tomorrow night. Before you speak? I don’t know.”
“Can I carry Jimmy’s gun in my purse?”
“You can carry a machete as far as I’m concerned,” Jack said. “If you decide a gun’s what you need to make you feel safe, I’ll carry it in for you since they’ll be checking bags at the door.”
“We’ll give it a go then,” Savich said. “I have this feeling the Abbotts will act, Rachael.”
Rachael bit into another scone, listened to Sean yell that he’d dumped Zhor into a bog, and hoped she’d still be breathing come Tuesday morning.
She stood up, planted her palms on the tabletop. “Would you look at the time. I’ve got a speech to write. And I’ve got to figure out how to keep myself from getting too scared in front of all those big shots.”
There was a knock on the back door.
FORTY-EIGHT
Jack held up his hand and walked to the door, looked out, and opened it wide. “Hey, Clive, you got something?” Agent Clive Howard, a twenty-year FBI veteran and one of its top forensic specialists, was six feet six inches tall, looked like a windowpane at 160 pounds, and had his grandma’s huge smile. “Of course I’ve got something,” he said in the thickest Southern accent Rachael had ever heard. “Lookee here.” Clive handed him a small rough-edged piece of material. “Our guy should have been more careful when climbing that oak tree to get into the house. Now, this guy has either noticed the rip in his jacket, in which case he’s already deep-sixed it, or he hasn’t noticed, and we might use it to identify him later. Now, I’m thinking this is off a lightweight jacket, and that makes sense since it was pretty warm last night. The material’s a synthetic stew, everything in it but good ole cotton.”
“I know it’s real small, but does the material look new to you, Clive?” Sherlock asked.
“Hard for an average untrained professional to say, but me?” He grinned real big at her. “I’d say it’s gotta he fairly new. We’ll test it, but I’m willing to bet it’s never hit the dry cleaner’s. Given he wouldn’t wear it during the winter, it’s probably a spring buy, maybe three, four months ago.”
Savich toasted Clive with his oolong tea. “Thank the good Lord for you, Clive.”
Clive beamed. “And we know our boy is a boy—a size ten shoe, heavy in the heels, a good-sized guy, maybe one eighty but not too tall—that’s according to Mendoza, who can tell you the foot size of a gorilla swinging through the forest.”
“Forest?” Sean said, coming to attention. “Is someone else trapped in the Forest of No Escape?”
Life never stopped happening, Rachael thought, and laughed as Savich quickly explained to Clive about Sean’s computer game. “Hey Sean,” Clive said, “my little girl really likes Zhor and the Forest of No Escape, tries to zap him whenever she gets done eating her vegetables.”
Sean sighed. “Papa had to help me.”
“That’s okay. I sometimes help my little girl, too.”
“She isn’t big like me?”
“Well, yeah, actually she is. She just turned eighteen.”
Sean giggled.
Savich stood, and the two men shook hands. Savich said, “Thank everyone for coming out on a Sunday morning, Clive.”
“All in a good cause.” Clive nodded to everyone, said to Sean, “Yo, kiddo, good luck cutting off Zhor at his evil knees,” and walked back into the yard.
“That material,” Rachael said. “May I see it?”
Savich handed it to her.
It was dark brown, a smooth fabric, sharp, she thought. Rachael said, “Synthetic stew or not, the guy who’d wear this dresses sharp.”
Savich’s cell sang out the
Savich looked at them. “Dr. MacLean is talking to a reporter about Congresswoman Dolores McManus murdering her husband.”
FORTY-NINE
It was nearly noon when they stepped onto the elevator in the hospital. They’d dropped Sean off at his grandmother’s house. She promptly hauled him off to church, whispering in his ear that she’d made potato salad for him, which made Sean beam at her and say in a confiding voice, “I’ll teach you how to fry Zhor, Grandma. You gotta get him into the Forest of No Escape and wrap a monkey vine around his neck.”
“My day will be perfect.”
The six people on the elevator obligingly moved to the side so they could enter. Savich said quietly as he punched the button, “I’ve got Ollie going through purchases made by Laurel, Quincy, Brady Cullifer, Greg Nichols, and three of the senator’s former staffers. We’ll see if a nice brown jacket shows up.”
“It could be a hired thug, Dillon.”
There were still two people on board when the elevator reached their floor.
Sherlock said, “I’ll speak to Dr. MacLean, Dillon; you take the reporter. Scare him spitless, okay?”
“That’s the plan “
The reporter was the
Jumbo gave Savich a grin, fanned his big hands in front of him. “Hey, isn’t this something—I got one of the big guns.”
Savich said easily, “I’m surprised to see you again so soon, Jumbo. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“More than you do,” Jumbo said. “I didn’t think you could outdo your press conference, but having you show up in person to get rid of me—what’s going on, Savich?”
“Yeah, you got my attention. Glad you could stick around.”
“Your guy gave me no choice, said he’d arrest my butt and toss it in a janitor’s closet on the fifth floor of the Hoover Building. He said I wouldn’t be found until next month.” Jumbo gave Savich a big toothy smile. “I was just checking out Congresswoman McManus.” He patted his laptop. “It ain’t MAX, but I can still find most stuff, like the details about the death of her husband. Now I hear from her very own shrink that she admitted paying some hit man in Savannah to take out her old man. Now, that’s news, Special Agent Savich, big news.”
“I know you’re not about to write about this until you’ve got verification. And you also know you’re not going to get it. Listen, Jumbo, you know very well Dr. MacLean is suffering from frontal lobe dementia, a disease that makes him talk about all sorts of stuff he shouldn’t, even stuff that didn’t happen. You also know there have been attempts on his life—”
“Nearly more attempts than we poor representatives of the people can keep up with,” said Jumbo. “That deal last night, what a fiasco for you guys. I mean, an FBI agent getting stabbed in the neck with a needle, not to mention a nurse saving the day. What’s that all about?”
“Hang that up, Jumbo. We’ve already made a statement.”
“The people got a right to know, Savich, that’s all I was saying. I heard rumors about this disease of his, but no one ever confirmed it. To tell you the truth, that’s why I didn’t mind staying. I know he’s real sick, know what he says is likely libelous, and that he can’t control himself. Talk to me, tell me what’s coming down here.”
“Off the record?”
“If I agree, when do I get to go on the record?”
“When everything is over. All right, Jumbo, I need your help.” Jumbo whistled, sat back, his arms behind his head, and crossed his legs. “What is this? You need
FIFTY
Sherlock found the good doctor sulking in his room. A neurologist, Dr. Shockley, was checking MacLean’s reflexes, humming under his breath. MacLean was ignoring him. His eyes narrowed when Sherlock came into the room. It looked to her like he was ready to yell his head off.
Dr. Shockley straightened. “Well, you’re good to go, Dr. MacLean, despite the excitement.”
