CHAPTER FORTY
JAMES BOLTED INSIDE OF HIS penthouse suite, hurling clothes in his suitcase.
He left his shaving kit behind. He abandoned his legislative paperwork.
He shoved money in his pocket. He booked a direct flight to Kodiak.
He barely remained still throughout the eight-hour debates.
He wasn’t planning to strategize the special election victory with the rest of the new political aides; he needed to be on the first plane to Arkansas.
James Wilde was officially a political aide for Congressman Pittman, what he’d dreamt of his entire collegiate life, but he didn’t even take his own office badge with him.
He discarded it in a heap of delicate suite service dishes.
He didn’t care that the polemarch had telephoned the penthouse.
He didn’t care that the archon eponymous of Connecticut sent a bellman to his room number with an indiscreet statue of íkaros disguised as a congratulatory gift.
He would scorch the surface of the sun, tarring his skin alive, plummeting from the sky, melting the wax of his ascent to power, if it meant Elliott wouldn’t be found. He would blaze a fall for the police to follow, if it meant Elliott’s trail went cold.
The cameras. The attention. The interviews. All of it was dangerous now.
The police would raid and discover Elliott at any moment–
A knock at the door stopped his heart.
He couldn’t process the stranger in front of him, his natural scent was instantly familiar as though it were his own, the sight of his navy rain jacket electrocuted James’s chest, and even still, it took him several seconds to recognize him. Right outside of his thirtieth-floor suite.
His eyes gazed into Elliott’s watercolor irises that were turbulent.
“Elliott, what are you doing here?” James hauled him inside of the suite.
The Areopagus Council–the council for homicide, treason, and political offenses–had summoned him for the unapproved murder of Lucien Montclair.
He received the missive attached beneath the statue.
He only had hours left for preparations to explain himself.
“N?o acredito. You can’t be here. What are you thinking? ”
News correspondents were crawling all over the Walcott Hotel. Media vans were prowling everywhere. Elliott couldn’t afford to be seen.
By Elliott’s pained expression, he’d witnessed the viral photos of Céline Montclair harassing James already. She blasted him all over her social media. He saw James primed to confess to murder on live television. However, James realized it was something else. A different danger.
Elliott was mute with horror. “James. The farm–the tape–” His words were fragmental. Incomprehensible.
“Elliott, listen to me. You’re not safe here.
” James grasped him, pulling him deeper into the private suite, careful not to raise his voice as his adjoining hotel suite filled with his political cohort.
He heard their arguments over merchandise margins, their dispute over social media tactics for the new ‘new-age liberation of the people’ campaign, and a Viennese porcelain kettle crashed loudly against the wall as they hotly debated the official color schematic for the congressman.
James locked the interconnected door. “You can’t be here, Elliott. What the hell were you thinking?”
Why would he even risk this?
“There was a cassette–a reporter–” Elliott started, soaked with rain water, out of breath as if he ran all the way from rural Arkansas himself, and James’s eyes widened.
A reporter from The Banebury Tribune had photographs of the hibernal ceremony, James knew that already, but what neither of them knew was that Elliott and Lucien had been seen.
James blanched. “Did he have footage of…”
“No.” Elliott shook his head. The dark rain penetrated him completely.
James had said ‘he’ because James had seen the footage of the ceremony from the detectives by that point.
He knew every detail, every facial feature, of The Banebury Tribune reporter that had been there.
That wasn’t why blood drained out of his own face.
The reporter had breached sacred ground to follow Elliott and Lucien.
The reporter left the Pearsons a cassette.
It felt personal. As though he suspected Elliott was alive.
“What did it say?” James asked cautiously. Now, it suddenly made perfect sense why Céline Montclair knew about Knox Pearson. A reporter was investigating the missing person case. The reporter was in contact with Céline Montclair.
Shakily, Elliott extracted his Walkman out of his pocket like it was a detonator. James hadn’t seen him in months, he wanted to cross his eyes over every element of Elliott. He wanted to embrace his best friend. But he was motionless in fear.
Did the reporter capture James’s murder of Lucien? Did the reporter know James was in the Eisenhower Woods with them? Was there evidentiary proof Elliott was alive?
“–I witnessed two figures at–Eisenhower–[static] fight ensued in the distance–ran out of sight–” The static of winter wind meant the taping had been recorded outdoors, likely in the screech of the early-winter maelstrom.
“I assumed it was a bunch of college kids. Snow fights. Ice balls. Bear runs. The hailstorm was piling on my car, so I left. I thought nothing of it at first. Except…I think…I think a student died out there.”
Palpably terrified, Elliott swallowed.
“I believe one of them is dead and one of them is alive.”
Elliott’s hands shook. Dread wrenched his gut.
“By the time the blizzard halted, the police cleared the area. I returned to the forest. Burnt remains. In the weeks after, I followed the phone lines–[incoherent]–the detectives received phone calls from Congressman Pittman, the secretary of state, and five more politicians. [Incoherent.] The Woodrow Wilson Infirmary received eight phone calls from a number traced from this address in Arkansas. The Pearson Farm. The correspondence begins on December 23rd, only one night after the hibernal ceremony. There were no incoming calls from that number prior to the incident. No contact at all. Post-incident, there has been a call almost every week.”
Raw anger shot through James. He nearly crushed the cassette tape in his grip.
“Finch Hudskin is located in the terminal care sector of the infirmary–his name was redacted in the Arthur Newton case. Under the Freedom of Information Act, I uncovered you were also in the Arthur Newton case, Knox Pearson. James Wilde IV and Elliott Archway were involved in the incident as well. Listen, I will keep asking questions, Mr. Pearson. You can keep ignoring my voice messages, my emails, my mail deliveries. Since I couldn’t get ahold of you through telephone, I had to circumvent the old fashioned way with cassettes.
I will confront–election night. November–” A torrent of scathing air screamed into the receiver.
“You have until November 4th. I know you have a newborn baby. A little boy, right? I’m willing to hear you out.
Sit with me for an hour before November. Take your time to think about it.”
Anger quickened James’s blood. He almost pulverized the tape with the statue. “I’m going to tear Knox apart.”
Clenched in Elliott’s palm were a pair of Knox’s truck keys, obviously stolen, which meant Elliott drove two dozen hours to reach James. Elliott exposed himself out in the open. He risked his entire life to warn James. Everyone thinks Elliott is dead.
They will kill him for this.
“Were you followed? Did anyone see you enter the hotel?” James darted into the hallway to check for any stalkers, trackers, and lurkers.
“No. No one followed me.” Elliott cleared his wet eyes with his dampened sleeve. His navy fisherman jacket was slick with the vehement spring torrent.
He didn’t care that his life was in peril. All he cared about was James.
Elliott had too much heart and it would get him killed.
“How could Knox be so fucking careless?” James felt like punching a wall. His rage was increasing by measures he’d rarely reached. “After everything we’ve done?”
James shoved open the bay window, glancing down below at the crowded streets for any sightings of the ginger-haired reporter with flecks of gray in his beard.
His eyes searched the wind-driven rainstorm that pelted the clots of staffers awaiting taxis; the crowds of errand runners that scampered in and out of coffee stores; the hectic tides of assistants that dried their paperwork from the blustery wind underneath umbrellas. No sign of him.
“Everything happened because of me.” Elliott was falling apart.
The saturnine months weighed on his haunted, remorseful eyes.
Elliott’s jacket was inverted, his hands were a mess of bandages beneath his sleeves that were scarred all the way to his elbow, and his skin paled beneath his eyes from lack of sunlight.
He hadn’t been outdoors in months. He hadn’t had fresh outside air in his lungs since last December.
He was rapidly losing his composure. “None of this is Knox’s fault.
Let me talk to the reporter. Let me explain everything to him. ”
Knox Pearson had a son to raise. Elliott couldn’t let himself be protected forever. He couldn’t let a child be raised without his mother and father, a fate Elliott suffered.
Alarm seized James’s brain. “Elliott, what are you saying?”
“I need to be the one to confess everything.” Elliott tucked his hands into his pockets. A letter of his own was addressed to Jamie. His smile was bittersweet. “I only wanted to spend one last moment with you.”
Shock obliterated James’s thoughts. The world tilted uncontrollably inside of him. “Don’t do this, Elliott.” I slaughtered a man for you. I severed him apart, then burnt him to ash for you. “You aren’t thinking straight. You haven’t slept well, Elliott. Have you been taking your medication?”
James needed to keep him under control.