The Next President (46 page)

No, what Cade had done by announcing his departure was guarantee that Roth would get him—by hook or fucking crook—tonight.

After J. D. had left, Del excused himself from his family, Jenny, and Donnel, saying he had to work on his opening statement for the debate. He stepped into the suite’s office. DeVito was there waiting for him.

“Could you hear anything?” the candidate asked.

DeVito shook his head.

“Just that everything sounded friendly.”

“Oh, it was. Just what you’d expect. Except for one thing.”

“What?”

“When my wife shook hands with Mr. Cade she felt something, intuitively.”

Making sure he watched his tone, DeVito asked, “Mrs. Raw-ley’s psychic?”

The candidate gave the special agent a chastising look.

“She’s empathetic.

She was a nurse. She’s a mother and a grandmother. She knows when something’s wrong with people. You should be able to understand that; I hear you often rely on your instincts.”

DeVito nodded.

“You’ve got a point. So what did Mrs. Rawley feel?”

“Devree asked Mr. Cade if someone had hurt him recently. So I’d have to think that she was feeling pain.”

A flip response occurred to DeVito but he stifled it. Maybe Mrs. Rawley’s instincts were more acute than his own. He figured that Cade had pretty much gotten out of the box he was in and now he wanted the senator to live.

But if Cade was feeling pain, who the hell knew what was going on in his head or what he might do?

“Cade thinks you’re going to show up at the movie studio where he’ll be speaking tonight, right, Senator?”

“That’s what I told him.”

“But you haven’t confirmed that with anybody else?”

“No.”

“So if Cade thinks you’re going to come to him at the studio, he has no reason to try to get through all the security at the Hollywood Bowl. He’ll wait for you right where he is. Then if you don’t show up, he’s shit out of luck, pardon my language.”

“That assumes he is an assassin, which I still haven’t concluded. But if he is, what’s to say he won’t simply leave the campaign, disappear, and try another long-range shot?”

DeVito shook his head.

“I don’t think so. He’s managed to get too close to you to pull back now. And he’s seen how tight security is at the Bowl, and he can bet it will be just as tight at any other outdoor appearance you might make. The fact that he’s leaving the campaign after tonight tells me that if anything is going to happen, it will be before the day is out.”

“So what you’re recommending to me is… ?”

“Stiff him. Skip the appearance at the studio. If I’m wrong about Mr.

Cade, you can always apologize later. But if I’m right, you’ll have scammed him out of his last shot at you.”

“What about Mr. Cade’s warning to you about Roth?”

“I’m going to cover him. He steps one foot out of line, he’s gone. I’ll take the heat.”

Del Rawley looked at DeVito mulling his choices.

“I’m going to withhold my decision for the moment about going to the Westside Studio.”

DeVito bit his tongue but was clearly unhappy.

“There’s something I want you to find out for me,” Del told DeVito

“What?”

“See if my wife was right. See if someone has hurt Mr. Cade recently.”

Evan’s escape attempt had failed. He and Blair and Deena were back on the sofa.

1 he load had his gun on them. He rubbed one eye and then the other, trying to clear his vision, but the world was a blur to him, and his eyes burned as if they’d been scoured with ground glass. But his prisoners were still tied up and under control once more. For the moment, that was all that mattered.

Evan hadn’t been able to tackle the Toad after he’d kicked the Lysol into his eyes, because just as he’d gotten his feet back under him to dive at the Toad, Deena had tried to get up from the sofa and sent him sprawling in a completely unintended direction. That had given the Toad time to backpedal. Not that Blair hadn’t tried to go after him, but he’d tripped over the sprawled Evan. Then the Toad had let off a round in the trailer, which had left everyone perfectly still while their ears rang like crazy.

He’d waved his gun back and forth over his captives and told them to get back on the sofa or he’d kill them all right then. It was plain to Evan, Blair, and Deena that their captor couldn’t focus his eyes, but the way he kept waving that gun, all he’d have to do was open up and in that confined space he’d inevitably hit all of them. They’d done what they were told and struggled back into position on the sofa.

For a moment it had looked as though the Toad meant to wreak his vengeance on Deena. He tried to sight his weapon on her. Then Blair had | leaned his torso in front of Deena, and Evan had leaned his body in front of Blair.

Now the air in the trailer was filled with the reek of the detergent | and cordite, the stench of the captives’ desperation, and the brimstone hatred pouring off the red-eyed Toad. Everyone was sweating from their various exertions, and the heat they had produced seemed trapped like an animal in the metal enclosure. There was a sense that soon they’d all asphyxiate

The Toad started forward, holding his gun in front of him. The captives stiffened involuntarily, fearing he was moving in for a better shot. But when the Toad reached the end of the breakfast bar, he moved to his right and found Deena’s little fridge. He opened it with his free hand, reached in, and came out with a bottle.

He held it up for the others to see.

“Tell me what’s in this bottle. If you lie, I’ll shoot all of you.”

“It’s water,” Evan said flatly.

“Bottled water.”

“Carbonated?”

“No.”

The Toad found his way back to his stool at the breakfast bar. He twisted off the bottle’s cap, and to be safe, he sniffed the contents.

Looking back in the general direction of his captives, he said, “If you try to move again, I’ll shoot you. I’ll empty the clip. I’ll get all of you.”

Then, being very careful, he tilted the bottle of water and poured a stream into his left eye… and immediately screamed in agony. Nobody moved, nobody said a word as suds came out of the Toad’s eye.

But Deena smiled fiercely.

And Evan and Blair began to strain against their bonds. Not grunting and going for broke. Just doing steady reps. Stressing the clothesline, pulling against the knots, relaxing and doing it all over again. Hoping to get free before the gargoyle with the foaming eye could see again.

Belle, Ben, and Marie Cade searched every single place in town where they might possibly find Evan. They’d looked all over the sprawling SILL campus.

They’d been to the town library, the Salvation Army store, the law offices of Richard Shuster. They’d been to restaurants, bars, and parks that Evan had frequented. All without result.

Now Ben and Marie’s minivan sat in a remote corner of a shopping mall parking lot off Route 51. Ben and Marie were trying to assure Belle that Evan would be all right while they waited for Ben’s neighbor, Sawyer Price, to arrive.

With each disappointment they’d faced in their search, the old lady had become more grim.

The afternoon shadows were growing long when Sawyer Price arrived.

He came in a pickup truck with a camper shell on it. From inside the shell came the barking of excited dogs. The one place the three Cades had yet to look was the Shawnee National Forest: 270,000 acres of woodland with 1,250 miles of paved, gravel, dirt, and grass roadway running through it. If you kidnapped someone in southern Illinois, you couldn’t ask for a better place to hide.

Ben climbed out of the minivan, and Marie slid in behind the wheel.

“We’ll go out to Giant City first,” Ben told the women.

“We’ll look around the lodge and the facilities. Then we’ll go into the woods. Belle, if Evan’s out there, we’re going to find him.”

The old lady looked at Ben but didn’t say a word.

She was keenly aware that Ben hadn’t—couldn’t have—promised to find Evan alive.

After leaving the Rawleys, J. D. returned to the Refuge. He took Pickpocket’s laptop out to the table by the pool. The task to which he addressed himself

was pulling up ever)’ story he could find on the demise of his old comrade Dixie Wynne. He quickly read all the news articles. He weighed the information he learned against what he hoped to do with it. He probed for any deficiency. Much to his surprise, he couldn’t find any. It all fit. At first glance.

He put the computer to sleep and turned a second analysis of Dixie’s story over to his subconscious, trusting it to be less inclined to see what he wanted it to see.

He looked at the patterns of sunlight dancing on the water of the pool and his mind drifted back to his meeting with the Rawleys. He could still feel that little boy’s fingers on his nose. What was his name again? Ben… Benjamin Franklin Walker.

Thing was, when he’d told Eleanor Rawley Walker that Evan used to clutch his nose the same way, he’d been telling the truth. J. D. remembered holding his infant son in his arms. Evan had looked right at him with his big green eyes shining brightly and gone straight for his nose every time. He’d held on tight, too. When J. D. had tried to gently grasp Evan’s tiny nose, his son had smacked his hand away and laughed as if he’d devised a strategy the old man could never figure out for himself.

J. D. had never tried to plan Evan’s life. Duplicating himself was the last thing he’d wanted. He’d hoped only for the joy of beholding his son as he discovered himself. So he’d encouraged Evan’s inclinations, never pushed his own. Helped him to see why doing the right thing was the right thing to do.

He never issued commandments from on high. He’d tried to set a good ex ample of what a man should be, but left room for Evan to see that there were other worthwhile ways, too.

The only point on which J. D. had been completely rigid was that he had always and unapologetically done whatever he thought necessary to keep his son from coming to any irreparable harm. But now that bastard Townes had kidnapped Evan and was holding his son’s life hostage. The taste of failure was bitter in J. D.‘s mouth.

He couldn’t let Townes succeed. Couldn’t let the sweet little boy he’d held in his arms be sacrificed to a madman’s ambitions. Himself, yes. He could accept his own death if that was what it came to. He’d killed people.

He had blood on his hands. So let him die.

But not Evan. Never Evan.

J. D. forced his mind back to Dixie Wynne. Most of the stories he’d read had rehashed the same details: Wynne’s shooting of the robbery suspect at the convenience store, his killing the two police officers

at the siege of his house, and his suicide. But within the text of other stories J. D. found the information he sought.

No one had been able to account for Dixie Wynne’s whereabouts during the weeks he’d been away from home. His neighbor, a man named Tag Olethy, said Dixie had gone hunting, but nobody knew where. The angry SWAT cop and former PANIC sniper had dropped out of sight. If he had gone out to the wilds and hunted, as he’d told his neighbor, he’d lived off the land. That and paid cash for any necessities. If Dixie had used credit cards to pay for motel rooms, meals, or filling his gas tank, his trail would already have been known. He’d have been tracked down. The only clue as to where he might have gone to hunt was the vague description he’d given his neighbor He was going hunting where nobody would complain about what he killed.

Who was to say that hadn’t been Chicago? It might be suggested that Dixie had received a call from his old army commander, a man who appreciated a good sniper and wasn’t nearly as squeamish about who got killed as the Gainesville PD. The idea was pure disinformation but, as

.J. D. dug out the business card Tom Hayashi had given him and called the reporter at his Los Angeles Times office. He wasn’t in, so J. D. tried his PCR and Hayashi answered. He had good news for J. D. “Got your man. The rest of the president’s entourage is at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but he’s at the Peninsula. You know where that is?”

“On Little Santa Monica Boulevard, right?”

“You got it.” Hayashi gave Townes’ suite number to J. D. and told him it was being paid for out of the same account as the rooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“I won’t ask you how you found that out.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t tell you.”

“How many people from your paper besides you are going to the Bowl tonight?”

“That’s a funny question,” the reporter replied.

“Enough so maybe you could slip one extra name on the list and I could use it?”

“That’s a damn funny question.”

“Could be worth a very good story if you help me.”

J. D. could almost hear Hayashi shift gears as he took that into account.

“How good?” he asked finally.

“Tell you who took the shot at Del Rawley in Chicago.”

“Jesus! How could you—” “I’m the guy who knew the president has one ball, remember?”

There was a deep silence on Hayashi’s end of the conversation.

“You’re the man with the great nose for news, right?” J. D. asked.

“Listen to me and decide if I’m telling you the truth: I know who took the shot at Senator Rawley in Chicago.”

“Sonofabitch,” Hayashi whispered after several seconds.

“You do know.”

“That good enough to get me a press pass to the Bowl?”

“Two things…”

“What?” J. D. inquired, having anticipated the first question any good reporter would ask.

“Was it you?”

“No.” Ready for the question, he answered firmly without either rushing it or waiting too long. He didn’t let Hayashi’s long following silence draw him into saying anything else, either. He could only wait to see if Hayashi’s judgment was truly infallible. He was beginning to sweat when he finally heard the reporter speak.

“Okay. So you know who did it and it wasn’t you. The other thing I have to ask is whether you know if there will be another attempt on Senator Rawley’s life tonight. I couldn’t keep something like that to myself.”

“Neither could I. The reason I want to be at the Bowl tonignt is i m trying to save someone’s life. I hope you can believe that, too.”