Long pursed his lips. “Your wife, she didn’t do anything?”
“Mr. President, she’s just a school secretary. She’s the daughter of the city’s mayor. She’s a supporter of yours for years now, and my boy, he’s only eight. How could they be a threat?”
There was silence for a few moments, just the grumbling and rumbling of the steam engine. Sam could feel sweat trickling down his neck. Long stared at him. Then he nodded. “All right. You write down their names right there on that pad, and I’ll check it out, and maybe I can get ’em sprung.”
“Mr. President?”
“Eh?”
“Could you make it an official pardon? That way, my wife won’t have to be scared about being picked up again. You know how mistakes are made.”
Sam wondered if he had pushed too hard, if everything was threatened. But Long smiled and said, “That must be some wife, you’re so desperate to get her home. All right, a pardon. I guess you deserve that after what you did for me and your nation. But I need the names, and they need to be checked out. Now, if you don’t mind, Inspector…”
Sam didn’t mind. He took out his fountain pen, scrawled Sarah and Toby’s names on the notepad, hardly believing he had pulled it off. Long took it and headed to the far door, yelling out, “All right, you sons of bitches, I got one more piece of paperwork to take care of, and then let’s get this train goin’ the hell out of here!”
Sam went out the way he’d come in, and by the time his feet were back on the platform, the sharp shrill of the train whistle cut through the afternoon air. The Ferdinand Magellan glided away, the President, and current dictator, of the United States safe and sound.
Sam looked again at the sheet-covered bodyguards, and he shuddered, thinking of the bloody mess on the tracks below. Reginald Hale, killed in a foreign land, trying to murder a foreign leader.
He knew he should feel remorse at what had happened, regret for the poor man’s wife, who had done so much in vain to free her husband. But as he walked down the bloodstained platform, he didn’t care.
His family was coming home.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
He spent several hours in Marshal Hanson’s office, telling and retelling his story to Hanson, to the Secret Service, and even to a bandaged and angry Special Agent LaCouture of the FBI. And when it was over, LaCouture said to the Secret Service, “You heard what the man said about Hale and how he got here. I want arrests to start right away. We’ll start with that writer tenant of yours, that Tucker.”
Sam said, “Walter… he’s just a science professor, a pulp writer, that’s all.”
LaCouture touched the bandage across his broken nose and snarled, “The hell he is. He’s an accomplice to an assassination attempt.”
Hanson intervened, “Sam, you know that’s how it’s going to be. I know he’s your neighbor, but he’s got to be brought in.”
LaCouture glared at him and said, “Just be thankful I ain’t chargin’ you, too, Inspector.”
Sam said, “You know, Jack, your nose really looks good. It truly does. Do you want me to rearrange it again?”
LaCouture cursed and moved toward him, but Hanson and two Secret Service agents hauled him back, and Hanson said, “All right, all right. My inspector here has had a long day. I’m sure he can talk to you tomorrow if you’ve got any other questions. Okay?”
With that, the office emptied until it was just Hanson and Sam.
“Sam,” Hanson said, going back to his desk. “You did something magnificent today, something historical. You saved the President’s life.”
“Tell you the truth, I didn’t care about the President,” Sam said bitterly. “I cared about those poor bastards in Burdick and everywhere else. That’s what I was thinking.”
Hanson took off his glasses, polished them with a handkerchief. “If you say so. Look, you’re beat. Time for you to go home, take a few days off. Then you come back, and we’ll clear all this up.”
Sam was too tired to argue. “Sure. That sounds good.”
As he went to the door, Hanson called out, “One more thing—”
Sam turned and saw something flying at him. He caught it instinctively with one hand. He looked down at the thick black leather wallet, opened it up. The gold shield of an inspector. Not the silver shield of an acting inspector.
“Congratulations, Sam,” Hanson said. “Now get the hell out of here.”
Sam clasped the wallet and shield tightly in his hand and tried to remember when this scrap of leather and metal had once meant so much.
At his desk, he picked up his coat draped over the chair, the sleeve still damaged where that cig boy had tried to cut him the other day. Poor sweet Sarah. Never did get around to mending that sleeve. By his typewriter was the day’s mail. One envelope stood out—from the state’s division of motor vehicles. He recalled the request he had made so many lifetimes ago. He tore open the envelope, read the listing inside of yellow Ramblers belonging to area residents of Portsmouth.
There was only one. He read and reread the name and decided it was time to go home.
He pulled the Packard into his driveway, and he saw lights on downstairs. Lots and lots of lights.
Sam leaped out of the car, raced up the front steps, and opened the door.
Sarah. His Sarah, standing there, his lovely Sarah, looking at him, staring at him.
It was wrong. Everything was wrong.
She was standing there, arms folded. Her face was pale and looked thinner. Her hair hadn’t been washed in a while, and her pale blue dress was stained and wrinkled. Her silk stockings looked like they had runs, and her shoes were scuffed and soiled.
“Sarah,” he said.
There was a pause. “You got a haircut.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” he replied, knowing nothing could be said about Burdick, nothing at all; that secret was terrible to keep but too terrible to share.
A voice from the kitchen, sobbing. “Mommy, look at what happened to my models! They’re all smashed!”
Sam called out, “Toby! What’s wrong?”
His son ran in, holding a cardboard box in front of him, the smashed pieces of his models sticking out. Sam’s heart ached at seeing the tears on his boy’s face. He said, “Toby, look, I’m sorry, we’ll get you new ones.”
“But Dad, these are mine! We built them together!”
Looking at Sarah stiffly standing there, Sam said carefully, “Bad men came into the house, Toby. Bad men came in and broke your toys. But I promise you, we’ll either fix them or we’ll get new ones.”
“It won’t be the same! It won’t! Why didn’t you stop them, Daddy? Why didn’t you stop the bad men?”
“Toby, please…”
“You promised! You promised! I hate you! I hate you!”
“Toby, back to your room.” Sarah raised her voice, “Mommy needs to talk to Daddy.”
Still sobbing, Toby tore from the room, carrying the broken pieces with him, as Sam looked to his wife.
“How long have you been back?” he asked. I hate you, the little voice had shouted. I hate you…
“Only a few minutes.”
“How did you get here?”
She said, “A Long’s Legionnaire who hadn’t taken a bath in a month drove us back. We got home to this.” Sarah gestured to the broken furniture, the piles of books, the debris of what their life had been.
Sam said, “Long’s Legionnaires broke in, while I was away on the job.”