Capitol Offense (33 page)

His eyes flew open.

Slowly, he assimilated what few facts he could be sure about. He was outside. It was daylight. He was lying on the ground, restrained in some manner. He didn’t know where he was, but it didn’t look like Oklahoma. More of a desert. New Mexico, maybe. Arizona. He was tied down to something—not that he was likely to go anywhere soon, given how he felt.

He glanced down at his right arm, exposed beyond his short-sleeved T-shirt.

Oh dear God …

“Loving! You’re awake! About time.”

That was Officer Peter Shaw. He recognized the voice. Hard to forget a man like that, after he had …

Had what? He tried to remember what had happened when he saw Shaw last. He had a strong sense that something important had occurred, but he couldn’t remember the details, nothing after he was spotted by Shaw’s accomplice. It was as if he had gotten drunk and had a blackout—but he was pretty sure nothing nearly so entertaining had been involved.

“Don’t bother trying to get free. You can’t. Don’t bother trying to escape. You’re going to die.”

“Then why haven’t you done it already?” Loving managed to say. His voice was slow and creaky.

“Haven’t had time, sadly enough. Been racing across the country to make an appointment. And then I get this text message. Turns out our contacts are running late. I’m irritated beyond belief. I hate people who aren’t punctual, especially when I’m carrying stuff that can get me arrested. Or kill me dead.”

“Sorry you’re inconvenienced,” Loving grunted.

“You’re the one who’s inconvenienced,” Shaw said. “This leaves me time to deal with you.”

Loving bit down on his lower lip. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Shaw? You make all cops look bad.”

“Is that what you think?” He leaned down into Loving’s face. “Well, let me tell you something, Mr. High-and-Mighty Private Investigator. You don’t know squat!”

Shaw pulled back up, pacing around Loving’s prone body.

“Why don’t you educate me?” Couldn’t hurt to keep him talking. Better than the alternative.

“You think I’m going to start monologing and tell you my whole sad story?” He laughed bitterly. “Why not? You’re dead already.”

What did that mean? His skin felt so hot … “I’ve known you for a long time, Shaw. You used to be a straight arrow. What happened?”

Silence hung between them, heavy as a hippo. Loving still could feel the sun beating down upon him. At least, that’s what he hoped he was feeling.

“My sister. That’s what happened. Did you ever meet Nikki?”

“Don’t know that I did,” Loving answered quietly.

“She’s a sweetheart. An angel. Best sister a guy could have. Always there for me. Job troubles. Divorce. Always there. Never had the sense to link up with any guy halfway worth her salt, but she’s a princess. Never had a boss halfway worth her salt, either, but she’s a queen.”

“I’m not seein’ the connection.”

“Haven’t you guessed, Loving? She got cancer. Cervical cancer. Had no medical insurance. Turns out her boss didn’t cover her. I took her to St. Benedict’s. They’re supposed to be the experts, right? But without insurance, she couldn’t afford treatment. Think I could afford it? In one month they billed more than I make in a year. It was hopeless. My sweet sister was fading away, turning skeletal right before my eyes. And there was nothing I could do about it.”

“So you went dirty. To get money.”

“I went dirty to get treatment,” Shaw said, kicking his feet in the sand. “What else could I do? When did medicine stop being about healing and start being about money?” He stomped angrily around Loving. “Dr. Sentz approached me privately. He knew who I was. Said his brother had recommended me. Said I might be just right for a very special job.”

“Smuggling cesium.”

“Chris was already helping his brother set it up. They were taking their lead from some major muckety-muck.”

“The guy in the police station. The one who nixed lookin’ for Joslyn Thomas?”

“All I know is that I went from catching crooks to being one. They had already made one smuggling attempt that went sour. Pig leaked and their accomplice got killed. Some poor clown named Parsons. Radiation poisoning.”

Loving remembered the victim Mike had told him about.

“They said it would be easy. It wasn’t. It went bad, right from the start. First time Dr. Sentz tried to sneak cesium out of the hot lab, Joslyn Thomas caught him. He tried to make some excuses, but she wasn’t an idiot. She ran out of the hospital. Probably had no idea what to do. But Sentz did. He called his brother. Told him to meet Joslyn on the way home.”

Loving’s lips parted. “That’s why she went off the road.”

“Chris drove her into the ravine. She wasn’t dead, but he knew she would be in time, and it was better that way. Looking like an accident. If he had shot her or strangled her, everyone would know it was murder. He made sure she wouldn’t be found anytime soon. Hid her car behind the blackberry bushes. Smoothed out the dirt, any sign that her car had gone off the road. And that was it.” Shaw took a deep breath, then released it. “So you can imagine his reaction when this guy comes into the station wanting someone to look for his wife.”

“Small wonder he didn’t want to open an investigation.”

“Into the accident he caused. Right. He wanted to make sure she was good and dead before anyone found her. And he did.” Shaw crouched down beside him. “What he didn’t reckon on, of course, was the husband.”

“Dennis blamed Sentz.”

“He was righter than he could ever imagine. Sentz knew that. Guilt was eating him alive.”

“So what happened at the hotel?”

“I saw Thomas as soon as he entered. Called Dr. Sentz, asked him what to do. Sentz brought over a drug to slip into the coffee Thomas sipped while he watched for Chris. I did while he was in the restroom. Didn’t work immediately. He still managed to ride up the elevator, just like I said. I wanted that. See, I was worried about Chris. His guilt was getting the best of him. He was making noise about going to the chief, telling him what happened, trying to make some sort of immunity deal in exchange for a lead on the terrorists. I thought that was a very bad idea. I couldn’t let that happen.” He paused. “Chris had to die.”

Loving clenched his teeth. “Did you let Dennis go up to the room so he would do the killin’ for you? Or so he would get blamed for what you did?”

“What difference does it make? Chris is dead. Dennis Thomas took the rap. And here we are.”

“Yeah,” Loving said bitterly. “What are you gonna do with me?”

“Well, there’s really only one choice, right?” He walked away for a moment, then returned with something in his hands. “And it has to be done in a way that cannot be traced back to me. No clues. Not even a bullet.”

Loving stared with horror at the small stainless steel tube in Shaw’s gloved hands. “Don’t do it, Shaw. You don’t want this on your conscience. Do not do this.”

“Did you know they still haven’t identified Parsons? That’s how bad this stuff is. Tears you up like nothing else. Add that to the effect of the sun and critters, plus the fact that you won’t be found for weeks, probably years, out here in the vast desert.” He pulled out the plug in the tube. “It isn’t pretty. But it is necessary.”

“Don’t do this, Shaw.”

“Don’t have any choice.”

“Do you think this is what your sister would want? Do you? You said she was an angel. Would an angel want to live at the cost of so many others?”

“She will never know.”

“How can you be sure of that? Three people have died already.”

Shaw began to tremble. “Do you think I don’t already know that?”

Slowly, he tilted the brim of the tube. A silver-gray powder drifted downward onto Loving’s chest.

Loving’s eyes ballooned. He twisted from side to side, but he had been tied so tightly he could barely move. “Get that off me!”

“If it’s any comfort,” Shaw said, “you’ll be dead in about six hours. On the down side … it won’t be a very pleasant six hours.”

“Shaw!”

“Goodbye, Loving. You’ll understand, I hope, if I don’t stick around. Got an appointment to keep. And now that that stuff’s loose, I want to be as far away as possible.”

“This is wrong, Shaw! Wrong!”

Shaw turned away, covering his eyes. “I can’t stop it now, Loving. Don’t you see that? It’s gone too far. Too far. There’s nothing I can do.”

“There’s always something, Shaw. It’s never too late. You can do anything you want. You can be whoever you want to be. Get this stuff off me!”

Shaw shook his head. “No.” And then he disappeared.

“Shaw!” Loving bellowed as loudly as he could, but there was no response.

He heard the sound of a vehicle driving away. He was alone. In the desert. Under the hot sun.

The powdered cesium was burning him. Burning a hole straight through to his heart.

You can’t save everyone.

Ben stared out at the darkened city streets. He had climbed onto his rooftop perch, but tonight he found no solace there. The air was brisk, but it did not invigorate him. The electric blue moonlight cast a shimmering, ethereal glow around the midtown neighborhood, but the sense of forgiving and forgetting that he usually obtained here, at least in a small and temporary fashion, was not forthcoming. The streets were always busy on a Friday night. Everyone was going out to dinner, it seemed, and each of Tulsa’s restaurants would be packed to the brim. He and Christina usually stayed in, but it was fun to watch everyone else hopping about. Movie theaters would be packed with those anxious to get out of the house to see the latest Hollywood extravaganza in the eyeblink before it showed up on DVD. He could see a group of teenagers walking along, singing, shouting, raising a ruckus. A local gang? They didn’t look dangerous. Bored, mostly. Looking for something to do. Something to define their existence on a warm spring Friday night.

And what would Dennis Thomas be doing right now? Ben closed his eyes tightly shut. He didn’t want to think about it, but the imagery came unbidden. By now the booking would be complete. He’d be in coveralls tonight. Guards acting out power fantasies, or hiding their insecurities with bitterness. Either way, the effect would be equally unpleasant for Dennis. He would not be allowed to bring books. He would not be allowed a window. He would be put in a cold cellblock in a small room with someone he didn’t know and had nothing in common with until it was time to haul him away to the penitentiary where he would in all likelihood spend the rest of his life. However brief that might be.

Ben ran his fingers through his hair. Christina had tried to comfort him, of course, but it hadn’t worked. He not only didn’t respond to it, he resented it, if he were to be honest with himself. He didn’t want to hear a lot of claptrap about how he had done his best. What good was that? He hadn’t been asked to do his best. He had been asked to win. It was no consolation to hear that you can’t win them all. At this moment in time, there was only one case, and he had lost it. That was why Dennis was spending the night on a metal cot staring at the ceiling, wondering if he would ever sleep well again.

This was not like most cases. Ben had been reluctant to get into this mess at all, but that didn’t matter. He had taken the case, and he had bumbled and lost it. Dennis had placed enough trust in him to put his life in Ben’s hands. His faith had been misplaced. His gamble, lost.

To Ben it was never just a case, never could be just a case. He was there to help his client, to do the right thing, to try to extract a little justice from a system that had all too often forgotten that justice was its goal. He’d failed.

Why did he do it? Why was he driven to take these impossible cases? To defend the lost, the hopeless, and, as Jones would point out, the invariably unprofitable. Was he still desperately trying to prove to his long-dead father that he had not made a fatal mistake, not chosen a profession of no value? Or was he trying to prove something to himself? Was he trying to calm the demons roiling inside by showing that he had something to contribute, that he could make the world a little better, one case at a time? Was he trying to find his worth in his work, or was his work trying to tell him who he really was? And how long would Dennis have to suffer because Ben had tripped and fallen on his journey to find his life purpose?

Ben leaned back against the roof, wishing there was some way he could neutralize the thoughts racing through his head. Nothing worked—not food, not television, none of the usual diversions. He had tried playing the piano, the most natural mood elevator he knew. But he couldn’t get his heart into it. Not even a good Eliza Gilkyson tune could cure this angst. There would be no release, not even in sleep, when it finally came, because the sleep would be filled with dreams, and his dreams tonight would be nightmares, dark and nasty and remorseless.

Christina had reminded him that this had been an impossible case and that he’d still given the jury a lot to think about despite the absence of any facts or evidence to help him. Ben bought none of it. He had been trying cases for a good while now. He knew the score. The fact was, Guillerman had beaten him because he’d put on the better case. He had outmaneuvered and outfoxed Ben from the beginning. Seen him coming. Outflanked him. The courtroom was a battlefield, and Ben had been pummeled by enemy artillery. Decimated.

That stung.

You can’t save everyone, Christina had tried to tell him. And the logical part of his brain knew that she was right. But what he was feeling at this moment had nothing to do with logic.

He knew he wasn’t being fair to himself. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be fair. He didn’t deserve it. On this warm spring Tulsa night, he had no memory of all those he had helped in the past. All he could remember was the man lying on the metal cot staring at the ceiling for what would be the first of so many sleepless nights, alone, apart, separated from everything he ever knew or loved. Until it was time for him to be put down. Because Ben hadn’t been able to save him.