Bill Pronzini - Acts of Mercy

He left the baggage car and began to hurry through the corridors to U.S. Car Number One.

Augustine was about to leave his office and join Claire when Maxwell returned and asked if Justice had reported back.

“No,” Augustine said. “You mean he hasn’t turned up Wexford for you yet?”

“Certainly that’s what I mean,” Harper said. “I’ve been waiting in my compartment for the last hour. Nicholas, I’m frankly becoming concerned about-”

And there was a sudden sharp, urgent rapping on the office door.

They exchanged a brief look, and immediately Harper went to the door and slid it open. Justice. He seemed to hesitate at the sight of Harper, then came quickly into the compartment and stood uneasily with his arms flat against his sides. Looking at him, at the distressed planes of his face, Augustine thought with cold alarm: My God, there is something wrong “Mr. President,” Justice said, “may I speak to you privately?”

Harper shut the door and came over in front of him. “Is it about Wexford?”

Justice hesitated.

“Is it about Wexford?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then for Christ’s sake, man, spit it out.”

“Mr. President?”

“Yes, yes,” Augustine said, “go ahead, Christopher.”

Justice took a breath, let it out sibilantly. “I couldn’t find him,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir, but he’s… disappeared.”

A tic began to flutter Augustine’s left eyelid. “Disappeared?”

“Yes sir.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Positive, sir. I’ve been through the entire train twice; I looked everywhere.”

Harper said, “Jesus.”

The same kind of shock Augustine had felt two nights ago in Washington, when Justice brought him the news of Briggs’s fatal accident, seemed to take hold of him again. “It isn’t possible,” he heard himself say. “How could a thing like that happen?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Justice said. “But Mr. Dougherty told me he saw Mr. Wexford out on the observation platform last night, after midnight. Maybe he lost his balance when the train lurched, or had a stroke or something, and… well, fell off the platform.”

Harper pivoted and stared at Augustine as if in accusation. But I was only joking earlier, Augustine thought numbly. I never imagined it might be true. How could I imagine anything like that would be true?

“What should we do, sir?” Justice asked him.

“Do?”

“Yes sir.”

Harper said, “There’s nothing to do,” in a curiously dull, hollow voice-a tone Augustine had never heard him use before.

“But there’s a chance he might still be alive, badly hurt somewhere along the tracks-”

“Don’t be a fool, Justice. A man Wexford’s age could never survive a plunge from a speeding train.”

“I guess you’re right, Mr. Harper. Still, shouldn’t a search party be sent out right away?”

“Yes,” Augustine said. “A search party.”

He went behind his desk, sank heavily into the chair. I hated Julius, he thought, I hated him for what he tried to do to me-but he was a friend for twenty years, I never wanted him dead. I never wanted Briggs dead either. Briggs. And now Wexford. One is bad enough, but two; two. No way to cover this one up, even if I wanted to. And Briggs will be found anytime now back in Washington.

Why did they have to die? Goddamn them, why did they have to do this to me?

Outside, the train’s air horn echoed loudly through the quiet morning. Augustine lifted his head, realized that the Presidential Special had slackened speed and that they were passing through the long limestone-walled cut into the narrow valley where The Hollows station was located. Less than five minutes now before arrival.

He also realized Justice was speaking to him. “… all right, sir?”

“What did you say?”

“I asked if you were all right, Mr. President.”

“Yes. A little shell-shocked, that’s all.”

“Do you want me to have Communications radio in a report to the FBI?”

“No,” Harper said.

Justice shifted his gaze. “Sir?”

“What’s happened is terrible enough without risking an immediate leak to the media. We can contact the FBI directly from The Hollows; a half-hour or so isn’t going to make any difference to Wexford. And there’ll be time to prepare an official announcement for when the body is found.” He looked at Augustine. “Don’t you agree, Mr. President?”

“Yes,” Augustine said.

“Then that’s how we’ll handle it.” And to Justice, “Not a word to anyone, do you understand?”

Justice seemed to want to say something; instead he nodded grimly, silently.

Augustine thought: Why couldn’t they all have been as strong and as loyal as Maxwell and Christopher? And Claire too… Claire. God, what will she say? I’ve got to tell her-but not right away, not until we get to The Hollows. I can’t face her with it until then.

“We’ll be at the station any minute,” Harper said. “Can you put up a front for the media, Nicholas?”

Augustine looked across at the liquor cabinet, then imme. diately pulled his eyes away from it again. “Don’t worry about the media,” he said.

The air horn sounded another time and the train lost more of its speed, coasting as they neared the station.

Augustine got slowly to his feet. “We’ve all got things to do before we disembark,” he said. “We’d better do them.”

Harper nodded. “Just the amenities at the station and straight to The Hollows. All right?”

“Yes. All right.”

When they were gone Augustine stood staring at the closed door. How can I beat them now that Wexford is dead too? he thought, and felt a coldness settle on the back of his neck.

How can I beat them now?

Justice finished repacking his suitcase and stood at his compartment door. The Presidential Special had already stopped, and outside the windows, on the station platform, there was a good deal of noise and activity. But he did not pay any attention to it. He might have been alone somewhere, standing in utter silence. He knew the name of the fear now that had been plaguing him since Thursday night, and the voice of it echoed in his mind and would not be shut away.

What if something far more ominous had happened to Briggs and Wexford, the voice kept saying, than death by freak and coincidental accident?

What if they were murdered?

What if someone close to the President was a homicidal psychopath?

Harper disembarked from the Presidential Special prior to Augustine and the First Lady, as was customary for the staff aides, and walked quickly through the mixed crowd of media people and security officers on permanent assignment to The Hollows. He kept his expression carefully blank, but it felt brittle, like something made of thin opaque glass. Inside him there was a kind of bitter hopelessness; he did not let himself dwell on it, kept it under rigid control, but it was there and he could not rid himself of it.

He stood alone at the far end of the station platform, segregated from the crowd by the stolid bodies of Secret Service personnel, and waited and watched his breath puff whitely on the cold morning air. The glare of sunlight reflecting off the metal surfaces of the train hurt his eyes and he wished vaguely that he had adopted the affectation of sunglasses-dark ones to dull not only the glare but his perception of the sharp edges of the valley.

Sharp edges. An accurate phrase, he thought with distaste. The pointed tops of pine and spruce and those overrated California monoliths, the redwoods. The jagged crowns of distant mountain peaks. The sawtooth tips of the valley slopes. The knifelike blades of the rail tracks, the axlike blades of the long limestone cut through which the tracks passed. The thin serrated-looking security fences that stretched away on both sides of the asphalt road beyond the station. The corkscrew line of the road up and across the eastern ridge toward the ranch complex in a second “hollow.” Even the station itself-an old wood-and-stone structure that had once been part of a logging railhead in the days before Philip Augustine had built The Hollows-with its alpine roof and its square stone chimneys and its sloping platform ceiling.