What a package.
It was more knowledge than one person should be carrying around.
Luther felt very alone. And very mad.
And the sorry thing was the bastard was going to get away with it.
Luther kept telling himself if he were thirty years younger he would take this battle on. But he wasn’t. His nerves were still stronger than most, but, like river rock, they had eroded over the years; they were not what they were. At his age battles became someone else’s to fight, and win or lose. His time had finally come. He wasn’t up to it. Even he had to understand that, to accept that reality.
Luther looked at himself in the tiny mirror again. A sob swelled in his throat before it reached the surface and filled the small room.
But no excuse would justify what he had not done. He had not opened that mirrored door. He had not flung that man off Christine Sullivan. He could have prevented the woman’s death, that was the simple truth. She would still be alive if he had acted. He had traded his freedom, perhaps his life, for another’s. For someone who could have used his help, who was fighting for her very life while Luther just watched. A human being who had barely lived a third of Luther’s years. It had been a cowardly act, and that fact gripped him like some savage anaconda, threatening to explode every organ in his body.
He bent low over the sink as his legs began to fail him. He was grateful for the collapse. He could not look at his reflection anymore. As choppy air buffeted the plane he was sick to his stomach.
A few minutes elapsed and he wet a paper towel with cold water and wiped it across his face and the back of his neck. He finally managed to stumble back to his seat. As the plane thundered on his guilt grew with each passing mile.
The phone was ringing. Kate looked at the clock. Eleven o’clock. Normally she would screen her calls. But something made her hand dart out and pick it up before the machine engaged.
“Hello.”
“Why aren’t you still at work?”
“Jack?”
“How’s your ankle?”
“Do you realize what time it is?”
“Just checking on my patient. Doctors never sleep.”
“Your patient is fine. Thanks for the worry.” She smiled in spite of herself.
“Butterscotch cone, that prescription has never failed me.”
“Oh, so there were other patients?”
“I’ve been advised by my attorney not to answer that question.”
“Smart counsel.”
Jack could visualize her sitting there, one finger playing with the ends of her hair, the same way she had done when they studied together; he laboring through securities regulations, she through French.
“Your hair curls enough at the ends without you helping it.”
She pulled her finger back, smiled, then frowned. That statement had brought a lot of memories back, not all good ones.
“It’s late, Jack. I’ve got court tomorrow.”
He stood up and paced with the cordless, thinking rapidly. Anything to hold her on the phone for a few more seconds. He felt guilty, as though he were sneaking around. He involuntarily looked over his shoulder. There was no one there, at least no one he could see.
“I’m sorry I called late.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m sorry I hurt your ankle.”
“You already apologized for that.”
“Yeah. So, how are you? I mean except for your ankle?”
“Jack, I really need to get some sleep.”
He was hoping she would say that.
“Well tell me over lunch.”
“I told you I’ve got court.”
“After court.”
“Jack, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. In fact I’m pretty sure it’s a lousy idea.”
He wondered what she meant by that. Reading too much into her statements had always been a bad habit of his.
“Jesus, Kate. It’s just lunch. I’m not asking you to marry me.” He laughed, but knew he’d already blown it.
Kate was no longer fiddling with her hair. She too stood up. Her reflections caught in the hallway mirror. She pulled at the neck of her nightgown. The frown lines were prominent on her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Look, it’ll be my treat. I have to spend all that money on something.” He was met with silence. In fact, he wasn’t sure if she were still on the line.
He had rehearsed this conversation for the last two hours. Every possible question, exchange, deviation. He’d be so smooth, she so understanding. They would hit it off so well. So far, absolutely nothing had gone according to plan. He fell back on his alternate plan. He decided to beg.
“Please, Kate. I’d really like to talk to you. Please.”
She sat back down, curled her legs under her, rubbed at her long toes. She took a deep breath. The years hadn’t changed her as much as she had thought. Was that good or bad? Right now she had no way to deal with that question.
“When and where?”
“Morton’s?”
“For lunch?”
He could see her incredulous face at the thought of the ultra-expensive restaurant. Wondering what type of world he now lived in. “Okay, how about the deli in Old Town near Founder’s Park around two? We’ll miss the lunchtime crowd.”
“Better. But I can’t promise. I’ll call if I can’t make it.”
He slowly let out his breath. “Thanks, Kate.”
He hung up the phone and collapsed on the couch. Now that his plan had worked, he wondered what the hell he was doing. What would he say? What would she say? He didn’t want to fight. He hadn’t been lying, he did just want to talk to her, and to see her. That was all. He kept telling himself that.
He went to the bathroom, plunged his head into a sink of cold water, grabbed a beer and went up to the rooftop pool and sat there in the darkness, watching the planes as they made their approach up the Potomac into National. The twin bright, red lights of the Washington Monument blinked consolingly at him. Eight stories down the streets were quiet except for the occasional police or ambulance siren.
Jack looked at the calm surface of the pool, put his foot in the now cool water and watched as it rippled across. He drank his beer, went downstairs and fell asleep in a chair in the living room, the TV droning in front of him. He did not hear the phone ring, no message was left. Almost one thousand miles away, Luther Whitney hung up the phone and smoked his first cigarette in over thirty years.
The Federal Express truck pulled slowly down the isolated country road, the driver scanning the rusty and leaning mailboxes for the correct address. He had never made a delivery out here. His truck seemed to ride ditch to ditch on the narrow road.
He pulled into the driveway of the last house and started to back out. He just happened to look over and saw the address on the small piece of wood beside the door. He shook his head and smiled. Sometimes it was just luck.
The house was small, and not very well kept up. The weathered aluminum window awnings, popular about twenty years before the driver had been born, sagged down, as if they were tired and just wanted to rest.
The elderly woman who answered the door was dressed in a pullover flowered dress, a thick sweater wrapped around her shoulders. Her thick red ankles told of poor circulation and probably a host of other ailments. She seemed surprised by the delivery, but readily signed for it.
The driver glanced at the signature on his pad: Edwina Broome. Then he got in his truck and left. She watched him leave before shutting the door.
The walkie-talkie crackled.
Fred Barnes had been doing this job for seven years now. Driving around the neighborhoods of the rich, seeing the big houses, manicured grounds, the occasional expensive car with its mannequinlike occupants coming down the perfect asphalt drive and through the massive gates. He had never been inside any of the homes he was paid to guard, and never expected to be.