Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

“She was.”

“She wasn’t my victim!” he said, digging his index finger into his chest. “She was a victim of the lifestyle she’d chosen. She was a chronic drug user. A party girl who swapped blow jobs for drugs. Jay had lined up dozens of her acquaintances who would corroborate that.”

He left his chair angrily, rounded it, and then braced his hands on the back of it, leaning forward as he continued to berate her. “But you didn’t show recent pictures of her wearing stiletto heels and skimpy tops with suggestive phrases spelled out in rhinestones. You showed your viewers high school graduation pictures of her.” His volume increased. “In her cap and gown. She looked like a cross between the girl next door and a Rhodes scholar.”

“I asked her mother for a photograph-”

“Her mother, who didn’t want her daughter to be remembered as a coked-out whore, who would much rather Suzi with an i be immortalized as the victim of a brute who got her drunk, fucked her, and then did nothing to stop her from overdosing on blow.”

Britt took the harsh criticism because it was warranted. Never in a million years would she admit to manipulating the story to that extent in order to impress her new employer and further her career. But in good conscience she couldn’t deny that her reporting had been biased, against Raley Gannon.

“I’ve said-”

“Spare me,” he said shortly.

He made a tight circle in the kitchen, holding his hair back off his face, a gesture that was now familiar to her. She’d seen him do it whenever he reached the limit of his frustration. It was his way of getting a grip on his temper. Whatever it took to do that she was grateful for. Angry, he frightened her.

He resumed his seat. “After Suzi was portrayed as a saint and I her despoiler, the chief had no choice but to fire me. Fordyce didn’t prosecute me for a crime, but he didn’t need to. I’d been tried and convicted by public opinion.” His eyes said, By you.

After a tense silence, she asked tentatively, “Is that when you moved out here?”

He gave a curt nod. “I rented the place for several months, then decided to buy it because I knew I’d never go back. For living a life that’s not worth shit, this is as good a place as any.”

“Where are we exactly?”

“Inland between Beaufort and Charleston.” He told her the general area, locating it for her by naming several towns.

“I never heard of them,” she said.

“That’s the point.”

“Does anyone…Do you see anyone?”

“Like who? My attorney? I paid his invoice, fired him, then never saw or heard from him again. All my friends who stuck by me?” He made a scornful sound.

“Parents?”

He looked pained and said softly, “They left Charleston, too.”

“Did they believe you?”

“Without question. I’m an only child. We’ve always had a close relationship. They would have stood by me, no matter what.”

“Would have?”

“Would have and did. But because they did, they became outcasts by association. Even their oldest friends started avoiding them. They got tired of being ostracized. Dad took early retirement from a medical supply company he helped build, and they moved to Augusta, where Mom has a sister. I hate like hell what they went through on account of me. I’ll never be able to make it up to them. Their whole lives had been spent in Charleston. They tell me they’ve made new friends, that they like it there, but…” He shrugged.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask about his fiancée, but instead she said, “How do you stand it? The isolation. Having no contact with anyone. Well, except for Delno. What do you do with your time?”

He stared at her for several moments. “I plot my revenge.” He spoke quietly, with menace, in a voice that raised gooseflesh on her arms.

She welcomed the noise from outside that signaled Delno’s return. As he stepped onto the porch, he hung a limp carcass on a hook attached to the overhang, told the hounds to lie down, pulled open the screen door, and poked his head inside. “Okay if I come in?”

“No,” Raley said.

Delno stepped inside anyway, rubbing his hands together. “Did I miss anything important?”

“Nothing you haven’t heard.”

His bare feet sounded like hooves on the vinyl when he reached the kitchen. “I’m hungry. You got anything to eat?” He checked the contents of the fridge and, with disappointment, said, “Lunch meat. You rather me fry up that rabbit?”

“I’d rather you go home, and take your stinking, flea-infested dogs with you.” Suddenly Raley got up from his chair and stalked out of the cabin.

Britt looked at Delno, who apparently had decided the lunch meat wasn’t such a bad choice after all. He folded several slices of pink processed meat into his mouth. It was such an unappetizing sight, she glanced at the screen door that had slammed shut behind Raley’s abrupt exit. “He’s still mad at me.”

“Ah, he’s just horny, is all.”

Her head came around quickly. “I beg your pardon?”

“Horny.” He closed the refrigerator door and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I seen it right off.” He dug into his ear with his little finger and extracted a wad of wax that he wiped on the bib of his overalls. “Can’t say as I’m surprised. The way you’ve been fannin’ around here in that getup.”

Attorney General Cobb Fordyce had a hard time keeping his mind on the heated discussion. The long, oval conference table had become a battlefield, opposing sides facing off across its polished surface like armies camped on either side of a DMZ. He held the neutral position at the head of the table.

Before the meeting commenced, he’d considered calling the parties involved and begging for a postponement. But it had been postponed once already. To ask for another delay would antagonize both sides. There would be speculation that his avoidance was politically motivated.

The issue was vitally important and polarizing. The legislators present were operating under a deadline. For those reasons, he’d let them assemble as scheduled even though his concentration was focused not on this topic but on another one.

After hearing the result of Jay Burgess’s autopsy this morning, that was all he could think about.

“Mr. Fordyce, the new bill on gun control needs your endorsement to get passed,” a constituent said when he could work the words in edgewise.

“It won’t matter whether you endorse it or not, Mr. Attorney General,” one of his opponents said with confidence, which to Fordyce seemed feigned. “As this bill now reads, this legislature will not vote it into law.”

“Then why are you trying so earnestly to persuade him not to endorse it?” one from the other side fired back.

Cobb stood up. “Gentlemen, let’s take a break before blood is shed over a gun-control bill. Wouldn’t that be ironic?” He flashed his vote-winning smile and received the expected chuckles. “Help yourselves to water, coffee. Those chocolate chip cookies are worth the calories. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He hoped none of them would follow him into the men’s restroom, and none did. He used the urinal, feeling obliged to after having interrupted the meeting under that pretext. At the washbasin, he held his hands under the cold-water tap, making certain that his starched cuffs, with the state seal cuff links, didn’t get wet.

So, he thought.

News that Jay Burgess had been murdered would blanket the state today. It would be blared from every newspaper headline and media broadcast. No one could avoid hearing about it, even if they wanted to.

When he’d arrived at his office this morning, his secretary had told him, with inappropriate excitement, that she’d heard it on CNN.