The dreams he so hoped to avoid were not nightmares, more recollections, some pleasant, even very pleasant, his daughter Amy with her friend Kathy... sharing beers with Gabe at a ball game... then not so pleasant, Amy at Kathy’s funeral... Kathy’s father Gabe crying into his shoulder... and then sudden violence, bullets flying, the dark of night all around...
Wake up bathed in sweat. Plump the pillow, drop back down, start the whole cycle again.
That had been his nights for almost a year.
Last night, though, had been different. Usually he got right to sleep before the fitfulness crept in, to wake him every hour or two with the fresh taste of recurrent dreams lining his brain. Last night? Worry was nagging him, and a guilty feeling that he should be doing something about that call he’d received, just before he crawled in the sack.
Well, not that he’d received — he’d missed the call. These days Reeder ignored his phone, where media types frequently bothered him and left him messages that had no chance of return. But he did check periodically, and before he went to bed he had.
He didn’t recognize the number, and there’d been no caller ID. He damn near ignored it, but his gut told him not to, and he’d learned not to blow off his inner warning system.
The call had been from an old friend, one he rarely saw, a fellow retired Secret Service agent who had a security outfit of his own now... okay, really just a PI office with some twenty-first-century trappings. Chris Bryson was one of those friends with whom he felt guilty about not keeping in closer touch, as the years crawled and raced by, in their contradictory way.
The message had been simple enough: “Call this number when you get this. Life and death, brother — don’t let me down.”
A lot of people used that phrase — to some, getting to FedEx on time could be a matter of life and death. Not to ex-agents like Bryson and himself. Reeder had returned the call but it went to voice mail.
“Chris, get back to me,” Reeder told his cell. “I’m waiting, buddy. Just tell me what you need, where to come. No matter the time.”
He tried Bryson’s other number and it went right to voice mail, too, and he left a similar message. He didn’t have Beth Bryson’s number. Bryson’s wife and his ex-wife Melanie were good friends.
Which meant the next logical step would’ve been to call Melanie, but somehow he couldn’t force himself across that small social barrier. The call might be answered by the husband who’d replaced him, Donald Graham, and hearing the lobbyist’s buttery voice always gave Reeder a pain.
So he told himself Chris was a pro who could handle himself. Put the phone on ringer, turned the ringer up, and deposited it on his nightstand, waited for it to ring.
Which it never did.
Behind him, he felt more than heard someone coming, but he didn’t turn. Judging by the person’s boots crunching lightly on brittle snow, this someone was not very heavy.
Did Dr. Reed have descendants who regularly came to pay their respects? More likely someone knew to find Reeder here, but that was a short list. He didn’t have a lot of friends, and Amy — Christmas break over — would be in class or at her new job. So would her boyfriend Bobby Landon, who was growing on him.
Patti Rogers maybe? The FBI agent had been Gabe Sloan’s partner till last year when she teamed up briefly with Reeder, who was consulting on the Supreme Court task force. He and Patti remained tight, and those light footfalls could be hers.
The caretakers of the cemetery had little to do in the winter and, anyway, gave him a wide berth. If the media had tracked Reeder here, keeping his temper would be a challenge. A tiny part of him thought it might be a threat, and he was unarmed, so — despite not wanting to invite conversation with a reporter or intrude upon someone’s privacy in a cemetery — he finally turned.
And saw his ex-wife trudging up the slope toward him in the snow.
“Jesus, Joe,” she said, half-kidding, “give a girl a hand, why don’t you?”
He stepped toward her, held out a leather-gloved hand. She held out a cotton-gloved one. Tall, her slender form plumped as if for an Arctic expedition in navy and black and touches of red and Ugg boots, she gave him a small smile so white, the snow might have envied it. Her long brown hair was tucked under a fashionable red-and-black stocking cap, her brown eyes impossibly large with long natural lashes, her model-sharp cheeks pinked with cold.
The divorce had been the right thing for the marriage, he knew that, but he would never stop loving her. Though they spoke on the phone regularly, he hadn’t seen her in many months. His heart raced a little, as it had when they had first met, so many years ago.
She positioned herself beside him, leaving her gloved hand in his, as they both looked down at the headstone. Magie Noire, her favorite perfume, found its way through the chill to warm his nostrils.
She said, “It’s fuh-fuh-fuh-freezing out here.”
“You trudged all this way with that news flash?” He meant to tease but it didn’t quite come out that way.
She pursed her lips, a precursor to a familiar frown.
“Just making conversation. And hello to you, too, Joe.”
“Sorry. Trying to be funny.”
A tiny smirk. “You suck at ‘funny.’”
Last year’s tragedy had brought Reeder and his ex-wife closer than they’d been in years. Daughter Amy had seemed happier now that her parents were getting along again.
But last summer, Reeder had gone over for a family cookout that included Amy and boyfriend Bobby. Hubby #2, Donald, was grilling in the backyard, taking on a role that had been Hubby #1’s. Though a registered Democrat, Reeder found the combination of the liberal lobbyist’s cynicism and Bobby’s idealistic socialism hard to stomach. It was a wonder he hadn’t slapped them both around with a greasy spatula. He thought he’d hidden his feelings pretty well.
But privately Melanie scolded him for his “unrelenting sarcasm,” and invites to family dinners were not repeated.
Reeder did still meet Amy and Bobby for dinner once every week or so, but hadn’t seen Mel since the ill-fated barbecue.
Suddenly here she was at his side, in his Fortress of Solitude. But Arlington was a big place, and even though she knew the five or six graves that were among his regular stops, she had gone to considerable trouble in frigid weather to track him down.
Whatever had brought her here was in-person important. Why wasn’t she getting to it?
Concern spiked in him. “Is Amy all right?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, waving a gloved hand. “Amy is fine. Bobby, too. This isn’t that.”
“What is it?”
Her voice sounded small against the wind. “Beth Bryson called this morning.”
“Oh. About Chris?”
Her eyes tensed. “Yes... but...”
“Dead?”
The face under the stocking cap goggled at him. “You knew?”
“No. Seeing you here... just meant...” He gulped air and breathed it out like cold cigarette smoke, then told her about the missed call from his friend.
“I let him down, goddamnit.”
“Joe... you couldn’t know this would happen.”
“What did happen? Killed on a job?”
“No. Nothing like that. Joe... I’m sorry... but Chris took his own life last night.”
“Shit,” he said.
They both knew the suicide rate among Secret Service agents, both active and retired, was not exactly low.
“At home? Hell, did Beth find him...?”
Melanie shook her head. “No, she says he was in a hotel or motel somewhere near Dulles. Evidently, he... hanged himself.”