First daughter, p.25
First Daughter, page 25
With his left hand, he indicated that she should check the second floor. He went room by room: the cobwebby basement, smelling of raw concrete and damp, the living room with its astounding volcanoes of books, magazines, papers of all kinds. The bathroom was clear, as was the kitchen. It was curious, though. The living room and foyer were just as he remembered them, cluttered and musty, but the kitchen and bathroom were neat and spotless, shining like a scientist's laboratory. It was as if two completely different people inhabited the same place: the ghost of the Marmoset and Kray/Whitman.
To the left, he found a closed door. Trying the knob, he ascertained that it was locked. His picks were of no help here. The lock was of a kind he hadn't encountered before. He stood back, aimed, then shielded his eyes as he fired the Glock at it. The resulting percussion brought Nina at a dead run.
He kicked in the door, found a room with only a huge painted wood chair. At one time, probably when the Marmoset had lived here, the room had had a window. Since then it had been bricked up and painted over. It reeked sourly of sweat, fear, and human excrement.
The two of them returned to the hallway, went down it until they found themselves back in the cheerful kitchen.
"Check everything," Jack said.
They opened closets, drawers, cabinets. All the utensils, bottles, cans, mops, brooms, dustpans were arranged in order of utility and size. The oven was empty inside. Nina pulled open the door to the refrigerator.
"Look here."
She knelt in front of the open refrigerator. All the shelves had been removed. She pointed to the bottom, where something translucent was wedged between sections.
"I think that's a piece of skin."
Jack nodded, his heart thudding in his throat. "Let's bag it, get it over to Dr. Schiltz. I have a feeling it belongs to our Jane Doe who had her hand amputated."
Nina donned a pair of latex gloves. "Let's pray it doesn't belong to Alli Carson."
As she produced a plastic bag and tweezers, Jack moved to the pantry door. It was closed but not latched. Gingerly, he pulled it open.
He expelled a long sigh of relief. The First Daughter was wedged into a corner, her back against the far wall where it met a set of cabinets. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins. She was rocking gently back and forth, as if to comfort herself.
Jack squatted down to Alli's level.
"Alli?" He had to call her name three or four times before her head swung around, her eyes focused on him. By this time, Jack could hear Nina speaking to HQ. She was asking for an ambulance, the Carson family doctor, who was standing by at Langley Fields, and an armed escort. She had initially asked for Hugh Garner, but for some reason Jack couldn't make out, wasn't able to speak with him.
"No sirens," Jack said softly, and Nina relayed the message.
Jack edged closer, and Alli shrank back. "Alli, it's Jack, Jack Mc-Clure. Emma's father. Do you remember me?"
Alli regarded him out of depthless eyes. She hadn't stopped rocking, and Jack couldn't help thinking of the room with the monstrous chair, the straps, the smell.
"Don't be afraid, Alli. Nina and I were sent by your father and mother. We're here to take you home."
Something in what he said put the spark of life into her eyes. "Jack?"
"Yes, Alli. Jack McClure."
Alli suddenly stopped rocking. "Is it really you?"
Jack nodded. He held out one hand until Alli reached out, tentatively took it. He was prepared for her to draw back, but instead she launched herself into his arms, sobbing and shaking, holding on to him with a desperation that plucked at his heart.
He rose with her in his arms. She was trembling all over. Nina moved in beside him. She was opening the drawers in the cabinet, one by one. All were empty, save the top one, which held an assortment of the usual handiwork tools: hammer, level, pliers, wire-cutter, a variety of screwdrivers and wrenches.
Alli began to whimper again, and Jack put one hand at the back of her head in an attempt to calm her. With the other, he fumbled out his cell phone, pressed a button. A moment later, president-elect Edward Carson came on the line.
"Sir, I have your daughter. Alli is safe and sound."
There was a brief rustle at the other end of the line that could have been anything, even Carson brushing away some tears. "Thank God." His voice was clotted with emotion. Then Jack heard him relay the news to his wife, heard her shout of relief and joy.
"Jack," Carson said, "Lyn and I don't know how to thank you. Can we speak with her?"
"I wouldn't advise it, sir. We need to extract her fully and assess her health."
"When can we see her?"
"The ambulance is on its way," Jack said. "You can meet us at Bethesda."
"We're on our way," the president-elect said. "Jack, you made good on your promise. Neither Lyn nor I will forget it."
At the same moment Jack put away his cell, Nina opened the cupboard over the small sink. Nina recoiled when she saw the horned viper slither down onto the countertop. The evil-looking wedge-shaped head with its demon's horns quested upward. The viper was hungry, and she was annoyed. Her tongue flicked out, vibrating, scenting living creatures.
Jack dug the pliers out of the drawer. The head moved forward, far faster than he could follow, but midway toward him a shadow fell across it, slowing it. Jack felt a breath of cool air brush the nape of his neck. With a well-aimed swipe of the pliers, he stunned the snake. Gripping the viper's head between the ends of the pliers, he squeezed as hard as he could. Though its brain was pulped, the viper's body continued to thrash, slamming itself this way and that in a random fury for a long time.
Nina struggled to regain her equilibrium. "Jack, are you all right?"
Unable to find his voice, he nodded.
"It was coming straight at you; I was sure it would bite you."
"It would have," Jack said, a little dazed himself, "but something slowed it down."
"That's impossible."
"Nevertheless, something did. A shadow came between the snake and me."
Nina looked around. "What shadow, Jack?" She passed her hand through the space Jack indicated. "There's no shadow here, Jack. None at all."
Alli twisted in his arms, taking her face out of his shoulder. "What happened?" she whispered.
Jack kicked the snake's body away. "Nothing, Alli. Everything's fine."
"No, it isn't, something happened," she insisted.
"I'm taking you out of here, Alli," he whispered as he took her back out through the kitchen and down the hall. "Your folks are coming to meet us."
The Marmoset's house was crawling with the heavily armed detail Nina requested. Along with them came two EMS attendants with a rolling stretcher, a nurse, and the Carson family doctor. But Alli refused to be parted from Jack, so he and Alli, with Nina at their side, strode out of the house with the escort.
Alli put her lips to his ear. "I felt something, Jack, like someone standing beside us."
"You must have blacked out for a minute," Jack said.
"No, I felt someone breathe—one cool breath on my cheek."
Jack felt his heart lurch. Could it be that Alli had felt the shadow, just as he had? His mind lit up with possibilities.
He climbed into the ambulance with her clinging to him. Even when he managed to get her onto the stretcher so that the doctor could examine her, she wouldn't let him go entirely. She was clearly terrified he'd leave her alone with her living nightmare.
He gripped her hand, talking of the good times when she and Emma were best friends, and gradually she relaxed enough for the doctor to take her vitals and administer a light sedative.
"Jack . . ." Alli's lids were heavy, but the abject horror was sliding off her face like a mask. "Jack . . ."
"I'm here, honey," he said with tears in his eyes. "I won't leave you."
His voice was hoarse, his breathing constricted. He was all too aware that this is what he should have said to Emma a long time ago.
PART FOUR
THIRTY - SEVEN
THE EARLY January sunset was painting narrow bands of gold and crimson across the low western sky when Jack met with Dr. Irene Saunderson on the wide, Southern-style veranda of Emily House.
"I've tried every way I can think of—and any number of new ones—to get through to Alli," Dr. Saunderson said. She was a tall, stick-thin woman with dark hair pulled severely back into a ponytail, accentuating a high forehead and cheekbones, bright, intelligent eyes. She looked like a failed model. "She either can't or won't tell us what happened to her."
"Which is it?" Jack said. "Can't you at least tell that much?"
Dr. Saunderson shook her head. "That's part of what's so frustrating about the human mind. I have little doubt that she's suffering from a form of posttraumatic stress syndrome, but at the end of the day, that tells us next to nothing. What's indisputable is that she suffered a traumatic episode. But what form the trauma took or what the actual effect on her is, we can't determine."
She sighed deeply. "Frankly, I'm at a dead end."
"You're the third shrink to say that." Jack unbuttoned his coat. A thaw had set in with a vengeance. "What about physical damage?"
"The exhaustive medical workup shows that she wasn't raped or physically harmed in any way. There wasn't even a superficial scratch on her."
"Is there a possibility of Stockholm syndrome?"
"You're thinking of Patty Hearst, of course, among many others." Dr. Saunderson shrugged. "Of course it's possible that she's come to identify with her captor, but she's shown no indication of hostility toward us, and given the relatively short amount of time she was with her abductor, it seems unlikely. Unless, of course, he used drugs to accelerate the process, but there was no sign of chemical markers in her blood workup. As you know, the president's own medical team at Bethesda took charge of her when you brought her in."
"It's been three days since I asked to see her," Jack said.
"You can see her right now, if you like," Dr. Saunderson said, brushing aside his complaint with a shrink's easy aplomb.
They always know what to say, Jack thought, even when they're wrong.
"Shall I take you to her room?"
"Actually, I'd rather see her out here."
Dr. Saunderson frowned. "I'm not so sure that's such a good idea."
"Why not? She's been cooped up for the better part of ten days. This is a pretty place, but it's still a prison." Jack smiled his most charming smile. "C'mon, Doc. You and I both know the fresh air will do her good."
"All right. I'll be right back." She was about to turn away when she hesitated. "Don't be surprised if Alli exhibits some erratic behavior, extreme mood swings, things like that."
Jack nodded.
Alone on the veranda, he had a chance to take in the antebellum atmosphere of Emily House, a large, rather overornate confection whose exterior might easily have been used for a remake of Gone with the Wind. Save for knowing its true purpose, Jack would not have been surprised to find himself mingling with couples drinking mint juleps and speaking in deep Southern drawls.
Emily House, named after a former president's dog, of all things, was a government safe house in the midst of fifty acres of Virginia countryside as heavily guarded as it was forested. Over the years, a good many heads of state, defectors, double agents, and the like had called it home, at least temporarily. It was painted white, with dove-gray shutters and a blue-gray slate roof. A bit of fluff on the outside, belying the armor-plated walls and doors, the bullet- and bombproof windows, and more cutting-edge security paraphernalia than Q's lab. For instance, there was a little number called ADS. ADS stood for active denial system, which sounded like something Dr. Saunderson might claim Alli was suffering from. However, there was nothing nonsensical about the ADS, which was to all intents and purposes a ray gun that shot out a beam of invisible energy that made its victims feel as if their skin were burning off. It wasn't handheld; it wasn't even small. In fact, it looked rather like a TV satellite dish perched on a flatbed truck or a Humvee. But it worked, which was all that mattered.
Jack, hearing a door open, turned to see Alli with Dr. Saunderson right behind her. It had been only three days since he'd last seen her, but she seemed to have aged a year. There was something in her face, a change he couldn't quite figure. It was another visual puzzle he needed to decipher.
"Hey," he said, smiling.
"Hey."
She ran into his arms. Jack kissed the top of her head, saw Dr. Saunderson nod to him, then withdraw into Emily House.
Alli was wearing a short wool jacket, jeans, an orange Buffalo Brand shirt, a screaming eagle with a skull in its talons silkscreened on the front.
"You feel up to a walk?" he asked her.
When she nodded, he took her down the steps, along the crushed gravel. There were a number of formal gardens around Emily House. This time of year, the low boxwood maze was the only one still green.
Alli ducked her head. "We can't go too far, you know, without catching the attention of the guards."
Jack listened closely not only to her words but also to her tone of voice. There was something sad there that touched the sad place inside him. This young woman had spent all her life at the end of a leash, watched over by stern men to whom she could never relate. He resolved to talk with her father about the new Secret Service detail that would be assigned to her when she came home. She deserved better than two more anonymous agents.
"How are they treating you?" he asked as they moved between the low hedges.
"With kid gloves." She gave a thin laugh. "Sometimes I feel like I'm made of glass."
"They're making you feel that way?"
Alli shrugged. It was clear she wasn't yet ready to talk about what happened, even with him. Jack knew he needed to take another tack altogether.
"Alli, there's something only you can help me with. It's about Emma."
"Okay."
Was he mistaken, or did her eyes light up?
"Don't laugh, but there have been moments during the past few weeks when I could swear I've seen Emma. Once at Langley Fields, then in the backseat of my car. Other times, too. And once I felt a cool breath on the back of my neck."
Alli, walking silently, stared at her feet. Jack, sensing that she'd had enough urging recently, chose to let her be. He listened, instead, to the wind through the bare branches, the distant complaints of a murder of crows, crowded onto the treetops like a bunch of old ladies at a funeral.
At length, Alli lifted her head, regarded him curiously. "I felt the same thing. When you were holding me, when that snake—"
"You saw the snake?"
"I heard it."
"I didn't realize."
"You were busy."
The words stung him, though that was hardly her intent. The wound his inattention had inflicted was still as raw as on the day he'd held Emma's lifeless body in his arms. There wasn't anything that could prepare you for the death of your child. It was unnatural, and therefore incomprehensible. There was no solace. In that light, perhaps Sharon's turning to the Church was understandable. There came a time when the pain you carried inside you was insupportable. One way or another you needed to grope your way toward help.
They had reached the heart of the maze, a small square space with a stone bench. They sat in silence. Jack watched the shadows creeping over the lawns and gardens. The treetops seemed to be on fire.
"I felt her," Alli said at last. "Emma was there with us in that horrible house."
And it was at that moment, with the utterance of those words, that Jack felt them both brushed by the feathers of a mystery of infinite proportions. He felt in that moment that in entering the boxwood maze, in finding their way to its center, they had both touched a wisdom beyond human understanding, and in so doing were bound together in the same mysterious way, for the rest of their lives.
"But how is that possible?" He spoke as much to himself as he did to her.
She shrugged. "Why do I like Coke and not root beer?" she said. "Why do I like blue more than red?"
"Some things just are."
She nodded. "There you go."
"But this is different."
"Why is it different?" Alli said.
"Because Emma's dead."
"Honestly, I don't know what that means."
Jack pondered this a moment, then shook his head. "I don't either."
"Then there's no reason why we shouldn't feel Emma's presence," she said.
"When you put it that way . . ."
With the absolute surety of youth, she said, "How else can it be put?"
Jack could think of any number of alternatives, but they all fell within the strict beliefs of the skeptics, scientific and religious alike.
And because he felt the wingtips of mystery still fluttering about them, he told her what he'd never been able to tell anyone else. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, his fingers knit together, he said, "After Sharon and I broke up, I started to wonder: Is this all there is? I mean life, the world that we can see, hear, smell, touch."
"Why did it come up then?" Alli asked.
Jack groped for an answer. "Because without her, I became—I don't know—unmoored."
"I've been unmoored all my life." Alli sat forward herself. "Sometimes I think I was born asking, Is this all there is? But for me the answer was always, No, the world is out there beyond the bars of your cage."
Jack turned to her. "Do you really think of your world as a cage?"
She nodded. "It's small enough, Jack. You've been in it, you ought to know."
"Then I'm glad Emma came into it."
"For such a short time!"
The genuine lamentation broke Jack's heart all over again. "And she had you, Alli, though it was only for a short time."
It was growing cooler as the shadows extended their reach across the vast lawns, hedges, and flower beds. Alli shivered, but when Jack asked her whether she wanted to go back inside, she shook her head.
