"I love you too, Dad," Mary Catherine said.
"Now go and do your job," Cozzano said.
Mary Catherine bent down and kissed her father's cheek. Then she stood up, turned, and ran into the Capitol.
The Rotunda had gone nuts. Several dozen Capitol Police had been herded into one corner and were being guarded by a couple of Posse members carrying M-16s with fixed bayonets. More justice men, and several men wearing FBI windbreakers, were stationing themselves around the entrances, trying to establish some control over who came in and who left. A couple of media crews were here, unable to make up their minds what they should be pointing their cameras at; several radio and television reporters were running around seemingly at random, shouting a stream-of-consciousness narration into their microphones. It didn't matter what they said as long as they said it with authority.
But most of the people in the Rotunda were invited guests who had been seated in the rows of chairs on the inaugural platform. It was easy to tell them apart. The men were all wearing intensely formal garb and the women were dressed, coiffed, and bejeweled to the nines. These people had gathered into knots scattered around the floor of the Rotunda. Each knot consisted of a few people turned inward, slack-faced with shock, jabbering at one another, and a few people, mostly men, constantly craning their necks in all directions, eyes wide and staring, trying to get some sense of what was going on. One or two men were jabbing at cellular phones with stiff index fingers, screaming into them, getting nothing but static. A man in black tie and morning coat slammed his cellular phone on to the floor in frustration and it slid across the polished stone like a hockey puck.
Mary Catherine couldn't see Eleanor anywhere. A Posse member walked in front of her in his black Justice shirt. Mary Catherine jumped forward and put her hand on his shoulder. "Where's Eleanor?" she said.
As soon as he recognized her, he told her: "She went to the ladies' room to clean up. She's got blood on her." "Who's with her?"
"I dunno," the man said, "we don't have any female deputies in this outfit."
"Where's that bathroom?" Mary Catherine said kicking off her shoes.
The man pointed. Mary Catherine headed across the floor of the Rotunda, building up to a full sprint.
It wasn't hard to find the bathroom where Eleanor was holed up: the entrance was almost obscured by a knot of black-shirted Posse members. Mary Catherine just aimed at the door and relied on them to recognize her, and to get out of the way.
They did, but she had to slow down to a brisk walk. She entered the women's lounge. The first thing she saw was Eleanor's dress spread out across a couch near the entrance, spattered with blood. She rounded a corner and saw a row of sinks. Eleanor was bent over one of the sinks, hot water blasting. She had stripped down to a camisole and panties. Her arms were wet up to the shoulders and she was bent over the sink splashing water on her face; flecks of blood were still visible in her hair.
One other woman was in the bathroom: from her appearance, obviously one of the invited guests. Mary Catherine had spent enough time with people of the advanced upper crust to know one when she saw one.
She even recognized this woman. It was Althea Coover. DeWayne Coover's granddaughter. She and Mary Catherine had gone to Stanford together and attended a lot of the same parties. Because of Coover's support of the Radhakrishnan Institute, his family had gotten several invitations to the Inauguration.
Althea Coover was standing at the sink next to Eleanor's. She had put a few small cosmetics containers out on the shelf beneath the mirror, as though she were here to fix her face. But just as Mary Catherine was rounding the corner, althea was pulling something else out of her bag: a capped hypodermic needle.
Mary Catherine headed straight for her.
Althea saw Mary Catherine and startled. Her eyes jumped to the hypodermic needle, then Eleanor, then up to Mary Catherine's face. She pulled the cap off, exposing the hair-thin needle, and raised it like a dart, aiming it at Eleanor's exposed shoulder.
Then Mary Catherine shoved her stun gun into the side of Althea Coover's neck and pulled the trigger.
Althea dropped the needle, collapsed, and smacked her head into the marble floor with a shocking thud. Eleanor straightened up, blinked water out of her eyes, and jumped to see Mary Catherine suddenly standing there with lightning in her hand, and Althea Coover gone.
When Mary Catherine and Eleanor returned to the Rotunda, now surrounded by very nervous and trigger-happy men in black T-shirts, they discovered that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had not been as lucky. He was collapsed on the marble floor, unconscious and unresponsive. Immediately before his collapse he had been seen talking to another invited guest who had made a hasty exit; later, an empty hypodermic syringe was found in an ashtray by the door. The Chief Justice was being attended to by a couple of old and distinguished doctors who had made it on to the guest list. A few Posse members picked him up and carried him into the Capitol infirmary.
Anyone wearing white tie or a formal gown was now being viewed with intense suspicion by the Posse. Mary Catherine and Eleanor found themselves dead center in the Rotunda, surrounded by Posse members facing outward, as the remaining guests were herded toward the outside of the room.
Between the knot in the center and the people crowded to the edges, there was a broad, doughnut-shaped, empty space, now occupied by a grand total of three people: a minicam operator from CNN, his sound man, and a bald, middle-aged man in a long black robe. The robe was a flimsy thing made of synthetic fibers and looked as though it had been wadded up into a ball and then sat on for a few days. It was unzipped to reveal a bulletproof vest underneath; beneath the vest, a black T-shirt could be seen. This guy was a member of the Posse.
In his right hand he was carrying a thick black book with the words HOLY BIBLE printed on the cover in gold letters. A single sheet of typing paper was clasped in the front cover.
"Excuse me," said the man in the black robe, standing up on tiptoes trying to see over the shoulders of the bodyguards, "but I could not help but notice that the Chief Justice has been incapacitated. Can I be of some assistance here?"
"Who are you?" Mary Catherine said, peering at him between a couple of Posse members.
"Stanley Kotlarski, Fifth Circuit Court Judge, Cook County, Illinois," the man said. "Mel asked me to hang around in case something happened to the Chief Justice. Are you ready to do the honours, or are we going to stand around here all day?"
The circle of bodyguards opened up to admit Judge Kotlarski and the camera crew. Judge Kotlarski pulled the sheet of paper out of the Bible and then handed the Bible to Mary Catherine. "You know the drill," he said.
She did know it. She had just done it about fifteen minutes before. Now, tear-streaked, blood-stained, barefoot, and dishevelled, she did it again: held the Bible out in front of the President-to-be. Eleanor Richmond didn't hesitate. She put one hand on the Bible and held up the other one. Judge Kotlarski looked at the cameraman. "You ready?"
"We're live to planet Earth," the cameraman said. Judge Kotlarski began to read from the sheet of paper. "Repeat after me. In the middle of the oath of office, Eleanor and the Judge had to raise their voices; they were nearly drowned out by the sound of a medevac chopper setting down out front, then, within a few seconds, lifting off again.
Mary Catherine didn't pay much attention to the oath. She was looking out the windows, watching the chopper carry her father away. The first thing she really heard was the voice of the President issuing her first order: "Evacuate and seal the Rotunda."
Then President Richmond bent down, pulled a thick black envelope out of her bag, and ripped it open.