Free Fall (9 page)

"What?" Beamon said.

"Shit, Tommy, you're still probably one of the most connected guys in Washington. You tell me how it went."

Sherman swirled the ice in his glass and drew it slowly to his lips.

"Okay, I will. You didn't give them what they wanted, Mark."

"What was it they did want?" Carrie said to neither of them in particular. They looked like they were in one of those staring contests little boys favored so much.

Sherman spoke first.

"They were looking to trip Mark up. To cast enough doubt over the legality of how the tapes were obtained, or the man who obtained them, that they could fabricate doubt as to their validity. Or at least divert the attention of the public. That's what they wanted, and that's what Mark didn't give them."

"That's good, though, right?"

Sherman softened when he looked over at her.

"I don't know, Carrie. I just don't know anymore. When the Vericomm tapes were leaked it was like a bomb going off in the Capitol building.

The public's apathy toward their elected officials' behavior had already started to turn to rage and this just amplified it. The politicians are getting desperate. And when people like that get desperate ..." He let his voice trail off and Carrie looked over at Beamon. He was slowly running his finger up the side of his can of Miller Lite, trying to gauge how much was left by the temperature changes in the aluminum, "I don't know what's going to happen, Carrie," he said finally.

"There's nothing I can do now."

"You could ride off into the sunset," Sherman said. Carrie silently thanked him for broaching a subject she'd been skirting for months.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said."

"Come on, Tommy, you know that everything relating to my suspension was a bullsh " He cut himself off as he looked down at Emory.

"They've got nothing, and next week they're going to bring me back to full duty. The whole thing's already got the director's rubber stamp across it."

Sherman didn't reply right away. He seemed to be trying to decide something. How much to say.

"If they do bring you back, Mark, it won't have anything to do with justice." He spoke slowly, now. Deliberately.

"You make it a little too obvious how important your job is to you."

Beamon tried to interrupt, but his friend held up his hand and silenced him. Carrie fought off a moment of confusion. She'd never seen anyone with the power to make Mark Beamon shut up before.

"You've put yourself in harm's way here, Mark, and now you're going to make it worse. You think they'll send you back to Flagstaff?" Sherman shook his head.

"No way. They'll find a reason to transfer you back to D. C." where it's easier to keep an eye on you. They'll dole out the jobs and cases to keep you pacified, and then they'll find a way to hang you."

Beamon slid up on the stone table behind him and took a sip of his beer, the muscles in his jaw tightening perceptibly. He needed to hear this no matter how much it hurt him, Carrie told herself. And he needed to hear it from the only person who had even a remote chance of getting through to him.

"Mark," Sherman continued, "you're bigger than life at the Bureau. A hundred years from now, people are still going to be telling stories about the moronic stunts you pulled and the rabbits you managed to pull out of your hat. But it's time to walk away now. It'll only add to your legend."

Sherman motioned around him.

"I'm telling you, retirement isn't half bad. You do a little consulting work when you feel like it and play golf when you don't. No more politics, no more crap. Once you have a little time for yourself, you won't know how you lived without it."

The silence lasted a long time. Carrie could see that Beamon was building something up inside and moved back to her former position along the rail to let Sherman take the brunt of whatever it was.

Cowardly? Sure. But sometimes cowardice was the better part of valor.

"Screw you, Tommy," Beamon said, not looking up from his beer.

"How old were you when you retired? Fifty-six? Well, I'm nowhere near that. You walked out the " He lowered his voice.

"Associate fucking director. I crawl out a disgraced SAC." Beamon waved his arm around him.

"Your family owns half of Chicago, so you retire to your Dupont Circle brownstones, your ranches, your villas, and your horses. What do I get?

A one-bedroom apartment and a job as a night watchman somewhere?"

"Mark!" Carrie scolded.

"Tom's just trying to " Beamon jumped off the table and brushed passed them, picking up Emory as he went by.

"You want to go see the horses close up, honey?"

Carrie watched for a long time as Beamon and her daughter trudged down the muddy hill toward a distant buck-and-rail fence.

"I did my best, Carrie," Sherman said in a customarily melancholy tone.

"I'm sorry."

"You did more than anyone else could have."

"It wasn't enough."

"It's an impossible situation, Tom. The FBI's been such a big part of his life for so long, he isn't sure who he is without it. He won't let himself see all the other things he has in his life." Carrie surprised him by suddenly smiling and clinking her glass against his.

"You may have failed at saving him from him self, and I imagine that Emory will be demanding a pony for Christmas, but the trip won't be a complete loss if you can show me how to do that trick."

"Trick?"

"The one where you make Mark shut his mouth."

Sherman nodded slowly.

"I'm getting old, Carrie, and my powers are waning. I can only do it once per visit these days."

Tristan Newberry opened his eyes, but it was like being blind.

The clouds had rolled in again, obliterating the stars and sliver of a moon that had glowed over them as they ate by the campfire. He propped himself up on his elbows and turned his head slowly back and forth, trying to make out the lines of the interior of the van with no success.

Two lousy years in the city and he'd already forgotten what real darkness and silence felt like.

He settled back into the makeshift foam mattress, slipping his arm under the covers and running a hand down Darby's side. Her back was pressed up against him, the warmth of her overpowering the cold damp of the fall night. Just like old times.

He closed his eyes again and let his exhaustion overcome the dull pain in his joints and muscles. He was almost out when he felt Darby drive her rear end into his hip.

"Darby? Shit, man, I'm trying to sleep," he said, putting a knee against her back and giving her a halfhearted shove.

"What?"

He heard her shift her position in the darkness and then what sounded like her head rising from the pillow.

"Did you leave food outside?"

Her voice was groggy.

"Huh?" The hypnotic sense of half-sleep had slipped away enough that another few seconds of this and it would take half-an-hour trying to get his thrashed body comfortable enough to drop off again.

"I heard something outside." Darby yawned.

"You left food where animals could get to it, didn't you?"

"No," he whined, throwing the covers up over his head.

He heard her head sink to the pillow again, and he let his eyes close and conjured the memory of their last trip to Europe. The blackness and quiet hum of the wind outside became a sun-bleached seashore and the crashing of waves against bone-white cliffs as he finally dropped off thinking of her and French limestone.

The next time it was an elbow.

He groaned quietly and tried to read his watch. The clouds had parted enough to see the vague outline of the cluttered van and to give the windows a mirrorlike glow, but not enough for him to be able to figure out what time it was.

"There's something outside," he heard Darby mumble into her pillow.

"You left food out." It was a statement now, not a question.

"Didn't," he protested.

He moved away from her, pressing himself against the back wall of the van. He'd been in similar situations with Darby in the past: freeloading varmints, tent air vents clogged with snow, early morning weather checks. He knew that if he was stubborn enough long enough, she would eventually get frustrated and face the cold world outside of the sleeping bag herself.

Fortunately, she hadn't changed. No more than two minutes had gone by when he felt a cold draft as she wiggled out from under the covers. A groggy smile formed on his lips when he heard her start to fish around for a pair of shorts.

"With my luck, it's probably a bear," he heard her say over the swish of fabric as she dressed and started strapping a pair of Tevas to her feet.

He closed his eyes again and pulled the sleeping bag over his face before the overhead light one of the few things he remembered still working on the old VW flickered on.

"Jesus, Darb. Close the door," he said as she jumped out into the tall grass and the outside air started to circulate in the van. She didn't respond and there was no sound of the door sliding shut. In fact, there was no sound at all.

Tristan slowly pushed the sleeping bag from his face and squinted against the light that, for some reason, seemed wrong. He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked out the open side door. The dome light overhead wasn't working. What illumination there was, was leaking around Darby's silhouette as she stood motionless in the powerful beam of a flashlight.

Tristan raised his hand to partially block out the light, letting his eyes adjust and shaking off the grogginess still clinging to him.

"Hello?" he heard Darby say.

No answer.

"Hello?"

Her voice was slow and steady like always. The hint of uncertainty beneath it would have been undetectable to anyone who didn't know her well. He saw her take a step forward and had to adjust his hand as the glow around her became brighter.

"Stop right there."

It was a man's voice. Tristan took a deep breath and let it out, trying to muster the will to overcome a sudden sense of weakness and fear.

"Who are you?" he said, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed and standing He'd wanted to sound angry, forceful, but it hadn't worked his voice shook perceptibly. Calm down, he told himself. Just people looking for a campsite. Worse case, a couple of drunk rednecks. This was West Virginia, after all the progeny of the hillbillies from Deliverance and their sisters probably lived down the road.

Some of his confidence returned as he slowly convinced himself that he and Darby were faced with nothing more than some locals who had been out spotlighting deer.

"Get that goddamn flashlight out of our faces!" There, that had sounded better.

He jumped out of the van and stood next to Darby, aware that the harsh light illuminating them would bring out the definition that still existed in the muscles across his bare chest and arms. Hopefully that would be worth a little intimidation value.

"I said " he started again, but went silent when Darby tapped him on his bare leg.

"It's okay, Tristan." She pulled him gently to the side, exposing the open door to the van. As they moved, the flashlight followed them and briefly illuminated a pistol in what seemed to be a disembodied hand.

Tristan started to step back involuntarily, but Darby put a hand on his back. She had seen the gun but gave the illusion of being completely unaffected.

"We don't have much," she said, "but if you need it, you're welcome to it."

"Are we?" the man holding the flashlight and the gun said. At the word "we" Tristan heard a loud rustling coming from the darkness at the edges of the flashlight's beam. In reality it must have been almost inaudible, but to him it sounded like an explosion. These weren't locals. Darby didn't understand they had to get out of here.

He grabbed her arm and, in one swift motion, pulled her hard to the left.

The sharp stones that littered the ground tore at his bare feet as he tried to drag her out of the light and toward the trees at the edge of the clearing.

He'd made it no more than ten feet when Darby's arm slipped away and he fell over what was left of the pile of wood they'd gathered to keep the fire going.

By the time he'd untangled himself from the branches, it was too late.

The beam of light arced toward him and he felt a powerful hand grab the back of his neck. He rolled over onto his back, hearing more than feeling the sharp branches breaking beneath him. He was about to take a wild swing at the man holding him when the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed into his throat.

"Tristan! Calm down!"

It was Darby's voice, but he couldn't process it. He looked around him as best he could as the man with the flashlight walked slowly toward him. The path of illumination as the flashlight swung loosely from the man's hand alternately lit the brown rust on the side of the van, the red and yellow of the fall leaves on the trees, Darby being held from behind, but never the man's face. When he finally stopped a few feet away, all Tristan could see was a thin layer of dust clinging to a pair of expensive black dress shoes.