The Survivors (33 page)

“Hold on, Cal,” Felix said. “
Maybe
it went that way, or maybe not.”

“To hell with that. That's got to be the explanation.”

I looked at Scottie for support, but he seemed as unconvinced as Felix. “I guess so. I mean, I don't know.” His eyes skated away from me. “It's just—it doesn't sound like your mom, giving up like that.”

I said, “So we can't explain everything yet. But we aren't knocking around blind anymore. We've got a story to work with. We need to find out who came to the house that night, and why they wanted to hurt my mother.”

“Or your dad,” Scottie said. “We don't know who they were after.”

“All right, but those are real questions, and I can start asking them in a few hours.” I looked at my watch. “In fact, I need to get home to change my clothes. Ned Bowles is expecting me at eight o'clock.”

Scottie scratched Coop's ears again, so hard the dog pulled away and gave him a questioning look. “I want to go with you.”

“Scottie, I don't think—”

He put his hand up like a traffic cop, so I'd stop. “I'll be OK. I'll do what you tell me. Besides, I think I deserve to go after all the waiting I've done.”

“They could call the FBI, bring them down on us before we could get out of there.”

“That's my risk to take, isn't it?” He stared over my head, the firmest look he could manage.

Coop broke the spell by standing up and shaking from head to toe. We all laughed. “OK,” I said. “You'll need to shave and take a shower. I should get you some fresh clothes, too. If somebody like Ned Bowles is throwing a party, you can bet it isn't casual. Call your landlady, and I'll swing by your house and pick up some things.”

Felix insisted that I eat a sandwich before I left, and then he walked me to the door. Scottie was upstairs shaving.

“I should be back in an hour and a half,” I said.

“Cal, no matter how this all turns out, you need to promise me you'll finish your sessions with Rubin.”

“I thought you didn't believe in what she did.”

“I don't, but that's beside the point. She unblocked something that was locked up for a reason. I think you've been protecting yourself all these years.”

“From what?”

“You just had the worst episode of your life. You were so far gone, you had no reflexes at all. Your heart rate was down to twenty-five beats a minute. The only thing that brought you around was a shot I gave you.”

I rubbed the inside of my arm. “I thought I felt a stick mark. Epinephrine? And you with no license to dispense the stuff.”

“This is no joke. You made it out this time, but if you're not careful, you're going to go down that rabbit hole and never come back. Nobody will be able to get you out.”

“Felix, I've been down the rabbit hole all my life. It's time I found my own way out.”

I turned quickly to go.

“Wait,” he said. “I know I'm not going to talk you out of what you're doing. Now, with what Rubin opened up, maybe it's the right thing. Just—” Felix would never hug me, but he laid his hand on my shoulder. “Don't push too far.”

THIRTY-FOUR

I
grabbed a shower at my apartment and pulled a suit from the closet, midnight blue. I added a dark tie and baby-blue shirt. I looked like ten thousand other guys you'd see on the streets of Washington: lawyers and lobbyists and Capitol Hill hacks. I figured I'd blend right in at a Ned Bowles party.

Twenty minutes later, I rolled up at Scottie's place. Nobody answered when I rang the doorbell. I went around to the back and saw Mrs. Rogansky in the kitchen, feverishly working over an ironing board. I rapped on the window, and she let me in through the back door.

“Dr. Henderson! So good to meet.” Her accent was thick, Russian. A hearing aid dangled in her white hair, and she slipped it into her ear. “Scottie tells me so much about you.”

“It's good to meet you, too. Are these his clothes?”

“Almost done. You sit for a minute? Have coffee?”

“I'll have to take a rain check. We're running late.”

She returned to the ironing board. “A party in Middleburg! Only rich and famous out there.” She glanced at me. “Why do you two go?”

“We have an appointment with a man.”

“Important man?”

I nodded.

“Scottie said so. He said too that you help him with his research. He's on the computers all night, every night.”

She had finished with the clothes and slipped them on a hanger. “Scottie is best tenant I had.” She pointed at the wall oven, which was half torn apart. “He fix that as soon as a new part comes.”

She laid the clothes on the table and stared at me. Her dark eyes were luminous behind her glasses. “This party is something I should worry about?”

I picked up the clothes. “I don't think so. We'll be fine.”

“Scottie . . .” She waffled her hand in the air. “He gets in trouble sometimes around people he doesn't know. You know that?”

I just waited for her to say what was on her mind.

“In his backpack, what he carries. You've seen it?”

“The gun? Mrs. Rogansky, I don't—”

“He thinks I don't know. I see him play with it, like—” She seemed embarrassed to say it. “Like he's shooting people.” She fingered a button on her sweater. “There, I tell you. What you think?”

“I think no guns tonight. Just talk. I promise.”

Her eyes searched me. “OK. You promise. Talk is good.”

Back at Felix's place, Scottie opened the door when I knocked. Felix had taken Coop for a walk. “I think he's checking out that widow again,” Scottie said with a grin. More likely, I thought, Felix didn't want to see us off. He'd said what he had to say and anything more would just stir up trouble between us.

Scottie took the clothes and a plastic bag Mrs. Rogansky had given me and went upstairs to change. He was quick about it. “Can you tie my tie?” he said as he came back down.

The suit was black with wide gray pinstripes; the shoes were high-sheen patent leather. Unknown to me, there had been a hat in the plastic bag, a narrow-brimmed fedora with a plaid band. He had it cocked low over one eye.

“What?” he said.

“You look like you're on the way to break John Dillinger out.”

“My mom used to call this my gunsel outfit.” He held out the tie, which was lime green and four inches wide. “Is the whole thing too much?”

I laughed. “On you, it's perfect.”

When I had the tie knotted, Scottie checked himself in a mirror and pulled the hat a little more off center. “The place is off Lelandsville Road, right?” His backpack was in a chair by the door, and he took out his tablet computer. “I've checked the directions already.”

“You can leave the backpack here,” I said.

“Why?” he said, instantly frosty.

“You know why.”

“It goes where I go.”

“Then it goes in the trunk of the car.”

He sighed and chucked it to me. “Fine. You're the boss.”

“Yes, I am.”

We were headed for Loudoun County, Virginia, the richest county in America. You'd never know it the first few miles off the interstate. We passed ramshackle used-car dealerships and small strip malls, little ranch houses with dogs chained in yards. Then Route 50 narrowed to two lanes, and we were in the country. The houses here were set back a hundred yards from the road. They weren't new; some had been around since the 1700s. This is where the money was, where the absolute upper crust of the Washington area lived. In the newspapers, this area went by the sedate name “horse country,” and the people liked to call themselves “farmers” because they had a barn or two—or three—on their property.

“What do you think he'll be like?” Scottie said.

“Bowles? Smart. Hard to pin down on anything. Beyond that, we'll have to see.”

“Have you seen a picture of him?” He had his tablet, and he tapped it a few times. “There aren't many around.”

He held it up, a candid shot taken on some beach. Bowles was looking out to sea, squinting under a long-billed fishing cap. He was wearing a white polo shirt and white swim trunks. “Is that recent?” I said.

“Last year.”

“How old is he?”

“Seventy-three.”

“He doesn't look a day over forty.”

“That's what the good life will do for you.”

Scottie brought the map program back up and ran his finger around the screen, just playing with it. “Now that you can remember, what do you think happened that night?”

“It's got to be like we said earlier. Somebody came to the house and shot my dad, then convinced my mother to shoot herself—to protect us kids.”

“Do you think it was Bowles? Eric Russo?”

“It could have been a lot of people. And a lot more people might be interested in covering it up. That's why we've got to be careful with what we say tonight, not show too much of what we know.”

“All right. I'll watch it.” He looked out the window for a few seconds. “The thing I keep thinking about is the gun. You saw your mother with it. What I don't understand is how someone got hold of it in the first place, to shoot your dad.”

“Scottie, I don't think—”

“When your mother had it, did she seem to know what she was doing? I mean, know how to hold it and everything?”

My hands were tense on the steering wheel; my fingers were beginning to tingle.

Scottie said, “She must have had it out before the person got there, or there was some kind of fight . . .”

The rushing sound started in my ears, and, with it, his voice drifted off.

I spun back in my mind. The bedroom, counting for hide-and-seek, watching out the window. My mother stepped into the yard. The tingling was all the way up to my shoulders.

“Hey, you missed the turn!”

“What?”

“The turn for Bowles's place was half a mile ago. Didn't you hear me?”