Up in Smoke (4 page)

Before she could respond the phone rang.

7

Bernie Quaid dashed through the pelting rain into Nevins Hall, a large stone building on the Emerson campus. Just inside the door, Todd Haviland, the governor's campaign manager, was giving Governor Garrett the schedule, stressing times in an attempt, probably futile, to keep the governor from straying and putting them too far behind. Jackson Garrett had a tendency to talk with the people whose hands he was shaking, ask about their lives and get into a one on one.

Todd looked at Molly, the governor's wife.

“I know my part,” she said. “Gaze with stupefied adoration.” Two highway-patrol officers, Philip Baker and Arthur van Dever, flanked Jack as they walked down the hallway. They were tense, focused, surveying the area, ready for anything that might be thrown at them. Whenever they were with the governor they were intensely on, aware, looking for danger, evaluating spots as potential hiding places for lurking assassins, locating means of escape. Somewhere out there was a nut with a gun and when he came they were ready. Bernie thought all that heightened vigilance must have them limp with exhaustion when they came off duty. They escorted Jack to the auditorium and waited in the wings as he walked alone to the podium.

The room was packed with college students, local Democrats, Garrett supporters, a few curious, and probably a few just looking for something to do on a rainy Friday night. Local dignitaries sat on the platform, another highway-patrol officer stood between the press pool and the television cameras. The crowd erupted with applause and began to chant. “Garr-ett, Garr-ett.”

“Can Kansas put on a storm, or what?”

Cheers rang through the room and echoed off the high ceiling. Bernie had never known a politician who let the energy of a crowd cut through his fatigue like Jackson Garrett. The audience seemed a source of strength that fed into some inner elation. As always, he focused on a face in the crowd and spoke to that person, focused on another face, spoke to him and then went to another. By the time he finished, every person in the room would feel Governor Jackson Garrett had touched him or her personally. He sensed his audience and reached a crowd like nobody else Bernie'd ever seen.

“How many of you think people should make money from sick babies?”

Health care. Students didn't have much interest in it, but the older people did.

“This country has the best resources in the world for health care. Our physicians are the best trained and we have the best equipment for dealing with disease, the newest tests and the latest medicines. Who gets the benefit of all this? It's not only the rich who should get the best in health care. Every person in this country should have it.”

He went on to talk about the cost of medicines and what must be done to reduce it so sick people could buy what they needed. When the Governor paused, Bernie froze.
No, Jack, don't do it. No. Not right here in God's country.

To Bernie, God's country was any small town. Its people always knew for a fact that God took a dim view of bright lights, dark bars, expensive restaurants, foreigners, Darwin, new scientific facts, and minorities. God, they were certain, was partial to the big sky, the sanctity of the land, and all that tumbleweed shit. God was also very big on an eye for an eye. If God didn't see to it, well then, they also knew that God takes care of those who take care of themselves and they'd snap up their rifles and their handguns and go after that offending eye.

Leaning over the podium, Garrett was talking as he would to friends. “… when each one of you who has lost a son or daughter, a mother or father, a friend to a cretin with a gun…”

To Bernie's surprise there was some applause mixed in with the boos. Minutes later, Garrett finished as he always did. “With your help and your vote, we'll make this great country an even greater one.”

Troopers tensed to leap into action and, sure as shootin', the governor trotted down the steps from the platform and plunged into the crowd filling the aisle between the rows of seats. Harried officers fought to stay with him. Governor Garrett was the worst kind of nightmare for security people. Without warning, he jumped into crowds, was apt to change his schedule on impulse, and refused to wear a Kevlar vest despite pleading from Phil Baker. Jack took each offered hand, looked at each face, and murmured a comment to each person. He got caught up in it, all the excitement, the ambitions, the dreams, but Bernie thought there was more to it. Almost as if Jack had to prove something to himself. That he wasn't afraid? Making up nonsense, Bernie told himself. The governor just needed to meet people up close to keep himself real. Or maybe punish himself. All the handshaking led to a swollen and painful right hand, so swollen and so painful that he had to bury it in a bowl of ice.

“Governor.” A television correspondent pushed a microphone in Jack's face. “Will your position on gun control hurt you in D.C.?”

Jack reached beyond the reporter for another outstretched hand.

“Governor,” the newscaster insisted.

A thin guy in a gray jacket slid in between him and the governor.

“He's got a knife!”

Bernie wasn't sure what happened next, but all of a sudden, the crowd seemed to shift closer, bumping the thin guy into the governor or maybe the guy lurched toward him. Somehow the governor was shoved back toward the steps of the stage and stumbled.

Oh no. Oh God, no. Bernie eeled his way through the crowd that babbled with confusion.

“I didn't hear a shot.”

“Did you hear a shot?”

“Somebody saw a knife.”

“He was stabbed.”

Art van Dever and Phil Baker threw themselves over Governor Garrett. By the time Bernie had elbowed his way through the milling people, the Governor was on his feet.

“What happened?” Bernie asked.

The thin guy in the gray jacket was being taken away by local cops assigned for just such an eventuality.

“Don't move, sir, paramedics are on the way,” Art said.

“I don't need paramedics,” Jack said. “I'm fine. Just let me finish talking with these good people.”

Two young males in navy blue jumpsuits appeared, asking where he was hurt. They came from the ambulance waiting outside, just in case.

“Damn it, I'm not hurt. I'm fine.”

“Can you walk, sir?”

“Of course, I can walk. Somebody bumped into me and I stumbled over some idiot behind.”

“You don't seem to be putting your weight on your right foot.”

“Yeah.” Jack took a breath. “Maybe my ankle is a little tender.”

“We'll get you to the hospital right away.”

“Oh, for God's sake, I don't need a hospital. Stop at a pharmacy and buy an Ace bandage.”

“You know we can't do that, sir.”

He refused the gurney, but did let Art van Dever lend an arm and joked with the crowd as he limped to the door. Despite his insistence that he was all right, Art insisted on getting him in the ambulance.

Bernie got in the limo that followed. At the emergency room, he found the governor in a cubicle with troopers blocking the entryway.

A stocky man with black curly hair, stethoscope around his neck, was looking at an X-ray. “No break. Bad sprain though. Stay off it.” He looked at the governor. “Going to do that?”

Jack nodded.

“Sure you are.” The doctor sighed. “At least, keep ice on it tonight.”

“That I can do.”

Two birds with one stone. Ice on the ankle, ice on the swollen right hand.

A trooper brought in a classy-looking woman with black hair and a man with hard, flat eyes. Local law, Bernie thought.

Art van Dever introduced them. The female of the duo was Hampstead's chief of police, Susan Wren. Bernie looked at her more closely. Police chief? She had a haughty look about her like you see on models in expensive magazines. The man with her was a guy named Parkhurst. You wouldn't mistake him for anything but what he was. Cop.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, sir,” she said.

The governor shook her hand and held on to it as he glanced up at her. “Wren? Relation to Dan?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “He was my husband.”

“Ah,” the governor said. “I knew him.”

“Tell me what happened tonight,” she said.

Jack told her the same thing he'd told Art. Somebody bumped into him, he stumbled and fell.

“You think it was deliberate?”

“I doubt it. There was a crowd and somebody got too close to somebody.”

“Did you see anyone you know?”

The governor gave her a dry smile. “My family has a farm out west of town. I went to school here. There were people who came just to see what I looked like after all these years.”

He sounded tired, Bernie thought. Todd apparently thought so, too, because he clenched his jaw the way he did when he wanted to move things along.

“If you write a list of everybody you remember seeing, it would be helpful,” she said.

“It's a month from the primary,” Bernie said. “He has a few things on his mind.”

“I understand,” she said and gave the governor a look of her own.

He nodded tiredly. “I'll give it a try.”

The police chief said what an honor it was to meet him, how sorry she was that this happened and promised to do everything in her power to make sure nothing else untoward happened while he was here.

Jack gave a hearty wave to all the people crowded around as he limped out and asked everybody to remember him on election day. He got in the limousine and Bernie slid in beside him.

“What happened back there?”

“I'm not really sure, Bernie. But I got to tell you that big surge of adrenaline rushed right through me. The one I'm always waiting for. I thought, this is it, I'm dead, just because some asshole doesn't like what I think.”

“Who is the guy Art scooped up?”

“Pencil for the local paper. He just had a question and somebody behind pushed a little too close. Probably an accident, but he gets to spend the night being questioned by the highway patrol. And probably Hampstead's chief of police and her trusty sidekick.”

“Who pushed him?”

“How could I know? It was just a crowd.”

“Right,” Bernie said, and wondered if the governor was lying.

*   *   *

Rain poured down in sheets, lightning forked through the black sky. Susan pulled into the parking lot, dashed to the building and in through the door Parkhurst held open. She stopped to take off her raincoat.

“He's in the interrogation room,” Parkhurst said. “State guys had a go at him.”

“What'd they get?”

“Nothing.”

She followed Parkhurst down the hallway and into the interview room. Ty Baldini, reporter for the
Hampstead Herald,
sat on the edge of the long table, feet in tattered jogging shoes, dangling. Late twenties, would have brown hair if it hadn't been shaved so short you couldn't tell what color it was, small silver earring, thin intelligent face, jeans, Emerson sweatshirt with the snarling wildcat on the front. He slid off the table when he saw her.

“What did you do with the knife?” she asked.

“There wasn't any knife!” Ty hauled enough air in though his nose to inflate a dinghy. “How many times do I have to say it? I didn't have a knife. I never saw a knife. There never was a knife.”

“A witness saw you with one,” Parkhurst said.

Ty rubbed a hand across his shaved scalp. “He's lying.”

Parkhurst waited, skeptical.

“Or mistaken,” Ty added in a flash. “Look, I can understand the spooks crawling up my ass but you guys know me. What reason would I have to hurt the governor?”

You could be a secret Republican,” Susan said.

A corner of his mouth twitched. As pissed as he was, getting even that close to a smile surprised her. “I was trying to get a quote for the paper. For the paper,” he insisted, then took a breath and continued with less volume. “I started to ask a question and
boom
somebody barreled into me. I went crashing into him. Next thing I know, twenty-five guns are pointed at my face and they're hauling me off to beat a confession out of me.”

Susan leaned forward and put her palms flat on the table. “Who bumped into you?”

Ty took in a deep breath as though pulling in a big dose of patience. “I don't know. I told them that about ninety times. No matter how much I say it,
I don't know.
A million people were in that auditorium and the governor was working through the crowd shaking hands and—” He shrugged. “You don't think I did anything, do you? I mean, you guys
know
me. You have to know I wouldn't hurt the governor.”

“Who was near you?”

“You're kidding, right? A million people. All milling around and trying to get their hands shaken—” He broke off, looking puzzled. “Shook—?”

“You were there for the governor's speech?”

Ty nodded.

“Was there anybody in the crowd who stood out in any way? Anyone you noticed for any reason?”

“No. I don't know. I wasn't looking. I was focusing on the governor. He's some speaker, you know? It was just a crowd. A bunch of faces jammed together. Most of them damp because it was pissing rain. All excited about seeing the governor and—”

“What?” Susan said.

“These people had to pay money to get in—”

“Ty,” Susan said with little patience, “would you just tell us what it is you're seeing in your stare and get it over with?”

“They had to pay, right? Because this was a fund raiser and so mostly whoever came would be for the governor, maybe some came to boo, but not many, because who would pay money just to—”

“Ty!”

“Oh, yeah, right. There was one person who was just watching. No reaction. Didn't cheer, didn't boo. Just watching. Like he was waiting, you know?”