Dead Watch

at the top, at noon. Live. This is great shit, Mrs. Bowe.” He picked up a remote and ran back to the point where Sheenan had shuffled toward her. The threat seemed more explicit on the tape than it had in person. James froze the scene, said, “Look at the face on that fucker . . .”
    Her name was Madison Bowe. Her husband was an ex–U.S. senator from Virginia, who, two weeks earlier, had vanished after a speech in Charlottesville. Vanished like a wisp of smoke.

    Next day.
    The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia stood in the living room of the private quarters on the second floor of the governor’s mansion, watching the television. He was flushed, angry, but silent.
    His brother was not. His brother screamed at the television: “Look at the bitch, Arlo. Look at that bitch. She’s ruinin’ you, and she knows it. Goddamn her eyes . . .”
    “She’s good at it,” Arlo Goodman said after a moment, a small smile on his face. “That silly ass Randall James is wearing a toupee, huh? He looks like a circumcised cock being attacked by a rat.”
    Darrell Goodman wasn’t amused. He sat on the couch behind the governor, wearing a tan raincoat, his hands in the pockets, a tennis hat shading his eyes, making them invisible in the already dimly lit room. His body was canted toward the TV, trembling with tension. “You want me to . . .”
    The governor turned and pointed a finger at him: “Nothing. Nobody goes near her, not for any reason. I’ll make a statement, sweetness and light, apologize, kick the Watchman’s ass. What’s his name? Sheenan. We kick his ass. But if anything happened to her, I’d be cooked. Done. Finished. Stay the fuck away from her.”
    “What about Sheenan? Maybe he’s working with her. Maybe it was a setup.”
    The governor grunted: “If that was a setup, he oughta get the Oscar. But it wasn’t a setup, Darrell. That was a real, honest-to-God barefaced threat. He thought he was doing the right thing.”
    “Dumb fuck, getting on tape.”
    “Let it go. I’ll have Patricia deal with him. But I’ll tell you what, this is no way to get to be president.”
    Darrell Goodman studied his brother, his calm face, the smile as he watched the televised assassination. Sooner or later, the governor would realize that they were in a war. Then he’d do more than rave. Then he’d get angry, then he’d move. Darrell looked forward to the day.

    The hunter knew Madison Bowe’s name. He’d seen her picture, had never met her, had no idea where she lived, had no thought that she might be in his future. As she spoke to a half million people on Randall James’s show, he knelt on a rubber tarp, not forty miles from her farm, waiting. Above him, the sun was a dull nickel hidden in the clouds.
    The rain had come every night for the past three, courtesy of a low-pressure system stalled over the Appalachians. The night before, the rain began just after 3 A . M . He’d woken in his guest room, upstairs in the cabin, snug under the slanting tin roof. He’d listened for a few moments, the water whispering down a drainpipe, the cotton smell of the quilt around him, and then he’d rolled over and slept soundly until four-thirty.
    He woke at four-thirty every morning. When he opened his eyes, he lay quietly for a moment, surfacing, then looked at the bedside clock, stretched, and got out of bed. He did fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups on the colonial-style hooked rug from China, then a series of stretches, working hard on his bad leg. As he was finishing his routine, he heard an alarm go off down the hall.
    He grabbed his jeans and a pair of fresh underpants from his bag, and padded barefoot down the hall to the bathroom. Better first than at the end of the line . . .
    He brushed his teeth, skipped shaving, showered quickly. Out of the shower, he dried himself with his designated towel, pulled on the shorts and jeans, and opened the door. Peyson Carter was leaning against the opposite wall, green eyes, sleepy, wrapped in a bathrobe, holding a hair dryer.
    “Morning, Jake,” she said, not looking at his bare chest. His name was Jake Winter. “Billy’s just getting up.”
    “Yeah, let me get out of your way.”
    He slid past her in the hallway, careful not to brush against her. Peyson was his best friend’s wife. Since Billy Carter first brought her around, fifteen years ago in college, he’d been a little in love with her. Some of the feeling, he suspected, was returned. They were