Michael Palmer - Fatal

"Yer pal Grimes had one a them phones — ya know, lak a two-way radio. When Lyle dint come rot back, we knowed it 'uz bad. A couple var frands got phones. I tole ya we knowed some people. Frank called Earl Morris — ya know him?"

"No."

"Well, Earl's moun'n jes lak us. He brought a bunch o'er an' hept us clean up. I don't think no one's gonna find Grimes an' his pals where we put 'em less'n they kin dahve in real deep, real dark water. Cleaned up all the casin's, too."

"Why was I so worried about you two? What about Hal? How'd you get there?"

"Earl Morris knowed whar he lives. We piled in back a his truck an' went over. Thar yer uncle were, all trussed up lak a hog at bar-bee-que time."

"Did he try and talk you into untying him?"

"Oh, he tried," Frank said. "B'lieve me, he tried."

"And this car? He told me he didn't have another key."

"He lied," Frank said with a twinkle.

"We knowed he 'uz lyin'," Lewis added. "He ain't vura good at it. Thanks he is, but he ain't. With a l'il hep from us, he tole what hap'ned ta Lyle, then he tole us whar the car key was. Wanted us ta have it in exchange fer untyin' him."

"Did you kill him?"

"Thought about it."

"I'm glad you didn't. I need him alive."

"We may a left some marks, though."

"Whatever it is, he deserved it. As soon as you can, find someone who'll buy his car and use the cash to get yourselves a new truck."

"Wer gonna. First we gotta fond Lyle's body. We want ta bury him back ta the farm. Summabitches."

"Well get down to the lake at dawn tomorrow. I'll meet you at my uncle's and show you the road down to the water. Lewis, I'm going back into the hospital to get some stuff to pull that tube out of your chest. I don't think you need it anymore and I don't want it to let in an infection."

"Whute'er ya say. Ya gonna be sendin' the police out ta yer uncle's place?"

"You check those knots I tied?"

"Yep. They ain't comin' loose no tahm soon."

Matt opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. The breezy night was cloudless and utterly clear. A West Virginia night.

"Maybe in a few days," he said.

The massive Hart Senate Office Building, more than a million square feet, was built in the late seventies adjacent to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, on Constitution Avenue between First and Second Streets. For four days now, the august central hearing room of the Hart Building had been the scene of the first major hearing of the new, post-election Senate — an investigation into the Omnivax debacle by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Ellen had already testified, as had Rudy and Matt and others, including Lara Bolton, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services in the former Marquand administration. For nearly six hours now, the senators, seated at draped tables beneath a massive, gray marble wall, had been taking turns questioning the star of the proceedings, Dr. Harold Sawyer, currently awaiting trial and being held without bail at the maximum security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. And for nearly six hours, Hal had been sidestepping and evading their queries like an All-American halfback dodging second-string tacklers.

Matt, along with Ellen, and Cheri Sanderson from PAVE, had been present for Hal's entire testimony, and his patience as well as his faith in the system was frayed to near the breaking point. With Grimes, Sutcher, and the hired killer Verne all still missing, and Larry a bloated, fish-eaten corpse, washed up on the shore of Long Lake weeks after his death, there was little in the way of substantive evidence against Hal beyond the testimonies of Matt and Ellen.

"Dr. Sawyer," Delaware Senator Martin Wells was asking wearily, "let's get back to your relationship with Dr. George Poulos of the Institute for Vaccine Development. In the six months prior to your arrest, precisely how many meetings — face-to-face or by phone or by e-mail — did the two of you have?"

"I would have to check my appointment book, Senator," Hal replied, smiling earnestly, "but from my recollection, as I told Senator Worthington, it couldn't have been more than one or two times."

"This is really depressing," Matt whispered. "He is just so damn slick. If I didn't hear him admit to what he's done, I would probably believe that he was just the unfortunate victim of hiring the wrong people."

"Matt," Cheri said, "I heard that he's in the process of cutting a deal with the federal prosecutors. Is that true?"

"I'm afraid it might be. Once they realized that he was going to be tough to convict on many of the major charges against him, they started going after the bigger fish he was dealing with."

"George Poulos, for one," Ellen said. "I'm convinced he's the link between the Marquand administration and Columbia Pharmaceuticals, which means he's the one who suggested they might send someone like Vinyl Sutcher to pay me a visit."

"Senator," Hal was saying, "I want to cooperate, really I do, but I feel I have answered your questions regarding my relationship with Dr. Poulos as forthrightly and — "

"Oh, I've had enough of this," Matt snapped. "Let's go out for coffee. My treat."

"Can't," Cheri said. "Sally's meeting me at the office in half an hour. She's at a meeting of the commission President Harrison has formed to look at vaccine issues, including funding for increased clinical investigation and public education, as well as debate on the whole business of parental choice. It's a miracle what's happening all over, and it's all thanks to you guys."

"Oh, pshaw," Ellen said.

"As long as we don't end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater," Matt cautioned.

"Even we don't want to do that," Cheri said. "We just want to be listened to."

"So, did someone say coffee?" Ellen asked.

After seeing Cheri into a cab, Matt and Ellen bundled up against the brisk February wind and walked arm in arm around to a diner on C Street. Hal's testimony would be continuing in the morning. Federal prosecutors had asked Matt to attend as long as his uncle was testifying, but today would be Ellen's last day at the hearings. Rudy was back at his cabin, teaching, writing, fishing when the weather permitted, and awaiting her return. She was still living in her place in Glenside, but the two of them had been seeing more and more of each other, and Ellen had mentioned something to Matt almost in passing about a trial period of living together in two places.

They sat across from each other in a booth, watching the traffic inch past, and saying little, but each aware of the bonds that would forever exist between them. Three months after she had helped to save his life, Ellen had returned to Belinda for the burial of Colin Morrissey, who rapidly became incapacitated from his neurologic disease and simply wasted away. Soon, sadly, Sara Jane Tinsley would share a similar fate.

For nearly six months now, the owners of BC amp;C had been besieged by attorneys, mine agencies, and government investigations. Armand Stevenson had been sent packing and was facing criminal charges. Elaine LeBlanc was gone as well, and latest estimates placed the fines and settlements in the tens of millions. Still, under new management, the operation had remained open, and recently, had even been hiring.

"So," Ellen asked finally, "what do you think about your uncle making some sort of plea bargain?"

Matt shrugged. He was thinking about his mother and her brother's many kindnesses to her. Since Hal's imprisonment, Matt had spent even more time with her than before. But she was inching closer and closer to custodial care, and now as often as not called him Hal.

"He hurt a lot of people," he said finally. "One minute I want to see him put away forever, and the next I think that he simply went crazy with all the money that was at stake. It's really out of my hands. All I can do now is keep telling the prosecutors what I know."