David Lindsey - The Rules of Silence

Titus could only nod. The only thing that remained for him to know was how it had happened.

“Ms. Elster is dead, Mr. Cain.”

Rita gasped, then gasped again, two expurgations of air that sounded as if she'd been hit in the stomach. Titus couldn't respond at all.

Seams talked slowly, carefully, as if he were trying to coax a frightened animal.

“She was found just about an hour ago near her home,” he said. “She was lying by the roadside. Been jogging. EMS people tell us it looks like she died of allergic reaction to insect stings.”

Incredibly, Rita gasped again. Seams threw a look at her again and then went on.

“She was wearing identification, ”he explained. “EMS took her to Seton downtown. I went by the house and neighbors told me her two daughters were out of town for the summer. They told me she worked for CaiText, and the people there told me she worked for you. That you were old friends.”

He reached out and put his hand on Titus's shoulder, an unexpected gesture.

“I'm really sorry, Mr. Cain. ”And he seemed to be. He looked at Rita again, then back at Titus. “This is hard, I know, but I need to ask you some questions about the girls. We need to talk about how to handle it. Somebody has to tell them. We've got to decide how to go about doing that.”

Rita had sat down in one of the wrought-iron chairs in the veranda and was crying as Titus stood and watched the deputy's car go down the drive to the front gate. He watched it until it was out of sight.

What he was feeling was indescribable. It was an emotion like no other, and it grew stranger as he stood under the morning glories and listened to Rita crying softly, even politely, but without consolation. There was a world of bewilderment in her weeping as well as fear and anger and stupefaction and emotions that no one had ever named.

For Titus, though, the overriding feeling was one of nausea driven by an appalling sense of guilt. If he had… if he had… if he had… In an instantaneous swarm of remembrances, he blamed Luquin… and Gil Norlin… and Garcia Burden… and himself for not seeing at every turn where all this was going, for not having enough insight, for not having enough intelligence, for not having enough savvy… for not having enough guts…

“Goddamn it all! ”he swore, and wheeled around, his face flushing, his body thrilling with the adrenaline that was exploding through him, driven by the hyperagitation of his own mind. “Goddamn it! ”he repeated, and barged across the veranda and onto the courtyard, headed for the guest house, where Burden had spent what was left of the night instead of going back down the hill.

“Titus! ”Rita lifted her head out of her hands. “Titus!” She stood, but she was frozen to the spot.

Titus flung open the door of the guest house with such force that it slammed against the inside wall like a gunshot. His entrance was so volcanic that Herrin and Cline, who were working at computer monitors, actually jumped to their feet in shocked surprise.

“Where the hell's Burden, ”he demanded, his throat thick with emotion, just as Burden stood up from the sofa where he'd been sitting, his telephone still to his ear.

“Get off the goddamned phone, ”Titus barked at him.

Burden said something into the phone and snapped it shut. The two men faced each other.

“You know what just happened?”

“Yeah, ”Burden said. “I just found out.”

Titus's chest was heaving, his heart pitching, almost squeezing off his ability to speak.

“No more, ”he said. “That's it. No more. Not one more. Don't give me any of this shit about inevitability. Fuck that. The killings stop here. Right now.”

“How do-”

“I'm going to tell you, ”Titus said. “You take every bit of information you have on Luquin and his people-which is considerable at this point-and you go to the FBI. Now. Right this minute. You take them everything you have, and you get their tac squads over there and arrest Luquin or kill him, and I don't give a shit which. But this insanity stops now!”

“Think about this, Titus-”

“ You do this now, Garcia”-Titus was almost screaming, his voice hoarse with heat-“or I will. I don't give a shit about your silence or your secrecy or your hidden agendas. No more of my friends are going to die because of this son of a bitch. You don't have any choice. You don't have any say. This is the end of it.”

The guest house was full of electricity, more of it coursing through the people than through the tangle of cables and wires supporting the computers and communications hardware scattered around on makeshift folding tables.

Rita had burst through the door immediately after Titus, and the two of them were standing facing Burden, who, unintimidated, was nodding at them, letting them catch their breath. Mark Herrin and Cline were working feverishly at their computer screens with an improbably fierce concentration. In the midst of this momentary silence, the only sound was the white noise of humming electronics.

“I should never have let this go this far, ”Titus said. “My choices led to these deaths. But I'm not going to let it happen anymore.”

“So your solution is to pull the plug on all this, ”Burden said.

From where he stood, he faced the south side of the large main room, with its high glass wall that reached to a vaulted ceiling and looked out at the last part of the laurel allee and the peach orchard.

“Look, ”he said, running the fingers of one hand through his hair and looking at Titus, “think about this: Knowing what you know now about Luquin, knowing that he had promised you he'd kill people if you went to the FBI”-he paused-“do you think that if you'd gone to the FBI that first night, you would've prevented either of these deaths?”

Burden paused, but he didn't want his answer quite yet. He went on.

“How quickly do you think the FBI would've found Luquin? Literally, how would that have played out? Would they have him yet”-he looked at his watch and then back at Titus-“sixty hours later? Would either of these deaths have been prevented?”

Titus stared at him. His mind was plunging into the problem, but still Burden didn't wait.

“Even if they had arrested him-an impossibility, but let's go ahead with that fantasy for the hell of it-would that have prevented these tragic… accidents?”

Silence.

“Or let's say Luquin would've managed to get out of the country before they found him. Do you think that would've prevented these two deaths?”

Burden glanced at Rita, who was staring at him in brittle silence.

“You need to remember, Titus, that you aren't the only one who's ever had to go through something like this because of this man. Have you forgotten that? And, believe me, I didn't tell you nearly all that I could've. The fact is, as tragedies go, things could've been a hell of a lot worse for you, couldn't they.”

Titus stared at him, feeling the heat of temper still in his face. He was strung out, pummeled by his own emotions.

Leaving his questions hanging in the air, Burden moved over to the window and looked out. He stayed that way, giving no indication of what he planned to do next.

“I can't do anything about what Luquin's done anywhere else, ”Titus said to Burden's back. “I'm sorry about it, I am, but I can't do anything about it.”

Burden turned around. “But you can do something about it here? Is that it?”

“I should've gone to the FBI to begin with.”

“And Luquin would be gone now, ”Burden said, “and Thrush and Elster would've died anyway.”

“But we'd have the FBI, ”Titus countered, “and the CIA, and the damned U.S. military, if we needed them, chasing his ass. There's a lot of weight there, Garcia. What have you got chasing him?”