Love Her Madly (38 page)

*   *   *

On the first day of Vernon's trial I was passing the metro station on Pennsylvania Avenue. The sky was dark; it had been raining since dawn. When it's raining, my driver leaves me off at the corner fifty feet from the FBI entrance. On Pennsylvania Avenue, rain means he'll need an hour to extricate himself from the traffic. Better I get a little damp than have the driver so tied up.

I was just about to go into my dash mode when a woman came out of the metro and fell in step beside me. She was holding out an audio cassette. I glanced down at it and then I took a better look at her, DC secretary type, dressed neatly in a sky blue suit and an unbuttoned black raincoat. Shoes nice but not terribly expensive, short pretty auburn hair. And new Ralph Lauren sunglasses, a pair I'd been considering because they reminded me of the Texas Rangers issue. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars. Very pricey for a secretary, and she was wearing them in the rain.

She thrust the cassette into my chest and said, “Get this to Vernon's lawyer.”

Her face was pale, she was a little on the thin side of slim, and it took me a full five seconds to recognize her because I'd never seen her forehead before.

I don't remember taking the cassette from her but I did. What I do remember is drawing my weapon and screaming at her to freeze, while she slipped amid the crush of rush-hour bodies all dashing through the downpour. I fired into the air just in case the shot might get everybody to drop to the ground so I could fire a second round into her back.

Nobody dropped to the ground, they just cringed, and I hoped the bullet wouldn't come down and pierce one of their stupid skulls. A very loud explosion went off in the middle of the street. That dropped them. I managed to shove the gun back in the holster, get out my cell phone, and punch in my emergency code before a gang of good Samaritans bowled me over and sat on top of me till a couple of transit cops came running out of the metro and reached me neck and neck with Bobby.

He squatted down and tried pulling people off me.

I said, “Bobby, Rona Leigh Glueck just ran into the metro.”

He said, “Motherfucker,” and got on his own phone as he took off.

I shouted at him, “Reddish brown hair, blue suit, black raincoat…” and then I stopped. It would do no good, and I had to get everyone off me. Once the cops knew who I was, I told them to quit worrying about the need of a bomb squad. The explosion was an M-80 that Rona Leigh had tossed into the road before flying down the metro steps.

She'd managed the perfect stage: picked heavy rain, the perfect
in obscura
moment, created a distraction, and danced the final dance—disappearing into a convenient hole in the ground. Rona Leigh had found a job and she'd obviously become an expert. She made drops for pros.

I was almost as impressed by the action to follow. The metro station, the streets all around it, the streets at all the stops the trains departing the stations were heading for—full of cops. But about as futile as firing my gun. Her wig made it all the way to Bethesda. She'd tossed it into one train but didn't get in herself. Instead, she went through a little doorway set into the concrete wall of the station that opened into a tunnel.
It was locked
was what the poor transit police kept insisting.

The blue suit was in the tunnel. So were the sunglasses. She'd sacrificed them. All that probably happened in the time it took me to get to my office and collapse into my desk chair, wet, a mess, my knees bruised. Delby said to me, “Tell me it wasn't really her, boss.”

“Sorry. It was. Different chin, though, now that I've had a chance to think.”

“Poppy, nobody believes it. Just Bobby. They're all sure you flipped out.”

“Do you believe me?”

“You know that, for sure. Still, you got trouble ahead.”

That's when I became aware of the bump in my pocket. “Delby, have we got an audio cassette player?”

“'Course. This is the FBI. We got everything.”

She went out and came right back with one.

I got the little cassette out of my pocket and dropped it into the machine.

Delby said, “I get a feeling this ain't gonna be John Cougar Mellencamp.”

The first sound we heard was a door opening, and it was followed immediately by Gary Scott's voice. “I'm closed, sugar. Meetin' an old flame. Come back another time.”

Long pause. Just the whir of the tape.

Gary said, “What's that?”

Another pause. “Oh, no. No!”

Then he said, “Jesus Christ. Hey. Please. Please.”

There was a gunshot, a scream, and then the sound of Gary's body hitting the floor. He wasn't dead, though. She'd just dropped him.

He groaned. He pleaded with her. “Rona Leigh, I didn't do anything. Listen to me, you gotta understand.…” He groaned a little louder. “My leg. Damn, my leg. Listen, I'm bleedin' bad here. I can't—”

Rona Leigh said, “Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit.”

Her voice, unmistakably, but with the sentiment and language she'd suppressed for seventeen years until the day she bolted the mission, leaving Jesus behind.

There was another shot. Gary howled like a dog.

Rona Leigh said to him, “I want you to die happy. You are going to be glad to hear what I come to tell you. See, Gary, I read that you believe I didn't suffer when they tried to execute me. Well, you'll be glad to know I did. I was drownin'. I was tryin' to breathe, tryin' to scream, but I couldn't get no sound out like I couldn't get no air in. I was bein' choked, suffocated, same as if there were two hands squeezin' my neck. Then I had some kind of mountain crushin' down on my chest. Felt like my insides were ripped apart. I knew I was gonna die, even though I didn't want to.
I didn't want to die.
I suffered plenty. Just like you. Except you're gonna die, aren't you?”

Then she shot him again.

Delby left the office.

Rona Leigh fired three times more, and Gary was gasping and crying and moaning all at once. There was a rustling on the tape, a bag—the sound of a shopping bag or a grocery bag opening. Gary tried to speak. I could barely make out the panic-stricken words. He said, “What are you doing?”

Then he found the strength again to shout, “No, no, no!” and begged her not to do it, kept begging her until there was a loud thump—the first swing of the ax hitting home.

I listened to Rona Leigh Glueck ax Gary Scott to death.

Then she repacked the bag, and there were footsteps and the splashing of gasoline that went on and on, until finally a match was struck, followed by the
whoosh
of the flame and then her steps running. The tape ended.

I went to the outer office where Delby was sitting, blowing her nose.

She looked up at me. “Where'd you get it, boss?”

I told her.

That was right when my director came in to find out what the hell was going on, so I told Delby she'd better go off and have some coffee. No sense in just sitting there while I played the tape again.

*   *   *

Vernon Lacker would not be tried for the murder of Gary Scott. There would be another venue for him, aiding and abetting the escape of a convicted murderer. The jury, I knew, would take pity on him. Juries will do that. After all, he was bewitched. Also, he thought he was in genuine service to the Second Coming of Christ, an unauthorized mitigating circumstance that carries a lot of weight in the Bible Belt, which was why there was also so much talk of mercy concerning Raymond Tiner and the New Believers.

*   *   *

Joe flew me up the Atlantic coast to Block Island in his little Cessna. He'd been overjoyed when I told him I didn't want to be there alone, that I wanted his company. Most of the cockpit was taken up by his oversized cat carrier, containing Spike, who yowled, pissed, and vomited.

I could tell the days to come—full of fog and salt air—would be ever so relaxing. Probably should have gone to Vegas with the shrink.

Also by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

The Book of Phoebe

Lament for a Silver-Eyed Woman

The Port of Missing Men

Masters of Illusion

An American Killing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith is the author of five previous novels, including most recently
An American Killing,
which was chosen as a
New York Times
Notable Book. She has lived in Connecticut all her life except for two years in Cameroon, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer. She is currently at work on the next Poppy Rice book.

 

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First Edition 2002

eISBN 9781466873179

First eBook edition: May 2014