First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [23]
"At least I can read without contorting my brain into a pretzel." Garner turned on his heel, walked out of the room, talking urgently to whoever was on the other end of the line.
Jack felt the heat flame up from his core, move to his cheeks, his extremities, until his hands began to tremble. So Garner knew. Somehow he'd burrowed back into Jack's past to discover the truth. He wanted to lash out, bury his fist in Garner's smug face. It was times like this when his disability made him feel small, helpless. He was a freak; he'd always be a freak. He was trapped inside this fucked-up brain of his with no chance of escape. Ever.
Something glimmered briefly as he shone the tiny beam of the mini-flash into the hole. Reaching in, he felt around, extracting a small metal vial with a screw top. Opening it, he saw that it was half-filled with a white powder. Tasting a tiny bit on his fingertip, he confirmed his suspicion. Cocaine.
SEVEN
NINA MILLER lit a clove cigarette, stared at the burning tip for a moment, and gave a small laugh. "Reminds me of my college days. I never lost my taste." She inhaled as slowly, as deeply as if she were drawing in weed, then let the smoke out of her lungs in a soft hiss. Behind her, the sun was going down over the low hills. A dog was barking, but the sound was high-pitched, from an adjoining property, not one of the K-9 sniffers.
She was standing outside of the west dorm, where Alli's room was, leaning against the whitewashed brick, her slim left hip slightly canted. Her right elbow was perched on the top of her left wrist, the left arm hugging her waist. The slow light placed her in the elongated shadow of the roofline.
"Find anything of interest?" she inquired.
"Possibly," Jack said.
"I saw Garner storming out. You got to him, didn't you?"
Jack told her about his single-perp theory.
She frowned. "It does sound hard to believe."
"Thanks so very much."
Her eyes slid toward his face. "Like Garner, I was trained to follow the forensic evidence. The difference between us, however, is that I won't simply dismiss your theory. It's just that I never had an intuition of how to unravel a case. I don't think real life works like that."
Jack felt sorry for her. It was a peculiarly familiar feeling, and then, with a start, he realized it was how he had felt toward Sharon most of the time they were married.
"One thing I will guarantee you," Nina said, breaking in on his thoughts, "that kind of argument won't fly with Garner."
That was when Jack handed her the metal vial. "I found it hidden in the bottom of Alli's box spring. There's cocaine inside."
Nina laughed. "So you found it."
"What?"
"Hugh owes me twenty bucks." She pocketed the vial. "He said you wouldn't find it."
Jack felt like an idiot. "It was a test."
Nina nodded. "He's got it in for you." Abruptly detaching herself from the wall, she threw down her cigarette butt. "Forget that sonovabitch." She moved off to the west, Jack keeping pace beside her.
"Back there," he said slowly, "when you read sections of that report . . ."
"I knew you were having trouble."
"But how?"
"You'll see soon enough."
They went along, paralleling the dorm. Just beyond it was a utility shed. At first it appeared that they were going to skirt the shed. Then, with a look over her shoulder, Nina opened the door.
"Inside," she said. "Quickly."
The moment Jack stepped through the narrow doorway, Nina closed the door behind them. The interior contained a plain wood table, several utilitarian chairs, a brass floor lamp. It was as sparsely furnished as a police interrogation cubicle. The small square window afforded a view down over the end of the rolling lawn to a tree-line beyond which was the wall that bordered the property.
Two people occupied the room. A cone of light from the floorlamp illuminated the sides of their faces. Jack recognized them: Edward Carson and his wife, Lyn. The soon-to-be First Lady, dressed in a dark, rather severely cut tweed suit, a ruffled