Дэвид Балдаччи - Absolute Power

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t you ever wonder why your mother loved him? Is your picture of Luther Whitney so goddamned distorted that you can’t see why she loved him?”

He grabbed her shoulders, shook her. “Does your goddamned hatred ever let you be compassionate? Does it ever let you love anything, Kate!”

He pushed her away. She stumbled backward, her eyes locked on his face.

He hesitated for a moment. “The fact is, lady, you don’t deserve him.” He paused and then decided to finish. “You don’t deserve to be loved.”

In one furious instant her teeth gnashed, her face contorted into rage. She screamed and flew at him, hammering her fists into his chest, slapping his face. He felt none of her blows as the tears slid down her cheeks.

Her assault stopped as quickly as it started. Her arms like lead, they clutched at his coat, holding on. That’s when the heaves started and she sank to the floor, the tears bursting from her, the sobs echoing through the tiny space.

He lifted her up and placed her gently on the couch.

He knelt beside her, letting her cry, and she did so for a long time, her body repeatedly tensing and then going limp until he felt himself growing weak, his hands clammy. He finally wrapped his arms around her, laid his chest against her side. Her thin fingers clutched tightly to his coat as both their bodies shook together for a long time.

When it was over she sat up slowly, her face red, splotchy.

Jack stepped back.

She refused to look at him. “Get out, Jack.”

“Kate—”

“Get out!” Despite her scream the voice was fragile, battered. She covered her face in her hands.

He turned and walked out the door. As he headed down the street he turned to look at her building. Her silhouette was framed in the window, looking out, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking for something, he wasn’t sure what. Probably she didn’t even know. As he continued to watch, she turned from the window. A few moments later the light in her apartment went out.

Jack wiped at his eyes, turned and walked slowly down the street, heading home after one of the longest days he could ever remember.

“Goddammit! How long?” Seth Frank stood next to the car. It was not quite eight in the morning.

The young Fairfax County patrolman didn’t know the significance of the event and was startled by the detective’s outburst.

“We found her about an hour ago; an early-morning jogger saw the car, called it in.”

Frank walked around the car and peered in from the passenger side. The face was peaceful, much different from the last corpse he had viewed. The long hair was undone, streamed down the sides of the car seat and flowed across the floorboard. Wanda Broome looked like she was asleep.

Three hours later the crime scene investigation was completed. Four pills had been found on the car seat. The autopsy would confirm that Wanda Broome had died from a massive overdose of digitalis, from a prescription she had filled for her mother but obviously had never delivered. She had been dead for about two hours when her body was discovered on the secluded dirt path that ran around a five-acre pond about eight miles from the Sullivan place just over the county line. The only other piece of tangible evidence was in a plastic bag that Frank was carrying back to headquarters after getting the okay from his sister jurisdiction. The note was on a piece of paper torn from a spiral ring notepad. The handwriting was a woman’s, flowing and embellished. Wanda’s last words had been a desperate plea for redemption. A shriek of guilt in four words.

I am so sorry.

Frank drove on past the rapidly fading foliage and misty swamp that paralleled the winding back road. He had fucked that one up royally. He never would have figured the woman for a suicide candidate. Wanda Broome’s history pegged her as a survivor. Frank couldn’t help but feel sorry for the woman, but also raged at her stupidity. He could’ve gotten her a deal, a sweetheart deal! Then he reflected on the fact that his instincts had been right on one count. Wanda Broome had been a very loyal person. She had been loyal to Christine Sullivan and could not live with the guilt that she had contributed, however unintentionally, to her death. An understandable, if regrettable, reaction. But with her gone, Frank’s best, and perhaps only, opportunity to land the big fish had just died too.

The memory of Wanda Broome faded into the background as he focused on how to bring to justice a man who had now caused the death of two women.

“Damn, Tarr, was it today?” Jack looked at his client in the reception area of Patton, Shaw. The man looked as out of place as a junkyard mutt at a dog show.

“Ten-thirty. It’s eleven-fifteen now, does that mean I get forty-five minutes free? By the way, you look like hell.”

Jack looked down at his rumpled suit and put a hand through his unkempt hair. His internal clock was still on Ukraine time, and a sleepless night had not helped his appearance.

“Believe me, I look much better than I feel.”

The two men shook hands. Tarr had dressed up for the meeting, which meant his jeans didn’t have holes in them, and he wore socks with his tennis shoes. The corduroy jacket was a relic from the early 1970s, and the hair was its usual tangle of curls and mats.

“Hey, we can do it another day, Jack. Me, I understand hangovers.”

“Not when you got all dressed up. Come on back. All I need is some grub. I’ll take you to lunch and won’t even bill you for the tab.”

As the men walked down the hallway, Lucinda, prim and proper in keeping with the firm’s image, breathed a sigh of relief. More than one Patton, Shaw partner had walked through her turf with absolute horror on their face at the sight of Tarr Crimson. Memos would fly this week.

“I’m sorry, Tarr, I’m running on about twelve cylinders lately.” Jack tossed his overcoat over a chair and settled down miserably behind a stack of pink message slips about six inches high on his desk.

“Out of the country, so I heard. Hope it was someplace fun.”

“It wasn’t. How’s business?”

“Booming. Pretty soon, you might be able to call me a legitimate client. Make your partners’ stomachs feel a lot better when they see me sitting in the lobby.”

“Screw ’em, Tarr, you pay your bills.”

“Better to be a big client and pay some of your bills than a teeny client who pays all of his.”

Jack smiled. “You got us all figured out, don’t you?”

“Hey, man, you seen one algorithm, you’ve seen ’em all.”

Jack opened Tarr’s file and perused it quickly.

“We’ll have your new S corp set up by tomorrow. Delaware incorporation with a qualification in the District. Right?”

Tarr nodded.

“How’re you planning on capitalizing it?”

Tarr pulled out a legal pad. “I’ve got the list of potentials. Same as the last deal. Do I get a reduced rate?” Tarr smiled. He liked Jack, but business was business.

“Yeah, this time you won’t pay for the learning curve of an overpriced and underinformed associate.”

Both men smiled.

“I’ll cut the bill to the bone, Tarr, just like always. What’s the new company for, by the way?”

“Got the inside track on some new technology for surveillance work.”

Jack looked up from his notes. “Surveillance? That’s a little off the mark for you, isn’t it?”

“Hey, you gotta go with the flow. Corporate business is down. But when one market dries up, being the good entrepreneur that I am, I look around for other opportunities. Surveillance for the private sector has always been hot. Now the new twist is big brother in the law enforcement arena.”