Blowout (3 page)

“You want me to come with you, Agent Savich?”

“That would be up to you, now wouldn’t it, Sheriff?”

Sherlock stood by the front door of the sheriff’s office, rocking Sean, who was bundled up in his winter jacket and gloves. “Why don’t we all go?”

All of them piled into the sheriff’s big black SUV. Ten minutes later, without Savich saying anything, the sheriff pulled off of Route 85 onto Clayton Road. It was dark and cold, the black clouds thick overhead. There was the smell of snow in the air, not rain. Savich supposed he expected the woman to come running out on the road again, waving her arms madly—wearing that skimpy dress. She could freeze to death. She could be dead already. The man could have been hiding outside, at a safe distance, watching to see what would happen. If so, he could have seen her run outside, and followed her.

He didn’t believe for a minute that the Barrister house, the one Sheriff Harms said was deserted and abandoned, was the house he’d been inside.

“We should see the house any minute now,” the sheriff said. It seemed to Savich that there were more ruts in the road than he remembered, the asphalt crumbling in many places, as if it hadn’t been tended in a very long time. No, he was wrong, he was mis-remembering. That beautiful big lighted house would come into view at any moment. Yes, there, another hundred feet and the small rise appeared, on the left, and on top of the rise was the house, trees closing in around it from all sides. He didn’t remember the trees being so close.

There were no lights shining out of the first floor of the house now, none at all. It looked like a huge black hulk, crouched atop that rise. Someone had come back and turned the lights off, or the power. A small voice in the back of his brain asked why.

“This is the Barrister house,” Sheriff Harms said, as he pulled to a stop in front of the big, dark house. “Is this the place where you brought the young woman, Agent Savich?”

Savich didn’t say anything. He pulled on his leather gloves as he slowly got out of the SUV and walked to the front of the house. He paused a moment, unwilling to accept what he was seeing. He walked up the wide wooden stairs that led to the covered porch which extended the full width of the front of the house.

Suddenly the moon came out from behind the black clouds, and he saw the house clearly for the first time.

It was the same house he’d been inside an hour before, but it wasn’t, not really. This house looked deserted, dilapidated, as if it had been neglected for many years. Trees pressed in toward the house, some of their branches whipping against upstairs windows. There were boards nailed over downstairs windows, broken glass scattered on the porch. There was even graffiti on the wall next to the front door.

The house was dead, had been dead for a very long time. His heart pounded as he looked at the front door that was barely hanging onto its hinges, studied it, and accepted what he saw because there was simply no choice. He closed his eyes a moment, seeing the woman clearly in his mind’s eye, realizing how very pretty she’d been, not having noticed it at first because she’d been so frightened.

He turned and walked back to the car.

Sheriff Harms said as he turned on the engine, “Her name was Samantha Barrister. She was murdered here back in August of 1973.”

“I want to see a photo of her,” Savich said.

Sherlock took his hand, held it tight.

T
WO HOURS LATER
, Sherlock awoke to find Dillon standing by the bedroom window, staring out at the falling snow.

She got up and walked to him, and wrapped her arms around his back.

“Did I wake you?”

“No. You’re thinking about her, aren’t you, still trying to find logical reasons for what happened.”

“There aren’t any. It’s driving me nuts. Even though I’ve been over and over it, I guess I can’t get around the fact that I’ve experienced something, well, I guess you’d have to call it otherworldly.”

She kissed his shoulder. “Then perhaps it’s time to simply accept it.”

“But the reasonable part of my brain doesn’t want to.” He turned and pulled her into his arms, buried his face in her hair.

“There’s another thing, Sherlock, something I just remembered. I called you when I had the blowout. It wasn’t ten minutes later that she came running out of the woods. I insisted on calling for help, but I couldn’t get through on the cell phone. But then later, at the house, after she was gone, I called you and it worked just fine again.”

She held him more tightly. “It’s possible the signal was better there.” She paused a moment, touched her fingertips to his jaw. “I just remembered something else, Dillon.”

He wasn’t going to like this, he knew he wasn’t.

“You called me at about eight o’clock.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“The second time you called me, it was only about a quarter after eight.”

He sucked in his breath. “No,” he said, “no, that’s just not possible. That would mean that all of what happened—no, that’s ridiculous. I spent a lot of time with her, even more time just searching that house. No, I can’t accept that all that happened in fifteen minutes.”

“Maybe we’re both wrong about the time. That’s the most reasonable explanation.” She hugged him again, touched her fingertips to his cheek. “It’s very late. It’s snowing. Sean will be up and raring to go in less than four hours. We’ll have time to discuss this tomorrow; you can decide what to do then.

“There’s a reason she came to you, Dillon. You’ll have to act. But sleep is the best thing for you now.”

He came back to bed, held her close against him, and prepared to stew about it until morning. He knew he would have to investigate what happened to this woman, even if he never convinced himself that what had happened was real. But he didn’t lie there staring at the dark ceiling as he fully expected. He fell into a dreamless sleep in three minutes.

A
T SIX
-
THIRTY
Saturday morning, Savich’s cell phone played the opening of
Chariots of Fire.
His first thoughts were of Samantha Barrister and the strange events she’d put him through.

“Savich.” He listened a moment, then looked over at Sherlock, who whispered urgently, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Savich flipped off his cell phone, then turned on the bedside lamp. “Mr. Maitland is sending a helicopter to take us back to Washington.”

Sherlock said, “Goodness, it’s something that big? Something so big we can’t even build one snowman with Sean?”

“Yeah. You’re not going to believe this.”

SUPREME COURT BUILDING

FIRST STREET N.E. AND EAST CAPITOL STREET

WASHINGTON, D.C.

LATE FRIDAY NIGHT

A
SSOCIATE
J
USTICE
Stewart Quinn Califano stepped out of the underground garage, bent his head against the cold wind blowing in his face, and walked around to the front of the Supreme Court Building. He paused to look up at the sixteen marble columns at the west entrance that supported the famous pediment and the words incised on the architrave above:
Equal Justice Under Law.
He loved the neoclassical style of this magnificent building, one that would be his home until he shucked off his mortal coil, or retired, something he couldn’t begin to imagine. Every time he entered, it was like walking into a Greek temple. Once inside, he greeted the three guards at the west entrance security checkpoint, making a point to ask about their wives, Amanda, Georgia, and Tommie, passed through the airport-like security gate, and stepped into the main corridor of the Great Hall. He paused a moment to give a little salute to the closed-circuit TV camera, not three feet above his head, and made his way through the Hall, his footsteps echoing loudly on the marble floors. He was well aware that every guard on duty tonight already knew he was here, alerted since he entered the garage. Not a single one would be surprised at his presence close on to midnight, even on a bone-cold Friday night in January. It was his habit to come here at all hours.

He paused a moment, as he always did, to admire the monolithic marble columns that rose to a coffered ceiling. The first time he’d visited the Supreme Court Building he’d been twenty-two years old, in his first year at Harvard Law School, and he’d stood there staring at the Great Hall’s incredible beauty and opulent detail, its acres of creamy Alabama marble.

The guards never dared ask him why he came long after closing hours. Truth be told, this was his refuge, a place he found utterly and completely private in the hours when most everyone was safely home. He could come here and be certain no one was listening or looking, the one place where he was safe from prying eyes, endless conversations, endless wrangling, and Eliza, he thought, smiling.

He quickened his pace, giving the Court Chamber at the end of the Great Hall only a cursory look. He walked to the right and paused in front of his chambers, his footsteps echoing loudly. He looked back at the romantic gloom and saw the shifting movements of the guards in their rubber-soled shoes. His hand was already on the doorknob, his eyes on the personalized placard that had been placed there seventeen years before, when he realized he would prefer to be in the library tonight. His inner office would feel too close, too full of recent conversations with Eliza, Fleurette, and Danny, his law clerks, and the tears of one of his secretaries, Mary, who was retiring come March.

Justice Califano turned and walked quickly to the elevators that took him to the third floor and the 500,000-volume library. He heaved a deep satisfied breath as he entered the main reading room. He loved this place, with its hand-carved oak-paneled walls, its soul-deep warmth that came not from the oak and mahogany but from all the books that surrounded him. Here there were no cameras, no electronic eyes to monitor his activities. He took off his coat, his cashmere scarf, and his leather gloves and laid them on a chair at his favorite study table. He took his time adjusting the old-fashioned lighting fixture. He paused a moment and looked toward the beautiful arches. He sat down, leaned back in his chair, and thought about
Jackson v. Texas
, a death penalty case the four liberal justices had voted to hear that was coming up on Tuesday. They wanted to revisit the
Stanford v. Kentucky
case of 1989 that allowed by a five-to-four decision the execution of juvenile offenders age sixteen and over. They were hoping to swing him and Justice Elizabeth Xavier-Foxx over to their side to gain a plurality and do away with the death penalty for all minors. It probably wasn’t the best case to push into the court, Stewart thought, since the sixteen-year-old boy had committed three particularly heinous murders. He was, according to his father during his original trial, a psychopath, exhibiting all the classic symptoms from the time he was eight years old. The father had tried to have him committed, but the boy was charming and intelligent, and the psychiatrists and social workers had failed to see through it. Then came the murders. Now he faced a death sentence in Bluff, Texas.

Stewart was interested in hearing the lawyers’ arguments about what had changed since 1989, both for and against. He hoped they would cover new ground, but chances weren’t good. Though he wasn’t certain which way he’d vote, he knew he was leaning toward the exclusion of all juveniles from death penalty eligibility, although by the time a juvenile offender actually faced the lethal injection, he’d be at least forty years old.

He stroked the soft leather arms of his chair, the one he’d first sat in when he’d walked into the library right after his confirmation. It was, he thought, rather cool to be one of the Supremes, so charmingly misleading, since all of them were grandparents. It was time, he thought, time to make decisions, time to stop thinking about upcoming cases. His hand shook slightly as he pulled the sheaf of papers from his breast pocket and smoothed them out on the shiny table. He began to read.

He paused a moment, looked up. He thought he’d heard footsteps. It was the guards, making their rounds, he thought, and went back to his reading. Since 9/11, the number of guards protecting both the building and the personnel had been tripled, and more sophisticated equipment had been installed, but not in the library, thank God.

He read what he’d written earlier in the day, felt a shot of renewed anger, then paused yet again. More footsteps, soft, but closer. And moving slowly, very slowly. He didn’t know any of the guards to tiptoe around. It was probably someone new come up here to check on him, to make sure everything was all right.

He swiveled in his chair and looked toward the darkness. Then he looked through the row of arches. Finally, he turned to look toward the open library doorway. In all directions he saw only midnight shadows surrounding the small circle of light he’d provided for himself. Suddenly, he felt afraid.

He heard a voice, a deep voice, close yet somehow muffled, whispering something. To him? He half rose in his chair, his hands on the arms.

“Who’s there?”

Was that his voice, that thin whisper layered with fear?

There was dead silence, but it was no longer comforting. He called out louder, “Who’s there? Say something or I’ll call the guard.”

Califano stood, reached for his coat, only to remember he didn’t have his cell phone. He looked toward the internal call phone on the wall not ten feet away from him. Guards could be here in a matter of seconds.

He wasn’t a coward, but it didn’t matter. Fear had him by the throat, hurling him into a race toward that phone, his hand outstretched when something thin and sharp went around his neck. “Now, isn’t this nice?” a voice whispered against his ear.

Califano pulled at the wire. Tight, so tight. He couldn’t breathe, even though his shirt collar was between the wire and his skin.

The low quiet voice said near his left ear, “Now, this won’t get it done, will it?” Something struck him on the head. Pain and white lights fired through his brain, and he felt himself falling. His hands fell away and his shirt collar was ripped downward, exposing his bare skin.