Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (3 page)

“A fundamental right,” the dark voice repeated, still mocking. “Does seeking to provide them with that ‘news’ give you the right to break into my home. I’m not ‘news,’ Ms. August. Not anymore. Get out.”

“I’m afraid I can’t agree with that. I’d like to talk to you about what happened in Tucson today. About—”

“Get out,” he ordered softly, but there was no denying the threat. For the first time, Kate felt more than a sense of unease. More than embarrassment for having done something which she knew was wrong. For the first time, she was afraid. There was so much anger in the quiet command.

“You can’t hide forever,” she said. It was something she had thought since she’d realized what his life had become. How empty. Hiding. That was the truth, and maybe one he needed to hear, but as she said it she knew
she
had no right to tell him what he should do. Lew had been right. Who could know how they would react if faced with the lack of trust Thorne Barrington must deal with every day for the rest of his life? She couldn’t imagine how opening a seemingly innocuous package and having it blow up in your face would color your view of the world.

“Hide?” he repeated. His voice was louder now, stronger in the darkness, apparently furious with what she had suggested.

The puppy whimpered at his tone, and Kate realized the retriever was sitting beside Barrington’s chair. Her eyes gradually adjusting to the darkness now, she could make out their shapes, a darkness against the surrounding shadows. Barrington’s hand rested on the dog’s neck, the animal pressed as closely as possible against the chair in which the judge was sitting.

“Is that what you think I’m doing, Ms. August? Hiding?” Barrington asked again.

It was what everyone thought, Kate knew, but given the anger in the dark voice and her situation, she hesitated. Apparently he had never realized what people believed about his disappearance.

“I don’t think anyone blames you for that. I can’t begin to imagine…” She hesitated. “I don’t know how I’d react to—”

“I’m not
hiding,
Ms. August. Now get the hell out of my house before I call the police and have you arrested for breaking and entering.”

“I didn’t
break
in. The door’s open. The gate. And your dog…” she paused, wondering for the first time how the dog had gotten in here. Obviously, there was another entrance.

“Elliot was supposed to…” He stopped whatever explanation he had begun when the retriever whimpered again. The puppy shifted position, uncomfortable with the anger, pushing his head against his master’s hand. “Look, none of that’s your concern,” Barrington said. “Just get the hell out of my house.”

“I would really like to talk to you. It doesn’t have to be tonight, but you have a different perspective on the bombings than anyone else. I’ll meet with you anytime you say. I’m doing a series. You may have read—”

“No,” the voice from the shadows said. “I won’t talk to you, Ms. August. Not tonight. Not ever.”

“It’s understandable, after all that’s happened, if you’re afraid, but surely you must realize—”

She never finished whatever idiotic advice she was about to offer. In the darkness she didn’t see him press the button of the speaker phone which was on the table beside him, conveniently near at hand. By the time she’d realized that he had, he was speaking to whoever had responded.

“This is Thorne Barrington. I have an intruder. She doesn’t appear to be dangerous, but I want her out of my house. Please send a patrol car.”

“You’re going to have me arrested?” Kate asked, stunned. She had played the good Samaritan because she was concerned about his safety, about breached security, and he was calling the cops.

“
Afraid,
Ms. August?” he asked mockingly.

Unable to believe it was really happening, she heard in the distance the siren of the patrol car. Apparently when Thorne Barrington asked for the police, he got them. Immediately.

Son of a bitch,
she thought resignedly, wondering what in the world Kahler was going to do to her for pulling this stunt.

W
HEN THE OFFICERS
had gone and silence again reigned in the familiar darkness that surrounded him, Thorne Barrington closed his eyes. He recognized the perfume the woman had worn, floating to him from across the room. His mother had worn Shalimar, and the fragrance haunted the room now, reminding him. Smell was the most evocative of the senses, and he wondered how the reporter could have known what to wear to create the images that were moving through his mind. Images of life as it had once been lived in this house. Images of what his own life had once been. Angered again, he pulled his thoughts away from the past and back to the reporter who had invaded his well-guarded privacy.

Kate August. She was the one who had written the series of articles on the bombings. He should have known. God, he should be better prepared by now. After what had happened today in Tucson, someone was bound to try. Usually the fence was enough to deter the curious. Either she was very determined or she had somehow convinced Elliot to let her in.

Where the hell is Elliot?
he wondered for the first time. He hadn’t escorted the policemen into the parlor. They must have entered through the door she had claimed was standing open. In his fury at her intrusion, he had totally ignored what Kate August had said, discounting her explanations as lies. Was it possible that something
had
happened to Elliot?

He stood up suddenly to stride across the dark parlor. He knew these rooms by heart. Not a piece of furniture was ever moved. Nothing ever changed in the house.

Except tonight,
he thought. Tonight the house was different, its aura subtly disturbed, because the elusive fragrance she had worn moved before him now through the once again silent, deserted rooms.

Chapter Two

The cops had been businesslike and impersonal. They acted as if escorting a female reporter out of Judge Barrington’s mansion was part of their nightly routine. By the time they’d arrived at their precinct house, Kate was completely humiliated by her own stupidity, but she made the call to Detective Kahler, praying he would be in and at the same time dreading the possibility. And Kahler didn’t let her down.

He looked long-day tired, slightly rumpled, with the collar of his oxford-cloth shirt unbuttoned, rep tie loosened as a concession to the heat. Kahler was pushing forty, but his face was good, the lines around the eyes and tonight’s slight shadow of beard not detracting from its attractiveness.

It was, however, his voice Kate liked best. The transplanted Yankee speech patterns had softened just enough to take the edge off. He was a good-looking man, and she had begun to think of him as a friend, but it was obvious he wasn’t feeling friendly tonight and his usually pleasant voice was coldly furious.

“What the hell made you think you had the right to walk into the man’s house at night?” he asked. “You’re damn lucky he didn’t shoot you. I would have. What the hell were you thinking, August?”

“I’ve already told the cops all this. I saw the dog tied outside and the open gate. It’s never open, so—”

“How do you know Barrington’s gate is ‘never open’?” he interrupted the reasons she’d attempted to offer before. “You take a survey of his neighbors? They tell you that if the gate’s open, there’s a crime in progress? The bomber always leaves it open when he visits? If you really believe something’s wrong, August, you call the police. You don’t waltz in on your own. It won’t wash. You just wanted to talk to Barrington about what happened today, and so you break into his home and—”

“I didn’t break in. The damn door was open. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

What she didn’t tell him, would never tell him of course, was how she knew the gate was always closed. She wouldn’t admit the number of times she’d driven by Barrington’s home. Kahler’s reaction was making her question what she had done. Not tonight—she knew what she’d done tonight was beyond the bounds—but before. To question her growing fascination with the central character of the story she was working on.

She even had a file folder of material she’d collected on Thorne Barrington. But if she didn’t admit the number of times she’d driven by his mansion, she certainly wouldn’t confess the number of times she’d studied the black-and-white photographs that folder contained.

Maybe Kahler was right. Maybe she needed to back off, maybe even get Lew to assign someone else to finish the series. She had broken the first commandment, the prime directive. She had become personally involved with this story. She was no longer objective. Not about Barrington. And not about the bomber.

“You broke a trust, August,” Kahler went on. “I agreed to talk to you, against my better judgment, I have to tell you. And then you go and pull something like this.”

Kahler had been up-front from the first about his and the department’s motives in agreeing to help her with the series of articles she was writing about Jack.
“Anything that will draw this joker out is okay with me,”
he had said.
“Just remember that we’re using you, August. Not the other way around.”

So they had shared some dinners, all of which she’d put on her credit card, a legitimate business expense since they had talked about the bombings, with only an occasional foray into how the Braves were doing. And he took her calls, patiently answering her questions and guiding her series into something that might, they both hoped, spark a response in someone who had information about the bomber that they didn’t realize might be important. And in the process, she had come to consider Kahler a friend. Only gradually had Kate begun to wonder if the look she had occasionally surprised in his hazel eyes was rooted in the growing personal interest she’d been attributing it to.

“I didn’t mention your name,” she said defensively. “Barrington doesn’t know you’ve talked to me. He won’t ever know. All he knows is I’m a reporter. He called us vampires.”

That comment had bothered her.
Feeding off other people’s pain.
She knew there was a lot of truth to the accusation. It just wasn’t the way she usually thought about her job.

“The media frenzy might be one of the reasons Barrington chose to disappear. Somebody sneaked into his hospital room and took pictures a couple of days after the bombing.”

She hadn’t known that. Those photographs weren’t part of the collection in her file, of course. Those were all pre-Jack, from the social pages or stories about his courtroom, his family.

“What happened to them?” she asked.

“You want to publish them?” Kahler asked sarcastically. “They’d be spectacular, all right, released now, given the timing with the one in Tucson.”

“You know better than that,” Kate denied hotly. “You know I’d never do anything like that. Lew wouldn’t.”

“How could Barrington know?
Somebody
took those pictures. A reporter for some scum of a paper. At a time when he was…”

Kahler paused to gather control, but Kate wouldn’t let her eyes fall from the accusation in his. She knew how people felt about journalists. None of this was new to her, but it hurt to find out this was what Kahler thought. The same things Barrington believed.

“Did Barrington call you today?” she asked. A change of subject seemed prudent since, after tonight’s escapade, she wasn’t exactly in a position to argue the ethics of her profession.

“As soon as his mail was delivered.”

“Minutes before Draper got the package,” she guessed. The bomber’s revenge for his one failure had been a subtle torture. Before each bombing a warning of what was about to happen was delivered to the one man who had escaped, but never in time to allow the authorities to prevent the bombing.

“He’s added a new refinement. The return address on the package sent to Draper was the judge’s.”

“Barrington’s address?” she repeated in surprise. “Why would he do that?”

“You’re asking me why Jack does the things he does? I don’t have any answer, August. Maybe to put the press back onto Barrington. More punishment. Like the warnings. Interest in the judge has died down, and Jack probably doesn’t like that. Maybe he knows how much Barrington hates publicity, and the news of the return address is bound to generate a lot if the authorities decide to release it.”

“What did Barrington tell you when he called?” she asked.

“Same as always. That Jack was going to kill again. That it would be in Tucson. And that he had sent Barrington his best wishes for another pleasant day.”

Kate tried to imagine receiving such a message, and knowing, better than anyone else, exactly what was about to happen to the next victim. Being unable to do anything to prevent it. Seven warnings, all delivered to the one man who survived.

“Did you ever wonder if he deliberately spared Barrington to be his messenger?” she asked. “To taunt the police.”

“Maybe Jack was still learning,” Kahler said. “He screwed up, and Barrington didn’t die. If anything, that mistake caused him to move on to overkill. He’s making sure now there’s no chance anyone will survive.”

“Have you ever seen Barrington, Kahler?”

“He calls me. He sends me Jack’s letters. He’s meticulous about protecting whatever evidence they might provide, but I don’t meet him, August. Nobody sees him. Not since the bomb.”

“But he always calls you.”

“He thinks he’s obligated to reveal the contents of the notes. They created a pretty strong sense of duty in their boy.”

The Barringtons and their golden boy, their only son and heir. There had been a younger child, she remembered, but something tragic had happened. An accident involving the family swimming pool. Then there had been only one son, the focus of all the Barrington ambitions, and all that very old money.

“Did you ever wonder what it was like growing up as Harlan Thornedyke Barrington IV?” she asked.

“I don’t have that big an imagination.”

She didn’t know much about Kahler’s background, but enough to know there was no old money there. In answer to her question about how he’d gotten into law enforcement, he had told her he’d joined the Marines at seventeen and ended up an MP, but other than that single piece of personal information, Kahler had been as reticent about his own past as about the case he had worked on for the last three years.