Fury (23 page)

Hawes searched his eyes for a story. “Am I missing something here?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Corso said. “And it’s gonna have to stay that way.”

Hawes furrowed his brow. “Were you—”

Corso held up a hand. “I can’t,” he said.

“Dougherty’s okay?”

“She’s fine,” Corso assured him.

A silence settled over the room. “You make your reservations for the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference?” Corso asked.

“Sent the registration form in yesterday.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you’d sure as hell get a Pulitzer nomination.”

Both men knew it was true. Small papers that break major stories are usually rewarded with Pulitzer nominations. Corso’s presence on the story, however, made that impossible. As far as the committee was concerned, nominating Frank Corso for a journalism award would be like nominating Jeffrey Dahmer for a culinary medal.

Hawes shrugged. “I’ve got no complaints.”

“Everybody’s got the story they want. Big shootout at the O.K. Corral. At great personal cost, brave cops kill despoiler of virgins. What else could anybody ask for? It’s positively mythic.”

Corso walked over to the desk and stuck out his hand. Hawes got to his feet. Made eye contact and took Corso’s hand in his. “I stand corrected,” Hawes said.

Corso raised an eyebrow.

“About you,” Hawes said. “You ever get tired of writing books and want to get back into the newspaper business full-time, you be sure to give me a call.”

“Tell Mrs. V. I’ll give her a jingle one of these nights,” Corso said.

Hawes said he would. “What’s for you now?”

Corso thought it over. “Finally got some decent weather; I think I’ll wash my boat. Maybe putt over and pump the heads and top it off with diesel.”

“Sailing off into the sunset?”

“Something like that.”

A dock is a special type of community. Diverse beyond reason. Filled with everything from millionaires who barely remember they own a vessel to lifetime live-aboards who have every dime they own tied up in the rig. Moguls, morons, and misfits, all of whom find common ground in the mystique of the water. All of whom, it seemed, wanted to drop by and chat of a sunny Sunday afternoon as Corso washed
Saltheart
. Everyone mentioned the weather, of course, and then immediately segued into how they’d heard there’d been some excitement down here this morning. Corso handed out quite a few Heinekens but precious little information.

Others bitched about the Carver’s anchor hanging out over the dock. Wanted to call management. The guy in the green Cruisahome wanted to push the Carver back in the slip and retie it with a springline, but nobody would lend a hand. You just don’t touch another man’s lines.

Corso had worked up a full sweat. He’d started in the dinghy with the sun hot on his shoulders. Paddling himself around, scrubbing the hull. Worked his way back onboard, where, as the last rays of the day had begun to slide behind Queen Anne Hill, the wind quickly died and the fog appeared from nowhere to take its place. As the mist settled on his bare shoulders, Corso moved the broom in a single-minded frenzy. He’d been at it so long the soft blue bristles had begun to hum in his head, like a mantra. A low Gregorian chant. “Behold the ten brides of Christ…” it intoned, “…who having strayed from his ways are now returned to the fold of our master, like lost sheep. Behold the…”

Sunday, September 23
1:57
P.M.
Day 6 + 1

Why, she used to wonder, would survivors subject themselves to this? She knew why
she
was here. That was easy. She was covering her ass. Making sure when Chief Kesey called she’d be able to say, “Yes, Chief, as a matter of fact, I did hear what Himes and his attorney had to say. Actually, I was there in the hotel for the press conference, Chief. And you?” On a Sunday too.

But them. The Tates and the Butlers, Mrs. Doyle and the Nisovics. Right there in the front row again. After the week they’d had. Dorothy Sheridan shivered, because, after fourteen years and a daughter of her own, she finally understood. Same as her, they were covering their asses. They were doing everything they could. Making certain that no stone was unturned, no step untaken, no opportunity to remember lost. Fruitful…futile…it didn’t matter. Because somewhere down the road, when the headlines and memories had faded, nothing was going to be more vital to their long-term survival than being able to tell themselves they’d done everything humanly possible.

She’d made up her mind. First thing Monday morning she was calling Monica and setting up an interview. Anything had to be better than this. What good was security if it killed you? First thing Monday.

She was still lost in thought when the buzz in the room suddenly subsided, pulling her attention to the dais. She’d never seen Myron Mendenhal in person before. Only on TV. Not that he looked particularly good either way. The man was a gnome. A bandy-legged troll with a head about four sizes too big for his body. Bald on top, grown out long on the sides. Big Moscow snow-cutter eyebrows.

Mendenhal tapped at the bank of microphones. Flashbulbs twinkled all over the ballroom. TV cameras began to hum. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “It seems my client has been unavoidably delayed, so why don’t we begin.” He had a wet mouth. Everything he said sounded a little juicy. “As most of you well know, my client Walter Leroy Himes was unjustly convicted and sentenced to death for the series of murders commonly known as the Trashman killings. Whether this gross miscarriage of justice was a matter of official ineptitude or indifference will be decided in a court of law. What cannot be denied, however, is that even at this late date, it is not too late for some measure of justice to be done.”

Dorothy allowed his voice to settle into a drone. Her head no longer throbbed. Instead, the pain had become a cold river of pressure flowing directly behind her eyes, making her feel as if her eyeballs might unexpectedly pop from their sockets like champagne corks. She massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger.

Mendenhal stopped talking as the buzz in the room began to rise. Himes, in maybe the worst suit in the world. An orange-plaid pattern that could have been used as the international symbol for bad taste. Way too small. Oh, god, look at his ankles.

Himes pulled out the other chair on the dais and sat down hard enough to make the bank of microphones belch. Weaving back and forth. Obviously shitfaced drunk. Sitting there surveying the crowd with this big loopy grin on his face.

“As I was saying,” Myron Mendenhal continued, “on behalf of my client Mr. Himes”—whom he acknowledged with the smallest of nods—“I have today, in state superior court, filed a lawsuit alleging willful and malicious prosecution in the amounts of…”

Thirteen million. If they got even half of that there’d be big-time layoffs. Might get all the way down to her. She pressed at her eyes, as if to keep them in place. She heard the scrape of a chair and then another belch from the mikes.

Himes leaning over the microphones. “Now that them no-good bitches got what they deserved…now old Walter Lee gonna get somma what he deserves for a change.”

Mendenhal whispered furiously in his client’s ear. Himes sneered and kept on talking. “Gonna buy me evathin’ I want. Might even git me a little”—he winked—“you know…a little…poontang.”

Malcolm Tate rose from his front-row seat. He pointed at Himes.

“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t you dare.”

Himes pointed back at him. “I seen you there. Eva time, in the front row, with your clean clothes and your old woman and all…up there in the good seats.”

“You shut your mouth,” Tate warned at the top of his voice.

All around the room, security guards hustled toward Malcolm Tate. His wife pulled at his pant leg, then rose to put herself between her husband and the dais.

“I’ll bet one of them bitches was yourn, wasn’t she?” Himes taunted.

Paula Tate put both palms on her husband’s chest and gently tried to force him back into his chair. Malcolm Tate, however, was having none of it. Instead, he stepped around his wife and wagged a blunt finger in Himes’s face. “You shut your filthy mouth,” he said.

Himes leaned forward over the table, grinned at the audience, and then spit on Tate’s blue denim shirt. A collective intake of breath was followed by dead silence. Malcolm Tate’s mouth fell open as he stared down at the yellow glob of phlegm now welded to his shirtfront.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please, ah….” Myron Mendenhal sputtered. “Could we perhaps…at this time—”

Tate went berserk. With a bellow, he lurched forward, toward Himes. His fingers extended like talons, as if he intended to go for the eyes. Tate took a single stride and then attempted to hurl himself upward onto the dais. He’d have made it too, except that his trailing foot became entangled in the maze of cables running along the front of the platform, stopping his ascent in mid-flight, jerking him down onto the cluster of microphones. Myron Mendenhal fell backward from his chair. An electronic shriek tore the air.

A female security guard arrived first, grabbing Tate by the belt and jerking him to the floor. Malcolm Tate got as far up as his knees before he was buried beneath an onrushing pile of uniforms. The amplifiers screamed like a jet on takeoff. The audience was on its feet, hands cupped over ears as if playing some deranged version of Simon Says. Without willing it so, Dorothy Sheridan found herself hurrying toward the front of the room. “Malcolm,” Paula Tate cried. “Oh…please, Malcolm.”

By the time Dorothy arrived, Tate had been pulled to his feet and was being led stiff-legged down the central aisle by four rent-a-cops. Somewhere in the scuffle, he’d suffered a cut on the bridge of his nose, sending a single crimson rivulet rolling down over his upper lip and into his mouth. “Mr. Tate,” Dorothy said. “Please, Mr. Tate.”

He bellowed at the ceiling, launching a spray of blood and spittle as he was muscled past her down the aisle. She turned and trotted along behind Paula Tate, who repeatedly called her husband’s name as he was dragged from the room. Dorothy patted at the pockets of her dress until she found her SPD ID badge.

Out in the hallway, Malcolm Tate had been forced to his knees. The female guard had disengaged and was whispering into a handheld radio. Holding her SPD ID badge before her, Dorothy Sheridan ran to Malcolm Tate’s side. “Don’t hurt him,” she said.

The nearest guard turned his sweaty, pockmarked face her way. “Listen, lady, why don’t you—”

She waved the ID in his face. “Don’t hurt him…you hear me? Don’t.”

Malcolm Tate hiccuped once and then vomited onto the carpet. The security guards released their grip and scrambled to their feet as his body convulsed, over and over again, until he was empty, left with nothing but a single silver strand connecting his lower lip to the carpet below. His wife knelt at his side. Put her hand on his back.

“Malcolm,” she said again.

Dorothy pointed to a bench against the wall. “Put him there,” she said. The pockmarked guard started to protest. “Do it,” she screamed.

Carefully avoiding the puddle, two of the guards helped Malcolm Tate to the bench, where he sat heavily, holding his head in his hands.

Someone brought a glass of water and some paper towels.

Ten minutes later, Paula Tate was till dabbing at her husband’s face and whispering in his ear when a pair of uniformed SPD officers came jogging around the corner and down the hall.

Dorothy held up her ID and met them halfway. As she explained the situation, they began to relax. “Poor guy,” the younger one said.

“Would you please help them to their car?” Dorothy asked.

“Sure,” they said in unison.

Paula Tate looked Sheridan’s way with red-rimmed eyes. “Come on,” Sheridan said. The Tates rose from the bench together and shuffled over. “Are we…is Malcolm being arrested?” Mrs. Tate wanted to know. Dorothy shook her head. “These officers are going to see you to your car,” she said. Paula Tate’s eyes filled with tears. “Did you hear what that man said?”

Dorothy said she had.

“How could this happen?” Paula Tate asked, as much to herself as to Sheridan. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m so sorry,” was all Dorothy could come up with. “If there’s anything I can—”

Paula Tate turned away. Her words echoed in Dorothy’s head as she watched the officers lead the couple up the stairs and around the corner.

Dorothy walked over, eased the ballroom door open, and stepped back inside. A trio of techies were putting the microphones back in order. Myron Mendenhal was still straightening his suit. Himes sat there, looking pleased with himself, rocking his chair up onto its back legs and then letting it slam back down.

A voice on her right asked, “Everybody all right?” Another guard. Fat and fifty. About to burst the buttons on a Hilton security uniform that obviously didn’t belong to him. Handwritten name tag read “Bill Post.”

“Fine,” she said.

He made a gesture as if he were mopping his brow. “Gotta leave that kinda rough stuff for the young guys,” he said. “Me, I’m just moonlighting for a little vacation money. Didn’t expect anything like that. No, sir, I didn’t.”

Mendenhal was talking again. Same thing he’d said before the excitement. Thirteen million. Civil suits to follow. “How do you compensate a man for three years of his life?” he asked. “Is there some dollar figure that can repair the heart of a man who has lived for years under the specter of his own imminent death? Who has lain upon the table of death? I think not. Can we—”

Dorothy held her breath as Himes leaned toward the mikes.

“If it ain’t me or him, just gonna be somebody else, you know.”

“Excuse me?” a big-haired blonde along the wall said.

“Said there’s always gonna be somebody out there killin’ bitches. Bitches and mo’ bitches is gonna be dyin’ all over the damn place, till you-all up to your damn ass in dead bitches.”

Up front, Slobodan Nisovic slowly got to his feet. Brushed at his face, then turned his back on Mendenhal and Himes. The little man leaned over and appeared to whisper in his mother’s ear. She nodded and handed him something.

On Dorothy’s right, Bill Post muttered, “Holy shit,” under his breath and started hustling toward the front of the room with an awkward, rolling gait.

When Slobodan Nisovic straightened up, he was holding an automatic in both hands. He had tears in his eyes as he looked out over the crowded ballroom.

“No” was all he said before turning toward the front of the room and pulling the trigger. The roar of the gun ripped the air. Dorothy stood transfixed as, all around her, people threw themselves to the floor. Screams and more shots. Himes was down on his side on the dais, his chest a mass of red. Nisovic turned to face the crowd. He stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Dorothy watched the side of his face explode and waited for him to crumple to the floor.

To Dorothy’s amazement, however, Slobodan Nisovic flinched but didn’t fall. He just stood there jerking the trigger, over and over. Nothing happened. Not even a click. Just the silent finger flexing and unflexing inside the trigger guard, until old Bill Post hit him with a flying tackle and drove him to the floor. First thing Monday. Call Monica.