Tailspin

  “I thought about it, but the fact is, you couldn’t have done anything, Jack, so let it go.”

  “Imagine,” Rachael said, “someone going after Dr. MacLean in the hospital. That’s insane.” She stopped cold, gave them a twisted grin. “I guess there’s a lot of insanity going around lately.”

  Sherlock nodded. “After hours of interviews at the hospital, we still don’t have a viable witness.” She carefully selected a scone and bit in. She rolled her eyes. “Goodness, this is wonderful. Hey, Sean, can you pass me the jam?”

  “The GoodLight Bakery on Elm Street,” Rachael said. “Jack found it, and didn’t hesitate to bring home about fifty thousand calories.”

  Savich gave Sean a quick sideways glance, saw that he was focused on trying to trap the evil king Zhor in the Forest of No Escape, and said, “The guy who broke into your house last night—what he did was dangerous for him, and that really worries me.”

  Sherlock said, “Dillon’s right. If we can’t predict what he’ll do, we can’t protect you, and that means we need a new plan.”

  “Your screaming, Rachael,” Jack said, “for no apparent reason, must have scared the bejesus out of him. That was excellent timing for a nightmare. It scared the bejesus out of me, too.”

  Rachael sat forward, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. “Why can’t we get a search warrant for the Abbotts’ financial records? You know we’d find a record showing payments to Perky and her thugs. Probably huge cash withdrawals, near the right dates.”

  Savich said, “I’m sorry, Rachael, but we don’t have enough proof to get a warrant to search even the Abbott pool house. With people of their stature, you’ve always got to have every single duck in a row before you go after them.

  “So that means we have to go another route, find some way to bring this to a close. Here’s what I propose. I got permission to speak to the vice president before we came over this morning. I told him we know every member of Congress and the president are concerned about the recent allegations that the senator was murdered. He laughed, said I was right. I told him I have a plan to get some closure. He’s decided to help us.

  “The vice president has agreed to reschedule the Jefferson Club’s speaker tomorrow night and change the agenda of their dinner meeting. It’s now going to be a remembrance and a tribute to your father, Rachael. Many senators will speak. If you’re willing, you can speak, as well. When I told him it was imperative the Abbotts be present, he didn’t say a word. The vice president agreed to extend a personal invitation to them. And that’s part of what we want.

  “The break-in last night—in spite of your having protection right here with you—shows the killer seems to have thrown caution to the wind. He didn’t seem to care about the enormous risk he was taking. Like I said, he’s doing precipitous things, and that makes him even more dangerous. We either get this resolved, or I can see you hidden away in the Witness Protection Program, Rachael. What we’re doing is providing the killer with another physical opportunity, but under controlled circumstances—our control. The killer might suspect it’s a trap, but he also might go for it. What’s happened here makes me think that although our killer might be playing with all his marbles, there’s something out of control driving him.

  “If you agree to speak tomorrow night at the Jefferson Club, we’ll alert the media about your father’s commemorative dinner, and the fact that you will be there and you will address the group.

  “The media are fascinated already, licking their chops over you more every passing day because Jack’s managing to keep you away from them.

  “So, the question is, Rachael, are you willing to take this hopefully final step? Are you willing to be bait?”

  Rachael said, “When you announce I’m going to speak about my father, the Abbotts will think I’m going to tell everyone what he did. They’ll feel compelled to have another go at me, is that what you think? Even for them, wouldn’t that be short notice?”

  “No,” Jack said, “not if they have the contacts. Admittedly, Perky and her band are out of commission. Can they come up with something by tomorrow night? I guess we’ll see.”

  Rachael said, “You don’t think they’re still trying to keep me quiet, do you? It no longer applies.”

  Savich said, “We all agree that the possibility of your ‘go ing public’ no longer holds much of a threat—we already know everything you know, and killing you now would make it more likely, not less, that the story would come out. If keeping that story secret is the killer’s motivation, his only hope is that you decide not to go public and that the FBI can never gather enough evidence to indict anyone. And they would be right.”

  Rachael said, “Then why is someone still trying to kill me?”

  Savich said, “Given his behavior last night, I’m thinking we haven’t cottoned to his real motive yet.”

  Jack said, “I know it’s the way to go, my brain recognizes that, but I’ll tell you guys, the whole thing scares me. I guess it’s preferable to being on the defensive. At least it’s proactive. But, Rachael, it’ll still be dangerous.”

  “After last night,” Rachael said, “I’m ready to do about anything. I found a gray hair this morning. In my braid. Show me the dotted line. I’ll do it.”

  Jack grinned at her, gave her braid a tug. Savich leaned closer to speak, then paused when he saw Sean was at a dead end on his computer game. He reached over and punched two buttons. They listened to a trio of whistles, two loud beeps, and one long, deep bong.

  Sean jumped up and down in his chair. “Wow! Look at that! Papa, you got Zhor to run right into the magic prison in the Forest of No Escape! He’s toast now.”

  “He could still escape, he’s smart and cunning, so be careful,” Savich said, his eyes on Rachael’s face. He added quietly, “If Laurel or whoever can’t find you tomorrow, and you can bet she’ll try, she’ll have to go after you tomorrow night. Before you speak? I don’t know.”

  “Can I carry Jimmy’s gun in my purse?”

  “You can carry a machete as far as I’m concerned,” Jack said. “If you decide a gun’s what you need to make you feel safe, I’ll carry it in for you since they’ll be checking bags at the door.”

  “We’ll give it a go then,” Savich said. “I have this feeling the Abbotts will act, Rachael.”

  Rachael bit into another scone, listened to Sean yell that he’d dumped Zhor into a bog, and hoped she’d still be breathing come Tuesday morning.

  She stood up, planted her palms on the tabletop. “Would you look at the time. I’ve got a speech to write. And I’ve got to figure out how to keep myself from getting too scared in front of all those big shots.”

  There was a knock on the back door.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Jack held up his hand and walked to the door, looked out, and opened it wide. “Hey, Clive, you got something?”

  Agent Clive Howard, a twenty-year FBI veteran and a top forensic specialist, was six feet six inches tall, looked like a windowpane at 160 pounds, and had his grandma’s huge smile. “Of course I’ve got something,” he said in the thickest Southern accent Rachael had ever heard. “Lookee here.” Clive handed him a small rough-edged piece of material. “Our guy should have been more careful when climbing that oak tree to get into the house. Now, this guy has either noticed the rip in his jacket, in which case he’s already deep-sixed it, or he hasn’t noticed, and we might use it to identify him later. I’m thinking this is off a lightweight jacket, and that makes sense since it was pretty warm last night. The material’s a synthetic stew, everything in it but good ole cotton.”

  “I know it’s real small, but does the material look new to you, Clive?” Sherlock asked.

  “Hard for an average untrained professional to say, but me?” He grinned real big at her. “I’d say it’s gotta be fairly new. We’ll test it, but I’m willing to bet it’s never hit the dry cleaner’s. Given he wouldn’t wear it during the winter, it’s probably a spring buy, maybe three, fou
r months ago.”

  Savich toasted Clive with his oolong tea. “Thank the good Lord for you, Clive.”

  Clive beamed. “And we know our boy is a boy—a size ten shoe, heavy in the heels, a good-sized guy, maybe one eighty, but not too tall—that’s according to Mendoza, who can tell you the foot size of a gorilla swinging through the forest.”

  “Forest?” Sean said, coming to attention. “Is someone else trapped in the Forest of No Escape?”

  Life never stopped happening, Rachael thought, and laughed as Savich quickly explained to Clive about Sean’s computer game. “Hey, Sean,” Clive said, “my little girl really likes Zhor and the Forest of No Escape, tries to zap him whenever she gets done eating her vegetables.”

  Sean sighed. “Papa had to help me.”

  “That’s okay. I sometimes help my little girl, too.”

  “She isn’t big like me?”

  “Well, yeah, actually she is. She just turned eighteen.”

  Sean giggled.

  Savich stood, and the two men shook hands. Savich said, “Thank everyone for coming out on a Sunday morning, Clive.”

  “All in a good cause.” Clive nodded to everyone, said to Sean, “Yo, kiddo, good luck cutting off Zhor at his evil knees,” and walked back into the yard.

  “That material,” Rachael said. “May I see it?”

  Savich handed it to her.

  It was dark brown, a smooth fabric, sharp, she thought. Rachael said, “Synthetic stew or not, the guy who’d wear this dresses sharp.”

  Savich’s cell sang out the Harry Potter theme. “Savich here. What? Okay, Tom, escort Dr. MacLean back to his room and make sure he stays there. Keep the reporter away from him and on ice until I get there. Yeah, okay, I understand. Yes, we’ll be right there.”

  Savich looked at them. “Dr. MacLean is talking to a reporter about Congresswoman Dolores McManus murdering her husband.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Washington Memorial Hospital

  It was nearly noon when they stepped onto the elevator in the hospital. They’d dropped Sean off at his grandmother’s house. She promptly hauled him off to church, whispering in his ear that she’d made potato salad for him, which made Sean beam at her and say in a confiding voice, “I’ll teach you how to fry Zhor, Grandma. You gotta get him into the Forest of No Escape and wrap a monkey vine around his neck.”

  “My day will be perfect.”

  The six people on the elevator obligingly moved to the side so they could enter. Savich said quietly as he punched the button, “I’ve got Ollie going through purchases made by Laurel, Quincy, Brady Cullifer, Greg Nichols, and three of the senator’s former staffers. We’ll see if a nice brown jacket shows up.”

  “It could be a hired thug, Dillon.”

  There were still two people on board when the elevator reached their floor.

  Sherlock said, “I’ll speak to Dr. MacLean, Dillon; you take the reporter. Scare him spitless, okay?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  The reporter was the Washington Post’s Jumbo Hardy, a smart-ass the size of a well-fed linebacker with both a brain and a mouth. He always looked droop-eyed and worn-out, like he hadn’t slept in a week, only Savich knew better.

  Jumbo gave Savich a grin, fanned his big hands in front of him. “Hey, isn’t this something—I got one of the big guns.”

  Savich said easily, “I’m surprised to see you again so soon, Jumbo. Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “More than you do,” Jumbo said. “I didn’t think you could outdo your press conference, but having you show up in person to get rid of me—what’s going on, Savich?”

  “Yeah, you got my attention. Glad you could stick around.”

  “Your guy gave me no choice, said he’d arrest my butt and toss it in a janitor’s closet on the fifth floor of the Hoover Building. He said I wouldn’t be found until next month.” Jumbo gave Savich a big toothy smile. “I was just checking out Congresswoman McManus.” He patted his laptop. “It ain’t MAX, but I can still find most stuff, like the details about the death of her husband. Now I hear from her very own shrink that she admitted paying some hit man in Savannah to take out her old man. Now, that’s news, Special Agent Savich, big news.”

  “I know you’re not about to write about this until you’ve got verification. And you also know you’re not going to get it. Listen, Jumbo, you know very well Dr. MacLean is suffering from frontal lobe dementia, a disease that makes him talk about all sorts of stuff he shouldn’t, even stuff that didn’t happen. You also know there have been attempts on his life—”

  “Nearly more attempts than we poor representatives of the people can keep up with,” said Jumbo. “That deal last night, what a fiasco for you guys. I mean, an FBI agent getting stabbed in the neck with a needle, not to mention a nurse saving the day. What’s that all about?”

  “Hang that up, Jumbo. We’ve already made a statement.”

  “The people got a right to know, Savich, that’s all I was saying. I heard rumors about this disease of his, but no one ever confirmed it. To tell you the truth, that’s why I didn’t mind staying. I know he’s real sick, know what he says is likely libelous, and that he can’t control himself. Talk to me, tell me what’s coming down here.”

  “Off the record?”

  “If I agree, when do I get to go on the record?”

  “When everything is over. All right, Jumbo, I need your help.”

  Jumbo whistled, sat back, his arms behind his head, and crossed his legs. “What is this? You need my help? When did the sky fall? What’s going on here I haven’t already guessed?”

  FIFTY

  Sherlock found the good doctor sulking in his room.

  A neurologist, Dr. Shockley, was checking MacLean’s reflexes, humming under his breath. MacLean was ignoring him. His eyes narrowed when Sherlock came into the room. It looked to her like he was ready to yell his head off.

  Dr. Shockley straightened. “Well, you’re good to go, Dr. MacLean, despite the excitement.”

  Sherlock introduced herself, waited for him to leave the room, which he did, with one last very long look at MacLean.

  Before he could spit at her, Sherlock intoned just like she would to Astro, “Bad dog, Dr. MacLean, very bad dog.”

  “Bad dog?” MacLean said slowly, “Bad dog? That’s pretty funny, Agent Sherlock, but that’s exactly my point. I’m not your damned dog. It’s none of the FBI’s business if I want to talk to a reporter. It’s just talk, a bit of conversation with another sentient human being—wait, he’s a reporter, but at least I was sentient.”

  “Hey, that was pretty funny, too. Are you done?” When he would have continued, Sherlock raised her hand. “I understand, Timothy, I really do. But you’ve got to believe me now. It was wrong—you broke patient confidentiality, and to a reporter. Try to think clearly about this for a moment. This is exactly why someone is trying to kill you. Do you understand that your speaking to Jumbo Hardy was inappropriate?”

  MacLean shrugged. He looked petulant.

  A different tack then. Sherlock punched him in the arm. “I hear your wife was pretty upset about what happened last night. She didn’t want to leave you alone.”

  “Yeah, right. Oh, that stupid Molly, she’s always hovering, always checking my pulse, my eyeballs, my goddamned feet. She says my toenails need trimming. I didn’t do anything to deserve it—well, hardly anything, at least in cosmic terms.”

  “You told her to go find a lover because you found her disgusting.”

  He shrugged. “Well, fact is, she smelled funny.”

  Down the rabbit hole, Sherlock thought. “She loves you.”

  He was silent for a very long time. Then, “No, she doesn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  MacLean leaned his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes. “When she found out what finally happens to people with this disease, she nearly left me.

  “Everyone thinks she’s a bloody saint for sticking so close to me,
but I know the truth. I know she’s siphoning off all the money she can out of our joint accounts. I know she’s got a lover, you see. Only thing is, she can’t very well leave me in this sucky condition, now can she?” He paused, shrugged. “It isn’t Pierre or Estelle behind this. No, Molly’s the one who’s trying to kill me.”

  Whoa.

  “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard out of you, Tim, and you know it and even the good Lord knows I’ve heard more than my share from you over the past twenty-seven years!”

  Molly MacLean stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, her face nearly scarlet with rage.

  “Mrs. MacLean,” Sherlock said, smiling at her, “would you please come with me for a moment?”

  “If I stay in the same room with this . . . individual, I just might kill him,” Molly said, and waved her fist at her husband. “Lead on, Agent Sherlock. Save this idiot’s miserable lying hide by removing me.”

  Savich found Sherlock and Molly in the nurses’ lounge, Molly in tears. He paused in the doorway. Sherlock raised her eyes. “Hi, Dillon. I think we’ve got things in some perspective. Do we, Mrs. MacLean?”

  Molly knuckled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve got it together again. It’s so easy to forget he doesn’t realize what he’s saying, doesn’t begin to comprehend how his words twist and turn the knife. He doesn’t even know there is a knife. And when I heard him talking about me to you like that—I’m sorry. Oh God, he’s so sick, so unlike himself. Sometimes I can’t stand it.” Molly lowered her face in her hands and wept.

  Sherlock lifted her to her feet and held her in her arms, murmuring nonsense to her, really, but kept it low and soothing.

  Molly pulled back, sniffed, and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry I lost it like that. I’ve got your blouse all wet. I’m a miserable human being for losing it when I know—I understand—he can’t help it.”

  “You’re doing remarkably well under the circumstances, Mrs. MacLean,” Savich said, and he meant it.