Testament Read Free Page A

talk he had left the stage to speak directly with his audience. Fragments from the stage had badly lacerated eight persons in the front row. The lieutenants themselves turned out to be from three Connecticut branches of the Kess organization, respected in their communities: a policeman, a fireman, a high-school botany teacher.
    One day later, six mortar rounds had hit an upper New York farmhouse and barn where a Black youth camp was being set up for the holidays. Fifteen minutes of sniping had killed two girls and a boy; two other boys were burned by fires from the mortar explosions, and most of the others were almost torn apart by shrapnel. At nightfall, police raided an isolated hunting lodge owned and used as a training ground by another of Kess’s lieutenants; they arrested five men and seized eight machine guns, three grenade launchers, two mortar launchers, one antitank missile launcher, a variety of handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles, and ten thousand assorted rounds of ammunition.
    Both times Kess had denied any knowledge of what his subordinates were up to. He seemed genuinely shocked and annoyed by it all. But a week later on Christmas Day, police had raided his home in Providence, Rhode Island, and seized twelve fully automatic submachine guns plus two cases of grenades, charging him with violations of the National Firearms Act. They had also charged him with organizing a conspiracy to attack and loot an Illinois National Guard armory.
    Now in September, the water dripping off his face into the sink, trickling down the drain, he thought of how he had watched the news of Kess’s arrest, how he had been curious to see what the man looked like, but there had been no pictures. He thought of how he had worked so hard, taken so much time to set up the meeting with Kess—and then he suddenly thought of Ethan again and fought to concentrate on the cool feel of the water drying on his skin. He toweled his face as roughly as he could. Anything to keep from thinking. Get busy, he told himself. Do something.
    Like what?
    Like find Sarah. Find out how she is.
    He found her the first place he looked—down at the end of the hall in her room. She was sitting propped up against the headboard of her bed, pretending to be occupied. The book in her hands was upside down.
    “I’ve got a job for you,” he said.
    She turned a page and peered at it. “Is Mommy going to die too?” she asked from behind the book.
    He had to close his eyes again. “No,” he said. “She’s just very upset and we have to do everything we can to help her. That’s the job I have for you.”
    The pressure eased, and he opened his eyes. She lowered the book, squinting at him. “Did Mommy hurt when the doctor gave her the needle?”
    “A bit.” He felt his throat seizing totally shut, and he hurried to say it all. “Sweetheart, when the doctor comes out of the bedroom, I think Mommy would like it very much if you went in and covered her with a blanket and snuggled next to her. She’ll be asleep and she won’t know you’re next to her, but when she wakes up, it’s very important that one of us be there to say hello. Can you do that for her?”
    “You screamed at me and pushed me.”
    “I know,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

5
     
    They were standing in the sunlit open doorway at the bottom of the stairs, watching him. The one was tall and big-hipped, the other was thin, and they both had their badges out. All the time he continued down the stairs, clutching the rail, they never stopped watching him.
    He sat at the table in the kitchen while the tall big-hipped one asked the questions and the thin one glanced around at the spilled milk all over and the broken glass by the stove.
    “My name’s Webster,” the big-hipped one said. “He’s Ford. Do you know what kind of poison it was?”
    “No.” Their names shouldn’t have seemed important to him. The pills were doing it, he guessed. He knew he had heard their names somewhere