Ashes (27 page)

Thankfully, just a few days later he was finishing his morning run, was heading back to his van when he heard the thud of hoofbeats on one of the trails. Even as he registered the sound, Richard rode into the lot, on the palomino this time instead of the brown horse. The worried tension had left Richard’s eyes, and Sean knew instantly that things were back on track.

“Anna said you were a runner,” Richard said, “And Doug said I might find you here.” He smiled. “Me, I let the horse do the running.” He patted the palomino’s neck.

“How has your summer been?” Sean walked over and stroked the horse’s velvety nose, though to be honest he’d always been a bit afraid of horses.

“Quiet.”

“Too quiet?”

“No, just quiet.”

“Good.” After a moment he asked, “How’s Anna?”

“She’s fine. Care to sample some of her barbecue on Saturday? We’re having a big get-together. Lots of stuff going on,” Richard said and gave him a wink.

“I’ll be there. Name the time.”

“Any time after noon. See you then.” Richard turned the horse about, then cantered off down the trail into the woods.

* * *

L
abor Day weekend. Sunny skies and a cool breeze to take the edge off the summer heat. Tall glasses of iced tea and lemonade. Barbecued chicken with two kinds of sauce, sweet and spicy. Slices of watermelon for dessert, the kids spitting the seeds at each other. The women showed each other vacation photos, pictures of trips to the Dells and Disney World, lamented the high price of school supplies. A late summer weekend get-together like any other. Save for one thing. The moment when the party’s host gathered a group of the male guests and informed them that plans to take action against the country that had given them this life, plans that would result in the deaths of hundreds of innocents, were back under way.

* * *

S
ean’s assignment was an IRS building two states over, and he went to the state and the town but did not bother to go to the building. He’d been to that building some fifteen years ago, ironically enough, when they’d received threats from the Posse Comitatus. Since then, security had been drum-tight. No hope of the group getting in there. He lingered for a week and a half, enough time to pretend he was looking things over.

He arrived back in Du Lac late on a Friday. The night was heavy with warmth and alive with the sound of crickets. He could not bear to go back to his cheerless apartment. What he wanted was to go to the Blaine house, drink iced coffees with Anna, and watch fireflies. That was impossible; instead he stopped at a roadhouse just outside the city limits. He ordered Scotch and took that outside, sat out on the patio with its splintery floor and its strings of light bulbs overhead. Sat and drank that Scotch and then another, gazing out at the lake. He thought of how very tired he was of waiting, wondered why it bothered him so. It never used to bother him that much. Out on the lake something splashed, a loon sent up its lonely cry. Despite the night’s warmth he shivered. Had Beatty been found yet? And wondered why he wondered, for it was no surprise when an agent was never found; Beatty had, after all, been killed in the line of duty. Yet it troubled him to think that Beatty’s bones would lie forever at the bottom of this lake. Might even be —

Stop it.
This was a different lake, not Deer’s Head, and it didn’t matter anyway. He went inside to the bar, got another Scotch, and when he went back outside found that he was not alone on the patio. Doug MacReady was there.

“Sam!” MacReady’s eyes lit up. “You just got back?”

He nodded. “And you, I take it.”

“Yes. Been a long couple weeks, thought I’d get a beer on the way in.”

“I’ll buy.” All the waitresses had gone home, he had to go inside to the bar to get the beer.

“We’re closing in a few,” the bartender said without looking at him.

“One drink and we’re gone, don’t worry.” He went back to the patio, where MacReady sat, staring pensively at the lake. “How’d it go?” he asked as he handed MacReady the beer.

“Thanks. Went well. I think this is the one. You?”

Sean shook his head. “Looks like a dead end.”

“Too bad. But one is all we need.” MacReady sighed, took several deep swallows of beer. Again he gazed out at the lake. “It was a hard job, Sam. Very hard.”

Sean was intrigued, for he had never seen this sort of mood in MacReady, the ever-loyal and competent assistant. Who probably equated doubt with disloyalty, and had probably never expressed such a thing to Richard. Sean said nothing, thinking that perhaps silence was the way to encourage MacReady to speak.

He was right, for after a moment MacReady sighed again. “It’s hard. I mean, I know we’re doing the right thing but still, to watch all the people go into the building. Because they’re the ones that are going to die, if we’re successful. That was the worst part of Los Angeles, you know. I actually worked there, as a maintenance guy, got stuff set up and everything, and it really bothered me sometimes to see all the people.”

MacReady was the one. All this time he’d thought it was Steve, and he felt annoyance with himself for thinking that Richard would have trusted such an important job to a hothead like Steve. But mostly he could feel anger, like a match touched to a piece of dry kindling, the flame small and slow, but growing hotter.

No, not hotter. Colder.

“You?” Sean said. His tone one of mild interest, even as he felt cold burn its way up from his heart to his brain and his hands.

MacReady smiled, a self-effacing grin. “I thought you knew.”

“No, I didn’t.” Mild wonder, mostly at himself. For being a fool. For thinking MacReady was different from any of the assorted rogues he’d fought and tracked over the years.

“I thought Richard would have told you. You know, I never did much great shakes in high school. Never made the team. Football
or
baseball.” MacReady chuckled. “When Richard asked me to join, you know, it was like being picked for the team.”

Sean's fingers itched, longed to squeeze a trigger, pull a garrote tight.

MacReady stood, walked over to the patio rail. Inside the roadhouse the lights had gone out, the bartender had apparently locked up and left the last two customers to find their own way home. “You know how Richard’s got a way about him. Makes you feel special. When he asked me to make Los Angeles happen, boy.” He smiled. Shook his head as if in disbelief at his own good fortune. “It was like getting picked for the All Stars.”

Sean went to stand beside MacReady. Cold anger burning along his spine, through muscle and nerve, heading toward his brain like a lit fuse. He could feel the weight of his gun in its holster, reassuring.

“I didn’t want to say so, but for a while I wasn’t sure I could do it. I mean, looking at a picture is one thing, saying ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ But when you’re there, seeing the place every day, and the people, get to know the cafeteria workers and the secretaries. That’s different.”

No, not the pistol. Someone might hear.

“I thought Richard was gonna be pissed when I told him this, you know, that I wasn’t sure if I could do it. But he told me that I had to think of the way things were in this country like cancer, and what we were doing was like chemo. That you have to take out some of the good if you want to get rid of the bad, do you see?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”
I’ll give you cancer, you rat bastard.

“I knew you would. You know, Sam, I really wish you’d been with us then.”

His hand went to his belt, to the hunting knife in its leather sheath. Shouldn’t do it, he knew. Too soon.

“It would have been great to have you on that job.”

Fuck it.
He clapped MacReady on the shoulder, a gesture of commiseration that went vise-tight in a second, held MacReady fast while his other hand brought the knife out of its sheath. Shoved the blade into MacReady’s chest, up under the sternum and into the heart in one swift motion.

MacReady blinked, looked down at the knife handle protruding from his chest, then up at Sean. He wore a look not of pain or even fear, but of surprise, as if he couldn’t quite figure out how that knife had gotten there. A look that said
That wasn’t supposed to happen.

Sean leaned close to MacReady, and as he gave the knife handle a twist, whispered in his ear, “Jennifer sends her regards.”

MacReady managed one word.

“...who...”

MacReady fell to the floor, eyes empty and staring at the moon, that look of surprise fixed forever on his face.

T
he plan was for Jennifer and Suzanne to take Matthew Tally and the Reisman kids to the aquarium. But Hannah Reisman went home early on Friday from kindergarten with an upset stomach, and by the next morning the whole family had been laid low.

So it was just Suzanne and Jennifer, in Jennifer’s car, who pulled up to the Tally house. Matthew was waiting for them, his anticipatory grin almost as bright as the sun shining on his blond head. “Dad, they’re here!” he yelled, and Gene came outside. He carried a toolbox in one hand; Jennifer saw wrenches and screwdrivers and less identifiable things, all with a band of white paint on their handles and the letters GT marked in permanent ink.

This day was a celebration of several things, Jennifer mused. Matthew’s birthday, for one. His successful completion, and acquisition, of the Harry Potter book this week. And three days ago, when the third-graders came to the library, a woman came up to Jennifer. She was a little older than Jennifer, and looked rather tired. “Are you Jennifer Thomson?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” said Jennifer, wondering what this was about.

“I’m Ellen Riordan.” The name rang a far-off bell in Jennifer’s mind, and then the woman said, “I’m the regular third grade teacher, just got back this week.”

“Oh, yes. It’s good to meet you,” said Jennifer. “How is everything?”

Ellen Riordan smiled, a bit wearily, but a smile nonetheless. “Better than it was. I was on maternity leave, and things were rough. But the baby and I made it through. Hailie’s at Suzanne Delacroix’s today.”

“I live next door to Suzanne.”

“So she said. The reason I came by is to talk to you about Matthew Tally. He tells me you’ve been tutoring him these last couple months.”

“Yes, I have.” She waited for Ellen Riordan to ask what her training was, what her credentials were, and what made her think she should be tutoring anyway. And after replying with
zilch, Jack Shit,
and
damned if I know,
what else could she say?

“Well, I wanted to thank you. I’m not sure what you’ve been doing, but I know that it’s working.”

Jennifer let out a sigh. She’d been holding her breath and hadn’t even known it. “That’s good to know. And I think you should know, he probably should be tested or something but I think Matthew has dyslexia.”

Ellen Riordan nodded. “No, it makes perfect sense. I should have put things together before, but...” She sighed, spread her hands. “At any rate, thank you. And keep up your tutoring.”

The teacher turned to go, shepherding her charges toward the bus. Jennifer stood, watching them go, and when they were gone, she heard the sound of gentle applause. She turned to see Mr. Bradbury behind the circulation desk, wearing his garden gnome grin and clapping as enthusiastically as his arthritic hands would allow. “Bravo, my dear,” he said. “Bravo.”

When Matthew came for his lesson that day, she asked if he wanted to go to the Vancouver Aquarium to celebrate. He was all for it, especially when she told him that they had a tank full of piranhas there (why there was an Amazon exhibit at a Canadian aquarium she could not even begin to guess). And here they were, and Gene waved to them. “Hi, ladies.”

“Hi, Gene,” they replied in chorus. Jennifer said, “You want to come along? There’s room in the car.”

“Yeah, Dad, they have piranha fish, Miss Jen told me. They can eat a whole cow in, like, a minute.”

“I know, I know, you only told me a thousand times in the last three days.” But it was said with a smile.

“Come on, Gene, tag along,” Suzanne said. Her eyes went from Jennifer to Gene and back again; Jennifer saw this but could not fathom what Suzanne was looking for.

“I can’t. I promised John Proulx out on the Point that I’d get his skiff running again,” Gene said. “Besides, I see fish every day.”

“Well, how about meeting us for dinner tonight?” asked Jennifer. “Six o’clock at the Blue Moose work for you?”

“Oh. Yeah. That sounds good.” He turned to his son. “Be good, and don’t stick your hand in the piranha tank.”

* * *

“I
t’s official,” said Suzanne. “If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a sea otter.”

“I could go for that,” said Jennifer. They watched the sea otters gyre and gimble in the water; a group of schoolgirls were also watching, private school kids in plaid skirts. Every five minutes or so the girls sent up a chorus of squeals, and shrill cries of “They’re so
cute!”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Jen, who’s your secret admirer?”

“What? Oh, the flowers.” They were waiting for her when she got back from the park last Tuesday. White chrysanthemums, lilies of the valley, and something that she did not recognize at first, but after consulting an encyclopedia at the library determined to be sweet alyssum. “I have no idea who sent those.”

“No note or anything?”

Jennifer shook her head. “Not a thing. I asked my sister, my mom, Mr. Bradbury. Denials all across the board.”

Suzanne shrugged. “Well, at least they’re pretty.”

“Yes, they are.” She didn’t tell Suzanne that pretty as the flowers were, there was something disquieting about them. Who sent them, and why anonymously? Perhaps it was just that they arrived on the anniversary of the bombing, but there was something else that bothered her. Maybe it was the choice of flowers, the whiteness of them. They looked like something from a funeral.

“Can we go back to the piranhas?” asked Matthew, who’d been sorely disappointed that no cows were going to be tossed into the tank to be devoured in, like, a minute. He’d been mollified by the sight of a caiman and an anaconda, though.