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mezzanine-level elevator doors and pressed the  up button.
Drisson would arrive at the room any moment now. He would knock, thinking
Laura was there, waiting. Toddrel would open the door, expecting Laura; or
even if he checked through the spyglass first, seeing it was Drisson, he would
let him in. Finding Toddrel alone and unharmed, Drisson, being Drisson, would
immediately conclude a double cross and have seconds to decide his move. Laura
thought she knew what the outcome would be.
She came out of the elevator and followed the corridor to 651, holding the key
in one gloved hand, the other resting lightly inside the top of her purse. She
looked quickly left, then right. The corridor was empty. Producing the gun,
she slid the key softly into the slot until she heard the lock disengage, then
pushed the door open and stepped quickly inside. Toddrel s body was crumpled
on the floor, crimson spreading across his shirt and oozing onto the carpet.
Drisson was between it and the door, already turning at the sound of its
opening, the gun still in his hand. Laura shot him before his mouth had framed
the first word. Then she eased the door shut and stood motionless with her
back pressed against it, feeling her chest pounding while she listened for any
reaction to the shot. Everything outside seemed quiet. She looked
apprehensively at Drisson, dreading that he might make some sound or move, and
if so, wondering if she would be able to bring herself to finish the thing.
But he remained inert. Laura could detect no sign of breathing. She forced
herself to be calm.
The line about making it look like a hooker had been for Laura s benefit. She
was supposed to have been next. Drisson s real intent had been to set up a
scene that would look like a fatal quarrel between
Toddrel and his high-class mistress. Being the only other person who would
have known about Drisson s insurance to protect himself hadn t seemed like the
surest way of getting to see much sunshine or many beaches.
Laura walked past Drisson to where Toddrel was lying, stooped to press his
hand around the gun that she had used, and then tossed it on the floor in the
middle of the room. Then she dug deeper into her purse,
took out a plastic bag stuffed with napkins, and from them carefully extracted
the glass Drisson had been drinking from in the Fairway lounge earlier. She
looked around, and after a moment set it on the countertop above the room s
mini refrigerator, along with a half bottle of bourbon which she had partly
emptied. She had no idea, really, what the police would make of it; but she
had every confidence in their ability to come up with something ingenious and
satisfying.
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The final thing that caught her eye as she checked over the room was a picture
frozen on the viewscreen of two people facing the camera in front of a
background of planes releasing missiles at targets on what looked like the
outskirts of a city. It was the man called Cade, from California, who seemed
to have been involved wherever trouble broke out during the past few weeks.
The woman with him was his former wife, who had been with the CounterAction
terrorists. Casper had developed some kind of an obsession about them.
As Laura walked away along the corridor, she reflected that curiously it was
those same two who, in a way, had been instrumental in bringing about the
events that had just transpired in Room 651. Ever since the first documentary
they had appeared in, which a few renegade Hyadeans made in South America,
Laura had found herself seized by a growing feeling of revulsion at the
pictures of burning villages, maimed children, pain, suffering, terror on the
faces of defenseless people the real price that had been paid to make possible
the life she had enjoyed. Now, somehow, she felt cleansed of it, as if, to
some degree at least, she had atoned.
Had Toddrel had some kind of premonition that they would be a cause of this?
she wondered as she waited for the elevator. She had never really had much
time for things like that. By some accounts that she d read, Hyadeans found
such possibilities intriguing. And they seemed pretty smart. Maybe it would be
something to look into.
A feeling of relief enveloped her as she came out into the night air without
incident. Getting away from
Washington and the East Coast in general for a while seemed like a wise move
in any case, she decided.
As she walked away along the street, the thought occurred to her that maybe
the kind of work she heard was going on in California could use some help:
putting the U.S.A. back together again along the lines that had been
intended or maybe along new lines that were even better; learning to work with
the
Hyadeans in ways that would benefit everybody; discovering the other sides to
life there were besides just making money. Maybe she would even get a chance
there to meet this mysterious Mr. Cade and his ex
Marie, was it? in person there. Now that sounded interesting and different.
She came to an intersection, managed to stop one of the few cabs that were
back on the streets, and gave the address of the hotel across town that
Drisson had checked her into.
Something challenging, creative, and useful to people. A way, maybe, to make [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]