The Next President (34 page)

combining personnel from the LAHJ, the FBI, and the Secret Service. The name of the apartment’s tenant is being kept confidential, but a source revealed that he used a false identity when signing the lease agreement. Descriptions of the tenant by neighbors are sketchy, but he is said to be an African-American.”

J. D. reread the paragraph several times, and each time he did his heart beat faster.

The M-100 he’d used was at the bottom of Lake Michigan. He had no doubt of that. But what if… what if someone else—a second assassin—had also been alerted that the plans for the M-100 had been briefly posted on the Internet? That would explain the weapon the cops and the feds had found at the Marina.

So there was no longer a question that a second assassin existed. No question in J. D.‘s mind that Donnel Timmons was that assassin. No question that…

He’d placed his son in grave danger by saving Del Rawley’s life that morning.

Two thousand miles to the east in Carbondale, Brady Farrel, the killer of Ivar McCray and Pru and Barton Laney, sat at the bar in Jack Duggan’s, an ersatz Australian steakhouse. Along with all the other patrons, he raptly watched the TV screen on which J. D. Cade made the lunge seen round the world. The assassin’s arm was deflected, the shot went astray, and a voice on the videotape yelled, “Gun!”

“Gun!” echoed the bartender at Jack Duggan’s.

Serving a drink instead of watching the tube—he’d seen the tape a dozen times already—the bartender observed a scruffily dressed woman press the barrel of a revolver into the base of a patron’s skull. The bartender was twenty-two years old, the holder of a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in physical education, and a high-school assistant football coach. He saw his chance to be a hero like the guy on TV and he went for it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Deena Nokes saw him leap over the bar at her.

“No!” she yelled, i Farrel saw help on the way, too. Knowing it was now or never, he jumped from his bar stool to flee.

From that point on, things didn’t work out quite as happily as they had in San Francisco. While the bartender deflected Deena’s gun hand, he knocked it directly into line with the escaping Farrel. Trying to keep

her grip on the gun, Deena squeezed the trigger and shot Ivar’s killer squarely through the head. The lethal round continued on and claimed the restaurant’s mascot as a second victim. Bruce the parrot, who’d sat in his gilded cage and warbled “Wild Colonial Boy,” expired in a burst of multihued feathers.

People ran and ducked for cover, their screams, shrieks, and curses trailing behind them. Deena had held on to her gun, and now the bartender lay at her feet, having serious second thoughts about the doing of heroic deeds.

Deena looked at him and pointed her gun in his direction.

“You stupid shit,” she said.

“I was only holding him till the cops got here.”

As if to verify her statement, a police siren wailed in the distance.

“Goddamnit, now what am I going to do?” Deena asked.

“Give yourself up?” the bartender suggested meekly.

Deena booted him in the belly.

“I wasn’t asking you, asshole.”

Looking around at all the terrified people, knowing they were peeing in their pants waiting for her to shoot someone else, certain she’d never be able to explain her way out of this shit storm, Deena decided the thing to do was run. People cowered and wailed as she raced for the door. All except for one warty, frog-faced sonofabitch standing near the exit. He looked at Deena so calmly she almost wanted to stop and smack him one, ask him if he hadn’t been paying attention or what. But she didn’t have the time. She bolted out side and ran for her hog.

Harold the Toad followed her out to the parking lot. He’d been on his way to the restaurant to meet with Farrel and tell him that he’d been relieved.

The Toad could easily have disarmed the woman who’d killed Farrel and held her for the cops. But that would have ended her usefulness and exposed him to unwanted attention and questioning.

He decided to tail her instead. See if he might work her into his plans somehow.

She got a good lead on him, but following people surreptitiously was one of the Toad’s many talents, and riding a poorly muffled motorcycle, trailing long blondish hair behind her, the woman wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

He followed her for quite some time. At first he’d thought she was simply going to make a run for it, head south and get as far away from the shooting as she could. But she soon changed directions and jinked from one back road to another. It became clear to the Toad she had no idea of where she wanted to go, that her anxiety was simply forcing her to keep moving.

He thought she was going to be of no use to him after all and he might as well kill her. He couldn’t let her live because she obviously knew

something about what Farrel had been doing. Otherwise, why would she have said she was holding him for the police? But before he could act on that decision, the woman turned off onto a path leading into the forest.

Harold the Toad parked his car on the shoulder of the road and followed on foot. He looked on from concealment in the woods at the clearing where Deena Nokes lived. He could see the tidy Airstream trailer and the collapsing log cabin. There was no light on in the trailer but the woman’s motorcycle was parked beside it.

She was obviously at home.

The Toad liked this setup. He liked it very much indeed. So quiet and isolated.

No one would ever hear any screams.

But first he had a bit of tidying up to do.

Evan Cade was spending his last night in the hospital before being discharged.

The day had been one of staggering emotions. Like the rest of the country, he had seen the tape of his father saving Del Rawley’s life. He’d watched replays until his eyes blurred.

Every Cade in southern Illinois had come by to exult with him; most of the hospital staff had dropped in to offer praise to his father. His grandmother and Ben had been delegated to speak for the family to the local media.

Best of all, when he’d booted up his laptop to send his father an e-mail, he’d found a message waiting for him:

I was in the right place at the right time, that’s all. I’m unhurt. Please tell Grandma. Will call ASAP. / love you. Dad.

Evan couldn’t recall ever feeling such a fierce joy before. It carried him through the day but left him depleted that night when he was finally alone.

He’d already turned the light out and was drifting off when he heard a soft tapping at his door.

A young woman entered, but she wasn’t his nurse.

“Evan. Evan Cade, is that you?”

Now, as she stepped forward, Evan recognized her from school.

“Jeri Perkins?”

She nodded. Jeri had been Pru Laney’s best girlfriend.

“It’s kind of late for visiting, Jeri.”

“I know. I had to sneak in. I didn’t want anyone to see me.”

“Why?”

“I have something for you. Pru gave it to me.”

“Pru?”

Jeri nodded, handed Evan an envelope, and started to sob softly.

“Pru said to give it to you if… if something happened to her. When I heard she’d died, I spent the whole day in bed crying. Then I got scared. I thought about throwing that envelope away. Pretending like I never saw it.

But then I thought maybe if you didn’t know what she wanted to tell you, you might end up like… like her.”

The young woman’s tears flowed freely and she gasped as if she couldn’t get enough air.

“Jeri, are you all right? You want me to call the nurse for you?”

“No, no! I’ve got to go. Please, don’t ever tell anyone I had that. Or even that I was here. Please, Evan, promise me.”

“Okay, Jeri. I won’t say a word.”

She bobbed her head in gratitude and started to go. But she stopped in the shadows near the door.

“I saw what your father did today, Evan. He’s a very brave man.”

“Thanks, Jeri.”

“I just wish … I just wish someone could have done the same for Pru and her daddy.”

“Me too.”

Several of the patrons and some of the cops at Jack Duggan’s were more upset about Bruce the Parrot getting whacked than the big guy with the hard face and the bandaged ear. In fact, they blamed the big guy—and Archie, the dim-witted bartender—as much as the woman with the gun for the beloved bird’s demise.

Now, with the stiffs, both human and avian, removed, the crime scene people from the state police come and gone, and every last witness interviewed, Chief Billy Edwards sat with Blair McCray at the bar.

“So maybe now you think you should’ve told me your cousin’s girlfriend was the witness to the Laney murders?” the chief asked Blair.

“You think you should’ve told me she was the one who wounded that sonofabitch before she came back and killed him?”

“I think she found him before either of us did. I think she did the right thing calling me to come get him. I think she would have testified against him.”

“Well, that won’t be necessary anymore, will it?”

“No.”

“No, indeed. Not after she drilled that sucker from one end of his

brainpan to the other. And for all we know, he could be some innocent slob who’d just stopped in for a beer and a steak.”

Blair McCray rolled his eyes.

“You really think that guy’s name was Jack Armstrong?” he asked, referring to the ID found on the shooting victim’s body.

“Did he look like an all-American boy to you?”

“He looked shot dead to me, which never improves anybody’s looks. And we’ll find out who he is soon enough. But what interests me more is finding his killer.” The chief gave his in-law a bleak look.

“Anybody else held out on me like you did, I’d lock his ass up right now. Being family and a fellow cop, you get one last break. Tell me where I can find Deena Mokes.”

Blair regarded the chief innocently.

“I haven’t heard from her the last couple of hours.”

The chief sighed.

“You think this woman got it right? That the guy she shot was the one who killed the Laneys. The one who killed Ivar. That Evan Cade wasn’t involved.”

Blair nodded.

“That’s pretty much what I think.”

“Okay. If that’s the case, then from your point of view, justice has been done.”

The Kentucky lawman knew what was coming next.

“I think it’s time you went home, Blair,” Chief Billy Edwards said.

Garvin Townes had arrived in San Diego ahead of the Rawley campaign. He sat in his own hotel suite, not far from where Del Rawley was staying. He’d just sent Arnold Roth, the head of the senator’s personal protection detail, out the door with his marching orders.

He’d yet to hear from Illinois, but he had confidence that his new, aggressive strategy for Evan Cade was the correct one—and he’d made it plain that it had better be implemented quickly.

Townes had been lured out of retirement by the prospect of becoming the incumbent’s next national security adviser. As the president was a total incompetent beyond the grubby limits of domestic pork barrel politics, the way Townes really saw it was that he would be the president for foreign affairs—which was the only area of government he considered meaningful.

His foreign policy would be simplicity itself: Fuck with us, and we will kill you.

The big picture was, as always, perfectly clear. It was bringing all

the endless pixels into resolution that was the hard part. And the most dimcuit aetail, once again, was J. D. Cade.

Townes had to admit to himself he never should have coerced J. D. Cade into joining the PANIC unit. Cade had intended to be a combat soldier, an army sniper. Had graduated first in his class from the sniper school at Fort Benning. He had been not only a deadly shot but also wonderfully bright.

Townes had decided he just had to have this young man. He had been sure that Cade would come to see that he’d been honored by being chosen for an elite covert operation.

What Townes hadn’t discovered until later was that Cade had been working out some sort of grudge against his father, and being assigned to a combat unit had been his means of doing so. By denying Cade that opportunity, Townes had thwarted him. Turned the boy sour. Made him rebel to the point where he thought he could choose his own targets, even kill an American officer.

Which, of course, was intolerable.

Townes had no choice but to cast aside his ambitions for J. D. Cade. But he hadn’t forgotten him, oh, no. He had kept watch on a regular, if not constant, basis right from the start. And when his men had brought him pictures of how young Cade had eliminated his enemy, Alvy McCray, with a deer-a deer!—it had made him both gleeful and filled with regret. Such a talent as this could have come to full fruition under his tutelage.

He wondered how Cade had felt—what sort of, well, panic had raced through his mind—when he first saw the picture of himself kneeling on the highway, cutting the loop of rope from around the deer’s neck.

He’d continued to receive reports on J. D. Cade down through the years.

He’d learned with growing disappointment that Cade had settled into the domestic stupor of work and family like any other member of the common herd. Cade’s only point of distinction was that he had refused to let his wonderful skills as a marksman wither away. He’d continued to shoot regularly, brilliantly, and without fanfare. Just as Townes would have wanted.

In an amusing turn of events, Cade had even wound up doing his shooting under an assumed name, a thin disguise at best, but it showed that Cade’s instincts were still sound.

He’d always known that the day would come when he’d call on Cade once more. That he’d make him live out his destiny. Even though it would cost Cade his life, Townes would see to it that his last act was one worthy of him—and of Townes.

But J. D. Cade was still insubordinate. Rebellious. Treacherous.

Delaying the hit on Raw-ley. Killing Danby. Always fighting him so hard.

It should have been different. They should have been such a great team.

DeVito sat in his hotel room with a cold can of soda pressed to his forehead, watching a video of J. D. Cade saving Del Rawley’s life. Watching it for the millionth time, and Cade was still a mind-numbing contradiction to him.