Forty-five minutes later, the vice president walked to the podium and adjusted the microphone upward. He spoke of his long friendship with John James Abbott, of his major legislation and his ability to work with both sides of the aisle, no matter the party in power. There was a low buzz of conversation about that statement until the vice president managed to get off a couple of old golf jokes, then turned it over to a senator from Missouri. It went on from there, each speaker with an amusing or touching anecdote about Senator Abbott.
When the crowd was feeling no pain at all, what with the waitstaff serving the hard stuff as well as rivers of wine, the vice president said, “I would like to introduce all of you to Jimmy’s daughter. As you know, he didn’t know she existed until she knocked on his door. In the last six weeks of his life, his happiness shone like a beacon. He once said to me she was the daughter of his heart. Many of you have had the opportunity to speak to Rachael this evening, to experience her kindness, her sense of humor, and her charm, doubtless inherited from her father. I give you Ms. Rachael Abbott.” He stepped forward to hug her when she gained the dais.
I’m still alive. The turkey was good, the cranberry sauce homemade and delicious, better yet, no one has tried to get near me with a knife. No one has tried to lure me to the men’s room.
She looked out over the room at the men and women who ruled the world. She knew her mascara had smudged a bit because she’d cried at some of the stories told by her father’s colleagues.
She looked at older faces, lived-in faces, faces that held both knowledge and secrets, and at that moment held a good deal of benevolence. And she saw clearly their sense of self-satisfaction; it was tangible, seemed to fill the air.
The lights were dim, the scents of discreet perfume mixed with the rich smells of the Thanksgiving dinner.
She caught Greg Nichols’s eye, cocked her head at him, gave him a tentative smile. Strange, he looked frozen, and more than that—he didn’t look right.
She said into the microphone, “I only knew my father for six weeks before he was killed. As you know, his death was originally ruled an accident. Now there are very real questions about that. However, tonight we are here to talk about the senator’s life.” There was a faint stirring in the group until she continued.
Greg Nichols took another sip of sparkling water, eyed the nearly empty bottle of Tums. All his staffers were looking at him like he was going to explode. Agent Sherlock had spoken to him during the long dinner, asked him repeatedly if he was all right. Upset stomach, he’d told her, nothing more, just an upset stomach from something he ate. And he’d give her a weak smile, say he was feeling better.
It had to get better, didn’t it? Food poisoning lasted just a few hours, didn’t it? He remembered the potato salad he’d eaten once as a teenager that had left him moaning on the bathroom floor, puking up his guts for eight hours. Then it was over. Would this be over soon? Dammit, he hadn’t eaten that much of the damned cioppino. A violent cramp slashed through him again, doubled him up. He gasped with the force of it. It kept getting worse until he thought he was going to die. There was no hiding anything now. He heard voices but didn’t recognize any words, he was too deep in the pain. He wasn’t about to puke in front of United States senators. He lurched to his feet, groaning, holding himself, and ran toward the door.
“Mr. Nichols, wait!”
It was Agent Sherlock, but he didn’t acknowledge her, he couldn’t, everything in him was focused on the god-awful pain ripping and tearing through his belly.
He heard Rachael say in a loud voice, sounding strangely far away and deep, like from the bottom of a well, “Senator Robertson spoke about his ability to nudge opposing sides into compromise, his ability to persuade without backroom bloodshed . . .”
People were coming at him, men in dark suits, FBI, Secret Service, his friends, but it didn’t matter. He was going to vomit, he was going to—
The lights seemed to go out around him, turning the huge room black as a pit.
He stumbled and went down.
He knew men were leaning over him, touching him, speaking to him, but he was caught in the agony and couldn’t say anything, could only groan, tears running down his face, and he knew there was blood flowing out of his body, and it was dark, so very dark. Was the dark on the inside or the outside? Why was someone yelling?
He lurched up as blood gushed out of his twisting mouth, the tears streaming from his eyes tinted red, two snakes of blood running out of his nose.
Sherlock yelled, “Dillon! Come here!”
Savich saw Secret Service agents surround the vice president and chivy him back against a wall. Four FBI agents converged on Rachael at the podium. There were more agents and a dozen other people knotted together. Something was very wrong.
He shoved his way through and looked down to see Greg Nichols lying on his side on the floor, blood trickling from his open mouth. There was blood everywhere. He was soaked with it. Sherlock was on her knees beside him.
“The EMTs should be here soon. He’s very bad, Dillon. All this blood. I knew something was wrong with him, I knew it.”
“We thought he was up to no good,” a Secret Service agent said, straightening over Nichols. “But no, this guy’s very sick.”
“I’m guessing poison,” Savich said. “He’s drenched in blood. What else would it be?”
A Secret Service agent said, “Yeah, you’re right, sounds like coumarin, rat poison.”
“Yeah, probably,” Savich said, and felt for Nichols’s pulse.
Sherlock rose to look at Lindsay Culley, Nichols’s secretary. She was wringing her hands, her face as white as Savich’s shirt. “I told him not to eat the cioppino, because there’d be a big meal tonight, but he did, only a few bites. It must have been bad. Really, he didn’t eat all that much. I thought he was better, he kept saying he was fine.”
She burst into tears. Sherlock patted her shoulder and nodded to Grace Garvey, Senator Abbott’s former secretary, who told her, “I didn’t know he was ill. We spoke about tonight, and I told him how nice it would be, how pleased we all were they were doing this for Senator Abbott. He and Senator Abbott were so very close.” She put her arms around Lindsay.
Savich said, “His pulse is thready, nearly nonexistent.” He sat back on his heels. He didn’t think Greg Nichols was going to make it.