working on campaigns and being strident and adamant about things. There’s always something sad about that. The men get to be gray-haired and wise even if they’re morons but the women just look used up and kind of hysterical. And nobody really pays attention to them. They just have them on the shows because they need females for their demographic base.’
‘So where will you go after Ward?’
‘Not sure yet. Maybe try to find a small college somewhere and teach. I’ve got a master’s in poly sci. I could work on a doctorate while I taught.’
‘You wouldn’t miss the fun?’
She frowned. ‘Some fun. Jim gets murdered, nobody can find David, and Burkhart seems to have something on Ward. And Ward has really disappointed me. I’m thirty-four years old. I think it’s time for a husband and a family, and the kind of guys you meet on the trail aren’t exactly the right kind of material for domestic bliss. And since I’ve never been much for one-night stands, I get pretty lonely.’
I remembered her telling me not to put the moves on her. I wondered if I was that obvious. Probably. I was as lonely as she was and needful of bed. My mind was getting clouded with the one thought that banishes all other thoughts — sex.
‘You’re going to start glowing in the dark pretty soon,’ she said.
‘Pardon me?’
‘You’re starting to radiate.’ She stretched out her arm and offered me her hand. I took it. ‘Do you ever just sleep with a woman? No sex, I mean. Just sleep.’
‘I’ve tried. It’s a bitch.’
‘At least you’re honest.’
Then I realized how dumb I was. ‘But I’d be willing to try. I’m pretty tired. Maybe I’d fall asleep right way and it wouldn’t be any problem after all.’
I was a dog, tongue hanging out, begging for scraps.
‘Now I sound like a tease. I’m sorry. But you were right in the first place. It’s a bitch trying to just sleep. But I have this thing about one-night stands.’ She glanced at her watch.
The crew was starting to close the hotel restaurant. They did so with great and pointed clamor. I didn’t blame them. It was late and they wanted to go home.
Our hands parted. ‘Maybe some other night, Dev. It’s just all so crazy tonight.’
I wasn’t quite sure what had distressed her so much. Given all the campaigns she’d worked on she’d certainly run into moments like those of seeing Sylvia Fordham on TV. Most modern campaigns depend on bombast and calculated revelations. And this revelation had been pulled at the last minute. Maybe it was the hour, the two drinks we’d had, or the simple fact that she decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. So here I was near midnight, isolated again, even though a most fetching woman sat less than two feet from me.
She was out of the booth in seconds. ‘I just need some sleep, Dev. But I’ve really enjoyed our talk.’
‘Me, too.’
In my room I checked messages and e-mails. Tom Ward had written me an especially long message. He wanted to know if he should fly here and help out. He wouldn’t ask any questions on the computer in case we were being monitored. But he used a kind of code to let me know that he had guessed that something big was about to break and that Sylvia Fordham pulling her punch was only a temporary break. He surmised correctly that she’d be back. Sylvia had the vampire gene. You couldn’t kill her.
I wrote back, also in a kind of code, that I thought we could handle things here. Tom would just make things worse. He’d play father to Jeff’s prodigal son and that would only complicate things all the more.
I needed three shots of whiskey to get to sleep. Not anything I wanted to depend on. Thoughts of my daughter and ex-wife came as I felt myself slipping into the soothing darkness. We’d been happy for the first four years. Even now I could smell the baby powder and the baby food and the wonderful scent of our daughter sleeping as my wife and I stood by her bassinet. I had never loved a woman as much as I did my wife in those days. Just thinking about my daughter could make me cry. But somehow I’d smashed it all.
I wanted to be standing next to that bassinet again with my arm around my wife and my tiny daughter sleeping with sweet and utter bliss.
But the dream gods were not kind to me tonight. I didn’t remember the nightmares exactly, but in the morning I was depressed and frightened. I feared for beautiful Erin.
NINETEEN
Between the hours of eight fifteen and ten o’clock the next morning I followed Mrs Burkhart from her home. She went to a pricey restaurant, presumably for breakfast, and then drove to a mall. Since tailing her wasn’t doing me much good I was ready to just go up to her in the parking lot of the mall, but there were too many people around. I could hear the news reader now: ‘Eyewitnesses said that a political consultant from Congressman Jeff Ward’s camp accosted Teresa Burkhart in a mall parking lot this morning. Teresa Burkhart is the wife of Rusty Burkhart, Congressman Ward’s opponent in the upcoming election. Police are investigating.’
I didn’t have any trouble finding her inside. The upscale stores were on the second level, east side. She was window-shopping.
She was assessing a display of winter coats. I walked up beside her. ‘I like the belted one.’
She didn’t look at me. ‘You’re stalking me.’
This morning she was dressed as a spy in her black Burberry and cute little faux fedora. She’d changed perfumes. This one had the same power of Eros as her previous one. She was worth every penny he spent on her.
She twisted around. Angry. ‘What the hell do you want from me anyway?’
She said it with crowd-pleasing fury. Shoppers slowed to see what had so displeased the lady. Everybody loves a free show.
‘Why don’t we go have a cup of coffee, Mrs Burkhart? We need to have that talk.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Then I guess I’ll have to call the police. I think I mentioned before that the police’ll be interested in why you were taking photos of Jim Waters on the day he died. From a car. Without his permission.’
‘Have you ever stopped to consider the possibility that I had his permission?’
‘That’s so stupid it’s not worth answering. So what’s it going to be — coffee or the cops?’
‘I hate you.’
I began walking away. She was good. I got five stores down before she caught up with me. She’d shaken my confidence. I’d started to wonder if she was just going to let me walk away.
Neither of us spoke. We used the escalator. On the ground floor we found a restaurant open and went inside. The motif was medieval. I wondered if grog was on the menu.
I’d only had a piece of toast and coffee for breakfast so I ordered scrambled eggs and hash browns. The waitress kept glancing at Mrs Burkhart, who looked as if she was being held here against her will. When the waitress asked if there was anything she wanted, all Mrs Burkhart did was shake her head.
‘I hate you.’
‘I think the waitress heard you say that.’ I wasn’t joking. She’d said it when the waitress was only a few feet from our table, walking away.
‘I don’t care.’
‘If somebody recognizes who you are, you’ll care. Somebody’ll let the media know that you were seen having coffee with a strange man. And that you might have been having a spat, a lovers’ spat.’
It was bullshit but it worked.
‘What the hell do you want from me?’
‘The truth. Why you were taking photos of Waters.’ I hesitated. ‘And why you were seeing David Nolan?’
For a cunning woman, she wasn’t much good at covering her feelings. She lurched as if somebody had jammed a knife blade into her side. Those rich dark eyes showed panic.
‘I ran into him once. I thought it would be nice to sit down and talk to him. You know, to show that there
