No Safe Place (62 page)

For uncounted moments, Sean drove toward it, deeper into the park. He felt the darkness close around him.

Cautiously, he steered down a hill, then up again, afraid to stop. The bridge was closer now, more visible. Soon, he sensed, the park would end.

To his right he saw another sign: “Fort Point.” Beside it was a smaller road, dipping steeply.

Hesitant, Sean turned.

Winding down the side of a hill, the road traced the edge of the bay. At its foot, Sean saw a large prisonlike rectangle by the water’s edge, its backdrop the massive concrete pillars of the bridge. In the beam of his headlights, the dark shape beside the building became a parking lot.

There were no other cars.

Sean parked in the shadow of the bridge. He still could not look at Kate.

As he opened the door, a chill wind swept through the pilings. Sean shivered, lonely in this strange place; the only sounds were the cars on the span high above him, the harsh current slamming against rocks.

A memory came to him, from a film. Alcatraz was in the
middle of this bay: no one could escape from it—the current, too swift, would sweep the strongest swimmer through the bridge and out to the Pacific.

Kate.

Circling the car, he opened the passenger door. She lay there, face averted, as if she had fallen asleep.

Pausing, Sean inhaled. Then he lifted her from the car, awkwardly cradled in his arms. He felt sick again, weak. Sweat chilled on his face.

He could not help this, Sean told himself. She would have betrayed him—no, betrayed the cause in which he was God’s soldier. Sometimes even bystanders must choose, and sometimes they must die.

He stopped, panting, at the edge of the rocks.

The water swirled beneath them, twenty feet below. For a moment, he did not want to let her go.

At last he loosened his grip. As if by her own volition, Kate slid from his arms and plummeted into the bay.

Tears blurred Sean’s vision again. Then he saw her far below, a vague form, at first swirling, and then slowly, half submerged, drifting inexorably toward the pillars of the bridge.

Sean turned away.

His mission was still before him, paid for with her blood.

He locked the car and walked away into the dark. Half lost, he retraced his route by instinct. Several hours later, hungry, sick, exhausted, he at last heard the traffic sound and then found the mouth of Lombard Street again—a lone man, the blood and vomit on his army jacket concealed by the dim neon light.

In the first red streak of dawn, Sean reached the motel.

Facing Nate Cutler, Kerry was gripped by the ironic thought that, six hours earlier, Lara had sat where the reporter sat now.

It was seven a.m. The time suited both their purposes—neither wanted the press to know. Nor could Kerry do this any later: five hours and four hundred miles away, in San Francisco, he had another speech to give. But that could not matter now, any more than Kerry, sleepless, could dwell on the hopelessness he had felt in the hours after Lara left his suite. Survival is our most basic instinct, he thought with a certain bleakness, no matter how dismal our life may seem.

He let the silence stretch, Nate’s question linger unanswered.

With some satisfaction, he watched Cutler’s own discomfort: the nervous rubbing of the fingers of one hand, a defensive look in the intelligent dark eyes behind the wire-rim glasses. At Kerry’s insistence, the two men were alone.

“Let me understand this,” Kerry said at last.

“You’ve gotten some notes from a psychologist who—by her own admission—has violated her legal obligation of confidentiality to advance her own political agenda. You’ve stolen my cell phone records. You’ve been telling people—though you can’t know this—that Lara Costello and I were lovers. And you’re doing all this, among other reasons, because you’re worried about
her
professional ethics.”

Nate seemed to tense. “Are you going to answer the question, Senator?”

“Are you?” Kerry asked, and then his voice became sardonic. “Oh, I’ve forgotten. You’re draped in the First Amendment, like a communion dress. So nothing you do
matters. But I’m
accountable to you for every aspect of my life, no matter how private—”

“She was
here
,” Nate interjected. “Last night.”

Kerry gave him a long, chill look. “Was she, now?” he answered. “And you’re here this morning. Just think of the implications.”

Briefly, Nate flushed. “Were you having an affair?” he persisted. “I need a quote.”

With exaggerated patience, Kerry looked at his watch, then into Nate’s face again. “No,” he said at length. “I hope that’s not too upsetting.”

Nate leaned forward, taut. “Then how do you explain this memo, describing in detail Lara Costello’s anguish over aborting
your
child?”

Imagining Lara’s solitude then, her horror at this betrayal now, Kerry fought his own anger. “I don’t,” he answered with a fair show of calm. “I didn’t write it. And I can’t begin to explain anyone who would give this memo to
you
.”

Nate clasped his hands in front of him. “We have records of long-distance calls from you to her, at all hours of the night. We have neighbors who saw you leaving her place in the morning. Others who saw her leaving
your
place.”

Kerry fixed him with the same unblinking stare. “We were friends,” he said. “And I liked her very much. You did too, I thought.”

Nate sat straighter. “I’m not a candidate,” he answered. “And I didn’t stay at her place, or she at mine.”

Kerry gave him a cold smile. “Well,” he said, “that’s a relief. All of it. As for me, if what you
do
have—phone calls and visits—is news, print away. This race has been focused on the issues for far too long.”

Nate shook his head—refusing, Kerry saw, to rise to the bait. “Do you deny, Senator, starting an affair with Lara after the correspondents’ dinner?”

“An affair? Yes, I deny it. For the second time, and for the record.”

“You were
seen
. Leaving Lara’s building the next morning, still wearing a tuxedo.”

Kerry stood. “What’s the question? Where I rented the tuxedo?” His tone became cutting. “In case you haven’t noticed,
I’m busy. The question was whether Lara and I were lovers. I’ve answered it. I’m not going to account for every UFO her neighbors might have seen.” His voice flattened. “If that’s the price of public office, I refuse to pay it. Maybe Mason will.

“We’re through here, Nate. I have only one more thing to say to you.” He paused again, his words low and emphatic. “I don’t expect much for myself. I don’t expect my political opponents to be any better than they are. But I expected better from
you
than what you’re doing to Lara.”

Despite himself, Nate found that the words—delivered with plain anger and contempt—stung him. He stared up at Kilcannon.

“You talk about issues,” he snapped. “Abortion is a central issue in this because you’ve helped make it one.

“I didn’t ask for this story, Senator. But if it’s true, you’re either a hypocrite who chose to sacrifice a ‘life’ to your ambitions, or unable to separate your own distaste for
Lara
’s choice from abortion as a broader question.”

Kilcannon considered him in silence, his wiry frame quite still now. “Or neither,” he said at last. “And you can never know. So it comes down to a matter of conscience, Nate—first mine and now yours.

“You can rationalize this as news, just the way you have. But you also know all the pressures to rationalize it that
aren’t
about news—that magazines like yours are losing out to newspapers and television, that tabloids have lowered the standards until it’s hard to find them, that scandal sells more advertising space than articles on the budget.” Kilcannon paused, as if for emphasis. “That this ‘story,’ if you print it, stands to benefit your career as surely as it will destroy Lara’s. And, perhaps, mine.

“You know what kind of person she is. And you know—at the least—that I’m not unstable, uncaring, corrupt, a substance abuser, or any of the other things that clearly
would
affect what kind of President I’d be.

“If I were Richard Nixon, and using the power of government to subvert the law—
then
, you’d have an obligation to print the truth, and nothing you did to uncover it
would be too much.

“But
this
?” Kilcannon paused again, shrugging. “This isn’t just about who I am, Nate. It’s about what ‘news’ should be, and who and what
you
are.”

Nate regarded him in silence.

Gazing down at the reporter, Kerry felt his anger drain, recalled again how exhausted he was. The self-righteousness left him, replaced by the knowledge of his own failings, his lies, the image of Lara, still so present in the room.

In a quiet voice, Nate asked, “Are you telling me it
is
true, Senator? But that we shouldn’t print it in good conscience?”

For a moment, Kerry wanted to answer honestly, as one human speaking to another. But this was about far more than him, and he knew too well that his plea for reason would instead become part of Nate’s cover story.
They’re not your friends,
Kit Pace was fond of saying.
They’re not even an audience.

“What I’m saying,” Kerry answered simply, “is that it never happened. Your conscience is your own concern.”

Nate watched his face. And then, ambiguously, he nodded.

“You’ll excuse me, then,” Kerry said. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

The reporter stood to leave. Nate had the grace not to thank him.

Afterward, Kerry sat alone, quite still, took some minutes more to refocus on the speech in San Francisco. Then Kevin Loughery knocked on the door, and Kerry’s public day began.

Disoriented, Sean waited for the bus on Lombard Street.

His stomach felt as though it had hemorrhaged; his jacket, still damp from his frenzied efforts to remove Kate’s blood with a wet cloth, seemed to draw the morning chill into his bones. The cold reminded him of those last moments in Boston, breath misting in the air, as he wondered if he could take a life.

Five days now, five deaths. He could still feel Kate’s warm skin beneath his fingertips.

There had been no choice. He was the protector, the shepherd: with all his heart, he wished that Kate could understand. Perhaps today he would give meaning to her death.

The cold and fear made him shiver. He was alone, and enemies surrounded him. The Secret Service. The security
check.

The magnetometers. The protective shroud in which Kerry Kil-cannon escaped God’s judgment.

The street in front of him appeared as swatches of reality—half-noticed cars, an old man walking into a coffee shop with a newspaper in his hand. Sean kept his head down. How much longer would it take them to realize that Kate was missing, to find her car?

Three hours to go …

At any moment, the police could trace him from Boston to here. Perhaps they already had; one computer check—nine damning numbers—and the Secret Service would discover him.

A bus rumbled to a stop in front of him and, with a hydraulic whisper, opened its doors.

Lara sat with her cameraman on the pool bus as the motorcade cruised toward the airport. She made no effort to chat with him.

Kerry was somewhere ahead of her. Today would be hellish: spent in his presence, a few feet away, both pretending that there was nothing between them, that last night had never happened.
I’m not even in my life anymore,
she thought. All that seemed real was
him
, and how impossible
they
were.

Leaning her head back against the seat, Lara steeled herself.

Work was her salvation, she decided. Not its meaning—its details: all the focus the pool required; listening for quotes; scribbling notes; distributing morsels to the press corps; preparing to react to some terrible mischance. A series of rote steps, which she must treat as if it were a drill that had no human meaning. And then another day would have passed.

Idly, Lara touched the chain around her neck—the press pass, the service tag—and then the ID pin on her blazer.

Two more days, and she would escape. But to what? More regrets, more sham, more days and weeks of anxiety, which would end, if at all, only if Kerry lost or withdrew. To the certainty of being hunted, watched, her past fingered casually by any reporter assigned to investigate their secret. Somehow she would have to withstand it; she could not snap as she had last night, with Nate.

At least
he
was not in the pool, she told herself with bitter humor …

I could
hit
Nate,
she suddenly thought.
Why couldn’t I have
held
Kerry and let him hold me? When we’ll never be alone like that again.

Lara closed her eyes to ensure that she would not cry. When she was a semblance of herself again and looked around her, they were entering the airport.

At the sterile outbuilding for chartered planes, the Secret Service swept the press again.

The
Shamrock
sat alone on the runway, dull silver in the sunlight. Nate watched the pool join the usual contingent of cops and agents; among them, Kerry Kilcannon moved like a magnet that drew a swarm of followers toward the steps of the airplane.

Hastily, Nate went to the pay phone and called Jane Booth again.

She was in. “I got your message,” she said in a clipped voice. “Do you believe him?”

Nate glanced over his shoulder. A few feet away, Lee McAlpine was chatting idly with Sara Sax, pretending not to watch him. “No,” he said softly. “He won’t—can’t—respond to all this stuff that looks funny, except to say we’re contemptible for digging it up. But he’s right that we can’t
know
.”

“So,” Jane answered, “we’re going to have to decide whether we can go with what ‘looks funny’—a counselor’s contemporaneous notes, sightings at odd hours, scores of late-night phone calls, Kilcannon calling to her through the door …”