Free Fall (59 page)

"I'll expect to hear of my appointment on the news tonight," he said as Beamon fell into step behind him.

His tone was dismissive.

Darby Moore bent her knees and used her entire body to throw the backpack into the bed of her pickup. It hit the back of the cab with such force that the entire vehicle rocked on its worn-out suspension.

"He's going to be president?" Her voice was nearly a shout, startling in the silent expanse that passed for Tom Sherman's front yard. She grabbed a water bottle off the ground and dumped it out into the fire ring at her feet.

"That's the best you could do? Three of my best friends in the world are dead and he gets everything he ever wanted?"

"Not everything," Beamon said.

"I told you. Tom will completely control him. I don't think you could ever understand how frustrating and humiliating that is for a man like David Hallorin. It's almost a fate worse than death."

She lifted a cooler off the ground and Beamon stepped forward to help her, but she jerked away.

"Almost worse than death."

He shrugged but didn't say anything as she struggled under the weight of the cooler and shoved it violently into the truck. When she turned back around, she seemed to have gained control over some of her anger.

"What do you think, Mark?"

The truth was, he didn't know what to think. What he knew was that he felt dirty.

"I guess I think I would have liked to see him go down in flames.

I would have liked to have had an opportunity to put a bullet in his head. I would have liked to pull his fingernails out with a pair of pliers ... "He looked down at his feet and kicked a half-burned stick into the damp fire ring.

"Look, I know it sounds lame, and I can't believe I'm about to say it, but there were bigger issues that had to be considered. I guess ... I guess it's a fairly gray piece of justice."

Darby tossed the last of her gear into the back of the truck and slammed the gate shut.

"I'd have died a horrible death without your help, Mark," she said without looking at him.

"I guess I shouldn't be bitching.

You saved me and now you're giving me my life back. I didn't think I'd ever be free again." "Why don't we call it even, then," he said, sliding a small knapsack off his injured shoulder and holding it out to her.

"What's this?" She unbuckled the straps and peered into it.

"Oh, my God!"

"There's a quarter of a million dollars in there," Beamon said, watching her paw through it.

"You need to get lost for a little while. Hallorin's not after you anymore, but the cops are. Give me a couple of months to get that straightened out."

She buckled the straps again and shook her head.

"I can't accept this."

"Take it, Darby. It's Tom's money. He wants you to have it, and believe me, he won't miss it."

She looked uncertain for a moment and then tossed it into the truck with the rest of her gear.

Beamon smiled. Most people would consider that much money worthy of riding up front. Maybe there was still hope for her yet. Maybe she would be able to forget the lessons she'd learned over the past two months and return to being the terminally optimistic young explorer that she was supposed to be.

"I don't know why, but I think I'm going to kind of miss you," she said, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around him.

"Not too tight, I'm still an injured man, you know."

She pulled back and smiled.

"Make yourself happy, Mark," she said, and kissed him on the cheek.

"I know you've got it in you."

He put a hand on her shoulder when she turned away, stopping her for a moment.

"This is over now, Darby. Nothing else can be done. Put it behind you and make yourself happy, too, okay?"

It was the first snow that had fallen in D. C. all year.

Only about an inch of coverage so far, but the flakes were the size of a man's thumb and the lazy path they were taking to the earth seemed to be getting more and more direct. The cotton-filled air seemed to swallow sound, making the voice of the priest standing only a few feet away a soft, unintelligible drone.

Attendance could be generously described as spotty. Besides Beamon and the priest, only two people had decided to brave the weather to attend Roland Peck's funeral. One was his wife, who looked like she probably never missed an opportunity to wear black leather. The other was a slightly stooped old man with a shocking white beard whom Beamon didn't recognize. They all stood silently around the snow-dusted coffin, positioning themselves to maintain the maximum physical distance from their fellow mourners.

The priest raised the volume of his voice a bit, invoking God and humanity in a general way that made it obvious that he had never had the displeasure to meet the guest of honor. Beamon took a couple of steps backward until the eulogy once again faded into a quiet garble.

Beamon had been forced to talk to Roland Peck on a number of occasions after his boss had finally completely caved to Tom Sherman's demands.

And every time he did, he noticed that the little man slipped a little closer to insanity. Peck hadn't been able to accept that anyone could control David Hallorin, a man who, depending on the day, he seemed to think was either his father, God, or the emperor of the galaxy.

Tom Sherman had used his considerable powers to try to keep the Leprechaun in control underplaying his own involvement in Hallorin's impending administration, keeping Peck in the speech-writing and strategizing loop but nothing worked. Peck seemed to blame himself for Hallorin's situation, and that failure was more than his tenuous grasp on reality could handle. Every day, he'd become more desperate and more unpredictable. The possibility that he would destroy the delicate balance that had been so carefully constructed started to become very real.

Apparently, Hallorin had found the situation unacceptable. The boy whom he had taken in at eighteen, who had masterminded his rise to the presidency, who had looked to him as a father, was found shot dead in front of his Georgetown home. A victim of random violence according to the police report, but more likely a victim of David Hallorin's all-encompassing ambition.

Beamon barely noticed when the priest fell silent and the coffin began to sink into the grave on quiet hydraulic rails. He watched with mild interest as the old man across the hole from him broke out of his motionlessness and walked carefully over the slick ground to Peck's veiled wife, offering his hand. She turned her back on him without a word and started for her car as quickly as her spike heels would allow.

"You were a friend of Roland's?" the man said to Beamon as he worked his way around the open grave and came within earshot.

"I guess you could say that," Beamon answered, shaking the man's ice cold hand.

"My name's Jeffery Tanin." He looked around him at the now empty graveyard.

"I read Roland's obituary. It seems he did well I'd hoped there would be more people."

"How did you know him?" Beamon said out of politeness more than a desire to prolong the conversation. He had a plane to catch and this graveyard seemed to have the effect of amplifying his uncertainty about the events he had involved himself in.

"I used to be a foster parent," Tanin said.

"I had Roland for a few years when he was a teenager."

Beamon didn't respond. He hadn't known that Peck was an orphan.

Now that he thought about it, he knew almost nothing of the man. What he did know, though, was that Peck was a murderer, pervert, and sociopath all qualities he didn't much admire.

"Deep down, he was a good boy... And so brilliant," the old man said more to the grave than to Beamon.

"But he was too far gone when he arrived at my door. His mother died when he was four and his father was a nightmare.

He had sexually abused Roland's sister for years, often in front of him.

No one did anything, though, until he finally killed her. She was ten, Roland was twelve. I believe the man died in prison."

They stood there in the snow for a while longer. Tanin spoke, a little incoherently, about Peck, and Beamon tried, unsuccessfully, to block out his words.

He could admit that he had screwed up a lot in life. But it had always been the result of doing what he knew was right. Until now.

Mark Beamon smiled imperceptibly, as he always did when he entered the doors of the expansive Phoenix office of the FBI. He wandered through it, taking in the sound and the smell, watching the young, idealistic agents moving purposefully from desk to desk. This was the FBI. It didn't have anything to do with politics or upper-level management or compromise. This was what he couldn't force himself to leave behind. It was just like an addiction--he knew it wasn't good for him, but he wasn't strong enough to break the habit. Not yet anyway.

"Mark Beamon, back from the void!"

Beamon looked up from the floor at the sound of the familiar voice.

"D. Thank God." His indispensable secretary from Flagstaff had been initially resistant to the financial hardships that would accompany following her boss to his new post in Phoenix. Fortunately, with his newfound political clout, Beamon had been able to make her an offer she couldn't refuse.

"You all right, Mark? You sound a little down."

"Fine."

"Fine? Look around you! You're the head of one of the biggest offices in the Bureau in one of the sunniest towns in the world!"

"Where would I be without you to put things in perspective for me?"

"Lost. Wandering helpless in the desert."

"Right. Exactly. D." really, I don't think I've said it out loud, but thanks for coming down."

She smiled uncomfortably and shrugged her shoulders.

"No problem."

"Okay, then. I'm going to go into my office and start to wade through my mail. If any of the God-knows-how-many people that work for me now want to talk to me, tell them I'm dead."

She nodded her understanding and went back to the box she was emptying onto her desk.

All he'd wanted was to extricate himself from the legal problems that had been plaguing him and get back his little job running the Flagstaff office. The first part of that wish had been taken care of weeks ago.

The Bureau had been quick to reevaluate his qualifications as a scapegoat when they'd received a letter from the attorney general stating that he had found the charges against Beamon to have no merit.

The call from soon-to-be President Hallorin proclaiming his admiration for Beamon and his willingness to throw his full political and financial weight behind Beamon's defense hadn't hurt either.

The suddenness and force of the whole thing had so terrified the Bureau's senior management that they had not only personally apologized but promoted him to SAC of the fucking Phoenix office a management nightmare that he still hadn't completely faced yet.

Beamon dropped into the expensive leather chair behind his ridiculously large desk and pulled a stack of mail onto his lap. He jabbed at the remote built into one of his drawers and heard the volume of the TV come up to an audible level, filling the room with David Hallorin's voice.

He'd heard the speech before, of course a surprising little ditty in which Hallorin had suddenly taken on a pacifying tone. National Healing, Clean Slate, Meaningless Youthful Indiscretions, the Foundations of a Great Nation that will Rise Again that kind of crap.

With his new kinder, gentler approach, and his focus on bipartisan leadership, the press had started to jump on the David Hallorin bandwagon. The economy had taken a sharp upward turn, and people who hadn't voted for David Hallorin were starting to lie about it.

Of course, it was really all Tom Sherman. Hallorin didn't open his mouth unless Sherman had signed off on what was going to come out of it.

The situation was killing Hallt, unintelligible drone.

Attendance could be generously described as spotty. Besides Beamon and the priest, only two people had decided to brave the weather to attend Roland Peck's funeral. One was his wife, who looked like she probably never missed an opportunity to wear black leather. The other was a slightly stooped old man with a shocking white beard whom Beamon didn't recognize. They all stood silently around the snow-dusted coffin, positioning themselves to maintain the maximum physical distance from their fellow mourners.

The priest raised the volume of his voice a bit, invoking God and humanity in a general way that made it obvious that he had never had the displeasure to meet the guest of honor. Beamon took a couple of steps backward until the eulogy once again faded into a quiet garble.

Beamon had been forced to talk to Roland Peck on a number of occasions after his boss had finally completely caved to Tom Sherman's demands.

And every time he did, he noticed that the little man slipped a little closer to insanity. Peck hadn't been able to accept that anyone could control David Hallorin, a man who, depending on the day, he seemed to think was either his father, God, or the emperor of the galaxy.

Tom Sherman had used his considerable powers to try to keep the Leprechaun in control underplaying his own involvement in Hallorin's impending administration, keeping Peck in the speech-writing and strategizing loop but nothing worked. Peck seemed to blame himself for Hallorin's situation, and that failure was more than his tenuous grasp on reality could handle. Every day, he'd become more desperate and more unpredictable. The possibility that he would destroy the delicate balance that had been so carefully constructed started to become very real.