'God help us. What?'
'Harris had his speechwriter prepare a couple of statements—'
There was a long pause before Gideon realized what Davis meant. He whispered, 'Oh shit.'
Davis reached into his breast pocket and removed two folded sheets of paper and set them down on the coffee table. 'Look them over. First is a draft apology for that tirade yesterday. Second is an opening statement for when you're called before the hearings.'
Gideon stared at the papers on the table. 'I don't believe this.'
Davis stood up. 'Take some time to consider it. All we need is your approval, and they'll release the first one to the press. Call me sometime today or tomorrow to okay it.'
Gideon nodded. He felt numb. He looked at the second statement, laying on the table, and asked, 'Have they even scheduled these hearings yet?'
'There's going to be a press conference next Friday. That's when we expect the hearings to be announced.'
'Wonderful. Nice to know the administration is a step ahead of Congress.' It was hard to keep the irony out of his voice.
Davis sounded relieved. He stepped over and held out his hand. 'Thanks for cooperating with this.'
Gideon didn't take the offered hand. 'Good-bye, sir.'
Davis was quiet for a moment and finally said, 'You're a good cop, Malcolm. I'm sorry this had to happen.'
'Yeah, thanks. You know where the door is.'
Davis stood a moment, apparently having run out of things to say. He walked off, leaving Gideon alone with the two statements. In the distance, he heard the front door close, and the sounds of massing reporters.
Gideon wondered if Davis knew how demeaning this all was. Asking him to mouth someone else's predigested political bullshit. He bent over and picked up the first statement. Glanced at it without really reading it, and decided that it didn't really matter what it said. They had his job in their hands, he pretty much had to call Davis back and okay the thing.
He balled up the statement and tossed it aside.
It landed on a short table next to his chair. On the table were the personal effects that he'd carried back from the hospital—his keys, a scattering of loose change, his wallet, and his badge.
Gideon picked up his badge. It had been clipped to his belt above his wounded leg. It was splattered with his blood. Maybe also with Rafe's.
In the dim daylight filtering through the curtains, the blood gave the appearance of being tarnish. Gideon slowly clenched a fist around the badge, until the tension made his hand shake.
He threw the badge against the wall.
1.05 Mon. Mar. 2
Gideon held his cast awkwardly upright as his left hand rested on the Bible.
'Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?'
Gideon nodded to the grand jury foreman and said, 'I do.'
He sat down and faced a panel of twenty jurors. It was a familiar position, part of being a cop, testifying before grand juries and criminal courts. Gideon had long ago lost count of the number of times he had been subpoenaed to testify. It was always a somewhat nerve-racking experience, whether it was a grand jury or a trial.
This time was worse than usual. He kept going through the shooting in his mind, racking his brain thinking of the hundreds of things that he should have done, or shouldn't have done, anything so it would have ended with a result different than the one that had actually happened.
The more he had thought about it—after the shock of Rafe's death had withdrawn enough for him to consider the details of the event—the more it seemed that there was something wrong with what had happened. The news kept reporting fewer Secret Servicemen involved than he remembered. The men in the building were in contact with teams outside, Gideon remembered the radio traffic. Then there was the fact that they'd been armed with silenced weapons. Most bizarre to him was the memory of the men pulling black Velcro covers off of their jackets to reveal the yellow letters 'U.S. TREASURY.'
Gideon would've thought that the men weren't Secret Servicemen at all, if it wasn't for the Attorney General taking the heat for the fiasco.
Gideon kept thinking of Monica, her grief, her all but accusing him of shooting Raphael himself. Could he trust his own suspicions, or was he only trying, somehow, to find someone to blame other than himself?
He felt sweat rolling down the back of his shirt as he sat down. Here, with the grand jury, at least there wouldn't be a defense lawyer calling him a liar. All he would have to do was answer the prosecutor's questions. . .
That would be bad enough.
The prosecutor shuffled a few papers and said, 'I'll try to make this brief.'
Gideon nodded. Thank God for small favors.
'I want to ask you about what happened in the early morning on February thirteenth of this year. Do you remember what you were doing then?'
Gideon swallowed and tried not to think of the jurors staring at him. 'Yes, I was on a stakeout.'
'With Agent Raphael Malcolm of the FBI?'
'Yes.'
'Why was he there?'
'I felt the Bureau would be interested in a lead I was following up.'
'A lead on the possible location of a stolen Daedalus supercomputer, correct?' 'Yes.'
'You then had no knowledge that there were already suspects in custody and the computer had been recovered.'
'As far as I knew, no one did.'
'Agent Malcolm was related to you, wasn't he?'
'Yes, he is—' Gideon sucked in a breath. 'Was my brother.'
The prosecutor nodded. 'Why was he with you, and not some other FBI Agent? There is a liaison that the DC Police Department normally works with, isn't there?'
'Yes.' Gideon felt cold, the sweat under his shirt had become like ice on his skin. Were they going to accuse him of causing Rafe's death, here? What could he say if they did? Could he deny it? He couldn't even deny it to himself. 'I went through my brother because I thought I'd have a better chance of getting an expedited hearing. I had a specific date, after which the Daedalus was going to be gone, who knows where. I couldn't wait for the liaison to sift through his priorities and kick it upstairs when he felt like it.'
'What was the Bureau's reaction?'
'There wasn't one. They felt the same as the department. The tip I was working off of wasn't credible enough to assign the manpower I requested.'
'But they assigned you Agent Malcolm?'
Gideon nodded.
'Why did they do that?'
'He—' Gideon's voice caught a bit. 'He requested the assignment.'
'So it was you and Agent Malcolm, your brother, alone on this stakeout?'
'Yes.'
'You had managed to get a warrant to do this?'
'Yes, Judge Bachman, based on an informant's tip.'
The prosecutor nodded again, as if he was making some sort of point. 'Who was this informant?'
'His name is Kareem Rashad Williams, his street name is Lionel. A small-time drug dealer.'
