The Ties That Bind (13 page)

"Let's not be humble, Gail," Fiona said.
"You followed your hunch."

"She had followed Barker," Gail explained,
growing expansive. "Then she stood by the window, and saw Phyla. She
wasn't aware of anyone else watching. They were otherwise engaged in the
festivities."

A number of questions crowded into Fiona's mind, questions
she would have to ration out cautiously.

"She apparently didn't know about Phyla's fate and I
didn't tell her. In fact, I said I was looking for the woman as a witness in
another case. I wanted to leave her with the impression that Barker was peripheral.
I did, however, caution her not to call him."

"So Barker is still in the dark?"

"I wanted to consult with you first. It's a
confrontation that we should do together," Gail said. She looked at her
watch, as if signaling that they should be interviewing Barker as soon as
possible.

"In the morning when we're both fresh would be
fine," Fiona said.

"He'll be fresh as well, Fiona" Gail said with
some disappointment.

"I do want to be there and I can't make it now."

"You don't think it's a priority issue?"

"He's not going anywhere, Gail."

But Fiona was, her mind on tonight's confrontation with
Farley. She needed to make that connection before meeting with Phelps Barker.

"I really think we should hit him when he least
expects it."

"I'm sorry, Gail. Besides, I don't think the Chief
will authorize the overtime."

It was yet another statement that could be categorized as a
little white lie. It was true that the Eggplant was being very stingy with
overtime, in fact, penurious. To grant it required paperwork and justification.
Yet in high-profile cases like this one, he would be open for persuasion.

"I take full responsibility. Tomorrow morning first
thing."

Gail pondered the idea for a moment, then shrugged with
resignation.

"Whatever you say," Gail said.

Fiona began to gather up some of the papers on her desk
prior to leaving. She had to go home to dress. It would not do for her to
approach Farley wearing clothes that looked as if she were on duty. The meeting
had to be casual, coincidental. She had to look the part.

But there was a question that could not wait.

"Do you think he did it?" Fiona asked.

Gail's long graceful fingers stroked her chin as she
considered the question through a long pause.

"Can't say, Fiona. No record. No bad stuff. Not
officially. But who knows? The thing is, we've put him where the action is and
that's something."

"We can't deny that," Fiona agreed.

"Neither can he," Gail snapped.

Fiona nodded and their eyes met. Gail could not hide her
annoyance.

"People carry dark secrets inside themselves,"
Gail said, as if she were addressing someone unseen. Fiona felt suddenly
vulnerable, the cliché hitting home, as if she were transparent to the probing
intuition of Gale Prentiss.

"Tomorrow then," Fiona said, forcing a smile,
starting to leave the office.

"I'll set it up," Gail said, reaching for the
phone.

"Do that," Fiona sighed. But before she moved out
of the squad room into the corridor, she looked back briefly. Gail Prentiss was
hunched over her desk speaking into the phone. If body language was accurate,
it revealed a woman determined, obsessed with an idea, single-minded, perhaps
fanatic. She had seen that kind of tenacity before. Sometimes in herself.

Gail Prentiss was going after Phelps Barker's jugular.

The public rooms at the State Department consisted of a
large ballroom and a number of exquisitely appointed salons created from
donated antiques.

Fiona entered with Harrison Greenwald, whom she had met in
front of the building. Wearing a short cocktail dress, she was appropriately
decked out for the event, totally transformed from the suited blandness of her
police work clothing. Harrison looked distinguished, his graying curly hair
blending nicely with his white shirt and striped blue tie.

She allowed herself to be cheek-kissed, the accepted Washington
form of social greeting between men and women. It was irritating to discover
that even this harmless touching of flesh on flesh made her cringe. She hoped
Harrison had not noticed, but he was an astute man and she could tell from the
suddenly saddened look in his large brown eyes that he had picked up her
signal.

"Just bear with me, darling," she said in a
comment meant not to be specific to the kiss, but a general assessment of her
condition. "It will pass. I promise you."

He nodded without conviction and they proceeded to the
elevator, his usual ebullience muted. Upstairs, the rooms were crowded. The
event was apparently in honor of a number of prominent judges from Russia's
highest courts, who were currently touring the States and had alighted in
Washington to be lavishly entertained by their American peers.

They entered through a reception room where a receiving
line consisting of honored guests and the hosts of the evening, Farley Lipscomb
and his wife, were suitably placed. They greeted the steady stream of guests
with practiced ease. The Lipscombs were the last on the line of seven, busily
attentive to each guest who paused briefly to shake hands and utter the
appropriate greeting and small-talk niceties.

As she moved along the line, a fist seemed to close on her
chest, her knees shook and the remembered pain of that awful afternoon
palpitated her sphincter muscle. She felt beads of sweat roll icily down her
back and, oddly, moisture sprouted on her scalp, dampening her hair.

She must have changed color as well. Harrison, moving
behind her in the line, asked: "Are you okay, Fiona?"

"Of course," she snapped back at him, then
turning, forced a smile. "I'm fine."

"Good," he said, not entirely convinced as he
inspected her face. It hurt her to be unduly cruel to him, a man she adored,
and who had been a kind and considerate friend and lover. Please, she begged
him silently, endure this.

They moved first from Russian to Russian, the majority of
whom smiled politely, although two attempted a brief conversation in badly
broken English. She felt herself growing faint as she approached the Lipscombs,
mightily fighting with herself to remain upright, to stay cool.

She passed through the line like a robot, forcing a smile,
watching Farley peripherally. She was already feeling the spell of his flashing
azure eyes. Actually, she had forgotten their power. They seemed to magnetize
their images, as they watched, intense and focused, mysterious and predatory
behind his high cheekbones. Once, they had the power to arouse her to an erotic
heat seldom experienced since.

Although his hair had become steel gray and the lines had
deepened around his mouth, his Prussian posture had remained ramrod straight
and she was certain that his vanity had prodded him to maintain an exercise
program that kept his muscles hard. As she moved closer, she imagined she could
still ingest his distinctive aura. Her knees weakened as she moved forward.

Yet, for a brief moment, she sensed the faint prod of
forgiveness, as if she was willing to accept blame for what had happened to
her. Hadn't she consented, perhaps wishing for the pain, as if his infliction
of it was as necessary as her surrender? And suddenly he was there, tall and
straight, his glance like blue searchlights boring into her, heating her brain,
rendering her mute.

Her throat constricted. She literally found her vocal
chords paralyzed.

"So good to see you again, Fiona," he said
smoothly, betraying not the slightest hint of anything resembling heat or
discomfort or, especially, guilt. It was the rooting of her feet into the
ground that saved her from toppling. But it was the touch of his flesh, the
hated touch, as if it were maggot-ridden, with running pustules that recalled
the old abuse, the humiliating agony, the whirring sound of that terrible spear
of pain that recalled the moment.

"Been a while, Farley," she said, recovering her
sense of place. "Farley", not "Judge," spoken through tight
lips, was, she hoped, the message that carried the still festering depth of the
old anger.

"Has it?" he replied with polite indifference,
still smiling, exhibiting not the slightest tinge of discomfort as he kept his
eyes focused on hers, his smile thick with practiced ingratiation. His
expression showed no recall, no history, a blank slate of memory, as if she had
been just another slab of flesh on his sexual cutting block.

"It's really wonderful seeing you again," he
said, trying to pass her off with the slightest nudge toward Letitia Lipscomb,
who was just winding up the greeting of a portly man she recognized as a
Cabinet member.

Only then, panicked by the briefness of their meeting, did
she find the words that she hoped might make some impact on him. Deliberately,
she resisted his attempt to move her toward Letitia.

"I'm actually a cop now, Farley. Homicide division
here in DC," she said, trying to arrange her features in a way that might
suggest suspicion. He reacted as if he hadn't heard, his eyes already drifting
to Harrison, who stood behind her.

"How nice," Letitia Lipscomb said, as Fiona
reluctantly moved in front of her. Lips met cheeks in a perfunctory greeting.

"You're looking wonderful, Fiona."

"Thank you, Mrs. Lipscomb."

Letitia Lipscomb was the controlled social expert that she
always had been, at the very top of her calling as the wife of a Supreme Court
justice.

As she stood before her, Fiona's mind crowded with possible
questions. Did he practice these abominations on you? Did you know about him
and me? Have you any idea that the man you share your life with is a perverse
monster? Or, more specifically, was he with you Saturday night?

What ironies lay just beneath the surface of these mental
meanderings. The persona her husband showed the world, which was reflected in
his well-reasoned articulate decisions, was of a man tuned in to compassion,
the leading liberal thinker on the Court, great and devoted friend of her
gender, more giving on the issue of human rights for women than any other. The
right to choose, the right to equal compensation, toppler of barriers. A
sadist? A sexual deviate? A murderer? Who could possibly believe that?

"It is so nice seeing you again," Letitia
Lipscomb said, nudging her forward, turning to engage Harrison, coming up
behind her. Letitia did not break her stride, concentrating her attention on
Harrison. When he had been run through the line, they moved to the ballroom and
into the milling crowd.

A groaning buffet graced one wall of the ballroom. At a
spot directly across from the buffet was a lectern on which was a microphone
for the use of the speakers.

"Why are we here?" Harrison asked.

"I thought it would be fun," Fiona began,
unsuccessfully avoiding Harrison's skeptical glance. "Scratch that."

"A case?"

Fiona nodded, feeling uncomfortable. For a brief moment,
dismissing the idea almost as soon as it surfaced, she contemplated a modified
form of confession to Harrison Greenwald. On rare occasions, mostly in moments
of post-coital serenity, she had offered confidences about her life, always
edited with tact and caution.

Harrison was one of the those philosophizing Jewish men, an
over-analyzer of psyches, especially his own. His wife and he had separated
because of career displacements. She had been a doctor involved in research at
UCLA. Childless, they had apparently simply drifted apart. Separate agendas had
created separate lives, which indicated to Fiona that their affection and love
for each other was not enough to hold them together.

"She has a fine mind," Harrison had concluded,
meaning his wife. Fiona guessed that they had probably talked their way out of
loving, intellectualized their relationship, leaving passion bereft. What
Harrison needed and Fiona provided was an attentive ear, a good sense of humor
and the experience of a strongly sexed woman, which he seemed to have missed
completely. To be deprived of the sexual feature of their relationship was
undoubtedly cruel and inhuman punishment as far as he was concerned.

What he gave her, aside from the complete cooperation of
his body, which she acknowledged was beautiful, with a level of remarkable
endurance that suited her perfectly, was a kind of soothing, fatherly wisdom
and, ironically, the fruits of a fine mind. He did not have Dr. Benson's
natural compassion, but he was able to articulate ways to face fate and its
vicissitudes.

This was something that her father had once provided, the
sense of moral protection, the understanding of life's foibles and how to meet
the challenges of one's own vulnerability. Fiona had adored her father, and all
the men in her life since his passing years ago were a replication of him in
some form or other. If there were sexual implications, she did not acknowledge
them as such. In this, perhaps, was the root of her tight bonding with Gail
Prentiss.

The most admirable thing about Fiona, as articulated to her
by Harrison, was her honesty, her forthrightness and the logical way in which
she expressed herself. Unlike many of Fiona's suitors, who hated the fact that
she was a police detective, Harrison reveled in it and showed a deep interest
in those cases whose details she shared with him. He was far enough removed
from the process so that her revelations would not be considered a violation of
police procedures.

"Do we have a suspect here?" Harrison said,
putting a hand up as if to shade his eyes, while rotating his head in a mock
search.

"I'll explain," she said. "I promise."

"Everything?"

"That, too."

She took it, as she knew he would, as a commitment. What it
required was a build-up of courage. They grazed at the buffet table and picked
up glasses of white wine, standing around while they ate and observing the
surroundings, speaking little. Harrison must have known she was concentrating
deeply. She needed, more than ever, to instigate a confrontation with Farley
Lipscomb.

It would be a chore to engage him, she realized.
Undoubtedly, he was playing the game of indifference. She allowed herself to
believe that it was a conscious pose of shrewd evasion.

There had to be a way to draw him out, create some litmus
test of his guilt ... or innocence. Seeing him, after recovering from this
brush with her own vulnerability, had forced her to clear her mind of all
extraneous hubris. She must concentrate on jarring him out of the clever facade
the had erected, rattle his cage, cause him to react.

She watched him walk to the microphone, smooth and
confident, in full possession of himself, the wise prince to be fawned over and
lionized. He knew how to handle that role well. His persona seemed created
especially for the purpose.

Fiona recognized the under secretary of state, who had come
in late by a side entrance, a man of lesser presence than Farley, bringing with
him the laudatory words of introduction while Farley Lipscomb stood modestly to
one side. After a burst of applause the associate justice made the customary
self-effacing remarks and bade welcome to his Russian friends, lifting his
glass, his voice smooth, its timbre silken.

He was so good at it that Fiona found it difficult to
superimpose this other image, the one that she carried with her, the laughing,
sneering monstrosity, delighting in her defilement, urging her on to a
disgusting refrain as he plunged the hard, vibrating object inside of her,
ordering her to relish the pain, to love the pain, to feel the pleasure of the
pain.

A film seemed to descend on her vision, which she found
difficult to blink away, and Farley finished in a misty cloud. She had lost the
content of the windup of his speech, but by then she had begun to take command
of herself again. I am a cop on the trail of a killer. Nothing less than that.
Alright, there was a lot more, and she would use that anger to prod her action.
Hatred, she had learned, was a great motivator, especially when it was
personal, the target clearly defined.

After a reciprocal toast by one of the Russian judges, the
formalities were declared over and the socializing began in earnest. Fiona
watched Farley move through the crowd, working the room with practiced
efficiency. Harrison had met a colleague and was deep in conversation, although
his eyes followed her protectively.

She insinuated herself into the wave of people sliding like
a pulling tide toward the associate justice as he moved against it, dividing
his attention appropriately to each person in turn. His wife moved in her own
orbit, a master of brief small talk, as she passed from person to person.

Although Fiona fixed her stare on the oncoming Farley, he
made no sign of recognition until he was directly in front of her. Lifting his
eyes, he smiled generously, showing no sign of anxiety, an unruffled presence
soaking up the plaudits of the crowd.

She had calmed down by then, steeling herself for what she
knew would be a battle of wills. Tenacity, she realized with heroic intensity,
would be her only real advantage. She would surely be outgunned by his
deviousness, his intimidating cleverness, and, of course, the power of this
reputation and mesmerizing persona.

But nothing, nothing was going to impede her confrontation.
In a split second she had decided to go directly to the heart of the matter.
Risk everything. Under the spell of that compulsion, she felt helpless.