Читать книгу They - SLMN - Страница 15
ОглавлениеTim helped Melissa through his front door and took her straight to the kitchen sink. He took a clean dishcloth and ran it under water, then used it to wipe her eyes, returning the cloth to the water several times. She was still coughing, but had recovered sufficiently to breathe normally and speak to him in one word answers.
When she confirmed her eyesight was more or less restored, he guided her to the sofa and they sat down together.
“Thank you,” she said, for what must have been the hundredth time.
“Once again, it’s nothing. I saw you in the cloud of gas unable to get out, so I came in to get you.”
“You always bring a…” She coughed several times, holding the wet towel to her face for a moment before recovering. “Do you always bring a mask and bottles of water to a protest?”
Tim smiled. “It’s not my first rodeo. Every time there’s a BLM march I join it – even before I became a senator – and sometimes things can go south real quickly.”
“Well aren’t you Mr. Socially Responsible.”
“It’s important, right? I think it’s just as important for white guys like me to stand up and say, this isn’t okay. If people see a few white faces in the mix, they might think, well hey, this isn’t just black folks bitching again, there may be more to this. It’s sad to have to think that way but there it is.”
“How many marches you been on?”
Tim stood up and grabbed a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew and two glasses from a side table.
“I’ve lost count, to be honest.”
“Have there been that many?”
“Too many.” He opened the bottle and proffered it to her.
“I’m usually a white wine drinker, but I sure could use something. So yeah, why not?”
“I can get white if you like.”
“No, no, this is fine.”
“It’s what inspired me to get into politics,” Tim continued, pouring her drink. “I saw this same shit happening over and over, saw cops get off for shooting people, saw the effect it was having on communities in my own city, saw the mistrust of the police boiling over again and again… Something had to change.”
“So you’re going to change it all?”
“Ha, no.” He took a drink from his own glass. The fruity red helped soothe his own burning throat. “But if I can start a conversation at the right levels, it helps right? I got elected on police reform, prison reform and busting the school to prison pipeline.”
“The what now?”
“Police in schools disciplining kids, so they leave school with a record or possibly a jail sentence instead of a couple of detentions and a high school diploma.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah and black kids are three times more likely than white kids to end up with a juvenile record. So anyway, I ran on those issues and they elected me. Yay!”
“So you’re using the plight of black Virginians to further your political career?”
Tim laughed. Melissa hung her head. “Sorry,” she said. “That came out pretty harsh.”
“It was very cynical, yeah. And you’re half right. This is what I want to do. I get a lot of satisfaction from it. I’m not gonna lie and say I’d dedicate my life to these causes if I wasn’t getting paid for it!”
They laughed together. Melissa took a sip of her drink. Her eyes were still a little teary and she sniffed now and then, but she seemed to have recovered quite well. She took in a lot more gas than Tim did, and he was still feeling the effects. It bothered him greatly: there was no need for the police to deploy the gas.
“I hope all those people got away,” Melissa said, her eyes downcast.
“What happened at the front, Melissa?”
She closed her eyes, clearly reliving the trauma and shuddering at the images flashing before her.
“The police forced us to turn off Franklin, then we went north and they marched out to block us again. I don’t know why, we were peaceful, at least where I was. And then these guys ran out past Wilson, past all of us.”
“What guys?”
“Oh shit! Wilson. I should call him and make sure he’s okay.” She pulled out her phone but Tim put a hand out to slow her down.
“Tell me about the guys?”
“I don’t know, maybe about a dozen of them. I didn’t see them before, but they ran at the police. They had masks and baseball bats and other weapons. That’s when everything went crazy.”
“Agitators,” said Tim.
“Huh?”
“Agitators. Sometimes they’re hired by someone with an agenda, or they’re troublemakers looking to find more trouble. Either way they’re not interested in protesting anything. They’re looking for violence. Any chance to cause mayhem, they’ll do it.”
“Someone hired them to start a fight?”
“More than possible.”
“Shit. Who?”
Tim had a damn good idea who. He wasn’t ready to talk about it just yet though. He waited a few minutes while she sent some text messages from her phone. He regarded her during that time. She was short, slim and very pretty. Her hair was naturally curly and her eyes were dark, deep pools. She was clearly smart, a little wiser than her years, and Tim was impressed by how she was keeping it together. After everything she’d been through in such a short space of time, she was remarkably calm and still caring for the wellbeing of others.
He missed having female company about the place. He wasn’t about to make a move on Melissa. She was attractive, certainly, but too young for him. Plus the press would have a field day if they started dating. He doubted she would be interested in a thirty-something senator from a different country anyway. Still it was nice to have her here. The house felt more complete than it had since Claire left him. He’d thrown himself into his work to such a degree that he hadn’t stopped to consider his own loneliness. Maybe he should take a breath, let the whole Granger thing slide and take some time to start dating again. He shouldn’t wait until he was fat and balding. He was still eligible.
But no. He had to keep pushing. The time to push his agenda was now. If he paused, or let Granger intimidate him, his bills would fail and he likely wouldn’t be able to build this momentum again. This path had cost him his marriage; he wasn’t going to squander his efforts now.
Melissa lowered her phone.
“I can’t get hold of Wilson. Maybe the police have him. Can we check?”
“We can go down to the station first thing in the morning. Let the dust settle for now. We should stay off the streets.”
“But he might be hurt.”
“In which case he’ll be in the hospital. I’ll make some enquiries first thing and we can go find him. It’s been a very long day, Melissa, and we should both get some sleep. I have a spare room you’re welcome to use. I’ll put out a towel and some blankets. My ex left some clothes behind so I put them in the closet in the spare room. I should really have thrown them out but never gotten around to it. Help yourself to anything.”
Melissa nodded, grateful. Tim was glad she felt comfortable enough to stay here. It was the least he could do for her. She never asked the police to shoot her boyfriend, for her to be arrested, to be kidnapped and tied up in someone’s basement, to be tear gassed. Most other people would be a bawling wreck by now.
Tim’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and unlocked it with his fingerprint.
We need to talk.
He frowned. The message was from the same number as the warning to return home when Melissa was tied up in the basement.
I can meet you in the morning.
Now.
Tim sighed. He could tell this person to go away, but they had saved his career with that tip off.
“What’s up?” Melissa asked.
“I have to go meet someone. It’s the mystery person who tipped me off about you in my basement. If it weren’t for them, I’d have come home after your kidnapper left and the police would have arrested me.”
“And you want to find out who it is?”
“Of course. They want to meet right now. Will you be okay here?”
Melissa put down her nearly empty glass and stood up.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not? I don’t really want to be on my own. I feel a lot safer with you, even out on the streets.”
“I’m flattered but really, it’s…”
“Shush. Where are we going?”
The café was deserted, partly because it was late but mostly because the earlier violence meant there were few people on the streets voluntarily. Tim wondered if this was such a good idea. He was quietly glad Melissa had insisted on going with him because he didn’t fancy being there alone. The only other person in the place was a solitary waitress, who delivered them coffee all the while keeping an eye on the door. She’d clearly seen or heard about the violence and wanted no part of it.
“How long is your shift?” Tim asked her as sympathetically as he could.
“Another hour, then we close,” she replied.
“Are you here alone?”
“Kitchen closed an hour ago, so yeah.”
“Would you like us to stay until you close?”
She smiled at him, her eyes tired.
“Yeah that would be nice. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
She moved off behind the counter, busying herself with cleaning up.
“If I was her I’d lock up early and go home,” Melissa said.
“If she did that she’d probably get fired. No shortage of people waiting to take her job.”
“Ain’t that the truth? You have any idea who we’re meeting?”
Tim glanced at the entrance again. “No idea.”
At that moment the door opened and in walked a small, white woman in a leather jacket, silk scarf and thigh high boots, carrying a briefcase. She made a beeline for Tim and Melissa, holding a hand out as she approached. She was in her late thirties, early forties and had a face that smiled easily.
“Senator Barns, Miss Jones, so good to meet you.”
Tim stood and shook her hand. Melissa did likewise.
“Please, sit down,” Tim said. “And you are?”
The woman slid into the bench opposite them and gave that cheery smile again, her blue eyes sparkling behind brown framed glasses.
“My name is Kirsty Frank. I write for darkmice.com, have you heard of it?” Tim and Melissa shook their heads. “Well that’s not surprising,” she continued. “We’re not exactly mainstream. In fact, we have proof that the government is deliberately throttling access to our servers and keeping our hit rates artificially low.”
Tim blinked at her. A horrible feeling was forming in the pit of his stomach. The waitress came over and took her coffee order, while suspicions crowded into Tim’s head.
“What sort of things do you write about?” he asked Kirsty, dreading her answer.
“Oh you know, we take a deep dive into issues the regular media likes to pretend aren’t real.”
“You mean conspiracies.” Tim wasn’t asking a question.
“Sometimes, yes, I suppose you could call them that.”
“Oh shit,” Melissa said. “Not all that 9/11-was-an-inside-job stuff ?”
Kirsty smiled again and shook her head. “Oh no, we would never say anything like that. Although there are some questions about that day that have yet to receive satisfactory answers.”
Tim stood up. “I think we’ve heard enough,” he said.
“Wait wait!” she implored them, raising her hands to motion them to sit. “Don’t you want to hear how I was able to tip you off about Melissa being tied up in your basement?”
Reluctantly, Tim sat down. Melissa followed suit, though she looked just as uncomfortable as he felt.
“We’re listening,” said Tim.
“We’ve been tracking Mr. Granger for quite some time,” she explained. “I know you met with him recently and I also know he tried to get you to shelve most of the platform that got you elected.”
“How do you know that?” Tim asked.
“Who is Granger?” Melissa interjected.
Tim turned to her. “Lionel Granger. Successful business leader in Virginia who financed my campaign and then tried to control what I did after my election. I was in the process of severing ties with him when you ended up in my basement.”
“So you know who kidnapped me?” Melissa appeared outraged. Tim held up a hand.
“I suspected. I don’t have any evidence and even if I did, what could I do with it?”
Kirsty nodded. “Granger has people everywhere. It’s almost impossible to investigate him without someone noticing and tipping him off. Then his lawyers get involved. He certainly keeps them busy. Sometimes, as in your case, it’s not a legal issue, so he uses other means to get his way.”
“Like kidnapping?”
Kirsty opened her briefcase and pulled out two documents. Both were missing person reports.
“These two women had affairs with Granger in the 90s. We know that because they both filed police reports saying he forced himself on them.”
“What happened to them?” Melissa asked, gazing at the faces of the women on the reports.
“Both of them disappeared soon after the reports were filed. They were never found.”
“And Granger was never linked to the disappearances?” Tim asked.
“They were never investigated. You’re looking at the only evidence in police records that these women ever went missing. There was no follow-up, no notes added to the case, nothing. It’s like the police weren’t interested in trying to find them.”
Tim frowned. “Where did you get these?”
“We have a friend at the local precinct. He pulled these out for us a decade ago. This is literally all he could find about these women on file.”
“Okay,” said Tim. “This looks really bad, but it’s not evidence against Granger.”
“No it’s not, and that’s why we’ve still got it after all these years and Granger is still a free man.”
Melissa shook her head. “He should be in jail.”
“I agree,” Kirsty said. “But no judge will convict him. No prosecutor would dare bring his case before one.”
It was Melissa’s turn to frown. “Why not? Because he’s rich?”
“Even rich people go to jail sometimes.”
Tim laughed at this. “Not in my experience.”
“It happens, sometimes, usually when the Feds get involved. But there are some people who are untouchable. Kidnapping and blackmail are nothing to these people. They’ll do anything to retain power and use every opportunity to wield it.”
Tim laughed. “Who? The Illuminati?” He said the word in a mocking tone, like he was talking about the bogeyman. When Kirsty didn’t reply, just gazed at him, Tim snorted. “You’re not serious.”
Melissa looked confused. “I’m sorry, what’s the Illuminarty?”
“The Illuminati,” Tim corrected her. “They’re a sort of shadowy organization dating back centuries. They’re supposed to be the ones with the real power, unelected, unknown, unaccountable, pulling the strings from behind the scenes and steering humanity towards a New World Order.”
“I’ve heard of New Order,” Melissa said. “My dad was a fan.”
Tim laughed. “Not quite. The New World Order is the concept of one world government. No individual nations, just one organization ruling the entire world.”
“Sounds creepy,” Melissa said.
“It is,” Tim agreed. “It’s also a myth.”
“Really?” asked Kirsty, raising an eyebrow.
“Of course it is. There’s no such thing as the Illuminati. They’re the stuff of Hollywood B-movies and pulp novels.”
Kirsty paused for a moment, taking a couple of sips of her coffee.
“Look, I don’t expect you to buy into the truth–” Tim snorted again at the use of the word “–but honestly it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. We call them ‘They’, and Granger is a powerful member with deep connections. You will never bring him down.”
“I don’t want to bring him down,” Tim replied. “I want him to leave me alone. I want him off my back so I can pursue the agenda I ran for election on. I want to be rid of his money and his influence. I want the freedom to do my job without being beholden to corporate interests.”
“You would never have been elected without him,” Kirsty said.
“Well that’s… true,” Tim admitted. It made him uncomfortable to say it but she was right. Before Granger injected his cash into Tim’s campaign, nobody knew who the hell he was and he would likely have sunk in a sea of candidates vying for his seat. “But he broke his side of the deal. He said he wouldn’t have demands. He said he liked my policies and wanted to see me go far.”
