was paying more than casual attention to him, but nothing registered.
And he had been doing this long enough that something would have clicked
if he had anything to worry about. His flight was called, his boarding
pass was handed over and he trudged down the ramp to the slender
projectile that within three hours would deposit him in the heart of
Texas.
The Dallas/Fort Worth run was a busy one for American, but surprisingly
he had an empty seat next to him. He took his coat off and laid it
across the seat daring anyone to trespass. He settled himself in and
looked out the window.
As they began to taxi to the takeoff runway, he could make out the tip
of the Washington Monument over the thick, swirling mist of the clammy
morning. Barely a mile from that point his daughter would be getting up
shortly to go to work while her father was ascending into the clouds to
begin a new life somewhat ahead of schedule and not exactly easy in his
mind.
As the plane accelerated through the air, he looked at the terrain far
below, noted the snaking of the Potomac until it was left behind. His
thoughts went briefly to his long-dead wife and then back to his very
much alive daughter.
He glanced up at the smiling, efficient face of the flight attendant and
ordered coffee and a minute later accepted the simple breakfast handed
to him. He drank down the steaming liquid and then reached over and
touched the surface of the window with its queer streaks and scratches.
Wiping his glasses clean, he noted that his eyes were watering freely.
He looked around quickly; most passengers were finishing up their
breakfast or reclining for a short nap before they landed.
He pushed his tray up, undid his seat belt and made his way to the
lavatory. He looked at himself in the mirror. The eyes were swollen,
red-blotched. The bags hung heavy, he had perceptibly aged in the last
thirty-six hours.
He ran water over his face, let the droplets gather around his mouth and
then splashed on some more. He wiped his eyes again. They were painful.
He leaned against the tiny basin, tried to get his twitching muscles
under control.
Despite all his willpower, his mind wandered back to that room where he
had seen a woman savagely beaten. The President of the United States was
a drunk, an adulterer and a woman beater. He smiled to the press, kissed
babies and flirted with enchanted old women, held important meetings,
flew around the world as his country’s leader, and he was a fucking
asshole who screwed married women, then beat them up and then got them
killed.
What a package.
It was more knowledge than one person should be carrying around.
Luther felt very alone. And very mad.
And the sorry thing was the bastard was going to get away with it.
Luther kept telling himself if he were thirty years younger he would
take this battle on. But he wasn’t. His nerves were still stronger than
most, but, like river rock, they had eroded over the years; they were
not what they were. At his age battles became someone else’s to fight,
and win or lose. His time had finally come. He wasn’t up to it. Even he
had to understand that, to accept that reality.
Luther looked at himself in the tiny mirror again. A sob swelled in his
throat before it reached the surface and filled the small room.
But no excuse would justify what he had not done. He had not opened that
mirrored door. He had not flung that man off Christine Sullivan. He
could have prevented the woman’s death, that was the simple truth. She
would still be alive if he had acted. He had traded his freedom, perhaps
his life, for another’s. For someone who could have used his help, who
was fighting for her very life while Luther just watched. A human being
who had barely lived a third of Luther’s years.
It had been a cowardly act, and that fact gripped him like some savage
anaconda, threatening to explode every organ in his body.