Point Blank

“Yeah, she’s going to be okay, but there are things she can’t remember yet, including who she is.”

Dix saw she was awake and looking toward the doorway at the three of them. He introduced the boys to her again.

“I made you the hot tea,” Rob said.

“Yes, I remember. Thank you.”

Dix said, “I don’t know what to call you.”

“Hmm. How about Madonna?”

Rob said, “You don’t have a space between your front teeth.”

She brushed her tongue over her teeth. “Do you think you could pretend I did? Pretend I’m a blonde?”

Rob said, “Madonna changes her hair color all the time, that’s no problem.”

Rafer said, “Mom liked Madonna, said she was so loaded with imagination she’d just keep reinventing herself until she was eighty, maybe end up buying the State of Florida.”

Unlike his brother, Rafe had light brown hair, and his father’s dark eyes, an odd combination that would slay girls when he was a bit older. Both he and his brother were skinny as rails right now, but when they reached their full size, they’d be big men, like their father. And their mother?

“Okay,” Dix said, “Madonna it is. Rob, you want to make Madonna some more hot tea, maybe a couple slices of toast with butter and jam?”

Rob looked at the woman lying on the couch. She looked really beat. “Sure, Dad.”

There was a knock on the front door.

Rafer took off to answer it, Brewster barking madly at his heels.

It was Emory Cox, Dix’s chief deputy. “I’m here to get the photo, Sheriff. Hi, ma’am.”

Dix introduced him. “Call her Madonna for the moment, Emory.” Emory took six Polaroid shots of Madonna, then Dix took him out of the living room, out of hearing.

Rafe stood in the doorway, watching her. He opened his mouth, closed it. “Ah, do you know anything about the double helix, Madonna?”

“Sure, Rafe, come here and we’ll talk about it.”

“Let me show you my model!”

CHAPTER 6

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

SATURDAY MORNING

THE LIGHT SNOWFALL had stopped two hours before, at seven a.m. The sky was iron gray, the clouds thick and bulging with snow that was forecasted to begin again at about noon.

Agent Ron Latham was standing two feet from Agent Connie Ashley, who was perusing a map of Arlington National Cemetery. “Why would Moses Grace come here? I think old Rolly has got some expensive habits he needs to feed—”

“No,” Connie said automatically. “Not feed—drink.”

“The guy’s an alcoholic on top of everything else?” Agent Jim Farland was pretending to speak into a cell phone.

“Well, I don’t think so, no. I’ll tell you later about his drinking habits.”

Agent Jim Farland said into his cell phone, his voice loud enough to be heard ten feet away, “Hello, Mom. Yeah, we’re going to go over to section twenty-seven, where all the former slaves are buried. . . . Yeah, that’s where all the pre-Civil War dead were buried again after 1900. Listen, Mom, I’ve gotta go, a funeral is expected in twenty minutes. See you soon.”

Ron said to Connie, “They put this op together so fast I’m not sure I’m clear on all the details. We’re supposed to hang out here acting like tourists until Moses Grace and Claudia show up, for whatever reason we don’t know, Pinky Womack in tow?”

“Yeah, that’s what the psycho snitch told me. Ruth said Rolly’s never let her down. He’s reliable and we’ve got to go with that, until we know for sure. The only reason I’ve got her cell phone is because I’m a woman and Rolly doesn’t relate well to guys. Anyway, time for us to get ourselves moving.”

Ron said with a smirk, “I like that pillow tied around your belly, Ashley. Hey, how many kids you got?”

Connie waved both of them off and paused to rub her back. It wasn’t just for show. She’d been walking around the cemetery for almost two hours, stopping to listen in at a funeral, speaking briefly to other agents, all of them dressed as tourists strolling through the huge cemetery. She’d read in her brochure the astonishing fact that more than two hundred and sixty thousand people were buried here. She wondered if she’d walk by every marker and monument and memorial before she was through. She thought of Ruth, hoped she was having a better weekend than she was. She would have liked to be in the wilds of Virginia with her rather than here, waiting for a crazy old lunatic to appear. Many of the agents and all of the snipers were from the Washington, D.C., field office, the snipers posted wherever they could find cover in the cemetery, in position since eight o’clock that morning.