car.
Once he was alone, he stated shaking.
Gideon sat behind the wheel, feeling the cold sink through his flesh like a frozen razor. He could still hear Magness' words, 'You enticed a private citizen into the same investigation that got your brother killed?'
All Gideon could say about Aleph, and Zimmerman, and the NSA meant little to the prosaic Internal Affairs Department. What mattered, in Magness' words, was that he had gotten someone else killed.
'I didn't want this to happen,' Gideon whispered over and over as he drove back to his Georgetown neighborhood. He didn't turn on the heat in the car, as if the cold was a form of penance. Tears he had once envied Rafe for now left burning scars on his cheeks.
Not only had Kendal died, Gideon knew that the official story was going to be that some homeless schizophrenic went nuts with a gun. By now the man who had shot Kendal was probably back inside whatever black organization had spawned him.
Every rational impulse was to follow Kendal's suggestion. Walk away, leave it alone. But he had already gone past the point of no return.
'You can’t run away, and you can’t ignore it. . .'
He pulled to a stop in front of his house and killed the engine. He sat a few moments trying to gain some composure before he tried to lever himself out of his damn car. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and tried to decide what he was going to do.
There always had been someone for him to turn to. Rafe, his dad, Kendal. . .
Who was left? Even if there was someone, could he possibly justify bringing anyone else into this after it had killed the two people he cared most about? Could he bear any more blood on his hands?
After a few moments he pushed himself up and opened the car door. It was a long painful trek up the front stairs.
He was reaching for the handle when he thought he heard something.
Gideon froze, balancing on one crutch, listening.
He could have sworn that he heard rustling from inside the house. His hand itched to reach for a gun that he didn't have. It was upstairs locked in a bureau.
Silence stretched, broken only by the sound of distant traffic.
Gideon was half-convinced that his mind was playing tricks on him, but he was careful to silently slip the key into the lock. He was being paranoid, but at this point paranoia was justified. He was suddenly very aware of how dark and empty the street was around him, and how alone and vulnerable he was at the moment.
He had a gut urge to bolt, to make it back to his car and drive away and spend the day in a Holiday Inn somewhere. The thought made him ashamed. He turned the key and pushed his door open.
A blue-gray glow from the streetlights behind him spilled past him into the front hallway. Everything seemed still and quiet for the moment, and Gideon took a relieved half step, swinging his crutch into the hallway.
Then he saw a silhouette dive out of the living room and into the kitchen. Gideon was stunned immobile for half a second, then he threw himself into the house, after the intruder.
Even with his bum leg he caught up with the man. The intruder was trying to force the kitchen door, but was stymied by the new deadbolt, which needed a key to open from either side. Gideon knew that the key was on a hook opposite the doorknob, but the intruder, in his rush to flee, must not have seen it yet in the darkness.
'Hold it right there,' Gideon shouted. He tried to sound forceful, but the night's stress made his voice hoarse and weak. The shadowed figure turned and grabbed for him. Gideon caught a flash of white skin and dark eyes behind a black ski mask.
The man swung at him and Gideon bought up his crutch with both hands and lurched forward, forcing it across the man's neck. They both collapsed into the door. Glass shattered and fell across them.
The man dug a gloved hand into Gideon's face. As the fingers dug into his cheek, Gideon managed to spit out, 'Who are you?'
Both of them slid toward the ground, and for a moment, despite his injuries, it seemed that adrenaline had given Gideon an advantage.
Then something slammed across the back of his skull. Gideon felt his body spasm, and suddenly he was blinking from a prone position on the floor with no memory of how he'd gotten there.
There were two shadows now, Gideon realized as his eyes focused. An icy wind bit into his skin from the open rear door, and he could just see the two intruders jumping the fence in the backyard. Both dressed in black, with ski masks. The second one carried a long flashlight that probably just matched the depression in the back of Gideon's skull.
After a few minutes, he sat up, rubbing the knot on the back of his head. Apparently it was too late to back out of it now. . .
Two hours later, in a Comfort Inn just outside the belt-way, Gideon Malcolm checked in under an assumed name, and using cash an ATM had advanced on his Visa card.
2.02 Mon. Mar. 16
J ULIA Zimmerman lived in a house just outside Annapolis. At least that's where the directory listings put her. Gideon approached it with the same caution with which he'd approached his own house, expecting a similar ambush even though it was midday and Zimmerman's neighborhood was far from abandoned.
He passed by it three times, watching an old man jogging, breath coming in puffs of fog, a college-age couple with backpacks slung over their shoulders, a trio of teenagers passing a cigarette—or more probably a joint—on the corner, a woman walking a dog. Any of them, all of them, seemed threatening. As if any one of them would pull a gun and start shooting, like the homeless man.
The final time Gideon decided that enough paranoia was enough. If there was an assassin here, he'd already had more than an adequate opportunity to shoot at him. He pulled into the drive.
Zimmerman's house was a small brick colonial hedged in by a white picket fence. The fence needed painting. Gideon turned off the engine and studied the house for signs of life. He didn't see any. The windows were blind and dead.
He opened the car door, taking one of his crutches and levering himself out into the cold. The air bit his skin, and he wondered how the old man could stand running in this type of weather.
He leaned on his crutch, taking a look at the neighbors. Both houses to either side had more of a presence of life than this one—even if he didn't see anyone specific at the moment. Curtains were open, a large plastic tricycle was in the driveway of one neighbor, and from the other steam vented from a basement window carrying the scent of drying clothes.
He walked up Zimmerman's driveway. The asphalt was covered with brown leaves that'd been flattened by the last snow. He walked up to the detached garage and peered through one of the tiny rectangular windows into the gloomy interior. Gideon could see the outlines of a car inside.
Gideon tried the garage door, and found it unlocked. He pulled and the door came up an inch, screeched, and his weakened hand slipped from the handle, burning the skin on his palm and almost toppling him backward. Gideon looked around, convinced that everyone on the block was staring at him.
As he looked down the driveway, he couldn't see anyone who was paying any attention to him.
He sighed, bent over, and pulled at the door, more slowly this time.
It resisted him, but once it made it halfway, it loosened enough to slide home by itself. The garage smelled of mold and old oil. A ten-year-old Ford Taurus sat in front of him. The paint job used to be a shade of blue, but it was gray now with a layer of dust.
The tags had expired three months ago. And on the concrete under the engine, a stain of black covered an area the size of a manhole cover.
There wasn't much besides the car—a couple of empty trash cans, and a pair of plastic recycling bins. One bin was filled with newspapers.
Gideon bent over and checked the papers. The latest ones were dated December of last year. He opened the
