"I am so, so sorry," Cassidy said, meaning it. If she could just get the gun out of Willow's hand and some sense into her head, this would make great TV.
"Sorry doesn't bring them back, does it?" Willow shook her head as if to clear the memory. "Now, tear off some more long pieces of duct tape so I can tape your wrists together."
As Cassidy did so, she said, "But it was contaminated peanut butter that killed your sister, not Jim. Why go after him? He's not a food manufacturer."
"Jim Fate had millions of listeners who hung on his every word. And he was always telling them that we didn't need more regulations." Behind Cassidy's back, Willow wrapped the tape tightly around her wrists. "That we could count on the laws that were already on the books. What a joke! Every day, manufacturers decide to gamble. One positive salmonella test can mean dumping thousands of dollars' worth of product. When the alternative is to ship it out, make money, and cross your fingers that with luck, A, no one will get sick, and B, if they do, they will blame something or someone else, not you."
"But why didn't you reason with him?" Cassidy thought of Jim. He had a soft side, even if many people didn't get to see it. "He would have cared about your sister. He would have listened to you."
Willow's laugh was real. "How can you seriously ask me that? You knew him. You couldn't reason with Jim. Jim Fate didn't listen to anyone but himself. It would be like trying to argue with Hitler. Would you try to get Hitler to see that what he was doing was wrong? Or would you shoot him down like a dog?"
Hitler! Anger heightened Cassidy's senses. She could hear the rasp of Willow's breathing. The edges of everything she saw were sharper. So were her words, spilling out before she could think twice about their wisdom."You've obviously got a gun--why didn't you shoot him? But no, you didn't even have the courage to look Jim in the eyes when you killed him."
Willow waved the gun at her. "Don't tempt me, okay? And I did see him that day. I was watching through the window when he opened the envelope. It only took a few minutes for him to die--it took three days for Sunny. Three days! I did him a favor, killing him the way I did."
Cassidy felt her attention widen past the round eye of the gun, past Willow's sad and crazy explanation. "So what's going to happen now?" More important, what was going to happen to her?
"I figured I'd get caught eventually. Step number one was stopping Jim Fate from standing in the way of real reform that will clean up our food supply. But there's always been a step number two."
"And that is?"
"I now have access to millions of listeners. I'll be able to get my message out, and you can be sure it will be broadcast again and again when they cover this story, and be reprinted in magazines and newspapers. And now that you're here, I can use you to get it on TV as well:'
Before Cassidy could protest, Willow slapped a final piece of tape over her mouth. Even though her nose was clear, Cassidy immediately felt like she was suffocating.
"First I need to buy us some time," Willow said, and Cassidy hoped it was a good sign that she'd said us.
Willow took the white pages of the phone book down from a shelf. Opening it at random, she stabbed a page with her finger, and then looked up at Cassidy and said, "Now watch me be . . . hmm." Willow looked back down, squinted at a name. "Myra Crutchfield."
Picking up the phone, she began to key in a string of numbers, pausing to grin up at Cassidy. "I have a card that lets me be anybody. Anybody at all, as long as I know their phone number. It can even alter my voice so that I sound like a man. Or if I wanted, I could call your old boyfriend right now and tell him that I want him back, and he would see your number on the caller ID and think it was really you. But right now, it's going to be 911 that's going to believe that Myra Crutchfield is watching a world of hurt."
So Chris had been right, Cassidy thought--the voice on the phone hadn't belonged to Congressman Glover. Instead Willow had framed him so effectively that he had been pushed into suicide.
Willow finished dialing the long string of numbers and then put the phone to her ear. "Yes," she said in an old lady's quavery voice, "this is Mrs. Crutchfield on Southwest Thirtieth. My neighbor's house is on fire. I tried to go over there with a garden hose, but it's too hot. Flames are shooting out of the roof. And I can hear little kids screaming. Oh no! One of them is trying to crawl out a second-story window!"
Without saying anything more, Willow hung up. Cassidy imagined the firefighters and police being dispatched to the neighborhood, hearts pumping, only to find--nothing. And Mrs. Crutchfield denying that she had been doing anything but watching TV or making dinner.