulse leaping, Jess took an automatic step back, her eyes widening as her gaze shot past him.

  To discover what looked like an onrushing wall of men.

  “Mark Ryan?” one of them called.

  “Run,” Mark barked in her direction as he whipped around, his hand diving for his gun.

  Mark.

  Jess screamed it in her head as she was almost knocked off her feet by Dawn’s sudden dash away. Even as she regained her balance, even as her eyes found Mark again, there was a whistling sound and he groaned and staggered and then dropped, just dropped like a stone, falling to the concrete like he ’d been shot.

  A sudden unwanted vision of how the man Mark had shot dropped flashed into her head.

  Mark had crumpled just like that.

  Oh, no. Please, God, no.

  Her heart gave a great thump. Her feet rooted to the spot. Her mouth opened to shriek, but her throat had closed up so tight no sound could escape. Then, without warning, she was hit by a wall of people, borne backward by the stampede of cursing, shouting bystanders fleeing the scene, and for a moment she could no longer see Mark.

  Please, God, please.

  She got knocked on her butt, and by the time she managed to scramble to her hands and knees and look again, there was a quartet of men in suits standing over Mark, three of them with guns drawn, one reaching down as though to check his vital signs.

  Mark didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound. Just lay there facedown on the pale concrete around the statue. It was too dark and she was too far away to tell if he was breathing, to see if his chest rose and fell.

  Everything in her wanted to go to him, run to him, fling herself down on top of him and do what she could to save him.

  But there was nothing she could do.

  Even as she faced that terrible truth, one of the suited men started glancing around, scanning the dark. As if he were looking for—what? Her?

  They knew who Mark was—they had called him by name. That meant they almost certainly knew about her.

  Jess rolled onto her hands and knees and started crawling away. The short, crisp grass was cold and damp beneath her palms. The scent of earth was strong. Bottles, cans, still-smoldering cigarette butts, all kinds of assorted trash that had been flung down in the mass exodus created what was basically an obstacle course in her path, and she did her best to dodge them. As soon as she judged she was far enough away so that they couldn’t see her, she reeled to her feet and stumbled rubbery-legged into the dark.

  It was only as her vision blurred that she felt the tears that were pouring thick and fast down her cheeks.

  31

  Jess had never been so cold in her life. Her teeth chattered. She shivered like she would never stop. She felt like she was freezing to death from the inside out. Her throat ached. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Sobs racked her.

  Please, God, don’t let Mark be dead.

  She was running, lurching, staggering, scrambling away from him as fast as she could go. Leaving him lying there like that was tearing out her heart. But to go back, to let herself be taken as well, would do him no good. If they succeeded in killing her, too, they would get away with it. The truth of who they were and the terrible things they had done would never be known.

  And if Mark wasn’t dead—please, God, please—maybe there was a chance that she could still save him.

  If she could just come up with a plan in time. She latched onto the thought with a feverish urgency. It was all that kept her from going to pieces.

  What she needed was proof that the First Lady had been murdered. Proof that she had been running from something and they had killed her before she could get away. Proof she could take to, say, the Post. She would go to their headquarters and tell everyone there what was happening, what she suspected, what had happened to Mark, to their own Marty Solomon, Davenport, Marian—all of them. And show the proof.

  Which she didn’t have.

  Without proof, would an
yone listen? Yes. Would they believe? Hmm. Would they print her words, her claims, and at least get them out there for the public to judge for themselves? She thought so, given her status as “the survivor,” but she couldn’t be sure. Washington was a company town, and whoever was behind this had the kind of power and influence that could maybe find a way of making the story disappear. Just like they could make her disappear.

  Maybe she should run straight to the police. The FBI. Somebody like that. But that might be an even faster route to disappearing. Unless she chose the right agency, the right cop or agent, she could be whisked away easily, never to be heard from again. No, she should go to the Post, tell her story, and have them call both the police and the FBI. Even if they took her away, even if they made her disappear, at least there would be witnesses. Lots of witnesses. Not even killers as ruthless as these could take out a whole newsroom, plus assorted innocent, uninvolved cops and FBI agents, too. Because there had to be more who weren’t involved than who were. The trick lay in knowing which was which.

  But whatever happened, whatever she did, it was probably going to be too late for Mark.

  That conversation about whether you meant it about being in love with me? We’re going to finish it. Later.

  She could almost hear him saying it. The memory stabbed her like a knife to the heart.

  Please, God, let there be a later.

  The image of him dropping to the concrete replayed again in her mind, and even as she tried to block it out—to get anything done she needed a clear head, needed to be able to think—she found herself gasping for air. Her insides twisted into a knot. Her heart gave a great aching throb. The pain almost brought her to her knees.

  Then she had a thought that galvanized her, that brought a blessed flood of adrenaline with it: They had to have known Mark was talking to someone, there at the statue. It probably wouldn’t take them long to find out about Dawn. To find Dawn. Who, voluntarily or not, would tell them what questions Mark had asked, and about the video on the First Lady’s phone.

  Grieving, if grieving it had to be, would have to wait. Staggering through tent city, glad that there were now people around her even though they were paying her no attention, even though she knew they provided her with no protection at all, she realized that the thing she needed to do first was go get that phone.

  She had an instant vision of the First Lady in the car, trying to make calls that wouldn’t go through. Of her throwing the thing in frustration. Of herself on her hands and knees trying to retrieve it from under the seat.

  Then thrusting it deep in her pants pocket as the accident went down. Where she thought there was a good chance it still was.

  When her mother had returned her purse and phone to her in the hospital, she would have mentioned a second phone if one had turned up. Therefore, it probably hadn’t. It was probably still in the pocket of her good black pants, which had been cut off her in the ambulance, wadded up with everything else she ’d been wearing, and given to her mother later.

  To be stored in a bag in the laundry room until Jess told her what she wanted done with them. Her mother had told her that, too.

  The first order of business was to retrieve that phone, see what if anything was on it, and then, if it provided anything like the proof she desperately needed, convey it personally and at warp speed to the Post. Or even if it didn’t. While calling a lawyer—George Kelly, Davenport ’s partner, sprang immediately to mind, but she hesitated even as she had the thought because of what had happened to Marty Solomon. But she needed an ally, lots of allies, as many as possible. Frowning, she thought of Davenport. Davenport had tried to kill her. Would Kelly be in the pocket of whoever was orchestrating this, too?

  The bottom line was, now that Mark was gone, except for her immediate family, there was no longer anyone she felt certain she could trust. That left her with the old adage about there being safety in numbers.

  She would pick up the phone and head straight for the Post, and ask them to summon every law-enforcement agency she or they had ever heard of after she told them her story.

  As a plan, it was rough around the edges. And in the middle, and everywhere else. But it was the only plan she had. Even if she wanted to save only herself. Because just running wasn’t going to work. They would catch her, just like they had caught Mark tonight.

  Now’s . . . really all anybody’s got.

  His words whispered through her mind. Suddenly they seemed terrifyingly prophetic. Oh, God, had he had some kind of premonition that he would die tonight?

  Her heart bled.

  Blocking him out of her thoughts wasn’t possible, although for the sake of her ability to do what she needed to do, she had to try. Gritting her teeth, she focused on putting one foot in front of the other and getting safely away. She was so stunned she was having trouble getting her brain to function beyond that.

  People were leaving the park like cockroaches fleeing a fire, she saw as she pushed through a low hedge at the shadowy corner of East Executive Drive and K Street. Punks and hookers and thugs and druggies and the homeless and everybody else with something to fear from the suits who had invaded the park were hotfooting it along the sidewalks and disappearing down side streets, making tracks for somewhere else. Nobody wanted to be involved. If asked, nobody would have seen a thing.

  Didn’t happen, wasn’t there, don’t know: It was the code of the streets.

  Mark had been shot in front of at least a dozen witnesses, and it was almost a sure bet that not one of them would say a thing.

  Jess pulled herself up sharply. She couldn’t think of Mark again. Every time she did, she could feel herself falling apart inside.

  A cab—she needed a cab. Her mother lived on Laundry Street, down at the very end of 16th Street, the part of the city that spilled over into Maryland. How much would it cost to get there? Jess realized she still had her purse, which meant she had some money. How much? Her share of the kitty: twenty-four dollars. They had never gotten around to actually pooling it.

  At the thought, Jess’s heart gave another of those horrible aching throbs. More tears leaked from her eyes. Wiping them away with determination, she sent one more heartfelt prayer winging skyward.

  Please take care of him, Lord. Please.

  Then she saw a cab coming toward her, and hailed it.

  The ride to her mother’s house was uneventful. Just to be on the safe side, she had the driver let her out on the next block over, and she cut through the alley. It was late now, well past one a.m. The chances that there would be anyone out and about in this slightly run-down residential neighborhood were slim. What worried her was that they—they, they, how she hated that terrifying, amorphous they—might have the place staked out, might be watching her even now.

  Her steps slowed as she neared the two-story white house with its aging aluminum siding and black shingled roof. The family had moved here when Jess was a senior in high school, so her mother could be closer to her job. They’d all lived here until the last few years, when one by one they had started moving out. It was a working-class house, narrow and a little shabby, three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, living room, dining room, kitchen, and a half bath downstairs, and it had been crowded when they had all lived there together. Currently, depending on whether or not Sarah was still in residence with the kids, just her mother and Maddie lived there.

  Jess stopped beside some garbage cans behind the house across the alley. Huddling against one of the rickety privacy fences that separated the tiny backyards from one another, she looked around—nothing out of the ordinary, nothing moving—and then back at her mother’s house. Not a light on in the place. No cars in the graveled parking area that, when they were home, usually held her mother’s Mazda and Maddie ’s Jeep.

  Shivering, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering, she hesitated, eyeing the house, almost ready to turn and walk away.

  The very last thing she wanted to do was endanger her family. But it was the weekend, and
Judy could often be found babysitting her grand-sons while Sarah and her husband went out and then, if they got home late, just spending the night at Sarah’s. (This was presuming Sarah’s marriage was back on.) And Maddie might well be with Grace, or at a girlfriend ’s, or, more likely, with her boyfriend.

  There was a good chance, then, that the house was empty. And it would take her only five minutes, tops, to slip inside, go down to the laundry room in the basement, and recover that phone if it was there.

  If there was any chance, any chance at all, that Mark was still alive, for her to find evidence that the First Lady’s death was murder and get it out to the public as fast as possible might be the only hope he had. After all, once the truth was out there, what was the point of killing anybody else? Of killing Mark?

  She was probably kidding herself, and she knew it. There was no reason she could see that they would have kept Mark alive.

  But she had to keep that slim hope. Otherwise, she was afraid she would just curl up in a little ball where she stood and cry and cry and cry.

  Making up her mind, Jess took a deep breath and quickly crossed the alley. The familiar smell of home greeted her as she pulled her key from the lock and quietly closed and locked the back door. Something about just being inside the house was comforting. Her bedroom had been in the basement—as a teen, she’d made herself a whole lair down there—and knowing that her old bed and her old computer and everything else she’d left behind were still right where she had left them made her throat tighten with longing. But she couldn’t stay. She couldn’t even linger.

  Holding her breath, listening hard as she crossed the well-worn linoleum floor, she heard nothing but the hum of appliances. The glowing numbers over the microwave announced the time: one twenty-three. She ’d been wrong, she discovered as she glanced into the hall. The light was on in the half bath at the bottom of the stairs. It had no windows, so she hadn’t been able to see the glow from outside. Now it showed her that there were no shoes kicked off in the hall—something that her whole family tended to do as soon as they entered the house—and so reinforced her belief that no one was home. And it was enough to light her way down the basement stairs.