burning into Chandler’s with every backward step.
Chandler knelt down and gripped Fiske’s shoulder. “John, you okay?”
Fiske nodded painfully, his eyes on McKenna.
“Will someone please tell us what is going on?” Sara cried out.
“Steven Wright was found murdered,” Chandler said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The shack rested in the center of a heavy forest in a remote part of southwestern Pennsylvania, where it notched into West Virginia. A muddy, tire-gouged strip of dirt was the only way in or out. Josh came in the front door, his 9mm poking out of his waistband, red clay and pine needles sticking to his boots. The truck was parked under a leafy shield of a soaring walnut tree, but Josh had taken the added precaution of covering the vehicle with camouflage netting. His biggest worry was being spotted from overhead. Luckily, the nights were still warm. He couldn’t risk building a fire; you couldn’t control where smoke went.
Rufus sat on the floor, his broad back resting against the wall, his Bible in his lap. He was drinking a soda, the remains of his lunch beside him. He had changed into some clothes that his brother had brought him.
“Everything okay?”
“Just us and the squirrels. How you feeling?”
“Happy as hell and scared as the devil.” Rufus shook his head and smiled. “Feels good to be free, sitting here drinking a Coke, not having to worry about somebody trying to get the jump on me every second of my life.”
“The guards or the other cons?”
“What do you think?”
“I think both. I was on the inside for a while too, you know. We could probably write us a book.”
“How long we gonna stay here?”
“A couple of days. Let things die down a little. Then we’ll head on, make our way down to Mexico. Live good on a tenth of what it takes up here. Went a few times after the war. Got some old Army buddies who live there. They’ll help us get in and then set us up. Find us a boat, do some fishing, live on the beach. That sound good to you?”
“Living in the sewer would sound good to me.” Rufus stood up. “Got a question for you.”
His brother leaned against the wall and started carving up an apple with his pocketknife. “I’m listening.”
“Your truck was full of groceries, two rifles and that pistol you’re carrying. And the clothes I’m wearing.”
“So?”
“So you just happen to be carrying all that stuff when you come visit me?”
Josh swallowed a slice of apple. “I got to eat. That means I got to go to the store, now, don’t it?”
“Yeah, but you didn’t buy nothing that’d go bad, no milk or eggs, stuff like that. All cans and boxes.”
“I ate out of a can in the Army. I guess I just fell in love with meals ready to eat.”
“And you always carry all them guns with you?”
“Maybe I’m still screwed up from Nam, got some syndrome or other.”
Rufus tugged at his shirt, which was the size of a blanket. “My size don’t exactly come off the rack. You came ready to bust me out, didn’t you, Josh?”
Josh finished working on his apple and then threw the core out the open window. He wiped the apple juice from his hands onto his jeans before facing his brother.
“Look, Rufus, I never knew why you killed that little girl. But I knew you weren’t right in the head when you done it. When I got that letter from the Army it crossed my mind there was something there. Now, I didn’t know it was some cover for what they done to you. But the fact is, nowadays, people go crazy and do bad shit, they stick ’em in the nut-house, and when they’re better, they just let ’em go. You been in prison for twenty-five years for something I know for a fact you didn’t even mean to do. Let’s just say I took it on myself to say that was long enough. You served your time, you know,’paid your debt to society’crap. It was time for you to get out, and I was gonna bring the key. If you hadn’t wanted to come, I was going to make you change your way of thinking. Call me right or wrong, I don’t give a damn. It’s what I made up my mind to do.”
The two brothers looked at each other for at least a minute without speaking.
“You a good brother, Josh.”
“You damn right I am.”
Rufus sat on the floor again and picked up the Bible, his hands gently turning the pages until he found the part he wanted. Josh eyed him.
“You still reading that stuff after all this time?”
Rufus looked up at him. “Gonna read it all my life.”
Josh snorted. “You do what you want with your time, but wasting it ain’t such a good idea if you ask me.”
Rufus eyed him stonily. “The word of the Lord kept me alive all these years. That ain’t no waste of time.”
Josh shook his head, looked out the window and then back at Rufus. He touched the grip of his pistol. “This is God. Or a knife, or a stick of dynamite, or a don’t-piss-on-me attitude. Not some holy book full of people killing each other, men taking other men’s women, just about every sin you can think of — ”
“Sins of man, not God.”
“God ain’t the one busted you out. I did.”
“God sent you to me, Josh. His will is everywhere.”
“So you’re saying God made me come get you?”
“Why did you come?”
“I told you. Get you out.”
“’cause you love me?”
Josh appeared a little startled. “Yes,” he said.
“That’s the will of God, Josh. You love me, you help me. That’s God’s way of working.”
Josh shook his head and looked away. Rufus went back to his reading.
A squawking sound came from Josh’s portable police scanner, which he had set on the floor along with his radio. Josh had managed to tune in a radio station from southwest Virginia for any local news on Rufus’s escape.
“Heard your name on the police band anymore?” Josh asked.
Rufus Harms had been mentioned in the news the day before. All the military authorities would say was that Harms was a convicted murderer who had a history of violence inside prison. He had escaped with the help of his brother, a dangerous man in his own right. The standard lingo was used, namely that both men were believed to be armed and dangerous. Translation: No one should be surprised or ask any questions when the authorities dragged their corpses in.
“A little,” Rufus replied. “They’re looking south, like you thought.”
Just then the afternoon news came on the radio. The first two news stories meant nothing to either brother. The third news story was a late-breaking one and it made both brothers stare at the radio. Josh hustled over and turned up the sound. The story only lasted about a minute and when it was over Josh turned the radio off. “Rider and his wife,” he said.
“Made it look like he killed her and then turned the gun on himself,” Rufus added, his head shaking slowly in disbelief. “Two men come to see me and now they’re both dead.”
Josh stared over at his brother. He knew exactly what he was thinking. “Rufus, you can’t bring him back, you can’t bring none of them back.”
“It’s my fault they’re dead. For trying to help me. And Rider’s wife, she didn’t know nothing about any of this.”
“You didn’t ask that Fiske boy to come down to the prison.”
“But I asked Samuel. He’d be alive except for me.”
“He owed you, Rufus. Why you think he came on down in the first place? He felt guilty. He knew he didn’t fight hard for you back then. He was trying to make up for that.”
“He’s still dead, ain’t he? Because of me.”
“Supposing that’s true, you can’t do nothing about it.”
Rufus looked over at him. “I can make sure they didn’t die for nothing. Them folks took most of my life away. And now they took these other peoples’lives. You say we’ll be okay in Mexico, but they ain’t never gonna stop looking for us. Vic Tremaine is crazy as hell. Just have to look in the man’s eyes to see that. Old Vic been trying to get me all these years. Probably think he’s got his chance now. Fill us both up with lead.”
“The Army catches up with us before the police do, they’ll damn sure keep firing till their mags are empty,” Josh agreed. He pulled out his Pall Malls and lit up, blowing smoke across the room. “Well, I can shoot straight too. They’ll know they been in a damn fight if they don’t know nothing else.”
Rufus shook his head stubbornly. “Nobody should be able to get away with what they done.”
Josh flicked cigarette ash to the floor and stared at him. “Well, exactly what are you gonna do? March in to the police and say, ‘Listen up, boys, I got some story to tell. Now y’all come on help a brother put these big-important white folk away’?” Josh took the cigarette out of his mouth and spit on the dirt floor. “Shit, Rufus.”
“I need to get me that letter from the Army.”
“Where’d you leave it?”
“I hid it back in my cell.”
“Well, we ain’t going back to the prison. You try to do that, I’ll shoot you myself.”
“I ain’t going back to Fort Jackson.”
“What, then?”
“Samuel was a lawyer. Lawyers make copies of things.”
Josh arched his eyebrows. “You wanta go to Rider’s office?”
“We got to, Josh.”
Josh smoked his Pall Mall down to the filter before answering. “I ain’t got to do nothing, Rufus. The whole damn United States Army is out looking for your ass. And mine too. You can’t exactly melt into the crowd. Hell, you’d make George Foreman look like a damn sissy.”
“We still got to do it, Josh. Least I got to do it. If I can get that letter, then maybe I can get it to somebody who can help. Maybe write another letter to the Court.”
“Yeah, look at all the good it done you last time. Them big-ass judges just come running to help you, didn’t they?”
“It don’t matter if you don’t want to come, Josh. But I got to do it.”
“What about Mexico? Damn, Rufus, you free. For now. We try poking around this thing, they gonna take you back to prison or most likely shoot you down first. We got to go while we got the chance, man.”
“I want to be free. But I can’t leave it like this. I go to Mexico now and I’ll die of guilt, if the Lord don’t strike me down before then.”
“Guilt? You done twenty-five years for nothing. When you die you going to heaven and you gonna be sitting in God’s lap. You a lock for that.”
“No good, Josh. You ain’t changing my mind.”
Josh spit again and looked out the dirty, cracked window. “You sonofabitchin’ crazy. Prison’s screwed you for good. Damn!”
“Maybe I am crazy.”
Josh glared at him. “Where the hell is Rider’s office?”
“About thirty minutes outside Blacksburg. That’s all I know. Shouldn’t be hard to find out where it is exactly.”
“Probably crawling with cops.”
“Maybe not, if they think Samuel done it all.”
“Shit.” Josh violently kicked the wall and then turned to his brother. “Okay, we’ll wait until nightfall and then head on out.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
“Don’t thank me for helping us both get killed. That kind of thanks I surely don’t want.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The flag at the United States Supreme Court was flying at half-mast. Newspaper, TV and radio reports nationwide were filled with accounts of the two murdered clerks. The phones in the Court’s Public Information Office refused to stop ringing. The adjoining press room was standing room only. Major TV and radio networks were broadcasting live from booths on the ground floor of the Court. Supreme Court police, reinforced by fifty D.C. police officers, National Guardsmen and FBI agents, ringed the Court’s perimeter.
The private hallways outside the justices’chambers were filled with clusters of people nervously talking. Most of the justices were secluded inside their chambers, having barely made it through the oral argument sessions, their minds far from the advocates and issues before them. The young faces of the law clerks too bore the terror inspired by the killings.
The small first-floor room normally used for the justices’ conferences was filled. The walls were dark-paneled and lined with bookshelves containing the bound volumes of two hundred years of the Court’s decisions. Another wall held a fireplace, unlit on this very warm day. A grand chandelier hung overhead. Ramsey sat at the head of the table. Justices Knight and Murphy sat in their regular chairs.
While Knight’s gaze darted around the table, Murphy, fiddling with an old pocket watch strung on a chain across his puffy middle, kept his eyes downcast. Also present were Chandler, Fiske, Perkins, Ron Klaus, and McKenna. Fiske and McKenna occasionally made eye contact, but Fiske had kept his temper under control.
Wright had been found in a park a half dozen blocks from his Capitol Hills apartment, with a single gunshot wound to the head. His wallet, like Michael Fiske’s, was missing. Robbery was the superficial motive, although no one in the room believed the answer could be that simple. Preliminary indications were that Wright had been killed between midnight and two in the morning.
On the ride over to the Court, Chandler had filled Fiske in on recent developments. He had had Michael Fiske’s autopsy expedited, although he was still awaiting the official report and the exact time of death. The cause of Michael Fiske’s death, however, had definitely been a single gunshot to the head. Chandler had tracked down the northern Virginia Wal-Mart where Fiske had had his car serviced, but no one there could give them any useful information.
Fiske had had one thought that prompted him and Chandler to make a short detour on the way to the Court: They had returned to the car impoundment lot to have another look at Michael’s Honda. Fiske had looked in the back pockets of the front seat.
“He kept a map in here, always did. He had this weird fear of getting lost. Had to plot out his whole trip before he set foot on the road. There’s no map here, but there is this.” He held up a couple of yellow Post-its that he had found wadded up at the bottom of the seat pocket. There was writing on them, names of interstates and roads — directions, given the faded condition of the ink, from some trip taken long ago.
Chandler looked at the pieces of yellow paper. “So why take the map book?”
“He would’ve had the directions to wherever he was going in there.”
“So the miles had something to do with his death.”
Fiske hesitated for a moment, debating whether to tell Chandler about the Harms filing. Revealing that information would open a can of worms that he didn’t want to deal with right now. “Maybe,” he finally said.
After that, he and Chandler had driven to the Court.
Now they were all in the conference room staring at each other. Without disclosing how he had come by the information, Chandler had just reported that there had been an intruder at Michael Fiske’s apartment the night before.
“We’re in your hands, Detective Chandler,” Ramsey said. “Although now I think it much more likely that we have some madman at work with a grudge against the Court, rather than it pertaining to some matter Michael was working on.”
McKenna said, “I want you to know that the Bureau has assigned a hundred agents to this matter. We’ve also arranged around-the-clock protection for the justices.”
“What about the clerks?” Fiske said. “They’re the ones getting killed.”
Chandler stepped in. “I’ve compiled the home addresses of all the clerks. I’ve beefed up patrols in those areas. Most of them live on Capitol Hill close to the Court. We’ve offered to house any clerk who so chooses at a local hotel where full-time security is available. I’ve also instructed one of our experts to talk to the clerks about ways to keep safe, be on the lookout for suspicious persons, avoid going out alone or at night, that sort of thing.” He