Chapt. 44 (1st draft -- Father Daughter Talk)

It was the tone of her voice, not his name, that cut through his concentration.

“Clem?”

Nothing unusual about his daughter calling him by his name, something she'd done since learning it as a child. He loved how it sounded spoken in the soft contralto she'd inherited from her mother. Ordinarily she said “Clem” with an easy affection that rarely failed to slip under the crusty exterior that kept most people wary in his presence. This time was different.

“Clem?”

She so seldom put the little interrogative curl at the end when saying his name that doing so now, especially with a heightened volume, conveyed an urgency that was equally unusual for her. Yet, he hesitated. Focused so intensely on a scene in the mystery novel he was writing, he needed stages of disengagement to break free. Part of his brain was calculating the degree of urgency represented by his daughter's not rapping on the door. He took a deep breath and stepped back from his laptop.

“Daddy!”

“Yes, Mary Beth. Come in.”

The door started to open, tentatively. He took the knob and tugged it enough to reveal his daughter, whose beauty struck him, as it often did, with its startling resemblance to her mother's when they'd met. Her radiant face was composed and serious.

“It's Randy. He said he'll call you from the cabin. Sounded urgent.”

“Thanks, Sweetheart. Can you find my secure phone? It should be in the desk, top left drawer.”

Clement Botticelli returned to his laptop, looked at the screen briefly and saved what he'd written. He closed it then, knowing he was finished for the day.

The throwaway cellphone twittered less than a minute after Mary Beth brought it to him. He'd moved to the recliner next to the dresser where when he worked on his novel he wrote standing.

Yeah.

Chapt. 34 (1st draft) - Saving Bart

Trueblood heard the barking as soon as the elevator door slid open. He recognized the voice as Bart's although the sharp bursts had a different timbre, a loud but strangely meek hollowness absent the personality of their habitual bullying bluster. It was as if someone were doing a poor impression of Bart, or practicing to imitate him. And it continued longer than Trueblood remembered it ever had. Three or four in a row, then a pause, then three or four more. These series repeated without variation as though following the percussion notations on a music sheet. They continued while Trueblood walked from the elevator to his office, and diminished in volume after he entered and closed the door to the hallway.

Doris looked up from something she'd apparently been studying on her desk. Her face was tense, lips remaining pursed as they resisted her effort to stretch them into a smile. “Morning, boss,” she said, her voice low and tight with caution.

“Happy Monday, Doris,” Trueblood said quietly, then,” What's with that?” He tipped his head toward the barking, which had indicated no sign of letting up.

She motioned him closer and began speaking in a near whisper. “The goonies,” she said, using her name for the two WACKO men who of late had commandeered the National Drug Control Policy offices.

“Didn't think I could ever feel sorry for that bag of wind, but they've been making him do that ever since I got here this morning. It's been going on over an hour now. Poor Cathy came in here crying. Said she's never been so scared. They've made him kneel on the floor and say Bart Bart Bart like he does, you know, and they won't let him up.

“You know, boss, how irritating that was at first, for me, anyway, but I got used to it after a while. Hardly even notice it anymore. Until now.”

“Yeah, I know. Where's Cathy now?”

“I sent her home. She was afraid to go back over there.”

“Same two guys?”

“She said yes. The big goon and that skinny one, the one I think is creepier. Talks like an undertaker.”

“Did Cathy say what set them off? Bart's been cooperating with them, so far as I know.”

“She said she heard their voices get louder, Bart's, anyway, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. She went to the door to hear better, and that's when she heard the undertaker tell him to start that Bart Bart Bart business.”

“Did she say what he said? The undertaker?”

“She started crying again when she told me that part, and I was afraid her voice would carry and they'd hear her. She said once the undertaker started talking Bart hardly said anything anymore, until he started with the Bart Bart Bart.

“She couldn't make out most of what the undertaker was saying because his voice was so quiet, like it usually is. But then she said it got louder, when he told him, Bart, to start saying his name. He got real sarcastic, like, You like to bully people? Huh? Makes you feel like a big shot when you bark at them, make them say your name? Huh?

“Let me hear how you say it. Go on, bully me. Tell me how you say Bart! He started shouting at Bart then, saying he couldn't hear him, to say it louder, and pretty soon she could hear Bart saying his name, but the undertaker kept telling him to say it louder, and finally she said he told Bart to get on his knees.

“That's when she said she got scared and thought maybe they were going to shoot him, like they do in the movies, like they do when they make someone get on his knees. That's when she came over here. She was practically hysterical. I calmed her down but then she started crying again when she was telling me all this. I told her she might as well go home, then, that I'd tell Bart she was sick.

“And that would be the truth, boss. She was sick by then, and I'm starting to feel sick now, too. What on earth is happening here?”