The Next President (29 page)

Steven Skipaniak, had brought down a tiger that had escaped from a derailed circus train. Rather than kill the animal, Dr. Skipaniak had fired a dart filled with muscle relaxant to immobilize the animal.

Ben had thought if a tiger could be darted, why not a deer?

“He called Dr. Skipaniak at the zoo, Dad, to talk to him about it. When the doctor’s secretary asked who was calling, Ben gave his name as Mr.

Cade.”

“Skip thought Ben was me.”

Evan nodded.

“Ben hung up. But he knew he had the first part of the scheme figured out. You darted a deer. Then he guessed you tied it to a tree.

Finally, he worked it out that you severed the deer’s restraint at just the right moment probably with a rifle shot and defined the path of where you wanted the deer to run by marking it with the urine of predators. With a friend like Dr. Skipaniak, you shouldn’t have had any trouble getting what you needed.”

“Ben has always been a smart, determined man,” J. D. said. He supposed he should be grateful the police or the McCrays hadn’t been as dogged in their investigation of Alvy’s “accident.”

“How’d you know Dr. Skipaniak?” Evan asked.

“He’s a fellow army veteran. I met him when I was buying a stethoscope as a gift for Mary Ellen McCarthy. She’d just been accepted to med school.”

After a moment’s silence, Evan said to his father, “Ben told me his story only after he heard I was going home… and because he thinks what happened then is somehow tied in to what’s happening now.”

J. D. nodded. Then he asked his son, “So how do you feel now that you know?”

“Damn shame about that deer,” Evan told his father.

“How do you really feel?” J. D. persisted.

Evan took a moment to arrive at his answer.

“I think you took one life to save many others. I think that’s what you must have had in mind.”

Evan had neatly paraphrased the sniper’s code, J. D. thought. Think of

the lives you’re saving, not the one you’re taking. In effect, his son had absolved him… of the killing he knew about. But J. D. felt that now was the time he must bare his soul as far as he dared to Evan. Now was the time Evan might be ready to forgive him.

“Alvy McCray wasn’t the only man I killed.”

Evan went pale.

“Who else?”

J. D. revealed to his son what he had really done in the army including how he’d shot a U.S. Army major whom a friend of J. D.‘s had described to him as “a gung-ho lifer prick who’s going to get me and a lot of other grunts killed just so he can make colonel.”

J. D. had taken a captured NVA sniper rifle from the PANIC armory to do the job, but in an act of reckless bravado had returned the weapon uncleaned. To show his asshole commanding officer that one of his men had gone off hunting on his own.

Evan offered no words of judgment. He just asked quietly, “What happened to your friend?”

J. D. sighed.

“He died. He was fatally bitten by one of the vipers they have over there. If he had to go anyway, I just wish it had been before I …”

Father and son lapsed into a long interlude of quiet. During which J. D. thought bleakly that maybe his son wouldn’t forgive him. Maybe he’d just lost Evan.

Finally J. D. broke the silence.

“Did you know that Blair McCray is Alvy’s son?”

The way Evan’s mouth fell open, he clearly didn’t.

“Yeah,” J. D. affirmed.

“I ran into him in the hospital lobby. He introduced himself and asked me to tell you he intends to prove you’re being framed. He said he was your friend.”

J. D. watched his son grapple with that idea.

“Yeah, I guess he is now.”

“You think his feelings might change if he knew what I did?”

Evan had no answer for that.

“I’ve tried to protect you all your life,” J. D. told his son, “but I’m the one who put you in the middle of this mess. All I want now is for you to come through it unharmed. I’m going to do everything I can to see that happens.

So I have to ask you, Evan I have to beg you to let me be the one to put an end to it.”

Evan looked away from his father and stared out the window for a long time.

When he looked back, there were tears rolling down his cheeks.

He said, “Dad, the bastard who’s trying to frame me shot Pru. Killed Mr.

Laney, then shot Pru in the head… after I let her walk away without trying to stop her.”

“I know, Evan, but—” Evan stubbornly shook his head.

“How would you have felt, Dad, if someone had shot Mary Ellen McCarthy?”

Del Rawley stepped in front of a mob of reporters in a large conference room at his hotel. His face was grim. His gaze swept all of those present, giving them a chance to look into his eyes. Then he directed his attention at the pool TV camera that would carry his image to the nation.

“This campaign,” he said, “will not be stopped.”

He paused to let the message sink in.

“By now all of you know that early this morning a member of my security detail, a special agent of the Secret Service, was almost killed by a sniper. He was sitting at a desk in the office of my campaign manager when two rifle shots were fired through the window. These shots came within inches of killing a man of the utmost courage and loyalty. Someone who, like all his colleagues, would step into the line of fire to save the person he is assigned to protect.

“I was nowhere near this particular agent at the time of the shooting. I was never in any physical danger. After conferring with the Secret Service and my campaign staff, we’ve decided that this cowardly act was intended to serve as a warning that no matter how much protection I have, I will never be safe.

It was a bald-faced attempt at intimidation, a symbolic threat to drive me from the race.”

Del set his jaw and there was fire in his eyes.

“To the assassins who would substitute the tyranny of the gun for the will of the people, I tell you now that you will not win. The American people will not be denied, either by me or by you, their democratic birthright to choose their next president. I have spoken with my family and we are in agreement.

We will not run from you. You will never drive me from this race. Nor will you succeed in your deadly and hateful ambitions. You will fail. You will be caught. You will be punished.

“Just as soon as we are done here today, I will leave to keep my full schedule of appearances. If you attempt to interfere, you will do so at your peril.

“This campaign will not be stopped.”

There was a brief moment of silence and then the room erupted in applause, with even the members of the media joining in.

Jenny watched from the wings with tears of pride in her eyes. With her were the other members of the brain trust and Donnel Timmons. Secret Service agents were everywhere. Among them were Roth and Danby.

Del accepted the embraces and handshakes of Jenny and the others as he left the room.

Looking around, he noticed that someone was missing.

“Where’s Mr. Cade?” he asked Jenny.

She took the candidate’s arm and, excusing the two of them from the others, led him off several paces—a ring of agents moving with them—to a place of relative privacy. There she explained in a quiet voice what had happened to J. D. Cade.

Del Rawley cut to the heart of the matter.

“Did the boy do it?”

“J. D. says no, he couldn’t have.”

“Normal reaction for a father. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“So we won’t be using Mr. Cade.”

“He said he understood how things would look. But he offered to make further contributions if we need them.”

Del Rawley considered the situation, made private deliberations.

“I enjoyed talking with Mr. Cade last night. We seem to have a lot in common.”

“I enjoyed last night, too,” Jenny said.

“Let me know how all this turns out. We may not be done with that gentleman yet.”

Jenny nodded.

“Okay.”

Del Rawley walked off, a man on a mission.

DeVito intended to look for the real J. D. Cade in the places he’d called home. He headed for Santa Barbara first. It was closer. But he intended to visit southern Illinois as well.

He had Cade’s Santa Barbara address and every intention of breaking into his house. It would be a black-bag job, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t looking for evidence to convict Cade of anything; he was looking for justification to shoot the sonofabitch when the time came.

He was sure that come it would. He felt it in his bones that Cade would be back.

But when DeVito arrived in Santa Barbara he was immediately frustrated.

A huge birthday party was going on at the house next door to Cade’s place.

It spilled out all around the house and looked as if it was just cranking up.

HAPPY 65TH, GEORGE! a banner read. Drop dead, George, DeVito thought, and take everybody to the hospital with you. But he knew he’d have to come back later. Probably much later, and he didn’t feel like he had a hell of a lot of time.

Since he was in town, though, DeVito knew there was someone else he could see. He’d pay a visit to the former Mrs. Cade. Maybe Cade’s ex wasn’t quite as chummy with him as she seemed on paper. Maybe she’d have a few poisonous and revealing things to say about her former husband. DeVito found his way to a large house near the mission.

What Bonnie Evans Cade told Special Agent Dante DeVito was: “Get the hell out of my house and off my property, and don’t come back without a warrant, you prick!”

DeVito left but not fast enough to keep the door from, in fact, hitting him in the ass.

He was about to bull his way back into Bonnie Cade’s home when a weasely-looking little guy hissed and beckoned to him from the corner of the house. Then the little guy disappeared without even waiting to see if DeVito followed.

The weasel was standing in the driveway, screened from the view of any one in the house by a tall clump of hydrangeas. He introduced himself as Raymond Washburn, Bonnie Cade’s current husband but only until he could find a lawyer who could break his prenuptial agreement.

Washburn began to spew exactly the kind of bile about the former Mrs.

Cade that DeVito had hoped she would spill about her ex. DeVito asked the bitter little man if he knew J. D. Cade.

“Only slightly,” Washburn conceded.

“To your knowledge, did he ever commit an act of violence against any one?”

“No.”

“Did he ever engage in any illegal practice in the business he co-owned with his ex-wife?”

“Bonnie won’t let me see the books.”

DeVito started to lose patience. This little turd just wanted someone to listen to him bitch.

“Did Mr. Cade ever spit on the sidewalk in your presence?”

Raymond Washburn knew when he was being insulted.

“He’s never done anything criminal that I’ve seen but I’m afraid of him.”

“Why would that be, Raymond?”

“Because I fucked his wife.”

“Yes, but she’s your wife now, even if you aren’t too happy with her.”

“I mean I fucked Bonnie when she was still married to him, and he knows about it.”

DeVito found this somewhat more interesting, but there was an obvious question to ask.

“How long has he known about it?”

“Almost two years,” Washburn admitted.

DeVito turned to walk away, but the little man grabbed his arm—until DeVito gave him a hard stare.

“He’s very cool and calculating, that man. Patient. He could wait a long time.”

“Maybe forever, huh, Raymond?” DeVito smirked.

“You’d be afraid, too,” Washburn accused, and then he spoke the words that rang in DeVito ears like thunder, “if someone was after you who shoots the way J. D. Cade does.”

“Yeah, J. D. Cade shoots here, has for years,” said Jack Wesley, the manager of the Rancho Durango Gun Club.

DeVito couldn’t understand it. He’d checked out J. D. Cade down to the dirt under his fingernails—on paper, anyway. And he hadn’t found any dirt.

Nor had he found any record of J. D. Cade belonging to a gun club. He didn’t understand how-“Is he listed as a member under his own name?” DeVito demanded.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Jack Wesley didn’t like DeVito attitude one bit. He answered through clenched teeth.

“What it means, Mr. Federal Agent, sir, is that Mr. Cade joined the club when my predecessor ran things here. Bert was just about retired, but his hearing had checked out a couple years prior to that. At that time Mr. Cade sometimes used his first name. Jeff. Short for Jefferson. He gave Bert his name as Jeff D. Cade. Which Bert wrote down as Jeff Decade. Bert caught the mistake eventually, but Mr. Cade just laughed when it was brought to his attention. Said might as well leave it that way. He seemed to shoot okay under that name.”

“And how well does Mr. Cade shoot?”

“Just like I said. He shoots okay.”

“You feel comfortable repeating that characterization in court someday?”

“I’ll feel comfortable when you get your ass off this property. You got any more threats to make, I’ll feel comfortable talking to my lawyer.”

The sonofabitch wasn’t going to give an inch, DeVito could see. Push him harder, he’d just dig in deeper. No point in that now. He could come back for this asshole later if need be.

He’d already found out the important thing.

J. D. Cade was a shooter.

After Blair McCray left the hospital, he thought it might be a good idea to pay Deena Nokes a visit. See if his cousin Ivar’s widow might have found out something helpful.

He drove out to her place in the woods and knocked on the door of the trailer. He looked around for Gorbachev the bear or any other potential threat. He wasn’t authorized to carry a weapon in Illinois but, with the Laneys getting shot, he was doing so anyway. He wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

There was no response to Blair’s rapping on Deena’s door… but he thought he heard a muffled whimpering coming from inside. He tried the door but it was locked. The rattle of the doorknob seemed to momentarily increase the volume and the pitch of the weeping, and then the sound was bitten off. Whoever was inside had realized her voice could be heard.