Act of Darkness

by Jane Haddam

  “That’s right,” Chester said.

  “And this speaking engagement—”

  “He got paid for it. You don’t have to beat around the bush. Everybody on Capitol Hill with a title to sell supplements his income that way.”

  “So that was a fund-raiser, too, in a way.”

  “It raised funds,” Chester said, “but it raised them for Stephen personally. Not for the campaign.”

  “The press was out in force at all three events?”

  “No,” Chester said. “At the first two, yes, but not at the third. No self-respecting Washington reporter is going to trek all the way out to the Blue Ridge Mountains just to hear Stephen talk about how we have to develop the compassion to cherish and support our mentally retarded children.”

  “All right.” Gregor thought he wouldn’t have trekked all the way out to Virginia for that either. He wouldn’t have taken a taxi across town. “What about between those times? Did Senator Fox do anything that would normally give him a case of stage fright? Anything at all?”

  “Oh, yes,” Chester said. “He got an award from the American Osteopathic Association. For his support, you know it was a straight payback, if you want to know the truth. There was a bill—”

  “You don’t have to tell me, Mr. Chester.”

  “Yeah. I don’t suppose I do. You were with the Bureau in Washington forever. Anyway, there was that. Two thousand people. Some reporters but not a lot.”

  “Was that a fund-raiser?”

  “Not directly. The AOA has a PAC. They give a lot of money away. Some of it they give to Stephen.”

  “Anything else?”

  Chester considered it. “Yes,” he said finally. “A couple of things. Small ones, really. He had a meeting with the Boy Scouts—the Connecticut council, or whatever it’s called. Big picnic with all the parents there. He gave a speech.”

  “Stage fright but no attack?”

  “Stephen always has stage fright when he has to talk to a crowd that big. That wasn’t a fund-raiser, but there was press. We do it every year. Like I said, it’s no big deal, There was a small dinner for the American Association of University Women, too, maybe three days ago. About two hundred people and one reporter for a local paper.”

  “He’s get stage fright at that?”

  “Stephen gets stage fright if he has to give a toast at Thanksgiving dinner. He really isn’t very comfortable in public, Mr. Demarkian. He’s just comfortable in front of television cameras. That’s what you need these days. Is this getting us anywhere?”

  Gregor sighed. “It’s getting us at least a tentative answer to my question. Senator Fox gets these attacks only when he has stage fright, but not every time he gets stage fright.”

  “So?”

  “So, whatever’s going on, it isn’t a psychological response to the stage fright. Or it isn’t likely that it is.”

  Dan Chester stared at him—so hard and so long, Gregor began to wonder what he could possibly have said to make the man so bug-eyed. Surely the thought must have occurred to him that Senator Fox might simply be breaking down. It was the first thing Gregor had thought of, and the first thing Carl Bettinger had suggested when he called Gregor to ask for his help. “Fox is one of the real world-class bozos on Capitol Hill,” Bettinger had said, “and my reading is the man’s not glued together too tight.” But even if Stephen Whistler Fox was a rock, the question would have to be asked. In the face of the clean bill of health delivered by the UConn medical center, it would have to be asked first.

  “Mr. Chester,” Gregor said. “You must have considered—”

  “Considered?” Dan Chester exploded. “Of course I considered. Stephen’s not having a nervous breakdown. Or at least he wasn’t having one when these attacks started.”

  “Meaning he is having one now?”

  “You’d be a little upset, too, under the circumstances. But you don’t understand. Stephen couldn’t be having—psychological—psycho—oh, hell.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Dan Chester got out of his chair. He had lost his blankness and his control. He dumped his empty coffee cup on the rectangular table near the door, passing from anger to the edge of hysterical laughter. He seemed to be holding himself in only with difficulty.

  “Look,” he said, “maybe you’re right. Maybe you ought to talk to Stephen.”

  “Mr. Chester, I have to talk to the senator. At least, if I’m going to do you any good I have to.”

  “You think that’s going to help you out, Mr. Demarkian? Well, that’s fine. You talk to him. I’ll set it up myself. But try to remember one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “People like Stephen Whistler Fox don’t run the country. People like me run the country. And it’s a good thing, too. If we had to depend for government on people whose only qualification for office was that their jawlines don’t blur on videotape, we’d be in even worse shape than we are. Do you get my drift?”

  “No,” Gregor said.

  “Look at the folder,” Dan Chester said. “It’s got everything and nothing in it. I’ll go find the honorable senator.”

  Chester threw the bolt, flung open the door, and began to disappear into the hall outside. Just before he was out of earshot, Gregor said, “Mr. Chester, speaking of folders, there are some very fancy ones upstairs.”

  Chester stopped. “What about them? I wrote them myself. They’re supposed to be souvenirs.”

  “Was it your idea to include a heart-shaped paper clip?”

  Chester gave him a twisted little smile. “That,” he said, “was Janet’s idea. In fact, the folders were Janet’s idea. She says they were Vicky’s, but she always says that when she thinks I’m going to hate an idea.”

  SIX

  [1]

  WHEN DAN CHESTER FINISHED with Gregor Demarkian, he didn’t go in search of Stephen Whistler Fox. Instead, he went out the great sliding glass doors in the beach room to the deck, and from there onto the beach itself. Janet saw him moving clumsily across the sand in his perfectly clean, perfectly stiff Top-Siders, shaking his head and talking to himself in a tone too low to be heard over the Chinese water-torture rhythm of the waves. He went up onto the flagstone patio around the saltwater pool, where long tables had been laid out in preparation for lunch. He fiddled with the decorations there—red, white, and blue flowers in red, white, and blue vases tied with red, white, and blue satin ribbons; a red, white, and blue donkey that was a piñata stuffed with red, white, and blue candy; a red, white, and blue elephant that was also a piñata, but stuffed with coal. Victoria had a sense of humor.

  Janet was standing on the beach, halfway between the house and the water, and when she saw Dan she hesitated. Patchen was down there, sitting cross-legged with her knees in the tide, and Janet wanted to talk to her, alone. What she didn’t want to do was get that close to the water, where she would be able to see the beach at the de Broden place without obstruction. For Janet, the de Broden place epitomized everything she didn’t like about Oyster Bay: the carefully understated good taste, the carefully understated fashionless clothes, the carefully understated tones of voice. At the de Brodens’, even the sand was carefully understated. Watching them, Janet sometimes thought they lived at the bottom of an invisible sea.

  She checked out Patchen Rawls one more time, then made her choice for Dan, who was at least someone she understood. As she came up on the patio, he turned in her direction, thinking of something else. When he saw her, he blinked. Then he looked down the beach at Patchen Rawls and blinked again.

  “Oh, dear Jesus Christ,” he said.

  Janet sat down on a deck chair, sideways, without stretching out her legs. “Never mind about Jesus Christ,” she told him. “What about Gregor Demarkian? What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. He asked a lot of questions.”

  “Were you disappointed?”

  Dan shrugged. “I should have expected it. I didn’t give him much of anything but questions. He wa
nts to talk to Stephen.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “You don’t seem to realize how dangerous that could be, Janet. I haven’t let Stephen talk to anyone in weeks,”

  “Except Patchen Rawls.”

  Dan Chester flushed brick red, then paled just as quickly. “Speaking of Patchen Rawls,” he said, “she’s down there. Don’t you think you ought to take care of that, before the party starts?”

  “Is there going to be a party?”

  Dan cast a baleful look in the direction of the de Broden place, even though he couldn’t see it. He liked the de Brodens even less than she did. “If it were up to me,” he said, “we’d have a brass band out here playing Hurray for Hollywood.

  Then he spun away from her and went stalking back to the house, presumably in the direction of something political to do.

  Janet plucked at her hairpins, fussed with her hair knot, rubbed her face. Then she turned toward the beach and sighed a little. It was time she did a little stalking of her own, although it wasn’t in character. She headed across the sand to the water.

  When she got to the wet pack at the edge of the tide, she put her hand on Patchen’s shoulder and said, “Miss Rawls?”

  Patchen Rawls looked up. “You shouldn’t do that to someone who’s meditating,” she said. “It could be dangerous. You could have pulled me out of a trance state. I could have been lost in a time crack.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think you have very good karma,” Patchen Rawls said. “You must have been a mass murderer in your previous life. That’s the only thing I can think of to explain you.”

  Janet sat down on the sand. “Listen,” she said, thinking of Stephanie, thinking of the children at the Emiliani School. She found it impossible to think about Patchen Rawls.

  “Listen,” she said again. “It’s time we had a good long talk.”

  [2]

  Victoria Harte had been standing at the sliding glass doors in her main-floor bedroom when Janet went down to talk to Patchen Rawls, and now, half an hour later, she was still standing there. Of course, Janet was still talking to Patchen Rawls. Victoria wondered what they were saying. Janet, as always, was being reasonable. That was Janet’s great talent. And Patchen was losing her self-control. That was Patchen’s great talent. How she could ever have been impressed with that woman, Victoria didn’t know. She must have been going through a divorce.

  Victoria watched as Janet stood up, brushed off the back of her beach dress, and headed toward the house. Patchen Rawls sat where she had been, looking, even at a distance, frustrated and angry. Victoria had a sudden and vivid image of Janet at the age of twelve, calmly explaining to the daughter of the most important producer in Hollywood why they weren’t going to be friends anymore. The daughter of the producer had been left with exactly the same look on her face that Patchen Rawls wore now: utter incredulity sliding into fury, because she was not the sort of person people did things like that to.

  Victoria turned away from her window, went to her door, and waited. When she heard Janet come in at the end of the hall, she stuck her head out.

  “Janet.”

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “I saw you out on the beach. Talking to that woman.”

  Janet smiled, in a tired, almost cynical way—but only almost, because Janet was not capable of being really cynical. “I don’t know if I’d call it talking. It was a very odd conversation.”

  “She probably tried to sell you on crystal healing. Or poltergeists.”

  “Not exactly. She’s a strange woman. I don’t think she has any practical sense at all. And she certainly doesn’t know men.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I couldn’t get it across to her that Stephen would do anything for sex except jeopardize his chance at the presidency. I couldn’t get it across to her that he’d never leave me. He won’t leave me, will he, Mother?”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “That’s the way I read it, too, given all the circumstances. Were you looking for a little company?”

  Victoria nodded. Then she closed the door and locked it and came in to sit on the sofa.

  “Do you think she’ll leave? I did everything but threaten to poison her food, but I couldn’t convince her not to come.”

  “I don’t know, Mother. I don’t think things like that would have convinced her not to come. I’m not sure anything would have. It’s like I told you. She’s a very strange woman.”

  “All Stephen’s women are strange.”

  “She’s stranger than most. Sometimes I think she might not be quite sane. She was in my room this morning, you know.”

  “What?”

  Janet smiled again, a thin wintry smile. Victoria bit her lip. It hurt her to see Janet like this, hurt her to see Janet in so much pain. And that’s all Janet had had, for years now, with Stephen Whistler Fox.

  “She went in just after I came down this morning. I was in the foyer and I saw her. And heard her. You know how you can see all the way to that end if you’re over by the Braque etching—”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Well, I was there. I’d come down intending to go out to the beach, but then I remembered I’d forgotten something. So I came back in, and I was just standing near the Braque when I saw her come out, humming to herself. I’ve been wondering ever since what she was doing up there.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Janet shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d get a straight answer. Nobody ever does. I suppose she was looking through my things. It was wretched even to think about.”

  “I don’t think you ought to take this so cavalierly,” Victoria said slowly. “Dan Chester thinks she’s responsible for Stephen’s attacks, you know.”

  “Who told you that? Melissa?”

  “Melissa is very good at what she does, Janet. And for once, I don’t blame Dan. That woman’s got some very strange friends. I’ve met a few of them. I think some of them may be involved in organized crime.”

  “And Patchen Rawls knows it?”

  Victoria snorted. “Patchen Rawls wouldn’t know Armageddon if it happened in her backyard. But she doesn’t have to know what they are, Janet. She only has to know what they can do for her.”

  “I’m not worried about Patchen Rawls, Mother. I don’t think she’s trying to kill Stephen. If she’s going to try to kill anybody, it’s going to be me.” Janet considered it. “Or Dan Chester,” she added.

  Victoria cocked her head. “I take it Ms. Rawls thinks Dan Chester is the principal reason Stephen won’t divorce you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s the kind of thing she would think. Janet, what are you going to do about all this? You can’t go on the way you’ve been. Don’t you ever think about divorcing him?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve never thought about divorcing him, Mother. Not even for a day. I just wish—”

  “What?”

  Janet sighed and rested her head on the back of her chair and closed her eyes. “I wish it had worked out differently. I wish Stephen hadn’t been in politics. I wish Stephanie had lived. I wish, I wish, I wish. Sometimes that’s all I do. I lie in bed and think it all through. I make it all different.”

  “That’s not a very healthy way to live, Janet.”

  “I know. I don’t think I care.”

  “Do you care about this other thing? About Stephen being president, and you being First Lady?”

  “No. It isn’t going to happen. No matter what Dan thinks.”

  “You’ve got a better opinion of the American electorate than I do.”

  Janet smiled again, fondly and indulgently this time. Victoria felt herself tense. Since the death of Stephanie, Janet had gone through moods like this often, drifting in and out of desolation like a cork being sucked from one bottleneck pool to another by a gentle tide. While Janet was los
t in desolation, Victoria was always afraid. There was a breaking point in her daughter’s head somewhere—everybody had a breaking point—and over the past month Victoria had begun to think Janet had reached it. She was playing with those hairpins too much. She was saying too little. Especially about the Act in Aid of Exceptional Children.

  That act was a deliberate, cynical fraud, and Victoria Harte knew her daughter.

  Janet hated frauds even more than she hated Dan Chester.

  SEVEN

  [1]

  GREGOR DEMARKIAN WAS USED to dealing with trouble on a professional basis. It was an attitude he wasn’t often aware of, but it was there: the expectation that, if something went wrong, the machinery to rectify it would already be in place. Procedures, authority, technical support: for most of his adult life, he had counted on these things the way most people counted on the use of their hands. He didn’t think about them. He simply took command and forged ahead and got the job done—or usually got the job done. There had been one terrible period in his life, during the days of Elizabeth’s last crisis, when he had not gotten the job done, and the job had been important enough to need doing. But he tried not to think about that.

  After Dan Chester left the Mondrian study, Gregor had turned to the medical file, flipped through it, and found what he had been sure would have to be there, a paraphrased account of the senator’s symptoms. It was written in the usual medical jargon, meant to be “scientific,” rendered only obfuscated and dim. Fortunately, he’d had long experience reading this kind of thing. He even had a certain amount of talent for it. And the facts, once untangled from declarations of “perceived cardiovascular hyperparalysis” and “apparent pulmonary function cessation,” were interesting.

  In the first place, as Dan Chester had said, the attacks started with a tingling sensation over the entire surface of the skin, as if—to lean on Chester again—the senator’s entire body had “gone to sleep.”

  In the second place, the gone-to-sleep feeling escalated into something far more painful, something the senator described as “being stabbed by a hundred million sewing needles.” This was quoted directly, and footnoted to indicate that the words were the senator’s own. Possibly, Gregor thought, the symptom was so bizarre, the scientific types hadn’t been able to come up with a polysyllabic substitute for it in time for the writing of the report.