Savich listened to the rock-hard political conversations going on around him and wondered when the rubber chicken would make its appearance. He wondered how they would rubberize his vegetarian dish.
To his surprise, he was served spinach lasagna, a tossed salad, and green beans dotted with pearl onions, all delicious. For the predators, they brought out what looked like a Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings.
A gentleman at the microphone announced that Thanksgiving was Senator Abbott’s favorite meal of the year. There was appreciative laughter. And more laughter when he announced there would be gelato for dessert, because pear tart-lets prepared for more than two hundred people never made it to the table tasting quite like fruit.
Forty-five minutes later, the vice president walked to the podium and adjusted the microphone upward. He spoke of his long friendship with John James Abbott, of his major legislation and his ability to work with both sides of the aisle, no matter the party in power. There was a low buzz of conversation about that statement until the vice president managed to get off a couple of old golf jokes, then turned it over to a senator from Missouri. It went on from there, each speaker with an amusing or touching anecdote about Senator Abbott.
When the crowd was feeling no pain at all, what with the waitstaff serving the hard stuff as well as rivers of wine, the vice president said, “I would like to introduce all of you to Jimmy’s daughter. As you know, he didn’t know she existed until she knocked on his door. In the last six weeks of his life, his happiness shone like a beacon. He once said to me she was the daughter of his heart. Many of you have had the opportunity to speak to Rachael this evening, to experience her kindness, her sense of humor, and her charm, doubtless inherited from her father. I give you Ms. Rachael Abbott.” He stepped forward to hug her when she gained the dais.
I’m still alive. The turkey was good, the cranberry sauce homemade and delicious, better yet, no one has tried to get near me with a knife. No one has tried to lure me to the men’s room.
She looked out over the room at the men and women who ruled the world. She knew her mascara had smudged a bit because she’d cried at some of the stories told by her father’s colleagues.
She looked at older faces, lived-in faces, faces that held both knowledge and secrets, and at that moment held a good deal of benevolence. And she saw clearly their sense of self-satisfaction; it was tangible, seemed to fill the air.
The lights were dim, the scents of discreet perfume mixed with the rich smells of the Thanksgiving dinner.
She caught Greg Nichols’s eye, cocked her head at him, gave him a tentative smile. Strange, he looked frozen, and more than that—he didn’t look right.
She said into the microphone, “I only knew my father for six weeks before he was killed. As you know, his death was originally ruled an accident. Now there are very real questions about that. However, tonight we are here to talk about the senator’s life.” There was a faint stirring in the group until she continued.
Greg Nichols took another sip of sparkling water, eyed the nearly empty bottle of Tums. All his staffers were looking at him like he was going to explode. Agent Sherlock had spoken to him during the long dinner, asked him repeatedly if he was all right. Upset stomach, he’d told her, nothing more, just an upset stomach from something he ate. And he’d give her a weak smile, say he was feeling better.
It had to get better, didn’t it? Food poisoning lasted just a few hours, didn’t it? He remembered the potato salad he’d eaten once as a teenager that had left him moaning on the bathroom floor, puking up his guts for eight hours. Then it was over. Would this be over soon? Dammit, he hadn’t eaten that much of the damned cioppino. A violent cramp slashed through him again, doubled him up. He gasped with the force of it. It kept getting worse until he thought he was going to die. There was no hiding anything now. He heard voices but didn’t recognize any words, he was too deep in the pain. He wasn’t about to puke in front of United States senators. He lurched to his feet, groaning, holding himself, and ran toward the door.
“Mr. Nichols, wait!”
It was Agent Sherlock, but he didn’t acknowledge her, he couldn’t, everything in him was focused on the god-awful pain ripping and tearing through his belly.
He heard Rachael say in a loud voice, sounding strangely far away and deep, like from the bottom of a well, “Senator Robertson spoke about his ability to nudge opposing sides into compromise, his ability to persuade without backroom bloodshed . . .”
People were coming at him, men in dark suits, FBI, Secret Service, his friends, but it didn’t matter. He was going to vomit, he was going to—
The lights seemed to go out around him, turning the huge room black as a pit.
He stumbled and went down.
He knew men were leaning over him, touching him, speaking to him, but he was caught in the agony and couldn’t say anything, could only groan, tears running down his face, and he knew there was blood flowing out of his body, and it was dark, so very dark. Was the dark on the inside or the outside? Why was someone yelling?
He lurched up as blood gushed out of his twisting mouth, the tears streaming from his eyes tinted red, two snakes of blood running out of his nose.
Sherlock yelled, “Dillon! Come here!”
Savich saw Secret Service agents surround the vice president and chivy him back against a wall. Four FBI agents converged on Rachael at the podium. There were more agents and a dozen other people knotted together. Something was very wrong.
He shoved his way through and looked down to see Greg Nichols lying on his side on the floor, blood trickling from his open mouth. There was blood everywhere. He was soaked with it. Sherlock was on her knees beside him.
“The EMTs should be here soon. He’s very bad, Dillon. All this blood. I knew something was wrong with him, I knew it.”
“We thought he was up to no good,” a Secret Service agent said, straightening over Nichols. “But no, this guy’s very sick.”
“I’m guessing poison,” Savich said. “He’s drenched in blood. What else would it be?”
A Secret Service agent said, “Yeah, you’re right, sounds like coumarin, rat poison.”
“Yeah, probably,” Savich said, and felt for Nichols’s pulse.
Sherlock rose to look at Lindsay Culley, Nichols’s secretary. She was wringing her hands, her face as white as Savich’s shirt. “I told him not to eat the cioppino, because there’d be a big meal tonight, but he did, only a few bites. It must have been bad. Really, he didn’t eat all that much. I thought he was better, he kept saying he was fine.”
She burst into tears. Sherlock patted her shoulder and nodded to Grace Garvey, Senator Abbott’s former secretary, who told her, “I didn’t know he was ill. We spoke about tonight, and I told him how nice it would be, how pleased we all were they were doing this for Senator Abbott. He and Senator Abbott were so very close.” She put her arms around Lindsay.
Savich said, “His pulse is thready, nearly nonexistent.” He sat back on his heels. He didn’t think Greg Nichols was going to make it.
A Secret Service agent opened the doors and paramedics rushed in carrying medical bags and a gurney. Savich listened to Sherlock tell them his symptoms as they worked over him. He heard an older man say abruptly, “Would you look at all that blood!”
They had him on the gurney quickly, white cloths draped over all the bloody clothes.
Two FBI agents accompanied the group. “Keep me informed,” Savich said, then turned back, saw the vice president looking over the heads of the crowd at him, and nodded.
Another three minutes and all the senators had turned to face Rachael once again at the podium.
The vice president nodded to Rachael. “As you all know by now, ladies and gentlemen, someone has fallen ill. I’m told it was Greg Nichols, the former senior staffer for Senator Abbott. He is being seen to, and we certainly hope he will be all right. Ms. Abbott, after all this excitement, do you feel like continuing?”
She nodded, stepped again to the podium, adjusted the microphone.
Greg, what happened?
FIFTY-FOUR
S
he looked out over the group, met Laurel’s cold, malicious eyes, and nearly recoiled. Then Laurel smirked, no other way to describe that small, self-satisfied smile. Her father’s sister—how could that be possible?
She looked around at the group, cleared her throat, and said, “I’m very sorry my father’s chief of staff, Greg Nichols, has taken ill. I hope he will be all right. I will keep this brief.
“My father loved our nation’s capital, and it disturbed him that alongside the beautiful granite buildings, the stretches of perfectly maintained parklands, just beside the towering monuments, there is squalor and poverty, their roots dug deep for more years than anyone can remember. It both angered and embarrassed him.
“Therefore, in his honor, I will be creating and endowing the John James Abbott Foundation, which will address first and foremost our local citizens’ problems. You are our nation’s lawmakers, our movers and shakers. I would appreciate any and all expertise you can throw my way. Together, we can make a difference in his name, I’m sure we can.”
She picked up her glass of water, raised it high. “I would like to toast Senator John James Abbott, a compassionate man, and an excellent father.” She raised her glass, and the rest of the room quickly followed suit. “To making a difference!”
There was a moment of silence while people drank, then, slowly, the members of the Senate stood, clapping, their eyes on her, nodding.
When she returned to the table, Jack said, “I didn’t know what you were going to say, but a foundation—that’s an excellent idea, Rachael.”
She took his hand and said, in a low voice, “I couldn’t do it. I thought hard about it, Jack. I finally decided you were right. What my father would or would not have done became moot the moment he died. It was his decision and only his, no one else’s. It would be wrong of me to change how history will judge him. I don’t have that right or that responsibility. Only he did.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Washington Memorial Hospital
Monday night
O
ne of the emergency room doctors, Frederick Bentley, turned tired eyes to the clock on the waiting room wall. His green shirt was still covered with blood. He said, more to himself than to the people standing around him, “Isn’t that strange? It’s ten o’clock, straight up. It always seems to be ten o’clock straight up when the freight train hits. You’d think midnight, the witching hour, would bring that choo-choo, but no. All right, I can tell you Greg Nichols is still alive, but I doubt he will be for long.
“We poured blood, plasma, and fluids into him to resuscitate him. His PT—that means prothrombin time—measured off the charts, meaning his blood wasn’t clotting, and his hematocrit just wasn’t compatible with life.
“He has remained unconscious. We’ve intubated him, meaning we put a tube into his trachea through his nose to allow him to be hooked up to a respirator. We’ll be moving him to the ICU in a minute.
“We’re not yet certain why his blood isn’t clotting, but I’m thinking poison or an overdose. Most commonly it’s coumarin, or something chemically related to it like a superwarfarin, which is used as rat poison. It must have been a massive dose.
“We took stomach and blood samples, which will show us what was in his system, and maybe how long ago he ingested it. It will take a while for the results, though.
“To be blunt, I’m surprised he’s still alive. Even if he regains consciousness, he may not be able to talk. I strongly doubt his brain survived the anoxia, the lack of oxygen. Would one of you like to see him?”
Savich followed Dr. Bentley into a screened-off section of the emergency room.
“You’re the boss, right?”
“Yeah, I get all the perks.”
“Good luck.”
Nichols lay alone and still, his face white as a plaster saint’s. Dried blood and vomit caked the side of his mouth. His eyes were closed; his lids looked bruised, like someone had punched him. There were two IV lines tethered to his wrists. The obscene wheezing of the respirator was the only sound in the room.
Savich leaned close. “Mr. Nichols.”
Savich heard Dr. Bentley suck in a breath behind him when Nichols opened his eyes. Savich saw the death film beginning to creep into them. No, Greg Nichols wasn’t going to live through this.
“Do you know who poisoned you, Mr. Nichols?”
Savich was losing him. His eyes were darkening, the film covering them, like a veil. His voice was urgent. “Who, Mr. Nichols?”
He was struggling for breath to speak but couldn’t.
His eyes froze. He was gone.
Nichols was dead and Savich wanted to howl. There were alarms, the heart machine flatlined.
Two nurses joined Dr. Bentley in the cubicle. Savich stepped out and returned to the small waiting room. There was an older black couple there now, their faces blank with shock, holding each other.
“Come with me,” Savich said to Jack and Rachael. He took Sherlock’s hand and led them into a long empty hallway, away from the emergency room and the soul-deadening silence of that waiting room.
“He’s dead. He regained consciousness, but it was only for a moment.”
“They killed him, Dillon.”
“Yes, Rachael, I think they did. And they did it dramatically, something I think pleased their vanity.”
“But why?”
Savich was quiet for a moment. Sherlock sighed. “I’m sorry, Rachael, but I think Greg Nichols was involved with them. After you and Jack met with him, maybe he spoke to them. Whatever he said must have made them realize he was a weak link, that he’d break, and so they killed him. I’ll bet you we’ll find out from Greg’s staff how they got to him.”