High Crimes

Jackie was still up when Claire returned. They went into the small “rec room” off the laundry room for scotch and cigarettes. So much for her no-smoking-in-the-house rule. Civilization was crumbling.

“Ooh, spy stuff,” Jackie said. “Cool. This guy sounds like what’s-his-name, G. Gordon Liddy. You know, the Watergate guy who used to hold his finger over a lit candle to show how macho he was?”

“I think all bald spooks want to be G. Gordon Liddy.”

“Why’s he helping you?”

“That’s the big question. I guess it’s because he’s a friend of Tom’s.”

“From where?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

“You think he’s telling you the truth?”

“We’ll see if he produces anything.”

“But it makes you all the more sure Tom’s telling you the truth.”

“There’s something about Tom’s intensity that tells me that. Independently. It’s the sound of truth spoken by a desperate guy. And he hasn’t lost his faith. You know, last time I visited him at the brig he told me he wanted to go to Mass, but they wouldn’t let him leave his cell. So they brought the chaplain to him.”

“Home delivery. Can’t beat it. You gonna put him on the stand?”

“I don’t know,” Claire said with heavy irony. “Plastic surgery, name change, false identity — I’m sure he’d make a great witness.”

“Oh, right.”

“Not just that. Fact is, I think he’d do well on the stand. I know he would. But if we put him on, all sorts of background stuff, bio stuff, becomes admissible. Stuff they cooked up, though we can’t prove it. What he did in Vietnam, was he a sort of government assassin who killed American deserters, did he do sicko stuff to dogs.”

“Dogs?”

Claire lighted another cigarette. “Funny, isn’t it, how we’re more revolted by killing dogs than human beings?”

“I figure U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were up to no good. Dogs are innocent.” She exhaled a plume of smoke through her nostrils. “Your secretary from Cambridge called. Connie. There’s a long list of people who want to hire you.”

“She told them no, I assume.”

Jackie nodded. “The Post called again. I think they’re really getting pissed off you won’t talk to them.”

“I don’t have to talk to a newspaper reporter.”

“They think they have a moral, God-given right to talk to you.”

A long silence passed.

“Claire,” Jackie said at last.

“Yeah?”

“If there’s a chance — even the remotest chance — that he’s guilty, that he’s the monster the prosecution says he is, do you really want him around Annie?”

“If he were guilty, of course not.”

“That’s good to hear,” Jackie said darkly. “Because for the last few weeks I’ve been under the impression that you’re a wife first and a mom second. Like, way second. Look at Annie, how’s she’s reacting. Look how you’ve been ignoring her.”

Claire looked at Jackie, saw the fury in her face. She’d never seen her sister so angry before. Then again, Jackie was fiercely protective of her niece. “I’m doing the best I can,” Claire said in a subdued tone. “I’m working night and day—”

“Oh, come on,” Jackie said brusquely. “You used to dote on her. Before all this happened. Now you barely talk to her. Jesus fucking Christ, Claire, you’re the only parent that girl has! She needs you really badly. More than your husband does. Your husband can get another lawyer. Annie can’t get another mommy.”

Claire stared in dull shock, unable to reply.

As she lay in bed for hours, Claire’s mind raced, in a disorganized, useless way. She cried for Annie, for the way she’d neglected her daughter. She didn’t get to sleep until well after two.

At three-thirty-seven in the morning the phone rang.

She jolted awake, fumbled for the phone, heart hammering. “Yes?” She stared at the red digital numbers on the bedside clock.

Complete dead silence on the phone. She was about to hang it up when a voice came on.

An odd, metallic voice, metallic and hollow. Synthesized. “You should ask yourself who really wants him put away.”

The voice was low-pitched and electronically altered.

“Who is this?” Claire demanded.

“Waldron’s only the point man,” the voice said. Then dead, flat silence.

“Who is this?” Claire repeated.

And the call was disconnected.

She was unable to go back to sleep for more than an hour.

30

In his baby-blue prison jumpsuit and manacles, Tom looked peculiarly vulnerable. His chasers, the two beefy brig guards, stood by, warily watching him examine a machine gun. They stood in a large empty room off one of the armories at Quantico.

The weapon, an M-60, was forty-four inches long and was sealed in a long plastic bag and tagged as evidence. Allegedly it was Tom’s gun, the one he’d used while serving with Detachment 27, the one he’d allegedly used to slaughter eighty-seven civilians. To Claire it was just a machine gun; she’d never seen one up close before.

She and Grimes waited in a couple of metal chairs in the armory while he turned it over and scrutinized it.

“Do you know,” Grimes said, “they call Quantico Camp Sleepy Hollow?”

“Why’s that?” Claire said without bothering to feign interest.

“Since it’s so quiet and wooded.”

“And so peaceful,” Claire said mordantly. “I want Embry back.”

“What?”