Michael Prescott: Mortal Faults

“I don’t have any comment. This entire conversation is off the record.”

He ended the call, stifling the reporter’s protests. He noticed he had stood up at some point during the conversation, and he sat down slowly, knowing there was a chair somewhere behind him.

There was no way to be sure of exactly what had happened at the Brayton Hotel tonight. But it was reasonably clear that Reynolds’ plans had been compromised. The woman in the lobby must been Abby Sinclair, or if there were two women, then maybe one of them was Abby and the other was Andrea Lowry. That much was evident. Now arrests had been made, and the FBI was involved.

The FBI, for God’s sake.

“Shit,” Stenzel said, intoning the word softly as a sober assessment of his circumstances.

People often talked about virtues. Stenzel was perfectly willing to listen to such talk and to write speeches incorporating such talk and to include questions about virtue in public opinion surveys he commissioned. He did not, however, actually believe in any virtues-with a single exception. There was one virtue he both preached and practiced, and it was the virtue of flexibility.

It was time to show some flexibility now.

He felt a little bit sorry for what he was about to do. But he had learned from Jack Reynolds and learned well, and one lesson of Jack’s, reiterated many times, was the famous witticism attributed to Harry Truman. If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.

Stenzel dialed 411 and asked for the number of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles. He needed to initiate a dialogue-ASAP.

“You’re in a great deal of trouble, Ms. Sinclair.”

Abby lifted an eyebrow. “You think?”

Assistant Director Michaelson leaned back in his chair in the interrogation room. Abby would have liked to lean back also, but her movements were restricted by the manacle securing her left wrist to a steel eyelet in the table.

“You were apprehended,” Michaelson said, “while holding a gun to the head of a United States congressman.”

“Who’d been shooting at me.”

“Because you tried to kidnap him. You and Andrea Lowry.”

Abby glanced from Michaelson to the only other person in the room-Tess, seated across from her. “Oh, come on.”

Tess offered no response.

“We have witnesses,” Michaelson said. “People in the hotel who saw you and Lowry forcibly escort Congressman Reynolds from the lobby.”

“Those witnesses must also have told you that I wasn’t the one holding a gun on him.”

“It doesn’t matter who was holding the gun. You aided and abetted Andrea Lowry’s escape from FBI surveillance. You orchestrated a meeting with the congressman. Then you and Lowry abducted him.”

“You’re wrong about that last part. But two out of three ain’t bad.”

Michaelson seemed to sense an opening. “So you admit to helping Lowry evade surveillance?”

“I more than helped. I pulled it off solo. I was driving Andrea’s car.”

Abby was aware that the meeting was being recorded by hidden cameras, and that her admission could most definitely be used against her. But she saw no point in lying. She was in a locked room in the FBI suite of the federal building, under suspicion of multiple homicides. It was time to test the old adage and see if the truth really would set her free.

“And you admit to setting up the meeting with Reynolds?”

“Correct-amundo. But not to kidnap him. That was Andrea’s idea-and in her defense, she wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”

Tess, the only other person in the room, spoke up for the first time since the interrogation began. “If you weren’t there to harm Reynolds, what was the reason for the meeting?”

Abby shrugged. “Therapy.”

“Come again?” Tess asked.

“Well, therapy was one reason. Getting Reynolds to incriminate himself was another.”

Michaelson frowned. “I’m not following you, Ms. Sinclair.”

“Why does that not come as a surprise? Okay, here’s the story. Reynolds is the bad guy. He was behind the attack on Andrea’s house yesterday. He was also behind the murder of Andrea’s children twenty years ago. She didn’t do it. His thugs did. They put a bullet in her to make it look like suicide.”

Sometime during this explanation Michaelson had folded his arms across his chest, his body language radiating disbelief. “And you know all this-how? Clairvoyance?”

“I’m not clairvoyant-just unusually perceptive. And way smarter than, say, you.”

“Are you now?”

“Oh, yeah. Not that I’m bragging. Because, let’s face it, if I wanted to brag, I wouldn’t be comparing myself-”

Tess cut her off. “Abby.”

The low warning tone wasn’t lost on her. Abby smiled. “Pissing off the boss man isn’t such a good idea?”

“You ought to be taking these proceedings more seriously, Ms. Sinclair,” Michaelson warned.

“I never take anything seriously. It’s all part of my elusive je ne sais quois. Anyway, to answer your question, I knew the truth about Andrea’s past because of a conversation I had with her this morning.”

Michaelson folded his arms tighter, as if trying to hug himself to death. “You’re lying. You were never in contact with Andrea Lowry after the attack on Friday, which means you had no opportunity-”

“Oh, spare me. I met her in the ladies’ room of the Beverly Center while your idiot surveillance squad stood around window shopping outside. The garlic genius she picked up there-I bought it. Incidentally, is there any way I can get remuneration for that? Put it on the Bureau’s tab?”

Michaelson ignored the question. “Even if you did talk with Lowry, how can anything she told you possibly relate to the meeting with Congressman Reynolds?”

“I needed him to admit what he’d done. I wanted Andrea there to hear it-and to participate. The plan was for Reynolds to say too much, reveal that he’d sent his brownshirts after Andrea twenty years ago. I was hoping if Andrea heard this, she’d have a breakthrough. She’d remember what really happened that night. Not the phony, reconstructed memories the shrinks pounded into her, but the truth.”

“And did she?” Tess asked, sounding just the tiniest bit intrigued.

“She did. Big-time. It was, if I say so myself, a thing of beauty to behold. Up to a point.”

Michaelson still hadn’t released himself from his death grip. “What point?”

“The point when she pulled a pistol out of her pocket.” Abby shook her head. “Wow, try saying that three times fast.”

“You’re claiming you didn’t know she was armed?”

“How could I? You guys confiscated her revolver, right? She never said anything about a second gun.”

Michaelson finally unfolded his arms, but only to tent his fingers in front of his face, another sign of resistance. “So you didn’t anticipate that she would abduct the congressman?”

“Nope. I didn’t see that one coming. A rare lapse of prescience on my part.”

Michaelson spoke through his fingers. “But you accompanied her when she left the lobby with Reynolds.”

“I was trying to talk her down.”

“And I suppose you expect us take your word for that.”

“Not at all. It’s on tape. I recorded everything that happened.”

“And where is this tape?”

“In my purse.”

“And where’s that?”

“I lost it when I was scrambling around under Reynolds’ car. One of the crime-scene guys must’ve found it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Abby felt her first flutter of anxiety. All along she’d assumed the purse would turn up. “They have to have found it. I mean, it’s a regular size purse with a microcassette recorder inside, and my wallet and ID…”