He was finishing his scotch when he saw the manila rectangle someone had slid beneath his door.
The manager, no doubt, delivering an envelope dropped off in his absence. Picking it up, he saw that Ben Flournoy had written “Captain Terry” on the front.
Inside were Brian’s cell phone records.
Terry sat down, at first scanning them idly, focused on the months prior to Joe D’Abruzzo’s death. Then he reviewed them again, more closely.
Perhaps it was nothing. Certainly the fact that there were so few calls to, or from, Kate D’Abruzzo said nothing in itself. Perhaps their affair, as Kate had suggested, was as regular as clockwork, and required little time and nurturing in between.
I know my daughter better than she imagines, Rose Gallagher had told him. There were times today when I didn’t believe a word she was saying.
As though in a trance, Terry went to his computer and logged on to the Internet. Within minutes, he found the photograph he wanted and printed it out. Then he went to his car and left Fort Bolton.
PART
V
The Secret
December 2005
one
THE MARRIOTT WAS BUSY, ITS BRIGHTLY LIT ENTRANCE LINED with cars and taxis dropping off new arrivals for the evening. When Terry arrived, the bellhop, José Calvo, was shuttling suitcases to the elevator. Waiting in the lobby, Terry positioned himself so that Calvo would see him when he came back down. This took five minutes; from the guarded, unhappy look on the young man’s face, he remembered Terry, and preferred to avoid reopening the subject of the lady who came on Wednesdays and her angry, now dead, husband.
But Calvo was polite. When Terry approached him, he stood there, stoic and resigned. “Hello, sir,” he said softly.
“Hello, José.” Terry angled his head toward a corner of the lobby that held two empty chairs. “Mind if we talk? It won’t take long.”
José nodded, then followed Terry to the corner. Terry placed the manila envelope on the table between them. “You remember Mrs. D’Abruzzo,” Terry said. “You recognized her photograph, but not the one of the man we showed you.”
“Yes, sir,” Calvo answered cautiously. “I remember.”
“I’d like to show you another, and see if you recall the face.”
Reaching into the envelope, Terry placed the photo he had printed from the Internet on the table. Staring down, Calvo’s eyes widened slightly, fixed on the photograph for a long, silent moment. Softly, he said, “This man I remember.”
Terry felt shaken. “You’re certain of that?”
“Yes. It is a face you do not forget. Also the way he carries himself.”
“You saw him here, then?”
“A couple of different times, one especially. I took my lunch break in the car, eating a sandwich while I listened to a baseball game.” Calvo placed a finger on the photograph. “Then I see this man, coming out the side door of the hotel. I remember thinking he acted kind of funny, looking around like someone might see him. Then he walks across the parking lot to the car right next to mine.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Normal clothes, nothing special. But when he sees me, he gives me a look—real sharp, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. Then he gets in his car and drives away.”
Terry nodded. “Is there anything else about that day you remember?”
Frowning, Calvo stroked his mustache. “I finished lunch and came back to the lobby. That was when I saw the lady we talked about, fighting with the dark-haired man I found out was her husband. The man was so angry, and she was so scared. So everything that happened got stuck in my brain.”
Terry struggled to absorb this new reality. “Have you told anyone about the other man?”
“No, sir.” Calvo opened his palms. “What would I say, exactly? I remembered this man only because of how he looked, and the way he looked at me.”
Terry slid the photograph back inside the envelope and gave Calvo twenty dollars for his time.
IT WAS ALMOST NINE o’clock when Terry reached Kate D’Abruzzo’s town house, and the light over the front door was off. But a faint glow came through the curtains drawn across the windows of her living room. Terry rapped sharply on the brass door knocker, and then, when no one answered, rapped harder.
The front door cracked open. Through this aperture, Kate D’Abruzzo peered out. Seeing him, she drew back slightly, the light as pale as her face became.
Coldly, Terry said, “May I come in?”
She gave a slight shake of her head, a delayed reaction. “The kids are in bed.”
“Good. That’ll make it easier to talk.”
Her eyes changed as she processed what must have happened, and what might happen now. She backed away from the open door as though Terry held a gun.
They entered the living room. Still watching him, she felt for the couch, sitting as he took the chair across from her. With the ghost of her mother’s poise, more remarkable for the trapped look in her eyes, she asked, “Can I get you something?”
“Before the trial, I could have used the truth. Instead, I helped you plant a lie at its heart.”
Kate’s eyes shut. When they opened, Terry thought of two dark wounds. But she mustered the resolve not to look away. “We didn’t mean for it to happen,” she said simply.
“The affair? Or lying about it?”
Kate shook her head in dismay. “Both.”
THEY MET AT HIS apartment.
Kate had never been there. Though driven here by her own distress, she paused in the doorway, struck by the sparseness of the decor, the sense it conveyed of a transient life lived by a solitary man.
Gently, Anthony McCarran asked, “What is it, Kate? On the phone, you sounded distraught.”
She looked into his face, kind yet authoritative and, on this occasion, puzzled. Then she went to him as she always did at first meeting, hugging, and being hugged, as though he were her own father. As Tony held her, she sensed him trying to imagine what she wanted, and what he could do to help.
After a moment he disengaged, gesturing that she should sit beside him on the couch. He sat several feet away, facing her with a look both attentive and perplexed. Even in her distress, Kate thought fondly that Tony McCarran felt more at ease deploying a brigade than dealing with a woman’s fears. Drawing a breath, she began, “Joe’s not the same since he came back from Iraq. He drinks all night and won’t talk to me about what’s happened to him. Now he’s begun to hit me—”
“Hit you?”
Kate touched her cheek. “On the face.”
She watched him drain the anger from his face. Then he spoke in the level but commanding tone she knew so well. “I need you to tell me everything, Kate.”
She did. Each detail—Joe’s sudden rages, bursts of violence, the brooding withdrawals, aversion to social life, and even his disinterest in lovemaking—seemed to register in the general’s gray-blue eyes.
“What about Matt and Kristen?” he asked.
“They’re suffering. They remember how much they loved being with him. Now they’re timid around him, even afraid.” She shook her head, adding in a thick voice, “I never imagined I’d say that. But in some ways it’s worse for them than having no father at all.”
The statement resonated with the wound she had suffered before she was born, the death of her father. She saw Tony McCarran mourn, as she did, that Jack Gallagher had not survived his war. “You can’t go on like this,” Tony said. “None of you can.” He paused, then asked, “What does your mother say?”
Kate shook her head. “I just can’t tell her. That would ruin her relationship with Joe. And I already know what she’d say: go to his commanding officer.”
The corners of Tony’s mouth drew down. “Is that such bad advice?”
Kate felt a surge of hopelessness. “Yes,” she said vehemently. “It could ruin his career. Without that, Joe would fall apart, and so would our marriage.”
“And you still want to save
it.”
Kate nodded. “Even now.”
She watched him absorb this, his concern for her at war with the tenets of his Catholic faith, the deep moral rigor that had caused him to stay with Mary McCarran when their marriage had become an endless well of sadness. Softly, Tony said, “Your mother and you mean the world to me. If it weren’t for Rose, I wouldn’t be where I am, or know the joy of having you in my life.”
Kate felt the constriction in her chest ease. “Talk to Joe,” she pleaded. “Not as General McCarran, but as a member of the family. Tell him he has to get help.”
After a moment, Tony nodded, clasping her hand in both of his. “If your father were here, he would have done that. So will I.”
Kate felt all of her emotions breaking loose inside her: relief, a rush of hope, the certainty that Tony could solve anything, sadness that he and her mother had never married, the sheer aching loneliness of sleeping beside a man who was no longer her lover but her enemy. Then she realized that tears were running down her face. In a trembling voice she explained, “I’ve felt so alone—”
Impulsively, Tony reached for her. She burrowed close to him, shivering with repressed sobs, her face pressed against his chest. Holding her, he murmured, “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
There was a different note in his voice, thin and almost choked. Moved, Kate drew back, looking into his face. “I love you, Tony.”
For a moment he looked so sad and alone that her heart went out to him. Before she knew what she had done, Kate kissed him gently on the lips.
Tony straightened. “Kate—”
His voice held anguish and confusion. She smiled uncertainly, grasping for a way to reassure Tony that she loved him as before.
But not quite, she realized.
Tony bowed his head. Suddenly she knew that no one but her mother had ever looked out for him, and no one completely.
Gently, Kate placed his hand on her breast.
Gazing into her eyes, he was speechless, as if they were living in a dream. “It’s all right,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Kate led him to the bedroom.
Afterward, she lay in his arms, feeling the rough surface of his face against her neck, the dampness of his tears on her skin. Only then did she see the picture of Rose beside his bed.
FINISHING, KATE FACED TERRY, looking weary but composed. “I don’t need a psychologist to decode this. I married Joe because he felt like a protector. Then I turned to Tony. It was my fault, not his.”
The self-discipline it took for Terry to stifle his anger and emotion surprised him. “But he talked to Joe, of course.”
“Yes. He told Joe to get help or face the consequences.” Her voice lowered. “Joe refused to see a counselor. But he was humiliated in front of Tony McCarran, the man he most admired. So he stopped hitting me, however angry and helpless he felt.
“But Tony and I were helpless, too. We couldn’t stop, even though we knew that we could destroy Tony’s career, my marriage, and both our families—my children, Joe’s parents, my mother, even Meg and Brian. So we had to keep it secret.” Kate looked down. “Extramarital affairs, I learned, breed a certain pragmatism. Washington was too far for a mother of two to drive. So we chose a hotel. Each time, Tony gave me cash to pay the bill.”
“What about phone calls?”
“He bought me a cell phone I used only to call him, so that Joe would never see the bills.” She looked up at him. “It sounds so seedy, I know. But he wanted me, and I wanted to feel safe. When he held me afterward, I did.”
“At least until Joe ended it.”
“No,” Kate said softly. “I did.”
THEY LAY TOGETHER IN the chill, sterile room, Kate’s breasts against his chest. She could see the fear in Tony’s eyes before she spoke.
“We have to stop,” she whispered. “You know we do.”
The pain on his face gave him a haunted look, as though it was an enemy he had met before. But she could not ask him about this; they no longer spoke of Kate’s mother. With a sadness that seemed years deep, Tony asked, “How can we go back?”
The full knowledge of how deeply she had sinned, and against whom, pierced Kate to her core. She felt the weight of her responsibility—she had come to him, and now she must be the strong one. “It will be so hard, I know. But one of the lessons you taught me is that people can bear whatever they have to.”
The words left a bleakness in his eyes that Kate would never forget. A few moments later, he left in silence, pausing in the doorway to look at her as she lay naked among the sheets. For a time she wept alone. Then she dressed and left the room.
The husband she dreaded was waiting in the lobby. “I saw him,” he told her, and Kate felt her world collapse.
SHE FOLLOWED HIM HOME in a state of numb resignation, not knowing what would happen. When Joe closed the door behind them, the house felt like a prison. The sole mercy was that he had not been drinking.
In a monotone, she said, “I have to pick up the kids at school.”
Joe stared at her. “So you remember you’re a mother.”
Despite her fears, the unfairness of this provoked her. “I try to, Joe. Because you’ve forgotten you’re a father.”
His jaw set, and Kate thought she saw the pulse twitch in his throat. Quietly, he said, “On your way to school, call the general on your cell phone. Tell him that if he ever interferes in our life again, I’ll bring him down in disgrace. Your mother may have spent her life as Tony McCarran’s camp follower. But your ‘services’ are over, and so are his special privileges. When you come back with our children, you’ll be the perfect wife.”
A vision of her future filled Kate’s mind: days and months and years spent in terrible equipoise, fearful that her slightest mistake—a careless word, an ambiguous glance—might cause him to destroy Anthony McCarran, shattering their families. And it was her doing. By her own act of selfishness and weakness, she had deepened his instability, placing in his hands the linchpin of a potential tragedy whose dimensions she could not lessen by seeking help.
“I have to leave now,” she said. “When the children are here, please keep them out of this.”
Something close to a smile surfaced in his eyes, disturbing in its anger and contempt.
SHE STOPPED A BLOCK from the school, taking out the cell phone she concealed in her purse. Tony was driving back to the Pentagon. When he answered, his voice was soft and weary, yet filled with concern. “Are you all right?”
No, she thought, and I may never be again. Without preface, she said, “Joe followed me to the hotel. He saw you coming out.”
In his silence, she imagined a stricken Tony McCarran envisioning his ruin. The quiet stretched as she saw the first kids spilling out of the front door of the school, a poignant reminder of the distance between her daily life and Tony’s solitary existence. Then he said, “I won’t let him abuse you, Kate. No matter the consequences.”
That was Tony, she thought—a stoic fatalism instead of blame or self-pity. “Please, Tony,” she said. “Let me deal with this. Not just for our sake, but everyone’s.”
Surely, she thought, Anthony McCarran could not help but weigh the threat to her against the certain cost of his public disgrace. After a moment, he said, “I won’t be blackmailed at the price of putting you at risk.”
“Let’s wait and see,” she said. “Maybe in a year or two, things will be different. Or maybe there’ll be an out for me. What I think we need is privacy, time to let this work itself out beneath the surface of our lives.”
Through the window, she saw Kristen’s dark head and slender form as she searched the street for her mother’s car. “Keep the cell phone,” she heard him say. “If there’s any trouble, call me. I’ll know what to do.”
“I love you,” she said miserably, “and I’m just so sorry.”
Kate turned off her phone. When she joined the line of mothers in cars, Kristen spotted her. Skittering to the SUV,
she climbed into the passenger seat, pleased to see the parent who had become her only source of security.
Kate kissed the crown of her daughter’s chestnut head. “Hi, sweetheart. How was your day?”
“Okay,” Kristen said with the pseudomaturity of a child who, however briefly, enjoys pretending to be an equal. “How was your day?”
“Fine,” Kate assured her. “Your daddy came home early.”
JOE WAITED UNTIL THE kids were in bed, then started drinking in the living room, staring silently at his own dark thoughts. Wary, Kate retreated to a warm bath. She was drying her hair in front of the mirror when his face appeared behind her. With ominous quiet, he said, “Turn off the hair dryer.”
Kate complied, frozen where she stood. He placed the tumbler of whiskey on the sink, roughly grabbing her shoulders to spin her around. In a low, tight voice, he demanded, “Who knows about you and McCarran?”
Bracing herself, she felt her shame and anger become defiance. “No one. But everyone knows about you. Don’t you know how different you are? Are you so far gone you’ve stopped seeing yourself? If you don’t believe me, look in the mirror. Look at us.”
Joe’s eyes flickered toward his reflection. More evenly, Kate said, “I’m ashamed of what I’ve done, Joe. But together we can face this.”
Without speaking, he turned and left.
When he returned, she was in her nightgown, fitfully reading a novel as she struggled to set aside her broken life.
In the Name of Honor Page 40
