Triggers

Yes, yes, yes! That’s where she was staying! Not at her son Mike’s place, but at the Watergate Hotel, which had recently reopened after major renovations. It came to Darryl now: she’d told Mike she was staying in his apartment, and indeed had gone by it once now, but she preferred a hotel, where housekeeping would find her no later than the next morning if she slipped and fell. She hadn’t told Mike that, though; she didn’t want him to be worrying about her running up expenses.

The Watergate was a great choice for someone who was visiting Luther Terry; it was only three blocks away, straight down New Hampshire Avenue, the diagonal street that constrained the LT building into a triangular shape. The Watergate complex was on the shore of the Potomac, opposite Theodore Roosevelt Island and just north of the Kennedy Center.

And—yes!—Bessie was looking around the grounds, as much as she could look at anything with her dim vision, and thinking this is where it all began, and—

And her thoughts were interrupted by a siren, and Darryl had heard a siren himself not five minutes ago. Normally, he’d expect to hear ambulance sirens in the vicinity of a hospital, but LT was under lockdown, and so Darryl had looked out the window and he’d seen a fire truck barreling north, and—

And Bessie had seen—or at least heard!—the same fire truck; this was a very recent memory.

Darryl spoke into his sleeve even as he broke into a run. “Hudkins to Dawson. I know where Bessie Stilwell is; I’m leaving the building to retrieve her.”

“Copy,” said Susan’s voice in his ear. “I’ll make sure hospital security knows; go out the ambulance bay, not through the lobby.”

Darryl could have commandeered a car to drive to the Watergate, but it was less than a thousand yards away. He made it down to the first floor and found himself retracing the path by which they’d brought in the president this morning, going past the staff sleep room, past Trauma, turning right, and heading out through the sliding doors that led to the ambulance driveway. A uniformed hospital security guard was indeed there. He checked Darryl’s ID, then unlocked the door for him; Darryl nodded thanks at the man and ran out into the chilly evening.

He hadn’t bothered to get his coat—that would have cost him a couple of minutes. He ran past the news crews, and one camera guy tried to follow him, shouting questions—Darryl was, after all, the first person to emerge from the building in hours—but the man, carrying a large camera, wasn’t able to keep up with Darryl as he ran along the building’s longest side, heading toward Eye Street, then—his heart pounding a bit—H Street, and then—sweating now—under the Potomac River Freeway, emerging at the Watergate complex. The hotel, he knew, was off to his right along Virginia Avenue, and he continued to run until he got there, making his way into the swanky lobby.

The aristocratic white man behind the front desk looked askance at Darryl, who was breathing hard, but Darryl whipped out his ID and said, his voice ragged, “Secret Service. What room is Bessie Stilwell in?” but then it came to him before the man answered: room 534. “Give me a passkey.”

The desk clerk hesitated for a second, but then programmed a keycard and handed it to Darryl, saying, “She just got back, actually.”

Darryl took the plastic card and dashed to the bank of elevators. He stabbed the up button and caught his breath as he waited. Then he rode up to the fifth floor, and—

—and that must be her, down near the end of the corridor, moving slowly away from him; there was no one else in the carpeted hallway.

“Wait!” he called.

She slowly turned around, and Darryl came bounding down the corridor, and she was fumbling to open her purse, and—

—and suddenly he realized how it must look to her: late in the evening, all alone in a long corridor, a large, sweaty black man, huffing and puffing, running right at her.

She soon had a tiny pistol in her hand. Darryl stopped dead in his tracks; he could have easily drawn his own gun and blown her away—he had no doubt his reflexes and aim were better than hers—but instead he raised his hands a little.

“Mrs. Stilwell,” he said, hoping the fact that he knew her name would calm her a bit. She peered at him; there were maybe twenty feet between them. Darryl noted the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door next to him. “I’m a Secret Service agent. Maybe you saw me today at the hospital?”

And saying that triggered him to recall her seeing him for the first time. She had indeed noticed him at the hospital, and—

What’s that—

Darryl was stunned as the rest of the thought tumbled into his consciousness: What’s that nigger doing over there?

And: Up to no good, I suppose.