Tail Spin

happen,” Gillette said. He sighed and looked around. He bent down, picked up a large hunk of glass. “I guess I’m not through with my house.”
    “They’re going to put me in the same hospital room as Dr. MacLean, are they?” Rachael wondered aloud. “Well, forget that. I’ve got to call my mom. If they didn’t do a pretty good search to find out about Slipper Hollow, then they could have gotten to her.”
    Gillette said, “I called while you and Jack were tracking blood in the woods. Everyone’s fine. I didn’t tell your mother about any of your trouble.”
    Rachael said, “But shouldn’t we warn them? Shouldn’t they take a vacation?”
    Jack shook his head. “Whoever ordered this hit doesn’t want more collateral damage than absolutely necessary. Parlow must have scared them but good. Limit the risks, limit the exposure. They knew it’d be beyond stupid to go after your mom and her family. And so they did something else.”
    Rachael said, “Fine, aren’t you brilliant. Just what did they do? I didn’t think anyone knew about Slipper Hollow.”
    Gillette sighed. “It wouldn’t be hard, Rachael, think about it.”
    Jack said, “Gillette’s right. Not hard at all. They researched you, Rachael, found out about Gillette and where he lives. After the failure in Parlow, they must have looked for another destination, and found it.”
    Gillette said, “I guess I wanted this place to be off the map. Nothing’s off the map in this day and age. I’m an idiot.” He shook his head. “Oh yeah, there would be FedEx records, property records, asking at the local post office where my P.O. box is, any number of ways to track me down.”
    Jack said to Rachael, “I should have hauled your butt to the Arizona desert.”
    Gillette looked over at his bullet-riddled front door, at all the beautiful windows, now shot to pieces, the gouges in the walls, the shattered hall mirror.
    Jack said, “While we’re waiting for Sheriff Hollyfield, let’s start fixing that door and boarding up the windows. You gonna use FedEx to deliver new windows?”
    “Probably, but I might take myself off their database,” Gillette said.
    “I’m so sorry, Uncle Gillette,” Rachael said. “It’s all my fault.”
    “Don’t piss me off, Rachael,” Gillette said, and tugged her braid.
    It wasn’t until that evening, right before dark, that Jack discovered the gunmen had found and disabled Rachael’s Charger.

TWENTY-ONE
    Washington Memorial Hospital Washington, D.C.
    Wednesday morning
    Dr. MacLean’s eyes weren’t drug-bright anymore; he was alert and laughing with a nurse when Savich and Sherlock came into his room.
    He looked over at them, smiled. “I remember you two from yesterday. You’re the FBI agents who work with Jackson.” He shrugged. “Jackson told me the young lady with him—Rachael, I believe her name is—saved our hides after he brought the plane down. They left ten minutes ago, said you were on your way.”
    The nurse, Louise Conver, gave Dr. MacLean a smile and left. “Yes,” Savich said, “we saw them in the lobby. They told us you’re feeling much better this morning.”
    The neurologist had told them the disease was unpredictable and everyone was different. Savich prayed Dr. MacLean would remember enough of their conversation the day before so they wouldn’t have to begin all over.
    MacLean said thoughtfully, “I always told his daddy I never liked the shortened version of his name, so he’ll stay Jackson to me. Fact is, I threw footballs with him, taught him how to pitch a curveball, gave him pointers on how to psychoanalyze his sister’s lemonade customers. He set up a stand right next to hers. Unlike Charlie Brown’s Lucy, Jackson charged ten cents for a three-minute reading and, ah, dispensing advice. He was ten years old, I believe.”
    “How did he treat his customers?” Sherlock asked.
    “I believe he looked at the men’s palms, and for the women, he swished the remains of the lemonade in the bottom of their paper cups and studied the arrangement of the pulp.
    “That was the first time I realized how intuitive he was. His mother closed him down after he counseled a neighbor to stop sleeping with Mrs. Hinkley, who lived two blocks over. He and his sister Jennifer made a bundle that summer.
    “Listen, I can tell something’s going on with him and that young lady—Rachael—but he claimed everything was fine, all the bandages were for dippy stuff, all the result of our