Blowout (38 page)

For the barest moment, Günter simply stared at him. Then he shrugged, and his voice was as empty as the still air itself. “I destroyed him. That is all I need. Whatever the world thinks, it doesn’t concern me.”

Savich said, “What makes you think I won’t tell the world?”

Günter smiled. “Because you’ll be dead, as dead as I will be. Three corpses know the truth. It is enough.”

Sherlock said, “But you weren’t alone in this, were you? Who was the woman with you the night you fired into our house?”

Günter laughed, but his gun never wavered from her chest. “Who cares anyway? That woman in my car was just a drunk I picked up at a bar. She was good camouflage, to help me get through roadblocks.”

“But you know it stops here, Günter,” Sherlock said. “It stops now.”

Günter laughed. “It doesn’t stop until I say it does. I’ve spent enough time with you. I’m going to die, but you’re going to hell with me.”

Ben shouted from behind Günter, “Don’t you even think of shooting or I’ll blow your head off!”

Günter whirled, fired, and kicked out all in the space of a moment. The bullet slammed into the wall not two inches from Ben’s head as Günter’s left foot struck his arm, numbing it instantly, and sending the gun crashing to the floor, skidding toward the front door.

Ben dived at Günter, slamming him onto his back to the hall floor, but Günter’s locked fisted hands smashed hard into Ben’s throat, just as his legs kicked up against his back, throwing him off. Ben fell against the areca palm, gagging, trying to get his breath. Günter fired into the living room, sending Savich and Sherlock diving behind the sofa. Then he fired toward Ben as he rolled away, shattering a beautiful Chinese vase, and sending the palm tree crashing to the entrance hall floor. It was the palm tree that saved Ben’s life. The next bullet shot through fronds, striking so close he could smell the singed material from his jacket sleeve. Günter burst through the front door, slamming it behind him, and leaped down the front steps.

Ben heard Savich shout at him, but he didn’t stop. He grabbed his gun up in his left hand, threw open the front door, and raced after him, Savich three feet behind him.

From the darkness, Jimmy Maitland yelled, “No, hold your fire!”

“There’s no escape, Günter,” Savich shouted. “Agents are everywhere. Stop where you are and drop the gun.”

Savich switched on the front lights, held his SIG in front of him as he looked at Günter. Ben was just to his left, behind a large urn that held an Italian cypress tree. For an instant, their eyes met.

Günter didn’t drop his gun, he shot from the hip, missing Savich by inches. Before he could fire again, a single loud rifle shot pierced the air. Günter whirled about, thrown forward as he slapped one palm against his neck. The last thing he saw was Dave Dempsey stepping from out behind a car at the curb, a sniper rifle aimed at him.

A half-dozen agents came running from their positions, guns aimed at the unmoving body. They walked to where the man who’d wreaked so much devastation lay, unmoving.

There was absolutely no sound for a good thirty seconds. Finally Jimmy Maitland said, “Jesus, am I glad that’s over.”

Ben nodded, stood up. “Sherlock, are you okay?”

“Yes, fine. Don’t worry about me.”

Jimmy Maitland said, “He doesn’t look all that scary now, does he? He just looks like a dead old man with a slack jaw. Nice shot, Dave. And thank you, Ben. You shaved it a little close, but you got him out to us.”

He turned to Savich, who had Sherlock pressed against his chest. “I was watching through the living room window, Savich. When he put that bullet through Sherlock’s arm, I nearly shot him myself then. Okay, I guess it’s time to call Dr. Conrad and get the trash taken away.”

Two paramedics came quickly forward, stepping over Günter to see to Sherlock. Ben looked at Savich, but Savich was focused on his wife.

He turned back and smiled at Dave Dempsey. “That was a good shot, Dave.”

“I guess it’s something for Luther’s family. But not enough. It’s never enough.”

“Ben,” Savich called out, “check him for I.D. Find out who he is.”

Günter lay on the sidewalk on his back, his gun still in his hand. Both Jimmy Maitland and Ben went through all his pockets. They came up with nothing at all, not even a fake driver’s license. Slowly, they both rose. Ben called out, “Nothing, Savich. Nothing at all.”

“It’s not a surprise,” Jimmy Maitland said, staring down at Günter. “He lived with another man’s name and died with no name at all.”

Savich had bared Sherlock’s arm. “The bullet came real close to your knife scar.”

“I’ll be fine. Dillon, before you turn the paramedics loose on me, I think you, Ben, and I should talk. You know we do.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, of course you’re right. Ben, could you come into the house for a minute?”

Ben nodded.

Savich picked her up and carried her inside over her protests, leaving the paramedics to wait in the ambulance for another ten minutes before Savich called them in.

Jimmy Maitland wondered if Savich would ever tell him what the three of them discussed.

TUESDAY NIGHT

I
T WAS JUST
after eleven o’clock when Ben pulled his truck into Margaret Califano’s driveway.

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Callie said. “And you never said a word to me. I could have stayed outside with the other agents.”

“I couldn’t, direct orders from Savich. You’ve been saying that all evening. I guess that means I’ll never hear the end of it, will I?”

“Probably not. But I’ll forgive you since Savich gave me that great inside interview for the
Post
this morning. Coombes is dancing on the file cabinets, high-fiving everyone he runs into, an idiot grin on his face. You said you liked my story, but what do you really think? Did you notice it was above the fold on the front page? Right there with my own byline?”

She was so proud, he smiled. “Yes, I really did like your story. It was excellent. Congratulations. So this means your job is safe?”

“Oh yes. Suddenly I’m valuable to him again. I was relieved to see Sherlock looking back to normal, well, nearly so. Dillon kept going on about the sling.”

“He told me it reminded him of a night he didn’t want to remember. He wouldn’t tell me about it.”

“Maybe I can get it out of Sherlock.” Callie settled back against the seat and closed her eyes. “It’s all happened so fast, I still can’t quite process it, even after writing my story. I’m glad Günter’s dead, but the fact that he picked my stepfather by chance? It didn’t matter which Justice he murdered? Stewart was such a fine man—” She stopped and drew a deep breath.

Ben repeated what he’d been saying over and over to her that evening, “He was crazy, Callie, just plain crazy. He wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. How better to get attention than to murder a Supreme Court Justice, any Supreme Court Justice, and all his law clerks?

“You want to know something else? When he realized that Savich had set a trap for him, he wasn’t about to die ignominiously in an FBI agent’s living room. He wanted to continue his blaze of glory last night, and that meant getting outside Savich’s house to take on a dozen FBI agents trying to bring him down. It was very much in character for him.”

Callie said after a moment, “And you believe he picked up a woman in a bar as camouflage?”

“Being crazy didn’t make him stupid. That was real smart of him. Who’d be looking for a couple?”

“He’d been Günter Grass for so many years,” she said. “I guess he never even knew who he actually was.”

“As Jimmy Maitland said, he used another man’s name in life and died with no name at all. Callie, before you go in, I want to say something. I sure liked that black dress you wore the other night. Can I see you wear it again sometime?”

She gave him a small smile. “I’m moving back to my apartment tomorrow. My mom says now that it’s over, she doesn’t need me with her anymore.”

“Ah.”

“Ah good or Ah bad?”

“Do you know it’s only a thirty-eight-foot walk from my front door to my king-size bed?”

She laughed, leaned over, kissed him on the mouth, and was out of the door of the Crown Vic. “Tomorrow, Ben?”

“Sure. Great. You know, that little black dress of yours would look even better hanging on my bedroom doorknob.”

“What a guy-type visual. Be still my racing heart.” She gave him a little wave and walked up the sidewalk to her mother’s house. He waited until she unlocked the front door and disappeared inside before he drove away.

Callie turned to set the house alarm, wondering why her mother hadn’t armed it when she’d gone to bed. She walked upstairs, and paused a moment by her mother’s bedroom door, listening. Slowly, she pushed the door open and stepped into her mother’s lovely bedroom. The white spread shone stark and cold in the moonlight pouring through the window.

She walked to the bed to make sure her mother was all right.

The bed was empty.

She turned on the lights, searched for a note, then walked to her own bedroom to look for one.

She picked up the bedroom phone to call Bitsy when she saw the blinking message light. She pushed the play button. There was a call from her mother’s manager at the Tyson’s Corner store, one from the dry cleaner, a message to call her lawyer about Stewart’s will, and finally, the last message. “Margaret, this is Anna. Come to Janette’s house right away. It’s an emergency.”

Anna had called an hour and twelve minutes before.

What emergency? Callie started to call, then slowly laid the phone back in its cradle. It was no surprise they were meeting at Janette’s house because there was no family to juggle around at her house since her divorce some ten years before. The five friends frequently met there.

What emergency? Callie didn’t pause, bundled back up in her coat and gloves, and headed out to her car.

Janette Weaverton lived in Emmittsville, Maryland, not more than a twenty-minute drive this late at night.

There weren’t many people on the road, and she made good time. She pulled into Janette’s driveway behind her mother’s Mercedes nineteen minutes later.

Besides her mother’s Mercedes, Callie saw four familiar cars parked in Janette’s driveway.

There were a lot of lights on in the house. Callie walked to the front door, quietly opened it, and stepped into the warm front entrance hall. She eased the door shut behind her. Janette was a minimalist, everything spare, utilitarian. She remembered as a child that Janette had loved girlie-girl stuff, but that had changed after her husband had left.

Callie heard women’s voices as she walked toward the living room. She paused just outside the open door when she heard Juliette’s voice: “And just what are you proposing to do now?”

Callie heard her mother say, “Calm down, Juliette. It won’t help if we all fall apart. It’s been a shock, but we’ll deal with it. Let’s talk about this. We’ll figure out what’s best.”

“But Stewart was your husband, Margaret,” Bitsy said. “How can you be so damned calm about it?”

“What do you want me to do? Shoot her for stupidity? Poor judgment in men? That’s nothing new, is it?”

Anna said, “How can we be certain the FBI are convinced that he acted on his own? Don’t forget he wasn’t alone in that car—”

Margaret said patiently, “Agent Savich said Günter told him it was a woman he’d picked up in a bar, for camouflage. That was the last door and he closed it. He never implicated any of us in any way.” She paused a moment, then said, “Günter told his grand lie to protect you, to protect all of us. It’s all in Callie’s headline story for the
Post.
He committed the murders to show how skilled and fearless he was, that he could even kill a Justice of the Supreme Court in the library itself.”

Janette said, tears thick in her voice, “But he was crazy, deranged, just look at what he did—he should have been killed at the Supreme Court, at Quantico. He was completely out of control.”

Callie stepped into the living room.

Five pair of eyes stared at her.

“Callie!”

“Hello, Mother,” Callie said, then nodded at the four women. Anna, Janette, and Bitsy had been crying. Her mother hadn’t, though she was the one of them who had lost the most. Juliette looked to be in shock. Callie said slowly, “I guess there was a woman involved after all. Which one of you was it?”

It was subtle and automatic. The five women all moved to stand together. For a moment, they all blended, standing shoulder to shoulder, as if they’d closed ranks against her. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?”

“Nothing that need concern you, Callie,” Margaret said. “Like everyone else in the country, we were just discussing that murderer, Günter Grass.”

“He protected one of you, thus protecting all of you when he lied about being alone in this rampage?”

Margaret shot a look at the other four women, watched each of them nod, then turned back to face her daughter. “Listen to me, Callie, because this is the most important thing I will ever say to you in your life.”

Not my mother, please, not my mother.
“I’m listening.”

“One of us was involved with Günter. Naturally she didn’t know he was Günter. He told her his name was John Davis, probably another lie. She had no reason not to believe him when he told her he’d been born and raised in Maryland.” Margaret paused a moment, saw that Callie was closely studying all their faces. “Do you want to know the why of all this tragedy, Callie? All right, I’ll tell you. Did you know that it was Eliza Vickers herself who called me to tell me she was sleeping with Stewart?”

Callie shook her head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“Oh yes. That bitch really wanted my husband. She wondered if I’d sensed he was having an affair, and of course I had. A wife always knows, they say, and it’s true. But I hadn’t asked Stewart for a divorce and she didn’t understand that. So she told me that Stewart had admitted to her that he’d married me because he wanted to be close to you, Callie. Ridiculous, of course, and naturally, I laughed at her.”

“Why didn’t you ask Stewart for a divorce if you knew he was unfaithful to you?”