Dead on Arrival

was just too much media heat and too many congressmen feeling the heat. Two days ago, it had reported out of the committee, two Democrats voting for it. Mahoney then began to do what he could to delay a floor vote, hoping — though without optimism — that something would happen to give him what he needed to get folks turned around. But then Broderick had to go and get himself killed, burnt to a crisp while screwing his secretary. The idiot.

Now practically every member of the House was screaming for Mahoney to bring Broderick’s bill to the floor for a vote. They didn’t scream directly at Mahoney, of course — they screamed via the press. And the press, at least the conservative press, was starting to make John Mahoney sound as patriotic as Benedict Arnold.

There was something else that irritated Mahoney. Before his death, Broderick had tried and failed to come up with a clever name for his bill, something like the ‘Patriot Act,’ a name that would make it sound as if the bill were really in the country’s best interest. He had tried to get the media to latch on to a couple of different names, such as the Domestic Security Act or the Muslim American Validation Act, but these names were neither particularly euphonic nor sufficiently misleading. And no matter what name Broderick tried to give his proposal, the liberals insisted on calling it the Muslim American Registry Act, a name Broderick had hated because it focused attention on the most controversial aspect of his bill. But now the bill had a name. It was being called the Broderick Act.

Jesus.

Nor could any advantage be taken of the fact that Broderick had been diddling his receptionist the night he died. A tidbit like that might have been useful if the man was still alive, but to bring it up now would be considered by one and all as a despicable thing to rub into the face of Broderick’s widow. So the press, in a rare act of decency, was pretending to accept the story given by Senator Broderick’s aide Nicholas Fine.

Fine had said that the senator had attended a meeting with some constituents the night of his death — this story matched the lie that Broderick had told his wife — and Fine assumed that the senator had stopped by Ms Talbot’s apartment afterward to give her some urgent task related to the meeting. Maybe, Fine said, Broderick had given her something he wanted typed up that very night or possibly something that he wanted her to get into the mail first thing in the morning. Yeah, he was giving her something, all right, the reporters thought, but they didn’t print what they were thinking.

Then the last straw floated down and landed on the camel’s back, prompting Mahoney to ditch his security so he could be alone. The FBI had discovered a note in Broderick’s car, a note that had apparently been left there by the bomber. The previous night when the cop had opened the car to find out who the car belonged to, he hadn’t seen the note. In fact, the cop had planted a knee right on it when he reached over to open the glove compartment to get Broderick’s registration. But after the FBI arrived and began to examine the scene in an organized manner, the note was discovered. The note was typed and unsigned but appeared to have been written by a Muslim American, one not particularly well educated. There were references to Allah, the Koran, and the worldwide Muslim brother hood, and there was the implication that al-Qaeda had helped the bomber, a statement to the effect that wise men across the sea had aided his efforts but al-Qaeda was not mentioned specifically. In the note Broderick was thoroughly denounced as a godless infidel whose bill was proof that America had declared an unholy crusade against all Muslims.

So even though the FBI could not prove it — even though the FBI said repeatedly that they could not prove it — the public was convinced that an American Muslim was responsible for the death of a United States senator, a man whose character had already improved tenfold in the hours since his passing.

Mahoney thought about calling DeMarco but decided not to bother. Unless DeMarco could find something in the next forty-eight hours, the Broderick Act was going to become law.

‘Mr Speaker.’

Mahoney turned his head. Aw, shit. His four secu rity guys were jogging across the grass toward him, the Notre Dame offensive line for sure.

They’d found him fast. These guys were good.

54

‘They blindfolded me,’ Danny said.

‘Son of a bitch!’ DeMarco said, glaring at his cousin.

‘Hey! It wasn’t my fault. I did what you wanted. I got ’em to show me the lab.’

Patsy Hall said, ‘Yeah, but for all you know, it wasn’t even on Pugh’s property.’ She thought for a minute. ‘Was the lab in a cave?’ Looking at DeMarco she said, ‘There’re a couple small caves on Pugh’s land. I snuck in there one night to check ’em out, but at the time they were empty.’

‘You went onto Pugh’s property by yourself, at night, and explored these caves?’ DeMarco said.

‘Yeah. I didn’t have a warrant and I wasn’t going to get any of my guys in trouble.’

Wow, DeMarco thought. Patsy Hall was something else.

Danny said, ‘This place I was in, it didn’t look like a cave. It was man-made. But it was underground. I could tell because we walked down these stairs to get in and the floor was dirt. But the walls weren’t made of rock, like a cave. They were built out of railroad ties, like they dug the space out and reinforced the walls with the ties so they wouldn’t collapse.’

They were in a conference room in Winchester where the DEA had a small field office. They all sat in silence, Danny worrying about his future, DeMarco annoyed at his cousin, and Patsy Hall thinking about Pugh, her lips set in a stubborn line. Hall got up after a moment and opened a file cabinet and pulled out a topographical map that included Pugh’s land. She spread the map out on the table.

‘How long were you driving around?’ she asked Danny.

‘Half hour, maybe forty-five minutes.’

‘Well, which was it? Half an hour or forty-five minutes?’

‘I don’t know! They took my watch when they made me strip.’

‘Shit. And how fast do you think you were driving?’

‘Wherever we were going, it was pretty rough. I’d say less than fifteen miles an hour most of the time, but a couple of times Randy, that asshole, really opened the thing up. Scared the crap out of me.’ Then he added, ‘I mean, being blindfolded like I was.’

‘But most of the time you were going less than twenty?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

Patsy scratched some numbers on the edge of the map. ‘If it took you forty-five minutes at an average speed of twenty miles an hour, you would have gone fifteen miles. She looked down at the map and said, ‘Shit, if you were traveling in anywhere near a straight line, you’d be off Pugh’s property.’

Danny said, ‘But we weren’t traveling in a straight line. We made a lot of turns. I could feel them.’

‘I know,’ Patsy Hall said, shaking her head, ‘but if you drove that long I can’t establish that you were on his property.’ She stood there a moment, studying the map, tracing a slim forefinger over the heavy black line that outlined Pugh’s land. ‘Could you feel anything or hear anything while you were driving?’

‘Like what?’ Danny said.

‘Like was the vehicle going up and down hills?’

‘Sometimes,’ Danny said, ‘but not big ones.’

‘There’s a train track on this edge of the property,’ she said, tapping the map. ‘Did you hear a train? Or other cars, like you might have been near a road?’

‘No. No noises. It was quiet, like we were deep in the woods.’

‘This is hopeless,’ DeMarco said. ‘Maybe we can set up a delivery right away and get Pugh when he delivers the dope.’

‘That won’t work,’ Hall said. ‘Jubal won’t be de livering anything. All we’ll get is some mule who won’t talk.’

‘There was one thing,’ Danny said.

‘Yeah, what was that?’ Hall said, obviously not expecting much.

‘Right before we stopped, maybe five minutes before, we drove over something that went