They could drive to Roanoke, hop a commuter flight and take it into Washington or Richmond. From there they could go anywhere. He would explain it to his wife by saying he was just being spontaneous, something she had said he never was and never could be. Good old steady, reliable Sam Rider. Did nothing more with his life than work hard, pay his bills, raise his kids, love his wife and try to catch a few strands of happiness along the way. Lord, I’m already writing my obituary, he realized.
He wouldn’t be in a position to help Rufus, but he figured the man was probably dead anyway. I’m sorry, Rufus, he thought. But you’re in a much better place, far better than the one those bastards saddled you with on this earth.
A sudden thought made him almost turn the car around. He had left the copies of the filing he had made for Rufus back at the office. Should he go back? He finally decided that his life was worth more than a few pieces of paper. What could he do with them now anyway?
He concentrated on the road. There wasn’t much between his office and his home except windy roads, birds and the occasional deer or black bear. The isolation had never bothered Rider until now. At this moment, it terrified him. He had a shotgun at home that he used for quail hunting. He wished he had it with him.
He rounded an elbow-shaped bend in the road, a rusted guardrail the only thing standing between him and a five-hundred-foot drop. As he tapped his brakes to slow down, his breath caught in his throat. His brakes. Oh, my God, I’ve lost my brakes! He started to scream. But then the brakes held. Don’t let your senses run away from you, Sam, he cautioned himself. A few minutes later he turned the last corner and saw his mailbox. A minute after that he pulled the car into his garage. His wife’s car was next to his.
As he passed by her car, he glanced at the front seat. His feet seemed to sink right into the concrete floor. His wife was lying facedown in the front seat. Even from where he was standing, Rider could see the blood pouring from the head wound. That was the next to last memory Rider would have. The hand came around and clamped across his face a large cloth that had a sickening medicinal odor. Another hand slipped something into Rider’s hand. As the lawyer looked down with eyes that were already beginning to close, he saw and felt the still-warm pistol as his fingers were wrapped around it by a pair of latex-gloved hands. It was Rider’s pistol, one he used for target shooting. The one he now also knew had been used to kill his wife. From the heat left in the metal, they must have done it as soon as he turned into the driveway. They must have been watching for him. He arched his head and stared into the cold, clear eyes of Victor Tremaine as his face was thrust deeper and deeper into the clutches of unconsciousness. This man had killed her, but Rider would be blamed for it. Not that it would matter much to him. He was dead too. As he finished this thought, Samuel Rider’s eyes closed for the last time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
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Driving down the George Washington Parkway south of Old Town Alexandria, Fiske glimpsed a bike rider as he flitted, phantomlike, among the line of trees that ran along the asphalt bike path paralleling the river. Fiske nudged Sara awake and she told him where to turn off the parkway. She glanced quickly at him. The encounter with his father had not been mentioned on the drive back. It was as though they had silently agreed not to discuss it.
With Sara directing, Fiske pulled down another blacktop road, and then turned right onto a gravel lane that ran steeply down toward the water. He stopped the car in front of the small, wood-framed cottage, which stood there prim and dour among the untidy backdrop of tree, bramble and wild-flower, like the preacher’s wife at a church picnic turned rowdy. The clapboard was layered with fifty years’worth of white paint; the structure also had black shutters, and a wide brick chimney the color of terra-cotta. Fiske watched as a squirrel sprinted across the phone line, leaped to the roof and corkscrewed up the chimney.