Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [112]
When she left the apartment with Traxler, she was shaking with fear. All the vague, unstated intimidation she’d suffered when they were married now took on a reality that gripped her with physical force, sickened her, made her hands tremble, legs go weak, voice crumble.
But after an hour in the car, she found herself gaining resolve. The helpless, hapless victim now began to think, to process the predicament in order to devise a way out of it. A calm set in as her former husband drove too fast; his speech was accelerated, too. He rambled, a jumble of thoughts going in many different directions, seldom connecting, with no beginning, middle, or end.
Midway through the trip, he abruptly fell silent after delivering a monologue about putting himself first for a change—“If I don’t look after me, make me numero uno, nobody else will. I’ve been laying my life on the line for years to make some bureaucrat look good and…” The muscles of his cheeks worked as he focused on the road, eyes narrowed, hands tight on the wheel.
“You don’t have to keep going, Skip,” Jessica said. “You can pull over and we can talk. Or you can let me out right here.”
He didn’t respond.
“It doesn’t matter to me what happened at that ranch out in Washington. I don’t know anything about what you did there, or why. The picture Cindy took—you have it. I don’t want it. I don’t have any use for it. Whatever it means, just tear it up, burn it. Let’s turn around and go back. I’ll get the negative from Cindy and—”
“Shut up!”
He put on the radio. An all-news station was in the midst of replaying Director Templeton’s press conference:
“… we’ve worked closely with law enforcement agencies in other countries.
“Today, in the wake of the successful siege on the Jasper compound in Blaine, our agents, working in concert with Canadian investigators, have linked another group to the downing of those aircraft, one closely allied with the Jasper Project, the Freedom Alliance. This organization…
“As we speak, the FBI, acting in close concert with our Canadian counterparts, have surrounded the Freedom Alliance’s facility in Plattsburgh and are…”
Traxler turned it off.
“Those are the men you were with in Plattsburgh?” Jessica asked. “In the picture?”
“Right,” he said.
Should she ask more, try to learn why he was there? It didn’t seem to matter what she knew or didn’t know. Simply having seen a photograph of him with those men—and his knowing she’d seen it—had caused him to pull a gun and kidnap her. The question she now asked herself was whether probing him for answers would ease his apparent, irrational need to silence her—or fuel it.
Fighting to think clearly, she decided that at this juncture it was better to engage him rather than allow his silent thoughts to fester.
“Skip, whatever’s happened in your life, I’m no longer a part of it. We weren’t right for each other and recognized it. I’ve gone on with my life and you’ve gone on with yours. Why don’t we just leave it at that?”
He sneered as he said, “You never did get it, Jess, never understood what I was all about, what I was going through.”
“Of course I did. Working undercover was dangerous. You were under constant pressure. I worried about you every day you were away working.”
“That’s really sweet, Jess. I’m touched.”
“I wasn’t trying to ‘touch’ you, Skip. I’m just telling you the truth.”
He drew deep breaths as though trying to keep himself under control. “You don’t know what it was like,” he said, not looking at her.
“No, I’m sure I don’t,” she said. “How could I? I didn’t live the life you led.”
“You bet you didn’t.” Now he turned to her. “Know what the worst part was, Jess?”
“What?”
“Watching the scum I was with living high and thumbing their noses at people like me. Oh, they didn’t know who I was. I was good, Jess. The best.” He began veering into the oncoming lane and swerved back, the maneuver startling Jessica into momentary silence.
She was afraid her resolve, manifested in the flat, calm voice she’d been using, might wane, and forced matter-of-factness back into her tone.