Mirror Image (39 page)

"What am I thinking?"

"That I'm plunging in, jumping to conclusions before I've lined up all the facts, reacting emotionally instead of pragmatically."

"You said it." Van sat back on his curved spine and propped his tumbler of whiskey on his concave abdomen. "You're good at that."

Avery drew herself up. "Let's look at all the tapes and see just how wrong I am."

When the final tape went to snow on the screen, a sustained silence followed, ameliorated only by the whistling sound made by the video recorder as it rewound the tape.

Avery came to her feet and turned to face them. She didn't waste time by rubbing it in how right she'd been. The tapes spoke for themselves. The man had shown up in nearly every one.

"Does he look familiar to either of you?"

Van said, "No."

"He was in every single city we were," Avery mused out loud. "Always lurking in the background."

"Not 'lurking.' Standing," Irish corrected.

"Standing and staring intently at Tate."

"So were you, most of the time," Van quipped. "You're not going to ice him."

She shot him a baleful look. "Don't you think it's a little odd that a man would follow a senatorial candidate around the state if he weren't actually part of the election committee?"

They glanced at each other and shrugged warily. "It's odd," Irish conceded, "but we don't have any pictures of him with his finger on a trigger."

"Did you see him at the GM plant?" Van wanted to know.

"No."

"That was one of the largest, most hostile crowds Tate addressed," Irish said. "Wouldn't that have been a likely spot for the guy to make his move?"

"Maybe the bottle thrower beat him to it."

"But you said you didn't see Gray Hair there," Van pointed out.

Avery gnawed her lip in consternation. That eventful day was a blur in her memory, punctuated by vivid recollections, like Tate sitting in the emergency room, his shirt stained with his blood. The wound had healed in a matter of days; the small scar was faint and hidden by his hair. She shuddered to think how much worse it could have been if Gray Hair—

"Wait! I just remembered," she exclaimed. "I read that day's agenda before we left the hotel," she recalled excitedly. "The trip to the GM plant wasn't printed on the schedule because it was squeezed in later. Nobody except Eddy, Jack, and the union bosses at the plant knew we were going to be there. So even if Gray Hair had intercepted a schedule, he couldn't have known that Tate was going to be in Arlington."

"You two sound like you're talking about a goddamn Indian," Irish said cantankerously. "Look, Avery, this thing is getting too dangerous. Tell Rutledge who you are, what you suspect, and get the hell out."

"I can't." She drew in a catchy breath and repeated with soft emphasis, "I can't."

They argued with her for another half hour, but got nowhere. She enumerated the reasons why she couldn't give up now and rebuked their arguments that she was just doing it for the notoriety it would bring her when it was over.

"Don't you understand? Tate needs me. So does Mandy. I'm not deserting them until I know they're safe, and that's final."

As she prepared to leave, rushing because time had gotten away from her, she hugged them both. "It'll be a comfort to know you're around," she told Van. Irish had assured her that he would assign Van to the Rutledge campaign permanently until after the election. "Be the eyes in the back of my head. Scan the crowds. Let me know immediately if you see Gray Hair."

"Not with the Indian names again," Irish groaned. He pulled her into a bear hug. "You've given me the worst bellyache of my life," he said gruffly. "But I still don't want to lose you again."

She hugged him back and kissed his cheek. "You won't."

Van said, "Cover your ass, Avery."

"I will, I promise."

She left quickly and sped home. But she wasn't speedy enough.

THIRTY-FOUR

"This is becoming an all-too-familiar scene." Tate angrily confronted Avery the moment she cleared Mandy's bedroom door. "I'm pacing the floor, not knowing where the hell you are."

Breathless, she rushed across the room and gingerly lowered herself to the edge of the bed. Mandy was sleeping, but there were tear tracks on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. Zee told me she had another nightmare." Tate's mother had been waiting for her in the hall when she came in.

Tate appeared even more agitated than Zee had been. His face was drawn and haggard, his hair uncombed. "It happened about an hour ago, shortly after she'd fallen asleep."

"Did she remember anything?" she asked, looking up at him hopefully.

"No," he replied in a clipped voice. "Her own screams woke her up."

Avery smoothed back Mandy's hair and murmured, "I should have been here."

"You damn sure should have. She cried for you.Where.were you?"

"I had errands to run." His imperative tone of voice grated on her, but she was presently more interested in the child than in arguing with Tate. "I'll stay with her now."

"You can't. The men from Wakely and Foster are here."

"Who?"

"The consultants we hired to oversee the campaign. Our meeting was interrupted by Mandy's nightmare, and their time is expensive. We've kept them waiting long enough."

He propelled her from Mandy's bedroom and toward onof the doors that opened onto the central courtyard. Avery dug in her heels. "What are you most upset over, Tate—your daughter's nightmare, or keeping the bigwigs waiting?"

"Don't test my temper now, Carole," he said, straining the words through clenched teeth. "I was here to comfort her, not you."

She conceded him the argument by guiltily glancing away. "I thought you were against using professional consultants for your campaign."

"I changed my mind."

"Eddy and Jack changed it for you."

"They had their input, but I made the final decision. Anyway, they're here, waiting to talk strategy with us."

"Tate, wait a minute," she said, laying a restraining hand on his chest when he made to move past her. "If you don't feel right about this, just say no to them. Up till now, your campaign has been based onyou—who you are and what you stand for. What if these so-called experts try to change you? Won't you feel diluted? Homogenized? Even the best advisers can be wrong. Please don't be pressured into doing something you don't want to do."

He removed her hand from the front of his shirt. "If I could be pressured into doing something, Carole, I would have divorced you a long time ago. That's what I was advised to do."

The following morning she stepped out of her tub and loosely wrapped a bath sheet around herself. As she stood in front of the mirror, towel-drying her hair, she thought she saw movement in the bedroom through the partially opened door. Her first thought was that it might be Fancy. She flung open the door, but rapidly recoiled.

"Jack!"

"I'm sorry, Carole.Ithought you heard my knock."

He was standing well beyond the door to her room. If he had knocked, she certainly wouldn't have given him permission to come in. He was lying. He hadn't knocked. More angry than embarrassed, she drew the bath sheet tighter around her.

"What do you want, Jack?"

"Uh, the guys left this for you."

Without taking his eyes off her, he tossed a plastic binder on her bed. His intense gaze made her very uncomfortable. It was prurient, but it was also incisive. The bath sheet left her legs and shoulders bare. Could he detect the difference in her body from Carole's? Did he know what Carole's body had looked like?

"What guys?" she asked, trying not to let her discomfort show.

"From Wakely and Foster. They didn't have a chance to give it to you last night before you stormed out of the meeting."

"I didn't storm out of the meeting. I came inside to check on Mandy."

"And stayed until after they'd left." She offered no apology or denial. "You didn't like them, did you?"

Since you asked, no. I'm surprised you do."

"Why?"

"Because they're usurping your position."

"They work for us, not the other way around."

"That's not what it sounded like to me," she said. "They were autocratic and mandatory. I don't respond to that kind of high-handedness, and I'll be amazed if Tate tolerates it for any significant length of time."

Jack laughed. "Feeling as you do about them and their high-handed advice, you're going to have a tough time stomaching this." He gestured down at the folder.

Curious, Avery approached the bed and picked up the folder. She opened it and scanned the first several sheets of paper. "A list of dos and don'ts for the candidate's wife."

"That's right, Mrs. Rutledge."

She slapped shut the folder's cover and dropped it back onto the bed.

Again Jack laughed. "I'm glad I'm just the errand boy. Eddy's going to be pissed if you don't read and digest everything in there."

"Eddy can go to hell. And so can you. And so can anybody who wants to make Tate a baby-kissing, handshaking, plastic automaton who can turn a glib phrase but says absolutely nothing worth listening to."

"You've become quite a crusader for him, haven't you? All of a sudden you're his staunchest ally."

"Damn right."

"Who the hell do you think you're kidding, Carole?"

"I'm his wife. And the next time you want to see me, Jack, knock louder."

He took a belligerent step toward her, his face congested with anger. "Playact all you want in front of everybody else, but when we're alone—"

"Mommy, I drew you a picture." Mandy came bounding in, waving a sheet of construction paper.

Jack glowered at Avery, then wheeled around and strode from the room. She congratulated herself on holding up remarkably well, but now her weak knees buckled and she sank onto the edge of the bed, gathering Mandy against her and holding on tight. She pressed her lips against the top of the child's head. It would be difficult to tell who was drawing comfort from whom.

"Mommy?"

"What did you draw? Let me see." Avery released her and studied the colorful slashes Mandy had made across the page. "It's wonderful!" she exclaimed, smiling tremulously.

In the weeks since her visit with Dr. Webster, Mandy had made tremendous progress. She was gradually emerging from the shell she had sequestered herself in. Her mind was fertile. Her sturdy little body seemed imbued with energy. Though her self-confidence was still fragile, it didn't seem quite so breakable as before.

"It's Daddy. And here's Shep ," she chirped, pointing to a dark blue blob on the paper.

"I see."

"Can I have some chewing gum? Mona said to ask you."

"One piece. Don't swallow it. Bring it to me when you don't want it anymore."

Mandy kissed her moistly. "I love you, Mommy."

"I love you, too." Avery gave her another tight hug, sustaining it until Mandy squirmed free and rushed off in quest of her chewing gum.

Avery followed her to the door and closed it. She considered turning the lock. There were those in the house whom she wanted to shut out.

But there were those she had to leave her door open for, just in case. Mandy, for one. And Tate.

Van opened a can of tuna and carried it with him back to his video console. His stomach had finally communicated to his brain that one had to have sustenance to stay alive. Otherwise, he would have been so engrossed in what he was doing, he would never have remembered to eat. He conveyed chunks of the oily fish from can to mouth via a reasonably clean spoon.

Clamping the bowl of the spoon in his mouth, he used both hands at once to eject one tape from one machine and insert a new tape into another. In this capacity, he functioned like a well-coordinated octopus.

He replaced the first tape in its labeled box and turned his attention to the one now playing. The color bars appeared on the screen, then the countdown.

Van swallowed the food he'd been holding in his mouth, took a puff of his smoldering cigarette, a gulp of whiskey, then scooped up another bite of tuna as he leaned back in his desk chair and propped his feet on the edge of the console.

He was watching a documentary he had shot several years earlier for a station in Des Moines. The subject was kiddie porn. This wasn't the watered-down, edited version that had gone out over the air. This was his personal copy—the one containing all the footage he'd shot over a twelve-week period while following around a features producer, a reporter, a grip, and a sound man. It was only one tape of the hundreds in his extensive personal library.

So far, none that he'd watched had justified the niggling notion that he'd seen someone in Rutledge's entourage before, and it wasn't the gray-haired man that had Avery so concerned. Van wasn't even certain what he was looking for, but he had to start somewhere. He wouldn't stop until he found it—whatever "it" was. Until he went back on the campaign trail with Rutledge, he didn't have anything better to do except get wasted.

He could always do that later.

* * *

"Where's Eddy?" Nelson asked from his place at the head of the dining table.

"He had to stay late," Tate replied. "He said not to wait dinner on him."

"It seems that we're never all together at dinner anymore," Nelson remarked with a frown. "Dorothy Rae, where's Fancy?"

"She's. . .she's. . ."Dorothy Rae was at a loss as to the whereabouts of her daughter.

"She was still at headquarters when I left," Tate said, coming to his sister-in-law's rescue.

Jack smiled at his parents. "She's been putting in a lot of long hours there, right, Mom?"

Zee gave him a tepid smile. "She's been more dedicated than I expected."

"The work's been good for her."

"It's a start," Nelson grumbled.

Avery, sitting across from Jack, held her peace. She doubted Fancy was working during all the hours she spent at campaign headquarters. She seemed the only one to attach any significance to Fancy and Eddy often coming in late together.

Mandy asked for help buttering her roll. When Avery finished and raised her head, she caught Jack watching her. He smiled, as though they shared a naughty secret. Avery quickly looked away and concentrated on her plate while the conversation eddied around her.