Читать книгу: «Guilt By Silence», страница 2
In that time, she had watched a light in those newly conscious eyes flicker and die. She never knew whether the calm that finally settled on him was madness or some kind of divinely inspired state of grace. It didn’t matter, she thought, as long as it gave him peace.
It gave her none, however. Most of what was left of her husband—Dr. David Tardiff, nuclear physicist and ex-boy wonder, harmonica player and Wayne Gretzky wannabe, love of her life and father of her only child—had died that day. All that remained now was this sad shell of a man—that, and a hard angry fist in the pit of her being that was perpetually raised in defiance of the God or the fates that had allowed such a thing to happen.
Mariah glanced at her watch. “I have to go soon, David. Lins will be almost done with her practice.”
His head lolled on the headrest as he turned his eyes to her, their expression sad, wistful as always. But he held her gaze fixedly and then his right hand reached out to hers, resting on the arm of his chair. He grappled for her wrist. Her hand followed his as he moved it shakily into his lap.
“Oh, David,” she said softly. She rested her head against his shoulder for a moment, then lifted it. “Just a minute,” she whispered. She rose and went to the door, closing it firmly, regretting the absence of a lock. The room was a private one, but institutional privacy was a contradiction in terms.
The first time this had happened was one Saturday when she and Lindsay had taken him home to their condo overnight. It had been late in the evening. Lindsay had gone up to bed after helping her get David settled on the sofa bed in the living room and Mariah had been lying beside him, outside the covers, reading to him while soft music played in the background. She wasn’t sure whether or not he followed the words, but her voice and the music seemed to relax him, and he’d looked almost like a gaunt version of his old self, lying there under the quilt.
Suddenly, Mariah had glanced up and seen him watching her with an expression of acute longing in his eyes and she had known what he was thinking about. It had taken her breath away. No one had ever mentioned it during his long hospital stays, even though she had discussed with the doctors every other conceivable aspect of the prognosis for his physical and mental recovery. But she had understood all at once that whatever else was to be denied him for the rest of his life, some basic needs had not disappeared.
That night, she had done what she had to do to give him the comfort that only a wife or lover can offer—she had made love to him as gently and delicately as she knew how. And although he was unable to reciprocate, she had comforted herself with the memory of the hundreds of times he had held her and loved her. Then she had crawled under the covers beside him, rocking him and crying silent tears, feeling in her arms the familiar and yet awkwardly unfamiliar outlines of his body.
Now, sitting close beside him in his nursing-home room, she gave him comfort again and then held him for a while before she had to go. His eyes were closed when she left him.
Mariah stood at the top of the steps outside the front door, inhaling deeply to clear her lungs of institutional air, forcing her mind to make the transition back to life beyond David’s world. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and started down the steps.
Preoccupied, she failed to notice the figure waiting under a tree next to the sidewalk. It was only when he said her name that she glanced up, startled out of her reverie. She narrowed her eyes to make him out in the shadows, then recoiled in surprise.
“Paul? Paul Chaney—what on earth are you doing here?” she asked, moving quickly from astonishment to instinctive wariness.
He came forward and they met at the bottom step. “Waiting for you.” He bent down and they exchanged busses on both cheeks, the European-style that transplanted Americans adopt awkwardly at first, then maintain as a lifelong habit as they come to appreciate the comfort of the ritual.
He pulled back and she studied him under the lamplight. He was tall, his lankiness emphasized by the soft, brown leather bomber jacket he habitually wore and was wearing now, the collar turned up. He had a full head of blond hair, graying at the temples, clear blue eyes and a photogenic face that could be earnest, penetrating or morally indignant as required in front of the television cameras. On air he dominated the screen, his presence imposing. Off camera, he also had what Mariah thought of as his helpless-but-comic puppy-dog shtick that he cultivated especially for the attractive and—preferably—rich and well-connected women that he seemed to attract like a magnet, all of whom seemed intent on nurturing him.
Based in Vienna, Chaney was senior foreign correspondent for CBN, the Cable Broadcast News network. In the three years she and David had known him there, Mariah had watched—appalled, amazed and ultimately amused—the succession of women he had trailed on his arm who had tried to sink their hooks into him. He had been too slippery for all of them, although an aggressive blonde who called herself Princess Elsa von Schleimann had looked for a while as if she might actually reel him in.
“What are you up to?” Mariah said. “I didn’t know you were back in the States.”
“Just got in yesterday. I’m working on a story.”
“What happened to the princess?” Mariah, anxious to mask her unease, hoped the question came across as mischievous.
Chaney seemed startled, then frowned. “Found herself a real prince, I guess.” They shuffled awkwardly, the old tension rising between them like a sudden fog. Finally, Chaney broke the silence. “How have you been, Mariah?”
She glanced away into the trees, her lips pressed tight. Then she sighed and turned back to him. “All right. My daughter’s doing better. She’s settled into a new school now, here in McLean, and she’s making a good recovery.”
“I’m glad.” Chaney glanced up at the front door of the nursing home. “And David? Is there any hope?”
Mariah shook her head slowly, watching the sidewalk as she crushed a dried leaf under the toe of her shoe. “If anything, he’s losing ground. He’s been having seizures from the scar tissue on his brain. For a while, he’d been able to type a few words on the computer, but now he seems to have lost even that.” She looked up as a sudden thought occurred to her. “Are you going in to see him, Paul? He’d like that—someone from the old days, from the team.”
Chaney smiled. He had been an honorary member of the Vienna Diplomats, the haphazard team of amateur foreign hockey players that played pickup games whenever they could find an opponent and get ice time on one of Vienna’s rinks.
“I already have. That’s how I knew you were coming—a nurse told me.” He moved closer, so close, she could smell the leather of his jacket. “Can we talk?”
How was it that Paul Chaney always managed to do this to her? Mariah wondered. Make her feel vulnerable and uneasy. On alert, her defenses aroused—against what, she was never quite sure. Something.
She mustered up an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, I can’t. I have to pick up Lindsay.” She glanced at her watch, half turning away already. “I’m late. She’s waiting for me. It’s been nice seeing you, and I’m grateful to you for visiting David, but—”
Chaney moved to block her path and put his hands on her shoulders. “Please. This is important. I need to talk to you about what really happened in Vienna. About the people who did this to David—and to your daughter.”
“What are you talking about? Nobody did this. It was an accident.”
“I don’t think it was. I think it was deliberate. I’m not sure about some of the details, but I’m trying to find out.”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking herself free of his grip. “I know you. You’re trying to come up with some sensationalist news item—Chaney’s exposé of the week. Well, forget it. There’s no story here. What happened to David and Lindsay was nothing but a horrible, ugly traffic accident.”
“Give me a break, will you? David was my friend. I wouldn’t say something like this if I didn’t believe it was true.”
“Give me a break, Paul! Do you believe you’re the only person that this thought might have occurred to? I was working in the embassy. Don’t you think I insisted that every effort be made to find out exactly what happened? We had people breathing down the necks of the Vienna Police every step of the way during that investigation. But it was an accident—so drop it, please. We’ve been through enough.”
She started down the path to the parking lot. Chaney never actually raised his voice, but it seemed to ring through the night. “It wasn’t, Mariah. And I think you know it.”
Mariah turned her head slowly to look at him over her shoulder, fixing him coldly in her gaze. “Stay away from me, Chaney—and from my family. I’m warning you.”
Across the lot, Rollie Burton watched from his vehicle, his eyes narrowed. The woman drove off, tires squealing as she pulled out. Only then did the man walk over to another car—a new white Ford that looked like a rental—and disappear in the opposite direction.
Burton pocketed the ivory-handled blade, then drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. He knew who that guy was—couldn’t remember his name, but was sure he’d seen him on TV. The news, that was it. She obviously knew him, too, although she hadn’t looked thrilled to see him. Maybe there was more to this job than he’d thought. For sure, he wasn’t happy about doing his work under the nose of some media hack. He was going to have to tread carefully.
Burton flipped the key in the ignition and put the car in gear, turning his grungy Toyota right as he headed out of the parking lot, following in the direction she had taken.
3
Mariah spotted her daughter as soon as she pulled up in front of the school. Lindsay was sitting at the top of the wide staircase at the main entrance, her mass of hair a burning bush under the overhead lights. She was deep in conversation with another young girl, and the two of them were feigning indifference to the group of boys nearby. The boys, falling over themselves in their rush to impress the girls, were performing death-defying skateboard tricks up and down the staircase. Their only reward was, alas, two pairs of pretty thirteen-year-old eyes rolled heavenward each time one of them tripped over his own gangly legs. In spite of the dread that clung to her like soot, Mariah grinned. Some things never change.
When Lindsay spotted the Volvo, she stood and waved goodbye to her friend, then started carefully down the stairs. Her arms were laden with books, and her pace stopped and started as the damaged left leg followed the stronger right, one step at a time. Mariah gripped the wheel, suppressing the urge to jump out of the car and run to take the books and offer a supporting arm. But Lindsay had thrown away her crutches a few weeks earlier and reacted angrily on those rare occasions when Mariah forgot her determination not to hover and fret. The ache in her mothering heart was less easily suppressed, however.
She leaned over and opened the passenger door. Lindsay dropped heavily into the seat, weighted down by her books. Mariah took them from her and placed them on the back seat while the girl lifted her left leg with her hands and settled it into a comfortable position before pulling in the right and shutting the door. Mariah watched her buckle up, then passed her fingers gently over Lindsay’s damp red curls, pushing the perpetually unruly mass back over her shoulders. The color was a throwback to ancient Bolt and Tardiff ancestors, it seemed, but the curls were pure David.
“Hi, kiddo. Sorry I’m late. I got held up at the home.”
Lindsay’s head snapped toward her mother, her expression shifting instantly from adolescent lightheartedness to all-too-adult anxiety. “Is Daddy all right?”
Mariah was putting the car in gear, but she paused and patted her daughter’s arm. “He’s fine, Lins. He loved your cookies.” Lindsay settled back into her seat, a smile replacing the fear in her eyes. “I was running late, that’s all.”
Lindsay shrugged. “It’s okay. Our practice went a little over. I just got out.” Mariah pulled the Volvo into the road, turning right. “Mom? Where are we going?”
“Home, of course.”
“Why are we going this way?”
Mariah glanced around, noticing where she was and realizing with a start that she had made a wrong turn. “Oh, for—”
“Hello-o! Earth to Mom—come in, Mom. Are you with us?”
“All right, all right. Sorry. I’ll pull a U-turn at the next light.”
Lindsay shook her head and then promptly launched into a long and detailed report on recent developments in the ongoing drama of thirteen-year-old social politics. Today, it seemed, two girls had decided to ostracize a third for some perceived infraction of teenage standards of decorum.
Like anyone who read all the parenting books, Mariah knew that teenagers lived in a parallel universe of strange customs and even stranger preoccupations. Still, she hadn’t quite been prepared when Lindsay suddenly turned into one of those hormone-tossed creatures.
After observing her daughter’s friends, though, Mariah had concluded that Lindsay was different, old beyond her years, more given to sober reflection. Mariah put it down to the accident and its awful consequences. Most youngsters were certain that they were invulnerable. Lindsay had learned early—too early—what a fragile illusion that was. Under the circumstances, it was probably a good sign that Lindsay could get caught up in the same trivial issues as her friends.
“Isn’t that mean, Mom?”
Mariah had only been half listening, waiting for a break in the on-coming traffic so she could turn around, thrown off by meeting Chaney again.
“What? Oh—for sure,” Mariah said, snapping back into focus. “So what did you do about it?”
“I told Megan I thought she wasn’t being fair and that I didn’t care what she said, Jenna was still my friend. Boy! It makes me so mad!” Lindsay folded her arms across her chest, eyes flashing.
Mariah smiled. “Good for you, kiddo. You’re a loyal friend. Don’t let the mob mentality rule.”
“Yeah,” Lindsay said, her lower lip jutting out as she nodded. “Some people think they know it all—like the rest of us should just sit back and let them rule the world!”
Dieter Pflanz knew something about what it took to rule the world—or at least, manage good chunks of it. And he knew how easily that control could be lost if you didn’t pay attention to details.
He glanced at his watch, calculating the time back East. Ignoring the sleek designer telephone on his desk, Pflanz reached into a cabinet behind him and pulled out a sliding shelf on which sat a bulkier unit. He turned a key next to the number pad and punched in a series of digits. Spinning his chair to face a big plate-glass window, he leaned back and propped his feet on the sill. A digital click in his ear traced the signal of the long-distance call. Crooking the telephone receiver against his shoulder, Pflanz picked up an India rubber ball from his desk, powerful fingers compressing the dense sphere as he watched the scene below him.
The California sun was still well above the western horizon. From his eighteenth-story aerie in McCord Tower, at the heart of Newport Center, Pflanz could see the late-afternoon surfers heading toward the beach, the diehards braving the cold December surf in wet suits. He shook his head as he watched all the cars with surfboard-laden roof racks wending their way along the Coast Highway. Despite the fact that he’d been based here for a decade now, he had never gotten used to the southern California life-style. “Laid-back” was not in Dieter Pflanz’s vocabulary. The daily sight of beaches packed with strapping young surfers and volleyball players only filled him with contempt. It was symptomatic of a society gone soft.
The telephone at the other end of the line began to ring as the connection was completed. Halfway through the third ring, it was picked up. “Hello?”
“It’s me. Going to scramble.”
“Roger.”
Pflanz punched a button under the telephone keypad. After a brief delay, a light began to flash on the unit. At the other end of the line, he knew, a similar light would be flashing. A long beep following a series of short ones confirmed that the scrambler was operational. From here on in, anyone trying to monitor the call would hear nothing but a piercing whine. Only the synchronized software of the two machines was capable of decoding the electronic gobbledygook passing across the connection.
“Okay,” Pflanz said. “We’re set.”
“I’ve been expecting your call. How’s it going?”
“We’re coming in tomorrow. There’s one stop en route—a charity thing. We arrive in D.C. in the evening. McCord sees the President on Friday.”
“I heard. He’s up to speed.”
“Good.”
“What about New Mexico?”
“It’s on for tonight.”
“Tonight? Jesus, Dieter! So soon?”
“We have no choice. Everything’s in place. Either we do it tonight or we miss the window of opportunity.”
“Are you sure about this? If anything goes wrong, this could blow up in our faces.”
Pflanz squeezed the rubber ball tighter. “Nothing’s going to go wrong, George. Not,” he added pointedly, “like that mess in Vienna.”
There was a long sigh on the other end of the line. “Hell, don’t talk to me about that. We’re still cleaning up.”
“What about the woman? She’s back in operation now?”
“She’s nothing to worry about.”
“She hasn’t made the connection?”
“No. She’s off the file and preoccupied with her family. Trust me—Mariah Bolt poses no threat to us.”
“She’d better not,” Pflanz growled. “All right, look—I’ll call you when I get in tomorrow.”
“No. Call me tonight, when you hear from New Mexico.”
“It’ll be late.”
“You’ve got my home number. Call. I’ll be up till I hear.”
“Roger.”
Pflanz cradled the receiver and closed the cabinet housing the secure phone. Then he leaned back and watched the sun sinking lower toward the Pacific.
A big man, with a hawk’s beak for a nose and hands like bulldozer shovels, Pflanz still looked at forty-nine as if he belonged in jungle fatigues instead of the corporate uniform that he mostly wore these days. Despite the suit, though, no one would mistake him for anything but a security man—the ever-watchful, hooded eyes missed nothing. His massive shoulders hunched forward, giving him the appearance of a bird of prey poised for takeoff.
He had spent a quarter of a century mounting complex security operations, first as a CIA covert operative, then as chief of security for McCord Industries. McCord’s head office was in Newport Beach, California, with subsidiaries in eleven American cities and fourteen other branches worldwide. It was a multifaceted business with diverse interests ranging from electronics to construction engineering, with dozens of difficult foreign projects that sometimes demanded special arrangements to ensure the safety of the employees. And the extracurricular activities of the company’s president and CEO, Angus McCord, added yet another dimension to Pflanz’s security duties.
You have to pay attention to detail, he told himself again—even the tiniest. That’s the key to success. You can’t leave anything to chance because it’s the little things, the loose ends, that are sure to foul you up. Despite the assurances on the other end of the line a moment earlier, he’d been convinced all along that the Vienna episode had left too many loose ends—loose ends that he himself had already begun to tidy up.
Rollie Burton’s battered green Toyota was parked across the road and down the street a little way from Mariah’s condo in McLean, but the town house was still dark. He had lost her in heavy rush-hour traffic outside the nursing home, but from the look of things, he had beaten her here. When he finally spotted the Volvo coming up the street, the sight of two figures in the front seat gave him a jolt. He peered closely as the car passed under a streetlight. Oh, shit, he thought—she’s got a kid. The voice had conveniently neglected to mention that.
The garage door began to rise as the Volvo approached the driveway. Burton slumped in his seat, tugging a baseball cap low over his eyes, watching the car pull into the garage. The brake lights flashed and then went dark as she killed the engine. Inside the lit garage he could see an interior door leading into the town house. When the automatic door began to drop, Burton glanced at the sweep hand on his watch: It took about five seconds to close.
The garage was on the side of the house facing the street, he noted, taking careful stock of the landscape. There was a cedar hedge running along one side of the driveway, with open lawn extending down to a cross street on the other. No prying neighbors. He nodded in satisfaction—good cover and a quick escape route.
The front door was around the corner of the town house, facing a footpath. It was part of a network of well-treed walkways and ravines that ran throughout the parklike condominium complex, radiating like a spiderweb from a recreation center at the hub. The trees were mostly evergreens, pine and spruce, casting deep shadows. Good possibilities there, too, he thought. Maybe she was a jogger. Burton loved joggers.
Then he pursed his lips, weighing the problem of her daughter. Nobody was paying him for the kid, and he had no intention of getting caught. But if he ever was—God forbid—he knew what happened to prison inmates who offed kids. On the other hand, he could wait forever to catch her alone at home.
First the reporter, now this—I don’t need this kind of grief, he thought, exasperated. Why can’t things ever be as simple as they seem?
Gathering up her briefcase, Mariah again resisted the temptation to carry in Lindsay’s books, walking ahead into the house as her daughter reached into the back of the car for her things. By the time Lindsay came into the kitchen, Mariah had already opened the freezer and was examining the neat piles of plastic storage containers, their contents labeled and dated, part of the determined effort she had been making in recent months to try to get the chaos of her life under control. She withdrew a chicken cacciatore left over from one of the double-size recipes she prepared on weekends, put it into the microwave and shrugged out of her coat. She fixed Lindsay with a frown as the girl stood poised to drape her own jacket over a kitchen chair. Lindsay sighed deeply, rolling her eyes. Mariah pursed her lips, then held out her hand for the jacket that Lindsay handed over with a winning smile.
The rewinding hum of the answering machine greeted Mariah when she returned from the hall closet. Lindsay was hunched over the kitchen counter, pen poised as the machine began to play back messages. Typically, they all seemed to be for her. It was a mystery how, after a full day spent together, so much urgent business could accumulate among a bunch of thirteen-year-olds in the two short hours since junior high had been dismissed. Mariah set a pot of water to boil for the pasta as a string of disembodied adolescent voices crackled across the kitchen. Just as she began chopping vegetables for the salad, the machine beeped again and Mariah froze at the sound of a deep, professionally modulated voice.
“Mariah? It’s Paul Chaney. I’m staying at the Dupont Plaza. I’m only in town for a few days, but we really do need to talk. Call me, please.” He gave a room and phone number before ringing off.
Lindsay was madly writing down the numbers as the message ended and the machine rewound itself. “Mom! That’s the TV guy who used to play hockey with Daddy in Vienna, isn’t it?”
Mariah nodded, then turned back to chopping vegetables. It was the last message on the machine—he must have headed straight for a phone as soon as she left him at the nursing home. The knife came down hard as she slashed at a piece of celery. “Time to wash up for dinner,” she said.
“Are you going to call him, Mom?”
“I doubt it. Can you set the table, please?”
“Why not?”
“The table, Lindsay.”
“Okay, okay. I’m setting.”
Lindsay limped over to the cupboard and began taking out dishes. Mariah watched her daughter’s slim shoulders as she reached for plates. Coppery curls tumbled down the back of the girl’s gray sweatshirt. During the ten months Lindsay had been recuperating—first in a wheelchair, then, until recently, in a leg brace and hunched over crutches—she had grown phenomenally. Now that she was upright again, it came as a shock to Mariah that this child—her baby—had already surpassed her own five foot two and might even overshoot David’s five-eight.
She’s no baby anymore, Mariah thought—not after everything she’s been through—and she doesn’t deserve this dismissive exercise of parental authority. She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. “I’ve got a ton of work at the office, honey. I just don’t think I’ve got time for Mr. Chaney this week, that’s all.”
“It sounds kind of important,” Lindsay said, setting out plates and cutlery. “I mean, he seemed really anxious for you to call.”
“I hardly know the guy. And to be perfectly honest, I never thought much of him when we were in Vienna, even if he was your dad’s buddy. Anyhow, he’s probably just calling to be polite. Reporters,” she added scornfully, “they make everything sound like a national crisis. I’ll call if I get a minute, maybe.”
Lindsay shrugged and Mariah changed the subject as they moved to the table.
The evening, as always, passed in a weary blur of homework and piano practice, housework and laundry. It was nine-thirty when Mariah went into Lindsay’s room to encourage her to pack it in for the night. The lights were on but Lindsay was in bed under the covers, her eyes closed. In one hand she held David’s old harmonica. Mariah stood for a moment watching her, swallowing the lump she felt rising in her throat.
The radio was vibrating with an insistent beat, the bass turned up to the max. Mariah reached over to lower the volume and then moved around the room, picking up discarded clothes with a sigh and depositing them in the laundry hamper before turning back to the bed. Posters of rock stars and TV idols stared down at her, strangely juxtaposed with others of puppies and kittens. Old stuffed toys took up so much of the bed that Mariah always wondered how Lindsay managed to turn over at night. Despite regular urging that she cull the herd, however, Lindsay insisted that every one of the fuzzy creatures was indispensable.
Bending over the bed, Mariah tried to remove the harmonica without disturbing her, but Lindsay’s eyes opened, glistening, as soon as Mariah touched her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed, reaching out to stroke her daughter’s cheek. “Is your leg bothering you?” Lindsay nodded miserably. “I’ll get you some Tylenol and the heating pad,” Mariah said, rising.
“Mom?”
Mariah had been moving toward the bathroom, but she stopped and looked at the girl.
“I miss Daddy so much,” Lindsay whispered, tears washing over her dark eyes.
Mariah sat back down and wrapped her daughter in her arms, rocking her gently and stroking her hair. As the child sobbed, her own chest and throat ached with the effort of holding back tears. “I know, Lins,” she whispered. “So do I.”
Lindsay buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. As her crying subsided, she caught her breath in great, shuddering sighs. Her voice, when it came, was muffled against Mariah’s body. “I have such awful thoughts sometimes. I know I should be thankful we weren’t killed. But when I think about Daddy—how he is now, in that place,” she said, pulling back and looking down guiltily, “I feel so angry. Sometimes I even hate him—and then I hate myself for feeling like that.”
Mariah stroked her hair. “It’s normal to feel angry, honey. What happened in Vienna isn’t fair. It’s horrible and not fair—to you, to me and especially to Daddy. Can you imagine how much he wants to be here with us?” Lindsay nodded. “But sometimes life isn’t fair—you just found that out sooner than most kids. It won’t always feel this bad, I promise. Just give it some time. And you know what?” she added, lifting her daughter’s chin. “I couldn’t have handled what happened to you and Daddy if you hadn’t been such a terrific kid. I’m proud of you, Lins—and I’m so glad you’re my daughter.”
Lindsay’s lip quivered even as she smiled, and she threw her arms around her mother’s shoulders. They held on to each other for a little while. Then Mariah tucked her securely under the covers. “You’d better get some sleep if you’re going to go back tomorrow to battle Megan the tyrant. Let me get your tablets and heating pad.”
When Mariah turned out the lights a few minutes later, her daughter was snuggled under the blankets, hugging a bald teddy bear and looking calmer. Mariah kissed her, then stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.
Moving into the living room, she settled wearily onto the sofa and opened her briefcase, pulling out a stack of magazines and press clippings. The best part of highly classified work was that it wasn’t supposed to be brought home, however hectic things might be at the office. While Mariah could use her evenings to catch up on press speculations on her most recent area of study—the interwoven networks of international terrorism—the top-secret reports to which she had access at the Central Intelligence Agency weren’t something to be left lying around on coffee tables. Spot checks of briefcases at the agency’s exits ensured that overzealous employees didn’t attempt to carry out the crown jewels.
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