“You wouldn’t really shoot me, would you?” I felt my eyes go large and liquid, puppy-dog eyes. After all we’d been through, I’d like to think he wouldn’t be so happy about traveling across the country for a chance to kill me.
He rolled his e
yes. “Norville, if I really thought you were going to get out of control, I wouldn’t have taken the job. I’ve seen you in action, you’re okay.”
I looked at Ben for a cue. His wry expression hadn’t changed.
“No, I’m not going to shoot you,” Cormac said with a huff. “Unless you get out of control.”
“If you shoot my client, I’ll sue you,” Ben said, but he was smiling, like it was a joke.
“Yeah? Really?” Cormac sounded only mildly offended.
Could Ben simultaneously sue Cormac for killing me while defending Cormac against criminal charges for killing me?
I was so screwed.
Also on the docket for the day were some folklorists from Princeton who gave prepared statements about how phenomena attributed to the supernatural by primitive societies had their roots in easily explained natural occurrences. When the floor opened to questions, I was almost relieved that Duke harried them as hard as he’d harried Flemming. The senator was after everyone, it seemed. He’d cornered Flemming on vampires. He cornered the folklorists on the Bible.
“Professor, are you telling me that the Holy Scripture that tens of millions of good people in this country swear by is nothing more than a collection of folklore and old wives’ tales? Is that what you’re telling me? Because my constituency would respectfully disagree with you on that score.”
The academics just couldn’t counter that kind of argument.
Duke called one of the committee staffers over and spoke for a few moments. Then he left. The remaining senators conferred, while the audience started grumbling.
Then Senator Henderson recessed the hearing for the day. I didn’t testify after all.
Anticipation produced the worst kind of anxiety. It didn’t matter how nervous about a show I was beforehand, how worried I was that a guest wouldn’t show, or that I’d get a call I couldn’t handle, or that I was presenting a topic that would get out of control, once the show started that all went away. I was only nervous when I sat there, doing nothing, inventing terrible stories of everything that could go wrong.
The longer I sat at the hearing without doing anything, the more nervous I got. I’d be shaking by the time I finally got up there to testify.
Cormac stayed in the back, leaning by the door, where he could keep an eye on the whole room. When the committee members left out the back and the audience was breaking up to leave, he came to our row and sat beside Ben.
“Has it been going like this the whole time?”
Ben crossed his arms and leaned back. “No. They’ve been totally businesslike until now. I wonder if they’ve lost interest.”
I pouted. “That doesn’t matter, they still have to let me talk. I drove all the way out here, I’ve been sitting here for three days—could they really not let me talk?”
“Theoretically, they can do anything they want,” Ben said.
Case in point: one of Senator Duke’s aides, a young man looking stiff and uncomfortable in his suit, came down the aisle toward us. I guessed he was Duke’s aide—the senator had returned to the room and watched us closely from the side of the benches. The aide only glanced at Ben and me, then leaned in to whisper to Cormac.
“The senator would like a word with you, if you don’t mind.” He waited, then, like he expected to escort the bounty hunter that very moment.
Cormac deliberately picked himself up out of the chair, taking his time, then followed the aide to see Duke. The reason for the summons became clear at once. Duke didn’t even need a microphone to be heard.
“You didn’t tell me you were friendly with her!”
If Cormac answered, he kept his voice subdued, and I didn’t hear him.
Duke replied, “Does conflict of interest mean anything to you?”
He apparently didn’t know Cormac very well. Even I knew the answer to that one.
“You’re fired! You’re off security! I want you out of this building!”
With as little concern as he’d shown strolling up there, Cormac walked back, wearing a wry smile.