Deep Cover

“Get away from it, Jaime.”

Fragmented lightning licked across the sky and metal in the hill rocks brought it down, fizzling and streaking, reflected in the windows. Thunder shattered the quiet with ear-splitting explosions; rain battered the shingles as if someone had dumped it out of airplanes in tank loads. The sky was dark and wild; Suffield spoke crisply and Ro

Spode was by the window and when Ro

Spode talked very fast. “Now drop that damned thing before I break her arm.”

In his anxiety Suffield had stepped forward; he shook his head, stubborn, weighing it, and finally he said, “I guess not, Jaime.”

Ro

Suffield had crossed half the length of the room, bringing up the revolver and sighting carefully past Ro

The gun wobbled out of Suffield’s fingers and Suffield sucked wind through his teeth.

Suffield cracked the leather rim of his shoe against Forrester’s shin. Pain shot up Forrester’s leg. Suffield twisted out of Forrester’s grip and dived for the gun but Spode had thrown Ro

Suffield’s fist closed around the broken table leg, its brass corner still attached. He turned on one knee wielding the massive leg like a club, swinging it in a wicked circle while Spode scooped up the revolver.

Forrester, swaying to get balance, saw it from the corner of his vision in the broken instant. The jagged club whistled toward Spode and because Spode’s weight was on one arm and one knee, Spode couldn’t parry, and there was only one thing left: Spode shot to kill because he didn’t have time not to.

The walls threw back stu

The fierce lightning of the thunderstorm crackled around the house. Forrester’s face was hot and prickly: his eyes felt sticky. Uselessly he kicked the bunched-up throw rug out of his path and knelt by Les Suffield, laying his finger along the man’s wrist to feel for a pulse. It stopped beating under his hand. He reached for the rug to pull it up over Suffield’s face.

Spode had turned to train the pistol on Ro

Ro

“Nuts.”

Forrester got to his feet. He could see the anger rising in Spode, the coming explosion, but Spode snugged the stubby .38 into his hip pocket.

Ro

Spode said, “He was your brother, right?”

She nodded. Her face dipping, the long hair swayed forward to mask it; her fingers reached the edge of the carpet and began to pick fluff.

Spode said, “Had to be.”

Forrester walked across the room and crouched on his haunches beside Ro

She pressed her hands to her temples. “They’ll kill me if I talk.”

Spode said harshly, “They’ll have to wait in line.”

“Who,” Forrester said very quietly, “is they?”

Her voice was thin, far away. “I knew I was going to hurt you. I tried not to. It was the first time in years anyone ever mattered to me—I wanted to be everything you wanted me to be.… If you knew how I despise myself …”

Spode moved forward. “Snap out of it. Both of you.”

Forrester put out a detaining hand. Spode stopped where he was, and Forrester stood up, gripping Ro

“Ro

She did not reply and when her eyes began to roll up Forrester lifted her off her feet and carried her to the couch. Her eyelids slid shut like those of a plastic doll.

Spode said, “Let’s wake her up.”

“Not yet, Top.”

Spode gave him a curious look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He dragged fingers across his eyes as if to scrape away a film. “She blacked out before—when her husband was killed. She had to be institutionalized and it took a long time to bring her out of it. I’m afraid to rush her now.”

Spode stared at Ro

“Maybe. We’ll see.” Her breathing was shallow and even; her face had gone white. Forrester straightened and turned. “We can’t just leave Les like that.”

“We’re not supposed to touch the body.”

“I don’t know if we want the police, do we Top?”

Their eyes locked and Spode said slowly, “I don’t know what in the hell we do want.”

“They said something about its being all over in thirty hours from now. Whoever they are and whatever they’re doing, they’ve put it into high gear.”

Top was down on one knee, as if by physical proximity he could vitalize the secrets that had died in Suffield’s brain. “How long did we know him, anyway? Ten years? Fifteen? He used to teach math at the university, remember? There was some kid worked on your last campaign said he was the best teacher she ever had because he had the best sense of humor. I don’t know what he was but I liked the son of a bitch.”

Forrester said slowly, “I have a feeling if we had time to dig back we’d find Les’s history stops cold eighteen or twenty years back. When he came to Tucson from wherever it was—Des Moines, I think he said. It wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t a shred of evidence in Des Moines to prove he ever lived there.”

“Like Trumble, you mean.” Spode scrutinized him over his shoulder. “I see what you’re getting at.”

Forrester was watching Ro

“Yes, her too.” There had been no visible flaw, no slightest hint that she was a forgery. The contradiction between reason and fact was staggering. He sat down by her; her perfume was in his nostrils, and he gripped her hand although she was still unconscious. When he looked into her immobile face it was hard to regard her as the same woman she had been forty-eight hours ago, to recall her smile, her body’s intricate capacity for abandon, the words that went with the expressions that chased one another across her animated face.