Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

Escobar’s eyes gleamed. Thorne had been right: getting shut out of his own murder investigation had cut deep. Escobar was waggling his fingers before Thorne even finished speaking.

‘Okay, c’mon, give. The doc’s address. I’ll overnight my semen samples to him as soon as I get back to the office.’

For the next two days Thorne marked time, exploring the Delta’s twisting waterways in a rented boat, hiking along its levees and studying its bird life. He wanted to call Janet at Whiskey River, just to hear her voice; but he figured he had nothing to tell her that she would want to hear.

On the third day, unable to contain himself any longer, he sent a three-word fax to Houghton: Yes or No? Twenty minutes later, he got back a oneword reply: Tomorrow. The next afternoon brought another oneworder: Yes.

Thorne drove to Lodi to drink beer and think. Johnny Doyle had laid it all out for him that night at the Hard Times Cafe, he just hadn’t been listening hard enough.

Kurt fuckin’ Jaeger, our wunnerful Chief of Staff, had th’ hots for Nisa... She turn’d ’m down cold...

Not understood by Doyle, but now understood by Thorne: she turned Jaeger down so hard he suddenly found he had trouble getting it up with any woman. That humiliation quickly led to obsession, to beating women for sexual release. Thorne felt as if he had raised a rock and found something slimy underneath it.

So he got a black pimp in LA named Sharkey to fin’ ’im hookers din’t mind gettin’ beat on...

When Janet Kestrel turned up at Jaeger’s hotel in LA, he left Nisa’s name and phone number and ‘Terminous’ on his phone pad for her to see. He had glimpsed a woman driving Corwin’s get away vehicle at the Grand Canyon, and thought Janet was she. But in LA, she played him so skillfully — while he was playing her — that he was deceived into thinking she was just a stupid little squaw girl after all, with no connection to Corwin.

So Jaeger had followed his usual M.O. with any attractive woman at his mercy. He had beaten her to get sexually aroused, then had masturbated on her unconscious body.

But at the hospital she passed on to Corwin what she had seen on Jaeger’s phone pad: Nisa’s name and number and the word Terminous. On election day, Corwin called Nisa, but she hung up on him before he could say they had nothing to fear from him. Then she called Jaeger, terrified, thinking she needed protection because Corwin had found them. Jaeger’s plan for revenge was back on track.

That night at the Delta, Jaeger told Sharkey he was going to ‘scout around’ the houseboat. He went aboard, maybe saw Damon’s gun, said something like, ‘For Chrissake, gimme that thing before it goes off.’ Of course Damon did: Jaeger was there because Nisa had pleaded with him to come rescue them.

Instead, he killed them. Six shots, muffled by the fog, five into Nisa. Then he ejaculated on her body. Murder: the ultimate sexual frenzy and release all in one package. With Corwin to take the rap. But Corwin survived.

No wonder that Jaeger had dragged Thorne out of Kenya when the computer said he was the best man to find Corwin. Jaeger had murdered Corwin’s daughter and had befouled her body, and had blamed it on her father. Who was still alive. Jaeger was terrified, in fear of his life.

But he was also ambitious. And Corwin had been smart enough to know that the best way to get him out in the open was to make all of them think that Wallberg was his target.

Where Wallberg went, Jaeger went. When Wallberg was exposed, Jaeger was exposed.

End of Jaeger. But end of Corwin, too, thanks to Thorne.

Nothing to do now except tell Janet what had really happened on the Delta that night. He used his phone card.

Kate’s voice said, ‘Whiskey River.’

‘This is Thorne. Tell Janet to be proud of Corwin. Tell her that he was not psychotic, just a man bent on vengeance. Tell her that he didn’t do anything ugly or dishonorable.’

‘I can’t. A week ago that fucking Fat-Arms LeDoux rolled over on her for immunity on an ag-assault charge. Hatfield’s men took her away in handcuffs.’ Her voice brightened. ‘At least, Hatfield reneged on their deal. LeDoux’s going down, hard.’

A week. His heart sank. It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t gone looking for her. Janet didn’t have anything they wanted, but Hatfield would never believe that.

Thorne felt his face grow hot. For a moment he thought it was an adrenaline rush, then he recognized it as rage. The same rage that had so often carried him safely through his Ranger years, suppressed since Alison and Eden had died.

Now he welcomed it. Red, cleansing rage, as he had felt at the Colombian rebels who had cut off Victor’s finger. But this rage was directed at Hatfield.

The fucker had gone too far. Despite what he knew, despite what Hatfield had done to him, Thorne had been planning to creep meekly away, find a way to get back to Africa. But this! The Ranger mantra flashed through his mind: Rangers don’t leave Rangers behind .

For right now, Janet was a fellow Ranger.

And she had saved his life, as he had saved Victor’s.

They had taken her watch, but Janet came awake with a start and knew it was the middle of the night. Her edge was that she had nothing to tell them except that Thorne was alive. And she would never tell them that. She had deserted him, sick, in the middle of the night, but she knew that if he learned where she was, he would try to get her out. He would fail, but he would try.

Thorne had the Benny Schutz identity, so he could move around freely. Hatfield thought he was dead. He had the Trooper, a clean vehicle with no connection to Brendan Thorne in anyone’s data base. He knew what Jaeger had done on the houseboat. No one else living did.

There had been something between Wallberg and Corwin from forty years ago. When Wallberg got that inaugural day message meant to get Jaeger into the open — CONGRATULATIONS TO A DEAD PRESIDENT — he had instantly accepted the idea that Corwin wanted to kill him. Thorne was going to find out why.

For Janet. For the dead Hal Corwin.

He had a lot of driving to do. Tomorrow was Memorial Day.

Memorial Day. Gus Wallberg sat in the old easy chair that had been his father’s, staring out of his study window at the blue and sparkling water of Lake Minnetonka. The kids were up for the weekend and had the sailboat out, heeled over with the wind, slicing through the waves. He could almost hear their shouts and laughter through the thermopaned glass. Edith was supervising in the kitchen: in two hours they would have a backyard barbecue under the big oak trees that would go on until well after dark.

Just six months ago, he and Edith had sat here together on New Year’s Eve, looking out over the frozen lake from this very window, discussing his upcoming presidency. What a difference those six months had made! Corwin’s inaugural-day letter had not yet been written. Thorne had not been brought in from Africa at Kurt’s urging to try and find Corwin and stop him. There was no hint that Kurt would die by Corwin’s hand, no hint that Corwin would die by Hatfield’s hand.

No hint at all that Wallberg’s poll numbers would soar as a result. The American people thought their President had almost been assassinated by some Muslim fundamentalist terrorist or some right-wing survivalist fanatic, and had rallied around. What would they think if they knew that countless millions of their tax dollars had been wasted by the Justice Department to find an assassin who didn’t exist? Well, they would never find out.

Only Wallberg and a tiny handful of his most trusted aides knew that it had been someone from the President’s past. Terrill Hatfield had killed the killer, thus freeing their President of the dark burden he had carried for forty years.