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“This Lattimore, the one that is still alive....”
“We can’t be sure of that,” cautioned the lieutenant. “From everything we’ve learned, from everything you’ve….” A soft, shrewd smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “From what I’ve been reading in the papers, the people behind this seem to do whatever they have to do to tie up loose ends. Lattimore may be alive, or he might not be. Either way, there is something I’d like to do, but I need your help.”
“Anything. Whatever I can do.”
“You’ve identified Lattimore as one of the killers, and DeStefano as the other. I want to give Lattimore’s picture to the media, let everyone know this is who we’re looking for, for the murder of Dieter Shoenfeld, for the attempted murder of you, and for the subsequent murder of Frank DeStefano.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me. But you said you needed my help. What can I do?”
“Two things; one is easy; the other is perhaps more difficult. First, I need you to work with a sketch artist. We have this photograph, but it’s old, taken when he was in the army. You can help show how he has changed. Then we can run two pictures, this one,” he said, pointing to the army photograph, “and one that shows how he looks today.”
“Sure, I’ll be glad to. When do you want me to do it?”
“Tonight, if you don’t mind.”
“Tonight? But how...?”
“The artist is a friend of mine. Said he’d come in late, if that would help. I figured that there wouldn’t be so many people around, that we could get you in and out before anybody in the press found out.”
Hart gave Coleman a searching glance. He had liked him from the first, trusted him implicitly, and now, more than ever, he knew that his instinct had been right.
“You’re always a little ahead of the game, aren’t you, lieutenant?”
“Age and experience, senator; age and experience - that’s all. But there is something I’m not sure about, and that’s the second thing - the one I said might be more difficult. This is a murder investigation, and there are certain rules you follow in a murder investigation, but this time there’s a little more involved than just trying to catch a killer. If we put Lattimore’s picture out there, if everyone knows he’s the one we’re looking for, we may never find him, not alive anyway. They killed DeStefano; there’s no reason to think they won’t kill Lattimore if they think he’s a liability. Lattimore is no fool. Once he sees his picture in all the papers, he’ll know he has to get out; that the people he works for won’t be willing to take the chance he might get caught.”
“Which means he might decide to trade what he knows for protection.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. A guy like that - trained the way he was - he’ll go to ground, some place he knows he’ll be safe, somewhere far away - Southeast Asia, some place like that. He may be there already, or he may already be dead. There’s no way to know, senator, which is the reason I’m asking.”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking, lieutenant.”
“Whether we should do it, run the picture, go public. We might have a better chance of finding him if the people who hired him don’t think we know who he is.”
“But I already told the press that I was there when it happened, that I saw them both”
“Nothing more than quick glimpse of a face, a face without a name and without any way of finding one. And we wouldn’t have, either, if he hadn’t stopped to take a few drags on a cigarette and we were able to get his DNA. As I say, this is a murder investigation. Normally, I wouldn’t hesitate to run a picture, a description, anything that might help find out who the killer is and where he might have gone. But this time that might end up helping whoever is behind this cover up his traces.”
Hart thought about it, but only for a moment.
“No, put it out there, everything you have, everything you know about him. Put the pressure on these people, whoever they are. Let them know that this well-made plan of theirs is coming apart, that it was not even close to the perfect murder they had intended. There’s another reason, lieutenant,” he added as he stood up and, this time quite deliberately, stared at the spot where Dieter Shoenfeld had been shot. “Someone out there knows him, or used to know him; someone in some agency, like the CIA, must have worked with him at some point; someone who is not involved in this.”
Coleman understood immediately what Hart was really saying.
“Which is what the people behind this will think: that someone who knew him is going to come forward and that it will eventually come back to them. That might make them start to turn on each other, make them start to look out for themselves, and then they’ll begin to make mistakes.”
“Perhaps,” said Hart as they turned out the lights and shut the front door. “At least it might give them second thoughts about trying to kill someone else - or about going ahead with another attack.”
Working in a windowless room at police headquarters, Hart spent an hour with the sketch artist. At the end of it, the drawing looked perfect in every detail. Placed next to the army photograph, the changes in the appearance of Henry Lattimore seemed to be exactly of the kind that would have been expected with the passage of time. It would be easy to pick him out of a crowd.
“You’re going to release these tomorrow?” asked Hart, just to be sure.
“First thing,” replied Coleman. “Along with a release that gives as much of his background as we know.”
“And I’ll bet that’s what you’ve been doing - isn’t it? - while I was in there with the artist.”
Coleman’s aging eyes took on a youthful sparkle.
“Just finished it, not more than five minutes ago. Want to go over it?”
“No, I’m sure you said it exactly right. Can you send a copy of it, along with copies of the pictures, to someone in New York tonight?”
“Sure. Won’t take more than a minute.”
“Let me make a call first.”
He pulled out his cell phone and moved off to the side of the large open room where a few detectives were still sitting at their desks, writing reports. Quentin Burdick answered on the first ring.
“Working late tonight,” said Hart. “Must be some story you’re writing. I’ll bet it has something in there about some crazy senator who offered to resign if something he said was proved wrong. Well, just in case that isn’t enough to write about, I’m sending you a press release and a couple of pictures you might be able to use.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bobby found her in the garden, cutting roses.
“Hello, Helen,” he said softly.
She did not turn around until she was sure that it was really his voice and not the one she had been imagining day after day, and then, laughing and crying all at once, she let go of the basket and with roses flying everywhere ran to his arms.
“You didn’t call, you didn’t.... I didn’t know where you were or what you were doing or how long you would be gone or what kind of danger you were in.” She laughed at how the words came tumbling out, how she had suddenly so much to say and could not slow down long enough to say it.
“I’m all right,” said Bobby to comfort her. “I’m sorry I had to disappear like that, but there was a reason. I had to....”
“I know, I know. I’ve watched it all on television; I’ve read the papers. It’s the worst thing ever, isn’t it - what those people tried to do. But let’s not talk about any of that now. You’re home. Nothing else matters.”
They picked up the roses and cut a few more from the well-tended bushes. On the distant edge of the Pacific, the sun, almost straight in front of them, was growing larger, the way it did nearly every evening this time of year.
“You really love this place, don’t you?”
“More than I ever thought I could love anything but you, Bobby Hart. Remember how we found it?”
“Dumb luck,” he said with a casual laugh. “We were just driving around, came around a corner and there it was, a For Sale sign right in front of it.”
“Call it luck if you want to. We both know it was fate. You might as well say it was only chance that we ever met. I didn’t even want to go to the dance that night; I wouldn’t have gone, either, if the other girls had not dragged me with them. But why did I let them do that if I had not known, deep down, that if I didn’t go I’d spend my whole life wondering what would have happened if I had. So say what you like, Bobby Hart, we both know there was a reason we went for a drive that day, a reason why we chose that road, a reason why this house just happened to be for sale.” She gave him a look of a certainty so great she could laugh away objection. “The For Sale sign had only just been put up. Remember what the real estate agent said: if we had gone driving just an hour earlier we would have missed it?”
It seemed to Bobby that she was right, that it made more sense that way. It made it possible to live a reasonable, decent life if you believed that things happened for a reason, and that your life was not just the plaything of chance.
“And if you had not called me when you did, if I had not gone upstairs to take that call....”
“I know,” she said quietly; “I know.”
And Dieter, he wondered silently, what about Dieter? Was it fate or destiny, was there a reason for things when they turned out the way you wanted them, and only chance when they did not? There was madness if you looked too closely into the why of things.
For Helen, it was enough that Bobby was alive and that, for a while at least, he was home with her.
They were almost through with dinner, when she remembered.
“Clare Ryan called, the night you were at their house in Ann Arbor, the night you left to go to Canada on your way to Europe.”
“She said she would. You like her, don’t you?”
“She called a couple of times after that as well. And yes, I like her, I like her more than almost anyone. She isn’t like those other women, always trying to size you up, figure out where you are in the great, that is to say Washington, scheme of things.”
Bobby laughed gently.
“Maybe that’s because, like you, she doesn’t live there. She has a life of her own in Ann Arbor.”
Helen poured each of them a glass of red wine.
“She said that she and Charlie would like to spend a few days out here after the election. She was funny. She said win or lose, Charlie was going to need a little sun, and someone he could tell the truth to.”
Remembering the conversation at dinner in Ann Arbor, Bobby smiled into his glass.
“She thinks Charlie should endorse Jeremy Taylor.”
Helen did not see anything wrong with it.
“He’s a lot better than Douglas.”
“Charlie is a Republican, running in one of the closest senate races in the country. Endorsing the presidential candidate of the other party hasn’t usually been considered a winning strategy.”
She looked at him with a puzzled, candid glance.
“Why not? Has anyone ever done it?”
Bobby started to reply, but then he realized that he was not sure what he wanted to say.
“No, or if they have, I don’t remember it. But if he did that, a lot of people who are going to vote for Douglas might just decide not to vote for him.”
“And a lot of people who don’t know who they’re going to vote for - who think party politics means thievery and stupidity - might fall all over themselves for the chance to vote for someone that honest.”
“You like Charlie a lot, don’t you?”
“I’d vote for him, if I had the chance.”
Bobby could not resist.
“If he were running against me?”
A thought came to her. She played with it a while, doubting whether she should say it out loud, but then, finally, she refused to lie.
“Yes, I would. Because if Charlie won, you’d be here with me and there would be someone else honest and decent in your place back there.”
Bobby looked at her for a long time, envying a little the clarity of her mind, the clean, logical precision with which every problem seemed to have a single, neat answer.
“If Charlie were running against me,” he said presently, “I’d probably vote for him myself.”
“Why don’t you tell him that when you talk to him later this evening,” she suggested. “He called earlier.”
“He called? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He said you wouldn’t be able to reach him - he’s in the middle of some campaign thing - and that he’d call back late night, a little after midnight his time. I told him I didn’t know if you were getting home today or not. I didn’t, you know; though when Charlie called I thought you must be. But then, when you did - come home, I mean - I forgot about everything except how glad I was to see you. There’s something else I forgot, something I need to tell you,” she went on in the soft, breathless voice that always made him forget everything but her.
“You look wonderful,” he said spontaneously.
“I do? But I didn’t have a chance to -”
“You look wonderful,” he repeated. He stared into her eyes, watching her stare back. “What did you forget, what do you need to tell me?”
“That I love you.”
“You forgot that?”
“No, but I needed to tell you that. The other thing I need to tell you is that I’ve made a decision. After the election, I’m moving back, with you, to Washington. I’ll do the best I can, Bobby. I can’t stand being away from you, and when that thing happened, when it happened in our house - I felt like I’d betrayed you, left you alone when I should have been there.”
“Thank God you weren’t.”
“No, but with everything going on now, with all these awful things happening, I can’t just sit here and dream about the day when it will just be the two of us again. You don’t have to worry about me, Bobby. I’m stronger now, stronger than when I was there before, when I had the breakdown.”
“I know you are, but let’s wait a while before we decide. It’s safe here, and I don’t know if it’s safe anywhere else. We’ll see.” Reaching across the table, he took her hand. “But thank you for that. I know how difficult it must have been.”
She held herself perfectly erect, all her emotions in check. She was stronger now, and more determined to do what she knew was right.
“It wasn’t - it isn’t - difficult at all, Bobby. I’ll go wherever you need to be.”
He got up from the table and cleared the dishes.
“I think you’re right,” he said a few moments later, as he sat down and reached for the wine bottle.
“Right?”
“That it was not ‘dumb luck;’ that we were fated to have this house. I want to sell the house in Georgetown - after what happened there. We could rent an apartment to use during the session. It might be fun, a small place, to use during the week, and then we’ll be here every weekend and during all the holidays. And what I said a few weeks ago: a year, maybe two - long enough to finish what I’ve started, and then I’m through. After that we’ll just be here, all the time, you and I.” He gave her a teasing glance. “You might get tired of that, having me around that much. I’m really quite boring, you know. That’s why I give all those speeches: people have to listen.”
They sat talking for a long time. A few minutes past nine, a little after midnight in Michigan, the telephone rang
“It must be Charlie. I’ll take it in the study.”
But it was not Charlie Ryan. It was Quentin Burdick from New York, looking for a quote.
“The vice-president has called a press conference for tomorrow morning. They apparently have some information on Mohammed al Farabi and he plans to release it.”
Hart stood next to the glass table he used as a desk, drumming his fingers.
“What kind of information?”
“You’re not going to believe this.” Burdick’s voice sounded like a low whistle. “They now admit that Farabi was being held in Guantanamo, but only for a short time until he was returned to his country of origin to face local proceedings. They supposedly have documents that prove Farabi was involved in terrorist activities.”
“Remember what I told you, how Gunther Kramer got him out? How he used forged documents to make it look like Farabi was involved so they would send him to Syria? He did such a good job that now the vice-president can use them to prove Farabi was exactly what he was not. He’s good at fabricating things.”
“Can I quote you on this: that the documents were forged and that was how they got him out of Guantanamo?”
“Quote me on the whole damn thing: everything I told you about Mohammed al Farabi - why he was sent there in the first place, what he learned about Rubicon, how they got him out - how the only way they could get him out was to tell a lie so that our people - our people! - would be convinced that they had to send him back to the Middle East for more refined methods of torture than what they were using at Guantanamo.”
Hart was so angry Burdick asked him if he wanted to think about it before he said anything more for attribution.
“Think about it? No, I don’t want to think about it. Mohammed al Farabi was handed over to us for the crime of speaking his mind, publishing in a newspaper what he thought of a government that puts people in prison for having the courage to dissent. He was handed over to us without any supporting evidence of terrorism whatsoever. Ask the vice-president why, if Farabi was such a well-known terrorist, he sat in Guantanamo, not for just this ‘short time’ they now want to claim, but for more than four years before these documents from Syrian intelligence just happened to arrive?”
Hart stared out the window at the moonlit ocean. He was certain what was going to come next.
“He isn’t holding a press conference just to claim that Mohammed al-Farabi is a known terrorist, is he? He’s going to attack me, discredit me anyway he can. He and his people can’t afford to have anyone believe that what happened in Los Angeles was part of a domestic plot.”
