I held on to Danko's arm. I had some leverage. I was try-ing to break his arm.
He turned toward me, and our eyes met. I'd never felt such hatred, such coldness. “Bastard!” I yelled in his face.
“Remember Jill!”
In that second, I squeezed the canister.
Spray shot into his face. Very close in. Danko coughed, gasped. His face twisted into a horrified mask. Other agents had him now. They pulled him away from me.
Danko was breathing heavily. He was still coughing, as if he could spit back the poison from his lungs.
“It's over,” I gasped. “You're over. You're done. You lost, asshole.”
His eyes smiled vacantly. He motioned me closer. “It will never be over, you fool. There's always another soldier.”
That's when I heard shots, and understood that I was a fool.
Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree
Chapter 106
WE RUSHED OUT to the courtyard, where the shots had come from. Joe Molinari and I pushed our way through the crowd. People were gasping, a few had started to weep.
I couldn't see what had happened, and then I could. And I wished that I hadn't.
Eldridge Neal was on his back, a crimson stain widening across his white shirt. Someone had shot the vice president of the United States. My God, not another American tragedy like this.
A woman was being held down by Secret Service agents; she couldn't have been much older than eighteen or nine-teen. Frizzy red hair. She was screaming at the vice president, rambling on about babies being sold into slavery in the Sudan; AIDS killing millions in Africa; corporate war crimes in Iraq and Syria. She must have been waiting for Neal as he was moved out of the main hall.
Suddenly I recognized the girl. I'd seen her before, in Roger Lemouz's office. The girl who'd given me the finger when I told her to leave. Hell, she was just a kid.
Joe Molinari let go of my arm and went to the aid of the vice president. The cursing, screaming girl was pulled away. Meanwhile, an ambulance drove right into the courtyard. EMS medics jumped out and began to tend to Vice President Neal.
Had Charles Danko planned this?
Had he known we were on to him?
Was this a setup? Knowing that chaos would reign if we caught up with him? What had he said? There's always another soldier.
That was the scariest thing of all. I knew that Danko was right.
Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree
Chapter 107
I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO to the hospital to be examined, but I wouldn't do it. Not yet. Joe Molinari and I went with the red-haired girl back to the Hall. We interrogated Annette Breiling for several hours, and then this revolutionary, this terrorist, this person who could shoot the vice president in cold blood, she cracked.
Annette Breiling told us everything we needed to know, and more, about the plot at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.
It was four in the morning when we arrived in an upscale neighborhood in Kensington, a couple of towns over from Berkeley. There were at least half a dozen patrol cars there and everybody was heavily armed. The street was in the hills and had a view of the San Pablo Reservoir. Very pretty, sur-prisingly posh. It didn't look as if anything bad could happen here.
“He lives well,” said Molinari, but that was it for small talk. “Let's you and I do the honors.”
The front door was opened by the Lance Hart Professor of Romance Languages, Roger Lemouz. He had on a terry-cloth robe, and his curly black hair was in disarray. His eyes were glassy and red, and I wondered if he had been drinking that night, if Lemouz had been celebrating.
“Madam Inspector,” he said in a throaty whisper, “you're beginning to wear out your welcome. It's four A.M. This is my home.”
I didn't bother to exchange unpleasantries with Lemouz, and neither did Molinari. “You're under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder,” he said, then pushed his way inside.
Lemouz's wife and two children appeared, entering the living room behind him, which was unfortunate. The boy was no more than twelve, the girl even younger. Molinari and I holstered our guns.
“Charles Danko is dead,” I told Lemouz. “A young woman you know named Annette Breiling has implicated you in the murder of Jill Bernhardt, all of the murders, Lemouz. She told us that you were the one who set up Stephen Hardaway's cell. You delivered Julia Marr and Robert Green into the cell. And you controlled Charles Danko - you knew how to push his buttons. His anger seethed for thirty years, but you got Danko to act on it. He was your puppet.”
Lemouz laughed in my face. “I don't know any of these people. Well, Ms. Breiling was a student of mine. She dropped out of the university, however. This is a huge mis-take and I'm calling my lawyer right now if you don't leave.”
“You're under arrest,” Joe Molinari said, making the obvi-ous official. “Want to hear your rights, Professor? I want to read them to you.”
Lemouz smiled, and it was strange and eerie. “You still don't understand, do you? Neither of you. This is why you are doomed. One day your entire country will crumble. It's already happening.”
“Why don't you explain what we're missing?” I spat the words at him.
He nodded, then Lemouz turned toward his family. “You're missing this.” His small son was holding a handgun, and it was obvious that he knew how to use it. The boy's eyes were as cold as his father's.
“I'll kill you both,” he said. “It would be my pleasure.”
“The army that is building against you is massive, their cause is just. Women, children, so many soldiers, Madam Inspector. Think about it. The Third World War - it's begun.”
Lemouz walked calmly to his family and took the gun from his son. He kept it aimed at us. Then he kissed his wife, his daughter, his son. The kisses were tender and heartfelt. Tears were in his wife's eyes. Lemouz whispered something to each of them.
He backed out of the living room; then we could hear running footsteps. A door slammed somewhere in the house. How could he hope to get away?
A gunshot sounded loudly inside the house.
Molinari and I ran in that direction.
We found him in the bedroom - he'd killed himself, shot one bullet into his right temple.
His wife and children had begun to wail in the other room.
So many soldiers, I was thinking. This won't stop, will it? This Third World War.
Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree
Chapter 108
CHARLES DANKO didn't spray me with ricin. That was what the doctors were saying, hovering over me all morning at the toxicology unit at Mof?t.
And the vice president wasn't going to die. Word was that they had him two floors below me, that he had even been on the phone to his boss in Washington.
I spent several hours with a maze of tubes and wires stick-ing out of me, monitors reading my blood and chest scans. The contents of Danko's canister were identified as ricin. Enough to kill hundreds of people if he had gone undetected. Danko had ricin in his lungs, and he was going to die. I wasn't sorry to hear it.
About noon I got a phone call from the president, as in the president. They stuck a phone to my ear, and in my daze I remembered hearing the word hero about six times. The president even said he was looking forward to thanking me in person. I joked that maybe we should wait for the toxic glow to settle down.
When I opened my eyes after a snooze, Joe Molinari was sitting on the corner of my bed.
He smiled. “Hey. I thought I said `no heroes!'”
I blinked and smiled, too, a little more groggy than tri-umphant, embarrassed at the tubes and monitors.